Girls Gone Wilder (1970). “Do you think I don’t know that you’re just being snippy because I was late? Don’t try to change the subject from the fact that I’m a little late because of you. I’ll make it up to you, don’t worry. I’ll make it up to you if you just tell me where to go.” – The Wild One (1953) It’s a classic moment in film history: Marlon Brando, one of the most important movie stars of the 20th century, and his character Johnny Fontaine—the leader of the rebel motorcycle gang who challenges the traditional social codes of suburban America by rebelling against its sexual and racial restrictions, as personified by its lead character Edna—have just finished fighting with each other. It’s the film’s climactic scene, as Fontaine and his friends storm an all-white town where a concert by white performers is being held. Fontaine, always the ringleader, pulls a gun on a town hall official, but the official and his allies manage to disarm and tie him up. The scene ends with the group being taken into custody and hauled off in a police car as Fontaine sneers at his captors. But where are the women in this scene? Where is the one who has been the object of Johnny’s desire since we meet him? In Brando’s case, it was Vera Miles. In the film’s script, she’s only called by her first name: “Vera.” We never see her name on screen—it’s a moment that calls out for the audience to think about race and gender: Johnny’s girlfriend is referred to as “a white girl” but never named. And it’s a reminder of the ways in which these social codes were enforced by Hollywood just then. That’s a minor aspect of the film—but a major one for a studio. The role that Vera Miles played—the other woman in the motorcycle club—was an important role for a studio like Warner Bros., which was trying to build an audience among black moviegoers who had never seen a “positive” black character before. In other words, Vera Miles’ presence on screen was something of a novelty, and like a new gadget at a toy store, a lot of people wanted to try her on for size. There are three things to unpack here. First, just because something is a novelty, it doesn’t mean it’s bad. There are certain new products that catch on and become widely popular. That happened with cigarettes when movies like Sunset Boulevard and even Rebel Without a Cause depicted smoking as cool and trendy. It happened with a number of food products when films like Julia and All About Eve introduced the idea of “fast foods” being “good for you.” And it happened with the products of the 1950s and ‘60s when films like The Godfather, Patton, The Godfather: Part II, and The Graduate used the world of Italian-American social and family dynamics and told stories about the rise of modern capitalism. So, if that were all there was to it, you could simply ignore the existence of “novelty” in a film. But it’s not. It’s not about the product, it’s about the consumers—people who want to see this product, who see it as something that is important. There is also the possibility that when you put this particular novel idea on film, that it helps define those consumers, and in fact defines an entire period of time. It becomes something like the defining moment in the film’s social structure: When that happens, you have a classic, a film that becomes a major part of our shared visual vocabulary. “This town is full of misfits, but you gotta have a little respect for those misfits, you know? Those misfits, it’s not misfits, it’s the future. The rest of you, you’re still living in the past.” – The Wild One (1953) “Look at that poster boy. You couldn’t get all those girls with the best-looking guy in the world.” – The Wild One (1953) This is another important theme of this film, and the reason I picked it as a classic film: it was a period piece that spoke to a period of time. In its best moments, The Wild One showed the world in which the film took place—the life of the American West of the 1950s—as a place of endless possibility, where even a black man could live as an outcast on a reservation and grow his own crops, and where a white man and woman could live in a relationship like they never had in the past. This was not just a film—this was a film that depicted a new life for Americans that was possible, if only they tried. And it was a theme that was not just about race, but about gender, too. In particular, the fact that this was a film in which Vera Miles was playing a female character who could match Brando, the great actor of his time. “You have read his book. You know what he thinks about women. Well, I want him to talk to you. And I want to hear what he’s got to say about love. And if you hear the same old platitudes, if you hear the same old boring, stale ideas, and you start getting sick of them and you want to get yourself back to the old tried-and-true clichés you were listening to before, you just let him know.” – Vera Miles to Johnny Fontaine What does “the old tried-and-true clichés” sound like? “A man falls in love. He talks about it. He cries about it. He acts like a fool. He gets her.” Sound familiar? Sound like nothing new? As important as gender is to this story, and as important as race is to this film, there’s something in here for anyone who’s ever been in a relationship, or who wants to be a successful parent. When you find yourself at a crossroads in your life—when you’re stuck in a rut, or when you’re unsure if you should stay with someone or leave them—you have a choice: do you want to move ahead and seek out other experiences, or do you want to ignore the people in your life who can help you grow as a person? In the film, these are not just the choices of Johnny and Vera—they are also Johnny’s gang, who go to the concert only to realize that the people in power who are in charge of the music industry have no interest in them. Instead of trying to create their own music, the group’s members reject the music in favor of violence. “Now look, boys. I love all you kids and I think you all do a swell job. But you are not here to create something. We’re here to take over. That’s all. We’re here to take over. Everything. You know, some of you kids just don’t know what you’re getting yourselves into, and the only trouble with not knowing is, not knowing makes it hard for you to decide. And indecision makes a man soft. There’s only one crime in this world, as far as I’m concerned—one law, one code of ethics: Be tough. Live with it.” – Johnny Fontaine This is not just a lesson that we can learn from movies. It is a lesson that the world itself can learn from films that are often forgotten. Not only are they the result of artists’ talent and imagination, but they are also a product of a very different period of history. At this point in time, the film is not so much about the future as it is about a way of looking at that future. The Wild One (1953) But while we can learn from all sorts of places, there are films that capture some of that essence, and put it into words. The Wild One was a film that was part of its time, and the words on screen show us why it has been such a classic for decades. “This is a free country. We’re all equal. We all have the right to do whatever we want to do. Go on, then. Do what you want to do, but do it in some place else. You can go get a beer, get a haircut, go to a movie. But you can’t do what you want to do here, can’t get a suntan, can’t get a girl.” – Johnny Fontaine When we hear of someone who “picks up and moves to another town,” what do we often picture? If we live in a city, then we picture them moving to an urban setting. If we live in a rural setting, we may picture them moving to a suburb. And if we don’t live in either of those settings, then we may picture a change of location within our own rural community. This film provides us with a template for what the future of a relationship, or the future of a person, can look like. And it presents a vision of change that goes beyond physical locations and extends into social structures, cultural norms, and the way our society views people as a whole. In that regard, this film is much more than just about the people in it, or about the motorcycle gang. “The motorcycle club is an American institution, and like the American