Racing with the Moon

This evocative coming-of-age period piece stars two of the best up-and-coming young actors of the early 1980s who would go on to become two of the biggest names in movies for decades to come: Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage. The two play high school friends from working-class families in a small coastal town in California who have six weeks remaining before they must ship off to fight in World War II. We get swept up in the reckless abandon of both young men as they hang on tight to their last days of freedom before facing an uncertain future. They both work at the local bowling alley, manually resetting the pins after each player takes their turn. One day, Penn's character Hopper sees the beautiful Caddie Winger (Elizabeth McGovern) taking tickets at the movie theater, and he's instantly smitten. Much of the film then centers around Hopper and Caddie's courtship and the relationship between Cage's Nicky and his girlfriend Sally (Suzanne Adkinson), who has become pregnant.

The film's mature handling of issues like abortion and the overwhelming feelings that come with falling in love for the first time, as well as its intelligent and tender depiction of how teenagers actually talk to each other, make Racing with the Moon another key example of the early '80s shift in how movies aimed at young people were changing. Films like this, Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders, Amy Heckerling's Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Martha Coolidge's Valley Girl, John Hughes's Sixteen Candles, and Marisa Silver's Old Enough were starting to take the lives, struggles, and feelings of adolescents seriously, rather than just crafting simplistic plots around them on which to hang gratuitous sex scenes and comically embarrassing situations or romanticized but simplistic nostalgia.

All the actors in Racing with the Moon bring depth and sensitivity to their rough-and-tumble characters. Henry and Nicky are tough-looking guys, constantly brawling, smoking, talking trash, hopping trains, and shooting pool, but the more time we spend with them together and with their girlfriends, the more we see the intelligence, thoughtfulness, and vulnerability under their bravado. The film features an intense sequence of high-stakes pool playing but is most memorable for its scenes where the characters share their dreams and fears with each other, engaging in serious teenage conversations about life. The film also features early appearances by future stars Crispin Glover, Dana Carvey, and Michael Talbott, with a stand-out turn from young Michael Madsen.

Sean Penn had just come off playing intense characters in Taps (1981) and Bad Boys (1983) but was most known as stoner Jeff Spicoli in the quintessential '80s teen comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). In each of his prior pictures, what made Penn's performances so powerful was his ability to bring nuance to what were, on paper anyway, one-note caricatures. Racing with the Moon was the first time this great actor got to play different shades of a complex character. Nicolas Cage, who had a tiny supporting role in Fast Times under his original name, Nicolas Coppola, had only been seen in one small role in his uncle Francis's period teen film Rumble Fish and one memorable lead role in the contemporary teen romance Valley Girl—both in 1983. Cage gives one of the least-mannered, most sincere performances of his entire career here. Later in 1984, he would play another best friend in another period piece about working-class buddies about to ship off to a different war in Alan Parker's Birdy. Then, immediately after 1984, he would become the Nic Cage we know and love, with his deliciously over-the-top turns in Peggy Sue Got Married, Raising Arizona, and Vampire's Kiss.

Equally terrific in this picture is the second-billed Elisabeth McGovern, who made her film debut playing Timothy Hutton's high school girlfriend in Ordinary People in 1980 but quickly jumped to playing adult roles in Ragtime and Lovesick and had just finished playing the grown-up version of Jennifer Connelly in Sergio Leone's epic Once Upon a Time in America. But she effortlessly captures her teenage character here. Her Caddie Winger is a playful, smart, curious, and sensitive young woman with a secret she tries to keep from Penn's Hopper once she's fallen in love with him. The chemistry and interplay between Penn and McGovern is as well-realized as the dynamics between Penn and Cage.

>The period details of Racing with the Moon are lovingly researched and were considered authentic by critics, film writers, and audiences who grew up in the 1940s, but the film never devolves into a mere work of nostalgia cinema. This is a picture that feels like it was based on a great book or the memories of an older writer/director looking back four decades on their youth. But was is, in fact, an original screenplay by a twenty-three-year-old. Racing with the Moon was the first produced spec script by Steve Kloves, a fascinating figure in film who parlayed the mild success of this movie into a shot at directing, which came five years later when he wrote and directed one of the best films of 1989, The Fabulous Baker Boys. His directing career ended with the failure of his second effort, the 1993 neo-noir mystery thriller Flesh and Bone with Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan (a film I still need to get around to seeing). Kloves retired from film for seven years after the disappointment of Flesh and Bone, but he came roaring back to prominence as a screenwriter when he was convinced to adapt Michael Chabon's novel Wonder Boys for the Curtis Hanson picture starring Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, and Robert Downey Jr. He was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for the excellent work he did bringing that wonderful Sunday afternoon of a movie to life, but he has since written nothing but big IP adaptations including all of the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts movies. He is currently attached as both screenwriter and director for an adaptation of Mark Haddon's best-selling novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

The director of Racing with the Moon was the gangly comedic leading man turned director Richard Benjamin. The star of Goodbye, Columbus, Portnoy's Complaint, and Westworld had been hired by Mel Brooks to direct the beloved 1982 comedy My Favorite Year, which scored Peter O'Toole his 7th Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Racing with the Moon was, by all accounts, a wonderful experience for the cast and director. But as soon as it wrapped, Benjamin was hired to take over the troubled production of City Heat, which writer/director Blake Edwards had been fired off of because star Clint Eastwood didn't like him and refused to make the film with him. The studio was so excited to make a film pairing Eastwood and Burt Reynolds that the project was hastily revised with Benjamin hired to helm what became a notorious flop. (I've never seen City Heat, so I will, for sure, be doing it as part of this series). Benjamin went on to direct a number of decent and terrible movies, the best of which is probably the 1990 comedy Mermaids with Cher, Winona Ryder, and Christina Ricci, but nothing he made after was as good as his first two pictures.