John Hughes’ movies end with freeze frames. These are moments
(Bender thrusting his fist in the air in The Breakfast Club;
Samantha kissing her dream boy in Sixteen Candles; Ferris
Bueller knowing he’s opened his best friend’s eyes; John Candy’s warm
grin in Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Uncle Buck)
where characters found the satisfaction they craved.
The Breakfast Club is the most explicit, but all of Hughes’
movies were about unlikely friendships breaking social barriers. His
high school movies (along with Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at
Ridgemont High) are benchmark teen comedies in film history. They
recognized adolescence as the time when everything is still possible,
before careers limit one’s social order. Hughes wrote the math for the
teen genre, first by respecting teens.
Since his death last week, Hughes (who hadn’t directed since 1991’s
Curly Sue) has been subjected to the usual media treatment of a
dead icon. Pundits are saying too much but not enough. What’s
overlooked is his filmmaking skill. Hughes was only at his prime for
four years. But from 1984 to 1987, he directed teen-genre mainstays
Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird
Science, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and the grown-up comedy
Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and wrote the middling Pretty
in Pink and the sublime Some Kind of Wonderful. He connected
to young pop sensibility better than anyone. His narratives took
teenage longings for affection seriously. The insights weren’t sappy
because they were arrived at through smart writing and visual
sophistication.
Hughes claims to have shot Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in
wide-scope format because it, like its title character, seemed
inappropriate. The movie reaches its apex in a montage of the trio
seeing its desires reflected in the Art Institute of Chicago.
If the real Hughes related most to Ferris, he had the empathy to see
the other side of the coin. The arc in Ferris Bueller really
belonged to eternally bummed best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck). Sure, the
Principal in Breakfast Club is a louse, but the Janitor is
offered two surprising moments of understanding.
Hughes knew a certain milieu very well. Although his biggest hit (he
penned Home Alone) came after his peak, the magic had started to
fade. Uncle Buck is OK for kids, but patronizes the teenagers he
used to vindicate. After Curly Sue, Hughes wrote mainly
children’s comedies, under a pseudonym, including Beethoven and
its sequels.
It’s a bitter ending for a remarkable career. Fans have eulogized on
the internet about how Hughes got them through their teens, making them
feel they weren’t alone. It’s not the point that Hughes’ scenarios
weren’t what high school was like. They were emotionally real.
Related Stories
Best of John Hughes: film clips
This article appears in Aug 13-19, 2009.
sigh… in the blink of an eye, 24 years go bye-bye
don’t you, forget about me… lalala