March 18 - Why Titanic needed a bad script to be so successful

Plus Phish Food, Basic Instinct, Porky's, Puff Daddy's insane 1997, and more

The Retro by 11 Points

Modern perspectives on ‘80s and ‘90s nostalgia

March 18th, 2022 • Issue 91

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This week in nostalgic history

March 18th

25 years ago, on March 18th, 1997 - Ben & Jerry’s introduced its Phish Food ice cream flavor on stage at a Phish concert.

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It was probably inevitable that the two most famous hippie capitalists from Vermont would come together one day.

And that day was 25 years ago today, when Ben and Jerry and Phish introduced their new collaborative ice cream flavor on stage at a show in Burlington, Vt.

The ice cream flavor is the only time Phish has officially licensed their brand name. (Some of the revenue from the flavor goes toward Phish’s environmental charity foundation.)

This flavor also marks the only time Ben and Jerry let someone else get final say on the ingredients in an ice cream flavor.

But regardless of the rare Phish tie-in, the flavor wouldn’t have survived long-term if people hated it. People do not hate it. Phish Food — a chocolate ice cream with swirls of marshmallow, caramel, and chocolate fish — is still one of the most popular Ben & Jerry’s flavors a quarter-century later.

It was the seventh best-selling flavor of 2021 — but still trails B&J’s other jam band-borne flavor, Cherry Garcia.

• Also on March 18th: The Greatest American Hero and its theme song premiered on NBC (1981)… Police Academy 5 hit theaters (1988)… the largest art heist in the history of the world went down in Boston (1990)… Leona Helmsley was sentenced to four years in prison for tax evasion (1992)… Duice’s single Dazzey Duks was released (1993)… Santa Clara upset Arizona in the NCAA tournament (1993)… Naked Gun 33-and-a-third hit theaters (1994)… Michael Jordan announced his comeback to the NBA (1995)… Mark Morrison’s single Return of the Mack was released (1996)… Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves hit theaters (1997)… Destiny’s Child’s single Say My Name hit number one (2000)… The Da Vinci Code hit bookstores (2003)

March 19th

40 years ago, on March 19th, 1982 - Porky’s hit theaters.

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Porky’s is a comedy classic that’s actually impossible to re-litigate through a modern lens; a version that would better meet today’s societal standards would be about six minutes long, including credits. Perhaps it’s better to look at as a historical record of just how much things have changed in four decades.

But all that aside, what does endure from Porky’s is its template for the “sex comedy” genre.

• Lots of big set pieces with sex mishaps

• Probably too much gratuitous nudity

• A few attempts to address real feelings and issues (though not enough to get in the way of the plot)

• Trying to make at least a few of the main male characters three-dimensional (and maybe doing that for a female character if there’s time, which there’s not)

• Following the character arc of a sex crazed goofy virgin until he has sex at the end of the movie

• Cranking out at least two sequels that are just terrible when compared to the popular first film

There has been talk of a Porky’s reboot for 20 years (going all the way back to the post-American Pie era) but between legal battles and the aforementioned evolving societal standards, a reboot is still yet to happen.

• Also on March 19th: Nancy Reagan appeared on Diff’rent Strokes to kick off her “Just say no” campaign (1983)… Spin magazine debuted (1985)… Televangelist Jim Bakker resigned as host of the PTL Club over a sex scandal (1987)… Collective Soul’s single Shine was released (1993)… Michael Jordan played his first game after coming out of his first retirement (1995)… the first futuristic episode of The Simpsons aired, “Lisa’s Wedding” — and five years later to the day, the second futuristic episode, “Bart to the Future”, aired (1995/2000)… Tracy Chapman’s single Give Me One Reason was released (1996)… Forces of Nature hit theaters (1999)… Andy Richter Controls the Universe premiered on FOX (2002)

March 20th

30 years ago, on March 20th, 1992 - Basic Instinct hit theaters.

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Basic Instinct was an interesting experiment in mainstream movies, as it posed the question: Could B-movies be more than be B-movies? (How big could a B-movie be if a B-movie could be a movie?)

Were B-movies eternally destined for 2:35 A.M. on Cinemax or could they make a mainstream turn if they had the studio backing and budget for A-list performers, a real script, and better production values?

And the verdict after Basic Instinct was, well, maybe? The movie was a shocking box office success (never would’ve guessed this, but it was the fourth-highest grossing film of 1992) but the reviews from both critics and regular folks were mixed.

So we didn’t wind up with a wave of B-movies gone legit, but the Basic Instinct experiment didn’t end up killing the genre either. We just got… some. But over the years, those trickled off as well and became rarer and rarer.

And now, 30 years after Basic Instinct debuted, when I was researching the film, the Google info box told me where I could watch it on TV in the upcoming week: Cinemax.

• Also on March 20th: Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ single I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll hit number one (1982)… Major League Baseball announced Pete Rose was under investigation for gambling (1989)… Sinead O’Connor’s album I Do Now Want What I Haven’t Got and Bell Biv DeVoe’s album Poison were both released (1990)… Eric Clapton’s young son tragically died after falling out of the window of their New York City apartment (1991)… Janice Pennington was awarded $1.3 million for an accident on the set of The Price Is Right (1992)… Positive K’s one hit, I Got a Man, peaked at number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 (1993)… Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon had their famous ladder match at WrestleMania X (1994)… a new Beatles single, Baby It’s You, was released (1995)… the Menendez brothers were convicted of murder (1996)… Primary Colors and Wild Things both hit theaters (1998)… Legoland opened in California (1999)

March 21st

39 years ago, on March 21st, 1983 - TIME magazine had a typo on its cover for the only time.

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TIME magazine has an impeccable record for copy editing. But that means when there is an error, it gets even more attention than a publication that makes mistakes all the time. Like this newsletter, for instance.

Today is the anniversary of what’s believed to be the only typo in the 99-year history of the TIME cover.

The top right corner of the cover of the March 24th, 1983, issue, which hit newsstands on this day, read “contol” rather than “control.”

They were so aghast they recalled the issue, but some copies remain and still sell as rare curiosities on eBay for a few hundred dollars.

• Also on March 21st: Someone shot J.R. on Dallas (1989)… REO Speedwagon’s single Keep On Loving You hit number one (1981)… Annie hit theaters (1982)… Part of Central Park in New York was named Strawberry Fields in honor of John Lennon (1984)… Police Academy 3 and RAD both hit theaters (1986)… Club Nouveau’s single Lean on Me hit number one (1987)… U2’s single With or Without You was released (1987)… Madonna’s album Like a Prayer was released (1989)… Queen’s single Bohemian Rhapsody returned to the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the first time since 1975 (1992)… Vanessa Williams’s single Save the Best for Last hit number one (1992)… Steven Spielberg won his first Oscars, for Schindler’s List (1994)… NewsRadio premiered (1995)… Liar Liar and Selena both hit theaters (1997)… Shakespeare in Love and Gwyneth Paltrow won at the Oscars (1999)… Roberto Benigni walked on the chairs after winning at the 71st Academy Awards (1999)… NSYNC’s album No Strings Attached was released (2000)… Nintendo released the Game Boy Advance for the first time, in Japan (2001)

March 22nd

25 years ago, on March 22nd, 1997 - Puff Daddy and Ma$e’s single Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down hit number one.

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It’s easy to dismiss Puff Daddy’s impact on the music industry, especially since his hitmaking and talent discovery skills both dried up quite a while ago.

But in 1997, he wasn’t just a player in the music industry, he was the music industry.

Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down, a double negative that proved itself incorrect based on Puffy’s 1997, was his debut single. It hit number one on this day.

The next number one song was Notorious B.I.G.’s Hypnotize, which Puffy produced. Following Biggie’s death that summer, Puffy’s tribute song I’ll Be Missing You was the number one song for 11 weeks. After that, the Puffy-produced Biggie song Mo Money Mo Problems went to number one. And finally, Mariah Carey’s song Honey, which Puffy also produced, hit number one.

So for 25 of the 52 weeks of 1997, a song with Puff Daddy rapping, producing, or both was number one in the country. (And it would’ve been more without those meddling Hanson kids.)

• Also on March 22nd: The NHL voted to admit four WHA teams: the Oilers, Jets, Nordiques, and Whalers (1979)… PETA was founded (1980)… Pink Floyd’s single Another Brick in the Wall hit number one (1980)… Heart’s single These Dreams hit number one (1986)… Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald’s single On My Own was released (1986)… Wayne Gretzky purchased a rare Honus Wagner baseball card (1991)… 95 South’s single Whoot There It Is was released (1993)… Intel shipped its first Pentium chips (1993)… the NFL added the two-point conversion (1994)… Prodigy’s one hit, Firestarter, peaked at number 30 (1997)… Stone Cold Steve Austin drove a beer truck to the ring in a signature moment of the late ‘90s wrestling boom (1999)… Lonestar’s single Amazed was released (1999)

March 23rd

24 years ago, on March 23rd, 1998 - Titanic cleaned up at the Oscars.

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Titanic won 11 Oscars on this day in 1998 — though the ones it didn’t win are just as telling than the ones it did.

Titanic won for: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score, Best Original Song, Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Visual Effects.

It was nominated but did not win for: Best Actress (Kate Winslet), Best Supporting Actress (Gloria Stuart), Best Makeup.

It wasn’t even nominated for: Best Actor (Leo), Best Supporting Actor (I guess Billy Zane?), or Best Original Screenplay.

All of this speaks to the formula that made Titanic a success: It just overwhelmed the hell out of you.

The movie was more than three hours. The visuals, the sound, the effects, the music — all powerful and stunning and hypnotizing. This movie was a true epic film, one of the few on that level in movie history, up there with The Ten Commandments and Gone with the Wind.

But part of the goal of overwhelming you was to also overwhelm you with a tried-and-true story of romantic tragedy. The script wasn’t amazing. The actors tried but could only do so much with what they were given.

Those formula calculations worked to perfection — to the tune of a longstanding box office record and award season dominance. The movie wasn’t a well-written, impeccably-acted character study because it couldn’t be to achieve what James Cameron and company intended to achieve.

And he would replicate pretty much the exact same formula with Avatar again a decade later — overwhelming epic movie with a mediocre script and basic acting. And while Avatar didn’t win as many Oscars as Titanic (it won three, for art, cinematography, and visual effects), it was the movie that finally broke Titanic’s box office record.

• Also on March 23rd: Joanie Loves Chachi premiered on ABC (1982)… President Reagan announced the Star Wars initiative (1983)… Barney Clark, the first recipient of an artificial heart, died after 112 days (1983)… Police Academy hit theaters (1984)… the Breakfast Club met for detention (1984)… Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley got married (1985)… the Soul Train Music Awards debuted (1987)… Pretty Woman hit theaters (1990)… Extreme’s single More Than Words was released (1991)… Timmy T’s single One More Try hit number one (1991)… Oleta Adams’ one hit Get Here peaked at number five, and Susanna Hoffs’s one solo hit My Side of the Bed peaked at number 30 (1991)… Billy Ray Cyrus’s single Achy Breaky Heart was released (1992)… Wayne Gretzky set the NHL goals record (1994)… the Roxbury Guys debuted on Saturday Night Live (1996)… the Tony Rich Project’s one hit Nobody Knows peaked at number two (1996)… Celine Dion’s single Because You Loved Me hit number one (1996)… WrestleMania XIII featured a bunch of so-so matches and then one of the all-time best between Bret Hart and Steve Austin (1997)… Ricky Martin’s single Livin’ La Vida Loca was released (1999)

March 24th

22 years ago, on March 24th, 2000 - Making the Band season one, featuring the creation of O-Town, premiered on ABC.

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Today marks the 22nd anniversary of when the music industry asked: Is there enough sexy dude talent to squeeze a third boy band out of Orlando?

In 2000, boy bands were having a moment, as were the nascent network TV reality shows. So ABC quickly tried to capitalize on both trends with Making the Band.

The results were a solid “fine” to maybe “fine-minus.”

Or, you could say, the results were the opposite of what O-Town preached in their (admittedly catchy) song All or Nothing. Their success was sort-of something.

O-Town’s first album debuted in the top five on Billboard and went platinum. O-Town had two top-10 singles from that album and went on tour as the opener for Britney Spears. However, O-Town never found the same level of success as the other boy bands of that era (not even the mid-grade ones like LFO).

Making the Band was not a runaway hit as a TV show. It finished outside of the top 100 for the 2000-01 network TV season, only slightly higher than the XFL and the shows of UPN and the WB. It lost its network TV spot after one year and moved to MTV, where it lasted a long time (maybe longer than anyone realized) — 12 entire seasons until 2009.

And now I can tie this in to the earlier discussion on Puff Daddy and his cold streak when it came to discovering talent after the ‘90s ended. None of the four acts he formed and launched over the decade on MTV (Da Band, Danity Kane, Day26, Donnie Klang) became particularly successful nor did any demonstrate longevity.

It would be naive to say the low-to-middling success of both Making the Band and the acts it spawned proved that truly great acts have to come together organically. After all, there have been plenty of music acts engineered in a board room that have become wildly successful.

If anything, it proves the effort to do so is a numbers game — launching five groups in a decade just isn’t enough shots on goal when it comes to manufacturing music industry success. Not even when those launches get a boosted profile from TV.

• Also on March 24th: Larry Bird and Magic Johnson led their respective teams to the NCAA tournament final (1979)… Nightline premiered (1980)… Troop Beverly Hills hit theaters (1989)… the Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred (1989)… Alannah Myles’s single Black Velvet hit number one (1990)… the series finale of ALF aired… and ended on a cliffhanger (1990)… Hulk Hogan defeated Sgt. Slaughter at WrestleMania VII (1991)… En Vogue’s album Funky Divas and Arrested Development’s album 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days were released (1992)… the series finale aired of Doogie Howser, M.D. (1993)… Major Payne hit theaters (1995)… the great Simpsons episode A Fish Called Selma premiered (1996)… The English Patient won Best Picture at the 69th Oscars (1997)… NSYNC’s self-titled album was released (1998)… Whatever It Takes hit theaters (2000)… Crazy Town’s only hit, Butterfly, hit number one (2001)… pitcher Randy Johnson accidentally killed a bird with a spring training fastball (2001)… the first version of Mac OS X went on sale (2001)… A Beautiful Mind won Best Picture at the Oscars (2002)

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Everything old is new again

A look at the reboots, revivals, throwbacks, retro insights, and nostalgia in the news.

• Selena Gomez is making a TV comedy spinoff of Sixteen Candles for Peacock.

• Alice Eve of She’s Out of My League and maybe something else will star in the CBS pilot for a reboot of Early Edition.

• Netflix has canceled The Baby-Sitters Club after two seasons.

• Melissa Joan Hart says there was an attempt at a Clarissa Explains It All reboot but it fizzled out.

• The Nirvana Nevermind deep cut Something in the Way has made its Billboard chart debut 31 years after its release. It was featured in the trailer for The Batman as well as twice in the movie.

• The South Park guys are holding a 25th anniversary concert this summer at Red Rocks in Colorado.

• T-Boz and Chilli of TLC say they have a TLC Broadway show in the works.

• Physical music sales were up last year for the first time since 1996. Vinyl is leading the way, but CD sales also saw their first increase in 17 years.

• Scott Hall, one of the key figures in the ‘90s pro wrestling boom, passed away this week at age 63 after complications from surgery.

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Throwbacks and recommendations

• Lego just unveiled new Back to the Future sets featuring the DeLorean. They go on sale April 1st.

• Winamp is going to sell an NFT of its original 1997 skin.

• A rare, famous Super Mario 64 guide book featuring custom-made dioramas is now available online in its entirety.

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Thanks for reading!

-Sam