Casting Call: Heathers
In which we suggest who should star in the next big adaptation, remake, or historical film.
“I just want my high school to be a nice place,” Veronica Sawyer laments in the cult-classic film, Heathers (1988). Played by Winona Ryder in her prime, 17-year-old Veronica is the most recent member of the school’s most popular and vicious trio: the Heathers.
Heather Chandler, Heather McNamera, and Heather Duke (the title was not misleading you) play croquet, wear color-coordinated outfits, go to super-cool university parties, say things like “fuck me gently with a chainsaw,” and terrorize their less aesthetically fortunate peers and each other. Quickly after being accepted (selling out “for a bunch of Swatchdogs and Diet Coke-heads”) Veronica realizes that Westerberg High can never be a happy place until the Heathers are eliminated…
Heathers makes Mean Girls look like a tiny, Disney Channel kitten. It’s dark, clever, surreal, hilarious, and disturbing—and would never make it past the MPAA ratings board in today’s post-Colombine climate. The first time we meet Veronica’s love interest, Jason Dean (Christian Slater), he pulls a gun out in the school cafeteria (“they won’t expel him, he used blanks”).
The rather ambitious people at Bravo, however, seem to think otherwise. A Heathers TV series is currently in development. Technically it’s a continuation of the film with a new clique, the Ashleys (didn’t some Disney show already have a group of Ashleys), but that is not as much fun to cast, so we’re turning this into a straight-up remake. Plus, we love the original movie’s glorious ‘80s slang. It’s been far too long since we heard the words “what’s your damage,” or “very” used as an adjective along the lines of “awesome,” “amazing,” or “cool.”
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