"Better Luck Tomorrow" Showed Things I Wished I Hadn't Seen, Reminds Me Of Things I Can't Forget

My best friend Jon recommended that I see the movie “Better Luck Tomorrow.” He even let me borrow it. My wife and I made a pizza, and sat down last night to watch it.

I wished we hadn’t. I turned it off midway through the movie, so I never saw the surprise ending. I don’t need to. There are some things you don’t need to see in order to understand them.

I went to bed angry after watching that movie (or parts of it). I woke up at 5:45 Sunday morning. I’d been dreaming about the movie. I am still angry. Not just kind of angry, but irrational, furious angry. Christ in the Temple angry.

At first I was mad at Jon for suggesting that it’d be a good thing for me to watch the movie. I had a friend who once suggested that I watch the movie “Old School.” I was on a plane, and I popped in the DVD he lent me. The opening credits featured women taking their shirts off. Boobs. In the opening credits. I slammed the lip of my laptop down so quickly I was afraid for a second I’d broken the backlight. I think some people around me saw what I was watching. I was furious at my friend. It’s like saying, “Here taste these brownies. They’re made with real poop.”

What the hell? You gave those to me? You thought that’d be good for me?

I had the same reaction at first to this movie. But then I realized I was far too angry - and not at Jon. I mean, I was irrational angry. At one point, I found myself in the garage yelling. I don’t know at who. I don’t know how long I was in there, practicing this speech. I don’t know who the speech was for.

I think I finally figured it out, though. Why I am so angry. I’ve had this exact feeling once before. I’ve had this reaction once before to another movie.

I saw the movie the summer after I graduated college in 1998. The movie was called “Kids.” Like “Better Luck Tomorrow” it got lots of awards and accolades. Like “Better Luck Tomorrow” it’s about kids. Like “Better Luck Tomorrow” no adults even make their way onto the screen. Like “Better Luck Tomorrow” it shows what happens when adults aren’t present and kids descend into amoral lifestyles. Like “Better Luck Tomorrow” it shows how immorality can spiral out of control into massive tragedy. And like “Better Luck Tomorrow” I left the movie with this pit of despair and depression, as though something deep inside of me had been assaulted.

"Kids" is filmed as though it were a documentary. It follows a kid, Telly, probably 14 years old. He steals 40s in the legs of his giant pants, gets high, skates and concentrates on his central task in life: have sex as much as possible.

In the opening scene, Telly uses charm and lies to force himself onto a girl 2 years younger who’s never had sex. I have no doubt that there are Tellys out there whose pick-up lines are just as ridiculous and whose style is just as forceful. I also have no doubt that they are often successful. In the next scene, Telly is walking down a Manhattan street with his friend Casper, recounting how much he loves having deflowering virgins. The dialogue is so shocking that even as a 22-year old college student, I felt my innocence being ripped away.

The movie moves on. They smoke. They go to Washington Square Park to buy drugs. They skateboard. They steal alcohol. They get in fights. They get drunk. They pass out in a stupor. Rinse. Repeat.

The plot turns and follows one of the female characters. She finds herself in a clinic, getting tested for HIV. A nurse walks out and calmly tells her that she is positive. In an effort to escape this news, she goes to a party and gets hammered. The final scene of the movie has Casper waking up to find the whole party passed out in a drunken stupor around him. He turns and finds a girl passed out next to him. He takes off her pants. She doesn’t wake up. He has sex with her motionless, limp body. Right there. On the couch. With dozens passed out around him. The camera pans back and we see that Casper is having sex with the HIV positive girl. He doesn’t know she has HIV. She doesn’t know he’s had sex with her.

Fade to black.

Literally and figuratively.

The implication here is that Caspar, the most promiscuous guy in the film, is now going to unwittingly spread this disease to dozens of unwitting women. But we get the feeling that even if Telly or Caspar knew they had HIV, they wouldn’t change the way they behave. They are like animals, prowling around searching for their next orgasm.

The movie continues to haunt me. There are images from that movie, and lines of dialogue that I still cannot get out of my head.

I saw the movie during those formative years of my life, when I was struggling to figure out what my place was in this world. I was just out of college, searching for answers spiritually, trying to figure out what the purpose of life was. And then I saw this movie. And something clicked in me.

I knew this movie was the enemy. Not the movie itself, but what the movie portrayed. This stark, bleak, hopeless picture of reality. “This is the enemy,” I thought to myself. “And I must fight against it.” I decided at that moment to use whatever powers I have to go into communities or places and ensure that this kind of amoral, cynical destructive version of life is stamped out. Or curbed. Or spoken out against. Or something.

The movie “Kids” became my arch-villain. Everything it stands for. Everything it portrays. It’s a symbol for everything bad.

And that’s when I started working with youth. It’s been 8 years now. I’d like to say I’ve made some dents. My classroom at Gunderson is sometimes a bubble from reality. And I am naïve and optimistic and idealistic. I stopped chaperoning dances at my school because it depressed me. I watched my students dance, and I saw that they moved in ways that showed they don’t have much innocence left. You could smell alcohol on their breath, and their cars smelled like cannabis. So I don’t chaperone dances because it depresses me. It reminds me of the enemy, and how near it is. And how little effect I have.

There are moments when I win, though. When goodness wins. When kids come alive in a discussion, or stay after school to talk to me. These moments are happening more and more these days. And the more they happen, the more I realize the task is too big for me. One of my best students came up to me on Thursday and said she had been taking her dad’s pain killers. Oxycotin. 6 pills a day. She’s been trying to numb out. This girl lost her mother her sophomore year. Her dad’s kidney are failing, and doctors had to amputate his foot over Christmas. Her 18-year old brother is head of the house. I walked with her down the halls and sat with her as she talked to a drug counselor who’s going to put her in a 20-day detox program.

I don’t know if this is a success or a failure. Probably a bit of both. When she comes out clean, I’ll spend some more time with her. Try to get her into my AP English course. It’s a bubble, but she needs a bubble. And maybe I can help somehow.

I think about one scene in the movie "Kids." The kids are all on the subway and a legless beggar wheels his way through their compartment. If you look closely, the platform supporting his half-body is a skateboard. Movie critic Roger Ebert said this about the film:

“Most kids are not like those in "Kids," and never will be, I hope. But some are, and they represent a failure of home, school, church and society. They could have been raised in a zoo, educated only to the base instincts. You watch this movie, and you realize why everybody needs whatever mixture of art, education, religion, philosophy, politics and poetry that works for them: Because without something to open our windows to the higher possibilities of life, we might all be Tellys, and more amputated than the half-man on his skateboard.”

I don’t need any more reminders of the reality. I see my arch-villain every damn day.

What I’d like to see are a few more superheroes.

Thinking back on it, Jon only suggested that I should see the movie. Perhaps he suggested it so I'd be able to better respond when my kids brought it up.

He never said that I would enjoy it.