The Godfather of Adolescence is Dead

Cry Like This - Blue Room (mp3)
If You Leave - OMD (mp3)

Michael Jackson created an image; John Hughes created a whole universe. I don't quite know how to explain my sense of loss here, but this isn't an exaggeration: my life would be significantly different -- and worse -- had John Hughes not existed.

Hughes, who died at 59, created so many of the indelible pop culture moments that cover the canvas of my adolescence, that were I to start spewing out all the memorable Hughes lines stored in my brain's C: drive -- without any cheating or help from Google, mind you -- it would take me a long time to get through it. Let's just do the first 25 that pop into my head, with the only requirement that I can't go with the same movie twice in a row.

1. He's a righteous dude.
2. Yeah. 220, 221, whatever it takes.
3. It must be a hen house, because all I see is chickenshit.
4. There's a tremendous white sale on.. at Towel World!
5. This is crazy this is crazy this is crazy.
6. In the family jewels?
7. Any fool can get into college. Only a select few can say the same about Amanda Jones.
8. Let's face it. You're a neo-maxi-zoom-dweebie. What would you be if you weren't out making yourself a better person?
9. You called Dr. Stanky?
   
10. Schooner Tuna: the tuna with a heart!
    
11. If I woke up tomorrow morning with my head sewn to the carpet I wouldn't be more surprised.
    
12. Chicks cannot hold de smoke. Dass what it is.
13. How 'bout you bend over and I shove this straight up your ass?
14. I don't want you to take me home!
15. You're like a chatty cathy doll.
16. You've got a big Yard King 410!
17. Gimme the keys!
18. Does Barry Manilow know you raid his wardrobe?
19. He jeopardizes my ability to effectively govern this student body.
20. Keep the change, you filthy animal.
21. Lisa was everything I wanted in a girl before I knew what I wanted.
22. You ought to spend a little more time dealing with yourself, and a little less time worrying about what your brother does.
23. She's small, but she's strong. Her first baby come out sideways. She didn't scream or nuthin'.
24. It's my porcelain udder buddy.
25. ...and an asshole on my front lawn, emptying his chemical toilet into our sewer.

(for those dying to know, the movies from which these quotes (or my inaccurate recollection of them) come are listed below)

These aren't the best ones. They're not the only ones I could work up. I'm just saying that I thought of the next one as soon as I'd typed the one before it, and I had to concentrate to keep others from coming into my head. I can already think of a dozen more that are better and more memorable than the ones I wrote above.

My point is, John Hughes helped me understand what I was going through as a teenager. He helped me know that being awkward and feeling outcast was miserable yet also worth laughing at. He made me want to kiss a girl. He told me it was admirable to want to be more than others think you can be. He told me money was sad and superficial and was used by shallow people as a singularly divisive attribute. He convinced me that parents loved us, even if they didn't quite understand us.

Hughes, particularly in The Breakfast Club, noted the cultural shift from the '60s and '70s -- when teens distrusted authority -- to the '80s -- when teens fought amongst themselves and paid too little heed to the conniving and selfish adults in charge of them. He simplified some of the complexities of teenage confusion without insulting us. He made an entire movie set inside a school library, a movie of just five kids talking to each other, and it was successful.

When I found out about his death yesterday afternoon, the weight of it didn't hit me right away. Then, last night at about 10 p.m., I found myself putting in one of my least favorite Hughes films, Pretty In Pink, and watching it and loving it even though it's not that great of a film. His movies weren't Kubrickian constructs of painstaking care. They were flawed, and sometimes highly. But they had enough heart to give life to a million tin men. Or, more accurately, to millions of tin teens.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1, 22)
Mr. Mom (2, 10)
Some Kind of Wonderful (3, 7)
Weird Science (4, 6, 13, 17, 21)
Vacation (5)
Breakfast Club (8, 12, 18)
She's Having a Baby (9, 16, 24)
Christmas Vacation (11, 25)
Pretty in Pink (14)
Planes, Trains and Automobiles (15, 23)
Home Alone (20)