Best Movies About The 80s

As a man who graduated high school in 1985, the 1980s represented my coming of age.  The Baby Boomers matured in the 70s, where they saw Watergate, the last gasps of the Vietnam War, disco and a lousy economy.  The 1980s were a big turnaround.  We had Reagan, Wall Street, "Morning in America," and a renewed optimism, except for AIDS scaring people sexless.  This blog topic came to mind after I caught Boogie Nights on television the other day.   The movie was made in 1997, but it tried to serve as a time capsule of the late 70s and early 80s.     I would welcome any debate or comments, but this is my list of best films about the 80s in no particular order ...

• Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights (1997) captured transition from the swinging 70s in the adult film industry to the direct-to-video 80s.  The movie romanticized nothing about either era with its characters' broken souls and rampant drug use.  It featured a stellar cast:  Mark Wahlberg as a deluded star whose only gift is between his legs; Burt Reynolds' Golden Globe winning performance as a porn director who wanted stories in his movies; Julianne Moore as an actress (Amber Waves) who lost custody of her child but acts as a mother to Mark Wahlberg's Eddie/Dirk; Don Cheadle as an actor who wants to leave the business to sell stereos (his real passion); and Heather Graham as a starlet who dropped out of school.   William H. Macy's role as "Little Bill" sparked a symbolic transition from the 1970s into the 1980s.   Cocaine was a big continuing line throughout the movie, but the story captured the consequences of abuse and addiction with Dirk's downward spiral and Amber's custody battle.
  
• Fast Times at Ridgemont High was my high school and a lot of other high schools in the early 1980s.  Sean Penn established himself as one of the great character actors as Jeff Spicoli.
  
• American Psycho, a dark satire based on Bret Easton Ellis' novel, captured the smug, yuppie mores of Wall Street in New York during the late 1980s.  The role served as Christian Bale's springboard to Hollywood's A-list and gave me a whole new appreciation for Huey Lewis and the News.  
   
• Oliver Stone wrote and directed Wall Street -- which was meant as a cautionary tale.  However, the film, as well as Michael Lewis' Liars Poker,  gave wannabe yuppies a playbook during the following two decades.   Michael Douglas plays Gordon Gekko, a corporate raider whose mantra of "greed is good" has inspired many on Wall Street to share his worldview.  Charlie Sheen (Bud Fox) aims to be Gekko's protege, but the values of Wall Street clashed against those of his father, who is a union representative at an airline that Gekko is targeting.  The movie created some high drama and won Douglas an Oscar.
  
• "They Live" represented a different take on the "Morning in America" of the Reagan Era.  Starring pro wrestling legend, Rowdy Roddy Piper, the movie captured the widening divide between America's "haves" and "have nots" in a fashion that was every bit as knowing as "American Psycho" and "Wall Street."  Piper discovers special glasses that allow him to see aliens in our midst that have taken over the earth.    

Please contribute!  I welcome other suggestions. 

Review of "Exile on Wall Street" by Mike Mayo

Securities analyst Mike Mayo recaps his career on Wall Street, where he covered the banking industry. Mayo outlines where the banks went wrong during the course of his career and what his independence and honesty cost him. As someone who was a financial reporter, I found myself nodding along with many of the points he raised in Exile on Wall Street. Executives and corporations will freeze you out if you don't "play along." Analysts who are on the team get rewarded with access and their banks are the ones who get deals. The financial stakes are much higher in that regard compared with the "media relations people" who will freeze out reporters who are too critical.
the book also included a concise history of Citigroup, a company that represents much of what's wrong with banking. It's too powerful, takes a careless approach to risk and it expects the Fed and government to step in when it runs into trouble. TARP is only one of several bailouts it has received over the years.
It is definitely a worthwhile read if you are interested in a behind the scenes look at finance and corporate management. Some of his recommendations and conclusions shouldn't surprise anyone though, since they are sound calls for smarter regulation, more accountability in management and greater transparency among banks.

Wall Street's Arrogance is Confounding

Originally published: Sunday, March 09, 2008

As I walked through Fortunoff's in the Woodbridge Mall today, I was amazed that the department store chain was bankrupt. It had great looking merchandise and customers. By those standards alone, any retailer would be successful. Yet the company is reorganizing under Chapter 11. This is not really surprising when you consider that a private equity firm bought control of it from the founding family.
Many of the people on Wall Street think they are smarter than people who work in other industries. This is despite the fact that these Wall Street gurus never really operated anything and their real world business experiences constitutes looking at a spreadsheet. In a perfect world for private equity firms, they buy a company from pooling together a portion of the purchase price from institutional investors (pension funds, hedge funds, investment banks) and borrowing the rest to seal a deal. They collect a fee from completing a deal. The private equity firm and its partners own the business, but plan to cash out at some point for more money when they list the company on a stock exchange.
However, the business world is rarely that smooth. Risk is sometimes mispriced; consumer tastes change; companies borrow too much; and sometimes the wrong people are left in charge. Eddie Lampert took over Sears and brought Kmart out of bankruptcy. Now he's finding out how hard it is to compete against Wal-Mart. He might end up tarnishing his legendary status on Wall Street because of the struggles at the retailer. Will Sears go bankrupt? I doubt it, but their Sears Essentials store in my area looks like its having a tougher time than Fortunoff. It's surrounded by a Target, a Wal-Mart, Lowe's, Home Depot and a Macy's. I'm sure South Plainfield is not that much different than the rest of America's retailing climate. Trimaran Capital Partners and the Kier Group bought a majority stake in Fortunoff from the founding family in 2004. The Fortunoffs hoped that the firm would turn them into a national department store and still held a stake. Published reports listed Fortunoff's debts exceeding $300 million in November and assets of $268 million. This indicates risky capital structure that is vulnerable to downturns in consumer demand. A bankruptcy court and a new owner could give the company a chance to create a better capital structure. Trimaran and Kier Group's troubles with Fortunoff are not that unique in retailing. Levitz filed for bankruptcy again. Catalog retailer Lillian Vernon and gadget seller Sharper Image recently filed.
Wall Street firms have a pretty good history of mismanaging retailers. Macy's was taken private in a leveraged buyout in the late 1980s and that led to a bankruptcy. You might be impressed with some of the big salaries these private equity types collect. If they start prowling around your company, be very afraid. The pedigree of a Harvard MBA associated with these Wall Street gurus is not a guarantee that they know how to keep retail customers happy or the shelves of these stores well stocked.