by the league after his second positive drug test.
Many more problems off the field would dog him
well into the 1990’s. Ironically, it was also in 1988 that
Taylor played what many observers called his most
memorable game. Taylor took the field against the
New Orleans Saints, even though he had a torn pec-
toral muscle. The injury was severe enough that he
needed a harness to keep his shoulder in place. He
nevertheless recorded multiple sacks and tackles,
leading the Giants to an important win.
Impact Experts have argued that it was Taylor who
made all NFL teams realize how critical it was to have
a powerful outside linebacker capable of disrupting
the opposition’s offense. Taylor was named the NFL
Defensive Player of the Year three times (including
following his rookie season), he was an All-Pro nine
times, and he earned ten Pro Bowl berths. He was
also selected as the league’s most valuable player fol-
lowing the 1986 season, when he led the Giants to
their first Super Bowl championship, which was also
the first Super Bowl loss for Denver Bronco quarter-
back John Elway.
Further Reading
Taylor, Lawrence, and David Falkner.LT: Living on
the Edge. New York: Random House, 1987.
Taylor, Lawrence, and Steve Serby.LT: Over the
Edge—Tackling Quarterbacks, Drugs, and a World Be-
yond Football. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.
Anthony Moretti
See also Elway, John; Football; Sports.
Teen films
Definition Popular films portraying the lives and
struggles of suburban American teenagers
Teen films ruled the box office in the 1980’s, portraying
characters and situations to which American teenagers
could easily relate and launching the careers of several
stars.
The teen film genre can be traced to the James Dean
(Rebel Without a Cause,1955) and beach films of the
1950’s and 1960’s. The 1980’s proved to be the
golden age of the teen film. Movies likeSixteen Can-
dles(1984) andThe Breakfast Club(1985) demon-
strated that teen films could be fun, meaningful, and
profitable, dealing with issues that teenagers and
young adults found most important while still bring-
ing in a significant profit for Hollywood.
Most teen films are set in high schools or deal with
characters that are of high school age. Films such as
Fast Times at Ridgemont High(1982) combined hu-
mor with serious coming-of-age topics such as popu-
larity, sex, dating, and abortion. Often, teen film
plots focus on the so-called nerd lusting after a
dream girl, as inWeird Science(1985), in which two
teen boys successfully create their “perfect woman”
through a freak computer accident. AlthoughWeird
Sciencewas purely comedic, movies such asPretty in
Pink(1986) dealt with drama and struck a chord
with teen girls. In this film, the lead character, played
by Molly Ringwald, goes from being an overlooked,
average girl to winning the heart of the most popular
boy in school.
The Brat Pack and John Hughes In the 1980’s,
writer and director John Hughes quickly became
known as the king of teen films. He wrote and/or di-
rected some of the most popular films at the time, in-
cludingSixteen Candles,Pretty in Pink,The Breakfast
Club,Ferris Bueller’s Day Off(1986), andWeird Science.
Each of his movies centers on middle-class teenagers
from the midwestern United States who are trying to
find their place in the world. As in other teen films,
Hughes’s characters often represent teen stereo-
types: the nerd, the jock, the popular cheerleader,
the troublemaker, and the girl struggling to fit in.
Hughes often cast the same group of actors to play
these parts, and they became known as the Brat
Pack: Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd
Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez, Demi Moore,
Andrew McCarthy, and Rob Lowe built great careers
in the 1980’s thanks to Hughes’s films.
Impact Teen films were designed to tap into the
psyche of young people by using a mix of comedy
and drama that dealt with issues such as sex, drugs,
high school, relationships, and the pressure to live
up to society’s standards. Although the demand for
the types of teen films made in the 1980’s tapered off
in favor of more lighthearted fantasy films of the
1990’s and 2000’s (for example,The Princess Diaries,
2000;What a Girl Wants, 2003), the teen film genre
left a lasting impression on Hollywood. While some
stars of the 1980’s had a hard time shaking their teen
film pasts and struggled to find roles later in their ca-
reers, films likeRisky Business(1983) launched the
career of superstar Tom Cruise,About Last Night...946 Teen films The Eighties in America
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