Note to self: remember the Pheobe Cates anecdote

I have been reading Mark Morford’s op-ed column in the SF Gate for years now. Sometimes, when he rags on the Midwest, or the mindless, or the unhealthy, or the spiritually numb, I see bits of myself in my column. I usually feel something close to shame, the kind of shame that makes you swear off Rock of Love and A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila and PerezHilton.com. Today’s column starts in the same vein; Mark is talking about the cognitive surplus we have in this country and how most of us blow right through that watching TV. He goes on to talk about Wikipedia taking nearly 100 million hours of work. Wikipedia, non-peer reviewed reference site that it is, represents a successful collaborative use of some of that cognitive surplus.

Then, he changes gears again. He says that Wikipedia may be a marvel of socialism and technology, but he doesn’t feel confident that we can ever be a truly collaborative culture because most often the by product of collaboration is groupthink. Nasty, evil groupthink.

The examples are legion, eternal, painful: You want to destroy a unique TV show? Run it by lots of focus groups. Want to maul a good film? Hire a team to write the script.

And here is where my post really gets started. Villi and I were sitting on the couch a few nights ago talking about something that led to something else. I don’t know how we got to Pretty in Pink, but I mentioned that the original ending had Andie and Duckie ending up together, which was really the natural order. Apparently, when they ran it by focus groups (big-haired, gum-smacking 14 year olds, I imagine) they started booing at the end. Andie shouldn’t be with sweet, kind, reverent Duckie. She should be with the rich, good looking (if you’re into the sunken-cheek, feathered-hair awkwardness that is Andrew McCarthy) boy who treated her like crap and rolled over to his parents' elitism rather than defend Andie. What a message to the girls in America! Why not just have her end up with James Spader’s Stef. If she really wanted to feel inferior for the whole of her relationship, I think that would be the way to go.

So, we checked out my Pretty in Pink DVD and it listed the original ending as one of the special features. Unfortunately, tt didn’t really have the original ending, just a bunch of commentary by the cast and crew about why the change was made. Molly Ringwald admitted that if the original Duckie (Robert Downing Jr.) had been Duckie she would have been okay with the original ending. When Jon Cryer was cast, she wanted the movie to change. What is that about? You’re an actress; it means pretend. Only Annie Potts seemed appropriately outraged at the change, and I blame that stupid focus group for all of this.

So far, only my friend Beth has agreed with the original ending.