The kid works hard. Just give him his two dollars.
The other day, I asked a reasonable question about Lane’s motive for refusing to pay Johnny for his services. And I got some great answers, from the overthinky:
@chrisgebert: Duh. Everyone knows the paper boy represented Lane’s guilt after questioning all existence and, thus, could never be repaid.
@jtlynchjr: This is covered in “I Want My $2: Working Class Struggle with Suburban Bourgeoisie in 1980s Cinema”, J. Film & Econ. (1997).
to the practical:
@jeffmargolis: Because he was super-distracted with trying to ski the K-12, on one ski no less.
@kiwistraw27: because poor Lane Meyer had the money to fix up his Camaro but not a dime to pay Johnny; real tragedy.
@grubi: Two dollars is basically the price of a sandwich, even in 1985. I think your position is reasonable.
But ultimately, Paul Hoch’s answer, though seemingly too simple, turns out to be the correct one:
@phoch00: Yes. It wasn’t his debt to pay. His parent’s were the newspaper recipients and therefore were the debtors.
I found a wonderful interview with the film’s director, Savage Steve Holland, which corroborates Paul’s theory:
So I started writing down stupid ways to kill yourself that would fail after that, and I put them in sort of a diary. And that diary kind of became Better Off Dead. And you know, all the bad stuff that happened to me in high school.I just had this book of stupid stuff. And my paper boy, honest to God, Johnny Gasperini would come up to the house. I was a latchkey kid, my mom wouldn’t come home until six, and this kid would come up to me and would say, “Give me my two dollars.” And I’d say, “Hey, I’m just a kid in school! I don’t have two dollars. My mom will be home soon!”
And he would sit across the street waiting. And then he’d come back in ten minutes and say, “You got my two dollars?” You’d think he’d wait for my mom’s car to pull up, at least, so I wrote that down.
