St. Elmo's Fire (film)
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| St. Elmo's Fire | |
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 St. Elmo's Fire theatrical poster |
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| Directed by | Joel Schumacher |
| Produced by | Lauren Shuler Donner Ned Tanen (executive producer) Bernard Schwartz (executive producer) |
| Written by | Joel Schumacher Carl Kurlander |
| Starring | Emilio Estevez Demi Moore Andrew McCarthy Judd Nelson Mare Winningham Rob Lowe Ally Sheedy |
| Music by | David Foster |
| Cinematography | Stephen H. Burum |
| Editing by | Richard Marks |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | June 28, 1985 |
| Running time | 110 min. |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
St. Elmo's Fire is a 1985 coming-of-age film directed by Joel Schumacher. The film, starring Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, and Mare Winningham, is one of the defining movies of the Brat Pack genre, and revolves around a group of friends that have just graduated from Georgetown University and their adjustment to their post-university lives and the responsibilities of encroaching adulthood.
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[edit] Main characters
- Kirby Keger (Emilio Estevez) - Known to his friends as "Kirbo." He's a waiter at St. Elmo's Bar with hopes of becoming a lawyer and lives with his former college friend Kevin Dolenz. He has developed an obsession with a woman he met in college after a recent encounter with her, and is willing to do anything to impress her, including changing his career.
- Billy Hicks (Rob Lowe) - The "frat boy" of the group, he is unable to keep a job but has a great talent for playing the saxophone. At the beginning of the film he is a reluctant husband and father but rarely goes home to sleep. He misses college days and feels lost in the after-college work life. Along with the problems in his marriage, he's a wild guy and a ladies' man.
- Kevin Dolenz (Andrew McCarthy) - a writer with a sullen streak whom Leslie says "just needs to fall in love." His writing job only allows him to write obituaries, but he's searching for the meaning of life and is working hard towards writing an article about it. He is secretly in love with someone he's known for years. He rooms with his pal Kirby Keger. Andrew McCarthy took up smoking and wasn't able to quit the habit until 1995.
- Julianna "Jules" Van Patten (Demi Moore) - The "party girl" of the group, with an extravagant and wild lifestyle. Jules used to be Leslie Hunter's roommate and is still her best friend. She has a very fancy, highly decorated apartment and works in banking. She loves a good time, but she's also looking for the love she struggled to find growing up; her father is emotionally distant and he's had many wives. She's also feeling a lot of pressures to take care of a family financial issue (her "stepmonster" as she calls her, who was cruel to her as a child, is terminally ill) and to handle her own finances after a crisis happens in her life.
- Alec Newbury (Judd Nelson) - a ruthless, ambitious yuppie and young Democrat, pursuing a career in politics and desperate to marry Leslie, despite the fact that he cheats on her. Everyone's surprised when he starts working for a Republican senator. At the start of the film, he has just moved in with Leslie and is still fixing their place up. He sees Leslie as someone who can help him get where he wants to go.
- Leslie Hunter (Ally Sheedy) - Alec's yuppie girlfriend who wants to pursue a career as an architect before marrying and having children. She's a romantic, and also seems to be trying to get more of a sense of who she is before sharing her life completely with a man; possibly in order to not lose her sense of self later. She lives with Alec, but is starting to feel doubts about her relationship with him.
- Wendy Beamish (Mare Winningham) - a girl from a wealthy family, the "innocent" of the group, a painfully shy virgin who devotes her life to helping others. She works in Social Services. Wendy is trying to break away from her family's overprotectiveness, move out on her own, and assert her independence, particularly from her father, who is pressuring her to marry the man of his choice. She, however, is in love with Billy Hicks, whom she knows her father will never consider suitable for her.Mare Winningham was pregnant while she played a virgin.
The film also features Andie MacDowell as Dale Biberman, a hospital intern and the object of Kirby's attraction.
[edit] Themes
Each of the 7 main characters has their own challenges to face in the movie, and one notable pattern is each character has to reach complete independence and/or maturity in some form or another, some cases more obvious than others, in order to break from their old lives and join the real world. Examples are:
- Billy Hicks's inability to separate himself from his carefree college days and his inability to hold a job.
- Kirby Keger's inability to let go of the past and look towards the future.
- Alec Newbury's self-centered personality and inter-social immaturity.
- Leslie Hunter's inability to listen to her intuition.
- Julianna "Jules" Van Patten's intellectual immaturity and lack of sensibility, social control and cocaine addiction.
- Kevin Dolenz's lack of emotional maturity.
- Wendy Beamish's struggle to break away from her parents' tight grip.
Another recurring theme is St. Elmo's Bar in itself. Clearly a college-student hangout, the seven main characters still go there despite having graduated from college life, possibly symbolizing a hard time letting go. This possible metaphor is supported by several scenes happening within the bar. In the opening St. Elmo's Bar scene, Kirby is first pondering his infatuation with an ex-flame, Billy reveals he's lost his first job, Wendy reveals that she is reluctant to give up her crush on Billy, and Alec decides to negotiate switching political parties in order to 'step up.' Later on, during a Halloween party at the club, Billy fights with his wife and is fired. In a short scene towards the end, Kevin and Kirby are walking in front of the bar, dismayed over losing at love, and refuse to go inside, where Alec is sitting, symbolizing a barrier between them.
By the end of the film, when the group decide to go somewhere else to dine rather than the bar, it symbolizes that the group is moving to the next stage in their lives.
[edit] Notes
The Breakfast Club is another 1985 film starring Estevez, Nelson, and Sheedy. In The Breakfast Club, these actors play high school students along with Anthony Michael Hall and Molly Ringwald (the only other Brat Packers who aren't in this movie), while in the same year they play college graduates in St. Elmo's Fire.
The title and subsequent song come from a quote at the climax of the movie, when Billy is comforting Jules: "It's St. Elmo's Fire. Electric flashes of light that appear in dark skies out of nowhere. Sailors would guide entire journeys by it, but the joke was on them... there was no fire. There wasn't even a St. Elmo. They made it up. They made it up because they thought they needed it to keep them going when times got tough, just like you're making up all of this. We're all going through this. It's our time at the edge."
Billy's statement is technically incorrect, in that:
- St. Elmo's fire is quite real, although it is indeed not fire, but an electrical phenomenon.
- St. Elmo's fire didn't appear in the sky; rather it gathered around the masts of the ship, thus making it impossible to chart a course by.
- "St. Elmo" was the nickname for two Roman Catholic saints: Saint Erasmus of Formiae, and Saint Peter Gonzalez known as "St Telmo" or "St. Elmo" in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking world. Together, they are considered the Patron Saints of sailors— both were real people that existed.
[edit] Soundtrack
- The theme song, "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)", was written by Canadian composer David Foster and performed by John Parr. This hit song was written for the Canadian athlete Rick Hansen, who at the time was going around the world in his wheelchair to raise awareness for spinal cord injuries. His journey was called the "Man in Motion Tour." The lyrics do relate though to the characters in the movie moving out into a new and exciting, yet a little scary, time in their lives. The analogy of the light or the fire works, in that they're looking for guidance into the unknown, and that a new 'fire' is raging inside of them, of who they're discovering themselves to be. The song "Give Her A Little Drop More," which plays during the movie when they enter St. Elmo's Bar & Restaurant, was written by British jazz trumpeter John Chilton.
[edit] Locations
- The fictional St. Elmo's Bar was built on a Hollywood soundstage. St. Elmo's Bar was based on the infamous Georgetown watering hole The Tombs (1226 36th St. NW). However, for the exterior shots, another Georgetown bar called Third Edition (1218 Wisconsin Avenue) was used.
- Although Georgetown University has fraternal organizations, the Mu Chapter of Delta Sigma Pi was established in 1921, it never had any fraternity or sorority houses. The scenes on campus were filmed at the University of Maryland. In the background people can be seen wearing red and white jackets. Those are the colors of University of Maryland. Georgetown's colors are blue and gray.
[edit] Awards and Nominations
Rob Lowe won a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor for this film.
[edit] External links
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