‘Big Chill’ Revival Asks Party’s Commitment

Wearing a faded blue denim jacket, Chris Townsend walks across the patio at San Juan Capistrano’s El Adobe restaurant to make sure there are enough quesadillas and tostadas for the 350 people who are filing in.

It’s Friday night, and the start of a “Big Chill” party with a theme taken from the 1983 movie of the same title. Townsend, a founding director of the 250-member Democratic Associates of Orange County, a volunteer fund-raising group, is hoping this party will revive the political spirit of the 1960s.

But the connection between the movie and the party is not clear to some of the guests, who are seeking an explanation.

Commitment for ‘80s, ‘90s

“The idea for this party is to have fun but also to ask ourselves why we shouldn’t commit ourselves to political action and not just mass consumerism in the 1980s and the 1990s,” Townsend says. In the movie, a group of 1960s college activists reunite more than a decade later in South Carolina for the funeral of a friend who committed suicide. The friends search for meaning in the transformation they have undergone individually and as a group. A People magazine reporter in the movie telephones his editor to say his friends’ reunion would make a great story about lost hope. “You say everything is boring,” the reporter tells his editor. “You wouldn’t say that if this was the Lost Hope Diet. “

According to Townsend, Friday night’s party was an invitation to battle lost hope.

John Hanna, a Santa Ana lawyer who chairs the Democratic Associates, says there’s no contradiction in using a popular but depressing movie theme for a supposedly uplifting political purpose.

“This is more of a cultural event than a political event,” Hanna explains. “It’s a powerful attraction. . . . We’re all here to have a good time.”

What was Hanna doing in 1968, a year of tremendous political upheaval? “I was 17, working as a volunteer for Eugene McCarthy. . . . My favorite music is still the music from that era--Buffalo Springfield; Crosby, Stills and Nash.”

Recalls Protests

Dressed in a brown corduroy sports coat and blue jeans, Hanna recalls protesting the bombing of Cambodia and the fatal shootings at Kent State University in Ohio while he attended Cal State Fullerton.

“Even then Orange County was not a hotbed of student activism,” he says. Looking around at the crowd attending Friday night’s party and observing that few people were costumed in 1960s attire, Hanna adds: “Hey, this is San Juan Capistrano. You wouldn’t expect to find a radical here now, would you?”

Townsend, public affairs director for the Stein-Brief Group, a politically influential development firm, helped plan the evening but admits, “In 1968 I was 7 years old. . . . A year later, I was on a fourth-grade basketball team. . . .”

The platter-spinner hired for the evening plays the song “I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” a 1960s hit used in the “Big Chill.” A woman moves through the food line saying: “We Democrats have to get to the food before it’s gone. Democrats are always hungry. Republicans never lack food.”

Mailed Invitation

Larry Meyer, a security officer at the San Onofre nuclear power station, stands nearby and says: “I came because I saw the Democratic Associates’ booth at the county fair. . . . I wanted to see what this was all about.”

Lynn Beck, a former 1960s activist who has returned to college for a degree in social ecology, says she came because she received a mailed invitation. “I saw the movie four times,” she says. “I have the soundtrack from the movie. But I don’t see how they’re tying this party to the film. . . . Seems like it’s a gimmick.”

Joan Allen, a statistician who works for county government and who was a campus activist first at the University of Michigan and then at UC Berkeley in the late 1960s, says: “I’m the only one here really dressed for the occasion.” Showing off an olive drab Army-style jacket adorned with political buttons, she points to one with the slogan, “Let’s Legalize Pot.”

“We never got around to doing that, did we?” Allen said.

“Watch what you say around here,” one of Allen’s friends advises. “This is Orange County, remember?”

Two No-Shows

Meanwhile, Jeff Goldblum and Mary Kay Place, two cast members from the “The Big Chill,” have failed to appear as scheduled. But actor Robert Walden (Rossi on the “Lou Grant” television series) fills in, telling the crowd: “I feel in my deepest corpuscles that you care about more than a decimal point in a bank book.”

Democratic Gov. Charles S. Robb of Virginia emerges from a private dinner and admits, “When I first heard the name of the movie in connection with this event I didn’t know what it was about. Now I understand. . . . We want to join groups like this who have hope.”

According to his staff, Robb’s personal hope is to be at least the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1988.

Just in case some guests have attended without signing up as new members, an official from Democratic Associates invites the use of credit cards to pay the 50% off, $25 fee.

The music system blares out a song. But it’s not from “The Big Chill” movie sound track or even from the 1960s.

It’s Madonna’s “Into the Groove” from the film “Desperately Seeking Susan.”