Childhood Rejects
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box office in 1985 (Ash 39, 43). Costing $19,000, 000, it earned a gross revenue
of $61,000,000.
It would be easy to explain The Goonies’ popular success by what Danny
Peary calls its “Spielberg touch” (Peary 117). Indeed, in the mid 1980s,
Spielberg-inspired movies dominated the box office, disseminating messages
very much in sync with the times (Thompson 64), and according to Lee
Goldberg, The Goonies is “pure Spielberg in every way but one: Spielberg isn’t
directing” (115). Overwhelmed with directing projects, Spielberg called his
friend Richard Donner and said, “Hey, I just finished this script I loved very
much. I can’t do it. Will you?” (qtd. in Goldberg 115). Donner jumped at the
chance, saying, “It’s a wonderful adventure that borrows from every adventure
ever written and yet is totally unique . . . It’s the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew
and it’s also Mark Twain. We’ve got our own Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher,
even an Indian Joe. It’s that kind of story.” (qtd. in Goldberg 116). Donner shot
the film with a crew of unruly, disruptive kids in fourteen weeks. “It was
brutal,” he said.
They’ve got to have school and rest periods and their attention
span is about ten seconds. While you are concentrating on two
in front of the camera the others in the background are looking
in wrong direction or picking their nose or falling asleep.. . . I
felt like a harried camp counselor. I know now why I never
got married and had kids. But, at the same time, I desperately
loved all of them. The energy they gave me was phenomenal.
(Goldberg 117)
Their story fits seamlessly into Spielberg’s 1980s canon that explores youth
experiences and their effects. As Robert Arnett notes, “The films Spielberg
directed uniformly emphasize the reunification of families {E.T. The Extra
Terrestrial [1982], the “Kick the Can” episode of The Twilight Zone [1983],
Indiana Jones and the Temple o f Doom [1984], The Color Purple [1985], The
Empire o f the Sun [1987], and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade [1989]) (R.
Arnett 124). The Goonies counts among those on which Spielberg served solely
as producer, along with Poltergest [1982], Gremlins [1984], and the Back to the
Future triliogy [1985-1990], all bearing the same theme and exalting “suburbia
and the middle class” (R. Arnett 124). Although E.T., Indiana Jones and the
Last Crusade, Raiders o f the Lost Ark, and Back to the Future outperformed The
Goonies at the box office, each ranking in the top ten movies of the decade and
earning over $300 million. The Goonies managed to eclipse these other 1980s
adventures in many people’s childhood memories, proving it was m