Five Great John Hughes Moments - Monkey See Blog : NPRSincerely, John Hughes
I was babysitting for my mom's friend Kathleen's daughter the night I wrote that first fan letter to John Hughes. I can literally remember the yellow grid paper, the blue ball point pen and sitting alone in the dim light in the living room, the baby having gone to bed.
I poured my heart out to John, told him about how much the movie mattered to me, how it made me feel like he got what it was like to be a teenager and to feel misunderstood.
(I felt misunderstood.)
I sent the letter and a month or so later I received a package in the mail with a form letter welcoming me as an "official" member of The Breakfast Club, my reward a strip of stickers with the cast in the now famous pose.I was irate.
I wrote back to John, explaining in no uncertain terms that, excuse me, I just poured my fucking heart out to you and YOU SENT ME A FORM LETTER.
That was just not going to fly.
He wrote back.
"This is not a form letter. The other one was. Sorry. Lots of requests. You know what I mean. I did sign it."
He wrote back and told me that he was sorry, that he liked my letter and that it meant a great deal to him. He loved knowing that his words and images resonated with me and people my age. He told me he would say hi to everyone on my behalf.
"No, I really will. Judd will be pleased you think he's sexy. I don't."
I asked him if he would be my pen pal.
He said yes.
"I'd be honored to be your pen pal. You must understand at times I won't be able to get back to you as quickly as I might want to. If you'll agree to be patient, I'll be your pen pal."
For two years (1985-1987), John Hughes and I wrote letters back and forth. He told me - in long hand black felt tip pen on yellow legal paper - about life on a film set and about his family. I told him about boys, my relationship with my parents and things that happened to me in school. He laughed at my teenage slang and shared the 129 question Breakfast Club trivia test I wrote (with the help of my sister) with the cast, Ned Tanen (the film's producer) and DeDe Allen (the editor). He cheered me on when I found a way around the school administration's refusal to publish a "controversial" article I wrote for the school paper. And he consoled me when I complained that Mrs. Garstka didn't appreciate my writing.
"As for your English teacher…Do you like the way you write? Please yourself. I'm rather fond of writing. I actually regard it as fun. Do it frequently and see if you can't find the fun in it that I do."
He made me feel like what I said mattered.
"I can't tell you how much I like your comments about my movies. Nor can I tell you how helpful they are to me for future projects. I listen. Not to Hollywood. I listen to you. I make these movies for you. Really. No lie. There's a difference I think you understand."
"It's been a month of boring business stuff. Grown up, adult, big people meetings. Dull but necessary. But a letter from Alison always makes the mail a happening thing."
"I may be writing about young marriage. Or babies. Or Breakfast Club II or a woman's story. I have a million ideas and can't decide what's next. I guess I'll just have to dive into something. Maybe a play."
"You've already received more letters from me than any living relative of mine has received to date. Truly, hope all is well with you and high school isn't as painful as I portray it. Believe in yourself. Think about the future once a day and keep doing what you're doing. Because I'm impressed. My regards to the family. Don't let a day pass without a kind thought about them."
There were a few months in 1987 when I didn't hear from John. I missed his letters and the strength and power and confidence they gave me and so I sent a letter to Ned Tanen who, by that time, was the President of Paramount Pictures (he died earlier this year). In my letter I asked Mr. Tanen if he knew what was up with John, why he hadn't been writing and if he could perhaps give him a poke on my behalf.
He did.
I came home from school soon after to find an enormous box on my front porch filled with t-shirts and tapes and posters and scripts and my very own Ferris Bueller's Day Off watch.
And a note.
"I missed you too. Don't get me in trouble with my boss any more. Sincerely, John Hughes."
Fast forward.
1997. I was working in North Carolina on a diversity education project that partnered with colleges and universities around the country to implement a curriculum that used video production as an experiential education tool. On a whim, I sent John a video about the work we were doing. I was proud of it and, all these years later, I wanted him to be proud too.
Late one night I was in the office, scheduled to do an interview with a job candidate. Ten minutes or so into the call it was clear that he wasn't the right guy, but I planned to suffer through.
Then the phone rang.
1…2…3…4…a scream came from the other room and 1…2…3…my boss Tony was standing in my doorway yelling, "John Hughes is on the phone!!"
I politely got off the phone with the job candidate who was no longer a candidate and
Hit. Line. Two.
"Hi, John."
"Hi, Alison."
We talked for an hour. It was the most wonderful phone call. It was the saddest phone call. It was a phone call I will never forget.
John told me about why he left Hollywood just a few years earlier. He was terrified of the impact it was having on his sons; he was scared it was going to cause them to lose perspective on what was important and what happiness meant. And he told me a sad story about how, a big reason behind his decision to give it all up was that "they" (Hollywood) had "killed" his friend, John Candy, by greedily working him too hard.
He also told me he was glad I had gotten in touch and that he was proud of me for what I was doing with my life. He told me, again, how important my letters had been to him all those years ago, how he often used the argument "I'm doing this for Alison" to justify decisions in meetings.
Tonight, when I heard the news that John had died, I cried. I cried hard. (And I'm crying again.) I cried for a man who loved his friends, who loved his family, who loved to write and for a man who took the time to make a little girl believe that, if she had something to say, someone would listen.
Thank you, John Hughes. I love you for what you did to make me who I am.
Sincerely, Alison Byrne Fields.John Hughes never won an Oscar. He really never won awards at all. He made mainstream, popular entertainment. But for a period of time in the late 1980s, he made a series of movies, mostly about teenagers, that people still watch, still love, and still quote. And those movies have never really been replaced, because the guy knew something. These five moments are the best explanation I have of what it is he knew.
1. "Never had one lesson." There are many more famous moments in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but none is as important as Ferris (Matthew Broderick) squeaking incompetently away on a clarinet shortly after getting rid of his parents for the day, then leaning forward and declaring — in the fourth-wall-breaking style of the film — "Never had one lesson!"
Unlike a lot of the kids at the center of Hughes films, Ferris Bueller isn't an outcast; he's at ease everywhere. So if he'd conned his way into staying home to make trouble or play video games — or, for that matter, to do nothing — he would just be a brat.
But from the start, he is skipping school because he genuinely believes he has better things to do than attend high school, which is an awfully difficult premise to entirely deny. Skipping school so you can stay in your house isn't really a quest; it's just skipping school. Ferris wants something bigger than school.
John Hughes movies were very good at putting school in its place. Everything isn't about yearbook and cheerleading; kids have inner lives of legitimate importance, and not only with regard to dating. Sometimes those inner lives demand a day spent with your friends, watching baseball and seeing great art, instead of answering to your name in homeroom.
Four more, after the jump...
2. "This is what my girlfriend would look like without skin." In the 1987 romance Some Kind Of Wonderful, you get a classic triangle: Boy (Eric Stoltz), Boy's Overlooked Best Friend (Mary Stuart Masterson), Boy's Object Of Desire (Lea Thompson). The movie is a lovely execution of a very simple story, but what makes it especially good is that everybody in it gets to be a person — not just the three corners of the triangle, but also Duncan (Elias Koteas), who comes on the scene as a menacing, leather-clad bully and ends up as an ally.
At one point, as Duncan and Keith (Stoltz's character) sit in detention together, they discover they're both interested in art. Duncan shows Keith an impressively realistic drawing of a skeleton with spiky hair. "This is what my girlfriend would look like without skin," he says matter-of-factly.
Hughes specialized in these cross-clique friendships — everybody in The Breakfast Club, Jake and Farmer Ted in Sixteen Candles — and he wrote at least one in almost all of these observant high-school stories. They were part of his way of humanizing and sympathizing with everyone, not just the traditional outcast heroes.
3. The She's Having A Baby montage. This one, you can see for yourself. The uneven 1988 romance-drama-comedy, starring Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern, was packed with wild pendulum swings in tone, including frequent lapses into fantasy.
But late in the movie comes this sucker-punch of a montage, featuring Bacon fretting helplessly as the doctors work on safely delivering his new baby, accompanied by the Kate Bush song "This Woman's Work" — which has since landed in countless TV montages, not one of them nearly as effective.
It's got a few stumbles (could have done without that carefully lit single tear, I think), but it works. And it's unabashedly sentimental in a way that has nothing to do with the writing of clever, arch dialogue for teenagers; having a big, hokey heart did a lot to cut the effect of that dialogue, and nowhere is that big, hokey heart more on display than here.
4. The end of Sixteen Candles. The wish-fulfillment movie done perfectly. Not every Hughes ending seemed right — the end of Pretty In Pink feels phony and unearned, and so all the charm of that movie is in the middle. But the end of Sixteen Candles? Well. Poor Sam has had her birthday forgotten and her underwear shown off by a geek; then her sister takes too many muscle relaxers on her wedding day and forgets her veil, and Sam has to run back for it and misses the sendoff. So she has a well-earned sense that she is the unluckiest person ever.
And then there's the cars-parked-at-the-wedding part, and her crush is standing there, and he ushers her into his red car. And wonderfully, her father wordlessly urges her to forget the boring old reception and go for a drive. It's kind of ... implausible, really, in just about every way. They don't even know each other, they've never had a real conversation, she's in her bridesmaid's dress. But none of it matters.
You hear a lot about how Hughes understood teenagers and took their problems seriously, and all of it is true, all of it is important. But he also had fantastic commercial instincts. He knew how to put together a preposterously corny moment of "What if it all came true?" packaged especially for teenage girls — right down to the sports car — and serve it up in a manner that would make it iconic and beloved.
5. Oh, The Breakfast Club. Where to begin? It's such a ridiculous movie, really — the Judd Nelson scenery-chewing and boot-burning, the Ally Sheedy nymphomania declarations, poor Paul Gleason as the principal who actually has to fight Judd Nelson? Who could take this seriously?
And yet ... it lasted, too. It really should not have. The rich girl had sushi for lunch? We're doing makeovers? There's a Cap'n Crunch sandwich? "Make me a turkey pot pie"?
See, that's the trick. I don't get it, but I know it. All of it. From many, many viewings stretching back to 1985. In many ways, I think it's the weakest of these movies creatively, because it was trying so hard and taking itself so seriously, but it might be the one I've seen the most. You see what I mean: He knew something.
For that reason, maybe the moment from The Breakfast Club that makes the point most honestly is the silliest one: the discovery that the library is wired with some kind of DJ booth that permits the blasting of music throughout the stacks (because what high-school library wouldn't install giant speakers and keep plenty of LPs handy?). Which is followed by ... the big dance sequence.
When I dug it up online, I recognized the music.
