Pixie Sticks and Cap'n Crunch. Holla.
Thursday, September 5, 2013 at 4:00PM It's Back to School Month at TFE
Hello, lovelies. Beau here, fixating on a tiny moment from one of my favorite films.
John Hughes was a Godsend to me growing up. From the ages of 14 through 17, hardly a weekend went by where I wasn't revisiting one of his key entries over the span of a twenty year career. These viewings alternated between Weird Science, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sixteen Candles, and The Breakfast Club. It's remarkable to me that we've managed to survive over ten years of remakes and rehashes, and no one has dared touch any of his material.
Whether that's a nod to his particular and unique sympathies (hard to imitate or replicate), or just blind dumb luck, I'm grateful for the Pubescent Passover.
My first encounter with John Hughes happened in my own puerile period; I rented The Breakfast Club at a mere nine years old, and afterwards, I immediately declared it:
the strangest fucking film I've ever seen.
Foreign to me in every way I could possibly conceive, I had no idea why these characters were so aggrieved. I mean, Jesus, life can't be that awful at 16. Consider all the perks!
Of course, it's not until you actually begin to suffer through this hormonal instability that you're finally able to empathize with these oddballs, consider them soundly and take away some comfort from their journey. But at the beginning, there was one bizarre, lovely moment that I squealed over, something that made me just roll with joy and laughter, even at nine years old:
Allison's Sandwich.
Some scenes serve no purpose, need no explanation or later reference. Some scenes just rock.
Reader Comments (5)
1st review of Naomi Watts in Diana,calls it woefully misjudged,the corniest dialogue you will hear all year and that Watts gives a flat impression and not a performance,that's her chances done then!!!,see full review below.
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/movies/review/a511877/diana-review-naomi-watts-stars-in-woefully-misjudged-biopic.html
I'm a 33 year old Filipino male and I saw "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" recently. I thought it was crap and tough to sit through save for a few laughs courtesy of Jeffrey Jones. Hated the character. Overall, I'm wondering why this film is so beloved.
Perhaps it's because of the annoyance I had with the elaborate, grandiouse posthumous Oscar tribute John Hughes received a few years ago. No other great filmmaker: Truffaut, Hitchcock, Kubrick (who got a solo one but not as elaborate), Antonioni, Kurosawa, etc. had ever gotten this big and an elaborate tribute. So I'm judging his films on the level of those filmmakers.
That's a tough comparison model there, Irvin. Not even apples and oranges, it's like comparing redwoods with lions. The categories are completely different. The aim is completely different. Art as Populist Entertainment versus Formalism. Even Hitchcock, whose films were more populist than the rest of the peers you listed off, was doing something entirely different with his filmmaking approach than Hughes.
I've always thought Ally Sheedy deserved an Supporting Actress Oscar nod for "The Breakfast Club," especially considering the not-overwhelming level of competition that year aside from Oprah Winfrey and Anjelica Huston. As NEWSWEEK pointed out, how many actresses can steal a movie for 40 minutes via non-verbal tics and bits of silent comedy, before finally uttering her first line: "Vodka"? And her classic line which brought down the house at every showing I ever saw: "You know what I did to get in here today? Nothing...I didn't have anything else to do." Even the cantankerous Pauline Kael--who didn't like the film overall but admired Hall and Ringwald--singled out Sheedy's as "the only performance with a comic kick to it."
I made the mistake of posting a somewhat rueful commentary online when John Hughes passed about his movies not aging well, or maybe it was just me outgrowing them, and got PULVERIZED for it. I still think his ear for slang and lingo is impeccable, his comedic style is sublime, his gift with teenage actors remarkable, and his choice in music masterful. However, when you watch his movies now, way too many of the adults are two-dimensional harpies or idiots (is this how he thinks all teens see them?), and though he claims to identify with "outsiders," they're always good-looking white kids. There are no gay teens in his movies, and he uses the epithet "fag" regularly in his scripts. Handicapped people and non-white characters are played for stereotypical laughs. "Curly Sue" and "Dutch" seemed to indicate he was drifting; after "Home Alone" he dropped out, taking his zillions of dollars with him and never directing again to my knowledge. Maybe that's why his teen movies still have so much punch: they were made by a filmmaker going through his own creative adolescence--but then he never tried to grow up.
I was 18 and in my first year of Uni when The Breakfast Club came out. I had seen all John Hughes's movies but the Breakfast Club seemed to be an encapsulation of my high school experience. While not really falling into any particular "type" I found something to relate to in all the characters. I have recently revisited this movie with my teenage daughters and they absolutely love it!!
The only thing that bugs me now (it didn't bother me back in 85) is that Claire feels the need "make over" Allison even though Andy notices her before Claire's ministrations. I know the point is Allison doesn't need that thick black eyeliner but does she really need pink lipstick, blush and a bow? It kinda ruins the message of accepting people for who they are.
But I can get past that. One of my all time favourite movies!