All I want for Christmas is...
Karen Allen.
Every now and then, the planets align, things just fall into place and sense can come from complete random madness. This is what happened to me a few days ago while I was at home watching TV. Flipping through the expanse of channels that line the Time Warner cable system I stumbled across Animal House, in HBO.
National Lampoon's Animal House, obviously as I don't need to tell you, is the bench mark classic college frat movie. Many have come in it's wake, but most all of them are simply the same jokes updated for the decade in which they were made. Animal House started it all and it also started something else, the career of Karen Allen.
Playing Katy, the girlfriend of one of
the frat boys, this was Karen Allen's first role in a major motion picture (at least according to the IMDB) She played the perfect, lovable, sharp edged, take only so much shit before giving it right back girlfriend. She was real, she was believable and she held her own when ever she was on the screen.
I watched the movie right up to the part where Donald Sutherland shows his better (or worse) half while reaching for the cereal and started flipping again. Building up steam I worked though the channels, watch flip, watch flip, check the guide, back to flipping.
Then, as only happens on Saturday afternoons that are, well talked about in Blogs, I hit the very opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark! The opening!! That never happens, you always flip in during the middle of the movie or the end and then can't decide if you should put the DVD in or just continue watching it on TV with the commercials. I stick with the broadcast and then it happened. Indy walked into a bar...
...and there she was doing shots of what one can only assume was gasoline,
hustling the huge locals and eventually drinking them all under the table before trying to decide if she should take the money or keep the priceless family heirloom. Karen Allen again! With out a doubt the best Indy girl of all three movies, and tentatively slated to appear in the 4th - should that ever happen. You can keep your Bond Girls - give me Indy girls any time, especially Karen Allen. She drinks, she smokes, she steals, she has a soft side, you know she would be cursing if the movie had an R rating. Just as the movie was the best of the three, so too Marion was the best Indy female lead.
While two would have been dismissible the end of my evening what was provoked this blog entry. I finished Raiders and turned the television off, not thinking much about the phenomenon I was in the middle of. Ran some errands, did a few things around the house and then, to put me a bit into the Christmas spirit I popped in one of my favorite Christmas movies, Scrooged. Bill Murry as an angry television exec who drinks Stoli and Tab and is visited by three ghosts - how could it not send some one straight to the streets a'caroling?
The premise is set up, the characters are introduced, everything is going along just fine and then you find
out what we're really doing here: Karen Allen smacks a younger Bill Murry in the head with a door and in doing so begins a love affair that the movie eventually sets out to rekindle. Clair is a voluenteer, optimistic, idealist, was a bit of a hippie and even though the world around her turned cold has kept her optimism on the world. She still even holds the hope that things are salvageable with Murry's stone hearted character.
It was in that moment that I decided that all I want for Christmas this year is Karen Allen. No I'm going to go set off to find out where she lives now (Kentucky....kidding) but some where between the mid 1970's and the late 1980's, she became the quintessential perfect girl in some of the greatest movies and for the large this seems to have gone largely unnoticed. In fact I might have even missed it and instead wasted my time this year asking Santa for a new computer, a loft apartment in the Village, or a book. If it wasn't for a lazy Sunday evening, the randomness of cable TV and the desire to get a little Christmas in me I might have missed this all together. So if you happen to see a Katy, a Marion or a Clair send them my way this Christmas, or any time really!
p.s. in case you were wondering, no - this is not a request to be set up, was just a good blog entry idea - that's all. thanks for playing though....
Every now and then, the planets align, things just fall into place and sense can come from complete random madness. This is what happened to me a few days ago while I was at home watching TV. Flipping through the expanse of channels that line the Time Warner cable system I stumbled across Animal House, in HBO.
National Lampoon's Animal House, obviously as I don't need to tell you, is the bench mark classic college frat movie. Many have come in it's wake, but most all of them are simply the same jokes updated for the decade in which they were made. Animal House started it all and it also started something else, the career of Karen Allen.
Playing Katy, the girlfriend of one of
the frat boys, this was Karen Allen's first role in a major motion picture (at least according to the IMDB) She played the perfect, lovable, sharp edged, take only so much shit before giving it right back girlfriend. She was real, she was believable and she held her own when ever she was on the screen.I watched the movie right up to the part where Donald Sutherland shows his better (or worse) half while reaching for the cereal and started flipping again. Building up steam I worked though the channels, watch flip, watch flip, check the guide, back to flipping.
Then, as only happens on Saturday afternoons that are, well talked about in Blogs, I hit the very opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark! The opening!! That never happens, you always flip in during the middle of the movie or the end and then can't decide if you should put the DVD in or just continue watching it on TV with the commercials. I stick with the broadcast and then it happened. Indy walked into a bar...
...and there she was doing shots of what one can only assume was gasoline,
hustling the huge locals and eventually drinking them all under the table before trying to decide if she should take the money or keep the priceless family heirloom. Karen Allen again! With out a doubt the best Indy girl of all three movies, and tentatively slated to appear in the 4th - should that ever happen. You can keep your Bond Girls - give me Indy girls any time, especially Karen Allen. She drinks, she smokes, she steals, she has a soft side, you know she would be cursing if the movie had an R rating. Just as the movie was the best of the three, so too Marion was the best Indy female lead.While two would have been dismissible the end of my evening what was provoked this blog entry. I finished Raiders and turned the television off, not thinking much about the phenomenon I was in the middle of. Ran some errands, did a few things around the house and then, to put me a bit into the Christmas spirit I popped in one of my favorite Christmas movies, Scrooged. Bill Murry as an angry television exec who drinks Stoli and Tab and is visited by three ghosts - how could it not send some one straight to the streets a'caroling?
The premise is set up, the characters are introduced, everything is going along just fine and then you find
out what we're really doing here: Karen Allen smacks a younger Bill Murry in the head with a door and in doing so begins a love affair that the movie eventually sets out to rekindle. Clair is a voluenteer, optimistic, idealist, was a bit of a hippie and even though the world around her turned cold has kept her optimism on the world. She still even holds the hope that things are salvageable with Murry's stone hearted character.It was in that moment that I decided that all I want for Christmas this year is Karen Allen. No I'm going to go set off to find out where she lives now (Kentucky....kidding) but some where between the mid 1970's and the late 1980's, she became the quintessential perfect girl in some of the greatest movies and for the large this seems to have gone largely unnoticed. In fact I might have even missed it and instead wasted my time this year asking Santa for a new computer, a loft apartment in the Village, or a book. If it wasn't for a lazy Sunday evening, the randomness of cable TV and the desire to get a little Christmas in me I might have missed this all together. So if you happen to see a Katy, a Marion or a Clair send them my way this Christmas, or any time really!
p.s. in case you were wondering, no - this is not a request to be set up, was just a good blog entry idea - that's all. thanks for playing though....
posted by Steddy at
5:50 PM
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home