A few more of Cody's JoBlo videos.
I have been writing news articles and film reviews for ArrowintheHead.com for several years, and for the last few years I have also been writing scripts for videos that are released through the site's YouTube channel JoBlo Horror Originals. Recently I started writing video scripts for the JoBlo Originals YouTube channel as well. I have previously shared the videos I wrote that covered
- Frailty, Dead Calm, and Shocker
- 100 Feet, Freddy vs. Jason, and Pin
- Night Fare, Poltergeist III, and Hardware
- Dark City, Mute Witness, and The Wraith
- Army of Darkness, Cannibal Holocaust, and Basket Case
- Halloween timeline, The Pit, and Body Parts
- Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, and The Thing (2011)
- The Monster Squad, Trick or Treat, and Maximum Overdrive
- A Fish Called Wanda, Night of the Creeps, and Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI
- Race with the Devil, Speed, and Romancing the Stone
- Maniac Cop 3, WarGames, and Night of the Living Dead (1990)
- The Rock, Witchboard, and Friday the 13th Part 2
- Intruder, Saving Private Ryan, and Big Trouble in Little China
- The First Power, Psycho (1960), and Hot Fuzz
- Cat People (1982), Bride of Re-Animator, and Con Air
- Moulin Rouge (2001), The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 (1985), and The Stuff
- Children of the Corn (1984), Bone Tomahawk, and Fight Club
- The Departed, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, and Ginger Snaps
- Silver Bullet, Last Action Hero, and Children of Men
- FleshEater, Christmas Vacation, and Lethal Weapon
- The Thing (1982), Monkey Shines, and Friday the 13th (1980)
- P2, Lethal Weapon 2, and Frozen (2010)
- Lethal Weapon 3, The Blob (1988), and Lethal Weapon 4
- The Fast and the Furious, Dance of the Dead, and The Rage: Carrie 2
- Puppet Master, 2 Fast 2 Furious, and Castle Freak (1995)
- The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Fast & Furious, and Halloween III: Season of the Witch
- Fast Five, Dog Soldiers, and Tremors 3: Back to Perfection
- Drag Me to Hell, 3D '80s Horror, and unmade Mission: Impossible sequels
- Sleepaway Camp, Tremors 4: The Legend Begins, and 2001 Maniacs
- Gremlins, Furious 6, and Lone Wolf McQuade
- The Last Showing, Grindhouse, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)
- Christmas Horror, Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys, and Furious 7
- Drive (2011), 1986 horror comedies, and Alien: Romulus
- Murder Party, Twisters, and Hellraiser
- Black Phone 2, Super 8, Red State
- Longlegs, The Mummy (2017), Dead-Alive
- Mission: Impossible 8, When a Stranger Calls (2006), MCU Blade
- Stardust, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, Gladiator II
- Salem's Lot remake, Versus, Judgment Night
- Scream 7, Prom Night (2008), The Mummy (1999)
- Terrifier, Link, The Mummy Returns
Three more videos that I have written the scripts for can be seen below, one for the JoBlo Upcoming Movies channel and two for the JoBlo Originals channel.
For the Revisited series on JoBlo Originals, I was tasked with writing about the 1989 Ron Howard / Steve Martin comedy drama Parenthood. Here's the result:
Parenthood script:
INTRO: Marriage. Divorce. Dating. Unplanned pregnancy. Psychological counseling. Gambling debts. Sexual awakening. Absentee fathers. Balloon animals. Cowboys. It’s all covered in the 1989 comedy Parenthood – which tells the stories of parents, grandparents, and a whole lot of kids. This led to Oscar nominations, financial success, and even a couple TV series follow-ups – and we’re about to hear all about it, because it’s time for Parenthood to be Revisited.
SET-UP: Legendary producer Roger Corman gave Ron Howard his first shot at directing a feature film with 1977’s Grand Theft Auto. At the time, Howard was best known for his acting roles, having played Opie Taylor on many episodes of The Andy Griffith Show and then Richie Cunningham on many episodes of Happy Days. It was while he was working on Happy Days that he met the writing duo of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, as Ganz was a supervising producer on the show and Mandel was a creative consultant. As Happy Days wound down to its end, Howard started skipping seasons to focus on building his directing career. And in 1982, he teamed with Ganz, Mandel, and his producer friend Brian Grazer to make the comedy Night Shift. That collaboration continued on the following year’s hit Splash, which earned Ganz and Mandel a Best Screenplay Oscar nomination. The writers and Grazer didn’t work on Howard’s films Cocoon or Willow, but Ganz and Mandel did write his 1986 film Gung Ho.
By the time the ‘80s were winding down, Howard and his wife Cheryl had four children, and the experience of raising those kids gave Howard an idea he would use to bring the whole gang back together. As he explained to E Online, inspiration struck after a particularly hectic seventeen hour flight with three of his kids: four-year-old daughter Bryce and seven-month-old twins. Howard said, “We needed the diapers and the formula and all that stuff with us, but we were only allowed two carry-on items. I had twenty-four carry-on items. So I got the crew to all carry on stuff for me and my job was to look after Bryce on the flight. Within the first forty minutes of the flight, she projectile vomited all over my shirt and I had no change. And the babies were crying, and I was helping Cheryl, and we were just walking them and driving the crew crazy.” Upon arrival, he was sweating, cursing, covered with puke, and feeling worn out as he was getting their luggage from the baggage carousel. And that’s when he realized he was living through the makings of a comedy.
He turned to Grazer, Ganz, and Mandel to develop a project that would be all about parenthood. It would even be titled Parenthood. And these were the right guys to work with on such a project. Grazer had two kids of his own, Ganz had three, and Mandel had six, including a set of triplets. Howard had a fourth child on the way, so these guys had fifteen kids between them at the time. They had plenty of real world experience to draw on as they put together the script.
Parenthood features so many characters that have so much going on, you might feel like you need to draw a diagram to keep it all straight. And, by the way, at no point in the film is there a seventeen hour flight. That scenario didn’t make it to the screen. The movie does introduce us to the overlapping Buckman, Lampkin, and Huffner families, who live in St. Louis, Missouri.
Jason Robards takes on the role of Frank Buckman, an elderly workaholic who was admittedly a bad parent. But he had four kids anyway, with his wife Marilyn, who is played by Eileen Ryan but barely registers as a character. Steve Martin plays Frank’s son Gil, who is married to Karen, played by Mary Steenburgen. They have three kids: Jasen Fisher as the high-strung Kevin. Who has to start going to therapy because he freaks out about any little thing that happens. Alisan Porter as Taylor, and Zachary Lavoy as Justin, who likes to ram his head into things. Dianne Wiest plays Gil’s sister Helen, single mother to teenagers Julie and Garry Lampkin, played by Martha Plimpton and Joaquin Phoenix – who was credited as Leaf Phoenix at the time. Julie is ready to dive into adult life with her dimwitted boyfriend Tod Higgins, played by Keanu Reeves. And Garry is going through a rough patch, feeling abandoned by his father and carrying around a mysterious bag all the time. A bag that turns out to be filled with pornography. Harley Jane Kozak is Frank’s third child Susan. She’s a teacher and is married to scientist Nathan Huffner, played by Rick Moranis. Who has very strict ideas about raising their daughter Patty, played by Ivyann Schwann, as if she’s a highly intelligent adult. He has so many rules in place in their household, Susan starts eating sweets behind his back. And poking holes in her diaphragm. Then we have the black sheep of the Buckman family: youngest son Larry, played by Tom Hulce. Who shows up at Frank’s door with his previously unheard of son Cool, played by Alex Burrall, and has some major gambling debts hanging over his head. Helen Shaw also has a few memorable moments as Grandma, Frank’s mother, who is still sticking around at an advanced age. Shaw didn’t begin acting until she was in her 80s. By the time she made Parenthood, she was in her 90s. She didn’t pass away until 1997 – at the age of 100.
Although the story is set in St. Louis, filming took place in Orlando. But the filmmakers were able to hide the Florida of it all, picking locations that appear to be in middle America. The main giveaway that this was Orlando is a scene set inside a classroom where one of the students is a young Howie Dorough – who would join the Orlando-based group the Backstreet Boys just a few years later.
REVIEW: Since there were four dads brainstorming this movie together, the filmmakers would admit that it is more focused on fatherhood than anything else. They had to write what they knew. And at the end of the ‘80s, there was a feeling that the approach to parenting had shifted. Baby boomers had grown up with fathers who only had to give the family financial support and not be abusive to be considered good dads. Now the boomers were adults and they were anxious to be better, more present fathers than their dads had been. As Ganz and Grazer put it to the Los Angeles Times, “Men have a different role and responsibility than they did in another time. All of us felt that, as dads, we did not have the license, even if we were inclined, to say, ‘I’m doing my part by bringing home the check.’ Now being a good dad means going to Lamaze classes, happily cleaning up throw-up and changing diapers, and going to check out schools with the kids. People now have parties during the day so you can bring your kids.”
The character they all most strongly identified with was Gil, and this comes through in the film, as he is a standout in the ensemble. Steve Martin wasn’t a father at the time; he hadn’t even spent much time around kids before being on this set. But he did a great job of acting like a dad who’s doing his best to be there for his kids while also trying to climb the corporate ladder, which he falls off of at one point. Raising three kids is already taking a lot out of him. The worry, the responsibility, all the activity, which includes having to dress up like a cowboy and make balloon animals in one of the funniest scenes. Now his wife has revealed that she’s pregnant with their fourth child. The same news Ron Howard received from his wife during the development of Parenthood.
Gil is aiming to be a better father than his own dad, Frank, was. Frank was one of those “be a good dad by bringing home money” types, and was so busy that he would take Gil to baseball games when he was a kid just to pay an usher to watch Gil while he was off doing other things. Through the story of Frank’s dealings with the troubled Larry, we’re shown that kids can keep their parents worrying well into adulthood. The end of their story feels very true-to-life, as Frank presents a perfectly reasonable resolution to Larry’s problems… but Larry won’t go through with it. He won’t put in the effort required to change his ways. Or raise his son.
The Huffners’ story was meant to be a parody of a nightmare version of parents that was emerging at the time. Ganz said it was their reaction to “obsessive yuppie parents who aren’t satisfied unless their child plays Schubert and speaks three different languages by the second grade. It’s these people who make you feel very bad as a parent for not giving your kids all these advantages, that make you feel like you’re too lazy, not energized enough. Rationally you can’t take these people seriously, but deep down you have a fear that you may be screwing up.” So those parents got a skewering in the form of Rick Moranis’s character.
Dianne Wiest’s Helen is where most of the mother perspective comes into the film. She’s also the only character raising teenagers. She was a hippie at Woodstock in her glory days, now she’s struggling to be a single mother to two kids whose father is largely absent from their lives. And they are definitely giving her some challenges to overcome.
This movie covers so much ground with its characters, chances are high that most viewers will find something to relate to. Especially if they’re a parent themselves, or someone from a large family. It’s not just about being a parent. It’s also about being a son. A daughter. A sibling. A grandchild. And while showing these relatable characters and situations, it also delivers a good amount of laughs, with many of those, of course, coming from Steve Martin. The movie has a great sense of humor that helps save it from feeling schmaltzy. An example of this comes when Grandma drops what’s meant to be a deeply impactful metaphor about roller coasters, advising Gil to enjoy the ride of life even as it makes him scared, sick, excited, and thrilled all at the same time. It’s touching… Then, as soon as Grandma leaves the room, Gil makes a mockery of it. Saying, “A minute ago, I was really confused about life, and then Grandma came in with her wonderful and affecting roller coaster story, and now everything’s great again.” So you can let the metaphor have an emotional effect on you, even while you know it’s cheesy. And then you can laugh at it with Gil because the movie acknowledges that it was simultaneously touching and cheesy.
LEGACY/NOW: Parenthood feels like the sort of movie that would be released in December to draw in families over the holidays while also catching awards season attention… But that wasn’t the case. This was a summer release, reaching theatres on August 2nd, 1989. An interesting counter-programming move in a summer season that was packed with movies we’re still talking about to this day. Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon 2. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Ghostbusters II. There were even Star Trek, Karate Kid, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and James Bond sequels in there. Along with James Cameron’s The Abyss. Dead Poets Society, When Harry Met Sally, Field of Dreams, Turner & Hooch, Uncle Buck. Weekend at Bernie’s, Road House, Major League, Pet Sematary. Rain Man. Movie-goers had to be struggling to keep up, with so many classics hitting the screen. It’s a good thing ticket prices were lower, or everyone would have gone broke.
Parenthood held its own against all this big-time competition. The movie was the eighth biggest film of the summer and ended up pulling in one hundred and twenty-six million dollars at the box office.
Beyond the financial success, it was also a hit with critics and was a contender when awards season did come around. Randy Newman earned a Grammy nomination for his song “I Love to See You Smile.” Newman also got a Golden Globe nomination, with Steve Martin and Dianne Wiest being nominated for their performances. Newman and Wiest were nominated again at the Academy Awards… But Parenthood didn’t end up taking home any Oscars. That’s okay. Wiest had already won an Oscar for Hannah and Her Sisters, and would win another for Bullets Over Broadway a few years later. This was Newman’s fourth nomination, and he has gone on to be nominated almost twenty more times, winning twice along the way. Ron Howard had Best Director and Best Picture wins in his future, for A Beautiful Mind. So there’s no lack of Academy recognition here.
This movie proved to be so popular that Howard and the writers decided to make a follow-up: not a sequel, but a TV series that started airing in 1990 and had a pilot episode that was written by Ganz and Mandel. The story of the Buckmans, Lampkins, and Huffners continued on NBC for twelve episodes – although the Huffners were renamed the Merricks for some reason. Most of the characters were recast and there were familiar names in this new cast, like Ed Begley Jr. as Gil, Thora Birch as Taylor, David Arquette as Tod, and Leonardo DiCaprio as Garry. Ivyann Schwan and Alex Burrall reprised the roles of Patty and Cool. But the ratings weren’t high enough for the show to go beyond one season.
But that wasn’t the last we heard of Parenthood. Twenty years later, prolific TV series creator Jason Katims convinced the reluctant Ron Howard and Brian Grazer to let him develop a new Parenthood TV show. This one was only loosely inspired by the film. The setting was moved to California and it focused on an entirely new group of characters. It just happens to be another story of parents and children. Changing things up was a recipe for success, because this Parenthood ran for six seasons and a total of one hundred and three episodes.
So that idea Howard had after his nightmare plane ride really worked out for a bunch of people. Thirty-five years after the film was released, it still holds up as an entertaining comedy with a lot of relatable, amusing character moments. So if you haven’t seen Parenthood in a while, give it another look. It’s definitely worth revisiting.
On the JoBlo website, I wrote an "Everything We Know" article about the upcoming action movie Nobody 2, and the article then served as the basis for a video that was released through the JoBlo Upcoming Movies channel. One of those things with a short shelf life:
And another video I wrote for the JoBlo Originals channel's Revisited series looked back at a childhood favorite, director Chris Columbus's 1987 film Adventures in Babysitting:
Adventures in Babysitting script:
The Marvel Comics character Thor officially made his live-action debut in the 1988 TV movie The Incredible Hulk Returns. But the year before that, Thor was a major presence in a teen comedy film about a group of youngsters having a wild night in downtown Chicago. The kids deal with gun-wielding car thieves, knife-wielding gang members, a homicidal tow truck driver, and a lot of other odd characters and dangerous situations. Their lives are put at risk on multiple occasions. And throughout, Thor’s iconic helmet is worn by an eight-year-old girl who looks up to the character… and believes he’s real. By the time the night is over, she might be proven right… Or maybe not. Whatever the case, there’s a whole lot of Thor in the 1987 film Adventures in Babysitting. And it’s time for it to be Revisited.
Adventures in Babysitting began with a spec script written by David Simkins. Who had worked on a locally-produced TV show as a teenager in his hometown of South Bend, Indiana. After going to film school, he found work assisting producers and earning credits on cult classics like Angel and Children of the Corn. After reading a lot of scripts, Simkins decided to write his own. The result was Adventures in Babysitting, and it was quickly picked up by Hill/Obst Productions, which was headed by Debra Hill, best known for her collaborations with John Carpenter – most famously Halloween – and Lynda Obst, who had previously worked on Flashdance and Risky Business. Hill and Obst weren’t totally on board with Simkins’ story, which involved a babysitter pulling off an elaborate, Ocean’s 11-style heist with her young charges, but they saw potential in the basic concept and had Simkins replace the heist with a series of smaller events.
Paramount Pictures had the right of first refusal for any Hill/Obst projects, so the studio looked at the script – and wanted to make the movie with Molly Ringwald in the lead role of 17-year-old babysitter Chris Parker. Which makes sense. Ringwald would have been a fine choice, and she had just become an ‘80s icon through the John Hughes productions Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink. It would have been a good choice for Ringwald as well, since Adventures in Babysitting made more of an impact than other movies she was working on at that time, like The Pick-up Artist, For Keeps, and Fresh Horses. But she passed on the offer. Paramount briefly considered having the character rewritten for Bette Midler or Cher, but they lost interest before pursuing those options. So Hill and Obst had to find another studio that would be willing to make the movie. That ended up being the Disney label Touchstone Pictures, where Adventures in Babysitting became the first Disney movie to get a PG-13 rating.
Making his feature directorial debut with the film was someone who was partly responsible for the creation of PG-13: Chris Columbus, screenwriter of the Steven Spielberg productions Gremlins, The Goonies, and Young Sherlock Holmes. The ratings board had come up with PG-13 in response to parental uproar over the darkness and violence in Gremlins and another Spielberg movie, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Rather than write something for himself, Columbus had been searching for a script to direct. It was a two year search and he read over a hundred scripts before Adventures in Babysitting landed on his desk. He decided to move ahead with this one because he felt comfortable with the scale of the story.
Auditions for the role of Chris Parker were held across the United States and in the Canadian city of Toronto, Ontario. A hundred and fifty actresses read for the part. Valerie Bertinelli of the recently-ended sitcom One Day at a Time was among those who auditioned. So was Phoebe Cates – and it’s surprising that she didn’t get the job, given the Gremlins connection. But Columbus chose to cast Elisabeth Shue, then best known for being The Karate Kid’s love interest. This wouldn’t be Shue’s first lead role – that came in the killer ape movie Link the year before – but it was still a challenge. She would have to carry the movie and keep it grounded while all sorts of crazy stuff happens around her.
The film memorably begins with Chris getting ready for a date while dancing and singing along to the song “Then He Kissed Me.” But her plans come crashing down when her boyfriend Mike, played by Bradley Whitford, shows up, dressed in his everyday clothes, to tell her that he has to cancel their anniversary dinner because he needs to take care of his sick little sister. With nothing else to do, Chris agrees to babysit for the Andersons. She’s only supposed to be babysitting 8-year-old Sara, played by Maia Brewton. Sara’s 15-year-old brother Brad, played by Keith Coogan, was going to be staying at his friend Daryl’s place… but he has a crush on Chris, so when he finds out she’s going to be watching Sara, he decides to stick around. Soon after Sara and Brad’s parents leave to attend an event in Chicago, Chris gets a call from someone else in the city. Her friend Brenda, played by Penelope Ann Miller, has gotten sick of her stepmom and decided to run away from home, but now she’s stuck at a bus station and needs Chris to come pick her up. It’s a thirty minute drive into Chicago and Chris tells the kids she’ll be back in an hour. But they insist on going with her. And Brad’s friend Daryl, played by Anthony Rapp, invites himself along as well.
The night continues going downhill from there. Chris’s mom’s car gets a flat tire and they get a ride from a tow truck driver who gets distracted by his mission to murder his wife’s lover. With bullets flying around them, they seek shelter in another car – which is being stolen by Joe Gipp, played by Calvin Levels. Joe is a nice guy, but he makes the questionable decision to take Chris and the kids to a chop shop where crime boss Bleak and his right hand man Graydon, played by John Chandler and Ron Canada, don’t take kindly to their presence. And get more upset when Daryl steals a Playboy that has their business plans written down on the centerfold, featuring a model with an uncanny resemblance to Chris.
With no transportation and criminals on their tail, Chris and the kids have to navigate their way through Chicago, avoid danger, save Brenda, and get Chris’s mom’s car back. This adventure takes them through a blues club, onto the L train, to a hospital, a restaurant, where Mike is on a date with someone else, through a frat party, into – and outside – the skyscraper that was then known as the Associates Center, and to Dawson’s Garage, where the owner is played by Vincent D’Onofrio and may or may not be Thor.
The Sara character has a fascination with Thor that’s so intense, she wears his winged helmet all through the movie and has his hammer Mjolnir close at hand. This was not in earlier drafts of David Simkins’ script. It was, along with the Chicago setting (despite the fact that Simkins grew up near Chicago), brought to the project by Chris Columbus. The director had been a Marvel Comics fan since childhood. They inspired him to get into the entertainment industry. He considered becoming a comic book artist, but figured filmmaking would be a better fit for him. And he was able to work his love for Marvel into Adventures in Babysitting. He also paid tribute to Gremlins with the backpack Sara wears.
Adventures in Babysitting is a mostly family-friendly movie… but there’s also content some parents might find objectionable. It has young kids as leads, but that doesn’t keep it from having a bit of edge. As mentioned, it has gun-toting criminals and bloodthirsty gang members, as well as a tow truck driver who’s out to kill. There’s a minor stabbing, nudity-free glimpses at an issue of Playboy, and a cheating boyfriend getting kicked in the ass. There are even a couple of F-bombs, including one in the most iconic line. It earned that PG-13. In most cases, the fact that there are two F-bomb lines back-to-back would have earned it an R. So the ratings board was being a little lenient here. But don’t worry, when Disney+ dropped the film on their streaming service, they used the cleaned-up TV edit. So when Chris grabs a knife and stands up to the gang member who has just stabbed Brad, she merely tells him, “Don’t fool with the babysitter.”
Despite the harder edge, and possibly because of it, the film earned a lot of young fans in the ‘80s. So it remains a nostalgic favorite for those fans all these decades later. It still holds up as an enjoyable, fast-paced piece of entertainment that sends its characters on the adventure of their lives.
Elisabeth Shue did an excellent job in the lead role, even though she’s tasked with being the serious one while other characters get to have more fun. Maia Brewton is great as Sara, the little girl who’s always going on about Thor and messing with her brother, getting him back for messing with her. Sara makes some choices that raise the stakes – and nearly gets herself killed. Long before we saw Tom Cruise climb the Burj Khalifa, we saw Sara hanging on to the side of the Associates Center. Of course, unlike Cruise, Brewton was hanging onto the side of a set. She was never more than a dozen feet off the ground. Keith Coogan is also great as the high-strung, lovestruck Brad. He went on to co-star in the cult classic Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead four years later, so you can have a good time watching a Coogan Babysitter double feature. Anthony Rapp is highly entertaining as irreverent horndog Daryl. So it’s surprising we haven’t seen him play more guys like this over the years. He’s in another popular teen movie, Dazed and Confused, but he’s one of the more low-key characters there. Speaking on The Today Show, Shue pointed out that the director and many of the actors were just getting started in their careers, and that’s a big reason why the movie is so fun to watch. She said, “There’s just such a grateful energy on a film like that where everybody is excited and it’s new to them. And that kind of energy really, really comes forward.” You can feel it in the finished film.
Chris Columbus’s main reason for requesting a Chicago setting was so he could work some Chicago blues into the film. That led to the most popular scene, where Chris and the kids find themselves on stage in a blues club – and the band, headed up by Albert Collins, won’t let them leave the place without singing the blues. Chris has to come up with a song on the spot. “Babysitting Blues,” with Collins singing along and Brad, Sara, and Daryl singing back-up. Shue told The Today Show the blues club scene was “Probably one of my favorite experiences in film, like at the top, top, top of every experience I had. I had so, so, so much fun. I think you can probably see it in in my performance. I probably had way too much fun.” Viewers have been having fun watching that scene ever since.
Even though the movie takes place in Chicago, much of it was filmed in Toronto. The production went smoothly – except when city workers came along and cleaned up the trash that was being used for set dressing. Crew members had to be posted as guards to make sure that wouldn’t happen again.
Disney was so certain this film would be a success, they signed a long-term deal with Hill/Obst Productions and had them move their offices from Paramount to the Disney lot. Sneak previews of Adventures in Babysitting were held on nearly 500 screens at the end of June 1987 to build up positive word-of-mouth before the film’s wide release on July 3rd… but that tactic didn’t work out as planned. The film had an underwhelming opening weekend. Thankfully, the positive word-of-mouth finally started spreading around. Movie-goers must have started noticing just how cool the poster Drew Struzan designed for the film was. Touchstone also came up with a new ad campaign that was apparently more appealing, because the film’s box office numbers rose forty-three percent on its second weekend and it was on its way to making thirty-four million dollars during its theatrical run. For the initial UK release, Adventures in Babysitting was given the title A Night on the Town – but it got its original title back for later home video releases.
The film was a hit on the big screen, then more fans found it through VHS rentals and airings on cable. Chris Columbus went on to direct more high profile films, including Home Alone movies, Harry Potter movies, and Mrs. Doubtfire. Elisabeth Shue followed Adventures in Babysitting with the Tom Cruise hit Cocktail and the two Back to the Future sequels, and has been working steadily ever since. She earned an Oscar nomination for her performance in the 1995 film Leaving Las Vegas, a job she got because director Mike Figgis counted Adventures in Babysitting as one of his favorites.
The movie was so popular, Hill, Obst, and Simkins tried to continue the story – not with a sequel, but a TV series. A pilot for an Adventures in Babysitting TV show was co-written by Simkins and directed by Joel Zwick. Jennifer Guthrie took over the role of Chris, with Joey Lawrence as Brad, Brian Austin Green as Daryl, Courtney Peldon as Sara, and Ariana Mohit as Brenda. The pilot made it to the air on CBS in July of 1989. It begins with Brad accidentally destroying one of Sara’s Thor toys. When he goes out to get a replacement, it becomes another adventure, involving armed robbery, a hostage situation, and an encounter with an alligator in an abandoned sewer system. CBS didn’t order the show to series, so things went quiet for about twenty years… Until Disney started developing a remake. Directed by John Schultz from a script by Tiffany Paulsen, a new Adventures in Babysitting aired on the Disney Channel in June of 2016. And for the most part, it’s a remake in name only, telling a story about completely different characters going on a different adventure – but with some similarities to the adventure Chris went on in the ‘80s.
The remake drew in viewers, but it came and went while the original film remains a beloved favorite for many who have seen it. Shue said she thinks it endures because, “It’s episodic and its innocence resonates today, just watching these young kids trying to navigate a really complicated world and how they learn and grow from there. Their night out together is obviously timeless. But maybe in today’s world, its innocence kind of shines through.”
It also happens to be a whole lot of fun to watch. So if you haven’t seen Adventures in Babysitting in a while, give it another look. It’s definitely worth revisiting.
More video scripts have been written, so another batch of videos will be shared here on Life Between Frames eventually. In the meantime, keep an eye on JoBlo Horror Originals and JoBlo Originals!
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