The Breakfast Club goes Home Alone on Vacation

Being a partial look at the John Hughes movies...

The Breakfast Club.

This is my generation, baby. And don't you forget about it. I can't imagine anyone in my age group getting through life without having seen this film. When I was in high school, I had a line or two from it written on my notebook. Didn't you?

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

I try not to hold it against it that this was Dan Quayle's favorite film.
And that it made Ben Stein a star ("Bueller? ...Bueller? ...Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?")

Planes, Trains & Automobiles

For my money, this comedy road trip movie is the best of Hughes' films to take place outside of high school. She's Having a Baby is runner-up, but the film's just not as memorable, even though its soundtrack may've been one of the first places I heard Kirsty MacColl (bless her).

(Trivia: In one scene in ...Automobiles, a character is watching a film on television. If you listen to the soundtrack, the movie they're watching is She's Having...)

Sixteen Candles.

I'll have more to say about this on one of my other blogs tomorrow, for now, suffice it to say: When people have good thoughts about this movie, one of the things they forget is that the material about the sister's wedding is uniformly unwatchable. There are other things people forget, but... (see other blog)

Home Alone

OMG. I see it all now. Thinking of those elaborate traps Culkin sets up in this movie, we might as well rename the HO movies "The Adventures of Jigsaw, When he was a Boy."

Some Kind of Wonderful

Hughes movie soundtracks were among the most influential on my musical taste (along with San Francisco's Live 105 radio station in the late '80s and early '90s). Come to think of it, Hughes may've been one of the most influental people in my entire psyche and life, certainly for somebody I never met.

How influential? Well, one of the earliest structural models for my unsold novel was this screenplay. It's grown a lot since then, but that was a basis for it.

Pretty In Pink

In retrospect, it's possible the reason I've never really liked most of the jobs that I've had is because I always wanted to go work for Annie Potts' character in this movie. And this soundtrack is the one that brought me OMD, who would become one of my favorite groups.

(again, more on this movie in forthcoming other post)

The Vacation movies. I have no proof, but I'd like to start a rumor that these were George W. Bush's favorite movies (except for the good ones, by which I mean the first and Christmas)