1980s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

[mfunk9786]

The children in the film are at an age where frustration with one's family is common even if it's irrational. And there are lessons to be learned from what they find frustrating or disheartening about their elders - often, as in the case with Estevez's character just to give an example, the characters are seeing traits in their elders that they're learning, in real time, that they may take on themselves more and more as they age if they aren't careful. It's difficult to imagine putting adult perspectives on understanding the intricacies of what makes parental figures turn out a certain way or act a certain way into the mouths of teenage characters and still coming out with a movie that rings as true as The Breakfast Club does - and that's coming from someone who merely finds it to be above average, and doesn't hold it in the exalted esteem of most (Ferris Bueller's Day Off is the first and last masterpiece that Hughes ever made, in my humble opinion).

[matrixschmatrix]

I never saw The Breakfast Club as a teen, and as an adult I could never get past Pauline Kael's beautifully pithy dismissal of it as "a bunch of stereotypes that complain that other people see them as stereotypes"

[Yojimbo]

I never saw The Breakfast Club as a teen, and as an adult I could never get past Pauline Kael's beautifully pithy dismissal of it as "a bunch of stereotypes that complain that other people see them as stereotypes"

What did she say about '12 Angry Men', mat?

[domino harvey]

I never saw The Breakfast Club as a teen, and as an adult I could never get past Pauline Kael's beautifully pithy dismissal of it as "a bunch of stereotypes that complain that other people see them as stereotypes"

They're archetypes not stereotypes, though

[knives]

I think it's a thin line especially in this film since at first it is definitely asking us to view them as archetypes. I think where it slips into stereotype is when it asks us to treat them as something more than archetype. That's why I think the quoted part is so potent, this wouldn't be an issue if the characters weren't so desperate to be seen as something more. That said I think that is a very small problem for the film at best being a symptom to the problem of false profundity and American styled individualism.

The children in the film are at an age where frustration with one's family is common even if it's irrational. And there are lessons to be learned from what they find frustrating or disheartening about their elders - often, as in the case with Estevez's character just to give an example, the characters are seeing traits in their elders that they're learning, in real time, that they may take on themselves more and more as they age if they aren't careful. It's difficult to imagine putting adult perspectives on understanding the intricacies of what makes parental figures turn out a certain way or act a certain way into the mouths of teenage characters and still coming out with a movie that rings as true as The Breakfast Club does - and that's coming from someone who merely finds it to be above average, and doesn't hold it in the exalted esteem of most (Ferris Bueller's Day Off is the first and last masterpiece that Hughes ever made, in my humble opinion).

I want to respond to this, but I at the same time am not entirely sure how to in the polite and respected manner it deserves. I don't think frustration itself is a problem, especially in the case of Nelson who seems to come from a genuinely abusive home, but the manner in which they express it lacks the complexity that comes from the point of frustration being family. These aren't schoolmates or friends they're talking about, but the very life they were born into and that frustration does express itself at any age in a deeper way. I think the movie doesn't ring true for me, in fact offends me at the deepest level, but it is culturally so removed from my experience where even in the worst of times (and they got bad) I would never verbalize that in that way and in fact am shocked at the disrespect needed to express ones self that way. It may be true for some people, but I've never encountered that to such a degree that such behavior seems to me as a sign of anglo privilege. Only the truly affluent could afford to hate family that much and be that disrespectful and that's gross to me. Then again, and I will revisit it with open eyes, I remember that cultural shock being what put me off of Ferris Bueller's Day Off despite at the time really loving Deutch's Pretty in Pink and 16 Candles.

[Gregory]

...such behavior seems to me as a sign of anglo privilege.

Oh, sure, blame it on the British.

[flyonthewall2983]

48hrs
Certain touches of the score aside I'm surprised at how lacking in '80s affectations this one has especially since the Hill I've seen is very much in what I've tended to think of that style. It almost has me reconsidering the decade that like with noirs what's been codified as signifiers for me is a gross exaggeration of a few isolated details. Instead this, and a lot of other '80s films I'm finding, aren't that radically different from the '70s with the primary change being for how clean and slow the film stock is. It's also a bit of a culture shock to see just how heavily emphasized the racism of Nolte is. It almost goes into parody by the time he says spear chucker. What's especially weird is that the racism is only used to supply tension between him and Murphy and isn't touched upon as a character detail at all with the film able to work just as well without it. I guess I just have to assume this is another '80s thing.

I read a book on MTV a few months ago and it said at some point that "the 80's" as a culture really didn't start until 1983, though from more of a musical perspective I imagine this includes film as well because the MTV aesthetic was more prevalent in film and TV by '85. This definitely has a 70's feel to it, if you take aside brief references to aerobics and it being the launching pad for someone who would be part of the epitome of 80's culture.

[knives]

Yeah, I just finished Streets of Fire, which is pretty damn amazing, and the difference is pretty amazing in terms of storytelling, costume, and cinematography. It's pretty old school in a lot of ways, but the sight of Dafoe dressed for an S&M club bathing in neon light is just about the most amazingly '80s thing ever. It's almost more like a Hong Kong cartoon than any American picture I can think of excepting De Palma.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Never thought The Breakfast Club would generate such controversy! I'm pretty ambivalent to it, and it's a million miles better than the awful Ferris Bueller....

My issue with Hughes' movies are the mean and nasty attitude towards 'authority' figures - I know his protagonists are usually younger characters and their view of the world is different, but even in Uncle Buck, he has the awfully written headmistress and Buck's meanness towards her.

[Feego]

In high school, The Breakfast Club was one of my favorite movies, but I have definitely cooled toward Hughes’ films over time. While I don’t have the abhorrence for this movie that Knives has, I kind of get where he’s coming from, and I think thirtyframesasecond expresses it best when he speaks of Hughes’ general hatred of authority figures, or adults in general. As a teen who attended private school (with lots of financial aid), I related to the childish and rather privileged idea of “fighting the power” present in The Breakfast Club. But as a 30-year-old, albeit not a parent myself, I am very much put off by the general distrust of adults that is so evident to me now. Paul Gleason does an admirable job finding a human being in his one-dimensional role, which is more than can be said for the grotesque caricature of a principal in Ferris Bueller. What I find so objectionable about TBC is its glib blaming of the parents for these kids’ problems. The depiction of the parents in the opening scene offers no sense of care or nurturing, just unfeeling pressure (Estevez’s dad and Hall’s mom -- fun fact, that’s Hall’s real-life mom!) or indifference (Ringwald’s dad). The one adult in the film with any positive attributes is the janitor, who is basically presented as an overgrown and disillusioned kid (note the photo that appears in the opening montage ironically proclaiming him “Man of the Year” in high school).

As much as these flaws stand out to me now, I do not hate The Breakfast Club (Ferris Bueller is another story, but I’ll elucidate on that once I revisit it for this project), and having once been so moved by it myself, I certainly don't question other children relating to it now. There are a number of things I do still like about it, particularly the performances. Nelson and Sheedy do seem to be overdoing it a little, their performances seeming particularly “actorly.” But Estevez is very good, and Ringwald and Hall, the only actual teenagers in the movie, are the best, successfully capturing both the innocence and emotional frustrations of their characters. Ringwald is especially good when her character receives a verbal stoning from the others in a scene that otherwise makes me cringe today.

[thirtyframesasecond]

John Hughes' movies sure knew their way around a soundtrack though, none better than this (still his best film)

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[domino harvey]

I should mention that I'm not a huge Hughes fan overall, though I really like the Breakfast Club and Uncle Buck (though the above poster is right, the scene where John Candy dresses down the school admin is needlessly cruel and audience-pandering, but the rest of it hits truer for me), and have some degree of affinity for Career Opportunities, and the Home Alone/Vacation films. I revisited Ferris Bueller a few years back and it didn't do anything for me anymore, and I don't like Sixteen Candles, Some Kind of Wonderful (sorry!), the Great Outdoors, Pretty in Pink, or She's Having a Baby. These are only the ones I've seen/rewatched in the last couple years, so I can't remember where I come down on stuff like Baby's Day Out or Mr Mom et al which I haven't seen since I was much younger. And I haven't seen Weird Science yet, though I do remember the TV series that used to come on USA!

If you want a good, overlooked, non-action, non-Hughes teen film from this decade, I strongly recommend Can't Buy Me Love, which has some interesting things to say with regards to the fleeting nature of popularity, and Lucas, which I considered making my Spotlight as it's a really touching teen movie for people who think they don't want to see a teen movie

[mfunk9786]

Knives, I certainly hope I wasn't disrespectful - but I don't know if frustration with one's elders and wealth/privilege necessarily align as much as you're implying that they do. There are plenty of people in difficult financial or vastly different cultural situations who find fault with or have anger toward their families for a wide variety of reasons, aren't there? It's not always rational, but it's a part of the human experience that shouldn't just be dismissed as exclusively born from white middle-class privilege.

[thirtyframesasecond]

If there's going to be one teen movie in my list it's 'Better Off Dead'. Obviously you have John Cusack's effortless charm, but its absurd humour and quotability more than matches him.

[domino harvey]

If there's going to be one teen movie in my list it's 'Better Off Dead'. Obviously you have John Cusack's effortless charm, but its absurd humour and quotability more than matches him.

It's a pretty good one, yeah, and the other Savage Steve Holland Cusack flick, One Crazy Summer, ain't too bad either. I think Say Anything is better, though none of these will be on my list. Fair warning: don't get carried away with Cusackmania though and check out Hot Pursuit (trust me)

[Feego]

John Hughes' movies sure knew their way around a soundtrack though, none better than this (still his best film)

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The soundtrack is another thing I still love about The Breakfast Club, not only for the iconic "Don't You Forget About Me" but also the Wang Chung song that plays as they're roaming the halls.

And I haven't seen Weird Science yet, though I do remember the TV series that used to come on USA!

Weird Science is the one Hughes film from my childhood that I haven't revisited as an adult, and while I don't remember it being as memorable as the rest, looking back it seems the least offensive. In the hands of most other directors of 80s teen movies, a story of two nerdy guys who create their dream girl would lead to all sorts of misogynistic shenanigans, but in this film, the dream girl turns out to be the smartest and most human character. I recall Kelly LeBrock bringing a lot of humor and warmth to the role, as well as real authority so that she never seems like an object. I used to watch the 90s USA series as well, but on that show, the character was basically reduced to a hip update of "I Dream of Jeannie."

and Lucas, which I considered making my Spotlight as it's a really touching teen movie for people who think they don't want to see a teen movie

Lucas is a fine movie that I will definitely revisit, one that captured Charlie Sheen and Corey Haim at their most sensitive.

[knives]

Knives, I certainly hope I wasn't disrespectful - but I don't know if frustration with one's elders and wealth/privilege necessarily align as much as you're implying that they do. There are plenty of people in difficult financial or vastly different cultural situations who find fault with or have anger toward their families for a wide variety of reasons, aren't there? It's not always rational, but it's a part of the human experience that shouldn't just be dismissed as exclusively born from white middle-class privilege.

You weren't which is why I was trying to be as respectful as I could. I was afraid I was being unnecessarily aggressive. To clarify though, my problem isn't with the frustration, but how it is expressed with regards to the absolute. Feego goes a long way to expressing the difference I'm talking about, but even growing up I didn't know anyone would express their (often much deserved) frustration as a hatred of the unit.

[mfunk9786]

Say Anything is a film that I was convinced was going to fade for me as I got further into adulthood, but I find that it's become a much richer and better film having seen it recently than it was when I first saw it as an oft misguidedly lovestruck teenager (as I think most who loved this film then were). It's such a great portrait of a certain period of time in one's life, that late senior year revelation that everyone's now in the same social boat since the politics of high school have immediately been snuffed out by graduation, and what the subplot has to say about parental involvement in their near-adult children's lives rings very true and is almost staggeringly mature and restrained for a relatively young screenwriter/director, as Crowe was at that time.

[domino harvey]

I like Say Anything overall but it has a significant problem in that John Mahoney's character is essentially right: Ione Skye is too good for Cusack within the world the film presents

[mfunk9786]

True, but I don't know that the film necessarily disagrees with you - that final scene pretty much acknowledges the uncertainty of their relationship now that the honeymoon's over. And the film has interesting questions to ask about how much it's Mahoney's place to interfere with his daughter's relationship because he feels that way - because as someone who's married to someone who is too good for me within the world that common sense presents, sometimes it works out well!

[John Cope]

Given the Hughes discussion you guys might like to see this.

Anyway, fwiw, I always loved Hughes. Felt very much like I grew up with his films, which I basically did. There was the added element for me that I spent much of my youth in suburbs of Chicago and could relate to that aspect. I also recognized and understood those characters though I certainly didn't and don't hate my parents (a lot of that stuff is intentionally overstated in the films anyway as they are after all young characters who are generally prone to that kind of expression).

What was tragic to me was Hughes' descent shortly after his peak period. I much admire Reach the Rock ('98), one of his very last scripts and certainly one of the most personal seeming and fully realized. In the midst of all the infantile Home Alone/Beethoven gibberish he was doing at that time here was a genuine new direction for him while also being a refreshing return to a revitalized, refined form. This really did point toward something new: a way to develop the milieu with which he was so clearly constantly concerned and had such a great sensitivity toward by distilling its essences. I still wonder what happened to Hughes at this point and even before (his last directorial feature was Curly Sue in '91). Presumably he could have continued to direct and he should have as his own sensibility was rich and resonant with that sensitivity as well as displaying a unique feel for his characters and eye for compositions (far more so than all those who attempted to mimic him in the 80's and 90's). Really, what happened?

[flyonthewall2983]

He was quite affected by John Candy's death, with whom he collaborated a lot with by the time he passed. Other than that, who knows. I'm surprised he never did any television, especially after Freaks And Geeks which stood long in the shadow of Breakfast Club and others.

He did give us at least one classic in Planes, Trains & Automobiles.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Again, that film features another petty attitude towards authority, similar to Uncle Buck and Hughes' teen films when Martin explodes at the car rental woman, though I guess her reply compensates for that. Hughes' films are also horribly sentimental in many ways as well, as they want to have it both ways.

[Gregory]

But these are comedies, and comedy is one of the only arenas in which people can mock, lay into, and deflate people who have power—politicians, the police, the rich, unpleasant people in petty positions of power such as customer service, religious authority, parents, etc. It's not necessarily meant to be reasonable or something we would all agree too morally. It's so pervasive in general, and so benign in Hughes's films as far as I've seen, that I'm surprised that anyone takes such issue with it.
I don't remember The Breakfast Club that well, but the characters are teenagers, and many teenagers who are more or less frustrated will vent when there are no adults in earshot and say all kinds of awful things about their parents. This has nothing to do with privilege or "hating family." They don't necessarily mean all the things they say. And again, it's comedy (or perhaps comedy/drama) and people are going to act disrespectfully sometimes, and—if they're teenagers—self-centered and immature to some extent.

As for Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the part about the principal ("dean of students") going to the Buellers' house was absurd of course, but I didn't find the principal himself to be a totally unrealistic caricature at all. I had teachers who were consistently supercilious, resentful, pedantic about rule-following, revealing their bitterness in a lot of what they said and did, and even seeming to relish punishing kids who stepped out of line. I even had one teacher who lost his shit one day and threw a chair across the room in the direction of a student he was kicking out of the classroom—and that was in elementary school. Most teachers weren't like that, though they were often humorless and showed some signs of the teachers parodied in comedies like these, The Simpsons, etc., and given my overall experiences I had no trouble with a character like Jeffrey Jones's principal, especially in a comedy. What was least believable about him was his ineptitude.

[Feego]

Gregory, I agree about teenagers venting their frustrations with authority, their parents, etc., and I find the conversations between the five protagonists of The Breakfast Club to be largely realistic. My problem with Hughes is not that he reflects his young heroes' emotions in his films, which is fine, but that he seems to genuinely believe that the adults deserve the audience's contempt, consistently portraying the adults/authority figures as cruel, uncaring, or stupid. Paul Gleason (in The Breakfast Club) and Jeffrey Jones (in Ferris Bueller) are needlessly mean and arrogant, and we are clearly meant to cheer every time they are humiliated by their teen opponents. It's one thing to acknowledge that there are some mean teachers/principals in the world, but these characters come to represent authority figures as a whole. Jones's character was basically written to be humiliated for our enjoyment so that Bueller can look that much cooler. And the fact is, Bueller does nothing in the movie to deserve his popularity or widespread affection. He wins because everyone else around him loses.