Miracle Mile (1988) ✦ Full-Length Watchalong Reaction
Added 2024-08-15 20:15:58 +0000 UTCHi everyone! A few of you are excited for this one, so I hope you enjoy it! I had never heard of this movie until it came through as a Reactr request and I was told to avoid everything as best as I could, which I did. And I'm glad for that! [Direct link here.]
I've been told that the two main actors in this are now MARRIED after all these years - that is so adorable and sweet.
Please enjoy and I look forward to your comments!
Comments
I was very surprised to see you react to this. I’m not sure it made much an impression at all when it came out (it lost money on even its modest budget) and seems largely forgotten, but there’s something about it that kind of stays with you. I saw this for the first time on TV a few years ago and whether it was the big turn in the plot or the ending, it did a great job of subverting my expectations and I liked it a lot more than I expected. Tyler does a great job of breaking down the development history and I wonder if this movie might have done better at the box office if it had been made even five years earlier. I think the WW3/nuclear apocalypse paranoia had really started to die down by ’88. Tyler also does a good listing some of the other actors, but my favourite random role here is the crazed, drugged-out yuppie on the roof is classic ‘that guy!’ Kurt Fuller who I primarily think of as the guy helping run Wayne’s World when they go corporate in the first movie. I love that you spotted Mykelti Williamson instantly (btw I had to do a deep dive on his name after seeing him credited here at Mykel T Williamson and I guess he was born Michael Williamson, tried to make his name more memorable with the spelling and middle initial and then just fully leaned into it with Mykelti. I respect it) but didn’t know Anthony Edwards. Edwards was on ER forever and he was Goose in Top Gun. But he’s also in Zodiac, which I am going to fill out your form for. I thought you’d seen that for some reason. I guess Mare Winningham was officially part of the ‘Brat Pack’ but I always thought of her as Brat Pack adjacent. I loved this movie a little more when I found out that they ended up together in real life after being friends for decades. Her haircut in this movie is tragic though. I liked the soundtrack here a lot as well. It’s Tangerine Dream, a pioneering 70s German synth band who did the soundtrack to Risky Business (the movie that got Tom Cruise’s career going) and it became iconic. That film and Tangerine Dream (who seemingly never turned down a chance to score a film) are a big reason why that type of soundtrack is so synonymous with 80s films.
nouvelle_vague
2024-09-02 20:09:08 +0000 UTCHad to come back and add that Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham actually got married in 2021 so I guess they really were meant to end up together 😭 which I'm just now realizing was in your description and I feel stupid 😂
Nathan Jasper
2024-08-16 06:12:21 +0000 UTCIt *was* the guy from the diner in the street cleaner at the end. It was supposed to be a funny coincidence, and it's why the guy flips him off immediately instead of asking what he wants. You are also correct that Wilson is played by Mykelti Williamson from Forrest Gump (although here he is credited as Mykel T. Williamson). Someone you didn't recognize is that the man talking to Roger was Earl Boen, who had another brush with the apocalypse as the skeptical doctor in the Terminator movies, and the gun brandishing diner manager Robert Do'qui was in RoboCop as the police captain. Last but not least, one of those two armed ladies getting on the helicopter at the end was Jenette Goldstein, who played Vasquez in Aliens (and also had a cameo alongside Boen in Terminator 2 as John Connor's foster mom). The diner was once a real diner. After it closed, it never got demolished, and so it was used in this movie, and then subsequently several movies (The Dude and Walter visit it to talk about a severed toe in The Big Lebowski). In 2013, it was declared a historical landmark by the Los Angeles City Council.
Tyler Foster
2024-08-16 04:36:30 +0000 UTCJust watched this for the first time, right before bed. I too went in blind. I've quite uncharacteristically been having some pretty vivid dreams these past few nights. Or at the very least, remembering them. Particularly after, waking and realising it was just a dream, then falling back to sleep and continuing that particular horrid narrative, several times during the night. Now, I'm hoping I don't dream about being caught up in an apocalyptic fever. dream. Wish me sweet dreams... 🫣
Daryl
2024-08-15 23:48:45 +0000 UTCMiracle Mile was in development for eight years before it got made, becoming a fairly famous screenplay in Hollywood circles. The film's writer/director, Steve de Jarnatt, posts many stories about this period on facebook. One of more well-known stories is that de Jarnatt had the film set up at Warner Bros., but they wanted to make it with a bigger budget, and would not entrust de Jarnatt (who had never made a feature) with that kind of money on the line. Luckily, he had already been hired to write a movie based on the "SCTV" sketch characters Bob and Doug McKenzie, but after de Jarnatt completed the first draft, the creators of the characters ended up basically writing the script themselves. Instead of cashing his $25,000 paycheck, he used that money to buy the rights to Miracle Mile back from Warner. I also seem to recall that Nicolas Cage was in the running to play the lead role when the movie was at Warner Bros. Looking forward to watching in a couple of hours!
Tyler Foster
2024-08-15 22:35:42 +0000 UTCThis was a nice surprise! In the poster there's a radiation symbol in the back so I don't know why I was thinking maybe an Outbreak or Contagion situation considering that's infection, not radiation. Anyway, I loved how director DeJarnett didn't opt for the cutesy fly off into the sunset trope. It showed a realistic view of what people would literally do and what things would be like if there was a nuclear war panic. It gave an ending that is the most likely to happen and it was so well-made. Of course people would be skeptical if a frantic man starts saying nuclear war's about to happen. Of course people would go into an all-out survival mode. Of course people would want to save their loved ones. And of course there's the end-of-worlders who just love to add to the chaos because, hey, the world's ending, no consequences right? I honestly have only seen Anthony Edwards in a few things such as Top Gun and ER, and I think he had an episode in Tales of the Walking Dead. He's probably been in other things I've seen but he's one of those actors that just blends in and if you're not looking for him, you won't notice him. I was very impressed with his performance in this film and it makes me wonder why this film isn't more widely known. Sad ending? Anthony's just not Tom Cruise-y enough? Whatever the case, this film needs to be talked about more. It's not just another "The Russians are coming" scare film like Red Dawn. Miracle Mile felt like it could still accurately happen today. Thanks for whoever suggested this, I deeply enjoyed it and I totally didn't think for one second this was all a nightmare and he'd wake up in his hotel room. Not at all.
Nathan Jasper, the Artist Formerly Known as Primary
2024-08-15 22:27:12 +0000 UTC
