Things About Now And Then You Only Notice As An Adult

In many ways Now and Then is a veritable time capsule, not just of 1970, but also of the year the film was released, 1995, which is a major thing adults notice in the movie that youngsters might not. Archaic objects like battery-powered transistor radios, rotary phones, non-electric vacuum cleaners, and even non-digitized library newspaper archives bound in leather were all in common use back in the 1970s before technology began its leaps forward. 

Only adults would also notice the now-defunct Yardley Cosmetics on Chrissy's vanity, how a print version of TV Guide is only 99 cents and Sam's hardcover book is $15.99, and that Sam uses a paper map to navigate. That's not even mentioning the answering machines and the VCR in Teeny's limousine. All relics now.

But what's almost more striking is how much has changed behavior-wise since 1995. Chrissy douses her hair with Aquanet hairspray even though she's about to have her baby at any moment, something adults know today could be toxic to the unborn child. Worse, Sam is a chainsmoker, and she and Teeny smoke around pregnant Chrissy without anyone mentioning it. To kids, this may look bizarre, but, to adults today, we know just how risky those behaviors were, though, if you lived through those times, it was considered normal.

Now and Then is a film about how our childhoods seep into our adult lives, and Chrissy, in particular, exists in a kind of arrested development even as she's about to become a mom herself. She continues to live in her childhood home, and she keeps it exactly as her mother, played by Bonnie Hunt, did. She even has her couch wrapped in plastic.

Chrissy doesn't allow swearing in the house — and she considers the word "breast" to be a swear — or hard liquor. The $129.98 Sears treehouse they bought in 1970 has lasted for 25 years, and Chrissy refuses to tear it down. She also keeps the radio tuned to the '70s oldies station, as if she's just as much of a time capsule as her home. Yet Chrissy sees her behavior as perfectly normal and even goes so far as to accuse Sam and Teeny of being bizarre. "The longer they're gone, the weirder they get," Chrissy says to Roberta as she judges Teeny's multiple marriages and Sam's chic wardrobe of black clothes. No wonder Samantha and Teeny exchange their fair share of eye-rolling as they listen to Chrissy. 

Janeane Garofalo's star was just beginning to rise when she snagged the role of Wiladene in Now and Then — a cantankerous waitress at the diner the girls frequented, and one who happened to dabble in fortune telling on the side. It was a bit part for Garofalo, who'd starred in another cult '90s hit the year before: Reality Bites. However, the small role still established a rapport between Garofalo and the younger actresses she filmed alongside. In 1999, Christina Ricci alluded to that connection, explaining that Garofalo had come to her defense when the media began singling her out over her size. 

"I was so happy to read an US interview where Janeane [Garofalo] said it was ridiculous that I always get slammed for my weight because, in real life, I'm not fat. At all," Ricci told Moveline at the time. "Maybe short, but not fat. And I do have a neck." 

It wasn't just the adult versions of the girls who smoked cigarettes in Now and Then. It was also the some of the girls' parents... not to mention the young versions of the girls, too! Although there was no literal statement made on behalf of the movie about this habit shared by so many characters, the movie itself may have been making a social statement. 

In 1995, when the film was released, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (or CDC) released a report on the problem with minors accessing tobacco products. And, according to an article in the National Academies Press on the background of smoking bans, the early '90s saw the first large wave of restrictions regarding smoking in public spaces. 

Regardless of the intention behind the characters smoking, at least one critic took the film to task for it. In his negative review of Now and Then, Roger Ebert panned the proclivity as part of a bigger cinematic issue. "In theory we might be interested in seeing what kind of women the girls grew up to be — but the movie gives the adults so little screen time that it has to resort to shorthand, like using smoking as a character trait."

Watching Now and Then as a teen or preteen in the mid-'90s, it was easy to swoon over the drifter played by Brendan Fraser. Watching as an adult, though, it's clear Fraser wasn't just eye candy, given his character's past war experience.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Now and Then's writer I. Marlene King discussed the dichotomy of idealism and transition during the '70s. "It was a very special time to grow up. And there's a hint of how the world is changing when the girls meet the Vietnam vet played by Brendan Fraser on the road, and they think that everything is all hunky-dory but he sort of opens the window to the fact that things are changing," she said. 

Of the movie, Fraser said (cryptically, much like his character), "That I think speaks to everyone who's kept little bits and pieces of the world to keep themselves together... I think the lesson in that is we are who we are no matter what we are, and we are the sum whole of — not everything we collect, but — our experiences." 

It wasn't only the youngsters going through it in 1970. Sam's mother, played by Lolita Davidovich, was learning how to be a single mom before that was commonly accepted in society. But it's the Pete Simms (Walter Sparrow) sub-plot that packs an emotional wallop in Now and Then. Called "Crazy Pete" by townspeople because he only comes out at night, Pete had experienced great loss when his wife and child were murdered in a random robbery. The 1945 incident was decades in the past, but he was still actively grieving and living with guilt that he might have saved his family if he'd been home.

Pete only goes out at night, telling Sam, "I don't like to see a lot of people. I don't think they like to see a lot of me." Later, Pete also tells her, "Things will happen in your life that you can't stop. But that's no reason to shut out the world." 

Sam reflects as an adult, "Although I understood the importance of his words, it's only now looking back that I understand their meaning." Watching as an adult, Pete's words do resonate differently.

Many would argue that 1970 was a safer time, so kids gadding about on their own wasn't a big deal. However, Shelby, Ind. had been home to a brutal double murder in 1945, as shared in the movie, so that point becomes moot. It gets disturbing watching the girls in Now and Then sneak out of their homes often at night to have seances in the local cemetery, and one night they even go in their pajamas. After one nighttime jaunt to visit their tree house prototype (which they climbed the fence into Sears Gardening to do), Samantha and Teeny get caught in a rainstorm, and Samantha almost drowns in the sewer.

They take shortcuts through the woods at night, and they ride their bikes nine miles to the next town without even telling any adults where they are going. As she processes her grief over her mother, Roberta enacts elaborate faked death attempts and, after Roberta pretends to drown, Chrissy gets so mad that she punches her in the face. The girls even break into Sam's grandmother's attic and climb onto her roof as they investigate the cause of Dear Johnny's death. A lot happened to them that summer, and it's a miracle they all lived.

With parents like Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, Rumer Willis was bound to have acting in her blood. Over the years, she has enjoyed roles in top TV series such as Hawaii Five-O and Empire, but her career actually kicked off with a minor role in Now and Then as Samantha's little sister, Angela. Since Moore played the adult version of Samantha, that means little Rumer played the sis of her real-life mom. 

Of the role, Willis told Elle, "My dad says I was an extra in Die Hard. I think it's true. But Now and Then was the first real thing. I loved it. All these amazing people. I was the tiny little seven-year-old on set and everyone was always like, 'Oh, you're so cute!' I just really liked being on set because I had grown up doing it." 

It's quite a delicious bit of irony that tomboy Roberta, who binds her chest with masking tape over her bra and wears her brothers' hand-me-downs, would be the first to see actual romantic interest from a boy. In Now and Then, Roberta and her besties have a sworn enmity with the Wormers, a group of brothers lead by the eldest, Scott (Devon Sawa), in their neighborhood who get their kicks by terrorizing anyone who's around — especially girls. 

One evening during that eventful summer of 1970, Scott runs into Roberta as she's practicing basketball. Without his brothers in tow, he's actually kind of a nice guy, and, as he and Roberta connect on a slightly deeper emotional level, he asks Roberta if he can kiss her. The ask is super awkward, but, as the exchange continues it becomes a perfect model of consent culture that is way ahead of its time. 

First Scott mumbles, "Can I kiss you?" He then enunciates when he asks again. Roberta considers his question and accepts. But she didn't realize she was saying yes to a kiss right then, so they clarify the terms and have a sweet lip-lock moment that both have agreed to. 

One thing in Now and Then that only adults would notice is the Dear Johnny storyline mirrors that of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. In Cold Blood is a true crime book about the random brutal killings of an entire family by two drifters in Holcomb, Kan. in 1959. It invented the genre of creative non-fiction and shocked America as it described violent crime not in an urban context, but rather a small-town one, shattering many Americans' illusions of safety in their own towns. 

In Now and Then, it was also a drifter who passed through Shelby, Ind. in 1945, who shoots Dear Johnny and his mother for what little they had in the house. In Now and Then the town is rocked by the crime, but, in the years after, the townspeople try to pretend it never happened. Part of that includes ostracizing the surviving family member, Pete Simms. This parallel to In Cold Blood only deepens the darker aspects of Now and Then and further puts them in a broader social and cultural American context, heightening the time capsule feeling of the movie.

For adults who remember growing up in the 1970s, the Now and Then soundtrack is a time capsule all of its own featuring an eclectic mix of songs that have become a kind of wallpaper to certain times and places. From the oldies of the Allman Brothers to Stevie Wonder, from The Jackson 5 to Nancy Sinatra, and from The Archies to The Hollies, these iconic tunes and musicians that drive the action in Now and Then are as catchy now as they were back then. 

Even '90s staples Sophie B. Hawkins and Susanna Hoffs' appearances in the soundtrack for the modern scenes evoke a '90s Lillith Fair-esque vibe that differentiates the past from the present in a clever way through musical choices, even as Chrissy is stuck in the past with her '70s radio station as a grown-up. For adults watching Now and Then, these songs invoke our own childhoods and memories as much as they do Sam, Roberta, Chrissy, and Teeny's, both now and then.

As kids, we all assumed we'd be best friends with our beloved childhood pals forever. There wasn't a shadow of a doubt in our minds. But as adults, this gets more and more complicated. In the days before social media and the internet, when people moved away, it was easier to lose touch than to stay connected. And for lots of adults who grew up pre-Internet, all the promises made as kids went out the window in the span it took for parents to bring home a moving truck with the announcement of a new job and city. Sometimes friends just grow apart. 

"All for one, and one for all," Sam, Teeny, Chrissy, and Roberta promised each other that intense summer of 1970. They also made a pact that no matter what, if they needed each other, they would all be there. And as adults, they actually kept it. There is incredible magic in their connection and in the fact that they were able to maintain their bond, even if they don't always agree with each others' lifestyle choices. As an adult watching Now and Then, this is arguably the most powerful aspect of the movie.