Somewhere in the deeply forested recesses of Hertfordshire, the members of Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Simple Minds, and Culture Club are convening crisis talks with only one agenda: How To Stay Alive in 2009. With key 80’s icons such as Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson dying this year, and now the revered and beloved director John Hughes, one can imagine that health checkups, cholesterol screenings, and alcohol reduction will headline the minuted action points – with the immediate goal being to successfully survive the Summer without incident.
While watching a Sky Tribute to the late Mr Hughes – first up was ‘Sixteen Candles‘, ‘The Breakfast Club‘ in second, and ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off‘ as the final overture – it’s easy to overstate the man’s influence, but equally easy to dismiss the emotional undertow of those 3 movies as a triptych of teen angst, humour, and irreverence. And it makes me sad that Hollywood doesn’t even bother making films like those anymore. What does it say that they still seem relevant, both to Generation X as it approaches middle-age, and today’s youth, in a way that teen films from the 60s were never relevant to young people in the 80s. This was Hughes’ gift: he helped create an entire genre which legitimised teen thought, articulated them as responsibility-miniatured adults, as people who could express anxiety in a way which made sense to their adult overseers, showed them as three-dimensional bundles of confusion, and whose depiction was directly at odds with the ‘Porky’s‘-type movies which caricatured the Teen Species.
Hughes, while responsible for legitimising the Teen Movie as Art, was also indirectly responsible for inspiring loads of silly, Brat Pack-cast movies (‘Wild Horses’, or anything with Judd Nelson apart from ‘New Jack City’). Hughes’s films were more about his directorial artistry than that of those who acted for him. It says a lot that not many of them had stellar careers post-Hughes. (NB: A notable exception is Charlie Sheen, and even his appearance in ‘Bueller’ was a cameo.) That Hughes was able to create such insightful and angst-ridden tapestries from these actors despite their limited ranges speaks directly to his prowess as a writer/director.
In some ways, Hughes had at least one thing in common with the great Alfred Hitchcock: Hitch’s films was similar in that – for the strong exceptions of James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Ray Milland – not many actors went on to have strong careers despite having benefited from a Hitch reference on the CV. The main guy I’m thinking of here is Anthony Perkins in his seminal role in ‘Psycho’. Norman Bates is so deeply ingrained in the American psyche that he’s practically an archetype. Yet it’s the rare person who can name another non-‘Psycho’ film that Perkins starred in, let alone shone. At least Molly Ringwald and Nelson can take some comfort in that – Maybe…
In a nutshell on giving props to this man as he goes on to his Great Reward, just ask yourself: who’s the next John Hughes for this decade, or the next? Anybody? ‘Bueller?…Bueller?…Bueller?…’
John – RIP. And, like, Thanks, Dude.
The Cynnergist 