Remembering “The Wonder Years”
Posted on August 12, 2014 at 3:57 pm
Paste Magazine has a very entertaining piece by Bonnie Stiernberg about “The Wonder Years.” There’s something of a meta layer in feeling nostalgic for a 1988-93 television series that was itself about the nostalgia an adult man felt for his childhood, 20 years earlier.
The cast got together to record some commentary for the forthcoming DVD release, and spoke to Stiernberg. Some of the highlights:
Alley Mills borrowed a dress from her own mother for her audition.
Olivia D’Abo described reading the first script: “I just remember reading the script and being completely blown away, really just rocked to the core. I had never read anything like it. It was just such a personal, intimate read. Laugh-out-loud funny, moving—I think it grabbed hold of every possible emotion one could have, as a reader. I completely forgot about being a young actor reading a script. It was so disarming—it was such a disarming read, that I kind of fell in love with the concept of what the show was about. It was not really an era that I knew much about, but I felt like I just gravitated to it immediately.”
Dan Lauria is a real-life Vietnam veteran. The writers made his character a Korean War vet, and in one episode he gave his daughter his Army duffle bag when she left for college.
Fred Savage later became a director, and Dan Lauria appeared in one of his productions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx7F_y7FiCE
Both feature film versions of the classic book about a mother and daughter who switch bodies are delightful and it is fun to see them both and talk about the way each one reflects its era. Be sure to read the 
by Mary Rodgers (daughter of Richard Rodgers of Rodgers and Hammerstein).
Judge Reinhold and “Wonder Years'” Fred Savage play the body-switching father and son in this 1988 comedy.
This very funny story about a wealthy lifelong invalid who wants her spirit to find a healthy body has lawyer Steve Martin is inhabited by the spirit of Lily Tomlin (some mature material).
It’s actually not the bodies but the faces that switch in this fantasy-thriller that has cop Nicolas Cage swapping his face and voice with criminal John Travolta (very mature material).
One of the most beloved films in this category has Tom Hanks as a boy in a grown-up body. It includes the “Chopsticks” scene, with Hanks and Robert Loggia jumping over an enormous keyboard to play the song. (Some mature material)
Alec Baldwin and Meg Ryan fall in love and then on their wedding day an old man gives her a kiss and what began as a fairly standard romance becomes a meditation on identity and intimacy.
A brilliant screenplay by Charlie Kauffman explores the nature of identity, art, gender, the wish for immortality, and a lot more in this story of a portal to the mind of actor Malkovich (who appears as himself, sort of). (Very mature material)
and Seventeen Again
Body-switching skips a generation as grandparents find themselves teenagers again in these two movies, one starring George Burns and the other starring Tia and Tamera Mowry.
(both about lotharios whose spirits come back as women) and A Saintly Switch
, a Disney film with Viveca A. Fox and David Allen Grier as a quarreling pregnant woman and her football player husband who switch bodies thanks to a magical potion.