Awkward Commas

bonerparty:

R.I.P John Hughes.

Re: John Hughes, initially my thoughts on his death were kind of like everyone’s with Michael Jackson.  Sure he was great at one point in the eighties, but what had he done for us since Home Alone 1?  Even for someone like me who was a little too young to really have “grown up” on his movies and pretty much discovered all the important ones in my freshman and sophomore years of high school, that was still almost eight years ago since he had any direct impact on my (entertainment) life.

But then I thought about it some more.  Sixteen Candles is one of my favorite comedies of all time, even with all the racisty and rapey stuff in it.  Pretty in Pink is amazing and more or less introduced me to the Smiths, New Order, and Otis Redding.  And for a kid from the suburbs, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off presents pretty much that same perfect image of Chicago that someone has when you live close to it, but never really in it.

Then I think about why I’m getting/I’ve gotten into the entertainment business.  And it is essentially to make movies or television like the films John Hughes’ made in the 1980s.  They spoke to me as I saw them at the start of high school.  Sure, they presented this weirdly innocent view of the Chicago suburbs, even when kids were smoking pot in Saturday detention or throwing a crazy party with a cyber babe, but because I lived (and continue to live) this extremely quite life for a young person, all of those things resonated with me.  More importantly, they felt honest.  And every single time I put my pen to some paper, that is all I’m going for.  Honesty.

It’s a shame that John Hughes didn’t continue to make great films as he continued to get older (and at least he had the good notion to use a fake name on some of the more pitiful screenplays that have since been attributed to him), but maybe that was a good thing.  It allows us to think of that ten year span where he could do almost no wrong.  And without those, there would be no Freaks and Geeks or Rushmore.  And a world without those or Vacation or Sixteen Candles or Planes, Trains & Automobiles is one that I wouldn’t want to be in.