sweater vest or cardigan, do it like you mean it

I just finished watching Mr. Holland's Opus, and there are a slew of thoughts racing through my brain. Among the most pertinent:

--How did Mr. Holland manage to spend almost 40 years composing his "American Symphony" only to have it emerge as a hot 90s movie jam; but not just any movie jam...the theme to his own movie!!! Fuck you, Dave Eggars, Richard Dreyfuss is on some real meta shit.

--Mr. Holland's tragically deaf son Cole somehow, between 1980 and 1995, grew into a ponytail-rocking, khaki-vest-and-shorts-wearing, fannypack-flossing Gunter. I bet he drove the whole way to the climactic scene with deep house bumping in the car while out of his mind on ketamine, the odometer needle pushing 95.

--Someone explain to me why Mr. Holland didn't peace out to New York in the mid-70s with that "hot" musical chick. Who could ask for anything more indeed, Mr. Holland. Fuckin' A, if he had gone to New York with her, he could have hung out all creepy-like in Central Park West until he "accidentally" met John Lennon. He could have bought lil' Sean an ice-cream cone, and climbed a tree together. Maybe John would have invited Mr. Holland up to his apartment in The Dakota, and they could've smoked pot and talked about Ray Charles. Yoko probs would have been pissed, but what else is new? For fuck's sake, who wrote this movie? I see a totally different ending--Mr. Holland leaves his wife and child to get rowdy with a girl 20 years his junior in the wild, untamed party of NYC circa '76, develops an unlikely bond with John & Yoko, has a falling out with them, and is ultimately the one to drunkenly suggest to Mark David Chapman that he go and shoot Lennon. This would give the "Opus" referred to in the film's title an entirely different meaning: instead of referring to the dozens and dozens of lives Holland touched and changed throughout his career, it would be a reference to his direct role in the death of one the greatest musicians in history. That kind of irony really trumps the "oh shit, I'm a music teacher but my son was born deaf" from earlier in the film.

--I know that dopey bass-drum kid gets killed in 'Nam, and that's sad, because he's goofy and charming. But given that Mr. Holland's career encompassed the entirety of the conflict in Vietnam, isn't it odd that Mr. Holland mourns only the death of this one student? Surely there were others. You're a cold-blooded gangsta, Mr. Holland.