You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, and Their Impact on a Generation

by Susannah Gora

  “Born just after the magnificent baby boom, we are forever cast” Geoffrey T. Holtz. Welcome to the Jungle: The Why Behind “Generation X” (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995).

  “Hughes simply took our side” Colby Cosh, National Post, 8/11/09.

  “Nelson is excellent in the film’s biggest role” Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune, 2/15/85.

  “The only thing we had to do at the hotel” Jeff Silverman, Chicago Tribune, 2/17/85.

  “I’d get back late and see them” Sean M. Smith, Premiere, 12/99.

  “How could that have been allowed to happen?” Logan Hill, New York, 11/25/07.

  “I was really bothered” Sean M. Smith, Premiere, 12/99.

  “When I woke up I thought, ‘Am I in Burma?’” Joan E. Vadeboncoeur, Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY), 2/4/88.

  “Ham! Ham!” Julia Cameron, Chicago Tribune, 6/8/86.

  “so they keep a sense of their Midwestern roots” Ibid.

  “I do not go to Spago” Joan E. Vadeboncoeur, Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY), 2/4/88.

  “It was terrible, going between something” Sean M. Smith, Premiere, 12/99.

  “We have made a movie” Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune, 2/17/85.

  “The Breakfast Club is a breath of cinematic fresh air” Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune, 2/15/85.

  CHAPTER FOUR: NOT JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANYMORE

  “the whole thing look like Necco wafers” Janet Maslin, New York Times, 1/29/81.

  “unconsciously beautiful…softly enticing” Pauline Kael, The New Yorker, March 1984.

  “I was deeply in love with her” Karen Schneider and John Hannah, People, 11/25/96.

  “He was definitely my first love” People.com’s Celebrity Central, www.people.com/people/demi_moore.

  CHAPTER FIVE: BECOMING “THE BRAT PACK”

  “after sitting for three years alongside my brother” Lawrence Grabel, Chicago Tribune, 8/3/90.

  “seemed to exude a magnetic force” David Blum, New York, 6/10/85.

  “the most beautiful face” Ibid.

  “the overrated one” Ibid.

  “the leader of the Brats” Ibid.

  “He laughed at her stupidity” Ibid.

  “[Estevez] is already accustomed to privilege” Ibid.

  “David Blum burned a lot of bridges” David Blum, Los Angeles Times Magazine, 6/21/87.

  “Will it ever end?” Bob Thomas, Associated Press, 2/1/86.

  “You’ve ruined my life” Samantha Miller and Dan Jewel, People, 4/19/99.

  “Nobody asks Isaac Stern” Jeff Silverman, Chicago Tribune, 2/17/85.

  “plays all of his roles” David Blum, New York, 6/10/85.

  “It’s unfair…[it] suggests unruly, arrogant young people” Molly Ringwald, Seventeen, Spring 1986.

  “I felt like the invisible woman in all that” Steve Hedgpeth, Star-Ledger (Newark), 6/3/01.

  “I was changing the kid’s diaper” Ibid.

  “a bullet that I dodged” Ibid.

  “If we all went out for one beer” Tom Gliatto and Elizabeth Leonard, People, 9/11/00.

  “I decided I had to be there for them” Craig McLean, Telegraph, 1/14/07.

  “The Brat Pack—they were going to be my generation’s actors” Po Bronson. What Should I Do with My Life? (New York: Random House, 2002).

  “Barely has there been a group of more smug” Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune, 6/28/85.

  “ensemble of trendy young actors” Aljean Harmetz, New York Times, 9/2/85.

  CHAPTER SIX: SITTING PRETTY

  “I saw these sorts of things happen” John Hughes on the Pretty in Pink: Everything’s Duckie Edition DVD, Paramount Pictures, 2006.

  “I think that [Ringwald’s] family was dependent” Annie Potts, Ibid.

  “When I moved there” Nelson Handel, Boston Globe, 9/18/05.

  “Yeah, I figure I got a lock on this teenage” Jon Cryer on the Pretty in Pink: Everything’s Duckie Edition DVD, Paramount Pictures, 2006.

  “I’ve played a lot of bad guys in my career” Chrissy Iley, Sunday Telegraph Magazine (Sydney), 5/18/03.

  “Jon was very Duckie-like” Andrew McCarthy on the Pretty in Pink: Everything’s Duckie Edition DVD, Paramount Pictures, 2006.

  “Ringwald’s style goosed fashion circles” Monica Corcoran, Los Angeles Times, 6/29/08.

  “inside the script” Bill Carter, New York Times, 8/4/91.

  “Among the ’80’s obsessed” Jen Chaney, Washington Post, 8/29/06.

  “turns teen trauma into so much gooey” Rita Kempley, Washington Post, 2/28/86.

  “dopey” David Ansen, Newsweek, 3/17/86.

  “patently contrived” David Robinson, Times (of London), 8/15/86.

  “keeping with the spirit of the times” Janet Maslin, New York Times, 2/28/86.

  “model modern teen” Richard Corliss, Time, 5/26/86.

  “Hollywood’s Teen Queen” Judith Daniels, Life, 3/86.

  “When John moved from Chicago to L.A. after The Breakfast Club” Richard Corliss, Time, 5/26/86.

  “Sorry, all you Ringlets and Breakfast Clubbers” Ibid.

  “the Molly trilogy” Ibid.

  “It is difficult to explain” Michael Agger, New York, 11/29/04.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: WE GOT THE BEAT

  “suddenly, in those edgy ’80s” Christopher Hutsul, Toronto Star, 5/7/02.

  “spent a year riding around” Michele Reverte, LAist, 2/26/08.

  “clocks ticking and emotions ticking” Sean M. Smith, Premiere, 12/99.

  “I guess they were supposed to be the next big thing” David Medsker, Popmatters.com, 6/28/02.

  “John and I actually for the first time didn’t agree—about the music” Howard Deutch on the Pretty in Pink: Everything’s Duckie Edition DVD, Paramount Pictures, 2006.

  “In the end, I can say that I was wrong” Ibid.

  “the best friend and ally” from the Pretty in Pink sound track, A&M Records, 1986.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: I LOVE FERRIS IN THE SPRINGTIME

  “Ferris is doing what everybody at some point” John Hughes on the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: Bueller…Bueller…Edition DVD, Paramount Pictures, 2006.

  “the character, unless done right” Janet Hirshenson, Ibid.

  “one of the most intriguing people” David Lees, People, 12/26/83.

  “To John, Ferris Bueller is more than a person” Matthew Broderick on the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: Bueller…Bueller…Edition DVD, Paramount Pictures, 2006.

  “It’s going to have a picture of me” Ben Stein, Ibid.

  “pretty disturbing at first” Julia Cameron, Chicago Tribune, 6/8/86.

  “a real guy” Ibid.

  “Here I am, ten years later” John Hughes on the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: Bueller…Bueller…Edition DVD, Paramount Pictures, 2006.

  “What happens is that I am on a set” Julia Cameron, Chicago Tribune, 6/8/86.

  “Ruck is doing so much as an actor the whole time” Steve Almond, “John Hughes Goes Deep: The Unexpected Heaviosity of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” in Don’t You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes, ed. Jaime Clark (New York: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2007).

  “It appeals to the most basic part of the human spirit” Ben Stein on the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: Bueller…Bueller…Edition DVD, Paramount Pictures, 2006.

  “I had shot enough high school hallways” Joseph Gelmis, Newsday, 2/16/88.

  CHAPTER NINE: TEENS IN WONDERLAND

  “My ego was shattered” Ivor David, Sunday Mail (Queensland), 8/24/86.

  “almost beside the point” Janet Maslin, New York Times, 3/15/87.

  “American radio is unbelievably stagnant” Patrick Goldstein, Los Angeles Times, 3/1/87.

  CHAPTER TEN: THE END OF THE INNOCENCE

  “getting tougher and tougher to play them” David Hutchings, People, 9/14/87.

  “Hughes’s protégés have been dumped by their mentor” Rob Lowing, Sydney Sun Herald, 8/6/89.

&nbs
p; “Molly Ringwald? I never considered her” Joseph Gelmis, Newsday, 2/16/88.

  “I really didn’t like my early twenties very much” Nelson Pressley, Washington Post, 4/16/07.

  “an image of a spoiled young actress” Rob Lowing, Sydney Sun Herald, 8/26/90.

  “Puberty-on-Film trilogy” Anthony Michael Hall on the Sixteen Candles: Flashback Edition DVD, Universal Studios, 2008.

  “He was my best friend” Stephanie Hunter, Chicago Sun-Times, 2/12/92.

  “Even the Indians have stopped talking about Custer’s last stand” Tim Allis, People, 3/2/87.

  “My face is my business” William C. Trott, United Press International, 4/22/87.

  “apparently went too far with his Brat Pack routine” Ibid.

  “God knows what I might have accomplished” Robert Fidgeon, Herald Sun (Melbourne), 1/10/01.

  “Until that movie, I took drugs after work” Jon Wilde, Guardian, 11/8/03.

  “I live with it all the time” Charlie Rose, 60 Minutes II, CBS News, 5/19/04.

  “When I come home to Northbrook” Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune, 2/17/85.

  “There is a certain amount of seepage” Julia Cameron, Chicago Tribune, 6/8/86.

  “The shoot was hellish” Terri Minsky, Premiere, 7/88.

  “Seldom has a movie which seems to want” Michael Wilmington, Los Angeles Times, 2/5/88.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: ANYTHING, AND EVERYTHING

  “They were good enough that I felt like” Kit Boss, Seattle Times, 9/3/92.

  “You remind me of Lloyd. You should direct it” Dave Karger, Entertainment Weekly, 2/8/02.

  “turned on…I had a boyfriend” Ione Skye on the Say Anything, 2006 DVD edition, Twentieth Century Fox.

  “not like anything I’ve seen in quite a while” Gene Siskel on Siskel and Ebert, 4/19/89.

  “a miracle” Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, 4/14/89.

  “sewn into memory holding a boom box above his head” “Proust Questionnaire: John Cusack,” Vanity Fair, 6/08.

  CHAPTER TWELVE: PACK TO THE FUTURE

  “I felt that the concept” Larry Richter, New York Times, 12/10/90.

  “To me, this was always an A picture” Ibid.

  “crazed, scary, capricious bully…[with a] perpetually frightened staff” Richard Lalich, Spy, 1/93.

  “[Hughes’s] name is a selling point” Ibid.

  “What happens with John is that you are either very close” Ibid.

  “stunned by Hughes’s unpredictable changes in affection” Terri Minsky, Premiere, 7/88.

  “He’s the reincarnation of me, isn’t he?” Tom Gliatto and David Hutchings, People, 3/9/92.

  “was drinking vodka by the quart every day” Ibid.

  “I never hit bottom, and I never went to rehab” Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith, Chattanooga Times Free Press, 5/22/02.

  “compellingly weird” Josef Woodard, Los Angeles Times, 3/14/91.

  “Now what? The business is somewhat cannibalistic” Craig McLean, Telegraph, 1/14/07.

  “That was to pay my bills…I was doing everything I could” Michael Dwyer, Irish Times, 1/19/07.

  “she found that Hollywood had moved on to new sensations” Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun Times, 8/3/96.

  “only whether they had the special quality that makes a genuine movie star” Aljean Harmetz, New York Times, 6/7/87.

  “I don’t have a family to feed” Ibid.

  “Judd Nelson was never much of an” Jan Stuart, Newsday, 11/20/90.

  “frivolous” Borys Kit, Hollywood Reporter, 2/5/08.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: LIFE MOVES PRETTY FAST

  “happy right now” Brian Compton, NHL.com, 1/1/09.

  “mesmerizing” Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune, 3/12/99.

  “our generation’s J. D. Salinger” Patrick Goldstein, Los Angeles Times, 3/25/08.

  “I haven’t disappeared” Roger Ebert, rogerebert.suntimes.com, 8/6/09.

  “it’s going to look like the Oklahoma” Richard Lalich, Spy, 1/93.

  “shocked and saddened” Matthew Broderick, released statement, 8/6/09.

  “a horrible tragedy” Jon Cryer, released statement, 8/6/09.

  “profoundly meaningful” Judd Nelson, released statement, 8/7/09.

  “It does seem sadly poignant that physically” Molly Ringwald, New York Times, 8/12/09.

  “As a lonely teenager” Anna Pickard, Guardian Film Blog, 8/10/09.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME

  “in our daily lives, in hopes of causing” T Cooper, “You Look Good Wearing My Future, or the Sexually Ambiguous Best Friend,” in Don’t You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes, ed. Jaime Clark (New York: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2007).

  “unites an entire generation” Rebecca Rose, Financial Times (London), 12/16/06.

  “There was a strategy” Bill Carter, New York Times, 8/14/91.

  “the next Molly Ringwald” Logan Hill, New York, 11/25/07.

  “At times, Mrs. Clinton” Alessandra Stanley, New York Times, 2/22/08.

  “John Hughes couldn’t have scripted it better” S. E. Cupp, Human Events Online, 8/31/08.

  “teens who are posting updated versions” Stuart Elliott, New York Times, 7/14/08.

  “Samantha has been forgotten” Pastor Tripp Hudgins, “The Gospel According to John Hughes,” communitychurchofwilmette.org, 7/27/08.

  “aware of belonging to a generation that has yet to figure out adulthood” A. O. Scott, New York Times, 8/7/09.

  “What Hughes captured on-screen” Kevin Smokler, Huffington Post, 8/18/09.

  “Just typing the name ‘Andrew McCarthy’” Paige Smoron, Chicago Sun-Times, 4/4/04.

  “Her beauty and her recalcitrance” Lewis Robinson, “The Ghost of Ally Sheedy,” in Don’t You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes, ed. Jaime Clark (New York: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2007).

  “from then on I would sing the song of Mary Stuart Masterson” Ben Schrank, “My Mary,” in Don’t You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes, ed. Jaime Clark (New York: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2007).

  “I just assumed I had weird taste” T Cooper, “You Look Good Wearing My Future, or the Sexually Ambiguous Best Friend,” in Don’t You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes, ed. Jaime Clark (New York: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2007).

  “He engages in open revolt against the system” Mike Miley, Huffington Post, 8/8/07.

  “If there’s a better celluloid expression of ordinary American freedom” Mark Hemingway, National Review Online, 8/10/09.

  “writing about a human need as basic as Jefferson wrote about” Ben Stein on the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: Bueller…Bueller…Edition DVD, Paramount Pictures, 2006.

  “I’m not going to pretend I know the black experience” Bill Carter, New York Times, 8/4/91.

  “one of the most offensive Asian stereotypes” Robert Siegel on All Things Considered, NPR, 3/24/08.

  “If Godard doesn’t turn out to be the most influential filmmaker” Elvis Mitchell, Slate, 12/16/99.

  “Any movie made in the past twenty years” Johanna Schneller, Globe and Mail, 3/9/07.

  “[Hughes’s] film characters, starting with Anthony Michael Hall” Patrick Goldstein, Los Angeles Times, 3/25/08.

  “It’s hard to find a thirty- or fortysomething writer” Ibid.

  “If it weren’t for him” Ibid.

  “an eighties child who really thought life was going to be like Pretty in Pink” Jenny Colgan. Looking for Andrew McCarthy (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001).

  “Knowing they filmed The Breakfast Club ten minutes away” Mark Guarino, Chicago Daily Herald, 10/19/07.

  “a slick indie pop unit” Rob Van Alstyne, The Onion’s AV Club, 6/3/08.

  “songs for John Hughes movies yet to be filmed,” rollingstone.com, 5/1/08.

  CONCLUSION: WHEN THE LIGHT GETS INTO YOUR HEART

&nb
sp; “I know everybody would love to watch it” David Daley, Hartford Courant, 3/24/99.

  “I’m too fond of those characters,” Ibid.

  “Hughes essentially introduced the modern teenage hero” Sean Howe, New York Observer, 8/21/06.

  “people will talk about how [Hughes] synthesized” Bill Carter, New York Times, 8/4/91.

  “Remove the floppy disk jokes and Sixteen Candles is ageless” Kevin Smokler, Huffington Post, 8/18/09.

  “I think, if it has lasted” David Daley, Hartford Courant, 3/24/99.

  “So what if Molly Ringwald peaked early?” Dan Pope, “I Dated Molly Ringwald, Sort Of,” in Don’t You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes, ed. Jaime Clark (New York: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2007).

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SUSANNAH GORA is a former Associate Editor of Premiere magazine, where she covered film and the entertainment industry. She has also written about movies for publications including Variety and Elle, has appeared on networks such as NBC, CBS, MTV, and VH1 as an entertainment commentator, and was the host and writer of “Classics on Film,” a DVD series produced by Penguin Books. Additionally, she serves as Director of the Friars Club Comedy Film Festival. Susannah Gora is a graduate of The Dalton School and of Duke University, from which she graduated with High Distinction in English and received the E. Blake Byrne Scholarship for excellence in creative writing. She is married and lives in Manhattan, where she was born and raised.

  Visit her on the Web at www.susannahgora.com.

  Copyright © 2010 by Susannah Gora

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  Crown is a trademark and the Crown colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gora, Susannah.

  You couldn’t ignore me if you tried : the Brat Pack, John Hughes, and their impact on a generation / Susannah Gora.’1st ed.

  1. Hughes, John, 1950–2009—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Teen films—United States—History and criticism. 3. Teenagers in motion pictures.