'Breaking Away'

What a monumental movie on several levels.

First, it's a really cool movie for anyone who's lived in a small town. Or worse, a kind of big town that's too small to hold you, but too big to really leave.

Also, it stars four young men almost at the very start of their careers and over the past 30 years, they've all gone different directions.

Dennis Christopher plays the Italy-loving bicyclist. Coincidentally, one of Christopher's first roles was in Fellini's Roma. "Dave Stoler" would've loved this. Christopher never really got a steady, defining career. Incredibly busy, I don't know if I'd recognize him or not.

This is probably Dennis Quaid's best early role. He plays the lug-headed misfit townie, the muscle of the group with about as much motivation as a lead pipe. Quaid was a couple years out of roles in Cavemen and, his breakout, Gordon in The Right Stuff. Quaid, of course, is probably the highest profile of this group.

This is the second Daniel Stern film -- Diner -- in the past month. And he pretty much plays the same exact chracter -- a lanky, self-loathing groundling, who kind of flitters through life without giving it all much thought. Stern, as we've noted, had a couple of roles in high-profile films in the 1990s and then fell off the face of the Earth.

Jackie Earle Haley's had the most fascinating trek in films. He'd already been a kid actor and been famously immortalized as Kelly Leak in the Bad News Bears films when Breaking Away was released. He'd do Losin' It several years later and then disappear until 2006's Little Children. He then proved his mettle and continues to get good roles in good films.

Four different paths. Two of them still relevant.