Younger Hexbears, if the spirit of boomerdom visited your household, boomer is more a state of mind than a specific birth year, so feel free to share your stories too.
There are some obviously better-known movies like Wall Street, but I remember an obscure one called “Let It Ride” that was played on tape over and over and over again so many times that it was like the theme song of the household for a while. It was a Richard Dreyfuss film about a gambling addicted asshole who seeks to triumph over his gambling problems by… gambling. Until he gets vibes about winning and then wins at gambling.
As a boomer bonus it portrays The Wife as a bad person because she’s… upset at the protagonist’s gambling addition. Oh yeah and she suspects he’s eager to commit some adultery. How dare she… the way to show her is to have a much younger love interest that is totally into the protagonist because he starts to win at gambling!
For anyone that has had gambling-addicted boomer parents, the kind that thought a fun outing for the kids was going to the racetrack, or to Vegas, you may have similar stories of poverty perpetuated because your also liked to “Let It Ride.”
it’s really hard to explain what a huge deal “the big chill” was to them… Ive never seen it but I would imagine it validates their turn towards materialism and such… Forrest Gump was also a huge deal in a similar way about 10 years later and I think a simpleton wandering through life and just happening to win at every turn really resonated with them
on tv, I think “thirtysomething” may have occupied the same mental space as “the big chill” but idk, never watched it.
if you ask me what their cinematic epitaph will be, it will be Peter Fonda in Easy Rider saying “we blew it, billy.”
I’ve never seen it but when I read about it, I concluded “yeah, a whole lot of boomers certainly do feel that way, responding to the sting of mortality by being selfish assholes.”