Hughes' Best Film post-Breakfast Club
Posted on 09/26/2006 5:22:00 PM PDT by slowhand520
Some Kind of Republican Was John Hughes really in favor of teen rebellion? By Michael Weiss
Posted Thursday, Sept. 21, 2006, at 4:36 PM ET As far as adult teen whisperers go, John Hughes has enjoyed a remarkable staying power. Anyone who grew up in the '80s—or just caught the decade on reruns on rainy Saturday-afternoon television—can probably remember high school as much for its unique misery as for the Breakfast Club references it evokes. Hughes was in his 30s when he became successful, and he managed to make teen cinema intentionally funny and less condescending toward its core audience, whose lingo he either spoke or helped invent.
Hughes was also the first Balzac of homeroom, arguing that what stratified public education as much as looks, popularity, or natural herd instincts was net worth. Even those dismayed by the cheap sentimentality and wafer-thin plotlines of his films could at least appreciate seeing class presented as not something you skipped but were defined by. Hughes, though, was never quite the antagonist of the status quo he made himself out to be. He was actually a political conservative, and his portrayals of down-and-out youth rebellion had more to do with celebrating the moral victory of the underdog than with championing the underprivileged. In Hughes' hormonal vale of tears, snobs and elitists were the ones who ruined wealth for everybody else.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
rotflmao-that guy will always be the EPA to me.
Ditto. Gregory Peck.
He had slimer taken away in the cartoon and he tried to have him "executid", he splattered to chuncks and reformed. :D
Anywho, good read.
"Sure enough, there's Harold Ramis—another Lampoon alum, who directed Hughes' screenplay for Vacation—reflecting on the Chicago Seven hearings in a recent interview with the Believer: "They ran up and down the street, smashing car windows and stuff. My first reaction was, 'Yeah, right on!' But then I thought, 'Wait, I'm parked out there.' " The polite term for this gentle rightward shift when it happens to artists and intellectuals is embourgeoisement.
What a shame the philosopher of puberty never warned kids about that."
I'm glad John Hughes didn't use his films to try to shove philosophical life lessons down our throats.
Man is this article dripping with disdain or what?
Best soundtrack too!!
ping
When the great Doug Kenney left the Lampoon around '75, publisher Matty Simmons handed the reins to PJ O'Rourke, to the horror of the staff left-wingers like Tony Hendra and Sean Kelly. These guys have held grudges to this day against O'Rourke, always bad-mouthing him, while PJ was responsible for some of the funniest material they ever did, including the High School Yearbook Parody (with Kenney) and the brilliant Sunday Newspaper parody, among many, many other pieces. O'Rourke and Hughes were SO funny, you would literally shake with laughter. They were that good.
It goes without saying that Hendra and Kelly were never, ever funny. Intellectual, yes. Funny, no. I have the back issues to prove it.
Underwear for the Deaf. The Bulgemobile. "Time has passed him by, and so shall we."
If you leave, don't leave now
Please don't take my heart away
Promise me just one more night
Then we'll go our separate ways . . .
I haven't seen it in a while, but the bicyclist and the following lawn mowing ballet were memorable.
I wish Hughes would get back to doing his best material again. His kiddie films are really grating and subpar, and the best film he has done in the past 18 years is "Reach the Rock", which I doubt most folks around here have even seen or heard of.
I was always curious who selected the music for his movies? Did he or someone else did it. Where else could you hear the Smiths and New Order in a soundtrack.
his best film was "Planes,Trains,and Automobiles" in my opinion-it had humor but also real human emotion and the song playing at the end was "Every Time You Go"-Hall and Oates-what an inspired choice
I don't remember which parody it was (the one with the cheerleader without the panties), but something I found really interesting was the choice of the school sports mascot... A Kangaroo.
University of MO, Kansas City has "The Fighting Kangaroos!" People wonder why I break out in laughter whenever the talk about "The Roos!"
Mark
I always find pieces like this kind of funny for about a half page or so, then they start to get irritating when you realize how deeply this writer is marinated in second-rate popular culture, like a permanent graduate student at an equally second-rate University where they actually write theses on subjects like this.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
I didn't know that. But I am still in love with Eric Stoltz.
I am an UMKC alumni!
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