Nashawaty, a former writer and critic for Entertainment Weekly who’s now Netflix’s editorial director on film, appears to be building a nice rep for returning to our VHS favorites of yesteryear and verifying all the backstage myths and legends surrounding them. His last book, 2018’s “Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story,” confirmed that the production was, in fact, an endless coke orgy where they took some breaks in-between snorting to make a movie.
Drugs are hardly mentioned in “Future” — all the players involved, from the filmmakers to the higher-ups — are mostly square. They’re all too focused on their projects to engage in excess and hedonism. However, Oliver Stone does admit he was blitzed on coke and shrooms when he wrote Conan’s batshit-crazy first draft. “It reads like the work of someone who’s been up for two weeks straight,” writes Nashawaty.
Nashawaty writes with fervent, respectful geek passion, bouncing from one narrative to another as he chronicles these films that obviously mean a lot to him. Thankfully, he’s still a journalist. When he pontificates about the brilliance and popularity of these pictures, at least he has the documented evidence to back it up.
As much as it’s a fun page-turner, “Future” also reminds us that Hollywood is no longer as bold and risk-taking as it once was. Instead of finding talented, eccentric dreamers to create their next summer hit, desperate studios just recycle the same IP repeatedly. Nashawaty points out that, except for “E.T.,” these films have been remade, revamped, spun-off, and given sequels. Studios don’t even wait to drop them during the summer months. “We find ourselves, for better or worse, living in one endless summer,” laments Nashawaty.
At least for him and so many ‘80s babies who experienced that cavalcade of sci-fi at their nearest multiplex, they’ll always have that summer.