eyelessgame (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
eyelessgame) wrote2006-08-07 10:41 am
eyelessgame) wrote2006-08-07 10:41 am
Fletch
I reread Fletch last week.
The book was written in 1974. Man, has the culture changed. Very minor spoilers for the book (the movie doesn't contain most of these) in the context of culture...
Fletch has a ton of sex. It's pre-AIDS, of course. Best line in the book (and movie): "What convinced me was something your wife said to me while we were in bed together."
While undercover to do a story on drug use and drug pushers on the beach, he's sleeping with a beautiful fifteen-year-old addict.
Fletch regularly smokes pot smuggled to him by a cop (evidence bags). The big drug bust subplot is of a nearby town's chief of police, who's selling heroin.
Fletch is a newspaper reporter, and emphatically not rich. His two ex-wives are childless; he owes them thousands of dollars (remember, this is pre-inflation) in alimony. (Alimony? What's that?)
The man who runs 'one of the largest corporations' in the country - an aerospace firm - owns one (1) house, is thinking about buying some ranch property in Nevada, probably makes one (1) million dollars a year, is supposedly planning to make a large real estate purchase worth three (3) million dollars, representing most of his assets. Other than working far harder than an ordinary person and belonging to a country club and having a reasonably nice house (French doors), he's the same person as everyone else. It's not that this is pre-inflation; it's that it's pre-Reagan. CEOs used to be like this back when we were kids.
The culture's very different.
The book was written in 1974. Man, has the culture changed. Very minor spoilers for the book (the movie doesn't contain most of these) in the context of culture...
Fletch has a ton of sex. It's pre-AIDS, of course. Best line in the book (and movie): "What convinced me was something your wife said to me while we were in bed together."
While undercover to do a story on drug use and drug pushers on the beach, he's sleeping with a beautiful fifteen-year-old addict.
Fletch regularly smokes pot smuggled to him by a cop (evidence bags). The big drug bust subplot is of a nearby town's chief of police, who's selling heroin.
Fletch is a newspaper reporter, and emphatically not rich. His two ex-wives are childless; he owes them thousands of dollars (remember, this is pre-inflation) in alimony. (Alimony? What's that?)
The man who runs 'one of the largest corporations' in the country - an aerospace firm - owns one (1) house, is thinking about buying some ranch property in Nevada, probably makes one (1) million dollars a year, is supposedly planning to make a large real estate purchase worth three (3) million dollars, representing most of his assets. Other than working far harder than an ordinary person and belonging to a country club and having a reasonably nice house (French doors), he's the same person as everyone else. It's not that this is pre-inflation; it's that it's pre-Reagan. CEOs used to be like this back when we were kids.
The culture's very different.