Matthew Modine: From “Vision Quest” to “Stranger Things”

Matthew Modine as Louden Swain in "Vision Quest".

Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090270/mediaviewer/rm3359654912/

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“I thought the old guy was dead?”

Those were the words of my spouse as we watched the fourth season opener of “Stranger Things”. Although he may be the old guy to her, I see Matthew Modine quite differently.

To me, he is a high school wrestler training for an impossible match, falling in love with an older woman, all to one of the best movie soundtracks of the ‘80s.

Back then, “Vision Quest” was just as much about the music as the movie. Yet, Modine did a lot more than that one role.

Full Metal Jacket
There were a lot of gaps in my movie watching memory after I started university in September of 1987. I did hit some movies, but missed a whole lot, making them up on video or when they aired on network TV and were marred by myriad commercial breaks.

“Full Metal Jacket” was just such a movie. At that same time, Oliver Stone had produced “Platoon”, a movie about a young man doing his tour of Vietnam. There was much discussion, because Stanley Kubrick was going to release his movie about Vietnam, which also looked at some young men doing their tour.

I was still in high school when I saw “Platoon”, but never did see “Full Metal Jacket” in the theatre. Instead, I waited until the Fall of 1990, when I took a film studies course. Our professor, Peter Cloven, did a great job breaking the course up into units.

Part of one unit was a comparison of “Platoon” and “Full Metal Jacket.” Since I hadn’t seen “Full Metal Jacket”, I watched it through the class. The university had these big classrooms that were the size of theatres, so when I finally saw “Full Metal jacket”, it was on a theatre-sized screen.

Matthew Modine played a character who I recall being a smart aleck, hence his nickname “Joker”. However, he was also sympathetic and kind, especially in basic training to a recruit who was struggling. He ends up in the Marines and is sent to Vietnam as a journalist.

Interestingly, Peter Clovin drew a distinction between “Platoon” and “Full Metal jacket” that still sits with me. He said that although “Platoon” purported to be an anti-war movie, elements could be seen as the opposite. In fact, scenes from the movie were used in American military recruiting commercials. Conversely, nothing in “Full Metal jacket” could be construed as anything other than anti-war.

Married to the Mob
Another movie I did not see until network television was “Married to the Mob” which came out in 1988. I had heard all the hype, especially with Dean Stockwell getting nominated for an Oscar for best supporting role, and Michelle Pfeiffer and Alec Baldwin being in it.

Somehow, I got the impression it was more zany and screwball, maybe from seeing the way Michelle Pfeiffer did her make up and clothes.

When I saw “Married to the Mob”, it was a good movie. Pfeiffer plays a woman, married to a mobster who gets killed and how she wants to leave behind that lifestyle. Matthew Modine plays an eager FBI agent who wants to help her escape, and capture a mob boss. If memory serves, he ends up falling in love with her too.

Gross Anatomy
In my fourth year of university, I lived on a floor with a guy named Tony Paradoski, who was an engineering student. He had to take an arts elective. When someone asked why he wasn’t studying for his mid-term in that class, he said he had.

He used the “bold-print method”. He just read all the bold print in each chapter the test was on, and figured he would be fine. He was.

Tony said he saw that in a movie called “Gross Anatomy”.

The movie came out in 1989, but it was not until a few years later that I saw it. I had seen it on video, and bought the tape in a discount bin. I was home one summer, and figured I’d watch it.

Matthew Modine is excellent in “Gross Anatomy”. He plays Joe Slovak, a first-year medical school student, who is cocky and unconventional, but brilliant. He does well in everything he does without much trouble – until he enrolls in gross anatomy, one of the hardest classes in med school.

At one point, he is challenged by a classmate who said he should be studying harder. He says he’s got it covered. He uses the “Bold type method”. Tony had the wording slightly wrong.

It is another great performance.

Vision Quest
Long before I saw “Vision Quest”, I had seen pieces of it in a music video. One of my all-time favourite songs, “Crazy for You” by Madonna is from “Vision Quest”. Every time I saw that music video, I got a better idea of the movie.

"Vision Quest" came out in 1985, but I never did see it in the theatre.

At Christmas of 1985, I got a VCR for Christmas, and with it a coupon to rent a bunch of movies for free. Since my sister came out for dinner every Sunday, she would swing by Baker’s Appliance, rent a movie, bring it to the farm, we’d watch it, then she’d return it that night.

She always asked what I wanted to see. When I told her “Vision Quest”, she came back the next week with a completely different movie.

“It’s about a high school wrestler,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d want to see it.”

She thought “Vision Quest” was a science fiction movie I wanted to see.

A week or two later, she did rent “Vision Quest” and I finally got to see it.

Modine plays Louden Swain, a champion high school wrestler, who wants to drop down a weight class to go up against the best wrestler in all of high-school wrestling. He lives alone with is dad, played by Ronny Cox, and they take in a border, played by Linda Fiorontino. The sparks fly from there.

Parting thoughts
I consider “Vision Quest” part of the lexicon or canon of teen angst movies I loved in my teenage years, along with the four movies of John Hughes, “Can’t Buy Me Love”, and a few others.

Whenever I see Matthew Modine, I am taken back to a scene in the video for “Crazy for You”, where Louden is skipping rope. It is a powerful image.

Although he may be an “old guy” now, I always think of him as an 18-year-old high school student trying to find his way.

Kind the way I was at that time too.