Boomers Want It All Now!
An NBC Documentary puts Marin County and baby boomers under a microscope
Oh, baby boomers… our pesky opinionated elders. They’re your parents, your grandparents, and as young people, we are constantly lamenting their negative impact on the world. Baby boomers lead the government, they hold the majority of real estate investments, and they complain about cultural shifts by way of the New York Times comment section.
There are clearly mutual negative feelings shared between younger people and their elders. A recent example of this combative smugness is best understood in the viral “Millennials Can’t Pay Off Student Loans Because of Avocado Toast” topic that lit the internet on fire five years ago. To summarize the entire debacle, some dude said if young people were less indulgent and more practical, they would have economic security and be able to afford a single-family home like previous generations. Every social media platform was flooded with self-righteous finger-pointing comments in reaction to this news story. Elders thought young people are irresponsible with money and selfish, and young people blamed boomers for being out of touch with the economic realities millennials faced. The debate continues and the story remains the same: young people are self-congratulatory, materialistic, and they need to be checked.
The reason I bring this all up, is because today I’m describing boomers as the young people in this scenario. They were once seeking the same type of wealthy influencer-adjacent wellness and spiritual enlightenment in the 1970s. The retro version of the viral avocado toast moment, manifested in the form of a 1978 NBC News Special titled I Want It All Now! Its impact was immediate: watch out for this new generation of adults because they are self-absorbed and overly indulgent.
The human interest news story aired nationally in the summer of 1978. I Want It All Now! was created to provide a snapshot of contemporary life in the suburbs - and also to expose the world to the nouveau-hippie destination, Marin County. The documentarians focus on a few individuals whose experience in the American suburb and nuclear family is vastly different than norms of previous decades. There are references to open marriages, the Human Potential/New Age Movement, and what defines happiness and personal fulfillment in a place like Marin.
The amount of New Age Easter Eggs in the program is hilarious, verging on camp. The Mill Valley head shop, The Pleasure Principle (great name), is presented with a tone of immense shock and awe. How could there be a shop that sells drug paraphernalia in our burb?! In contemporary times it appears pretty quaint, especially now that marijuana is legal in 18 states. Also, my personal favorite is the resident who engages in wellness practices in her backyard, including receiving sensual massage with peacock feathers from naked men. She claims all of these additional components to the massage are all in the name of mental health.
Outside of the counter-culture exposure, the main goal of the news story is to expose this trendy suburb as status-obsessed and beyond the limits of what should be considered self-improvement. Their thesis is that this community is the canary in the coal mine for society’s growing narcissism problem. “What is happening in Marin County may soon be happening where you live — unless, that is, it's happening there already.”
For whatever reason, boomers and young people in the 1970s and the 1980s were obsessed with Marin County. Generational icons encamped to Marin in droves, including George Lucas, Joan Baez, and most famously The Grateful Dead and their prolific front-man Jerry Garcia. When asked why Garcia and the band relocated to Marin, their publicist said something to the effect of “we chose Marin because it’s paradise?” Marin County wasn’t just a random suburb outside of San Francisco, it was a destination for celebrities, wealth, and cool.
As Marin County came of age as a hot spot, a wildly popular book set in the Bay Area community debuted in 1977 called The Serial. It became a New York Times-bestseller and captured the cultural conversation. The book chronicled the everyday soap opera of people in their 30s living in Marin, raising families while not losing their counter-cultural edge. The Serial’s intimacy read like a diary, and people were obsessed. It delved into the anxieties of status-driven boomers and satirized the quirks of alternative living including organic food, drug use, and lax child-rearing. Everyone wanted to learn about this wealthy enclave and the happenings there. It not only exposed the discontent lurking beneath the breezy Californian façade, but also signaled the beginning of the new normal: the hippie-yuppie neo-liberal elite as taste-makers. When I Want It All Now arrived on national television a year later, it boosted Marin County’s profile further as a major lifestyle center. It represented an entirely new way to “Keep Up With the Joneses” with an alternative, hip flavor.
If I was going to compare the Marin County obsession in the 1970s with something else, the only place I can think of that is both maligned and adored in the same fashion is the early-2000s cultural obsession with Orange County. When The OC was released in 2003, Laguna Beach in 2004, and The Real Housewives of Orange County a few years later, Orange County became the same sort of trendy epicenter for better or worse. Mystic tans, designer labels, and platinum blonde highlights were symbols of the Western World’s idea of coolness. Celebrities bought homes in Newport Beach, and the affluent California region became a center of influence. In the 1970s, Marin County was this same sort of influential destination, and baby-boomers badly desired the lifestyle.
What I found most comical (besides the head shop scene, and of course, the gloriously campy theme song) is the pandering narration, and how the filmmakers grasp for sensationalism at every turn. If not for the jolting commentary, it would be a pretty slow-moving show, and the family dynamics and eccentricities of the residents, are pretty vanilla. There is a divorced couple who co-parent their kids amicably and openly. There’s also single mom, Cathy Burke, who has four children and is seen at both Tai Chi classes and feminist groups. She moved to Marin in search of greater fulfillment and independence after her divorce.
If anything, I wish they had focused more on the topic of divorce. The divorce rate skyrocketed in the 1970s everywhere in the United States, not just in Marin County. In 1969 California instituted no-fault divorce laws. The 1970s was the first decade people in bad marriages had the option to leave for the first time without having to claim extreme circumstances. Even if single-parent households, therapy, and embracing eastern concepts of wellness were seen as fringe, it was actually exceedingly normal. Today we don’t even bat an eye at single-parent households or moms going to yoga class.
Whether they are seeking self-fulfillment spiritually or economically, the subjects remark about the challenges of obtaining happiness in an expensive community, and the lengths they go to find satisfaction. Boomers should listen to millennials when we complain about affording a house - we want it all too.
While I Want It All Now! is objectively dated, I want to attempt to connect it back to contemporary times. The most similar piece of media that hearkens back to the 1978 film is the most recent season of the pulpy TV show You on Netflix. In its third season, the writers of You address these same moral questions about self-fulfillment asked in I Want It All Now, even setting the show in a fictional version of Marin County named Madre Linda, (there’s actually a town in Marin County named Terra Linda for reference). The parents of the Madre Linda community are essentially the tech-infused, cryptocurrency counterparts of those in the I Want It All Now documentary. They are status-obsessed, dealing with marital issues, and seeking a highly optimized life to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
This same feeling of self-actualization at all costs (therapy, yoga, wellness, screen time, etc.), has all become mainstream and turbo-charged in contemporary culture. While we can satirize and poke fun at this culture in the way that You or The Serial does, it’s hard to deny the self-actualization machine is still going strong with younger generations.
Last week, I spoke of the 1970s home style and the interiors that focus on individuality and a back-to-nature feeling. Millennials are moving back to the suburbs, and there’s been a focus on a cozier, more subdued lifestyle. I’m hoping there’s less status-seeking and more humility as this next era of suburban influence takes shape, but only time will tell. Young people might be savvier in some ways than boomers, and hopefully more self-aware, but we’re absolutely repeating the same patterns. I Want It All Now’s mix of suburban life and self-actualization, is very much in vogue. Maybe the generations should have more empathy for each other.
For Further Enjoyment-
Top Tracks
I Want It All Now! (1978) (Full Documentary)
Clip from Play It Again Sam (1972) - a depiction of nightlife in Marin County in the 1970s
B-Sides
NYT's 1978 Review of "I Want It All Now"
CENSUS DATA REVEAL 70'S LEGACY: POORER CITIES AND RICHER SUBURBS (NYT, 1983)