Not the definitive account of the Brat Pack/80s teen era, but more a look at specific films: Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Some Kind of Wonderful, St Elmo's Fire and Say Anything. So we get a lot on John Hughes (though it's not a bio), a bit on Cameron Crowe, and a fair amount on the actors. Basically this feels like six long individual pieces stuck together - there's kind of the link of Hughes, but a third of it deals with films he didn't make, and it pretty much ignores Weird Science. So there is something slightly unsatisfactory about it.
Still, what's here is pretty good, helped by interviews with most of the key players - well, actors, mostly, and a few executives, critics, academics and record company people, not so much from editors, cinematographers, etc. There were a lot of things I didn't know - the extent of troubles on Some Kind of Wonderful (which sounds hellish to make), the casting process of the various movies, the story of the writing of the Brat Pack article in New York magazine, the fact that all the actors blame that article for ruining their careers.
I have, like so many, strong memories of the John Hughes films. I had heard about Sixteen Candles before it hit cinemas - the advance word was it was a more serious teen movie. I first saw it on VHS and was delighted to find most of the comedy was very broad, like Meatballs or Vacation - there was a bit of sap but not too much. The others I saw in a cinema (including Weird Science) - except Some Kind of Wonderful which didn't get much of a release. The Breakfast Club blew me away - I remember talking about it with total strangers at McDonalds after seeing it in the cinema. Pretty in Pink was less impressive, though good - it was incredibly serious (like Breakfast it seemed to be a drama, only with a lot less laughs). Ferris was comedy with some great dramatic bits; Some Kind of Wonderful remains my favourite with great personal resonance. These movies were all flawed (e.g. broad racist caricatures in Candles, unconvincing romantic pairings in Breakfast, overly smug hero in Some Kind of Wonderful) but they all had wonderful moments, even Weird Science.
They were all beautifully cast too - Hughes seemed to have a knack of picking young actors who'd done maybe one memorable role before hand e.g. Anthony Michael Hall (Vacation), Mia Sara (Legend), Matthew Broderick (Wargames), Andrew McCarthy (Class). But also he took people who seemed to come out of nowhere, e.g. Jon Cryer, Alan Ruck. And the music was always great - Yello, OMD, Spandau Ballet, Simple Minds, Psychedelic Furs...
Gora is an engaging writer and doesn't deify the films. She could have perhaps put them in a more historical context - while she's strong on the films that Hughes influenced (Kevin Smith, Judd Apatow, etc) she's not as good on the films that influenced him. Surely he was affected by teen tales like Summer of 42 and American Graffiti - or was it the Sandra Dee movies of the 60s? The Hughes tales didn't just drop from the sky.
On one hand you feel some sympathy for the actors being labelled as part of a pack. But did it wreck their careers? A label surely didn't send Molly Ringwald to France, or drive Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, and Rob Lowe to drinking problems, or Ally Sheedy to an eating disorder. Do they really think the label made Ringwald turn down Blue Velvet and Pretty Woman and Some Kind of Wonderful, Hall and McCarthy Some Kind of Wonderful? Also most of them had one or two post Brat Pack hits - Nelson (From the Hip), McCarthy (Mannequin), Lowe (About Last Night, Bad Influence), Sheedy (Short Circuit), Estevez (Young Guns), Jennifer Grey (Dirty Dancing) - they just had trouble sustaining it. But most of them had decent careers - Nelson, Lowe, Hall, Ruck and Cryer all enjoyed a successful run on the small screen, none of them are washed up junkies.
A great read but you can't help wishing there was something more.
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