st. elmo's fire

Most of you are probably too young to remember, but way back in the mid 1980s, there was a not-very-good movie called St. Elmo’s Fire. It was mostly about the ineffable angst of being 22 years old, gorgeous, and living in a loft apartment in Georgetown. What plot there was traced the intertwined stories of a group of recent college graduates as they struggled with deep issues like the chasm between dreams and reality and the meaning of life and love. By the closing credits, all of the characters had experienced helpful epiphanies, their collective coming of age symbolized by the key decision to have finally drinks somewhere other than their usual hangout, the eponymous St. Elmo’s.

The central characters (or central-ish, since this was decidedly an ensemble production) were Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy. He was a political operative and compulsive cheater. She was his long-suffering yuppie girlfriend, who ended up getting even by sleeping with his best friend. Anyway, (and I haven’t seen the movie in 20 years, so I might have this slightly wrong) throughout the movie, Allie Sheedy kept telling the story of how she knew that she and Judd Nelson were meant for each other, ever since they had met the first day of college, while they were both moving boxes into the dorm. Finally, at the end of the movie, the scales fall from her eyes and she tearfully says something like, “You know, if we hadn't met that first day of college, I would have ... I would have just met somebody else.”

And that line is the reason I remember this otherwise-forgettable movie so vividly. It was my own little light bulb moment when I suddenly saw that the past is malleable, that chance masquerades as fate, and that, when you look back, by some trick of the light, all roads seem to lead inevitably to exactly the place you’re standing.

What's your favorite bad movie?