...mulling it over...
There's many a man has more hair than wit.
-William Shakespeare-
It is 2023, a new year provoking a new me with new needs based on old ideas of timeless truths. I need more exercise, more sleep, less stress, more mullet. According to the handful of articles I barely looked at online this morning, the haircut synonymous with the term “business up front, party in the back” can be origin storied to one of a handful of places. Some say it began with the Beastie Boys in 1992 and their song mullethead. Others point to the film Cool Hand Luke. There are antiquities that posit it to the european 1st century.
I was first exposed to the mullet while watching one of two fine works of 80’s cinematic art, both fashioned by the wilt chamberlain of batman nipples… Joel Shumacher.
Shumacher brought many extremely important artworks to our world, such as Arnold Schwarzenneger performing cold standup and a movie about a phone booth.
But most importantly Shumacher had a two year run of 1980’s movies and music that changed my life, and as is important to this article, my conception of chevelure. In 1985, he directed the film St. Elmo’s Fire, which I can loosely describe as a 90-minute movie about characters who might be better served acting as ski villains in a different movie. It starred actors and actresses who belonged to a gang called The Brat Pack, and according to the Houston Press, everyone in the film is a rotten bastard. I’m willing to chalk that criticism up to the 80’s, a decade defined artistically by greed and cocaine, two passions that can only lead you to wearing sunglasses indoor, and skintight tiger print leather suits.
So anyhow the movie is awesome. I watch it like twice a week, largely for two things. Number one is the ability to watch Rob Lowe dangle a saxophone off his neck in a sleeveless shirt as though it is some form of mardi gras beads. Number two is the ability to watch Rob Lowe dangle a saxophone off his neck while he sweats a bagload of plasma, wears a sleeveless yellow shirt with bats on it, and dons a rubberband to his skull. These are both the same scene and it is a great scene filled with fantastic neckties and halloween spirit.
ST. ELMO’S FIRE (1985) – Billy’s Fight
But the movie, Rob Lowe's sweat, and an improperly handled neck knot are not the only life altering points when it comes to enjoying St. Elmo's Fire. The ultimate testament to this film’s ability to cocoon and transform you is the lead song that soundtracks the film, Man In Motion by Englishman John Parr.
Do me a favor and don’t do anything else with your life until you watch this music video…
John Parr's fame started with his hit Naughty Naughty in 1985 (sample lyrics :: Naughty naughty, loud and bawdy, t-t-t-t-t-tease me, Take it easy, hug and squeeze, A naughty naughty, naughty, I'm a naughty naughty guy.) He toured with Toto, wrote songs for Tom Jones, worked with Meatloaf, was on the soundtrack for Three Men & A Baby, and most importantly has the sweetest fluffiest happiest mullet in all of rock and roll.
The song “Man In Motion” is inspired by athlete activist Rick Hansen, who in 1985 took on a 26 month, 34 country attempt to wheelchair tour across the entire planet. The song is a banger. The chorus is basically one of those protein shakes that people drank before arm wrestling competitions in the 80’s, where you take like 16 eggs, half a turkey, powders of unknown origin, alleyway steroid sticks, orange juice and a dark chocolate bar, then you blend and gulp it before you read the finance section of your local paper and pretend to drive to work but instead go and park under some freeway 14 minutes past your accounting firm and cry.
In real life St. Elmo’s Fire is a weather phenomenon where glowing light emanates from the points and masts on your sailing ship. It is seen as a good omen even though it is an electrical field that hisses and growls near thunderstorms or volcanic activity.
And in still even more other pop culture, it is a remake version of itself written 20+ years later by John Parr again to celebrate the incredibly barely competent professional football player Tim Tebow. Seriously John Parr was so inspired by his own inspiring song he went ahead and made a song called Tim Tebow’s Fire. I’ll wait until some other article to discuss the dangers of American sport, but noting here that getting inspired to sing about Tim Tebow ranks super duper super high on that list…if you feel Tim Tebow’s fire burning in you, then you need to go and see a doctor…
“Man In Motion” is triumph and inspiration personified, a type of song format that had a real run in the 80’s. From Joe Esposito shouting “You’re The Best” on the Karate Kid Soundtrack, to Sammy Hagar shrieking “Winner Takes It All” on the Over The Top soundtrack, the decade had a real knack for merging cinematic underdog stories to motivation minded music that helped you aerobicise.
This is the point of the article where I distract and encourage you to completely drop out of all society, sell all your personal belongings, burn your shoes and undergarments, and watch this music video from the soundtrack to Mannequin, a movie about a guy having sex with a mannequin, featuring so so many delightfully floofy fluffy flumfy flaffy flowfy mulletz™. Everyone in this band has one and it is a really awesome feeling to see that teamwork. See you in a second…
…man that felt good…ok now let’s wheel back to Man in Motion…
The music video is directed by a man named Kort Falkenberg III, who owes it to the world to create a Kort Falkenberg IV: The Falkening. The video can loosely be described as John Parr slowly hanging out with all seven brat pack actors from the film and looking sadly through the foggy windows of a run-down and fire-damaged version of the St. Elmo's Bar set from said film.
As with all things in this life, a deeper layer can be found if I am just willing to peel, or dig, or obsess, or hire someone to dig obsessively for me. So, inspired by Tim Tebow myself, I’ve decided I should go deep. I should go all the way. I should go over, over the top.
Using my overpriced and underutilized education in professional film theory, I’ll perform a quick scene by scene and frame by frame analysis of the Man In Motion music video and see if I can’t determine what it all means man…
…SCENE 1 :: Rain on mud, single white sneaker splashes rain on mud, cross fade into sign on bar, cross fade into that exact same sign on bar and zoom into the bar out of business and John Parr is standing alone inside of it…I am pretty sure the meaning here is if there is a fire and you want to ensure safety, be certain you have a water source present to help assist with extinguishing said flame…
…SCENE 2 :: The cast grips on a window, Parr sings on the bar’s neon sign, everyone is graduating and clinging to the window again, lamp light fade into a trash fire…the very clear implication in this montage is after you graduate everything in your life will most certainly begin to go down in trashy flames…
…SCENE 3 :: John Parr sings alone under a lamp in the rain outside, woman shaking in empty room with huge blue drapes, people stare at her through window, rob lowe smoking in shades in the fall, and then we all live inside john parr’s hair and we are stuck outside this window again…my interpretation of these extremely moving images is very literal…we all now live a doomed existence inside of john parr’s hair…
…SCENE 4 :: Drunk kids wave fingers, John Parr reminisces, we’re still stuck outside this window, fading into John Parr, fading into Andrew McCarthy smoking while fading into the same Andrew McCarthy smoking…flames lead to John Parr jamming on stage with the band…while we all live inside of John Parr’s hair, he is actually living inside of Andrew McCarthy’s cigarette fire…
…SCENE 5 :: John Parr satisfied and rocking while the kids wait in line at this bar, people studying while eating and drinking at the bar while we dissolve and fade into getting seated at a table somewhere in the bar while John Parr is singing…based on the next fade I am pretty sure he is singing about singing at the bar “that one time” while a trash fire burns behind him…so even if your life is a trash fire, or you are trapped in a man’s haircut, you can always put that behind you in a caged alleyway…
…SCENE 6 :: now we are getting to the real meat and potatoes…flirtatious jukebox straddles leading to a cross dissolve of the trash fire and a sloppy saxokiss, which means John Parr is now outside and hugging the window, fading into himself while the kids live freely on the other side and he gets rained on while he sings…the point here is that the matrix is real and that the matrix is John Parr…
…SCENE 7 :: John Parr fade’s into Ally Sheedy face and an immediate fade into all the other brat pack faces one by one…this is like an 80’s version of the Black or White morph but white or white…this scene is just a confirmation of life's limits..no matter if we get onto the other side of the window we sare still doomed to live inside of John Parr’s hair…
…SCENE 8 :: The fade continues as we fade out of young Emilio through the John Parr hairosphere straight into a fight, fading right back into John Parr delightfully rocking on stage…the moral being that no matter how angry you are that you live inside of John Parr’s hair, he is still going to have a good time…
…SCENE 9 :: Fade out of Parr into a happy albeit dangerously overcrowded Jeep journey only to be faded right back into the trash fire version of Parr who is slowly doubling and fading into stage Parr only to be fading right into Rob Lowe with a can of fumes and a match ready to make an impromptu flamethrower…we can ascertain here that the director is warning us that in case of a zombie apocalypse it is smart to have Rob Lowe near to us for protection…
…SCENE 10 :: Lowe lights it up next to an ominous clown head summoning the flaming wall of Parr and with but a zoom and a crotch fade he gets the ladies giggling before they fade back into a now walking and now serious Parr…if you summon the Parr of Flames prepare to delight between the hips and become Mens In Motion yourself…it is clear we now live in his potentially hairless netherregions…
…SCENE 11 :: So after the previous scene established that we live in John Parr’s crotch, we are openly and enthusiasticaly having a good time…wearing hawaiian shirts, dancing on a bed and celebrating with smiles, drinks and flirty looks off screen…Parr still walks with purpose in front of the jukebox though…will we ever escape or is this just “Parr for the course”?...
…SCENE 12 :: Life as John Parr’s crotch is still amazing, but then holy sparks, a sizzling comet explosion that is happening inside the mind of the window and we are back on stage with captain Parr…we fade into a controversial snowkiss and with another crossfade it appears we all live inside of John Parr’s hair again…we are humans in motion and the motion is now crotch to mullet and back again (which was also the title to the 27th unpublished James Bond book)...
…SCENE 13 :: Whether you live in John Parr’s crotch, or inside of his hair, you will fight, and you will make out, and you might even get laid..restless and overexcited from the journey to the Parr crotch realm, pretty much the whole cast is banging in his hair at this point, and Parr is loving it so much a light emerges from his head…is this the st. elmo’s fire we wonder, as we aggressively bone on a bed of mullet…
…SCENE 14 :: Mr. Parr walks down the stairs past the jukebox that now lives on the street…he has released the brat pack from the inner existence of hair and loin and now they are free to get sang at next to the trash fire…he places a hand on Demi Moore’s shoulder to comfort her, as I am sure it was quite a journey to live life at a window, in a window, in a man’s hair, between his legs in his hair again and now here next to a trash fire…Rob Lowe is alright though, so instead he comforts John Parr with a shoulder pat, letting him know “thanks for convincing me cut my hair into a mullet also brother”...
…SCENE 15 :: Parr continues to comfort the entire gang while asking sweater arms out on a date, and the gang begins to follow Parr away from the trash fire when suddenly he crossfades them back into a life living in his hair before abruptly disappearing and becoming a single white light off screen…dazed and confused, the brat pack walks stunned towards the light…the meaning here is we are all just one bad hair cut away from a total psychological meltdown and being hospitalized against our wills….beware the flowbee….
…SCENE 16 :: As the pack walks into magical white light Parr they also cross fade back into a rainy window and the olden version of themselves on college graduation day before finally becoming one singular white light staring in through the window again…the lesson here is that if you join some sort of hair based cult, while you may find purpose, you will still likely be left looking and longing for what lies beyond the window of life, beyond this mullet you now forever live inside of…
…SCENE 17 :: The trash fire watches from a distance behind the window with the brat pack who are now transformed to only a white light that may or may not be made of John Parr’s hair and magic. But the trash fire is the real star and can’t sit and watch along anymore..the magician John Parr stares deep into our souls as he merges with the trash fire, and Parr, his beautiful mane, and the trashfire he so loved, become one…this is the song, the video, and the manfire, letting us know this magic trick is complete…
According to historian Linda Lacina, the act of wearing your hair in a mullet style is an act of rebellion. From ancient roman Hun-cut chariot riding warriors, to electricity kite wielding madman Benjo Franklin, to androgynous sexy man wizard David Bowie and the criminal king of tiger’s himself Joe Exotic, the mullet has always been a haircut that lets the world know you just don’t care about what it has to say to you.
In the music video for John Parr’s “Man In Motion” director Kort Falkenberg III showed us that he doesn’t care to transition video scenes with any other method but a crossfade, and also that wonderful mulleted hair can be incredibly dangerous. He let us know the age old truth that if you find yourself in a gang, in the rain, being haunted by a trash fire, and staring through a window, be careful you don’t look too closely into a mullet, lest you become a singular white light who will still stare into rainy windows at trash fires.
Perhaps you rebel, should ignore that danger. Cut your hair up front and let the back get sassy. Become a white light, and go where the eagles are flying higher and higher.
Take us to where that future’s lyin’...st. elmo’s fire…
I do maintain that if your hair is wrong, your entire life is wrong.
-Morrissey-
…to be continued?...
I am not even sure where to begin.
Mullets, St. Elmo's Fire, a John Parr video I somehow forgot existed, and a Tim Tebow version of Man in Motion???
Pass the White Rain, I need to sit down for a minute.