Spaceballs Made Me Who I Am Today

Spaceballs, The Substack Post!

via ScreenCrush

I saw Aliens for the first time this past weekend. I’ve never seen it before and I’ve never seen Alien before, but The Great Movie Ride (rip) was my favorite ride at Disney so I can kind of say I’ve seen Alien. But anyway, I haven’t really seen Alien, so when I first saw a scene of a little alien popping out of a character’s human chest and through its shirt, I didn’t think, “Oh, right, that’s what happens in Alien.”

I thought, “Like Spaceballs!”

Spaceballs came out in 1987—one year, actually, after the release of Alien 2. I had to look that information up, because to me, it was a movie that appeared out of absolutely nowhere. It was just in our mini-van one day. Or was it a Saturn Vue? I don’t remember. It was just in the textured CD case of movies that we could watch on trips to church and our grandparents’ houses.

In this CD case, you could also find:

• Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde

• The Sandlot

• Ghostbusters 2

• Stuck on You (a film about Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear living as conjoined twins that I swear exists)

Why these movies were chosen still elude me. Why are they mostly sequels? I could ask my parents why they made these choices, but how else would I see if they’re reading my blog posts?

Legally Blonde 2 is probably my favorite out of these films; as evidenced by the fact that I worked at Lush for six years. (Legally Blonde 2, if you don’t remember, is about fighting animal testing. I think it’s just as good as Legally Blonde, although nothing is better than the musical. I’m serious. It’s so good.) But Spaceballs had more of an impact on me than I could understand as a child looking out the Saturn Vue windows and wishing I could have a cell phone. I think—possibly, I fear—Spaceballs has changed the trajectory of my life. It nurtured me into a very silly person.

I didn’t watch Star Wars until I was 18. And then, when I watched the Millennium Falcon (...?) slowly drift by the cameras, I thought, “Oh! Like Spaceballs.” When I watched Aliens…Spaceballs! Anything with John Candy? Spaceballs!

Spaceballs is a wildly silly movie. I love when they go, “Spaceballs, the flamethrower!” and when the lightsabers pop out of their crotches. The oversized helmet and “Jammed!” The cadence of the jokes has been etched into my brain like grooves on a record. The comb, the comb, the Afro pick. The set up, the set up, the punchline. (For better or for worse, I can’t separate the movie from the line, “We ain’t found shit!”)

Funny, wholesome movies were our go-to. Action? Meh. Actual sci-fi? Bleh. Sad? How dare you. My parents gave away their VHS of The Fox and the Hound because it was “too sad.” I’ve never seen it.

This, paired with a decently easy childhood, sets every situation up for a clean punchline. If tension is not broken with a laugh, I start to get hives. When I was 10ish, I watched a made-for-TV movie in which a child smokes a cigarette. It was not supposed to be funny. Cigarettes were a huge no-no, and I couldn’t stand to see the child put himself in a troubling situation. When I came back into the room a few minutes later, my mother shook her head and said, “You’re just like your father. He can’t watch this stuff either.”

Is it nature? Is it nurture? Is it just that I’m a little sensitive? I don’t know. I’m not a psychologist. Plus, my sister loves The Family Stone. She also made it through all of Marley & Me, a movie that I could not physically sit through. I got up and left. I did the same thing during Stranger Than Fiction, which I don’t think is a particularly sad movie, but I was a moody teenager and I cried in my bedroom after watching it. Never seen it since.

Serious emotions are something I dance around like a bonfire. I respect them, I see them, but I keep my distance and I don’t throw them in anyone’s faces. But why should I, really? We’re all balls of energy moving around in skin suits on a pale blue dot. Energy cannot be created and destroyed. At one point in the history of our existence, we were all probably jellyfish. When you zoom in, sure, take it all seriously: cigarettes and grief and borders and institutions and genitals. Zoom out? That Millennium Falcon is still painstakingly moving across the screen, and you can’t help but laugh.

Maybe if I had grown up on Star Wars and Aliens, I would find comfort in catharsis through big gunfights and lightsabers. Maybe if I had been surrounded by sad songs and plot lines, I could have made it through more than two episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. (I watched the bomb episodes with Kyle Chandler. That was enough.) Maybe if Spaceballs had come after the movies it was making fun of, I would have put humor second. But I didn’t grow up with Star Wars. I grew up with Spaceballs. I grew up laughing at our existence before understanding it. I grew up watching very silly movies and therefore, I became a very silly person.