Cupcake Girl & The Trip

Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve felt incredibly drawn to the 1960s. I think that the reason might be that that’s the kind of music my parents would play in our house – by age 11, I was already obsessed with The Beatles and the hippie movement. Sure, there has been sometimes when I’ve felt drawn to other kind of music, but, ultimately, I always find myself coming back to the 60s/70s. I could go on and on talking about the 1960s for hours! I just find it a very comforting time… which is fun because the 1960s were not a comforting time. Sure, there was that lovely music and the whole “flower power” thing… but there was Vietnam, political tensions such as JFK or the Cold War, and plenty of civil movements that achieved amazing things at a very high cost. Too many brilliant, decent people got killed just for speaking up against the system. It was time for rebellion. It was time for revolution – and it’s crazy how similar it is to modern days, but I’ll get to that later.

The point is that I find it a fascinating time. In just ten years, the world changed drastically. And with so many social changes happening, I wanted to create a story that somehow celebrated all of it, from the last glimpses of the nuclear family to the absolute revolution through an epic odyssey that could only be achieved through a road trip that could also be seen as a metaphor for the time itself

To do this, we follow the adventure of Mary Claire Denning, a 17-year-old who just wants to go on a trip with her boyfriend, Corrigan Bloom, to see their favorite band. These two kids come from a small, conservative town and are still part of the nuclear family, even though there is no such thing for them anymore. At least not for Mary Claire. Her father died during the Korean War and her mother has become an overprotective person who is afraid of what could happen to her daughter (or even Corrigan) with all that’s happening in 1969. Will he be sent to Vietnam? Will she leave home and become a hippie when she turns 18? Such are the worries of her mother, but not Mary Claire’s. She just wants to have fun and discover her place in the world, so, she escapes with Corrigan on a romantic getaway to California, hoping to enjoy a concert and, maybe, see a little more of that world her mother warns her so much. However, these are not the plans the travel has prepared for them. Not entirely, anyway. As the young couple lose their train and end up getting involved with a hippie caravan that will accidentally kidnap Mary Claire, they will find themselves going through an odyssey through 1969 America in which they will discover much more than they expected about themselves, their love, and their place in the changing world.

This is the kind of story that some of our parents or grandparents went through, but with which we can still fully connect because most of us love concerts and because, as noted previously, the 2020s are surprisingly similar to the 1960s/1970s. Much like in those times, we are fighting for social change while dealing with plenty of political problems. So, a movie like this could create a bridge between those older generations to make them understand that we are not so different. That we are fighting the system the way they did, and that we are as concerned about our future as they were during Vietnam or the Cold War. I think this is something that we need, especially because society has polarized itself so much, and if we don’t search for better communication or understanding, things won’t get better. And wouldn’t it be lovely to achieve such a thing through a film?