Summer of Cher: Mask

Cher has red hair and Sam Elliott is named Gar

When I mentioned the film Mask to my mom, she was like, “Whew, Sam Elliott!” And when I mentioned the film on Instagram, I got multiple messages from friends about how much their moms love Sam Elliott. So what I’m saying is…this is a movie for moms. It’s certainly a movie for this mom, because I loved it.

It’s weird that I never watched Mask in high school because I would have, as they say, made it my entire personality. But I’m glad I saw it now because back then, I would’ve felt closest to Rocky Dennis, the teenage main character. But watching it at 38, I found myself mostly thinking about Cher’s character, and the ways she was both succeeding and failing as a mom.

But first, the plot. If this newsletter seems more disjointed than usual, please attribute it to post-Covid brain fog, or the fact that I’m currently totally off caffeine because of post-Covid symptoms and so cannot ride that matcha high. I have to write this with my un-caffeinated brain. The horror.

Mask is about Rocky Dennis, played by Eric Stoltz. Stoltz’s face is mostly hidden under prosthetics because Rocky has craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, a bone disorder. The film’s title comes from the kids who yell at him to take off his mask (side note: why are these kids so rude? One of the first and most-emphasized lessons we taught our son is we don’t talk about people’s bodies!).

Even though Rocky doesn’t always fit in because of his very visible disability, he has something all those other jerky kids don’t have: a biker gang as a family. The film starts with Cher coming home from one of her many, many dates (my son would refer to her as “boy crazy” if he was allowed to watch this film, which he isn’t) and trying to fend off a pushy guy. But then a group of bikers roll up, stuff the guy back in his car, and send him on his way. That’s right: these are protective bikers and they won’t let anyone bother Cher or Rocky. As a rule I’ve been referring to Cher as Cher in these posts, but I think I should actually start using her character’s name because it’s…Rusty. A great name. Details are free.

A great, big group of supportive, protective bikers was such a lovely idea that I was into this movie from the beginning. It reminded me of reading a romance novel where a group of bikers or a sports team or some other group of traditionally very masculine guys is actually made up of romantic softies, and maybe that’s not realistic, but also it’s so fun to read about that I don’t care.

I hope you like Bruce Springsteen because this film is 95% Bruce songs. Apparently director Peter Bogdanovich wanted to use Bruce, but there was some kind of rights issue and the film was released with Bob Seger songs. When Bogdanovich was able to work on the director’s cut, he switched out the Seger to Bruce songs. Do you think Bob Seger was like, “Okay, what am I, chopped liver?”

Anyway. Rocky is an incredibly likable character right from the beginning as he bops around his room to Bruce while admiring his baseball card collection. This is a little detail that wouldn’t have registered with me as a kid but was extra heartbreaking for me as an adult because it shows how Rocky, even though he’s maturing as a teenager, is ultimately still a kid. He’s collecting baseball cards! His little board of cards says “1955 Brooklyn Dodgers!!” on it, with exclamation points. This is probably a very mom thing of me, but there’s nothing I find more precious than the collections and interests of little boys and this was just a reminder for me that Rocky is still quite young.

But he’s growing up fast, mostly because Rusty is doing what we would call some hard living. She is such a tough, take-no-shit, badass mom at times (I mean, she’s Cher, of course she is), yelling at the principal who doesn’t want to let Rocky attend a regular public school and defending her son whenever people stare at him. But she’s also dealing with a serious drug problem and sleeping with random men as a way to escape her life. If she has a job, it’s never mentioned. She’s either going out on dates, doing drugs, taking Rocky places, or making morning smoothies while listening to what sounds like my Spotify yacht rock playlist. Okay, yes, she rules, but also she needs to stop doing so many drugs because Rocky is literally hiding drug rehab facility pamphlets all over their house. Rusty also cannot drive a car (maybe because she’s used to sitting on the back of a bike). Throughout the film, whenever there’s a lawn or a curb, she’s gonna drive over it. She can’t even park in her own driveway—diagonally on the front lawn it is! Part of this is presumably her cavalier attitude about driving under the influence, but also I think it’s just part of her character. No curb can contain her.

And then…Gar shows up. That’s right, there’s a man named Gar, and he’s played by none other than Sam Elliott himself. He’s Rusty’s “the one who got away” and they have a real will-they-won’t-they energy from the second he rolls onto the screen.

I mean, look at them.

You’ve never seen a more attractive biker couple.

A very important thing to know about Gar is that he shows up to a party at Rusty and Rocky’s place wearing this shirt and somehow, he still looks hot.

Literally anyone else in this shirt would look like a drunk frat boy.

The main thing I can’t stop thinking about: did he purchase that shirt? Because it really just looks like the iron-on letters my friends and I would use to make shirts in high school. Did Gar stand by his ironing board, painstakingly ironing on this message and chuckling to himself as he imagined the reaction at Rusty’s house? Did someone iron it on for him? Was it passed from biker to biker until it found its true home? A lot to think about. But this is the power of Gar!

Rocky manages to win over the kids at his school by being positive, kind, and describing how the Trojan War began. In my experience, knowing a lot about the Trojan War was never a ticket to popularity in high school, but I’m glad it works for Rocky.

But Rocky’s starting to worry that girls won’t like him because of his face, and he expresses this worry to Rusty. Rusty, in her infinite wisdom…tries to hire him a nineteen-year-old sex worker she sees at a bar. Rusty! I know she doesn’t have time to read parenting books, what with all the drugs and the smoothie-making, but come on.

Rocky just ends up befriending her and then Rusty walks in on them having breakfast with Gar. Gar gives her a motorcycle (not mustache) ride and Rocky gets seriously mad at Rusty. Listen, we all make mistakes, and she meant well.

But what I can’t forgive Rusty for is when Rocky comes home and reads her a poem he wrote in school, and she doesn’t listen and then they get in a fight and she tears up one of his baseball cards. He tells her all she cares about is “getting loaded and laid” and she slaps him in the face. Ahhh, Rusty. This scene was truly painful to watch.

Rusty’s drug use pushes away everyone in her life, including her parents (her mom is played by Estelle Getty!) and, most crucially, Gar. Imagine pushing away a man like Gar. It’s a bad movie, Rusty!

When Rocky’s principal tells him about a summer camp for blind children where he could be a counselor, he’s initially offended, then intrigued, even though he can’t imagine leaving Rusty. But ultimately he decides he has to get a break from Rusty and her constant drug use, so he goes to the camp and has an experience common to all campers: he meets a young Laura Dern.

Laura Dern is blind and she loves horses, and eventually she falls for Rocky. Rocky describes colors to her in a scene that’s very “William Hurt using movement to describe Bach to Marlee Matlin in Children of a Lesser God,” but you know how I feel about Children of a Lesser God, so I wasn’t mad at it.

But when Rocky meets Laura Dern’s yuppie parents at the end of camp, they’re clearly horrified by his face and then they don’t let Laura Dern know when he calls her. Rocky has to take the bus all the way out to wherever her horse stable is and track her down just to confirm that she still loves him, even though they can’t be together because her parents are sending her to boarding school. Things were so much harder in the time before cell phones and Google. The fact that he tracked her down is still impressive to me. That’s love! Also this plot line would’ve destroyed me as a teenager.

It was right around this time that I started realizing the movie would end eventually. Here’s the thing about Mask: it’s long. Some might say too long. But also…what’s too long when you’re enjoying the story? Does every scene really need to be efficient in a film? I’d argue no (then again, you know my love of Nothing Happens cinema). One of my least favorite criticisms of any art form is “this needed an editor,” both because it’s usually a misunderstanding of what editors do (my editors do many important things, and making my books shorter isn’t really one of them) and because…well, I just don’t think it’s usually true! I’m very pro-editor, in practice (in my own career) and in theory (the things I watch), but don’t you ever just want to see some long, shaggy scenes that ultimately add to the feeling and the atmosphere and, dare I say it, the vibe of a film? I do. I almost always want that! But I’m probably being a hypocrite here because I complain when action films are too long. I guess what I’m saying is…I don’t mind if something is a bit too long if it’s enjoyable. Art doesn’t have to be efficient.

So yes, I was content with Mask continuing forever, but then something hit me: the only way this movie was going to end was with Rocky’s death. I mean, I guess he could leave town to go on that European motorcycle trip he kept talking about, but there was plenty of foreshadowing about his impending death. And then, it happened: he went to bed with a headache and he didn’t wake up. Rusty found him in the morning and Cher’s acting was so good in this scene that I was surprised she didn’t get an Oscar. I know she has one for Moonstruck but I think this might be the better Cher role!

This final scene really got me.

Ultimately, I’m not sure how successful I was in describing the slow-moving, emotional appeal of this film, but I loved it. A few more things:

-there’s a biker named Dozer who doesn’t speak except to tell Rocky he’s proud of him :’)

-Dozer gives Rocky a puppy and then the dog seemingly ages in real time throughout the film! A nice little detail!

-Cher sings!

-When Rocky is about to graduate from ninth grade, he’s freaking out about not having nice clothes for the ceremony because he only hangs out with bikers and wears jeans. Gar tells him to go get a beer from the fridge and when he opens it…a suit is hanging inside. The bikers all got him the suit and Gar picked it out. :’) again. This is romance novel stuff. I need a romance where Gar is the hero!!

-At one point, we see Sam Elliott sleeping in bed and he’s not using a pillow. Just his arm. When you’re Sam Elliott, you don’t need a pillow. You’re your own pillow.

-My DVD had a little clip of Cher talking about the work she does with the Children’s Craniofacial Association after her experience working on Mask. Their website says she’s their National Spokesperson and their “most generous contributor.”

Mask is kind of hard to find online…it’s not available anywhere legal for streaming, and it’s difficult to even Google because you’re gonna get a lot of results for Jim Carrey’s The Mask. I got a copy from my library. I know we have a lot going on right now as a country, but at some point we need to look into why so many Cher films are almost impossible to watch. Something’s not right here. I’m starting to feel like my very close relative, Oprah.

I think Cher is being silenced, you guys.

That’s it for this week. In conclusion, I spent a lot of time listening to Jens Lekman in college without realizing that more than one of his songs was about Mask.

This week, consider getting Mask from the library, or listening to Jens Lekman. Also try not getting Covid. Just a few suggestions! See you soon. xo