Free Life Moves Pretty Fast: The lessons we learned from eighties movies (and why we don't learn them from movies any more) by Hadley Freeman Page A

fn1 With the exception of Weird Science – which is a dopey-ass teen comedy and as a result is Hughes’s least memorable teen film – he kept these two sides to his filmmaking separate, even going so far as to fire Rick Moranis from The Breakfast Club as the janitor because he felt, rightly, that Moranis’s humour was too broad for that film, and that’s the only time I’ll ever say a word against Moranis. Teen films were about deep emotions, and deep emotions were reserved for his teenage characters alone. ‘When you grow up,’ one of his characters in The Breakfast Club says, ‘your heart dies.’
    Even though Hughes wove plenty of autobiographical details into his films, he was a lot less interested in his own youth than he was in that of contemporary teenagers. Not many adults can say that. He would hang out with his teenage actors on the set, make them mix tapes, take them to concerts (Hughes genuinely loved music and, unlike a lot of eighties filmmakers, didn’t just see it as merely a means to sell soundtracks), and he would infuriate his crew by corpsing along with the kids during embarrassing scenes. Hughes’s teen films feel so heartfelt because they were written with such honest respect for his teenage actors, and the one with whom he felt the closest affinity was Ringwald: ‘We just instantly connected. He felt more like a friend than a director. We talked about everything,’ she says. So it is not surprising that the truest character Hughes ever wrote was one he created for her: Andie Walsh from Pretty in Pink .
    By the time Hughes and Ringwald made Pretty in Pink , they knew each other pretty well after having already worked on Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club . Ringwald’s character, Sam, in the former is sparky, but the film is pretty unwatchable today due to being weirdly racist fn2 and a bit rapey. fn3 Hughes then cast Ringwald as popular and posh Claire in The Breakfast Club , because it amused him to cast her against type, and he gave the more interesting female character, Allison, to Ally Sheedy. It wasn’t until Pretty in Pink that he created for Ringwald the role she deserved. ‘John always wrote best when he was writing for someone, and his real muse was Molly,’ says Howard Deutch, who directed Pretty in Pink . ‘A lot of who Molly was became the character he wrote for her in Pretty in Pink . So Molly inspired John to write that character and the writing of the character also impacted on Molly.’
    Like all Hughes’s teen films, Pretty in Pink has a laughably simple premise: Andie, a high school girl from the wrong side of the tracks (literally, she lives next to the train tracks – no one could ever accuse Hughes of subtlety), wants to go to the prom with a wealthy boy called Blane, to the horror of her lifelong and fellow lower-middle-class friend, Duckie.
    ‘When we were filming I remember thinking, This is about a girl going to a dance? Seriously? Who’s going to want to see this? Really had my finger on the pulse there!’ laughs Andrew McCarthy, who, thirty years on, has yet to escape the shadow of the film (although we fans of the 1989 comedy Weekend at Bernie’s also associate him with near necrophilia. But that’s a different story).
    The Breakfast Club is more original as an eighties teen film in that it pretty much takes place in just one room (truly, this is one eighties film that is begging to be turned into a play) and DOESN’T EVEN HAVE A PROM, whereas Pretty in Pink ticks off all the classic clichés: pop song title, scenes in crowded school hallways, big music number, climactic prom. But it is in many ways a more satisfying film, partly because it features some of the best acting ever to appear in any of Hughes’s films, especially from James Spader who nearly steals the whole movie, bringing his delicious Spaderish creepiness unlike anything seen in any other teen film ever. Jon Cryer as Andie’s heartsick and nerdy friend Duckie is great, too, full of