That Was Then... This Is Now

That Was Then, This Is Now is the story of two working class youths who look like they are on a street to nowhere in their lives.

After his parents killed themselves, Emilio Estevez is taken in by his best friend Craig Sheffer and his mom Barbara Babcock. The two of them get in all kinds of trouble. But Sheffer is starting to think that may be if I grow up their just might be a future for him.

Estevez is carrying a lot around, many of us do and we react to it in different ways. Estevez is on the road to career criminality. He gets involved in deeper and deeper and threatens to bring Sheffer in with him if Sheffer does not heed the better angels of his nature.

The key scene is when we learn as Estevez confides to Scheffer just what it is he's carrying inside. Some of the best acting in both their careers.

Hollywood has done very well with S.E. Hinton novels. That Was Then This Is Now is right up there with Tex, Rumblefish. and The Outsiders. This one managed to get done without Matt Dillon.

I recommend it highly.

That Was Then... This Is Now is one of the best early performances of Emilo Estvez as a writer and actor. Estevz brings Mark to life they way S.E.Hinton intened by being brutal and cut throat in his performace. All of the actors in the film give equally good performacnes in particular Morgan Freemen and Craig Sheffer. A underlooked gem.

In English class, we read S.E. Hinton's saga of teenage angst. The students were enthralled with the story. While the setting was from years past, the ethical questions raised and the teenage situations were quite apropos. The story generated a great deal of quality discussion in class...education at it's finest.

The movie, however, was a bit of a disappointment for us. Taken by itself, it was a fine example of 80's brat-packish fluff. It was formulamatic, but entertaining. One could hardly say that the movie was based on the book, though. Bryon's personal growth journey and coming of age, so well illustrated in the novel, was sacrificed to car chases and Hollywood's penchant for tidy endings, in the movie.

While I would recommend both, I would caution that they are two separate stories, sharing the same character names. Perhaps there is the lesson: You cannot watch the movie to get out of reading the book! .

My grade 10 ESL students read the book and then watched this film version. They were not impressed at all and everyone agreed that it is not a good portrayal of the book. Some essential scenes are missing such as Mike Chamber's story which helps the reader really understand the motivation behind Bryon's change of heart. It would really have not been that difficult to just follow what was written in the book. Someone needs to be blamed for this poor excuse of a film!

The desperate male students in the class were hoping that the Angela character would have been as hot as she is described in the book!

Read the book instead.

I was born in 1970. While many movies such as Pretty In Pink, etc. were bigger hits, these movies along with a couple of others were incredibly important in what it means to be a friend, what it meant to grow up, and what it meant to grow up in the 80's. It wasn't a "great" movie, but it was a great movie for me and is a great movie about growing up, deciding what is important, forming morals. Will be on my buy list when I get a little money.