Despite the untimely and very sad passings this year of Michael Jackson, Bea Arthur, Walter Chronkite, Dom Deluise, Farrah Fawcett, Nathasha Richardson, Ricardo Monotalban, and Ron Silver, the saddest death of all for me has to be the death today of John Hughes.
I know, who?
For his time (the 80's and early 90's), John Hughes was a very famous screenwriter and film director who's most successful film was Macaulay Culkin's Home Alone (but that film was trash, a good kid empowerment film, but trash nonetheless). I remember John Hughes from my 2 favorite 1980's film of all time, The Breakfast Club and the less successful, but even funnier and better written film, Sixteen Candles (with Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall in both casts). But he also wrote and/or directed, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, Curly Sue, and Uncle Buck (John Candy's final film).
I distinctly remember seeing both The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles in the 1980's and both films made me laugh out loud and cry. They were both amazing films for their time. It was actually from those John Hughes films and others like St. Elmo's Fire that created the Hollywood's party and drug fueled "Brat Pack" (Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Rob Lowe, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall) of the 1980's. John Hughes did what only 1 other writer I know of has ever done, and that's successful capture on film the way teenagers actually talked and thought. This was no small achievement for a older man from the MidWest. And it began Hollywood obession with the youth market. Prior to John Hughes films of the 1980's, teenagers were not specifically targeted in films. But John Hughes' films changed all that.
I would like to say a little prayer for Mr. Hughes. His films had an enormous impact on my life and definitely shaped my career view of wanting to work in an industry that produced such well written and timely films. And I have to say, I have the DVD's of both films, and even though they are classically "stuck" in the 1980's, his films are just as relevant to the problems every teenager faces, even in the 21st century. And that's the real test of any film. Of course you can speak to the time and the generation when the film was made, but how does it play in the next decade, or the decade after that? Specifically, The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles still make me laugh and cry today.
Below is the final voice over from The Breakfast Club:
"Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us. In the simpliest terms, in the most convenient definitions, what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours - The Breakfast Club"
Rest in Peace Mr. Hughes.
Rest In Peace Patrick Swayze. I loved you in The Outsiders and Dirty Dancing.
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