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*The Best in Music, Movies, TV & More *The Ultimate Pop Culture Quiz 1984—AN AWESOME YEAR IN POP CULTURE Dynasty’s TV Reign • Tina Turner’s Comeback • The Terminator Debuts ONLY IN PEOPLE On Tour With the Boss • On-Set With Splash, Footloose & More…
In 1984 bookstores saw a massive sales spike for a 35-year-old novel previously found more often in schoolbags than beach totes. George Orwell’s 1984 finished the year on the paperback bestsellers list between Changes by Danielle Steel and Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins, thanks to readers who could now compare the vision laid out in the dystopian classic to the actual modern-day landscape. The verdict? Reality was far from an Orwellian nightmare. In fact, it was often far from reality. Fantasy ruled. Dynasty (starring Jackie Collins’s sister Joan) topped the TV ratings, edging out the only slightly more realistic Dallas. Ghostbusters and a mermaid hit the big screen. Ronald Reagan got himself reelected, in part on the optimistic fable of his “Morning in America” ad. Anyone worried by Orwell’s prediction…
IF YOU HAD TO NAME the top box office draw of 1984, you might reasonably guess Stallone or Schwarzenegger. Good try. The biggest stars were, in fact, a trio of spirit-chasing, proton-pack-wearing parapsychologists named Peter Venkman, Raymond Stantz and Egon Spengler (with an assist from Winston Zeddemore). Released on June 8, Ghostbusters became the action-comedy blockbuster that defined a decade of irony and became the top-earning comedy to date. It was the crest of a wave of 1984 comedies that included rom-coms, teen flicks, horror humor and a hilarious rock mockumentary. But it was Ghostbusters, showing off the merry-prankster, Marx brothers chemistry between Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson, that won the box office title at year’s end, marking the first time in years that Hollywood’s top…
WHEN DISNEY CAST its $9 million bread upon the unlikely waters of Splash, nobody expected it would net a monstrous audience. Yet everyone is hooked. It marks the emergence of director Ron Howard, 30, as a new force in Hollywood. “People buy the fantasy,” he says. “The mermaid story has always been a negative thing, the love you can never have. We flipped that, and it came out fresh.” Ironically, what spooked Howard as a youngster in California was the ocean deep. “It always scared me,” he says. “I never wanted to go surfing out by the breakers.” The underwater shoot in the Bahamas added a new challenge. He and the cast and crew trained for scuba diving, and Howard, weighted down in his wet suit, learned to direct…
IT’S A STORY as old as Gone With the Wind. The movie is ready to go, but there’s still no star. Just when every possibility seems exhausted, a new name comes up. Someone points out that he’s not a dancer, and since this is a dance movie, that sounds serious. The studio vice president shepherding the project has another problem. She insists he’s not embraceable (her actual word was far more pungent, but unprintable). Despite the objections, the nondancer is cast, the movie is made, and—what do you know? Footloose is a smash, and in Hollywood this month there’s no one more embraceable than spiky-haired, pug-nosed Kevin Bacon. “Paramount had a very neutral juvenile in mind, more like Rob Lowe,” explains director Herbert Ross, “but I thought we needed…
On location for Cat’s Eye, a Stephen King horror film, starring the actress. Action! 7:30 A.M. A dressing room at Dino De Laurentiis’s North Carolina Film Corp., in Wilmington. Drew has just put on her costume, pink and white pajamas. She is eating a banana and holding her stuffed Gremlin, a gift from buddy Steven Spielberg. With her are her mother, Ildiko, and Drew’s tutor Almarie Clifford-Robinson. They are waiting to be picked up and driven to the soundstage. Drew, still sleepy, rubs her eyes. 8 A.M. Drew, now wide-awake, arrives at the set, a toy-filled bedroom. Director Lewis Teague calls rehearsal. Drew crawls into bed to go nighty-night. James Naughton, who plays her father, tucks her in. Ildiko crouches on her knees, watching her daughter through a bedroom window.…
