There will come a time when the filmmakers whose work I grew up watching will begin to shuffle off this mortal coil. That is not supposed to happen yet.
Yesterday we lost a man who helped define the 80′s and, in turn, my youth. Here’s where we intersected…
Sixteen Candles
Didn’t really catch up with this until cable. And then I caught up with it all the time. The beginning of Hughes’ Geek-Hero Myth. Farmer Ted is one of the most hopeless creations of the modern teen comedy and yet he gets the (hopelessly vapid) hot girl at the end. Do not think that this was not the fantasy of every 80′s nerd who could not screw up the courage to even talk to a girl, yours truly included. Farmer Ted also has what may be my favorite Hughes’ line of all time.
“A: Don’t hit me. Secondly…”
But the real geek of Sixteen Candles is, of course, the Molly-Ringwald-career-launching Sam. She is the outcast getting felt up by her grandmother on her forgotten birthday. She is the one living out the fantasy of getting the hot guy even though she is the ignored girl.
Even the so-racist-his-character-became-a-touchstone-for-Haorld-&-Kumar-Go-To-White-Castle stereotype Long Duk Dong is not Japanese for the purpose of putting down the Japanese. He’s Japanese because that’s his geekery. The same way that his girlfriend is an outcast because she’s tall, athletic and sexually aggressive.
Something people tend to forget about Hughes was his alterna-taste in soundtracks. Homeboy was throwing out The Smiths and Psychedelic Furs like he was a college radio DJ. Here he whips out Bowie’s “Young Americans” where a typical teen comedy director would try to splurge on “Material Girl.”
He also spins a Thompson Twins deep cut (such a creature exists) at the end with “If You Were Here.” A moment I will never forget. Not because of the cheesy Hunk Reveal. No, because the song is so damn good and fits so damn well. I’m convinced Hughes was the first to teach the budding young director in me the value of the perfect marriage of music to image.
It was not just in musical selection, however, that Hughes was out to undermine the conventional teen film, a point that would never be made clearer than with his next movie.
The Breakfast Club
When I first saw The Breakfast Club, I had no idea what I was getting into. It was something akin to an art film experience. It had been recommended to me by my sister, who saw a good review on Siskel & Ebert. In other words, this was not a hype machine purchase.
I was blown away. Only later was I to realize just how subversive this movie was, simply by being a teen film that was neither sex comedy nor slasher flick. As today, in the 80′s if you were going to make a movie about teenagers they’d damn well better be fucking or dying (preferably both). What those teens better not be doing is sitting in a library for 90 minutes talking about their feelings.
Again, he pits the outcasts against the normies. Although, in this case he seems to try to find some sympathy for the normies and gives them a common enemy (who also gets to state his case in one fantastic scene) in the indelible Paul Gleason as Dick Vernon (imho, one of the all time great overlooked-by-Oscar perfs).
Again, the popular get matched up with the unpopular although, in this case, the math doesn’t work out for the one true geek in the room – Anthony Michael Hall as Brian – a less obnoxous version of Farmer Ted (while Ringwald does a 180 and plays the – presumably – shallow popular girl).
I always felt bad for Brian. Everyone gets a girl and he gets – a paper. Seriously, that last shot of him punching himself in the arm over what a good paper he wrote always kind of pissed me off. This suicidal bastard does all the work and that’s his reward?!
Well, at least Hughes got him high.
Here’s where I started to feel a real personal connection to Hughes’ work. In a moment of TMI, I’ll reveal here that when I was a kid I was suicidal. This was the first – and possibly only – representation of that depression I saw onscreen during that time and it was handled in a way that didn’t talk down to me. Which was a key facet of any John Hughes film. He didn’t talk down to teenagers. He valued and respected them. He considered their hopes, dreams and fears as valid as any Important Dramatic Character. Brian Johnson might as well have been Willy Fucking Loman. You didn’t get that shit from Porky’s.
Music-wise, had you even heard of Simple Minds before Hughes added “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”? And don’t even get me started on Karla DeVito and the Best. Dancing. Montage. Ever.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Caught this in a sneak preview during my run of amazing sneak preview luck (E.T., Princess Bride, Midnight Run). Went on to watch it almost every single day on video for one summer with a friend of mine. Needless to say we could quote it from beginning to end.
This time our outcast is neither underpriviledged nor especially unpopular. Alan Ruck’s Cameron is, in fact, best friends with the most popular kid in school. But he is still his own brand of dork. What struck me, though, was the film’s frank approach to sex.
“Cameron has never been in love – at least, nobody’s ever been in love with him. If things don’t change for him, he’s gonna marry the first girl he lays, and she’s gonna treat him like shit, because she will have given him what he has built up in his mind as the end-all, be-all of human existence. She won’t respect him, ’cause you can’t respect somebody who kisses your ass. It just doesn’t work.”
Try to appreciate here the typical line on virginity in most teen comedies. The entire project is to lose it. It actually is the end-all, be-all of human existence. With the exception of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, few films of the 80′s even hint that it might be a little more complicated than that. And for a no-ass-gettin’ geek in the 80′s, that was important perspective to hear.
Again, Hughes gives us the bomb diggy soundtrack with a Dream Academy cover of a Smiths tune (Hughes favorite “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want,” which would appear in Pretty in Pink that same year, plays during the museum montage – and that’s another thing – these teens have the class to ditch school to go to an art musuem – the Hughes’ Message ringing through – Teens. Aren’t. Stupid.), Sigue Sigue Sputnik, General Public, The English Beat and, of course, Yello’s “Oh Yeah.”
Not to mention our hero is sophisticated enough to pick “Danke Shoen” to begin his lip-synch routine.
Seriously, you put this premise in the hands of ten comedy writers, the nine who aren’t Hughes have the boys go to a brothel.
Pretty in Pink
Here we have a return to the female outcast, but the iconic love refugee here is, of course, Duckie. This was, in a way, a character that would suit my older geek youth, where I found myself chronically drawn into the “friend zone.” Duckie is the poster boy for that location. I’m not sure I would have bought the original ending at the time, where Duckie actually escapes the gravity of the zone, but I don’t know that him landing Kristy Swanson out of nowhere is any more plausible.
This time, Hughes hits us with the Furs right in the title, and makes one hit wonders out of O.M.D. with “If You Leave.”
It wasn’t just the geeks that Hughes cared about. Like I said, he respected all teens. It was just the geeks I related to the most.
Excellent stuff! This really captures what he did so well – especially the point that he talked to teenagers, not down to them.