UPDATE: I forgot to add this last night when I put this post up . . . Congratulations to KELI GWYN, winner of The Blue Enchantress.

You may have read today’s blog title and thought, Who the heck is John Hughes? Well, for those of you who don’t know, John Hughes was a screenwriter, director, and producer who passed away Thursday, August 6. Because so many of his movies have become iconic over the years, I thought I’d pay a little tribute to the influence this man has had on the culture of the 1980s.

Sixteen Candles (1984)
This movie, in combination with the next two on this list, practically defined the 1980s for teenagers. And these three films made Molly Ringwald into the biggest teen star of the ’80s. Now, if you’ve never seen these films (or if it’s been a really long time), I will warn you that the language and subject matter can be rather crass at times, but still, some of the most culturally important films for my generation. Back in ‘the day,’ turning sixteen was a big deal . . . because WAAAAYYYYY back then, sixteen was the age when we were supposed to start thinking of first boyfriends and first kisses (though I realize that even back then, this was happening at a much younger age—but still probably not as young as now!). Also, if you think about the way that school systems were set up then, with ninth grade still being in junior high and not high school, the year we turned sixteen was usually the first year of high school, just adding that much more pressure. And in this film, when the girl turning sixteen has an older sister who’s getting married at the same time as the sixteenth birthday, there’s going to be a lot of emotional turmoil going on—but in a fun way in this film.

The Breakfast Club (1985)
Now, while I’ve said this as one of the iconic films of my teen years, I have to admit that I didn’t see it for the first time until I was in my twenties. But, boy, it took me straight back to those days. Aside from the fact that this movie churned out some really good actors, it also delved into the most common stereotypes of teens in the ’80s: the jock, the nerd, the beauty-queen, the loner, and the stoner—and then broke down those types into real people and the real issues behind the labels. Hughes used the platform of a day-long detention to pull these five disparate characters together in a setting in which they’d be isolated from the rest of their peers so that they had to interact with each other. And in interacting with each other, they each discovered the fallacies of the stereotypes they’d been labeled with, finding a little piece of themselves in each other—and vice versa—and ended with the characters voicing that lesson, just as any good teen film should.

Pretty in Pink (1986)
When I was fifteen years old, I developed a crush on an actor who was being pretty much ignored and called “Matthew Broderick for the Near-Sighted” (which I was at the time, so actually, that fit). That actor was Jon Cryer, whom hardly anyone knew about until he hit it big with his current show on CBS, Two and a Half Men. Jon Cryer played the uber-iconic Duckie in Pretty in Pink, and maybe he stood out in my mind a little bit more than for other people because I had a good friend my sophomore year of high school who was the spitting image of him—and dressed and acted just like that character, right down to the “duck shoes.” But more than just this new breed of ’80s guy, PiP gave us Andrew McCarthy as the rich guy who was willing to ask out the girl from the wrong side of town in spite of his friends and James Spader in the type of role it took him years to break out of—the snobby rich guy. It also sent teen fashion into new and strange directions—I’ve already mentioned Duckie’s style, but Molly’s character sported some pretty bizarre couture in this film; and pretty soon after it came out, that kind of style sensibility started making its way into my high school.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
Is this not the most iconic film of the 1980s??? (Bueller? Bueller?) By the time I got to college three years after it came out, there wasn’t a single person I knew who hadn’t seen this movie—and loved it and quoted it often (until Steel Magnolias became the most quoted movie shortly thereafter). Who didn’t dream of skiving off a day of school (or work) and going out and doing whatever we wanted to do and not get caught? In this film, Hughes broke the “fourth wall” and had Matthew Broderick, as Ferris, talk directly to the audience—giving the audience lessons on how, exactly, to fake out the parents or get away with skipping school. (And they tied the movie to Broderick’s other breakout hit of the ’80s, War Games, when Ferris hacks into the school’s computer system to change the number of sick days he’d taken). I’ll admit it straight out—I like Cameron more than Ferris, as I tend to go more for the quiet type than the flashy type, but the character of Ferris is going to be a big influence for the hero of one of my future contemporary romance novels (at least on the surface of my character). If you haven’t watched this movie recently (or ever) may I recommend renting it this weekend?