Anthony Michael Hall was born Michael Anthony Thomas Charles Hall on April 14, 1968, in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. He chose his rearranged stage name because the Screen Actors Guild already had a registered actor named Michael Hall. Hall’s parents married very young, and split up when he was only a year old. “He wasn’t a bad guy,” says Hall’s mother, celebrated jazz singer Mercedes Hall, of Hall’s birth father, Larry. “We were just too young.” After a stint on the West Coast—Mercedes was singing in Las Vegas and Los Angeles—mother and son moved to New York, where they settled into the life they would know for years, living on the artsy Upper West Side of Manhattan. Mercedes would go on to marry Tom Chestaro (who would adopt Hall), with whom she would have a daughter, Mary. (Chestaro would also later become Hall’s manager.) Hall’s childhood was filled with music. When Mercedes couldn’t find a baby-sitter and had to do a singing gig, Hall would tag along and “play the congas or bongos alongside the drummer,” Mercedes recalls.
Hall went to Catholic school, which came in handy when comedian and television pioneer Steve Allen was directing a semiautobiographical play at New York’s Symphony Space and “they needed a kid who could say the catechism,” as Mercedes remembers. Hall was cast in the role—a meaty one at that—and more theater work followed. He soon became so busy acting that he transferred to the Professional Children’s School in New York. So the young man who auditioned for the role of “The Geek” in the Universal building on West Fifty-seventh Street, though barely a teenager, was already something of a pro. And luckily for him—although the room was swaying in favor of Eric Gurry—casting director Burch listened to her gut, and cast Hall, the lanky kid with a bouncy, frenetic kind of charisma.
The character “The Geek” was a nerd, for sure, but thanks to the way Hall would portray him, this was no stammering, insecure, pocket-protector-wearing dweeb. No, Hall’s “Geek” would be charming, ebullient, cocky even. He was also the self-described “king of the dipshits”; his inner circle includes the even dweebier Cliff and Bryce, played by non-actor Darren Harris (whom Burch found in a movie theater while out scouting for nerdy “real” kids) and a young actor by the name of John Cusack, a Chicagoan who had made his film debut in 1983’s Class, and whose oldest sister, Joan, would also join the Candles cast, bringing cinema its greatest ever drinking fountain scene, as a neck-brace-encumbered girl trying to hydrate herself.
Candles’s plot revolves around Samantha Baker’s crush on the gorgeous, popular Jake Ryan, but Jake is no meathead. Rather, he represents a teenage girl’s dream version of what the most popular boy in school should be like: sensitive, soulful, a little shy, caught up in the trappings of wealth and coolness but longing, deep down, for something more. This is a guy who admits that he “can get a piece of ass anytime,” but that he wants a serious girlfriend, “somebody I can love, that’s gonna love me back.” The actor playing Jake Ryan had to be muscular and studly enough to be the coolest boy at school, yet also somehow sensitive, gentle at the core.
“When he had his audition,” says Jackie Burch of GQ model Michael Schoeffling, “he was very shy.” But Burch was worried that other filmmakers would be put off by Shoeffling’s quiet nature, so she fibbed, attributing his taciturnity to something else entirely: “I said he just had dental work done and is not normally this low-key.” He was, however, normally that low-key, but it was this very subdued quality that Burch valued. Schoeffling was a fit, says Burch, because of “his softness. He had such dignity as a person. It made him so endearing, and it really worked for that part.”
Michael Schoeffling was born December 10, 1960, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and grew up in southern New Jersey, the second of three brothers. He was a member of the U.S. Junior Wrestling Team—his team won a gold medal at the European Championships in West Germany—and he studied at Temple University. Soon, he was modeling for magazines such as GQ (and for famed photographer Bruce Weber). Although Schoeffling spent some time studying at the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute for acting, when he arrived at the Sixteen Candles audition, he had no real professional dramatic credits to his name. Regardless, remembers Michelle Manning, who earned her first producer credit on Candles, “he was so stunning and dreamy that we cast him.” With his classically chiseled face and sculpted bod, Schoeffling looked more like a Roman god than a suburban teenager. Yet, just like the character he would portray, he didn’t let his looks go to his head. Says Jeffrey Lampert, whose real-life Illinois home was featured as Jake Ryan’s house in the film: “He was a model, and he was the kind of person who you might think would not be polite and sweet and gracious. But he was all of that, and more.”
On Valentine’s Day 2004, the Washington Post published an essay that spread like wildfire over the Internet as otherwise demure thirtysomething women emailed it to one another in a frenzied state of romantic delirium. The essay’s subject was Jake Ryan. “Listen to all the Thompson Twins songs you want,” wrote the Post’s Hank Stuever, “but let’s finally admit that Jake Ryan is never coming to get you. Not in the red Porsche 944, and not wearing that Fair Isle sweater vest…There are women out there who to this day are still pining for a fictional character, the perfect high school crush.” Ryan’s mystique is only intensified by the fact that Schoeffling became something of a recluse in later years, leaving the spotlight and working as a craftsman in rural Pennsylvania. Viewers are privileged enough to know him only and forever as their Jake, a fairy-tale ending leaning on a red Porsche.
Samantha Baker’s life is rich with cringe-inducing elements: she longs for Jake Ryan while The Geek crushes on her; and then there’s that zany Asian foreign exchange student, Long Duk Dong, whom her grandparents have brought to town on their visit for the wedding. Other characters in the film experience moments of desperation or drama, but the role of “The Donger” is pure comedy; a gong sounds every time Dong enters a scene. With his thick accent and bumbled attempts at American catchphrases (“Whass happenin’, haaht stuff?”), everything Long Duk Dong says and does is undeniably offensive—but is also, admittedly, hilarious.
Gedde Watanabe, an actor of Japanese descent, was twenty-six years old and performing for the Shakespeare Festival under legendary director Joseph Papp when he learned about the role of Long Duk Dong. Although the part was a far cry from the serious dramatic roles Watanabe had portrayed onstage since childhood, something about The Donger spoke to him, and Watanabe submitted himself for the role through an agent. “This character was from a foreign country—they weren’t even specific,” says Watanabe. “So I said, ‘Okay, he’s from Korea.’” Watanabe, who was born and raised in Utah, prepared for the audition with the help of a Korean friend. Laughing, Watanabe remembers saying to his pal, “Look, I need to just listen to you—don’t be offended.’ We sat down and talked for a while. And then I got the idea.” It occurred to Watanabe that he should go to the audition completely in character, and “just not tell them” he was American-born. “I don’t know why,” he says, “it was just an instinctual thing to do.” When he auditioned for Burch, she fully believed he was from Korea, and that he barely spoke a word of English. In an attempt to break the language barrier, Burch, who used to teach the deaf, found herself signing to him. “At the end of it,” Watanabe remembers, “I said, ‘Jackie, I was born in Ogden, Utah.’” Burch loved it, and Watanabe was cast.
Slowly but surely, the film’s supporting roles were filled. The parts of Samantha’s grandparents went to veteran actors Billie Bird, Edward Andrews, Carole Cook, and Max Showalter. The role of Jake Ryan’s cheerleader girlfriend, Caroline, went to Haviland Morris, an elegant blonde who grew up in Hong Kong and possessed the huge blue eyes, soft blond hair, and perfectly upturned nose of a Barbie doll. Blanche Baker, a fair-haired sexpot with great comedic timing, who was the daughter of 1950s stage star and Tennessee Williams muse Carroll Baker, was cast as bride-to-be Ginny Baker, Samantha’s older sister. The part of Samantha’s obnoxious little brother, Mike, was filled by Justin Henry, who ensur
ed his trivia immortality at age eight by becoming the youngest Oscar nominee in history (a distinction he still holds), for his 1979 portrayal of a child of divorce in Kramer vs. Kramer. The role of Rudy Ryszczyk, the brute who’s marrying Ginny Baker, went to John Kapelos, an actor who cut his chops at the Second City in Chicago. Rudy was “a low-level jerk,” says Kapelos of his first film role. “I was just really excited to be in the movies, so I was playing this kind of hyper-playboyish cad.”
Stage actress Carlin Glynn, mother of Mary Stuart Masterson, was cast as Samantha’s harried mom, Brenda Baker. Glynn was best known for her Tony-winning role in the original theatrical production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (the part Dolly Parton would play in the movie). The musical was cowritten and codirected by her husband and Mary Stuart’s father, Peter Masterson, and in it, Glynn played a maternal figure to the young call girls. When John Hughes called to talk to her about the role in Sixteen Candles, Glynn surmised that Hughes thought she would be right for the role because “she was such a great mom in Whorehouse.” (The mother Glynn played on Broadway, however, was of the den variety.)
Paul Dooley, a very accomplished actor with many film and TV credits to his name, was approached about playing Ringwald’s father, Jim Baker. Dooley didn’t want to take the part because, as written, it was a rather small role. So Hughes added the tender scene where Jim Baker has a heart-to-heart about boys and life with his daughter Sam on the couch in the middle of the night. Hughes told Dooley the scene made sense because he thought the film needed “a grounding moment.” (Decades later, Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody would include a very similar father-daughter scene in her movie Juno as an homage.) Dooley was on board.
With casting finished, Hughes could begin filming his first movie.
Sixteen Candles was shot in and around the Chicago suburbs of Skokie and Highland Park, near where Hughes grew up, over six weeks in the summer of 1983. It was brutally hot, with temperatures regularly exceeding one hundred degrees. The season and the heat only added to the feeling that the shoot “was really just like summer camp for postadolescents,” says Haviland Morris. The energy of newness permeated the set—everyone was excited, from the young crew, to the relatively green actors, to Hughes himself. “You think of it as a ‘big Universal film,’” says Morris, “but it wasn’t really. There weren’t any big movie stars, and actually the shoot had a great innocent quality to it.” Producer Michelle Manning, who was in her early twenties at the time, remembers fondly that “it was like we were all teenagers together. John inspired an environment for everybody to act like a kid.” Which isn’t to say that the young people making the film didn’t take their work seriously. “I was a kid,” says Anthony Michael Hall, “but suddenly I was developing a craft.”
For Hughes’s part, he would use this production to develop the directing style that would stay with him his entire career. His learning curve was a steep one, though, and on the set of Sixteen Candles, he discovered that his most valuable asset was the input from the creative minds of a bright, talented cast. “A great director should encourage you in that way,” says Hall, “and he did that. We were collaborators, and I started my career knowing that’s what it should be like—an intersection of all these talents and efforts.” Says Bruce Berman, who worked as a young film exec on Candles and is now the chairman and CEO of Village Roadshow Pictures, “By the time John directed, because he had written what he was directing, I think he was very confident. If he wasn’t, he certainly gave off the aura of being confident that he knew what he wanted.”
Ned Tanen was a veritable Obi-Wan Kenobi to Hughes’s Skywalker on the set of Candles, imparting to the young director much of the wisdom he had learned over three decades in the movie business steering the careers of filmmakers such as George Lucas when they were barely out of film school. “Ned Tanen’s role was not to be underestimated,” says John Kapelos. “He protected John, gave him the latitude to do his work.” Tanen, the bold, hard-charging Hollywood power player (although those who knew him well also knew his kindheartedness—Joel Schumacher described him as a “teddy bear”) shielded Hughes from the kind of everyday studio hassles that can plague a director. “Ned kept John away from those battles,” says Kapelos.
Hughes was smart enough “to allow these kids to improvise,” says Mercedes Hall of the young cast. “He knew to use their talents, and he knew it would make him look better.” One day, when shooting in the mansion that had been rented out to use as the Ryan household, Gedde Watanabe went exploring, and found in the attic a strange-looking piece of exercise equipment. He found the contraption to be “really fun,” and wondered what his foreign exchange student character would think of this odd apparatus. “He wouldn’t have known what that thing was,” says Watanabe, laughing. “He would’ve thought it was something that cleans rice or makes tofu.” Excited by his discovery, he ran downstairs to the set and asked Hughes to come upstairs. Hughes obliged, and when he saw the machine, was intrigued by the comic possibilities. In time, he filmed the sequence where Long Duk Dong and his “sexy American girlfriend” awkwardly ride the exercise horse together. “Once you started to play,” says Watanabe, Hughes “was having just as much fun as you were.”
As fun as it must have been literally to stumble upon the makings of a great comedy scene, Hughes was also open to his actors’ deeper, more serious thoughts about their characters’ behavior. Carlin Glynn remembers reading Sixteen Candles and realizing that “nowhere in this script does the mother say, ‘I’m so sorry’” for forgetting her daughter’s sixteenth birthday. So Glynn leveled with Hughes, telling him, “If she is the woman you described to me, then you’ve got to have her say she’s sorry, or it just won’t work. It’s bad enough that she doesn’t remember her kid’s birthday, but she wouldn’t apologize? I mean, she’d be wracked with guilt for the rest of her life!” Hughes saw the wisdom in Glynn’s point, and he wrote the touching scene toward the end of the film in which a crying Brenda apologizes to Samantha. Traditional roles are reversed when the teenage daughter comforts her mother. “What he did with it,” says Glynn, “was perfect.”
Some of the actors saw the improv-loving Hughes as “everything you would want in a director,” remembers Haviland Morris. “You were always free to try out anything.” So readily did Hughes let his actors try different versions of scenes that he ran through an excessive amount of film, something that would become a significant problem later in his career. “John shot a lot of tape,” says John Kapelos. “I mean, a lot of tape.” Kapelos suggests that Hughes’s shooting ratio was eight to one—meaning he would shoot eight takes for every one take he would use.
But as much as he encouraged improv, there were also times Hughes was ultra-specific in his directing style, going so far as to tell the actors how he wanted a line reading to sound, how he wanted an actor’s face to look, rather than discussing the underlying dramatic motivation that might cause a character to say a line a certain way. For some of the more seasoned cast members, this seems to have been a bit jarring. Hughes’s directing style, says Glynn, was “result-oriented. If you’re trained the way I am, you essentially work from the inside out. You do a lot of research, you build backgrounds for the character. But he would give you result choices. Because he was a first-time director,” she adds thoughtfully, “I think he felt compelled to talk a little too much rather than watch. First-time directors can be so anxious to impart what they want.”
In the script for Sixteen Candles Hughes laid out the hierarchies of coolness within a high school as if they were levels in the Indian caste system: cheerleaders and wealthy kids (“richies”) were the Brahmans, while geeks, weirdos, kids with neck braces, and most underclassmen were the untouchables. Samantha Baker isn’t even interesting enough to be an untouchable—her status is instead that of an unremarkable, unnoticed, unhappy sophomore. When Jake Ryan asks his friend what he thinks of Samantha Baker, his pal replies, “I don’t. There’s nothing there man. It’s not ugly. It’s
just…void.”
The character of Caroline, Jake Ryan’s cheerleader girlfriend, serves stark contrast to Samantha. Caroline is every dweeb boy’s wet dream, sex in a periwinkle silk dress, an angel with a Heather Locklear feathered hairdo. Early on in the script, Samantha catches a glimpse of Caroline taking a shower in the girls’ locker room, and feels paltry in comparison, particularly in the chest area. When Sam woke up that morning, she’d looked in the mirror and told herself, “You need four inches of bod.” The shower scene shows Caroline fully naked, soaping her pinup-girl body. Its presence in the film may have been an effort on Hughes’s part to placate the studio by incorporating at least one raunchy, Porky’s-esque element into his teen comedy, and the sequence would mark the only true tits-and-ass shot he would use in his career. Ultimately, a body double was used to film the steamy scene. “My character was supposed to be more endowed [than Molly Ringwald],” says Haviland Morris, laughing, “and I was not,” so Morris told casting director Burch she didn’t feel physically equipped to do the scene. “I’ve just never been the Playboy centerfold type,” she says. “But they picked a lovely girl for the shower scene, some eighteen-year-old babe who ran ten miles a day.”
Samantha’s feelings of hopeless inferiority would only be heightened later in the film, at a dance held in the school gym (filmed at suburban Chicago’s Niles East High School), where Jake Ryan catches her flat-out staring at him and Caroline slow-dancing to Spandau Ballet’s dreamy hit ballad “True.” “The slow dance in the movie seemed very romantic,” says Morris, “but it was actually a hundred and three degrees in that gym.” Filmmakers decided against air-conditioning the huge room because it would be prohibitively expensive. “So I had to be pulled out after every take to have my hair blow-dried,” Morris remembers, “and have my dress changed half the time because it would be soaked through with sweat.”
You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, and Their Impact on a Generation Page 5