I can't relate to John Hughes films

[ForrestGump]

I guess I mean the '80s 'brat pack' films, because he also did the first three "Vacation" movies, "The Great Outdoors," "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles," "Nate and Hayes," "Mr Mom," and "Weird Science" (a teen movie, but a lot different than those supposedly harder-edge Brat Pack films). I'm talking about "Some Kind of Wonderful" (I think...I can't even remember what this one's about), "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," " "Pretty in Pink," "The Breakfast Club," and "Sixteen Candles." I was going to include "St Elmo's Fire," but it turns out that this one was actually made by someone else, some kind of John Hughes imitator. I don't think I ever saw any of his '80s teen movies at the theatre, and I'm not even sure which ones I've seen because they seem so interchangeable.

I've heard people say that his films are great because you cna relate to the characters. Not me. Not even. I can;t even relate to them as a collective composite. "The Breakfast Club," for example, I found as contrived as could be and I had no real empathy with or sympathy for any of the characters...for one, nobody I went to high school with was like any of those petulant trendies. And I kind of like bits of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," but -- much as I've liked Matthew Broderick in other things -- Ferris is, at heart, a supercilious, smarmy little smart alec of the kind I'd love to deck rather forcefully.

I love a lot of the '80s movies, but his just weren't my thing. My kind of "coming-of-age" movies were things like the brilliant "Breaking Away" and "The Karate Kid."

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

1. This post is a joke right?

Oh I get it!!! Ok, here I'll play:

Yeah man I hate it when people diss on Ishtar and Gigli and stuff.

HATAZ!!!

[qnr]

4. "Tellin' The Truth Can Be Dangerous Business" ... n/t

[ForrestGump]

12. Nope - actually serious

Bring me the head of Ferris Bueller.

[Zomby Woof]

2. Barry Levinson

I think his Baltimore films, especially "The Diner", were among the best of the 80's coming of age movies.

I agree about Hughes... they are always movies about rich white teens in Chicago suburbia, big houses, nice cars. I come from a lower-middle class background, a little rougher than the manufactured teen angst of Hughes. And no one acted like Judd Nelson, the token blue-collar asshole of his films.

[sundog]

3. Some Kind of Wonderful reached me more than any other movie of my youth..

and that's the troof.. but that's just me.

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

6. OMG I LOVE THAT MOVIE!!!

Me and Mr. Moonbeam could watch "Some Kind of Wonderful" ABOUT fifty seven hundred times in a row and STILL not get tired of it.

"My future looks pretty good on you..."

SWOON.

(Mr. Moonbeam has a thing for Mary Stuart Masterson...)

[sundog]

7. The best line is...

"It is better to be alone for the right reasons that with someone for the wrong ones."

This is a line I heard at 16 & lived by.

I watched the movie again recently & it was crazy how so much of it still was relevant. I felt like I had managed to stay true to myself.

In other words, I didn't sell out. :)

[NamVetsWeeLass]

5. And the collective IQ drops a few points at the mention of ...

Dogma.... Jay and Silent Bob went out west to be the "Blunt Connection" in Shermer, Ill. That is the town in all the Hughes Movies... I still think one quote in that movie is one of the best ever in a weird way.... "Which I can't even watch with this Tubby Bitch anymore...." (Silent Bob apparently has a soft side, LOL)

[BigMcLargehuge]

8. I am from the generation that those films are supposed to represent

and I hate them too. Mrs. McLargehuge loves them, me, I'd rather masturbate with a handfull of roofing nails than sit through 16 candles, Pretty in Pink, any of the Vacation movies (except Christmas Vacation which I stomach exactly once a year, Christmas Eve), the Breakfast fucking Club, Ferris friggin Beuller or any of the others.

I hated the people in school who were like his characters and I hate his characters.

Give me Cameron Crowe, Fast Times at Ridgemont High was MUCH closer to average teen life in the 80s, at least mine and all my friends. Fuck, Meatballs was closer to reality than anything spewed out of John Hughes brain.

Ironically, I married a woman who is a Molly Ringwald lookalike...

[Zomby Woof]

9. 'Fast Times' - Crowe actually went undercover in '78-'79

His book the movie was based on is even grittier and less 'sell-out' than the movie. He looked younger than he was, so with a principal's cooperation, a 22 year old Crowe masqueraded as a senior in a southern CA high school, and wrote about what he saw.

Has a lot to do with why you relate to it more than Hughes and his dreck.

[ReadTomPaine]

11. Interesting... it does explain a lot.

Hadn't heard that about Fast Times before... Haven't seen the film since it was in the theaters. Does it hold up?

RTP

[ReadTomPaine]

10. "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" is a surprisingly complicated film.

It's deceiving to think of it as a teen comedy - there are a lot of dark undertones and subtext. Very interesting film.

RTP