We’ve all seen them. The films that have helped us grow and feel better about who we are. The films that were us, the teenagers, the ones just trying to make their way through. Yes, the infamous John Hughes films. When going on a long-night binge watch of Academy Award speeches I came across the video from the 2010 Oscars where there was a tribute to the legendary John Hughes because it happened to be the year after he passed. After watching the montage of clips from his hits I came to realization that his films are timeless. The flicks that taught life lessons 31 years ago still happen to teach the same wisdom today.
Many people have said after Hughes' death that he didn’t get enough credit and I feel that. When you go back and look at all the films he either wrote, directed or produced, you’d be astonished. All the classic films you love, the films that make you remember your childhood, make you appreciate all the little things in life. His films always had this continuing packaged theme to them...always set in the suburbs of some town in Illinois, seeing as that is where he grew up. At the end they always achieved answering a pressing question the main character had about themselves or their life, and for the viewer it answered it too. Hughes didn’t make his films like every other filmmaker at that time, he didn’t include sex to just make it appealing, he put the issues everyone felt but was too scared to address up on a pedestal in the daylight for everyone to see.
In "Pretty in Pink," the main character Andy (played by Hughes teen princess Molly Ringwald) is embarrassed of her financial situation. At one time in the film she is ashamed and doesn’t even want to be driven home by the boy she’s pursuing. That is a subject no one ever wanted to make a film about even though there were teens out there who felt it. He was a genius. He knew what it was like to be a teen and live with all these questions and anxiety about yourself and who you are. And even worse not knowing who you are. Nothing he made was fabricated nor superficial, it was all true to Hughes and personal to who he was. In "The Breakfast Club," a classic, the film you cannot turn off once you see it on, he had that effect. It is said that one of the most heart wrenching emotional scenes in the film, the one where all the kids sit in the circle and talk about their lives, was not scripted. It shows the reality of it. It is what those teen actors have probably lived through and shows Hughes true vision shining through.
The music in his films have become a soundtrack to all of lives. We can’t listen to "Danke Schoen" or "Twist and Shout" without picturing Ferris Bueller on top of that parade float. When trying to get someone’s attention or repeating something we can’t help but say “Bueller, Bueller,” a phrase that has become engraved in our vocabulary as Americans. Don’t even get me started about "Home Alone," one of the greatest box office hits in history, a film that forever changed our childhoods. A Christmas holiday season without "Home Alone" just doesn’t exist.
I feel as if I could go on for hours about John Hughes and my love for his work. Call it an obsession, or whatever, I just feel as if his work is overlooked and underappreciated. Whoever you are, young, old, he made some sort of impression in your life and helped you a little bit...he did for all of us. Although in his last years he was very under the radar and made very few films I constantly wish he was still around...I feel like he could give us one last piece of insight that could help us all forever. So to you John, danke schoen.
