Monday, August 6, 2012

An Officer and a Gentleman



An Officer and a Gentleman is definitely an R-rated movie. There's not a lot of nudity, but there's sex, and some emotionally realistic sex at that.

I've already talked about my youthful love for Richard Gere, so there was no way I wasn't going to be seeing this one. And we only waited about a week after it opened to go see it on a weekend at the Regency II.

And by "we," I mean me and my parents. But that's not the interesting story. The interesting story is when some neighborhood friends and I attempted to go see it again about a week later.

It was still playing at the Regency II, and as I've said before, the Regency II was always nicer than the Regency I, both in terms of the theater itself, and the staff. And I suppose I shouldn't fault a theater for sticking to the law, and making sure no minors were allowed in the theater without a guardian. But I had been going to R-rated movies alone for so long, I just wasn't used to getting carded. In fact, I was insulted!

And, indeed, the ticket seller wouldn't sell me and my friends tickets, and we weren't exactly gracious in the face of that. But we also weren't going to give up on our chance to see some age-inappropriate cinema that day!

So, we waited outside the theater until we saw a woman who was going in alone, and we asked her if she would pretend to be our aunt, and go in with us and get tickets. It was the cinematic equivalent of asking someone to buy us beer.

OK. I guess we weren't very bright, or we were just blinded by Richard Gere lust, because why we thought the ticket agent would just suddenly forget the belligerent girls who tried to get in five minutes ago, and buy the whole "aunt" thing, I don't know. And, indeed they didn't buy it, and made us leave. Again. But not before I indignantly yelled, "Oh yeah?! Well, I'VE ALREADY SEEN IT!"

Yeah. I showed them!

As for the movie itself, well, aside from its sexual frankness, it really is, at heart, an old-fashioned love story. It's so old-fashioned that my grandfather went to see it, and loved it. In fact, a lot of people went to see it, and it was the third highest grossing picture of 1982, which, when you consider all the other now-classic movies that came out that year, is pretty remarkable.

Below is a clip of the film's ending but, if you haven't seen the movie, you probably shouldn't watch the clip. (Although even if you haven't seen the movie, you probably already know how it ends, after years of movie and TV references and parodies.)

I'm including it because for years I was convinced that when Debra Winger kisses Richard Gere, she takes the ear plugs out of her ears, and sticks them in his mouth.



Now, I am assuming she drops them before she sticks her fingers in his mouth, but it's the whole sticking-her-fingers-in-his-mouth thing that makes it suspect to begin with. What's that about?

Or have I been kissing wrong all this time?!

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