Heathers (1989)

dir Michael Lehmann

Can everyone get more camp with it, right now, immediately?! We are in an artistic DROUGHT! Heathers, baby, sit down, I’m not talking about you, honey. I am talking about the trash we are pumping out currently. They couldn’t make Heathers today…not because of woke or whatever but because everyone in Hollywood these days is obsessed with Realism. Everything must be lifelike, possible, and relatable in a very literal sense. Tell, not show. What happened to style? Surrealism? Showmanship?!

See: Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters by John Waters, Chapter Two: Whatever Happened to Showmanship?*

*and to think! Waters published this essay in 1987, two whole years before Heathers was even released. Perhaps people were sitting there in the late 80s screaming about the same problem- why are all these movies so fucking boring? I said it once, I’ll say it again!

Can everyone get more camp with it, right now, immediately?!

One of my all time favorites. Heathers had an influence on my teen years almost as powerful as The Smiths or Andy Warhol. I was utterly obsessed. Of course I saw myself as a Veronica- misunderstood, miserable, forced to play suburban games when I was destined for so much more. Snort. I was, and still am, quite impressionable (and a little depressed), but at least I was led into Communism instead of murder when I was an angsty teen. Honestly I think Marxism would’ve saved them.

Stylistically so much works here. The outfits, the music, the performances. God, the writing is so snappy and sour. I die. Without Heathers we would have never gotten Jawbreaker or Bottoms. We just wouldn’t have.

There’s also some real heavy and heartbreaking shit tucked in here. Yeah it’s camp but it’s also…a movie about teenage suicide. Martha, Heather McNamara, the whole thing is pretty tragic. In a way, it’s Shakespearean. Lots of soliloquies, cynical wordplay, characters with shared names, existential crises. The biggest difference is that our protagonist survives the show. William Shakespeare would never allow that!