You're Old: 'Indecent Proposal' and 'The Sandlot' Came Out 20 Years Ago This Week

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You're Old: 'Indecent Proposal' and 'The Sandlot' Came Out 20 Years Ago This Week

By Eric D. Snider Apr 09, 2013

Do you remember that magical weekend when you could see either the new movie about kids playing baseball in an empty field or the new movie about Robert Redford paying a million dollars to sleep with Woody Harrelson's wife? You do?? Then I have terrible news for you: You're Old™. Because that was 20 years ago.

Yes, Indecent Proposal was released on April 9, 1993 -- Good Friday, by the way -- and competed for attention with The Sandlot, which had opened two days earlier. (It was spring break for a lot of people, hence the Wednesday release for a kid-oriented movie.) I suspect there was little overlap between the two films' audiences. In fact, it's safe to say that anyone who saw them both in the theater was either a middle-aged pervert or a horny 13 year old.

(Aside: I would like to have a conversation with anyone who saw Indecent Proposal on Easter Sunday.)

The smutty melodrama got all the focus, with its star-studded cast and controversial premise. It was directed by Adrian Lyne, who'd also given us steamy thrillers Fatal Attraction and Nine 1/2 Weeks, and it was being released a year after the massively successful, erotically charged Basic Instinct. The plot was easy to summarize and easy to parody -- a great combination when it comes to building up buzz for a film. The late-night talk shows had a field day. It became a discussion topic: Would you have sex with someone who isn't your spouse for a million dollars? (Of course, a lot of people do that for free.) Being the recipient of mostly negative reviews didn't matter. Indecent Proposal was a hit, earning $18.4 million opening weekend on its way to a total gross of $266.6 million worldwide.

The Sandlot was at a disadvantage. It was a live-action, PG movie aimed at preteen boys (a hard demographic to crack without explosions or fantasy elements), and it was a nostalgic period piece set 30 years earlier. Also, it was about baseball, a sport that is beloved in real life and rarely lucrative on the big screen. It had neither big stars nor an easily encapsulated plot. Despite mostly positive reviews, it was only a modest success, with a final tally of $33.8 million worldwide.

But who's laughing now? Twenty years later, Indecent Proposal is remembered as a dated joke. Redford's respectability has survived, but Harrelson and Moore are kitsch figures now, the kind of actors who we not only don't take seriously but have a difficult time believing were ever taken seriously. A lot of people have seen Indecent Proposal, but you'd be hard-pressed to find many who love it. (Coincidentally, its underlying themes -- a billionaire thinks he can buy whatever he wants; non-billionaires struggle in a difficult economy -- are timely again in 2013.)

Meanwhile, The Sandlot found a receptive audience on home video, eventually spawned three direct-to-video sequels, and has just received a spiffy Blu-ray upgrade. (Indecent Proposal has been on Blu-ray since 2009. Does anyone care? NO.) People are writing about its 20th anniversary. Viewers of a certain age, especially men, remember it with great fondness and say "You're killing me, Smalls!" a lot. Nobody ever quotes anything from Indecent Proposal, not even the part where Demi Moore says, "I hate you" and Redford replies, "You wish you hated me" like a stone-cold badass.

In short, given enough time, the cream usually rises to the top. Indecent Proposal scored big at the time but is now justly regarded as ludicrous and campy, while The Sandlot is a bona fide cult favorite. Nice guys finish first (eventually) (usually)!

When Indecent Proposal and The Sandlot were released, 20 years ago this week:

- Indecent Proposal easily took first place at the box office, earning $18 million, with The Sandlot a distant second with $5 million. The previous weekend's top films had been Cop and a Half and The Adventures of Huck Finn. So, dark times all around. The Crying Game and Unforgiven were both still in the top 10 despite having been in theaters for 20 and 36 weeks, respectively, aided by the attention they'd received at the Oscars, held March 29.

- The five most-watched TV shows were 60 Minutes, Roseanne, Home Improvement, Murphy Brown and Murder, She Wrote. To answer your next question, yes, 60 Minutes and Murder, She Wrote only appealed to old people even then.

- The standoff between cult leader David Koresh and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in Waco, Texas, had been going on for 41 days and would last another 10 before it all went kablooey.

- Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee, had been killed several days earlier on the set of The Crow in an accident involving a gun that was supposed to only have blanks in it but whoops.

- The most popular song in the country was "Informer," by Snow. It had been number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks, and would stay there for another two. What is Snow doing now, 20 years later? Repeating that fact to anyone who will listen.

You're Old: 'Monty Python's The Meaning of Life' Came Out 30 Years Ago

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You're Old: 'Monty Python's The Meaning of Life' Came Out 30 Years Ago

By Eric D. Snider Apr 01, 2013

The movie ends with a visit from the Grim Reaper and a trip to heaven (where it's always Christmas), so it's fitting that Monty Python's The Meaning of Life should be this week's reminder of your own mortality. It opened on April 1, 1983 -- 30 years ago. Which means that if you remember it, You're Old™.

As a group Monty Python had been popular since the days of Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-'74), and especially since 1974, when episodes of that show had started airing in the U.S. The first two "real" Python movies (not counting 1971's And Now for Something Completely Different, which was just a collection of reshot TV sketches), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and Life of Brian (1979), were hits. The group's albums, featuring studio recordings of both old and new material, sold well.

Individually, the Pythons were another story. John Cleese's Fawlty Towers was beloved, and Terry Gilliam was beginning to establish himself as a director (he made Time Bandits in 1981), and Eric Idle and Michael Palin had each hosted SNL a few times. But Terry Jones and Graham Chapman had almost no non-Python credits, and none of the six could claim a substantial solo career by the time The Meaning of Life came around. Since their first two films had been straightforward narratives, The Meaning of Life -- an assemblage of newly written sketches -- was going to be a return to the sort of thing that made them famous in the first place.

Part of what made them famous in the first place was the fact that they weren't afraid to do things that were deliberately off-putting and abrasive. And so The Meaning of Life begins with a separate 17-minute short called The Crimson Permanent Assurance, in which "corporate piracy" is turned into the literal, high-seas kind of piracy. Directed by Gilliam (and it is indeed very Gilliam-y), the film has only glimpses of the Pythons and would have no relation at all to The Meaning of Life were it not for one sketch that references it. The marketing department didn't count it at all: the tagline for The Meaning of Life was "It took God six days to create the heavens and the Earth, and Monty Python just 90 minutes to screw it up" -- the length of the feature, not including the short. (The tagline was changed for DVD release in 2003, by which time The Crimson Permanent Assurance was considered a permanent part of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.)

From there it's classic Python-style madness, only without the restrictions of television. The lads made full use of this creative freedom, judiciously employing nudity, gore, vomit, blasphemy and sex in ways they never could have done on the BBC. (The film was banned in Ireland, just as Life of Brian had been, for its slams on Catholicism.) Two particularly outré sequences became legendary: the "Every Sperm Is Sacred" musical number (staged like something out of Oliver!), and the infamous visit of obese Mr. Creosote to a restaurant where he eats everything on the menu, plus a mint, then explodes.

The reviews and box office were favorable, but not to the same degree as with Holy Grail and Life of Brian. Still, The Meaning of Life made just under $15 million in the U.S., placing it in the top 50 for 1983, and number four among limited-release films (under 600 screens). The fact that it wound up being the final Monty Python movie had little to do with its performance and more to do with the six Pythons going off in different directions. Gilliam directed Brazil next, while Cleese and Palin had A Fish Called Wanda in the not-too-distant future. Idle got busy in movies and TV. Chapman's death in 1989, just as the Pythons were preparing to celebrate Flying Circus' 20th anniversary, meant that a complete reunion would never happen.

How appropriate that the group's cinematic swan song would be the most Python of all their works: absurd, scathing, surreal, naughty, hilarious, occasionally not hilarious, and clearly made without any studio intervention. The gang must have had a great laugh when, six weeks after it opened theatrically, the film played at the Cannes Film Festival -- and won the Grand Jury prize.

When Monty Python's The Meaning of Life was released 30 years ago:

- It was the top new release at the box office, but still only managed sixth place. The top two films were both holdovers from the previous week: Spring Break and The Outsiders. The year's biggest hit, of course, was going to be Return of the Jedi, still eight weeks away.

- Michael Jackson, who was not creepy yet, had performed the moonwalk on a TV special a week earlier, giving the world its first glimpse of what would become his signature move. His Thriller album was in its fifth week at number one on the Billboard charts. People generally believed him about Billie Jean not being his lover.

- Speaking of music, you know who was huge? Puerto Rican boy band Menudo! They had recently performed six sold-out shows at the Felt Forum, and would be back for four more sellouts at Madison Square Garden later in the year. All of America had Menudomania!

- Compact discs were brand new to the market, having first been sold in the U.S. on March 2.

- Carrie Underwood, Kate Bosworth and Emily Blunt were all less than three months old, while Henry Cavill, Gabourey Sidibe and Adrianne Palicki were all about to pop out of their respective wombs.

- The episode of Diff'rent Strokes where Nancy Reagan shows up to teach kids to "Just Say No" to drugs had aired two weeks earlier. Oh, and the final episode of M*A*S*H a few weeks before that, but whatever. Nancy Reagan wasn't on that.

- The A-Team, Mama's Family and Fraggle Rock had all recently debuted on television, which means we must be due for a Mama's Family movie.