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Saturday, Jul 4, 2009
The films he created in the decade of greed made adolescent angst funny and bearable without romanticizing it.
Jul 17, 2001 | To this day, when I hear the name John Hughes, I get a rush in my stomach that's an awful lot like the feeling I'd get in high school when I spotted my crush standing in the parking lot after classes let out. I became a Hughes fan in 1984, the year his movie "Sixteen Candles" came out, and I revere him to this day for being the first filmmaker who connected with me on a personal level, with an insight into my everyday thoughts, worries and experiences, and for being the only movie person to capture what it was like to be an adolescent in the '80s.
There were plenty of other movies that came out around the same time that I liked. "The Outsiders" (1983) made me incredibly melancholy before I even knew what the word meant. "Return of the Jedi" (1983) and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" (1984) thrilled me with their epic tales, and "Ghostbusters" (1984) amazed me with its ingenuity and special effects. "Footloose" (1984) made me sick with the desire to be beautiful and sexy and daring like its stars, Kevin Bacon and Lori Singer. And then there was "Risky Business" (1983). All I remember about that one is the nudity, which made me, a strictly raised Catholic girl, feel guilty and confused. But four John Hughes movies -- "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club" (1985), "Pretty in Pink" (1986) and "Some Kind of Wonderful" (1987) -- were more than entertainment for me. They were comforting and smart but also funny and cool, intimate and personal without being uncomfortably sappy.
Hughes dropped out of the University of Arizona after only a year and began working in advertising, traveling to New York regularly to see clients. During one of these trips, he met some editors from National Lampoon, who eventually asked him to join their team. It was during his time as a Lampoon editor that he made the break into films. In 1978, Hollywood took a Lampoon story and turned it into the hugely successful frat-party movie "Animal House." Sensing they'd stumbled upon a gold mine, the big Los Angeles film companies raided the Lampoon offices, signing movie development deals with a number of people there including Hughes. In 1983, a short piece he'd written, "Vacation '58," was translated into the huge screen hit "National Lampoon's Vacation." The same year, Hughes had his second big winner with a script called "Mr. Mom." The movie, based on Hughes' own experience, starred Michael Keaton as a stay-at-home dad.
Around the time that "Mr. Mom" came out, movie industry executives were figuring out that teen dramedies could be big winners, thanks to the success of movies like 1982's "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "Risky Business." Hughes caught on quickly and in 1984 parlayed his early successes into a deal that allowed him to direct a quirky script he'd written about a day in the life of a suburban Chicago girl whose family forgets her 16th birthday. "Sixteen Candles" featured unforgettable performances by Molly Ringwald in the lead role and Anthony Michael Hall as the geek.
What set "Sixteen Candles" above others of its genre was that it was so real; the primary characters were like the kids you'd known since pre-K. Ringwald was 15 years old during filming, with the soft face and figure of someone that age. Her character, Sam, was dorky and vulnerable enough that we could relate to her, but also cool enough that we were proud to, as when she tells herself in the mirror on her birthday morning, "You need 4 inches of bod and a great birthday." I needed some inches myself as I sat watching the film in the dark theater, my mouth full of metal, squinting because I refused to wear the geeky glasses I needed so badly. Sam was so hip she had bangle bracelets and a flouncy skirt that another arbiter of '80s chic, Madonna, would have been proud to wear; but it was also an outfit that I thought I might be able to pull together with babysitting money and a little time at the mall.
Hughes' movies made the awkward angst of adolescence funny and bearable without romanticizing or glorifying it. And Hughes did it best in "The Breakfast Club," about a group of high school students forced to spend morning detention together. As we learn in the opening voice-over, the students are seen by adults, their peers and maybe even themselves "in the simplest terms, the most convenient definitions [as] a brain, a prom queen, a basket case, a jock and a criminal."
Now that "The Breakfast Club" has become a teen movie classic, it's hard to believe it was ever viewed as a commercial risk. But before the movie was released film critic, Gene Siskel asked: "Will today's young audience sit still for a film that's virtually all talk? Do teenagers want to see an adolescent 'My Dinner With Andre'?" Siskel wasn't the only one who knew it was a gamble. Hughes himself warned his actors that the movie might bomb but that if it did they would have nothing to be ashamed of. "We have made a movie that will be around for a long time," he told Siskel. "Even if it doesn't do any business, we have documented a slice of life that normally doesn't get documented in the movies. It will live on ... We can be proud of this."
