Friday, February 28, 2003
The Breakfast Club
Physical State: creaky
Mental State: nostalgic
Music: Black Dice - Beaches & Canyons
Fashion sense: black fleece jacket, blue jeans
I've just discovered that TNN (or the new TNN, or the "network that compresses your image to 95% vertically so they can announce what show your watching and have their burn-in") is having a Ferris-palooza today all day Feb.28. They're showing Ferris Bueller's Day Off, ALL DAY! A great film if only to hear Edie McClurg rhyme off the teen cliques that exist at the high school. This got me to thinking about how great those John Hughes movies were and how they don't make teen movies like these anymore (why is that? An Aquarian way ahead of his time). I still sit and fondly watch Superstation's butchering of The Breakfast Club (which seems to be on every other weekend), if only so I can yell out "he never said that". Fast Times at Ridgemount High is another gem that can never be matched either for it's sheer motherlode of present-day celebrities (ok Damone didn't really make much of a career but he lives on in guys like The Strokes) or it's incredible cultural significance (some of you may be balking at this and that's ok). Most of the brat packers continued to make films and have careers (Ally Sheedy managed to become a total iconoclast with her movie High Art). We won't talk about Emilio Estevez's "I'm about to be shot by a firing squad" look on the VH1 Best Hits of the 80's shows. But getting back to Hughes, his movies spoke to me as a teen and some of their messages still resonate with me: misunderstood geek gets the sensitive beau-hunk in the end (Sixteen Candles), guy should stop looking elsewhere when his perfect match is right in front of him (Some Kind of Wonderful), sometimes you can't take life too seriously (Ferris Bueller), deep down we all have problems that aren't that different and we can eventually make peace (Breakfast Club). Teens today need a John Hughes, something tells me that corporate Hollywood would have no place for someone like him now.
