Tag: John Hughes

August 18, 2014 / / Main Slate Archive

Pretty in Pink

 

Given the economic turmoil of the 1980s, PRETTY IN PINK is very much a product of its environment. Girl meets boy who is of a higher class than she is.  Girl is embarrassed at her lack of money, and boy is overly concerned with what his rich friends think of his relationship with her.  They break up, but in the end, girl and boy reunite at the high school prom while Oingo Boingo plays. There is a bit there in the middle where girl almost falls for her loyal friend who is both dedicated to her and in the same socioeconomic class. That ending, however, did not test well with audiences and the ending was reshot to include the poor girl getting the rich boy.

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July 18, 2008 / / Film Notes

THE BREAKFAST CLUB

By Erin Blakeley

The Breakfast Club – 1985 – dir. John Hughes – Original Theatrical Trailer

Early on in The Breakfast Club, Brian Johnson, one of the students stuck in Saturday detention is asked to describe the activities of the Physics club, of which he is a member. “I guess you could consider it a social situation,” he replies. “I mean, there are other children in that club.” Today, no self-respecting teenager, on-screen or off, would ever refer to himself as a child. In fact, the word ‘children’ has largely fallen from the lexicon, replaced by shorter, snappier words—kids, teens, tweens—that reflect the growing lack of distinction between adults and their progeny. Yet, the characters in The Breakfast Club—the five high schoolers famously archetyped as the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess and the criminal—are children. Each one, save Bender (the criminal), is dropped off at Saturday detention by a parent. And despite the promise of social transformation that is at the heart of the film’s appeal, at the end of the film, after all the truth-telling and boundary-breaking and making out—they get right back in the car with their parents.

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