Filmmaker John Hughes -- whose 1980s' youth films (Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off) often captured the essence of what it was like to grow up in Reagan's America -- has sadly passed away. He was 59.
In the mid-80s, Hughes seemed unstoppable. He directed a string of youth-oriented blockbusters that helped define what it was like to be young in the 1980s.
I came of age when Hughes was at his height. I was among his target audience. And I have to admit, I didn't love everything he did. In fact, when I first saw The Breakfast Club on a dreary winter night back in February 1985, I hated the movie. I was 16 and none of the characters in it spoke to me. Not even Judd Nelson's Bender, the nihilistic punk of the group.
There was something about the film that rubbed me the wrong way. I found it superficial. I could tell it was made by an adult whose understanding of young people was decidedly limited.
But then I went to school and overheard my classmates talking about it. People at my high school LOVED the movie. It spoke to them. They could relate to the characters. To a lot of young people in the 1980s, The Breakfast Club was sort of their Catcher in the Rye. I might've found it to be pointless and superficial, but I could grudgingly see what others saw in it. A movie about alienated youth coming together and finding things in common with one another really struck a chord with the high schoolers I knew at the time.
Even though I didn't like The Breakfast Club, I loved Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which I thought were wonderfully hilarious snapshots of young, upper-middle class Chicagoans in the 1980s. Ferris Bueller in particular, the Bugs Bunny-esque anarchist played so wonderfully by Matthew Broderick, gave young people an inspiring role model of a smart kid who was always one step ahead of the clueless adults. No wonder the film has achieved a cult status and remains extremely popular in DVD sales.
Sixteen Candles was a nigh-perfect youth film that still holds up extraordinarily well today. Molly Ringwald as the alienated Samantha Banker has never been better in a movie (where has she gone, by the way???). But the actor who really stole the show was Anthony Michael Hall as "The Geek."
Hughes was involved with plenty of lesser efforts. Pretty in Pink -- a 1986 high school comedy-drama about a girl played by Molly Ringwald in love with a boy played by Andrew McCarthy -- was melodramatic and sappy, but a hit with many teenagers. Hughes didn't direct Pretty in Pink... Lightweight Howard Deutch, Hughes's pal, did. But Hughes wrote the screenplay and his fingerprints were all over the film. Same with the Deutch-directed, Hughes-written 1987 film Some Kind of Wonderful, which was essentially a remake of... you guessed it: the previous year's Pretty in Pink.
After Ferris Bueller, Hughes directed four more films: Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987); She's Having a Baby (1988); Uncle Buck (1989) and his final film, 1991's Curly Sue. They were all forgettable. Hughes had more success in some ways as a writer. He wrote the script for Chris Columbus's 1990 blockbuster Home Alone. Earlier in his career, he wrote Harold Ramis's highly successful National Lampoon's Vacation (1983). At his best, Hughes was a witty writer who created memorable characters.
Like so many of the stars of his films, Hughes just kind of faded away. He said he wanted to spend more time with his family. He became a classic recluse, avoiding interviews and remaining generally aloof. Fans waited for a comeback movie that never came. He died much too young of a heart attack earlier today.
Without question, John Hughes was an Eighties Icon. Hollywood rarely ever gets youth films right. Throughout the history of filmmaking, there have only been a few iconic youth films that have withstood the test of time: Rebel Without a Cause (1955); American Graffiti (1973); Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982); Dazed and Confused (1993). It is quite amazing that Hughes wrote and/or directed several important youth films -- movies that still resonate with the mood and values of the 1980s. They weren't all masterpieces. But looking back on my youth, I now realize that even films I wasn't fond of at the time -- such as The Breakfast Club -- still deserve respect. Hughes was an artist with a keen eye for human idiosyncrasies and an uncanny ability to create multi-dimensional characters. His historical moment was the mid-eighties and he captured it with great zest.
Too bad he never got a chance to make that comeback picture. I would've paid good money to see it and I'm sure I wouldn't have been disappointed.
To answer you question of where has Molly Ringwald gone - it seems she also agrees that she's never been better than when she played Samantha Baker in Sixteen Candles because there was recent talks of her spearheading a sequel to Sixteen Candles :S
Fortunately/Unfortunately she said she would never make Sixteen Candles 2 without John Hughes' permission - which he never gave - but now that he's gone who knows what she'll do!
Posted by: Kerri | August 07, 2009 at 12:58 PM