Life in a John Hughes Movie...

I can’t remember the first time I allowed my girls to watch my favorite John Hughes movies. But once they did, they were hooked.

Kate is enamored by all things 80s—both of my girls, really—the clothes, the hair, the music. They wish they had been teenagers back then and they think I had it made.

I’m caught somewhere in the middle. Times were definitely simpler then. Being a teen in the 80s meant that you could look back and still appreciate those simple times, but it also felt like you were on the edge of something big and exciting just waiting to happen.

I loved being a child of the 60s and 70s. It was a time filled with traditions and rituals that you could count on, and that you found comfort in, like church and Sunday dinner. Birthday parties consisted of a homemade cake, and games like flashlight tag or dressing up your dolls, were all played out in your own living room and backyard, and not in some god-awful Chuck E. Cheese. There were no texts, social media, or cell phones for that matter. Technology I admittedly appreciate today, but only to a certain degree.

Yesterday’s parents, like generations before them, were still under the illusion that children should be seen and not heard. This is the one thing I feel that my generation has come to understand (almost to a fault) that children do have a say and all of it matters.

As any person who has suffered through adolescent angst and the horrors of high school will tell you—it’s all the same, but somehow it’s not, anymore.

My favorite John Hughes films—The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles—defined an era. How could you forget scenes like John Bender (Judd Nelson) crawling through duct work while telling a dirty joke and then falling through the ceiling, or when Duckie (Jon Cryer) lip syncs the Otis Redding song, Try a Little Tenderness, as he dances his way through TRAX music store, or when Samantha (Molly Ringwald) screams after she realizes her friend’s brother just paid to see her underwear.

But, The Breakfast Club is John Hughes’s masterpiece. The film chronicles five teens subjected to spend Saturday in detention. Required to write a 1000-word essay describing “Who you think you are”, five strangers with nothing in common, slowly start to reflect on their secrets and personal struggles, and begin to share stories about their oppressive parents and own shortcomings. Despite seeming different on the outside, they all come to realize that they are, deep down, the same.

Hughes' heart-on-your-sleeve dialogue gave an authentic voice to a new generation of stars that delivered them with raw emotional force. Regarded as one of the greatest teen films ever, The Breakfast Club will remain one of my all-time favorites.  

In honor of the 30^th anniversary, the film is being released on DVD and Blu-Ray, and a newly restored version of it will be re-released in over 400 movie theaters nationwide on March 26th and 31st. The Breakfast Club doesn’t just resonate with my generation, but every generation of teens.

When asked why the film has become such a classic, co-star Molly Ringwald remarked, “It’s the universal feeling that we’re all alone—that we’re all different. I think the movie’s one resounding theme is that everybody feels the same and we’re all alone together.”

And when John Hughes’s former colleague and fellow writer P.J. O’Rourke expounded about the upcoming anniversary and the rebellious nature of the movie, he wrote, “There’s nothing revolutionary about The Breakfast Club. On purpose. The kids don’t try to abolish authority and institutions. They elude and modify them with wit.”

In today’s teenagers’ over-scheduled world, there is precious little time for anything, never mind time for themselves. I used to get in trouble for day-dreaming of all things. Now I have to fight for every moment of peace I can give my children. Let’s just say, I’m a strong believer in mental health days. And having just finished the last round of college applications, I can certainly tell you that the process is far from simple. When I applied to college, that was just what I did, applied. I did my homework and got good grades. Now you have to take extra classes, join several clubs, play sports, and be on a committee that’s going to cure the world of all of its evils. All good, mind you, but let’s be real here.

Once the 80s were over, there was a certain element of innocence that has since disappeared, but I suppose that could be said for every decade that goes by. And although I felt hopeful that life held nothing but promise, the roots of my childhood started to creep over into a world of excess I feel has not changed us for the better.

So yes, there is a big part of me that would like to spend some time in a john Hughes movie, where they put you in a room for a Saturday and you listen, share, learn, accept, and understand. Where there is no difference between social status and circumstance. And where, in the end, the girl gets the guy and everyone lives as happily ever after as they possibly can. Wouldn’t that be something.

These movies matter—then and now.