Archive | Past Matters

Silver Spoons and Fighting Seasons: Ricky Schroder and Me

Ricky Schroder may be the best pop culture indicator of whether a person was born before or after 1985. Mention his name to those born after that year, and chances are good they’ll smile blankly. But someone born before that year will light up. They’ll yammer about how heartbreaking he was in 1979’s “The Champ,” and how funny he was in the 1980s sitcom “Silver Spoons” with Jason Bateman. If these don’t resonate, they’ll recall his work in the 1990s series “NYPD Blue.” And they’ll invariably tell you: “You know, he prefers to be called Rick now.”

These days, Rick Schroder goes by “Ricky” again, and he’s been busy behind the camera instead of in front of it. He’s the producer and creator of “The Fighting Season,” a six-episode DirecTV docu-series about 100 days in the run-up to last year’s Afghan presidential elections. No matter how you feel about U.S. involvement in that part of the world, the show offers a fascinating glimpse into how our military wages contemporary battles, with the sort of footage that used to proliferate the nightly news in the Vietnam War era but is increasingly rare these days.

For AOL Build, I got a chance to talk with Ricky about “The Fighting Season” as well as his feelings about being a longtime show-biz veteran. (Spoiler: He’s pretty over the Hollywood scene, and only stays in touch with Robert Duvall and Jon Voight.) Easygoing and generous of spirit, Ricky is that rare star who is as pleasant in person as he seems on screen.

Here’s our full conversation:

The ‘Kids’ Were Alright

It begins with a pair of half-clad teenagers making out, which is a conventional enough opening for a coming-of-age film. But these two look awkward rather than polished – the girl is barely pubescent, the guy is drowning in his big-boy boxers – and they’re going at it like guppies swallowing each other or cannibals mawing their last meal. The shot is not Hollywood sexy; it’s nasty, nothing you’d see in the too-cool-for-school movies about adolescents today. Welcome to “Kids,” the landmark film about New York City teenagers, which is celebrating its twentieth anniversary this spring. (Yes, we’re that old.)

Sprawling and unrepentant, “Kids” isn’t so much a study; it’s more a ninety-minute panoramic photograph, which is appropriate since it’s the first (and best) film by photographer Larry Clark. It also boasts the first screenplay by Harmony Korine, who went on to direct such jaw-slackers as “Gummo” (1997) and the neon-reactionary, pseudo-feminist “Spring Breakers” (2012). Between Korine and Clark, who has cited lower Manhattan’s male skateboarders as his chief inspiration, this is hardly an anthem of female liberation, though it adjacently highlights the need for young women’s rights, and debuts Rosario Dawson and Chloë Sevigny, both of whom then prevailed as It Girls of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. (The latter girl was still technically a “Metro North queen” who lived in her parents’ tony Connecticut home). Continue Reading →

Riot Grrrl, Meet Space Crone

I spent the early morning rewatching “Kids” for work while separating the contents of my bureau into three categories: Keep, Give Away, Cut Up. It was the third category that conferred the most pleasure. Hacking into clothing that’s failed to live up to its promise always feels so liberating, as if I’ve refused to toe a cruddy line. This morning I made a lacy vest out of a blouse with fussy sleeves, jaunty ankle-grazers out of sagging yoga pants, and a “Flashdance” T out of an oppressive neckline. It all looks a little rough, no doubt about it–my only tool was a pair of a kitchen shears–but those items had it coming. Besides, no matter how many times I wax my brows, you can never take the ’90s out of the girl. I’ll always be more punk rock than polished, just now I call it dowager chic.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy