“Mask” Characters Did What I Did.
When the movie Mask was released in 1985, I loved it.
I was mesmerized by the plight of the red-headed teenager with the giant head, who was bullied mercilessly but who stood up for himself (unlike me) throughout the film. I was awestruck by Cher’s performance and torn apart by her heart-wrenching mega-scene near the end of the film. And I was head over heels in love with Sam Elliott, who played Cher’s boyfriend in the film.
I had no idea I would soon be immersed in the biker culture so accurately portrayed in Mask, nor did I know how accurately the film represented that culture.
For decades, I watched Mask whenever I had a chance: on the big screen, on free HBO weekends, on TV whenever it appeared, on VHS when it came out at Blockbuster, and on DVD when I finally bought my own copy. I’ve forced my husband and kids to watch it, and I’ve watched it alone since then.
The biker lifestyle in the film was so close to how I lived – with the exception that, eventually, it got very cold outside in my life. The film took place in southern California where the weather is mostly perfect.
So the bikers rode motorcycles in the movie all the time. Sometimes there were trucks interspersed among the Harleys, but for the most part, Mask characters did what I did: rode motorcycles and drank beer.
In the movie, the bikers ride down the street in a pack, three or ten at a time. Motorcycles always travel together. Everyone wears denim and black leather. Everyone smokes. Everyone drinks shots and beers.
There are sober bikers, but my limited alcoholic imagination cannot comprehend why this would be.
In one scene, the bikers pick up Rocky (the kid with the big head) to take him to school on the back of a bike. Rocky gets on the bike with toast – which he doesn’t eat, because he gives it to the guy who’s driving. Because bikers eat on motorcycles. They smoke on motorcycles. They laugh and cavort and camp on motorcycles. Passengers can sleep on motorcycles and bikers drive drunk without remorse and they all smoke cigarettes and eat sandwiches and sing and cry, all while riding on a huge machine that never stops vibrating.
Motorcycles roar down the highways, but they also drive on the grass – in parks, on lawns, anywhere. This part, in particular, is amazingly accurate. Bikers do not care if they park on cement or grass. They only care that they don’t park in mud or gravel. There’s no mud or gravel under the tires in Mask.
Also the bikers are rather clean cut in the PG-13 movie. They’re a bit rougher in real life: more beards and knives and bad skin and bad breath.
But there’s a party scene that still gives me chills when I watch it. The house is swarming with people, motorcycles are pulling onto – and off – the lawn. Everyone’s drinking beer. The camera focuses in on some cocaine, and Cher’s character imbibing, before it pulls back to an Allman-like character with long blonde hair. Soon the camera finds Sam Elliott’s character – who, in my warped brain, represented Larry, which means I likened myself to Cher.
It’s the scene that feels truest to me, that propels me back to biker life in an instant. I lived that party.
Mask always takes me right back to where I lived, how I lived, why I lived the way I lived. It’s the closest thing I have to home movies from that time period.