My kids are always asking to watch movies with lots of highschoolers in them.
Most movies with lots of highschoolers are focused on pursuits that don’t align with my tender elementary school-aged daughters. And the ones that Disney makes for the tween audience tend toward meanness, egoism, and smartass attitudes in such polished ways that it makes the garden-variety pursuits of normies like the T-Birds and Pink Ladies seem innocent by comparison.
And so we sat down to watch “Grease.” Sex, revenge, cigarettes, chauvinism, butts, and booze–all sugarcoated with a great oldies rock score.
A lot of the most awkward lines, like “The chicks’ll cream / For Greased Lightning,” can be glossed right over by keeping the subtitles off. But it’s tougher to explain what’s going on when Kenickie and Rizzo are in the back of a car at Inspiration Point, and she says “Let’s do it,” and he reaches into his pocket, but woefully says “It broke.”
What broke?, my daughters asked. I thought fast, and came up with “A breath mint…’Cause he wanted to kiss her.” Good enough.
Summer Nights
But you know what’s really hard to explain is why I tear up during “Summer Nights.” One fall in high school in the late ’90s I played Eugene in a community production of Grease. Eugene was the geek–not one of the T-Birds–but I got some good laughs out of the role.
Anyway, we’d been rehearsing this show for weeks, months, all fall, and then the Monday before opening night one of my closest friends went off and got himself killed in a freak accident.
Thursday night I’m backstage putting on my make-up for opening night and some of the older cast members are talking about this kid from the high school that killed himself with some kind of homemade pipe bomb. And minutes later I’m on-stage smiling through “Summer Nights.” So I guess the song makes me think of that split, between me and him, the joy of putting on a show and the tragedy of your scientific curiosity overtaking your common sense. We hadn’t even been friends for all that long, but we spent a great summer together. “Wonder what he’s doing now / Summer dreams ripped at the seams / But, oh, those summer nights.”
You don’t pause “Grease” for a story like that.
Disco
Watching it again for the first time in decades I realize I’m drawn to Frankie Valli’s disco theme “Grease” more than the rock tunes. The song wasn’t even in the original Broadway show. But it sold two million copies in its own right. That’s because they got the Bee Gees’ Maurice Gibb, hot off of “Saturday Night Fever,” to write the thing. Too bad they didn’t have Travolta and the T-Birds walking down the block like the opening of that picture. That would have slayed.
I saw an ad the other night where the Pink Ladies were similarly mobbing down the hallway of Rydell High. “Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies” bows on Paramount+ in April. These teens look both younger and more confident than the original cast. I’m sure we’ll watch it, so we’ll see where it lands.