40 Years After “Vision Quest”, Matthew Modine and Daphne Zuniga Say 'You Can't Remake' the Cult Classic (Exclusive)

Matthew Modine and Daphne Zuniga reflect on 'Vision Quest's cult-classic status 40 years later

It’s been four decades since the coming-of-age wrestling film Vision Quest debuted, and the film’s cult classic status makes it a staple from the '80s.

Following high school wrestler Louden Swain (played by Matthew Modine), who wants to drop two weight classes to face off against (and ideally best) the undefeated Brian Shute, it’s a story that Modine says “you can’t remake.”

“Louden Swain in a movie today who says and does the things that he does in the film — which are all really important lessons and part of coming of age, of saying inappropriate things, of doing inappropriate things people — young people do,” Modine, 65, tells PEOPLE ahead of the film’s 40th anniversary. “He realizes he made a mistake in something that he said, or something that he did. And it's Linda Fiorentino [who] puts him in his place.”

While attempting to pursue his goal, Louden finds himself falling for Fiorentino’s character Carla, a woman stranded in Louden’s town after her car breaks down on her drive to San Francisco. As Louden tries to capture Carla’s attention, he occasionally loses the motivation to beat Shute — but Carla’s redirection is part of what helps him come to the film’s resolution.

“Today the person would be canceled — the person would be chastised on social media, on text messages and things. So I don't think that you could remake this film. I think the world has gone topsy-turvy,” Modine continues. “But the good news is that the movie exists in its '80s form, and you can go back and watch it and romanticize about what it was like to be in the eighties and with all that great music and these wonderfully weird and goofy people.”

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Despite the more controversial pieces of the film that make it impossible to remake today, Daphne Zuniga, who played the newspaper editor with an unrequited crush on Louden, Margie Epstein, argues that Vision Quest was making moves that she hadn’t seen in other scripts at the time. She largely attributes this to Margie’s enthusiasm about publishing an article in the school paper about the clitoris.

“That's what I loved about the part, that it was unexpected,” Zuniga, 62, tells PEOPLE. “You've seen these characters that are on the side and they're the smart girl who just has a crush on the lead guy, but they're not like that character Margie. They're not so excited and so unashamedly smart using all these big words and then [saying], ‘I'm going to do an article on the clitoris.’ At least back then, I didn't see a lot of that kind of writing, so I thought it was very smart.”

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Vision Quest’s impact has lasted through the years, and both Modine and Zuniga say they’ve had fans of the film approach them and share personal stories of how it impacted them. Modine specifically named UFC founder Dana White and Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott, both of whom consider the film to be favorites.

“Over the course of these 40 years, how many [times] I’ve have been stopped on the street by people who start crying and say that Vision Quest and Louden Swain gave them a direction. That they were lost, and Vision Quest was a compass in their life that helped to give them a direction,” Modine says. “They saw Louden as a tool to help them fix their lives — that through hard work and determination and sacrifice that you can change the course of your life, change the direction.”

Though Zuniga didn’t have as much screentime as her costar Modine did, she says she still receives comments on her social media posts or in person about Vision Quest’s impact.

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“When I meet fans, I love that they bring Vision Quest up,” Zuniga says. “It's that cult kind of thing, whether you were a guy who loved wrestling or did wrestle or whatever — you don't even have to be, but there is this group of men that it really meant a lot to them. And I think because it's a coming-of-age story and it was a guy's coming-of-age, but it wasn't a cheesy guy's coming-of-age movie. It was real.”

“It's wonderful to be a part of anything that inspires people to be better, to be kinder, to be forgiving,” Modine says. “Because as Louden says at the end of the film, what he learned that year was that we all have to live our lives like there's no tomorrow … that the pursuit of happiness is achieved by helping other people.”

“I'm so happy that this film has helped so many people find a positive direction in their lives,” he continues. “That gives me great happiness.”