...In which our heroine has sixteen candles, down the drain.

The Lollapalooza post is coming, but more pressing matters are at hand...

By now you know John Hughes died Friday, and although much has already been said about his passing, I have to contribute my thoughts.

There is a clear memory - sitting on my couch with my dad, I was probably six or seven. My mom was dyeing her hair in the basement. We were watching a movie of undetermined origin. Then, an adorable redhead in a heinous pink dress turned a corner down a long hallway and was greeted by a geek with a pompadour and mirrored glasses before they "plow" into prom. It is one of my earliest recollections of being moved by film, as it was of course Pretty in Pink. Watching that then, I had no idea the impact John Hughes would have on the way I watched films.

Here's another picture - ten year old, geeky Katydid taping double features of The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink off of TNT. Those two along with Sixteen Candles would complete what I lovingly call the Fiery Trifecta of Awesomeness with my girl Molly. All in all, I'd say that I've watched those films about 20 times each. I was smitten with the synth-pop soundtracks, the exploration of a teenage world I did not yet know, the unbearable whiteness of being.

Over the next few years, obsessed was not the word for how I felt about the films of John Hughes. Most of my early internet explorations were to a now defunct website called The John Hughes Files that contained every piece of trivia about the films. I made my mom check out a 1995 issue of Premiere magazine for the piece it had about The Breakfast Club. For months, the Pretty in Pink soundtrack put me to bed. I know things that define minutiae - like that The Pretenders were supposed to sing "Don't You Forget About Me," but Chrissie Hynde got pregnant so her husband Jim Rourke of Simple Minds stepped up, or that Molly Ringwald played "Pretty in Pink" so incessantly on the sets of her first two Hughes films that he wrote her a script about it, or that the band name written on her binder in Sixteen Candles, The Rave-Ups, appear as the house band in Pretty in Pink...I got all day with this stuff.

As all things do, the adoration I had for Hughes faded over time. High school - the very time that his films were made for - consumed me and I lost track. But now as an adult, or at least a post-high schooler, I've reconsidered his films and how damn good they are. The films I loved when I was really little, like Beethoven, Home Alone, and Curly Sue are his, and it all makes sense why I liked them then. We watch Christmas Vacation every year on the day, and I've had to school some college friends on the wonders of Molly Ringwald.

If I really think about it, the films of John Hughes were the first things I ever saw that showed me how well a synthesis of pop music and film could work. Few things make me happier then Duckie trying a little tenderness or Samantha blowing out her birthday candles with the Thompson Twins.

I wore out VHS copies of Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but my eternal favorite, Pretty in Pink, is the only one that made the jump to college with me on DVD. When I was getting ready for prom, I re-created the montage in it set to "Thieves Like Us" by listening to the soundtrack, just like Andie. I just wish I would of had a Duckie, or even a Blaine waiting for me...Maybe the reason I like the Fiery Trifecta so much is because Molly is the outsider, but always gets the guy - Jake Ryan makes me weak in the knees - and it gave me hope.

My sub-conscious did a good job in sending me to Chicago - after all, it's where all of the Hughes films take place. I've seen where Ferris Bueller twist and shouted, longed to make a pilgrimage to the fictional Shermer, Illinois. John Hughes was the first director I ever loved, the single greatest auteur of the teenage film before I even knew what that word meant. So it couldn't be more fitting that here I am, in the city I saw immortalized by some awkward teenagers, trying to make some movie magic of my own.

And at the end of the day, we were/are all some character in one of John Hughes's films - the geek, the basketcase, the rebel, the princess, or the jock - although mostly we're a little bit of each. And in his films, John Hughes showed that was okay. In the roundtable in The Breakfast Club, Allison says "When you grow up, your heart dies." Whoa. As much as we don't want it to be true, it is at least in the sense of the eternally hopeful teenagers in the Hughesverse. Talk of sequels always bothered me - who wants to see Samantha and Jake in a loveless marriage twenty years down the line? Above all else, I think John Hughes films pay tribute to the infinite possibility of what being a teenager means, standing on the brink of adulthood yet not quite there, and certainly not all the scary grown-up stuff that comes after.

Like everyone else, I owe a great deal to John Hughes for helping me navigate those troubled teenage years. I wish only he wouldn't have become such a recluse in the 90s-present because I'd have loved to know what he thought about my generation. I guess I'll just have to write it for myself.

He entertained and inspired me, so I am eternally thankful the films of John Hughes. For Samantha, Claire, Andie, The Donger, Allison, Duckie, Watts, Cameron, Farmer Ted. For Shermer, singing in the shower, blackest black eyeliner, hideous pink prom dresses, The Smiths, black and white capturing the moment, pawn shops, and St. Bernards. For making me an eternal optimist - although I'm more of an Allison then a Claire - that hopes Jake Ryan or Duckie really exists, or that Keith will choose Watts over Amanda. For making me remember to never let a geek borrow my panties, not waste good lip gloss or to always make-up wishfully,  to buy a pool when you might just end up with a jelly of the month club, but most of all, to not let my heart die when I grow up.

Cheesy, but well-edited:


Perfection. That is the boy:


My heart belongs to you forever, Duckie:


Making amends for that travesty at the end of Pretty in Pink:

Best. Lunch. Ever:


And if you haven't read this story about the man himself, please do.