Teen Directors II:
John Hughes
by
Ross M. Miller
Miller Risk Advisors
www.millerrisk.com
July 14, 2008
If single person is responsible for turning teen
movies into a separate genre, it is John
Hughes, the genre's king. Hughes started as a screenwriter and
scored a hit early in the 1980s with National
Lampoon's Vacation (which had the two teenage children in it)
and soon became a writer/director, making teenagers the centerpiece of
his films.
The secret to John Hughes' success is that he takes
teens seriously. With minor exceptions that were noted in the previous
commentary, earlier teen movies focused more on teens' bodies than their
minds.
Hughes' first two teen movies, Sixteen
Candles ("16C") and The
Breakfast Club ("TBC") were a package deal. Hughes
wanted to do TBC, but had to do 16C first to get it made. While 16C is a
perfectly good Hughes film, it was TBC that really get Hughes noticed.
The Breakfast Club had many of the ingredients
of a typical Broadway play of the time, only with teenage characters
instead of the usual neurotic adults. At its core, the film is an
extended group therapy session in which the psychiatrist has left his
patients to their own devices. Such a movie could easily go very wrong,
but Hughes arguably manages to pull everything off.
There are two reasons that TBC works. First, rather
than yield to the temptation to make all five characters equal in
importance, Hughes, a fine screenwriter, makes the Bender character
(played by Judd Nelson)
the force that propels the movie. While Nelson lacks the acting chops of
a Robert Downey Jr.,
who tended to get bit roles in other Brat
Pack movies, Nelson does fine as the edgy "criminal" in
the film. The second reason that TBC works is the #1 hit song "Don't
You (Forget About Me)," which was written specifically for the
movie. While the song itself did not add that much to the movie, it was
made into a popular video that incorporated clips from the movie that
would double as a free movie ad on MTV.
A deeper reason for the success of TBC and the
emergence of teen movies is that society had turned teenagers into
miniature adults. The dysfunctional American family is the character
lurking in the wings of the 1980s teen movie. Family problems dominate
the TBC therapy session. While the 1960s beach party movies were
decidedly middle-to-working class California affairs, John Hughes takes
us to the nouveaux riche living in the Chicago 'burbs. We cannot give
Hughes credit for this important change of venue, Risky
Business, which takes place in toney Glencoe,
came out two years before TBC and a year before 16C.
As someone who attended an inner-city public school
more than a dozen years pre-Breakfast Club, that movie is laughably
tame. Weekend detention was unheard of at my high school, probably
because no one would ever show up for it. A teacher who left the
detainees alone for even a moment might return to a most unpleasant
situation. I never got detention because for an honor student to be
sentenced there was tantamount to the death penalty. (The only time I
can remember staying after school was in my 12th grade honors math class
when the entire class had to stay after for some trivial infraction that
I can no longer recall.)
The Breakfast Club is a very good movie, but it
is not a great one. John Hughes would serve up his masterpiece with his
next teen movie, Ferris
Bueller's Day Off ("FBDO"). Although that movie uses
the standard plot devices that are taught in Screenwriting 101, it
transcends the formula that by doing something altogether radical: It
shows what a wonderful teenage (or even adult) day would be like. Matthew
Broderick is the perfect Bueller because he gives us a Ferris who
thoroughly enjoys being Ferris.
Beyond Broderick's Bueller, the movie has a dynamite
supporting cast, with the possible exception of Mia
Sara, who never really hits her stride in the nearly unfillable role
of Sloane Peterson, Bueller's lady friend. (The problem is that Sloane
has to be wonderful, yet not upstage Ferris.) Alan
Ruck is inspired as Bueller's buddy, Cameron. Ruck goes well beyond
the Curtis Armstrong variety
teen sidekick. Edie
McClurg, the principal's secretary who gets to deliver the
definitive description of everyone who considers Ferris a
"righteous dude," is just adorable. Jeffrey Jones (Beetlejuice),
Jennifer Grey (Dirty Dancing), and, Ben Stein (Nixon speechwriter) are
all spectacular as well.
The materialism that remains largely as subtext in TBC
is on full display in FBDO. Ferris and Cameron lounge around rooms that
are giant product placements for The
Sharper Image catalog. Getting back to economics for a minute, the
emergence of teenagers as major consumers in the '80s is undoubtedly
linked to the rise in movies about them that was so prominent in the
middle of that decade. While two working parents may have help cause the
problems chronicled in the Hughes films, it also provided teens with
beaucoup de discretionary income to spend on things like movie tickets.
Moreover, the expansion of movie viewing from theatres to cable and
video rentals was a big boon to the genre. Finally, given the pervasive
gloominess of 1970s films and the trendiness of affluence as
demonstrated by Ronald Reagan and J.R. Ewing, audiences were ready to
watch rich kids be protagonists.
The success of the Hughes films led of teen films
galore as well as early twenties films that followed the same general
formula and could accommodate aging Brat Packers whose credibility as
teenagers, which was sometimes minimal to begin with, had vanished
completely. Directors Rob Reiner and Savage Steve Holland would take a
minor actor in 16C, John Cusack, and make him a star of a series of
Hughes knockoffs in the middle of the 1980s. (Curtis Armstrong
solidifies his sidekick role in the two Holland films.) It was not until
the end of the 1980s that Cameron Crowe, the subject of the next
commentary, would make Cusack legendary.
Copyright 2008 by Miller Risk Advisors. Permission granted to
forward by electronic means and to excerpt or broadcast 250 words or less
provided a citation is made to www.millerrisk.com.
