Coming of Age Films—Mystic Pizza

The focus of last week’s film, Dirty Dancing, was the coming of age of a young woman. This week’s film, Mystic Pizza [1988], by Amy Holden Jones, Perry Howze and Randy Howze, has a similar focus, but centers around the coming of age of, in this case, three young women—JoJo, Daisy and Kat.

JoJo is engaged to a local fisherman but has doubts about making this lifetime commitment, Daisy is the poor girl, of Portuguese ancestry, dating a rich boy from the ‘good’ side of the tracks, and Kat has fallen for a married man and thinks he’ll eventually leave his wife for her.

Here’s the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRlaX5c0pUA

So what we have here are three coming of age stories—and they all involve relationships with men. They each have life goals of one kind or another, but the crux of all of the stories is that personal angle. Will JoJo succumb to the pressure of marriage? Will Daisy make it when she goes to the rich boy’s house for dinner? Will Kat’s older man leave his wife?

It’s interesting to think about how this sort of film might take place today. Would the entire film be about the women’s struggles with men, or would those perhaps be eclipsed by their struggles with their futures outside of their choice of men?

One of the things this film has going for it is its quirky location. The pizza parlor where all the women work is in Mystic, Connecticut, and is run by a Portuguese family. Amy Holden Jones, the principal writer, was vacationing in Mystic and saw the pizza parlor, which she said gave her the idea for the story.

Think summer. Think of the kinds of jobs you had back at home before leaving for college, think of the angst you felt then. Think of the pulls between the familiar [home] and the unknown [college, for example]. All of these thoughts could lead you to a film like Mystic Pizza. But a film, perhaps, for a new generation.

Mystic Pizza certainly wasn’t a huge hit when it was made—it did OK, but wasn’t a blockbuster by any means. But it’s a great example of how to interweave multiple stories to serve a central theme. When it comes to love, should you trust your heart or your head? And should a relationship take precedence over the other things in your life—like a career or an education?

Even though this film is 34 years old, those are struggles that women—and men—still struggle with today. So if this kind of film interests you as a writer, ask yourself what sort of characters could populate a film set in the present. Because that’s one of the reasons to study a genre—to see what’s already been done and how your unique take could add to the genre.

What would your unique take be?

Next week, a film that came out in the same year as Mystic Pizza but was a HUGE hit—Big.

Copyright © Diane Lake

01Aug21

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com