California Dreaming

I've been looking for the title of this movie since San Luis Obispo County made Unocal clean up funky little Avila Beach. It seems a pipeline under the street from their oil terminal was leaking oil under the stand. This led to Unocal buying up most of the downtown and then selling or trading properties.

Back to how I found it. It played last year on one of the premium channels, but I couldn't recall the title. Then last week I saw Seymour Cassel co-starring in TV's new "HEIST" show on one of the networks. I recognized his face, but not his silver hair. It was blonde in California Dreaming, so I checked his bio and found the film.

I agree, I thought it was an early seventies film, not 1979. But then the old central coast town of Avila was timeless. Small beach, volleyball court sloped to the ocean, unpainted building on the corner where he lived was an abandoned property owned by an eccentric who held on to everything he owned.

All of the old Avila Beach is torn down now. Even the only historic building in town--the Custom House. The name now exists as a new restaurant down the street at the foot of the pier.

For those who want to see what a small California beach town once looked like, rent or buy "California Dreaming". It's all that's left of the once funky town of Avila, where no one has ever drowned playing in the local surf. Reason? There is very little undertow. The waves crash and take you back to the beach. Board surfing is non-existent.

This is one of those movies I hope to see again. I often surf the internet hoping to find this movie released on DVD. A great soundtrack, a good cast and an interesting angle on growing up... surf style. Includes the best recording of "California Dreamin" extent, and the instrumental "Brothers Theme" is haunting! The sub plot of re-living the glory days by an over the hill surfer in contrast with the adolescence of the kids around him provides sort of a retrospective view of life. It is a deeper movie than it seems to be on the surface, which makes the comedy funnier, and the sad moments even more so, kind of like a good episode of MASH. A cleaned up 5.1 enhanced DVD release of this movie would be most welcome by me!

This movie was released in 1979 and is different from both the purely exploitative (or "sexploitative") 70's films that came before it or the more adolescent-themed 80's films that came after it (the male protagonist here is definitely pretty horny and probably a virgin, but the movie is more than just the usual allegedly hilarious quest to "lose it"). The acting is really good, especially that of Dennis Christopher who plays the "fish-out-of-water" main protagonist (and who really should have gone farther than the other Dennis, Quaid, with whom he starred in "Breaking Away" that same year), and perennial character actor Seymour Cassel, who plays an older surfer who takes the protagonist under his wing.

The female cast is headed by Glynnis O'Connor, who plays Casell's daughter and the protagonist's improbable love interest. She is not a great actress, but is certainly easy to look at (and she provides all the movie's nudity). Supporting parts go to Tanya Roberts and Stacy Nelkin, but unfortunately the less talented one (Roberts) gets the much bigger (and regrettably non-naked) role as the neglected girlfriend of an egotistical surfer. There's a lot of gratuitous surfing (this being a California movie and all), but not as much of the dumb hijinks you usually find in these movies (OK, there is a stupid side-story involving one dumb guy who has to spend a month in his car as part of some bet he made with a rich kid, all so the rich kid can secretly get it on with the guy's gold-digging girlfriend. . .).

This movie kind of resembles "Malibu Beach", but with better acting and more of a plot. It probably wouldn't have gotten made a couple years later after "Porky's" had set the horny-teenagers-trying-to-"lose-it" template firmly in stone. But it is quite a bit more realistic than deluge of "teen comedies" that followed that later film, and (for me anyway) that makes it much more interesting.

I have just recently seen this movie for the first time in almost 20 years. Originally, the final credits rolled while we heard the Eagles signing their great version of California Dreaming. But the current version has some mindless, goofy music at that point. I find it unbelievable that the movie California Dreaming no longer is shown containing the song of the same name.

According to George Carlin, the term "Extremely not bad" should be used more often ... as in, "Gosh, this turnip casserole is extremely not bad."

California Dreaming follows the trials and tribulations of TT (Dennis Christopher) as he arrives in California with some recordings of his recently-deceased brother's jazz music. The idea is to play the music near the ocean, because his brother loved the ocean. While in California, TT stays with an old surfer (Wynn, in probably the best role he's ever had ... should be, though, because he wrote the script), who offers TT a place to live. TT becomes a surfer, woos his landlord's daughter, gropes gratuitously-displayed breasts; so far, it's pretty standard surf-movie fare.

Near the end, though, there was an actual plot twist; the plot had been so thin up until that point that I didn't even notice it coming. I'm not as easily manipulated now as I did when I first saw this movie (when I was about 15), but I was so blindsided by this development that it actually gave the ending a strong emotional impact, for me.

Great cinema, it ain't, but Glynnis O'Connor and Tonya Roberts were both hotties, the surfing scenes are pretty cool, and the acting is convincing, if not outstanding.