I wasn't alive in the 80s and honestly don't remember much of the 90s, but the theme of "teenage suicide" [most school shooters seem to be killing themselves off after killing off a few others] was pretty touchy when I went to high school [late 00's].
shareI seriously doubt it.
shareA movie centered around either teen suicide and/or a student bent on mass-murder would probably have to be handled far more seriously. This was intentionally comical, and there's just been too much tragedy surrounding the subject for the masses to find it funny. Kind of like True Lies and how it probably wouldn't be made today because terrorism isn't a thing to be joked about anymore.
Then again, they did adapt Heathers into a musical recently, so it appears maybe some producers are still comfortable with investing in this type of story.
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Post Columbine, yes; though it would have to have some changes and probably not at the moment since we have had a recent, continual string of school shootings.
shareIf the scene with J.D. shooting his gun at Kurt and Ram were included- absolutely not. That scenario would have to be rewritten. I could agree with Heather Chandler in the aftermath in that he should have gone to jail, even if the gun had blanks.
I encourage you from time to time, and always in a respectful manner, to question my logic.
Teaching Mrs. Tingle had to be changed somehow due to the Columbine shootings. I think the ending was changed. They were supposed to kill her.
Swing away, Merrill....Merrill, swing away...share
Teaching Mrs Tingle had also been originally titled Killing Mrs. Tingle and was even referred to as Killing Mrs Tingle in much of the promotions prior to release. Title was changed after the tragedy and just prior to release.
shareI agree. If Heathers were made now JD would probably just beat the *beep* out of Kurt and Ram as opposed to pulling a gun. Plus, since Westerberg is such a high end school they would probably have metal detectors to make sure that nobody brought a gun in
shareA movie like this would be considered horror instead of wickedly funny.
Send lawyers,guns and money/The *beep* has hit the fan
Heathers (arguably, all black comedy) relies on a certain level of innocence. Once innocence is lost, you can't get it back, and this kind of thing can't be funny in the same wry way again.
We could laugh at situations like kids threatening to blow up a school or killing each other over bullying as long as we had that protective, safe distance of absurdity. Those scenarios aren't absurd any more - we've all seen them happen, and we know they can happen again. It's a real thing to fear, not a safely silly made-up story.
I'm glad I was young while this kind of thing was still mostly unthinkable. We'd had the Brenda Spencer shooting in San Diego. But that was still rare enough that we sang along with "I Don't Like Mondays" anyway. It was kind of a musical gawking at this one-of-a-kind occurrence.
So much for that, huh?
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Nothing to see here, move along.
I agree with all this, except I wouldn't call Heathers innocent except in a completely incidental passage-of-time sort of way. Heathers wasn't intended to be a send-up of high school murder, but it was intended to be a send-up of how the media was handling teen suicides. And they had plenty of that in the '80s; sometimes it really did look like an outbreak you could catch when you read about strings of suicides at a single school all right around the same time. There wasn't anything funny about suicide when the film came out, so much so that it influenced/interfered with a lot of creative decisions including the ending. But there was something funny about teen suicide's portrayal in the media, and that was the spirit the film was made in. You kind of have to take something as extreme as Columbine to call Heathers innocent at anything.
If it were made today with the same purpose, it wouldn't replace suicide with school shootings, but rather media exploitation/sensationalism of suicide in the 80s with media exploitation of school shootings in the '00s, except that I doubt many would find the attention its had unwarranted so far. If we started getting cookie-cutter films on the Hallmark channel about how evil toy guns are (do we already? I don't know) then we'll be ready for the topic to get the Heathers treatment.
And when they do, I'd like to patent a joke about candlelight vigils setting off the fire alarms outside the cafeteria.
No studio would finance it, although premium cable and streaming TV series are as edgy or even more now, so who knows.
shareI couldn't picture a comedy Film like this being made today.
Teenage Homicide & suicide, guns and bombs at school, a couple of homophobic slurs, even the poking fun at the obese Girl...
It was a different time back in the 80s. Society is just different these days.