Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Whatever happened to . . .
Listening to t.A.T.u.’s cover of Morrissey’s How Soon Is Now? on my drive home from the gym tonight, and for some reason I remember this old Lance Kerwin TV show from 1977, James at 15, and how much it enraged me back then. How Soon Is Now? is such an angst-filled song . . . perhaps that’s what triggered the memory. James at 15 tried and failed to capture the angst of a difficult adolescence, mainly because James — white, solidly middle class, and challenged by little more than a recent move from Oregon to Boston — really had nothing to kvetch about.
I, who was also 15 in 1977, had plenty to kvetch about. I remember thinking: I’m a sensitive 15-year-old, intelligent, creative, perceptive of my surroundings. They should create a show about ME! (Would have been a lot more interesting than James at 15, eh Sis? I would cast Liz Taylor and Richard Burton as our parents, the actors revisiting their roles from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, minus the alcoholic charm.)
It was the first of many shows I shunned because it was too close to home: material I knew well enough to improve upon. Add to James at 15 just about any medical drama produced since 1990.
So, what happened to Lance Kerwin? Turns out the real life Kerwin was far more interesting than sensitive young James. Kerwin had drug and alcohol problems. In the 90s, he got religion, left Hollywood. Now he’s a minister and lives on Kauai with his wife and kids.
I don’t know why Hollywood always has to soft pedal adolescence. But wouldn’t it be cool if Kerwin wrote a TV series about what his life was really like at 15?
D.
I turned 6 in ’77. I don’t remember that show. I do, however, remember Square Pegs. And of course, The Breakfast Club. Those fit my adolescence pretty well.
Liz Taylor and Richard Burton in their roles from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf…good one. I think adolescence is soft pedaled because some writers prefer to think about it as they’d like it to be not as it really was. From the age of 13-16, there wasn’t anything rosy about my adolescence. I think we can apply this to shows about teachers, doctors and any other profession we know well that is soft pedaled or downright offensive in their portrayals.
If you ever watched the show Brooklyn Bridge, that show sometimes took a fairly decent stab at depicting adolescence/Jewish upbringing. Gary David Goldberg had one of those benevolent Jewish upbringings without the screaming.
noxcat, wasn’t Square Pegs played for humor, primarily? And there was someone famous in that cast . . . Yeah, here we go, Sarah Jessica Parker.
Sis: I’ll look for clips on YouTube.
Funny how adolescence is punctuated with screaming and the occasional head of iceberg lettuce bounced off the kitchen cabinets.