This is one of the best blog posts I’ve read and I wish I had written it.
As for me? I didn’t care when Michael Jackson died and, while I feel bad for Ed McMahon’s family, well, whatever. Walter Cronkite is a different story. He was a legend and an icon and there aren’t any more like him, which is sad.
But John Hughes? I’m 36 years old and those teen angst movies are still among my favorites. You know, the kind you’d take to a desert island to watch over and over again.
Maybe it’s a generational thing to say (read: Cathy’s getting old) but they don’t make movies like The Breakfast Club or St. Elmo’s Fire anymore. Everything’s about bigger, louder, more impressive instead of story and plot and theme. The one exception? “Art films” that people in brown turtleneck sweaters and dark jeans talk about at length while sucking on unfiltered cigarettes, wearing dark lipstick, and bemoaning their bourgeois station in life and the bad luck they have not to have been born with more angst in their life.
Nobody makes happy-funny movies anymore. Hughes knew his format and his dialogue and timing. He knew that life has enough sadness and pain an angst all on its own without having to show it to people in movies, too.
Goodbye, Mr. Hughes. Thank you for the laughter.
