Today in 80s History: August 8th in the 80s

1983 - An Innocent Man

Artist: Billy Joel (9th Album)
Billboard Charts: #4
Note: Joel's love letter to the doo-wop and soul records he grew up on, written in the giddy first months of dating Christie Brinkley — who then turned up in the "Uptown Girl" video. Six singles, seven million copies sold in the US.

1988 - Straight Outta Compton

Artist: N.W.A (Debut Album)
Billboard Charts: #37
Label: Ruthless Records
Note: Recorded for around $10,000 and eventually certified triple platinum with almost no radio play and no MTV. It got the group a warning letter from the FBI, which is a level of promotion money genuinely cannot buy.

1987 - "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" Was #1 in America

Artist: U2
Note: Two weeks at the top, and U2's second American #1 in a row off The Joshua Tree. The video was shot on the streets of Las Vegas, which is a strange place to film a gospel song about doubt, and it works anyway. The Edge turns 65 today.

The Transformers: The Movie (1986)

Release Date: August 8, 1986
Director: Nelson Shin
Starring: Orson Welles, Leonard Nimoy, Judd Nelson, Eric Idle and Peter Cullen
Budget: $6 Million
Box Office: $5.8 Million
Note: Orson Welles' final film role was a planet that eats other planets, and he died before it came out. Hasbro killed off Optimus Prime to clear shelf space for new toys and traumatized an entire generation of kids in the process. "You've Got the Touch" does the rest.

Xanadu (1980)

Release Date: August 8, 1980
Director: Robert Greenwald
Starring: Olivia Newton-John, Gene Kelly and Michael Beck
Budget: $20 Million
Box Office: $23 Million
Note: A roller-disco musical about a Greek muse, and Gene Kelly's last film. It was savaged so thoroughly it helped inspire the creation of the Golden Raspberry Awards — and the soundtrack went double platinum anyway, with "Magic" sitting at #1 the very week the film opened.

Stand by Me (1986)

Release Date: August 8, 1986 (Limited), August 22, 1986 (Wide)
Director: Rob Reiner
Starring: Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell and Kiefer Sutherland
Budget: $8 Million
Box Office: $52.3 Million
Note: Sixteen theaters to start, 745 two weeks later. Stephen King reportedly cried when he saw it, and said it was the first adaptation that got him right. Nothing else has ever gotten four kids walking a railroad track quite so exactly.

One Crazy Summer (1986)

Release Date: August 8, 1986
Director: Savage Steve Holland
Starring: John Cusack, Demi Moore, Bobcat Goldthwait and Curtis Armstrong
Box Office: $13.4 Million
Note: Holland and Cusack's follow-up to Better Off Dead, and Cusack reportedly hated it. Watch for a teenage Jeremy Piven, and for Bobcat Goldthwait ending up inside a Godzilla suit, which is not a sentence that needs explaining.

She's Gotta Have It (1986)

Release Date: August 8, 1986
Director: Spike Lee
Starring: Tracy Camilla Johns, Redmond Hicks, John Canada Terrell and Spike Lee
Budget: $175,000
Box Office: $7.1 Million
Note: Shot in twelve days in Brooklyn on a budget Spike Lee raised in pieces, mostly in black and white, with Lee himself as Mars Blackmon. It made forty times its cost and launched one of the most important American filmmaking careers of the next forty years.

1987 - Animal Crack-Ups Premiered

Event: Series Premiere

Network: ABC
Seasons: 3
Note: A Saturday morning animal-trivia game show hosted by Alan Thicke at the absolute height of Growing Pains, with celebrity panelists guessing what the creature on screen was about to do

1984 - Carl Lewis Won the 200 Meters in Los Angeles

Event: Summer Olympics, Los Angeles

Details: Gold number three, in an Olympic-record 19.80. Two days later the relay made it four, matching Jesse Owens' 1936 haul event for event.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eBKsE3ahZI

1988 - The Lights Came On at Wrigley Field, Briefly

Event: MLB

Details: 8-8-88, and 91-year-old Cubs fan Harry Grossman threw the switch on the first night game in Wrigley history. Rain washed it out in the fourth inning before it became official. The real first night game happened the next evening.

1982 - Raymond Floyd Won the PGA Championship

Event: Golf

Details: Floyd opened with a 63 at Southern Hills and held on to beat Lanny Wadkins by three. His second PGA title, eventually one of four majors.

No other news today in the 80s!