Tag: Pretty In Pink

snow, bridge, winter, scene

Personal Essay: December Is The Hardest Month

December is a glum month. The cozy, communal nature of this time, reinforced by a combination of weather, occasion, social ritual, the marking of time and season, plus the digital signifiers that Surely Everyone Is Having A Better Time Than You, means, for those lacking family and/or firm social network, a keen feeling of being forgotten, whether it is true or not.

Oh, but the very many will (and do) say, we’re all so busy. Never has a word been more overused, and December is a good reminder of the ease with which avoidance is casually wielded – for fun, for comfort, and yes, for an understandable want of calm. Sometimes people, even the most popular, actually-busy, super-hyper-social ones, simply want to pull a Garbo. I appreciate that, as someone who often, pre-pandemic, felt the desire to leave hot, crowded rooms, the feeling that I was being smothered made smile-laden socializing difficult and stressful; usually I’d continue smiling and guzzle down a gallon or two of water. Such smothering feels more pronounced now, intro/extrovert labels be damned; one falls between, around, over, and under such easy categorizations, in this, the Age Of Omicron. I want to spend time… but are you boosted? Let’s have dinner… but can we get a negative test first? I’d love for you to kiss me but… ? Having viewed casual contacts with some suspicion over the years, lately I feel a deep gratitude for any miniscule crumb of kindness; amidst pandemic, little things become big things.

I was reminded of this earlier in the week when I received close to one thousand well wishes for my birthday. While I would have loved to have thrown a big party, or travelled (or ideally done both, as I had done in years past), reality dictates otherwise. Living alone as a freelance writer and adjunct Professor means being ever-conscious of illness and its effects, financial and social, as much as physical. Thus does staying in and alone become less a choice than an exercise in logic. Choosing solitude, when one has the absolute privilege of people around them at any given moment (and never let it be forgotten that having people around – partners, family, associates, work colleagues, friendly neighbours, pets – is a very under-recognized form of privilege), is far and away a different thing from solitude as a lived, actual norm. The few in-person conversations I’ve had lately are accompanied by a counterpoint of constant anxiety, wondering and worrying if I’m talking too much, too loudly, too quickly, pontificating and pondering, desperate to be heard, and desperately happy for this one (poor) individual to really be sitting across from me. I am, I fear, turning into the Crazy Old Woman cliche, minus (so far) the cats.

“You’re different, that’s for sure,” my mother used to say, furrowing her eyebrows and judging, for the thousandth time, how it was she, one of those hyper-social, popular, widely-loved, togethery-with-all-sorts, could have possibly birthed… me. The thing she perhaps didn’t see, or more directly refused to admit until the very end, was her culpability: a single, beautiful, cultured woman in a grey, artless, firmly conformist environment could not possibly be anything other than an outsider. The most powerful lessons are those done through osmosis, and her position as a divorced (and again, gorgeous, glamorous, artsy, social) parent in a bleak Canadian suburban had an effect – how could it have been otherwise? Such an upbringing screws in a keen sense of individuality, of the pain of being an outsider, and its strange, strangely-experienced joys. If, her reasoning went, everyone was to settle for being “dowdy” (her word), well… she’d be the precise opposite, and damn them if they hated her for it (they did). To hell with the cost to her daughter. Those costs were indeed great but sometimes there were benefits. I could show up most everyone who’d mocked me/pushed me over in the playground/thrown snowballs at my head with ribbons of intricate piano playing sounds that always impressed adults, namely teachers. It was a talent which sometimes got me out of boring classes and into the cool, quiet environment of a tiny teacher’s lounge that happened to have a piano; it was always a treat to be plucked out of class and be told I could, for an hour or sometimes two, practise to my heart’s content. I can still remember my shop teacher’s face when he heard me one afternoon, the way he stopped and stared, dumbfounded.

“Has your mother talked to anyone about putting you in the gifted program?”

They said no. I already tried.

His eyes widened, but he was silent. Years later I ran into other teachers from that elementary era, and all of them, oddly enough (or not), said: “You really should have been in the gifted program, you know. I mean, we all said that.”

It was at my mother’s insistence that I took some classes with the gifted group and felt that I was being ferociously judged, fiercely rejected, in a more brutal manner than usual. You’re not one of us you plain-spoken, poorly-dressed imbecile. I remember the silent stares, the quiet eyerolls whenever I spoke (which wasn’t often; I was terrified). I wasn’t smart enough for them (or something), I wasn’t unique enough (or something), my work was (apparently) unoriginal; thus it was back to the land of the super-normals (or something) where I clearly didn’t fit in either. I could not possibly be a part of their club, or so their behaviour implied, repeatedly. I recognized that same anxiety in speaking with various academics, authors, managers and musicians over the years, and I can clearly count the times I didn’t feel I was being similarly judged. Not smart enough; not unique enough; stupid, unoriginal. Back to the land of normals; rinse, repeat.

Snippets of overheard conversations my mother had with close friends arrived with the sound of her sighs. She just didn’t know what to do with me. What I loved was considered “too” weird, “too” outside, “too” daring, even for the woman who had, once upon a time, tried so hard to fit in with a world that wasn’t going to accept her either; I think it hurt her to see me making the same sorts of efforts, and with the same sort of results. Her efforts to gain acceptance within the teensy-tiny bubble of small-town Canada were never going to be successful; so too, for her artsy, anti-social, book-and-music-loving daughter who had a predilection for doing things in her very own way, who’d been told by the “special” folk she wasn’t “special” enough, who learned how to hide everything behind masks of makeup, dresses, heels, who became adept at distraction and diversion, who contented herself to be the entertainment, to inspire desire and derision, envy and confusion, and of course, ostracization, exclusion, isolation. To clench jaw and smile at rejection. To give a middle finger with a bat of the eyelashes. It became second-nature; it still is.

There were eyerolls when I’d exit my high school history class early on Fridays; I was off to then-dingy New York. My mother had a subscription to the Met Opera; it wasn’t as fancy as everyone thought – we had seats in the gods – but no one in our little town knew or cared about such details. We were being fancy, snooty, pretentious; I was perceived as uppity, absurd, self-important.

“Have fun at the opera,” they’d sneer.

“Have fun at the mall,” I’d reply, slipping on my faux-fur coat over my ugly grey uniform.

Really, it wasn’t a question of my believing opera was somehow “elite” – I never thought it was; looking around at the Met on any given night, I’d see all sorts, dressed in all ways, and it was nice to feel part of a community where we could all come together and talk about this thing we all loved. How many excited conversations did my mother and I enjoy at intermission and post-performance, with people whose fashions mattered so much less to us than that they could speak about x singer in y performance with z  conductor; that, to us, was every bit as magical as what we had just experienced. How could any of my fellow students, in my crappy little town, possibly understand? I didn’t try to fit in with them; I used their cliched, outmoded perceptions of the art form I loved in a way that protected my own passions, musical ambitions included. Thus my teenage weekends weren’t filled with parties and dancing and snogs with boys I barely knew, but with the sounds of Tebaldi and Domingo and Pavarotti, dinners at little Manhattan restaurants (long since gone), trying on a much-needed new coat at Century 21, cocktails mixed in our hotel room before and after performances (my mother didn’t believe in mystifying alcohol), and oh, the happy expressions during and after every performance – the sighs, the exchanged looks, my mother’s quiet “aaach!” at hearing, or remembering various musical moments, sung or played. I hated coming back after such excursions; Monday morning became tearful. I did not want to face them.

“But we’ll be back in two months!” my mother would shout over her cassette of Maria Callas arias. “Put on some lipstick – you’ll feel better!”

Rejection and defiance are close bedfellows, as recent history attests; the constant feeling of being outside the perceived (usually strict) circles of perceived norms and related social interaction mean that head-tilting haughtiness, protective thought it may be, screws in the nails of an innate, proud different-ness which led, in some cases, to a terrible if perhaps predictable isolation. “If you send out the signals you don’t want to fit in,” pronounces the school principal  in the 1986 John Hughes film Pretty In Pink, “people will make sure you don’t.”

“That’s a beautiful theory,” retorts Andie (Molly Ringwald), maligned for her low socio-economic status as much as the unique fashion sense inspired by it. I loved that movie when it came out, not only for its style (I had wanted to be a fashion designer for years and still find myself sketching ideas for outfits to events I’ll probably never attend) but for its poor-girl-wins-for-being-weird theme. It’s one that is proven more and more within the realm of pure fantasy as a woman moves through life without hitting the predictable marks, rendering her invisible (or close to it), a position which not all of us have quite made peace with. The rise of digital media has created an algorithmically-dictated hierarchy of worth and attractiveness based on a youth that can only be conveyed through the erasure of physical indications of living – of experience, of endurance, possible wisdom. Difference comes with even sharper edges (deeper wrinkles, as it were) when one hits a certain age and is without family or close community; thus is one thrown into the bins of fetishistic sex fantasy or angry frump, with little if any room for (or interest in) nuance and all the fascinations such variance can (or should) afford. I am sure many perceive there to be something quite wrong, that my too-haughty shell  has led me here, that this is “the price” of such attitudes– a simple-minded calculation to smirk at. I didn’t expect my mother to die so young; neither did she. One of the last things she said to me six years ago (when she still had the strength to do so), was, “I’m sorry” – and it wasn’t just about that morning’s snappish behaviour, I knew; it was the same apology (the same words) uttered by my father at our final meeting eight years prior, an acknowledgement of wrongdoing that manifests on the face and in the eyes. I knew precisely what she meant, and she knew I knew.

“It’s okay,” I said, choking back tears. It had to be; she was dead three weeks later.

More than once I have written to close contacts that I don’t miss my mother, and it’s true, I don’t; that feeling changes in December, the most glum month, as I wrote, a month when being an outsider hurts in a way it doesn’t the rest of the year. Geography, and the cultural differences that such geography brings, can (does, in my case) make an immense difference, but of course there are a whole new set of circles and a far more knowable kind of separateness to be navigated, which is easier and more difficult, all at once. The feeling of being different never leaves, no matter the setting; it isn’t something to be celebrated, or indeed, something that should inspire any form of reaction at all. Different-ness, and its unmissable expression in life, can only be accepted, along with all of its itinerant branches, reaching like octopus arms across various facets of living, the one facet, which shows itself every December, is painful, for it is a reminder of lack. But so too is there reason to remember abundance.

The pandemic brought the worst of childish habits to the fore and social media gave such instincts a stage for amplification; recently I looked back on old postings (since deleted) with a mix of horror and fascination. Oh, the ways we continue to seek a validation we felt was always missing since childhood; oh, the means we have at our disposal to receive and encourage it. The performative aspects of social media have led to aspects of our private lives taking on the appearance of a shadow-play, stripped of the blood-and-guts messiness of real, authentic living. But oh, that real living is what is most missed; my mother made a fuss in December, the month of my birth, the month of her father and brother’s birth, the same month of their respective deaths. How to navigate such sadness with the miracle of giving birth (something I am told she never expected to do, which she did late in life, and amidst a hideous separation) – December was a loaded month for her, and it still is for me. Lately I walk around my tiny abode wishing for little more than the aroma of her annual baking: the almond crescents, the raspberry bars, the whipped shortbreads. Her frenzied gift-giving, not just to close contacts but to everyone in quotidian life – postal people, bank tellers, hairdressers, delivery drivers– was perhaps her own way to seek (and find) validation, to fill the perceived hole of her own outsider-ness, feel her presence was somehow, despite everything, valuable.

For every individual who took time to wish me a happy birthday this past Tuesday – to write on my wall, to send a kind note, to offer good wishes: thank you. Small things are big things – now, more than ever.

The Women Understand

Confession: I finally saw the classic 1980s movie The Breakfast Club in its entirety last week. I’d only ever seen it in bits and pieces before, like a giant, talky jigsaw; viewing it all the way through, uninterrupted, proved to be a revelation.

As a child of the 1980s, it’s strange to think this symbol of an era passed me by, because of all of John Hughes’ films, The Breakfast Club is perhaps the most celebrated, widely known, and deeply loved. It’s surreal seeing symbols from my generation being embraced -indeed, appropriated, worshipped, and idolized -by far younger generations. Following the movie’s screening, I combed through various websites and tweets, curious to gauge reaction, get a sense of the age of these new fans, and investigate how they expressed their love. The level of passion for a 28-year-old film, from a generation populated by those sometimes young enough to be my own kids (gulp), is nothing short of astonishing. Yes, the film is fascinating, funny, and captivating in its poetic simplicity as well as timeless in its themes -but I honestly did not expect the intense love from millenials that I found.

In the years since John Hughes’ untimely passing, I hadn’t thought much about his films, or his characters -or indeed, the chemistry of his ensembles, the genius behind his casting choices, or the thought-provoking subtext of his characters. At the time of writing my 2009 tribute to Hughes, I was floating in a sea of nostalgia. I recalled how Pretty In Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off made me feel then, as a kid -not now, an adult. While it’s strange to think I missed the TBC (and perhaps it’s a bit of a shame, because I was strangely oblivious to the cultural earthquake it created –thanks very much, MJ, Duran Duran, and childhood best friend), seeing it now, as an adult woman, has allowed a very unique insight into the nature of youthful infatuation versus adult attraction. While the “popular” boys of Hughes’ films have implied sexual histories, there’s precious little to indicate they enjoyed “it.” While that’s partly down to language -Hughes seriously toned down the vulgar vernacular that so characterizes teenaged boys -it’s also deeply related to how he portrayed female characters. Hughes consistently placed his “good” boys with supposedly “skanky” girls. It’s curious (and, looking back on them now, depressing) that sexually experienced females are portrayed as mean sluts.

Perhaps this was a symbol of the director’s identification (/fascination//obsession) with his (perennially virginal) female lead, a sort of latter-day outcast Elizabeth I, who was never allowed to be friends with “those”sorts of girls (if Ringwald’s character in TBC was, we never saw it). Andie’s buddy Jena in Pretty In Pink is a possible-maybe exception to this rule, though the nature of female-female relating in that film seems geared entirely toward Andie’s glaringly absent mother. Regardless of the “good” boys dating the “slutty” girls in Hughes’ movies, I get the sense now, watching them as an adult woman, that there is an implied (if very identifiable) subtext of the boys never really enjoying the sex they were getting -even though it happened to be with females who had considerable power on the social ladder and were aware of that power. The boys were getting it, not feeling it, and that was an important (if romantically teenaged) distinction in the world(s) Hughes created.

The act itself comes across as dirty or perhaps ridiculous (ie, The Geek or Long-Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles) -surely not pleasurable, but silly, reckless, something belonging to the (supposedly) joyless world of adulthood, and as a result, there’s something curiously sexless about the male characters; sure, that’s part of their innate charm -they are awkward teenagers, after all -but, viewing them from an adult perspective, it’s still curious. Hughes was portraying class-challenged kids (his forte), but the sexual dynamics, and the realism of their energy, are of particular importance for to the works’ continued watchability; casting is central to this energy. Michael Schoeffling, Andrew McCarthy, Eric Stotlz, Matthew Broderick, and Emilio Estevez, as they appear in Hughes’ movies, are all boyish, pretty, and entirely unthreatening. In The Breakfast Club, Estevez’ Andy fits in perfectly with the handsome-boy archetype Hughes was developing -heightening the idealizing is Andy’s being an athlete (albeit unwillingly) -and proves himself a nice guy in making himself available as a confessional figure in whom the shy Alison can trust. All these male characters (who appeared in Hughes’ films between 1984 and 1987) have two important things in common: conventional good looks and moral fortitude. You could take Jake, Blaine, Keith, Ferris, or Andy home to mom, and mom would surely approve.

The Breakfast Club‘s John Bender however, is a different breed. Unsettling and damaged, he’s the guy you’d never take home to mom. But despite – or because -of this, I think Bender is far and away Hughes’ most interesting creation -and perhaps the one best-suited to an audience beyond the one intended. Featured between Sixteen Candles (1984) and Pretty In Pink (1986) (The Breakfast Club was released in 1985), the role was originally meant to be played by John Cusack, but eventually went to then-25-year-old Judd Nelson, who was so committed to the role he emulated “Bender” between takes and ad-libbed some of the film’s most beloved moments and lines. He brings a mesmerizing, deeply authentic sexual heat unlike any other actor in the Hughes canon. It is certainly not a teenaged vibe (at least to my mind), and while it’s fair criticism that quality lessens the “realism” of the film Hughes was so keen on capturing, I’d argue it’s greatly contributed TBC‘s enduring popularity for close to three decades.

Unlike Hughes’ other male leads (including Estevez), Nelson is not conventionally handsome (though very striking, he is certainly not from the same mould as model-turned-actor Michael Schoeffling), and his character is clearly not morally upstanding. Nelson transcends his character’s wrong-side-of-the-tracks cliche, using charm, smarm, a jangly physicality and greatly contrasting speaking volumes (shouting/silence); his attractiveness is intensified as a result. The ensuing soupcon of tangibles and intangibles (bad attitude, tender vulnerability, physical prowess, louche fashion and verbal dexterity) is something online fangirls understand, just as they try to analyze him and daydream about his future with Claire. It’s interesting how Hughes gives short shrift to sex appeal and its role in attraction; The Breakfast Club, interestingly, hints at just this. Claire’s correcting Bender in his pronunciation of “Moliere” is fascinating (Ringwald’s flashing smile suggests, to me anyway, far more than mere friendliness), and in another memorable scene, we see the “Princess” looking through the various photos of females the “Criminal” keeps in his wallet. He simultaneously examines the contents of her purse, and the two converse. He asks her why she carries so much stuff around; she asks him why he has so many girlfriends. Claire eventually tells him she never throws anything away, to which he neatly responds, “Neither do I.” The look on Nelson’s face here, similar to when Claire later visits him in the closet, is wonderful to behold. Voila, a Hughes character who clearly, unabashedly enjoys sex. Bravo!

There is a distinct (and refreshing) lack of innocence about Bender that goes far, far beyond the romantic “bad boy” image so popular in cinematic history (and which many fans revel in). This isn’t to say he isn’t sensitive -he is, clearly -or that he isn’t afraid -again, he clearly is, as are the others. But Bender is menacing -an angry, abusive, violent figure living in a violent situation, horrified at exposure of his own vulnerability but simultaneously dying to put it on a stage for attention. He is also sexually confident. When he’s hiding under the table, he sees Claire’s white-pantied crotch beneath her skirt, and, integrating both sexual and provocative instincts (perhaps correctly guessing at this point that she’s a virgin), moves his face between her legs before the mortified Claire kicks him, surely a perfect example of the repulsion/attraction principle at work. Bender openly questions others’ virginity and is looked up to, becoming a de facto leader of the “club” not only because of his detention experience, but, I suspect, because of his sexual experience. This, to my mind anyway, is in line with teenaged mores.

What’s more, Bender is able to use language in a way the others may not because of that experience -even when he’s only talking to himself. His joke as he crawls through the air duct, with its vulgar element of the “two foot salami” and the naked, poodle-carrying blonde, is left famously unanswered; it’s an interesting (and I think, genius) choice Nelson made in ad-libbing the punchline-free joke, with Bender bolstering his own confidence and soothing his nerves by referencing images with such clear sexual underpinnings. It reveals so much about Bender as a person -his past, his attitudes, his values, even, dare I say, his self-opinion.

That doesn’t necessarily mean he isn’t sexually confident, and it’s notable, therefore, that the character isn’t punished for his carnal confidence or knowledge (unless you count his abusive home environment), nor is he rewarded for them (though some may argue the virginal Claire is his reward, but it’s interesting their overture is left purposely unresolved); he is, rather, used as a symbol for the alienation all of the characters feel, his raised fist, both defiant and victorious, closing the film. Might he also be an unintentional beacon of a burgeoning sexual confidence in the others? And can he, through associating with the virgin Claire, “redeem” himself? Of what?! Should he be sorry about his past deeds? Should he burn all those girlfriend photos? Should he go hawk Claire’s earring? Some contemporary fans seem devoted to the idea of romance between the two (or not), and though my little teenaged heart sighs at the thought, my adult heart scowls.

It’s rather ironic an image of Bender closes The Breakfast Club; never again would film audiences see such an unapologetic, likeable, sexually potent figure in a John Hughes movie. Sadly (if unsurprisingly), Hughes never cast Nelson again. (One can only conjecture over why.) Does all this now mean I don’t enjoy Hughes’ movies? Certainly not. I look at old favorites like Pretty In Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as warm, comforting old chums, momentos from the “woolly cotton brains” of youth. Twenty-first century teens, saturated as they are with internet culture, with easy access to porn, having grown up with a myriad of saucy images and sexting, feel an affinity with his work (especially TBC) and it lives on in various ways, through various media. Perhaps, if I’d seen the movie when it came out, my reaction would’ve been similarly worshipful. Then again, as a youngin, I always preferred the smooth, pretty boys, the ones with the nice cars and the good manners who I could bring home. I loved Duckie because he was sweet, silly, and protective of his best friend; I loved Ferris for his posh tastes and intelligence. Fantasy was fun, but those fantasy figures had to conform to a certain standard of acceptability in my social and familial circles. No creeps were allowed, especially sexy, dangerous creeps. Eeeeek.

It’s only been with time and experience -life -that I’ve thrown out ideas around acceptability and come up with my own definitions. These days, my head has been turned, not by aesthetics or fantastical ideas, but by that undefinable quality that manifests itself as a mix of confidence, charm, curiosity, respect, and knowingness. Everyone gets older, and in the process, everyone gets clearer on what they want in life and love.

(via)

What happened on Monday? That’s the question everyone who’s seen The Breakfast Club asks. Forget romance! My rose-colored glasses of teendom are long gone; I hope Bender ditched class and paid a visit to the Principal’s wife. I’d expect nothing less -or more. Neither should you. Life goes on… carpe diem. Don’t you forget.

(Photo credits: Emilio Estevez as Andrew Clark via; Andrew McCarthy as Blaine McDonnagh via; Eric Stoltz as Keith Nelson via)

He Understood. He Really Did.

This is turning into the summer my youth died.

First, my favourite singer as a child passed away last month, and now comes word my favourite filmmaker as a teen is gone.

John Hughes died today at the far-too-young age of 59. Filmgoers of a certain age and generation will remember him for classics like The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Some Kind of Wonderful, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and Weird Science. he also wrote or co-wrote the hugely successful Home Alone series.

Hughes was the man behind two of my favourite films: Pretty In Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I felt a real kinship with the awkward misfits and gawkish outsiders that populated Hughes’ world. He was a champion of the underdog, but not in a patronizing, grossly over-moralizing way. Some of his characters -and lines -may have veered into cartoon territory at points, but those of us who went off to our local mall cinemas back then didn’t care; Hughes spoke for us through Andie and Ducky, and Ferris and Cameron.

As an entirely-non-confident teen girl, I especially appreciated his casting of Molly Ringwald in so much of his work; while pretty, she wasn’t model-esque and perfect in appearance, and she never came off for a minute as being pretentious. She seemed… awkward and unsure, kind of like me, still feeling her way into her own physicality and personality. Her portrayal -as well as the writing -of Andie in Pretty In Pink was spot-on when it came to exploring the crap of being the lone daughter of a single parent with limited resources. I could relate to Andie’s embarrassment at where she lived, her awkwardness going after the rich boy, her pain in missing an absent parent, and her exhileration in moments where self-expression triumphed. It was simply a wonderful film for me, and a real moment that marked my path through youth-dom.

Then, of course, there was Ferris Bueller. The character -indeed the film -was a radical departure for Hughes’ style, in that it portrayed a popular teen -someone who came from the supposed “right” side of the tracks, who was well-liked, and generally set up to be hugely successful in life -going about his day avoiding the drudgeries of school. It played like a teen fantasy, with an air of high-class awesomeness I still adore: Ferris, Sloan and Cameron take a classic Ferrari to downtown Chicago, where they go to the Art Institute of Chicago (where, among other works, they admire Seurat’s famous painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte in the process), visit the stock exchange, have lunch in a super-posh restaurant and join a street parade. Not too many teens have tastes that sophisticated (I did, natch -which made Ferris that much more awesome to me. I half-expected a scene in which he went to the opera!).

Ferris is wise beyond his years, bored of the high school scene, bored with unchallenging work, and eager to challenge the impotent idiocy he sees surrounding him. Sure, there is a huge streak of nihilism to Ferris… but there’s something incredibly likeable about him too. He’s faithful to his friends. He’s willing to take the fall. He probably did marry Sloan. And he probably sang in many more parades. The sheer joyousness with which Ferris approaches life is awesome. No wonder Cameron says “he can do anything…”. Yeah dude. That’s the point. Now go do it yourself, the movie -indeed, Hughes’ career -urged. Go. You’re you, that’s awesome, go.

There’s something fabulously celebratory about Hughes’ work, a quality I still find captivating, even now, more than twenty years after seeing his work for the first time. His observations, written and directed from a teen point of view, were unique for the moment, and so tied to a specific time and place. But like a lot of good art, they’re also timeless. Like many today, I feel like I’m mourning a friend. And I’m mourning the man who understood what it was like to be a teenager. He really got it. There will never be another John Hughes. Thank you, sir.

I do have a test today. That wasn’t bullshit.
It’s on European socialism.
I mean really, what’s the point?
I’m not European. I don’t plan on being European.
Who gives a crap if they’re socialists?
They could be fascists anarchists.
It wouldn’t change the fact I don’t own a car.
-Ferris Bueller

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