In case you don’t know who John Hughes is...well, have you seen: Vacation, Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty In Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful, Uncle Buck, Home Alone1&2?
Before you were a jaded, workaholic, aggressive, frustrated adult you were a teenager, and you probably saw most if not all of these movies if you are in your 40’s. These movies and soundtracks defined our 'puberty-years' and gave being a teenager some credit for something more then zit cream, eye rolls and weak upper lip mustaches.
The 80’s were kind of fucked up. There was a lot of money due to free flowing banks and credit cards- the bubble hadn’t burst yet, to remind us all that you did have to pay back those credit cards at some point. When you are a teenager, bills aren’t your problem, your heart, soul and loins are!
Driving in the backseat of my best friends mother’s silver Cadillac Cimarron, heading to godforsaken hicksville Georgia from the cultural armpit of Indiana in the summer of 1986 my soundtrack was all John Hughes inspired. I felt “Left of Center,” and my high school days were going “Round,Round,”...everyday walking down the hallowed halls of Munster High School, constantly nervous about my developing bod, my “look”, my stature in the halls, I was in a state of “Shell Shock”- my pillow knew tears. These were all songs collected for the soundtrack of "Pretty in Pink" by John Hughes.
John Hughes wrote our words, picked the perfect music and gave us a good laugh at ourselves when we so desperately needed one, (ever try to make a teenager laugh, it ain’t easy)!
Fast forward to...my early 20’s.
The 90’s have come and they weren’t all we thought they were gonna be in the 80’s. I’m in the formerly flooded, basement of my pianists apartment trying to put music “act” together. His day job is teaching karate to rich kids and he comes home all depressed because he was at singer Richard Marx’s house and he’s jealous. Richard has the hot wife from "Flash Dance" / "Stayin Alive" Cynthia Rhodes and a great career and he, Ron Blade (stage name) is playing piano for a nobody like me in his moldy hole of a home.
“We gotta find a way to make it Cal, seriously, I can’t keep living like this,” he power chugs a gatorade with a splash of vodka, “ I guess I could become a solider of fortune?” He said wistfully, he always forgets...he was never in the military, he only went to military school.
Ron went on to explain; the sun was setting, and he saw a man in his bathrobe with what looked to be a cocktail, standing at the edge of his back terrace staring out at the lavish north shore neighborhood he lived in, there was something sad about him. Ron said, “he looked how I felt.”
Next week Ron and I meet up to practice our set for a gig at poetry slam (it was a new trend in Chicago in 2009, and they wanted music to break up the poets...incase folks were falling asleep into their drinks).
After our practice, we were finishing off a bottle of tequila, the basement still smelled like a cave of old cheese, “remember that neighbor of Richard Marx I told you about?”
“Yes Ron, who looked like you felt,” I nodded pouring myself another shot. “It was fuckin John Hughes! The director! Ya, know Molly Ringwald- Judd Nelson...Breakfast Club, St Elmo’s Fire... He just fuckin died!”
I was so in shock, I took another shot and chased it was some flat diet Dr. Pepper. “St. Elmo’s wasn’t his.” I replied in a daze.
Every generation has their stars...for me it was Princes Diana, Jackie Kennedy Onasis, Harold Ramis, people who define an era...and John Hughes was one of these luminaries.
He really was his characters because that’s what happens when you write...you create a person out of thin air and make them real, and some how they are a part of you.
I was such a gaping wound of a teenager...and John Hughes was like a therapist, big brother... or more aptly my Oz. He said, “I listen to kids. I respect them. I don’t discount anything they have to say just because they are only 16 years old.”
I had heard that he didn’t feel his films or his writing was appreciated in the way he thought that they should be and was disgusted at the baby boomer hypocrisy that was culminating from his generation.
He left a legacy that will transcend the pettiness of the 90’s and 2000’s... We all long for our teenage summer, the Say Anything, Shyest Time, I Go Crazy- days and nights of sleepovers, big dreams, long walks across town with no destination but to hope and dream that someday we will be as loved and revered for what we are...what we leave behind...our thumb print on this big blue marble of the world.
The song that John named his movie after- ...”Don’t You Forget About Me,” will live in our forever teenage summer memory of him.