Nobody Puts John Hughes in a Corner

I kind of glossed over the death of Michael Jackson in my last entry, but that’s because it’s been covered…well…to death.  Michael Jackson’s music was my generation’s soundtrack, but let’s face it, the guy went a little bonkers. Though I’m sure his celebrity childhood and his “disciplinarian” father changed his trajectory for the worse, I, for one, didn’t know how much sadness to feel about a person with a lifetime of questionable behavior.  Around the same time, another person who greatly influenced pop culture quietly passed away–writer/director John Hughes. His death didn’t get much coverage at all. Big slight. But hey, writers are used to the invisibility cloak.

Maybe I’m biased because I love movies more than music. While Michael gave us a legacy of pop music, Hughes gave us so many great films–The Breakfast Club, Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, Uncle Buck, Sixteen Candles…the list goes on. If stranded on a desert island, I’d be happy with a John Hughes box set–as long as it included Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  I was surprised to read that Hughes quit making films for a while after the less successful Curly Sue and She’s Having a Baby. Those two films, though not as wonderful as some earlier ones, were still delicious. Like so many of Hughes’s films, Curly Sue, the story of a precocious orphan girl who finds a family, appealed to both my young son and me. It is heartwarming and we enjoyed it over and over. She’s Having a Baby is also funny and sweet. It addresses the issues of newly marrieds, so no surprise that it didn’t appeal to teens. But it spoke to my husband and me over the years as we went on the same journey as Elizabeth McGovern and Kevin Bacon, first getting married, then having a baby. Nothing to be ashamed of there, John.  It was a good film that went unnoticed. It’s still relevant today and I highly encourage Netflixing it. Yeah, I invented a verb–Netflixing. I hope some writer, inspired by Hughes, comes along in the next generation to capture the essence of families, teenagers, and life, then make them relatable and hilarious, the way he did.

Finally, with Patrick Swayze gone, another bit of pop culture left us this summer. Never had the crush on Swayze that many women did, but I liked him just the same. It’s rare that a person can be both a tough guy and a dancer. He was like John Wayne with a mullet. My husband loves the movie Roadhouse, starring Swayze. It’s almost as difficult for me to watch that as it is for him to watch Dirty Dancing. Though Swayze wasn’t in tons of movies, he was memorable in each film–leading a band of teenagers fighting Soviet troops in Red Dawn, lifting Baby in the water in Dirty Dancing, making pottery with Demi Moore in Ghost.

The good part is that we get to keep enjoying the music and the movies these guys made. Still, it’s sad there won’t be more.