On Its 40th Anniversary, It's Time to Recognize MR. MOM As a Feminist Classic
MR. MOM was released in 1983 — forty years ago this year — and was immediately struck by negative reviews that might have felled lesser films. But its story, about a suddenly unemployed father who takes up domestic duties so his wife can go back to work, struck a nerve with American audiences. A slow rollout, engineered by the studio to bury the film, actually played to its advantage — building positive word-of-mouth buzz that no longer exists in the streaming age — leading to a smash comedy hit that grossed $200 million at the box office (adjusted for inflation).
It’s easy to see why MR. MOM resonated at the time. Layoffs in traditionally male U.S. workplaces, especially the auto industry, had landed innumerable men on their living room couches - a stark contrast to the seventies when a total of, I shit you not, sixmen reported being stay-at-home dads in America. Six. This resulted in many of their wives had to head into the workplace themselves to help make ends meet, but it also meant these men were forced to tackle domestic responsibilities previously foreign to them.
You know, like their kids.
When I grilled people about their recollections of MR. MOM, few had seen it in decades. Most women described their memory of it as a reductive, sometimes even bad-taste comedy about a man fumbling through all the aspects of domestic life a responsible adult should’ve been good at anyway – operating a washing machine, making spaghetti, school drop-offs. There was an overwhelming sense that it was a comedy that, in some way or another, made fun of stay-at-home moms. Dated was a word that came up often.
Needless to say, feminist was the last word any of them used to describe it.
The truth is, I would’ve agreed with them before my wife and I sat down together to revisit MR. MOM a few months ago. We didn’t do so for any reason other than nostalgia and general affection for its stars Michael Keaton and Teri Garr. But halfway through it, I paused the film, turned to my wife — also a screenwriter — and asked, “Holy shit, is this as pro-woman as I think it is?”
The answer is: yes, yes it is.
Now, enjoy this incredibly sexist trailer for the film:
Before we get into the why of it, let’s talk about MR. MOM’s origins. As luck would have it, an old friend used to work for the film’s legendary producer, Lauren Shuler Donner and made an introduction. Despite a recent bout of bronchitis, she was generous enough to hop on Zoom with me to discuss the film that put her and its screenwriter, John Hughes, on the map.
Hughes, who went on to help define Hollywood in the eighties with films such as THE BREAKFAST CLUB, FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF, and the NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION trilogy, clearly enjoys an incredibly dear spot in Lauren’s heart. She visibly changed whenever the late filmmaker’s name came up and grew defensive of his work when the conversation shifted to how a fellow producer mangled Hughes’ work on MR. MOM.
“We connected on a very personal level,” she told me, including both of them being from the Midwest. He was from Chicago, she from Cleveland. The family in MR. MOM would eventually be located in between in Detroit, where I’m from.
“One day, his wife Nancy was away and he was left in charge of the boys,” she continued. “I have a feeling that they got married right after either high school or college. I think he grew up with three sisters. Basically, I think the man never had taken care of himself. Never been in a grocery store. Certainly never operated a washing machine or anything like that. So, he was telling me about taking care of the boys and trying to cook - and it was hilarious. At a certain point, John said, ‘You know, I have about eighty pages in the drawer. It’s this movie called MR. MOM. Do you want to read it?’”
Lauren had two credits to her name by that point, as an associate producer on THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY (1978) and as a producer on a television film written and directed by the late Joel Schumacher called AMATEUR NIGHT AT THE DIXIE BAR AND GRILL (1978). Hughes had written NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CLASS REUNION (1982), which, until our conversation, I had no idea even existed. MR. MOM’s success essentially made both of their careers and even scored Hughes a three-picture deal with Universal – which is how we got his directorial debut SIXTEEN CANDLES (1984).
Lauren repeatedly centered our MR. MOM conversation around Hughes, even though his original script didn’t make it to the screen unscathed. He wrote at a phenomenal pace, according to her (and many other people who have worked with him), something she attributes to his years working in advertising - which is the career Teri Garr’s character moves into in MR. MOM. She even shared a wonderful anecdote about the filmmaker receiving notes in a meeting. He stepped out of the office, to where Lauren’s assistant worked, asked her to please get up from her desk so he could take her place at the Selectric typewriter, then banged out all the discussed changes right then and there – “And they were damn good,” she added.
Development of MR. MOM took an infuriating turn when Lauren’s partner on the film, Aaron Spelling, grew impatient with Hughes’ refusal to move to Los Angeles to work with him on the script – something Lauren insisted to me was unnecessary. “First of all, John never slept,” she said. “I mean, honest to God, he would fax you pages at, like, 3:00 in the morning. So, it wasn't like he wasn't available. He was there practically 24/7. He was more available than if somebody was in the actual room.”
When Lauren left town to make LADYHAWKE (1985), Spelling fired Hughes behind her back and brought in two television writers from his series “DYNASTY” to replace him. She doesn’t blame the writers for taking the job. She even sounds sympathetic because they had to follow Hughes - and no writer in their right mind would want to do that. It’s Spelling she resents.
The initial reception to MR. MOM four decades ago was not what the filmmakers hoped for, as I mentioned earlier. Lauren Shuler Donner remembers critics dueling over who could say the worst things about the film. Roger Ebert lamented, “People have been living through the basic idea for MR. MOM for years. It's too bad this movie doesn't feel more like their lives and less like the pilot for a TV sitcom.”
Sure, okay — much of the humor is indeed broader and Stan Dragoti’s direction leans that direction, too — but Ebert was dead wrong about the film’s emotional truths as I’ll explain in a moment.
Universal was equally perplexed by MR. MOM, choosing to prioritize the Michael Douglas film THE STAR CHAMBER (1983) over it. “They didn't know what they had,” Lauren told me. The studio decided to roll MR. MOM out regionally rather than give it any kind of splashy release, assuming it was dead on arrival. But after two weeks in theaters, THE STAR CHAMBER crashed and burned…and then, MR. MOM exploded.
When I asked Lauren how she felt at the time about MR. MOM, she had this to say:
“Look, it wasn't John's script and that broke my heart. It absolutely broke my heart. But it had our bones. Even though the script was different, it still had enough of the essence that. You know, it was — it is — a good movie. It’s fun. There’s a lot to say.”
At this point, we began to discuss the film’s social relevance, both in the eighties and, perhaps, today. I wanted to understand how conscious she and Hughes and the rest of their team were about — for example — the film’s feminist message (which, again, I will explain more about in a moment, don’t worry).
“It wasn't that I had to be conscious of it because I just was,” she said. “I was always feminist and always sort of staking out my own path regardless of what anybody thought or said, so that was just me.”
The subject, however, didn’t seem to interest her as much as the process of developing and producing the film. This isn’t a unique experience for me, as I feel many filmmakers grow bored about talking about the meanings of films themselves, what this or that meant, and prefer to dwell more on their memories — and process — of making them.
MR. MOM’s legacy was also not an area Lauren seemed especially interested in reflecting on beyond pointing out that the film struck such a chord within American culture that the term “Mr. Mom” entered English vernacular as a result. I hesitated when I heard this, but research confirms she wasn’t being remotely hyperbolic. The Oxford English Dictionary hilariously attributes its first use to a 1984 New York Times article, completely overlooking the hit film that originated the term the year before.
As for why MR. MOM hasn’t stood the test of time as well as other iconic films of the era, Lauren suggested that might have more to do with how the zeitgeist dramatically changed immediately after its release. Part of that was inadvertently her doing — and Hughes’ — as the rise of the teenage film and the “Brat Pack”, such as THE BREAKFAST CLUB and ST. ELMO’S FIRE (1985), which she produced, replaced more adult comedy fare at the box office.
Interestingly, Lauren closed our conversation by imploring that I spend less time discussing my academic interests in MR. MOM and more time talking about why I love it so much. She appreciated my passion much more than my efforts to dissect a forty-year-old film. Your wish is my command, Lauren.
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