Back to the ‘80s – The Movies & Stars of the Reagan Era
In-Person – Tuesday 3:10 pm – 4:50 pm
Jan. 14, 21, 28 and Feb. 4, 11 
A look at the movies and stars of the 1980s – the blockbuster era.
- Week 1: The rise of the summer blockbuster – from The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 through Raiders of the Lost Ark and Back to the Future. Hollywood found the hit-making formula after years of audience erosion.
- Week 2: The multiplex explosion and the rise of cable and VCRs. To keep up with all of the hits, theater chains built massive multiplexes all over the country. The boom lasted despite two new ways of seeing uncut movies at home – pay cable and the VCR.
- Week 3: Two Toms become superstars of the era – Tom Cruise in films like Risky Business and Tom Hanks in hit comedies ranging from Splash to Big.
- Week 4: A new group of female stars emerge in a better decade for women’s stories than the male-dominated 1970s. Meryl Streep leads a new pack of leading ladies that includes Jessica Lange, Sigourney Weaver, Debra Winger and Glenn Close.
- Week 5: The dark side of an optimistic decade. Despite the wave of upbeat mainstream blockbusters, daring directors also explored the underbelly of American society in films like Blue Velvet and Blow Out.
Joe Meyers is director of programming for the Focus on French Cinema festival in Connecticut. He is co-host of the Spotify podcast Now a Major Motion Picture! Meyers has written features about movies, theater and books for more than 30 years for the Hearst Connecticut Media Group and other publications. In the late 1970s, Meyers ran the first (and only) art house on the Delmarva Peninsula, the Lewes Cinema. In 2012, the Mystery Writers of America gave Meyers the Ellery Queen Award for his writing on crime fiction.