“When you grow up, your heart dies.” — from The Breakfast Club                                    

Just finished Susannah Gora’s new book You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, And Their Impact On A Generation. As the title implies, the book looks back on the 1980s and the particular brand of teen movies of the era pioneered by the late writer/director John Hughes (Gora focuses on the seven seminal works in this genre: Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s Fire, Pretty In Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Some Kind Of Wonderful and Say Anything).

Many of us here at YOMYOMF grew up in the 1980s and these films were an important part of our youth despite their flaws (i.e. the glaring lack of diversity in them except for one infamous exception—see below). So let’s take a trip to the past with these little-known facts from Gora’s book:

THE ORIGINS OF THE BRAT PACK

The term “Brat Pack” was created by journalist David Blum in a New York magazine cover story that ran on June 10, 1985. Blum originally planned to write a story on Emilio Estevez, shooting St. Elmo’s Fire at the time, who invited Blum for a night out with the boys including fellow cast mates Judd Nelson and Rob Lowe. After what Blum claimed was a night of “bratty” and rude behavior on the part of the young stars, he coined the term as a take-off on the Frank Sinatra-led entourage, the Rat Pack. The young actors felt the article negatively impacted their careers by painting them as spoiled hedonists (Estevez was especially hurt as the one who brought Blum into the fold).

The fallout from the “Brat Pack” piece had far-reaching consequences. Those like Andrew McCarthy, who didn’t really socialize or have much in common with the others, felt unfairly lumped in with his cast mates: “Emilio was like obsessed with going to see Rambo and I thought, who would want to see fucking Rambo? What is this? I just thought this is stupid. They used to go out a lot.” Fellow cast mate Ally Sheedy felt the article not only negatively impacted their careers but also the relationships she had with the other actors: “We were friends. I was happy and comfortable, and felt accepted. That’s why it was completely heartbreaking to me when the whole ‘Brat Pack’ thing happened…I had felt truly a part of something, and that guy (Blum) blew it to pieces.”

SIXTEEN CANDLES

John Hughes wrote Sixteen Candles, which would unofficially kick-off the golden era of 80s teen flicks, with Molly Ringwald in mind to play the lead. He had seen her in a recent film version of Tempest and thought she’d be perfect for the role of Samantha. He wrote the script with her headshot taped over his desk as inspiration and offered her the role without an audition. Ringwald and Hughes had an immediate (by all accounts, platonic) connection despite their age difference. “He was inspired by me,” Ringwald said, “and I was, in turn, inspired by him. And it was great. I felt a bit that it was like Woody Allen and Diane Keaton.”

Sixteen Candles also features the infamous Long Duk Dong played by Gedde Watanabe (the only major character of color in any of Hughes’ teen films; as Ringwald stated: “The movies are just so white.”), which many Asian Americans found offensive. The Utah-born actor went to the audition completely in character and the casting director really believed the actor barely spoke a word of English. Watanabe on his role: “Back then I didn’t understand as much as I do now. I was a little bit ignorant, too, because I grew up in Utah. I had a very strange upbringing where I didn’t experience that much racism. I just thought I was a part of everybody else.”

THE BREAKFAST CLUB

Hughes wrote The Breakfast Club before Sixteen Candles but because he had no directing experience, the studio felt he should do Sixteen Candles first because The Breakfast Club took place in mostly one room and would require more skill and experience to pull off. According to Judd Nelson, who played the role of the rebel Bender: “Hughes told me he got the idea for it from seeing Breaker Morant, an Australian movie about the Boer War. It primarily takes place in the courtroom. He was fascinated that it held his interest, and so he wrote The Breakfast Club.”

ST. ELMO’S FIRE

By the time of the St. Elmo’s Fire shoot, many of the film’s young actors were already big stars and they knew it, especially Rob Lowe. Remembers director Joel Schumacher on one memorable day during the shoot: “Rob was in his (trailer) with Emilio, and I guess he was changing out of his costume, and there were all these screaming young ladies outside, separated by a barrier. Rob says to Emilio, ‘Watch this,’ and he threw open the door. He was stark naked. And then he immediately slammed the door and locked it. This mass of people moved forward and I thought the whole (trailer) was going to tip over.”

PRETTY IN PINK

Regular readers of this blog already know that in the original ending of Pretty In Pink, Ringwald’s Andie ended up with Duckie (Jon Cryer) over Andrew McCarthy’s character. But after a negative test screening, the climax was reshot so that Ringwald ended up with McCarthy instead. Ringwald had really wanted Robert Downey Jr. to play Duckie and felt she had no chemistry with Cryer (“I think he seemed gay,” Ringwald said about Cryer’s take on Duckie) so she was happy with the new ending. But Cryer had mixed feelings: “I was a little hurt because you feel it reflects on you as an actor, because you didn’t get an audience to invest enough in (Andie and Duckie’s) relationship in such a way that it would be satisfying that they would end up together. But at the same time, I got it…You can’t send a message that interclass romance just can’t possibly work.”

FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF

Alan Ruck was widely praised for his role as Cameron, the insecure best friend of Matthew Broderick’s titular character, in John Hughes’ big hit Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. But after moving out to L.A., Ruck found himself unable to book acting jobs and had a wife and new baby to support. Desperate, he went to an employment agency to find a job. Ruck remembers being asked, “’Can you file? Can you type?’…I was like, ‘No, I can’t do anything.’ So they sent me to work at a Sears warehouse in East L.A.” His mostly Latino and African American co-workers would occasionally remark about his resemblance to the actor in Ferris Bueller, but Ruck would either deny or, at the least, not confirm their suspicions. He said his co-workers must have seen him as “a dumb son-of-a-bitch that had a job in the movies then wound up working in a Sears warehouse.”

SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL

The John Hughes-produced Some Kind Of Wonderful was a troubled production. When original director Howard Deutch (who also directed Pretty In Pink) dropped out, Martha Coolidge (Valley Girl) was hired. But she was soon fired along with actors Kim Delaney and Kyle MacLachlan (who were replaced by Lea Thompson and Craig Sheffer). Deutch came back on board and immediately clashed with star Eric Stoltz who was upset his friends had been let go. Stoltz himself had recently been fired from Back To The Future and replaced by Michael J. Fox. As Lea Thompson remembers: “I had seen him fired on Back To The Future. He was my friend so I was more worried about Eric. I was afraid he’d get fired.”

SAY ANYTHING

Writer Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire) made his directing debut with Say Anything because every other director (including Lawrence Kasden and Mike Nichols) turned down his script. The now iconic scene where John Cusack, in an effort to win back Ione Skye, holds his boombox over his head while Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” plays almost didn’t happen. Cusack initially refused to do the scene that way because he “was really adamant about not wanting (his character) to be subservient to (Skye)” according to Crowe. Other options were tried (like the boombox sitting on the hood of Cusack’s car) but none of them worked. As the sun was setting and the shoot was coming to a close, Crowe convinced Cusack to try it with his boombox over his head. The last shot Crowe got in before the sun went down was what ended up in the completed film and eventually became one of the most famous moments in cinematic history.