You know a lot more about this than I do, so let's move on to a new question -- have these coming-of-age high school movies gotten actively worse? In the late '70s/early '80s came most of the acknowledged classics of the genre (exceptions like Rebel without a Cause [or the period piece movie based loosely on A Tale of Two Cities the name of which escapes me] aside, this is when I would guess the concept of the "high school movie" came about?) So if high school coming of age romances are still being made, are they not being made well anymore? I'm not talking about Brick or Donnie Darko style, I'm talking about American Pie etc.
This will not be as short an answer as you might like. John Hughes was the king, no doubt about it. But you'll note - he wasn't making Porky's. He was making Sixteen Candles and Some Kind of Wonderful and Pretty In Pink and movies where they lead with heart and let the humor fill in around it. You could say the same about Goonies or Stand By Me - they're funny, but they aren't just funny. They're about people who care about each other and believe in things. They are not Animal House or Better Off Dead. Those movies do still exist, but they're less common. Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a funny coming of age movie. It's also one of the first things written by Cameron Crowe, who also did Almost Famous. Almost Famous is a movie that cares about people and is a coming-of-age film (that is also about Led Zeppelin). It was not sold as a coming-of-age movie, though. Not really. Boys and Girls is also a coming-of-age movie. It's squarely in that "teen" "high school" territory - it's about college freshmen. Yet if you watch the trailers, they're trying to sell it like Porky's... or American Pie. And there's the trick. The genre was pretty much dead until American Pie came out, which was raunchy by any standard. So everyone attempted to remake American Pie. Even when what you had wasn't American Pie, you sold it as American Pie - 10 Things I Hate About You is The Taming of the Shrew. Legit. Straight up Shakespeare re-cast in High School. Yet watch the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWmjzCZr0Jw ...*American Pie.* It didn't take long for people to decide that, rather than pretending their movies were American Pie, they might as well make them American Pie. Because raunch sells. Consider: Judd Apatow really broke out with Freaks and Geeks, perhaps the most heart-filled "coming-of-age" TV show in a generation. If you haven't seen it, watch it. It legitimately leaves My So-Called Life in the dust. But it lasted one season and was cancelled. From there, he went raunchier, but with still a little heart - he made The 40-year-old Virgin. From there, it just got raunchier - Knocked Up. Pineapple Express. Dewey Cox. All the heart went out of it, and into that void jumped fucking TWILIGHT. So now your teen coming-of-age movies are at a nadir. It'll get better. But yeah. There's a cycle to everything. One of my friends pointed out that the landscape is ripe for a decent, well-written, well-acted, well-directed romantic comedy because we haven't had one in almost a decade. It's all The Hangover and Bridesmaids and other crass bullshit that is completely without any heart. The most romantic film we've had in forever is Sideways and even that gets fucked up by Paul Giamatti not being gay.
You know, for someone my age or a bit younger, it's almost impossible to imagine good romantic comedies coming out on a semi-regular basis. There just hasn't been one since I've been cognizant of movies. I mean, audiences actually put effort into enjoying 50 First Dates and Hitch for that very reason. They desperately wanted to meet the genre halfway. Zooey Deschanel breaks hearts and sells movies/shows/albums because her life seems like some kind of rom-com. What a joke. Give me another Intolerable Cruelty at the very least, which is clever in a sort of obvious way. Give me Clueless. It's a crying shame, because romantic comedies are "easy listening" in a way not approached by anything currently except the vapid Marvel movies. A good romantic comedy has staying power. /opinion or whatever. I just like smart movies and lately films have to pick only two out of romance, comedy and intelligence.There's a cycle to everything. One of my friends pointed out that the landscape is ripe for a decent, well-written, well-acted, well-directed romantic comedy because we haven't had one in almost a decade. It's all The Hangover and Bridesmaids and other crass bullshit that is completely without any heart.
A guess: Rom coms can't be "event" movies. They aren't "must sees." Now that the average movie release, with P&A, costs $100m, there isn't any way to get people to go out to see a movie that isn't a "must see." You can make a $150m sci fi epic that everybody has to go see. You just can't make a $150m romcom. Something I've been dealing with personally is the propagation of tiny little movies that just go directly to Netflix. I think we'll see more of that as the studio system continues to lock out anything that isn't a nine-figure pre-existing property. It'll be a while, though; it's really tough to make a decent movie for under $300k of a quality that will be accepted by the average audience.
It's happening with tv shows, so I assume movies are next -- but I don't know how the money works there. I mean, what do a few episodes of Arrested Development cost compared to an independent film? What exactly can Netflix afford? Not a movie with George Clooney in it, surely. And until then it'll be a limited market. (Hell, maybe Netflix can afford that shit -- I saw a statistic bandied about a while ago that claimed that any given evening X percentage of bandwidth is being used on Netflix streaming, and it was an insane number.)Something I've been dealing with personally is the propagation of tiny little movies that just go directly to Netflix.
It's nothing compared to porn and spam. Netflix's bandwidth is high, but considering their traffic rides on Amazon's servers, it's hard to say for sure. As to the rest of it, read this.
For the record, Porky's was brought in to this conversation by me. I want to make it clear that my point was that Porky's was a T&A franchise, much like American Pie. These types of movies aren't going anywhere. Thoughtful coming of age movies like Sixteen Candles aren't going anywhere either. But I was not comparing Porky's to this genre.