The American Teenager in Middle America: John Hughes, His Films and the Music

I asked a few friends, “What’s your favorite John Hughes movie and why?”

The Breakfast Club. I was about 12 when it came out so I think it just really captured all of those feelings. Junior high is when you start breaking off into categories and of course every girl is trying to be a Claire. I was far from it but that movie made every group seem kind of cool, like why can’t nerds and athletes be friends? It was a funny movie.

Ferris was probably my favorite movie as a kid that wasn’t a Star Wars film. Breakfast Club reminds me of what life was like when we were kids, even if that wasn’t exactly “our” life.

As for John Hughes, I haven’t seen a lot of his classics, so I’d probably say Home Alone. It’s a fun kid fantasy film with a lot of heart. As a young kid, I’d often dream of having the freedom to do whatever I wanted to do, but you also realize how much Kevin loves his family and they love him.

There’s definitely some nostalgia involved. I can watch it again and again and laugh every time. The rant scene where Clark describes how awful his boss is, and asks for the Tylenol, the line ‘Shitters Full’, so many good funny parts

OK, I’m going to go with Some Kind of Wonderful. It’s the most charming of Hughes movies. The characters are most like real teenagers whereas in his other movies they’re archetypes; and it captures the complex relationships between crushes better than Sixteen Candles or Pretty in Pink. It’s less a comedy than a romance. It also has some of my favorite 80s actors in it (Eric Stoltz, Mary Stuart Masterton, Lea Thompson).  And unlike Hughes’s other movies which always take place in a north shore suburb of Chicago, Some Kind of Wonderful takes place in Los Angeles. It’s the better, more subtle version of Pretty in Pink.

On the outside, John Hughes seemed to be a quiet, conservative, middle-American dad.  Yes, we knew he could write screenplays, but writers are often somewhat square.  However, Hughes’ creativity expanded far beyond what most saw.  He obviously directed, had soundtrack decision-making (more on that shortly) but also sold jokes to comedians such as Rodney Dangerfield and worked at high end advertising agencies on famous ad campaigns.  He had an innovative mind, uniquely tuned to that of the average American teenager.

 We identified with these characters, because one of them, is just like me.  But none of them were flawless.  Just like me.

My favorite example of this is Jon Cryer’s excellent portrayal of Ducky in Pretty in Pink.  Most “nice guys” in movies are all nice guy.  Ducky is more realistic.  He has the dark side that, in real life, a lot of these “nice guys” have.  He’s the guy who calls himself a feminist, tries to befriend the girl, but when she spurns his advances, it’s not a fault in him, it’s a fault in her.  “I guess you really are a stuck-up bitch.”  That’s not a nice guy, that’s a guy pretending to be a nice guy.  You don’t root for Ducky, you root for Blaine to get his shit together.  In the end, there’s seemingly redemption for all of them, just as there is for all of us at the end of our awkward teen years. 

And while I think we’d all agree, the movies are timeless, because they’re so honestly human, what doesn’t get talked enough about is his influence on the music we listen to.  How many lonely, outcast kids were first exposed to a band that would change their life in a John Hughes movie?  How many poets heard Morrissey croon, “Please, please, please, let me, let me get what I want, this time” and decided they wanted to start a band? 

I combed through IMDB.com and just listed a selection of some of the amazing tunes he put in his movies:

Vacation – “Holiday Road” by Lindsay Buckingham, “Blitzkrieg Bop” by the Ramones, “I’m So Excited” by the Pointer Sisters

European Vacation – “A Town Called Malice” by the Jam

Sixteen Candles – “Snowballed” by AC/DC, “Today I Met the Boy I’m Gonna Marry” by Darlene Love, “Little Bitch” by the Specials, “Growing Pains” by Tim Finn, “Lenny” by Stevie Ray Vaughn, “Turning Japanese” by the Vapors, “Gloria” by Patti Smith, “Rebel Yell” by Billy Idol, “Young Americans” by David Bowie, “Sixteen Candles” by the Stray Cats, “Birthday” and “Hey Jude” by the Beatles

The Breakfast Club – “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds

Weird Science – “Weird Science” by Oingo Boingo, “Turn it On” by Kim Wilde, “Tubular Bells” by Mike Oldfield, “Tesla Girls” by OMD, “Oh Pretty Woman” by Van Halen, “Don’t Worry Baby” by Los Lobos, “Method to My Madness” by Lords of the New Church, “Eighties” by Killing Joke

Pretty in Pink – “Pretty in Pink” by the Psychadelic Furs, “Thieves Like Us” and “Elegia” by New Order, “If You Leave” by OMD, “Bring on the Dancing Horses” by Echo and the Bunnymen, “Try a Little Tenderness” by Otis Redding, “Cherish” by the Association, “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” by the Smiths, “Left of Center” by Suzanne Vega

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – “Bad” by Big Audio Dynamite, plus a few Dream Academy songs including a cover of “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want”

Some Kind of Wonderful – “Do Anything” by Pete Shelley, “The Hardest Walk” by the Jesus and Mary Chain, “Beat’s So Lonely” by Charlie Sexton, “Catch My Fall” by Billy Idol

I think “Holiday Road” is as good as “Go Your Own Way.” It’s criminally under-appreciated. Americans as a whole don’t appreciate Paul Weller and The Jam enough. I think The Smiths and Billy Idol, as big as they were, are now under-appreciated as well.

But perhaps what Hughes was best at was marrying the right song to the right scene. Think of the end of The Breakfast Club and “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” or the end of Pretty in Pink and OMD’s “If You Leave”. We grew up with this as an example, but Hughes knew… he knew that humans inherently tie memory to sensory stimuli. It’s a movie, he can’t make us smell or taste, but he can make us see and hear. I challenge you to listen to one of those songs and not think about Molly RIngwald. Or, I guess if you’re a woman, Judd Nelson or Andrew McCarthy, but I will always think of Molly Ringwald. And, even though I’m middle-aged, I’ll still get that little twinge in my stomach that my twelve-year-old self got when he saw Molly RIngwald in that moment. It’s a physiological response to an emotional memory.

THAT my friends, is how you know you’ve created something for the ages.