PCU: The Movie That Predicted The Future
Katy : Hey, Droz, how 'bout this: Tonight, at the Pit, "Everyone Gets Laid." Droz : It's tasteless, disgusting, and offensive. I love it.
Back in the heady days of 1994 as cinema was about halfway into one of its most creative and inspiring decades, a movie came out that upon release was considered something of a bomb and largely went unnoticed. Released by 20th Century Fox studio, the movie only earned $4,333,569 at the box office budget of $9,000,000 it. Over the years it has become something of a cult hit.
That movie is PCU starring Jeremy Piven, David Spade, Jessica Walters, Megan Ward, and a young John Favreau. Not to mention George Clinton and The Parliament Funkadelics.
What’s fascinating and why PCU is the subject of today’s Movie Life Lessons is that this unsuccessful college party movie predicted the future.
First some background.
The movie was written by Adam Leff and Zak Penn. It was directed by Hart Bachner. Who is Hart Bachner? He played “Ellis” in Die Hard. Yes, Ellis. The coke-snorting Nakatomi executive who negotiates million-dollar deals over breakfast but gets blasted by Hans directed the movie that predicted the future.
Hans, bubbie, turns out he was a white knight after all.
At the time of its release, PCU was viewed as a cynical attempt by a corporatized movie business run by MBAs to cash in on the 1960-70s nostalgia craze to make a movie that most critics viewed as a bad rip-off of “Animal House.” This was the same year that Woodstock was rekindled only to end in a conflagration and evacuation of the campground where once there was peace and love. Which is to say blatant attempts at ripping off what was once cool do not always turn out as intended.
Such was clearly the case with PCU.
But what it lacked in box office might it more than made up for in its predictive powers.
What exactly did PCU predict?
The Movie Life Lesson of PCU is where the mentality that “everyone's a victim" exhibited by all the protesters on the PCU campus was going to take us.
That the political correctness that at the time was taking root on university campuses and to a lesser degree in high schools and corporate boardrooms would in the next twenty years explode across these areas of American life as being PC metastasized into “wokeness” as it is currently defined.
The definition is viewing any unequal outcome between groups as being the result of racism or sexism. And, seeing that discrimination baked into our institutions and our country’s history and society at large. Thus, all history, learning, relationships, and interactions with one another need to be viewed through a racially or sexually tinted lens where the cardinal sin is to offend anyone’s sense of self. No matter how much that may shit over time. This is a perfect description of the world view of the “Cause Heads” in PCU.
What’s a “Cause Head?”
A protestor.
But, a protestor who has to find a cause, any cause, to protest. Because really, the protesting is the point. It is the end in itself. It is the identity.
The trouble with political correctness or wokeness as a governing principle — and there is a lot troubling about it — but the worst is that at some point it leads to censorship. Like Spade’s “Balls and Shaft” fraternity plotting to get Piven’s “The Pit” fraternity kicked off campus.
Fact checkers
Missing context labels
Trigger Warnings.
Personal and Professional Cancellation
They’re all designed to stop people from speaking freely. Either by shouting or bullying or generally just getting in the way of things. Like freeway protestors. Like a college quad jam-packed with protestors. It’s no way to live. Or go to work. Or school. Or PCU.
The Movie Life Lesson of PCU is where the mentality that “everyone's a victim" exhibited by all the protesters on the PCU campus was going to take us.
That is, from a fringe, fairly laughable, easily dismissible, collegiate sideshow put on by a bunch of (privileged) kids yet to be confronted by the realities and responsibilities of the real world, to a full-on indoctrination ideology reaching the highest levels of media, government, education, and even entering into the domains of science, medicine, and math.
Math is now racist. A “Cause Head” had to have come up with that one.
Is it a coincidence in a time where adults are celebrated for acting like adolescents, hoping to be their kids’ buds rather than their dad or mom, at a time of declining religious observance, and a workforce that doesn’t work, that any notion of responsibility is dropped in favor of personal identity like college freshman dropping calculus to study video games.
Unfortunately, these days no one is tossing these jokers out of their rooms like Droz knew to do in the movie.
Instead, they’re electing them to congress.
Once you remove responsibility you remove other things like meritorious accomplishment. Like freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. As when Piven’s house is threatened with being kicked off campus.
You know, like totally canceled, dude.
The movie even offers a Movie Life Lesson about what to do when your job or your frat is canceled.
Have a bong hit. One little binger to brighten up your day.
Then throw a party. Have some fun. Relax. The problems will all be there tomorrow. But, don’t let them get in the way of you living life and having some good times along the way.
Like Megan Ward’s “Katy” explains to her “Femi-Nazi” friend in PCUs “Everyone Gets Laid” Party at the The Pit frat.
PCU aims its most mocking barbs at the administration, in the movie led by Jessica Walters paying the dean of PCU, who seeks to exploit this discombobulated, illogical, consortium of ideological activists for her own benefit. To remain in power.
It’s hard not to picture Nancy Pelosi these days when I watch Jessica Walters in PCU.
PCU predicts perfectly how the administration cave to the demands of the protesters (in reality, the mob) To save their own asses. The same way politicians, corporate CEOs, and celebrities these days all cave to the demands of the protestors in their cities, their boardrooms, and online. All surrendering to the maxim “if you can’t beat em join em” and then posting their black and blue squares on social media and getting on with the struggle sessions.
The wisest of the PC wokies figure out that better to cut deals with those in power “in the room where it happens.” In the movie it’s Spade on behalf of his fraternity. These days it’s Harry and Meghan. Or anyone else playing the victim. In reality, it’s to gain power for themselves.
The goal of PC crusaders (wokies) in the movie PCU as in life today is to tear down the historical, legal, ethical, factual considerations of the university standing in the way of their PC-agenda. Like an offending statue.
In the name of never offending anyone’s feelings.
In the name of being an ally, (a stupid euphemism if there ever was one.) Mainly invoked by people claiming belief in a cause that in reality they do nothing to support. In an effort to lay claim to a respect they’ve neither earned nor deserve. And to use that as a leg up in their own life and career which perhaps they could not achieve on their own merit. So, if like Balls and Shaft they can get a house in the process, all the better (We see you, Patrice Cullors).
What’s truly insidious and which the movie clearly demonstrates is that the PC ideology yields the opposite of what claims to oppose. Calls for inclusion lead to exclusion. Calls for being an ally lead to having enemies, and often acts of betrayal. Being an anti-racist is racist.
When this ideology is reinforced, encouraged, and spread by the media, the universities, private businesses, and your friends and neighbors, then it can turn ugly. As when the entire student body led by the “Cause Heads” try to kill pre-frosh Tom, who unintentionally offends them all.
In the movie, the victory for Piven’s frat is when they expose the manipulation by the administration to turn the student body against one another for their own benefit. This leads to the climax of the movie, the ultimate protest led by Droz, who calls for the students to not protest.
“We’re not gonna protest!”
It becomes the rallying cry of unification as Spade’s racist blue-blood weasel and Jessica’s Walter’s corrupt dean are embarrassed, defeated, and chased off campus themselves.
The student body in the movie unifying in their outright rejection of this divisive is another Movie Life Lesson to take away from this prescient masterpiece disguised as a college party movie. It is the solution to radical political correctness. To wokeness.
So, take ninety 79 minutes and put on PCU, and pay attention to the most important of its Movie Life Lessons: Remember what we have in common. Remember how much fun we can have when we let down our hair and have a party. And remember most of all…
“We’re not gonna protest!”
For a great listen here is Jeremy Piven talking about PCU’s impact.
One more Movie Life Lesson for you college kids out there…Don’t major in a 5000 year old dead language.