“Are you fucking kidding me?!” I texted my husband.

“Yeah, it’s really sad,” he wrote back, without nearly enough emotion for someone who always wore this ecstatic expression during the infinite groove on “Expressway to Yr Skull.”

“If it can happen to Kim and Thurston, it can happen to anyone,” a friend said morosely. Another asked, “Do you know why they’re splitting up?”

“No,” I snapped, feeling oddly protective of their privacy, “and I don’t want to know. That’s their business.”

I don’t know them. I’m not now, nor have I ever been, friends with Kim and Thurston. We lived on the same Lower East Side block for a while, and for the last 25 years I’ve seen them around town and at shows, either their own or in the audience for everyone from Sebadoh to Shonen Knife. Most recently, our teenage daughters’ bands shared a bill with their daughter, Coco, and we had the shared experience of proud parents appreciating the joy of their kids expressing themselves onstage.

I feel like I can call them Kim and Thurston because they never felt like celebrities to me; they were just the down-to-earth, keeping-it-real, DIY rock stars that lived next door. More than that, for the majority of my adult life, they’ve inspired me through their music and art, and yes, through their marriage and parenting.

The first time I saw Sonic Youth was in 1987 at CBGBs, at a benefit for a record store that had flooded. I was with my then-boyfriend, later husband, Rob Spillman. I remember hearing “Hot Wire My Heart” and thinking that should be our song. The evening ended with a cacophonous cover of “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” The last time I saw them was in 2009 at McCarren Pool in Brooklyn with my then 14-year-old daughter, jumping up and down as we sang along to “Schizophrenia.”

When my husband proposed to me at 22, the idea of getting married seemed a bit absurd, but also the most rebellious thing I could think of — I mean, only squares got married. Look, we’d say to each other, Kim and Thurston are married, as though that gave us permission. They made monogamy, the whole til-death-do-us-part seem rad. Being married didn’t mean losing some part of yourself, it meant making each other stronger.

Onstage and off, neither seemed dominant; they were equal. They didn’t cling to each other in public, they gave each other space — still, in a crowd, you’d pick them out as a couple. They fit, in a way some couples, even after years of marriage, simply don’t seem to.

There they were up on stage, attacking their guitars with screwdrivers, shredding, nursing howling feedback, singing solo and together, their voices perfectly tuned to each other’s. Look at them, I thought: They were in love and married and making art. They were cool and hardcore, with a profound seriousness about their art, and they hadn’t sold out or gotten soft. In an age of irony, where I’d feign indifference and cover up my insecurity with mockery, they weren’t too cool to care.

Years later, freaking out over the fact that we were even thinking of having a child, Kim and Thurston showed us the way. Seeing Kim and Thurston with Coco, walking past the Dean & Deluca downtown, made being a parent seem not only possible, but infinitely hip. By the time I got pregnant, they’d made two more records. Indeed, half of Sonic Youth’s music (and scores of side projects) were produced after their daughter was born, proving you could be “alternative” as well as “traditional” and successful.

Kim was a mom — she loved her daughter, loved being a mother, and she was still writing and performing. She was also completely ripped. It made me think that motherhood had made her even more of a badass. So, why not me?

Sure, some of the sadness I feel over Kim and Thurston splitting is tied to nostalgia, a remembrance of a long gone past. I’ve become one of those tedious boors lamenting the death of downtown New York. Kim’s Video, King Tut’s Wa Wa Hut, holding my breath as I pass CBGBs, a sacred place defiled. I miss the days of the Tompkins Square riots and squatters and boomboxes. I’d rather hear the sibilant lowing of “Smoke? Smoke?” than a toddler wailing on the playground, and yes, I’m crying over spilt organic milk.

I tell myself, for Christ’s sake, they left the Lower East Side ages ago, left New York City, decamping to Northampton, Mass. — and made the denizens of that groovy town feel even more smug about their own decisions to flee New York City. (They just claimed Frank Black.) In all honesty, their move did — briefly — set me wondering if we were crazy not to at least consider ditching our cramped Brooklyn digs for hipper pastures.

And if there’s some nostalgia, there’s lots of projecting. No one can really know what goes on inside another couple’s marriage. Sure, from the outside — the great musical successes, arty side projects, the house featured in shelter magazines, the “It girl” daughter — they looked like the epitome of domestic bliss.

But who knows? At some point, I’ll want to know what happened. Just not now. I don’t want to hear about infidelity, some clichéd open marriage bullshit (that always goes badly) or the old-as-dirt tale of trading in the old wife for the new model. I don’t want to hear about addiction, or cruelty, or gambling debts. Instead, I’m left to project my own shit and fears. Who knows, though, what it was like sitting at the kitchen table on a Sunday morning when they were out of coffee. What it was like to balance careers that each required traveling, negotiating time-zone differences, weeks spent apart.  Who knows what compromises were made, and what sacrifices. Who knows what personal disappointments and resentments they endured. Coco will soon be of college age. It’s not uncommon for parents today to consider renegotiating their marriage contract once the children are out of the house. Maybe they just fell out of love, maybe by inches, the way uneven proportions of sand and water can become concrete.

Why should they be different than the rest of us?

And therein lies my problem letting them go. What’s scarier than a couple deciding — after 30 years of being in a band they created, 27 years of marriage, 17 years spent raising a child – that now they’re done with it? As they succeeded, we succeeded. Now the world just got a little less cool.

Last night, I went through some of our old records (how the hell will Kim and Thurston divide their albums?). I played “Evol,” “Daydream Nation” — a desert island record — and “Confusion is Sex/Kill Your Idols.” Kill Your Idols. It was time to trust that I can go on. Well, that or put on a Yo La Tengo album…

Wormald plays Ren MacCormack, the character created by Bacon. Ren is a big city boy (Chicago then, Boston now) who finds himself in a small town where dancing and loud music have been outlawed. In the original film, the merriment is prohibited because the town’s reverend (John Lithgow) is a religious fanatic who fears for the teenagers’ souls. He also doesn’t like his foxy daughter (Lori Singer) hanging around with Ren. In the 2011 edition, a tragic car crash in which five teens were killed coming home from a dance is the plot engine which leads to a teen rebellion and the eventual need for Ren to help everybody lose … their blues.

But why now? And why, at all? It’s not entirely uncommon for films to be remade, and even horror movies from the 1980s have been brought back from the undead to some success. But after the stunning popularity of last year’s “Karate Kid” remake (biggest difference: no karate), another hit from 1984, the barn door crashed open. If a movie was a hit once, why wouldn’t it be again?

“There’s a generation now that would find a whole new meaning in this story,” Craig Zadan, a producer on the “Footloose “remake who also produced the original, has said. But, of course, this whole new generation could easily watch the original “Footloose” by adding it to their Netflix queue, or checking out a few choice snippets on YouTube. Few teenagers in 1984 would be caught dead watching a youth film from the late 1950s – it pretty much was a different universe. But the same is not true of decades-old films today. But today’s teens are just as likely to have seen “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” as ’80s kids were.

Jen Chaney, an entertainment reporter and Celebritology blogger for the Washington Post, says that when it comes to remaking certain ’80s movies, “I tend to have a knee-jerk reaction — oh, why are they doing that — and I certainly felt that way with ‘Footloose.’ ” When she recently listened to music from the new soundtrack (which includes Blake Shelton covering the classic Kenny Loggins title track), she found herself longing for the old days, when a “Footloose” soundtrack meant you’d be hearin’ it for the boy, needin’ a hero, and dancin’ in the sheets. “I was like, what’s going on here? Where’s the Shalamar?”

The real reason for the remake, of course, is probably this: Hollywood — like the rest of America — is nervous about its bottom line, and thus hesitant to take a chance on new ideas. In an era when there’s no longer such a thing as a sure thing in Hollywood (see “Eat, Pray, Love”), cashing in on nostalgia can provide nervous studio execs with a bit of comfort. Rebooting “Footloose” guarantees built-in brand recognition and an audience of both Gen-Xers who might want to check out how the remake compares to the original, and a younger audience who have at least a passing familiarity with the 1984 Herbert Ross film (the marketing pretty much presupposes knowledge of the original).

On the chance you need convincing that this remake might be at least as much about commerce as it is art, check out the “Footloose Collection” currently on sale on the Home Shopping Network. (Oh that I were kidding.)

Sometimes, an ’80s story can truly be retold in a fresh, original way, thanks to new advances in technology (like “Tron: Legacy”), or compelling developments in our society (“Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”). But some remakes — like the recent “Karate Kid” reboot with Jaden Smith, seem more about milking nostalgia for all it’s worth, while we’re still wondering why anyone said yes to remakes of “Arthur” and “Fame.”

But now that the people who were kids in the ’80s are in decision-making roles at studios, the trend is likely here to stay: Remakes of ’80s films as diverse as “Robocop,” “Porky’s,” “Police Academy” and “Short Circuit” are said to be in the works. It used to be that you would replace your VHS tapes with DVDs, then those with BluRay. Now it seems, we have to replace our original versions of films with their remakes.

“I find this incredibly depressing,” wrote legendary English film critic Barry Norman, “What kind of an industry caters for people dumb enough to enjoy ‘Porky’s’ the first time round and are still dumb enough to want to see it all over again in a new version?”

Of course, Hollywood has always dined off sequels (Universal’s fourth theatrical helping of “American Pie” is being released next spring), and it’s not uncommon to see more than one filmed version of a novel or an American version of a foreign film. But remakes of still-popular Hollywood films is a more recent phenomenon. In the case of the new “Footloose,” says Chaney, “The mindset is that maybe today’s teenagers would like this movie but because it was made over 20 years ago, they’re not going to embrace it — so we should remake it. But I think that some kids are more sophisticated than that, and are willing to embrace older films.”

In fact, many of today’s teens consider ’80s pop culture the epitome of vintage cool. Think leggings, bangle bracelets and off-the-shoulder sweatshirts. One Houston teen, who I interviewed for my book “You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, and Their Impact on a Generation,” told me that “you haven’t lived, as an adolescent, until you’ve seen these movies.”

And although it boasts an undeniably modern look, feel, and sound, the new “Footloose” does contain plenty of nods to its original. Writer/director Craig Brewer filmed some scenes as almost shot-by-shot homage’s to original sequences, such as the moment in which Kevin Bacon dances his way through anger management in an empty warehouse. The new film also features Kenny Loggins’s original version of “Footloose” at the beginning — although he says he didn’t have any creative input over the remake. (“I even had to call and ask for tickets to the premiere,” he recently admitted on “Access Hollywood Live.”)

In defense of the remade “Footloose,” it does have a couple of things going for it that the original didn’t — in particular, its leads are professional dancers. (“I’m excited to shut up all the naysayers,” Wormald said to the New York Times), and it does come back to the big screen by way of a successful Broadway adaptation in the late-1990s that later toured across America.

But when it comes to remakes, says Chaney, “if you feel like you have a kinship with these characters or what that movie stood for, and you see somebody taking it in a direction that is counter to what that stood for to you, that automatically feels wrong and that’s what makes people upset.”

So maybe, just maybe … is it possible that those of us Gen-Xers who are getting annoyed over this remake have become the veritable John Lithgows of our time? Should we just back off and let these crazy kids have some fun? The scores of exuberant homemade dance videos submitted by young fans on the movie’s website does suggest that the remake is hitting a chord. And Julianne Hough does look pretty great in the 2011 version of those famous red cowboy boots.

“I remember the first night that I got called to ask if I would do the ‘Footloose’ remake,” Brewer said. “I had the first reaction that many people had, and that is, why should you remake something that’s a classic. But then all night, I couldn’t let it go. There’s a unique time to be young. And we forget about that when we’re older. We hold those times precious, and that’s why we don’t want them revisited. I knew that a younger audience needed to experience this story.”

Or, as Kenny Wormald says passionately in the film, channeling Kevin Bacon’s insouciance from 1984 but with an energy that is decidedly of the moment, “This is our time.”

Susannah Gora is the author of “You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, and Their Impact on a Generation.”

That’s not to say that our stylistic fantasies of an earlier age can’t be valuable. There’s something refreshing about the late ’50s and early ’60s standard of beauty, an era when Marilyn Monroe, the world’s sexiest woman, fluctuated between a size 8 and a size 12. On “Mad Men,” the sexiest woman, Christina Hendricks’ Joan Holloway, is also the biggest, clad in costumes that emphasize her curves. Romola Garai, the tough and sensuous female star of “The Hour,” refuses to diet and has spoken repeatedly about food as a source of joy rather than anxiety. They may not have succeeded in permanently shifting the fashion world — Hendricks still has trouble finding dresses for premieres and events — but they are a powerful counterpoint to a world where a deviation from a sample size sparks pregnancy rumors and female news anchors confess to eating Cheerios as if they’re binging on candy.

But if shows set in the 1960s usefully debunk the idea that women need to starve themselves to be stylish, they also let us indulge in less healthy fantasies. Don Draper may turn himself into an anti-tobacco crusader as a strategic move and Bel Rowley may be shut out of smoke-filled rooms on account of her gender. But “Pan Am’s” stewardesses still serve martinis on orchid-adorned trays, and “The Playboy Club’s” waitresses still shill steaks for the menu’s standard buck-and-a-half price. When you’re fretting over the assassination of the president or the rearrangement of society’s hierarchies of race and class, who has time to fret over cholesterol or cirrhosis? In an uncertain world, who doesn’t need a tipple, or in the case of Peggy Olson, to smoke some marijuana?

But even if we don’t want to go back to work in sex-segregated offices (and clubs and planes), there is something appealing about an era where, in the battle of the sexes, it was easy to pick out bad guys, and single out bad behavior. It’s impossible to miss the sexism in advertising executives’ treatment of Joan and Peggy; in the doubts that dog Bel as she sets out to make “The Hour” a vital and challenging news show; in the leers of young men who think themselves sexually sophisticated simply by perusing a Playboy Club menu; in a world that seems so stifling that escaping into a Pan Am-issue girdle feels like freedom.

And while there may be no perfect solution to the sexism these characters face at home and at work, we at least see the characters learning lessons that we’ll benefit from a generation later. The Playboy bunnies may get a little bit further than the Joan Holloways of the world by packaging their sex appeal for sale beyond a market of only one man. But as “The Playboy Club” makes clear, the freedom not to marry every man you shook your bunny tail at did not mean freedom from sexual harassment. There’s no question that trailblazers like Bel and Peggy opened up new professions and responsibilities for women, but we know now, from persistent pay gaps and underrepresentation of women in powerful positions, that their victories were the first salvos in a battle that is far from won. And the “Pan Am” stewardesses won their freedom of mobility by conforming rigidly to a corporate standard of beauty.

What’s both depressing and powerfully nostalgic about these shows is not necessarily that sexism was so virulent — though that’s certainly upsetting — but that we failed to capitalize on the nascent momentum that all of these shows explore. Some of those failures, like the inability to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, are a testament to the persistence of sexism in American society. And some of them are the result of fighting with ghosts. Should women and men be represented exactly equally in all industries? Are we really going to tell women that it’s wrong to take time out of the workforce to raise their children? Shows like “Mad Men,” “The Hour,” “The Playboy Club” and “Pan Am” resonate with us not because we want to return to the bad old days, but because we wish we had a clearer path toward a better future.

As proof that “Say Anything” is on his mind, Crowe has been posting a number of extended and deleted scenes from the movie all week on his website, theuncool.com. Granted, these aren’t actual filmed scenes — they’re just portions of the script, words on a page. But if there’s anybody who knows a thing or two about words on a page, it’s Cameron Crowe. And to the legions of “Say Anything” devotees, the ones who dress up like Lloyd for Halloween, the release of these new scenes is exciting enough that we’re forced to remember Lloyd’s famous directive: “You must chill!”

The newly unearthed scenes include one in which Ione Skye’s character, Diane Court, is hit on by one of her teachers but gracefully thwarts his advances, and an extended version of the graduation scene — Diane’s valedictorian speech originally included a rather ’80s-centric musing on her future: “Will I live in the suburbs, and drive a BMW?”

There’s also an extended version of the dinner party scene in which Lloyd gives his famous “I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed” speech. Turns out the longer version of the scene included a line in which Lloyd actually talks about wanting to marry Diane one day (pretty heady stuff), and the scene also provided a more detailed glimpse into the financial wrongdoings of Diane’s father, Jim Court (played brilliantly by veteran actor John Mahoney). I was particularly intrigued by a stage direction for Lloyd that Crowe had included in the script at the end of the scene: “He wipes his hand, offers it to [Jim] Court.”

Crowe had based the Lloyd character on a real-life man named Lowell Marchant, who was his neighbor in Santa Monica during the time he was working on this script. Marchant was an optimistic 19-year-old kickboxer from Alabama, who, as Crowe told me when I interviewed him for my book “You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried,” “would knock on the doors of his neighbors to make friends. And you’d answer it, and he’d be like, ‘Good afternoon, I’m Lowell Marchant. And I would like to meet you. I’m your neighbor, and I’m a kickboxer. Do you know about kickboxing?’ And he would wipe off his palm on the side of his pant leg, and shake your hand. And it was just such a great thing.” Crowe told me that Marchant’s simple, thoughtful gesture of wiping his palm before going for the handshake “was the first little spark for the bonfire that would become getting the character right.”

But what struck me as perhaps the most interesting and most significant finding in all the newly released material was this: Originally, Lloyd had a line at the very beginning of the film in which he asks one of his friends, “Did [Diane] ever say anything about me?” The line was ultimately scrapped, which may seem insignificant if not for one thing: That was the only time that Cusack’s character ever uttered the phrase that was the title of the film. As it stands, that phrase, “say anything,” is spoken many times — but only by Diane and her father.

Whenever people wax nostalgic about “Say Anything” and the lessons it taught them, those lessons almost always have to do with romance, thanks to the startlingly honest and palpably powerful love shared between Lloyd Dobler and Diane Court. But there’s another essential thread to the film’s narrative as well — the complicated, strained but ultimately beautiful relationship between Diane and her dad, the morally challenged man who loves his daughter so blindly that he steals money from the residents of the nursing home he owns so that Diane never wants for anything. “He was willing to sacrifice anything and everybody to make sure that she got what she wanted,” Mahoney told me. “A lot of teenage films turn the parents into cartoons — this was a real flesh-and-blood person who turns out to be extremely flawed.”

Jim is proud of the close bond he shares with his daughter, and is fond of telling her often that she can “say anything” to him. But the movie’s title has within it, suggests Mahoney, the contrast between the way Jim Court loves Diane, and the way Lloyd Dobler loves her. In terms of Lloyd, ‘say anything,’ Mahoney reasoned, “means, ‘I will always understand you.’” As opposed to what it means to her father, who will listen to her, but still get her to do things his way.

The last time we hear the movie’s title used in the film’s dialogue, Diane Court is confronting her father after learning he’s been deceiving her for years: “I don’t want to leave something out, because I know I can say anything to you,” she tells him. “You’re a liar, and a thief.” Happily (spoiler alert), by movie’s end, Diane learns to forgive her father, and begins a new life with Lloyd, the man who truly loves her best.

Mahoney told me that when people come up to him and talk about his movies, they almost always want to talk about “Say Anything,” and how much it matters to them. “It hit a chord,” he said, “and it resonates still.”

According to Crowe’s site, more extended scenes — from the final shooting script dated Jan. 18, 1988 — may still be posted in upcoming days.

“Marty was told that Doc Brown was dangerous, a crackpot, a lunatic,” wrote Gale. “So, being a red-blooded American teenage boy, age 13 or 14, he decided to find out just why this guy was so dangerous. Marty snuck into Doc’s lab, and was fascinated by all the cool stuff that was there. when Doc found him there, he was delighted to find that Marty thought he was cool and accepted him for what he was… Doc gave Marty a part-time job to help with experiments, tend to the lab, tend to the dog, etc.”

Noting that the roots of the Doc-Marty relationship was a major point of geek hypothesizing for years, Slate points out that this revelation undermines early drafts of the original script that had Doc hire Marty to do household chores and Doc and Marty working together on a video-pirating business.

As someone who can probably recite every single line of “Back to the Future,” I for one, feel a sense of major relief that this controversy has finally been put to rest. But it reminds me that many other similar questions from the 1980s remain — questions that must finally be asked. And so I feel it’s my responsibility as a proud ’80s obsessive to muster some courage, enter the breach and publicly stand up for all of us who want answers.

Here are ten key lingering questions about 1980s film classics — and my theories about what their answers might be.

Unanswered Question: Why are the McFlys still friends with Biff after Biff tried to rape Lorraine?

What remains unknown: Only a few minutes of screenplay separate Biff’s sexual assault of Lorraine in 1955 from George and Lorraine bantering with Biff as he washes their car in 1985. And yet, bizarrely, most people who watch “Back to the Future” never wonder how it is that the McFlys and Biff are on speaking terms, much less in a friendly customer-client relationship.

Theories: Since Biff’s sexual assault happened in an era that typically looked the other way when it came to sexual crimes, Biff’s actions were never considered “sexual assault” — they were just seen as “making a pass.” And since only George and Lorraine really knew what Biff did, they just let it go and slowly became friends. Alternately, Lorraine pressed charges against Biff, and a creative judge, predating “Seinfeld’s” butler pilot, sentenced Biff to some form of lifetime indentured servitude to Lorraine. By 1985, with Biff owning his own car detailing service, this meant free carwashes for the McFlys, which included at least two coats of wax. Biff obsequiously calls George “Mr. McFly” because he’s afraid that George will call the authorities and report him for not fulfilling his sentencing requirements.

Unanswered Question: How did the Ghostbusters have proton packs, but not the military or police?

What remains unknown: In “Back to the Future,” Doc Brown has to secretly steal plutonium from a foreign government’s military in order to power the flux capacitor. This makes logical sense — as Doc notes, such high-powered nuclear material “is a little hard to come by.” Yet, in “Ghostbusters,” the heroes are carrying “unlicensed nuclear accelerators” — “proton packs” — throughout New York City in their quest to put down an inter-dimensional terrorist attack. Even more preposterously, only they — and not the police or Pentagon — have these atomic weapons. This remains the case, mind you, even after the Ghostbusters become famous. Indeed, because they and only they have such equipment, the Ghostbusters are called in by a helpless government to stop the ghosts. Why, after Zoul’s initial attacks, aren’t police officers and soldiers also armed with proton packs?

Theory: The Ghostbusters were actually a joint DARPA/CIA unit assembled to create plausible deniability for the government. Thanks to ironclad intelligence and scientific evidence, politicians and military brass knew ghosts could be a national security threat, but they didn’t want to openly finance a ghost-fighting project, for fear that they would be ridiculed by a public that doesn’t believe in ghosts. So, using the intelligence community’s hidden budget, the government secretly underwrote the seemingly private, for-profit entrepreneurs known as the Ghostbusters. That way if there never was a ghost attack, officials couldn’t be accused of wasting money on a silly boondoggle, and if there was such an attack, the government would have a special unit ready to fight back. The Ghostbusters, therefore, are the only ones with the essential proton packs not because they built them in spite of the U.S. government, but because they built them with the help of that government — and they only built a few, for fear of busting the budget and exposing the black-ops project.

Unanswered Question: How did Ferris Bueller and Cameron Frye ever become friends?

What remains unknown: As I’ve written before, the Ferris-Cameron relationship in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” makes little sense at face value. Ferris is easily the most charismatic, popular guy in school, and Cameron is, ahem, not. In the cliquish culture of the modern American high-school, these two would almost certainly not be friends — at least not through any natural process. Unlike in, say, “Lucas” where the Fairly Tale Bromance between the film’s Ferris-ish quarterback (Charlie Sheen) and its Cameron-esque ultra-nerd (Corey Haim) is at least plausibly explained (the ultra-nerd helped the QB with his homework when the QB got sick), “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” provides no explanation whatsoever. Other than a vague reference to knowing each other in 5th grade, there are no mentions of earlier good times as younger kids or allusions to shared interests or hobbies. The audience is just asked to accept their implausible friendship without question.

Theories: The “Fight Club” theory of Ferris Bueller posits that Ferris is just a figment of Cameron’s imagination a la Tyler Durden. Assuming that’s not true and that Ferris is an actual person, an alternate theory is that Ferris and Cameron aren’t really friends at all. Instead, Ferris just connives to use Cameron for things Cameron has that Ferris does not. This hypothesis is supported, of course, by Ferris’s own self-acknowledged angst over not having the key instrument of teenage fun that Cameron has — a car. Thus, Ferris doesn’t consider Cameron much of a friend beyond his ability to allow himself to be a glorified chauffeur — and once they part ways and go to college, they never speak to each other again.

Unanswered Question: How did Rocky Balboa and Ivan Drago both avoid being tested for steroid use?

What remains unknown: The iconic picture of Ivan Drago facing Rocky Balboa in the center of the ring in “Rocky IV” is one of the most searing scenes for any child of the 1980s, and not just because of the oft-quoted “I must break you” line. The image is a cinematographic reminder of why professional sports organizations are supposed to test athletes for steroid use. These are not two merely well-trained boxers — they look like cyborg-ish super-humans, and for good reason. Drago, we learn, was actually using steroids. And while the juxtaposition of the Russian behemoth’s syringe and Rocky’s intrepid mountain climbing is supposed to imply that the latter is drug free, we know now that Sylvester Stallone (the actor who played Rocky) has dabbled in steroids as well. Regardless of whether the Rocky character was supposed to have been doping, how could both of these guys look the way they did and have international boxing officials not opt for at least a basic drug test?

Theory: Because the Rocky/Drago fight was technically an exhibition match, international boxing authorities were not involved in overseeing the event. And because Drago’s earlier killing of Apollo Creed created so much revenge-themed hype around the Rocky fight, the relatively few American and Russian government officials involved in setting up the fight didn’t want to do anything to stop the event from happening. Thus, the fight became a real-world version of what Saturday Night Live would later harangue as an “All Drugs Olympics.”

Unanswered Question: How did Roger Murtaugh avoid being fired and prosecuted for his cold-blooded killing of an unarmed diplomat?

What remains unknown: Though South African ambassador Arjen Rudd is clearly a bad dude abusing his privileged status for the purpose of running a drug cartel, he was completely unarmed when “Lethal Weapon II’s” Sgt. Roger Murtaugh gunned him down at the Los Angeles pier. Murtaugh, of course, does immediately follow his cold-blooded murder of Rudd with a proud public declaration that he has the right to “revoke” Rudd’s diplomatic immunities — and by this, Murtaugh seems to imply that “revoking” said immunities authorizes him to put a bullet in the diplomat’s forehead. However, these suppositions are absurd. A mid-level urban police officer does not have the legal power to decide on the spot to revoke a high-ranking diplomat’s status, nor does that police officer have the legal right to gun the diplomat down when the diplomat is in the act of peaceably surrendering for arrest. It stands to reason, then, that the extrajudicial killing would have made international headlines, and Murtaugh would have found himself prosecuted and fired. Yet, there he is in “Lethal Weapon III,” still doing his job with the LAPD. How?

Theory: The South African government, already facing international outrage over its apartheid ideology, petitioned U.S. prosecutors to drop all charges against Murtaugh before they could ever be filed. Rather than demand justice for one of their own, the South Africans instead wanted the whole thing to just go away, fearing that the episode would place their other ambassadors under undue suspicion at a time when they needed all the diplomatic support they could get. Because the South African regime was so tight with the Reagan administration, their pleas to U.S. prosecutors were successful. Murtaugh, therefore, was never charged.

Unanswered Question: How did a wolfman manage to attend high school without media scrutiny and a political firestorm?

What remains unknown: When during a basketball scrum “Teen Wolf’s” Scott Howard shows himself to be a wolfman, there is a collective gasp in the gymnasium. But, with almost no fanfare, he is subsequently permitted to continue attending his high school as a proud canine. Somehow, his small town isn’t the scene of angry mobs at school board or PTA meetings trying to stop a potentially dangerous animal from attending the local high school. This seems especially odd considering American folklore’s longtime obsession with scary wolfmen.

Theory: The school board, at the urging of the school’s wolf-hating vice principal Rusty Thorne, briefly considered banning Scott from school. However, Scott’s father, Harold — who had faced similar persecution during his teenage years — was already ready with a federal lawsuit against such a move. In a closed-door meeting immediately after Scott outs himself, Harold threatens the school board with a long drawn out court battle over civil rights statues and the “equal protection” clause of the constitution. The school board quickly relents, citing budget deficits. As for picketing and protests, the parents who are most outraged at a wolfman in their school are also the most frightened of wolfmen, meaning they are too afraid to publicly protest for fear of retribution by the the Howards.

Unanswered Question: Was David Lightman prosecuted?

What remains unknown: After breaking into the WOPR super computer and almost inadvertently starting a nuclear war, teen hacker David Lightman helped defuse the crisis he created. Though earlier in “War Games” he had been arrested for his actions, he was congratulated for his heroics by relieved generals and military police in the situation room at NORAD. However, for all the backslapping and cheering, the fact remains that David illegally broke into the Pentagon’s computer network. Was he eventually prosecuted for the crimes he was initially arrested for?

Theory: The Pentagon refuses to drop the charges against David, however, because of his age and his belated heroics, military brass offer him a plea bargain — in exchange for an admission of guilt, David gets a suspended sentence on the condition that he agrees to work for three years as the apprentice of Dr. McKittrick, helping him plug the clearly huge security holes in the WOPR.

Unanswered Question: Why didn’t David Lopan die when Jack Burton hit him with his truck?

What remains unknown: The first time Jack Burton sees David Lopan in “Big Trouble In Little China,” he runs him down with his truck during a gang battle in a Chinatown alleyway. Lopan, of course, remains completely unharmed, suggesting that he is some sort of deity who cannot be killed through standard blunt force trauma. Yet, at the end of the same movie, Jack kills Lopan in the basement of the Wing Kong Exchange by throwing a hunting knife into Lopan’s forehead. Granted, running someone over with a truck and penetrating their skull with a blade are two different forms of bodily harm — but they both fall under the rubric of standard physical violence. How could Lopan be killed by one but not the other?

Theory: Unbeknownst to anyone, David Lopan’s baby soft spot never fully closed when he was first born 2,000 years ago. This was always his hidden weakness, but even Wang and Egg Shen, who are familiar with the Lopan mythology, never knew it. Jack, therefore, got incredibly lucky to hit Lopan in precisely the place that could kill him. Unfortunately, though, Lopan’s soft spot was not hit when Jack first ran him down with his truck. (UPDATE: Somehow, I forgot the fact that, even though it’s true that Lopan never completed the wedding necessary to become fully mortal and all-powerful at the same time, he did finish enough of the ceremony to become partially mortal, and therefore he was, in fact, killable at the end. My bad – mystery solved!)

Unanswered Question: What happens to Del Griffith after he moves in with Neil Page?

What remains unknown: Unlike most John Hughes movies, which tend to end with everything neatly tied up in a “happily ever after” package, “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” ends rather abruptly — and with no real resolution. All we learn is that traveling shower-curtain-ring salesman Del Griffith has no home, and that his wife died years ago. Upon finding this out, ad executive Neal Page appears to ask Del to live with him and his sprawling family in suburban Chicago (this request isn’t stated, but it seems clear Neal is asking Del over for more than just one Thanksgiving meal). But since we know Neal and Del have serious problems being together for long stretches, can we really believe that this arrangement actually works out and that Del isn’t kicked in a matter of days?

Theory: No, we can’t actually believe that, as much as the happy music at the end asks us to. On the contrary, Del lasts about two weeks at the Page house, before being thrown out on the street. Neal wanted to let Del stay, he really did. But Del was Del — he smoked in the house, he left his dirty underwear and socks in the bathroom and he wouldn’t stop yakking when it was time for everyone to go to bed. This grated on the family, but they tried to tolerate it. However, when he pulled an exact reprise of his antics at the Braidwood Inn, first spilling beer all over the guest room and then loudly unclogging his eustachian tubes, Neal snapped and told Del he had to leave. This was a monumental crossroads in Del’s life, and he decided to take radical action. He shaved his mustache, got an apartment in downtown Chicago, applied for a sales job at a local tire dealer and changed his name to Buck Russell. Though he vowed never to return to the north shore of Chicago, his estranged brother unexpectedly called him up two years after the Page affair and asked him to take care of his nieces and nephews. Hence, the the anti-hero Uncle Buck was born.

Unanswered Question: Why was Maverick investigated for Goose’s death, but not the defense contractor that built their plane?

What remains unknown: During the official “Top Gun” inquiry into Goose’s death, only Maverick was potentially to blame. But watch the tape — Goose dies not because of Maverick’s maneuver, but because his body is ejected into the cockpit door that should have been fully open and out of the way. And yet, in the film, we are led to believe that only Maverick is being questioned in the tragic accident — but not executives at the defense contracting firm that built the plane. How is this possible?

Theory: The facts of this case were really clear: If Maverick ejected and survived, Goose should have survived, too. But the Military-Industrial Complex doesn’t like bad publicity. So in a backroom deal, top Navy officials inform the contractor that they need to quietly fix all the doors on the planes, and in exchange, the military will sweep the whole inquiry under the rug. Maverick is quickly exonerated, but because he doesn’t know this deal has been cut, he has a lot of trouble getting his flying confidence back. While we are led to believe he’s still shaken by Goose’s death, what really haunts him — and hampers his flying abilities — is his belief that the planes he’s being asked to continue piloting are flying Pintos. For weeks, he is wracked by guilt knowing he could have pulled a Ralph Nader and blown the whistle. Only when Viper pulls him aside and tells him of the deal does Maverick finally regain his confidence — luckily, right before he is needed to save Ice Man and Slider from an intense MiG dogfight.