A really nice piece by Matt Zoller Seitz, with a couple of clips. I think I saw Ferris Bueller 5 times in the movie theatre, on its original release. I basically couldn’t stop going. The funniest thing was that I kept running into Mitchell at the movie theatre – we weren’t really friends yet, this was the summer BEFORE our friendship exploded into the universe. But it got to be a joke. I’d be going to Ferris Bueller for the third time, or whatever, and there Mitchell would be in line at the theatre – and he was ALSO going to see Ferris Bueller again. Once I was walking towards the theatre, and I saw Mitchell, standing right up against the glass, looking at me, and laughing, his eyes were crazy, like, “Are you actually going to see the same movie I’m seeing – AGAIN?” It was that kind of movie. Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles were big deals, too – but I’ve always been a Ferris Bueller girl. I should have known that summer that Mitchell and I would be great friends, based sheerly on the fact that neither of us could stop ourselves from going to see Ferris Bueller again … and again … and again …
And here’s a great piece by Slate’s Dana Stevens. She writes:
If that sounds grandiose, well, grandiosity has long been essential to the representation of teenagerhood: James Dean’s lovingly cultivated sneer, Holden Caulfield’s self-defeating purism, Judd Nelson’s raised fist in freeze-frame at the end of The Breakfast Club. Each generation learns to express its alienation in the fashionable pose of its time. That the pose is an imitation doesn’t make the need to strike it any less real. John Hughes, who died yesterday of a heart attack at 59, understood this.
And Marisa has posted again her wonderful essay What I Learned From John Hughes. Not to be missed. It made me cry.
//That the pose is an imitation doesn’t make the need to strike it any less real. John Hughes, who died yesterday of a heart attack at 59, understood this.//
Oh, that’s wonderful. Thank you for the links, and for including me.
I love that you kept seeing Ferris Bueller like that and that the person you kept running into was clearly fated to be a lifelong friend. I love that.
And in the end I guess it was always Pretty In Pink for me. I watched it again and again. I remember actually trying to wrap my head around the idea that these boys liked Andie and Andie was amazing and compelling and fascinating – and she wasn’t trying to be like everyone else AT ALL. It was riveting to me. It was the first time the concept of individuality as desirable broke into my little pre-teen consciousness.
It made everything after that so much better.
seeing u at Ferris Bueller was so exciting to me…remember..i had already stalked u at Cherry Webb and Touraine…so this was like the Cherry on the Webb of the Touraine!!!
Cherry Webb and Touraine. I am laughing out loud.
And member the midnight showing at Pier Cinema of Ferris Bueller? When we all danced in the aisles?
Glorious!
Jake. Ryan.
Every girl growing up in the l80s has had a least one relationship (if not *all* of them) affected by their own “relationship” with Jake Ryan.
This is a fact.
And I wrote that before I read Marissa’s piece! Great minds think alike, I guess.
Mitchell – did you follow her into the Weathervane as well? Or So-Fro Fabrics?
John Hughes was the rare kind of director that made movies for teenagers without ever condescending to their experiences. My personal favourite is The Breakfast Club and the whole damn thing is about the feelings of teenagers, the kind of heightened emotion that you get at that age when every drama, big or small, feels like life or death. And Hughes never made fun of that.
That essay is wonderful, and the part about always being yourself is so true. It’s not an easy thing to do, but I honestly believe it is the only thing to do. Being myself has sometimes made me miserable, but it was always worth it.
Have you read this appreciation of John Hughes by a woman who had him for a pen pal when she was a teenager? Guaranteed to have you tearing up by the end of the piece.
http://wellknowwhenwegetthere.blogspot.com/2009/08/sincerely-john-hughes.html