Bruce Handy

1 month ago | vanityfair.com | Bruce Handy

The first quarter of the twenty-first century seems to have been an especially confusing time to be a teenager, which is quite the achievement. But look at the century’s most successful teen franchise, the Hunger Games novels and movies, a relentlessly grim series that expanded this spring to add a second prequel novel to Suzanne Collins’ original set of three books. That trilogy was turned into four movies between 2012 and 2015, followed in 2023 by an adaptation of the first prequel.

1 month ago | vulture.com | Bruce Handy

Not gonna do it. One of the pleasures I found in researching and writing Hollywood High: A Totally Epic, Way Opinionated History of Teen Movies, which is out today, was the way the films reflect their eras yet can also be in dialogue with one another, even across decades and generations. I found all kinds of interesting through-lines: cars, clothes, cliques, school, the threat of impending adulthood. And, of course, sex.

1 month ago | hollywoodreporter.com | Bruce Handy

This essay is excerpted from Hollywood High: a Totally Epic, Way Opinionated History of Teen Movies, by Bruce Handy, out May 20 from Avid Reader Press. Leap Day, 1940. The city: Los Angeles. The place: the Ambassador Hotel’s Cocoanut Grove nightclub, where Hollywood’s biggest names were gathered for the 12th annual Academy Awards ceremony.

1 month ago | yahoo.com | Bruce Handy

This essay is excerpted from Hollywood High: a Totally Epic, Way Opinionated History of Teen Movies, by Bruce Handy, out May 20 from Avid Reader Press. Leap Day, 1940. The city: Los Angeles. The place: the Ambassador Hotel’s Cocoanut Grove nightclub, where Hollywood’s biggest names were gathered for the 12th annual Academy Awards ceremony.

1 month ago | airmail.news | Bruce Handy

“Not every girl is miserable. There are actually genuinely happy girls. I don’t come across them very often, but they do exist.” —Rosalind Wiseman, in her best-selling nonfiction book, Queen Bees & Wannabes, 2002Mean Girls, released in 2004, is the first teen movie of the 21st century to earn an indisputable spot in the canon. For one thing, Tina Fey’s tart, smart screenplay is as witty and quotable as Clueless’s—to my taste the teen comedy gold standard—but with a genuinely nasty bite all its own.