When John Hughes died it seemed like the end of something. He hadn’t –as far as I know- put out a movie in years, (decades even?) and yet he meant something to me. Something to anyone who was a teenager in the 80’s, I imagine.
The funny thing about my generation, Generation X, we wanted to live for something better, and yet we never were the ones who got off our butts and did something about it. We were/are dreamers of the first order. We wanted the fairytale, we believed in it. John Hughes had something to do with that, because he wrote our fairytales.
In John Hughes’s world, the outsider got her man because she was comfortable in her own skin, the popular prince (princess) found the courage to break free from the scrutiny of the click, and the geek was finally heard. Rarely did this happen in the real world, yet we all hoped, hoped we’d be the one that broke the mold.
And that’s the thing with fairytales; they inspire hope and dreams. Ordinary Joe in an ordinary life when, with a blink of an eye, he transcends the ordinary to become extraordinary. Life for the most part is mundane. That’s the way of things. But in movies, books, we’re transported. It’s why I became a writer, better than books, better than movies, I can fall into a world of my making, live the fairytale for a moment. By giving me the modern fairytale, John Hughes inspired me to dream.
My sister and I used pick who we were in relation to a John Hughes movie. Were we Watts, the super cool chick who didn’t give a shit and banged on the drums? (I wish), Andie whose best friend was the ultimate oddball and all the guys secretly loved (definitely my sister)… Me, I was Samantha, the soft heart who would help a geek, mooned over the hot guy yet when he talked to her turned around and ran the other way. LOL.
I wanted to leave you with what I consider the end all be all of John Hughes’ fairytale endings –Jake Ryan waiting for Samantha (yay!) Unfortunately, YouTube only had one clip of that and it’s a dubbed Spanish version, which actually cracked me up, so… enjoy.
Le Sigh. Even in crazy dubbed Soap Opera style Spanish I get chills. So, who inspired you? And, more importantly, what John Hughes character would you be?
LMAO at that dubbing! I loved John Hughes' movies when I was an angsty 80s teen. But I was more interested in mooning over the guys than working out which character I was ... ah, Andrew McCarthy and his puppy dog eyes. Sigh. Wonder what happened to him? Off to google ... (g)
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought of it in that way before but you're right - the reason John Hughes' movies are so timeless is that they're like fairy tales, and what could be more inspiring than that? It's good vs evil in a nutshell.
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