Better Off Dead (1985 Savage Steve Holland & scr)

Whatever happened to Savage Steve Holland? (Answer: TV.) This was his debut, followed by One Crazy Summer (also with John Cusack) and How I Got Into College. It's a comic book of a film (Holland being an artist and animator), quite crazy, a little patchy, not very well acted (Cusack the notable exception) but fun, involving racing Koreans, psychotic paper boys, fantasy scenes and outrageous food.

David Hyde Pierce, Kim Darby, Scooter Stevens, Diane Franklin, Dan Schneider. Funniest line is the two black telephone technicians who see Cusack go by in a refuse truck and one says "Now that's a real shame when folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that".

Amazing ski scene (in skiing and filming) with one protagonist on one leg is highlight (Utah standing in for Northern California), produced by former skiing documentarist Mike Marvin.