There was already a glorious teen movie boom before John Hughes showed up. In 1982 we got Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which still gets my vote as the decade’s best movie. But in the early ’80s we also got Class, Risky Business, Getting It On, The Last American Virgin, Private School, Paradise, The Legend of Billie Jean, The Beach Girls, Vision Quest, Footloose, Flashdance and many more. Girls Just Want to Have Fun is one of the all-time best movies about growing up Catholic, with Sarah Jessica Parker as the bespectacled geek girl who longs to go on Dance-TV, and Helen Hunt as her wisecracking friend (“Hail Mary? Sorry Sister, I thought you meant ‘Proud Mary,’ but I do a great Tina Turner!”). Even the nuns in this movie get to be cool. Dirty Dancing was just a big-budget copy of this movie, although an admittedly great one. (Hard to go wrong with Patrick Swayze.) People obsess about the strangest teen movies. When I’m walking around in Greenpoint, my neighborhood in Brooklyn, I always take a loop around McGolrick Park to the side street where one of my neighbors is parked with a license plate that reads WORDMAN. I always think, damn, that is one hard-core Eddie and the Cruisers fan. And who thought that in 2010, there’d be any kind of Eddie and the Cruisers fan?
The teen movie explosion was mostly garbage, sure. But as a rebellion against smug Hollywood pap, the garbage meant something. And Phoebe Cates? She really meant something.
John Hughes’s movies were special because they had the sassiest girls, the cattiest boys, the most relatable boy-girl friendships and bumbling parents and big sisters on muscle relaxants. For those of us who were sullen teenagers, it shocked us how he got the details right, especially the music. “I’d rather be making music than movies,” he said in 1985, describing himself as a frustrated guitarist. “Pretty in Pink was written to the Psychedelic Furs, Lou Reed and Mott the Hoople. The Breakfast Club was written in my Clash-Elvis Costello period.”
That’s how we got the Pretty in Pink soundtrack, one of the defining ’80s new-wave albums. You could complain that when the Psychedelic Furs did their remake of “Pretty in Pink” for this movie, it was about one-third as good as the original. I would counter that until this movie, girls never listened to the original; once “Pretty in Pink” became a song girls actually liked, it became a totally different song.
His movies had loads of talk; it’s no coincidence that the generation weaned on The Breakfast Club was the generation that decided John Cassavetes was the great American filmmaker. I first fell for Molly Ringwald in a movie where she plays John Cassavetes’ daughter, Miranda to his Prospero, in the 1982 Shakespeare update Tempest. When a cute American boy arrives to rescue her from desert island drudgery, the first thing she asks him is “So is punk still big in the States?”
But John Hughes didn’t bother trying to catch how teens “really” talked, which then as now just meant “um” and “you know.” Instead, he indulged his genius for invented catchphrases. It’s not like any of us actually said things like “So I smell” or “While we’re on the topic of the double-breasted party machine,” but he had an ear for what we were trying to say.
Here’s just one example: it’s easy to forget now, but Sixteen Candles invented the word “geek” as we know it. Before Anthony Michael Hall played the kid listed in the credits only as “the Geek,” geeks were just called “wusses” or other homophobic epithets. The word “geek” was just an arcane reference to the old Dr. Demento novelty “Pencil Neck Geek.” (It doesn’t come up once in Fast Times, which goes for “wuss” instead.) The geek as a social category didn’t exist before Sixteen Candles entered the Anthony Michael Hall of Fame. Now, can you imagine a day without that word? Hughes knew geekdom: he even did a cameo as Hall’s dad in The Breakfast Club, dropping him off with an E MC2 license plate. (This joke helped the geeks in the theater figure out where all the other geeks were sitting, since we were the ones who laughed.)
To me, his most famous and beloved creation is Duckie, from Pretty in Pink. It has been suggested in some quarters that Duckie is, in fact, the Messiah. This suggestion is probably correct. The parallels are daunting: Jon Cryer and Jesus Christ? Practically the same name! Both are poor Jewish boys with absent fathers. Both make the ultimate sacrifice so that others may have life—or, if they prefer, Andrew McCarthy. Duckie tells Andie, “I would have died for you!” Both have a very special relationship with Dweezil Zappa. Duck of God, you take away the sins of the world; grant us peace.
The Duckman is at the heart of the central question of the John Hughes universe: Why, Andie, why? Why does Molly’s character go for hot richie Blaine (McCarthy) when she could have the lavishly moussed Duckie? It’s amazing how violently people argue over the end of Pretty in Pink. To this day, there’s a popular legend that the original version of the movie had Andie choosing Duckie, except it supposedly got changed after test screenings. I’ll believe this when I see it—but given that this scene has never shown up anywhere, not even in the DVD outtakes, I’m going to keep believing this “lost original” is a myth that just illustrates how much people love Duckie.
I love Duckie too, but what makes him Duckie is the selfless way he accepts the ruckus of female desire, and the way he wants her to get what she wants. So he urges Andie to go dance with Blaine, even though Blaine’s a jerk, and even though Blaine showed up to the prom wearing an even goofier outfit than Duckie’s. And of course, Duckie ends up getting jumped by another girl—Kristy Swanson!—before the song even ends. That’s teen utopia for you.
Those final seconds of Pretty in Pink will always be controversial—but they sum up why I will always love John Hughes movies. The sullen teenager inside me needs Duckie to set Molly free, and so the sullen teenager inside me will go to his grave defending that final scene. Pretty in Pink shows why sullen teenagers will always exist and will always annoy people. You disagree? Hey—no worries.
LITA FORD
“Kiss Me Deadly”
1988
Let’s spend a few minutes on this girl, which in all honesty is more than she spent on me.
Paula was a messed-up Catholic girl I knew. I liked messed-up Catholic girls. Like a good Catholic boy, I was attracted to messes and to messed-up-ness in general. She was a bartender with long greasy black hair and a denim jacket she wore every day, no matter how hot it was. When I think of the summer of 1988, I think of her. Def Leppard was her band. “Pour Some Sugar on Me” was her tune. Screamin’ Joe Elliott? Her man. When Joe howled, “You got the peaches, I got the cream,” his voice seemed to herald the imminent union of our peaches, our cream and other sundries from the produce-and-dairy aisle of our hearts.
I got to know Paula at the radio station, where she did the Friday night reggae show. I would drop by to file her records and attempt to impress her. Sometimes she wouldn’t show up, and I was forced to cover for her by doing a reggae show, which was kind of like the time the Red Sox had to use George “Boomer” Scott as a pinch runner. She got rowdy when she drank; she liked to start scenes in bars with big dudes and leave me to talk my way out of it. She loved fireworks, and she loved to take her boom box up to the roof and set off bottle rockets while blasting Lita Ford and Guns N’Roses. I was invited, as long as I didn’t blow off a thumb or anything.
I spent the summer sleeping alone with a big picture of Morrissey over my bed, ripped out from Spin magazine, with an ad for his solo album: “MORRISSEY ... ALONE.” Every time I crawled into this bed, I was alone, and for some reason I thought that was a surprising coincidence. Paula hated Morrissey, hated the Cure, hated anything that sounded dour or angsty. But there was always something kind of sad about her. She never liked to talk about her hometown or her history. She had a big, croaky laugh, and her eyes were like clear glass. I could tell she’d come a long way from wherever she was from.
In the afternoons, she called me and we watched Dial MTV together over the phone. She kept up a constant motormouth commentary as Adam Curry counted down the top ten viewer requests from 1-900-DIAL-MTV. We sang along with the hits of the summer—“Kiss M
e Deadly” and “I Hate Myself for Loving You” and “Sweet Child o’ Mine” and “Push It” and “Foolish Beat.” Every day, “Pour Some Sugar on Me” was number one.
On weekends we’d sit on her floor listening to records, drinking Jägermeister and Connecticut Cola. All over her wall, she had pictures of Johnny Depp, usually torn out from Bop or some other teen fan mag. The show 21 Jump Street was brand-new that summer. It’s hard to remember there even was a time before Johnny Depp was around to toast the loins of our nation . . . but there was. And it was a cold, cold place. She loved to talk about how Johnny Depp was going to change the world. He was a new ideal of manhood, the dawn of a new golden era. It sounded plausible the way she described it. Anything would have.
Paula also had a sweet tooth for pop—Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, Exposé, George Michael—and metal, especially of the ass-kicking girl variety like Lita Ford and Joan Jett. I would come over, bringing her the latest Bop magazine, and we’d listen to her Debbie Gibson twelve-inch single of “Only in My Dreams,” all the remixes in a row. I would play her my “Foolish Beat” cassingle, with the “Mega Mix” medley of all Debbie’s hits. But Paula had big issues with Debbie’s video for “Foolish Beat,” because she didn’t like the boy in the video—too much of a pretty boy. She said, “Debbie should get some bikers in her video.”
One night, I helped her make a sign for a political rally she was going to in New York, demonstrating against the nuclear arms race. She made a sign that said, JOHNNY DEPP DEMANDS WORLD PEACE. I stayed up late helping her cut out pictures of Johnny’s eyebrows to decorate her sign. She invited me to crash on her floor. We didn’t make out or anything, but spending the night in a girl’s room was a very big deal. I lay there in the darkness, hearing her breathe. Johnny Depp’s eyebrows watched over us both. I remember thinking, “I’m going to remember this night for the rest of my life.” What’s stranger: the fact that I remember, or the fact that I had a rest of my life? Was there a connection between one fact and the other?
She had to get up early in the morning, because her ride to the rally was coming at six. The clock radio woke us up to Bob Dylan’s “Silvio,” and we were both too groggy to talk. She got picked up by a married couple in a Volvo; the husband told her to put out her cigarette because “Nobody has ever smoked in this car,” which for some reason made us giggle. I staggered home to sleep it off, but I was afraid I would wonder later if it had been a dream, so I wrote a note on an index card and thumbtacked it to the wall: 7 A.M. SHE LIKES ME.
I decided I would make a move, sometime that summer, but it seemed like there was plenty of summer left. My roommates and I threw a house party that turned out kind of like the party Lita Ford sang about in “Kiss Me Deadly,” with a truly rancid orange punch my roommate and I had brewed by pouring all the alcohol in the house into a bowl and adding Tang. While people danced in the living room, Paula sat in the kitchen and watched MTV—it was a Rock Block Weekend, so we waited for a Def Leppard block. It didn’t take very long. Paula marveled to the “Rock of Ages” video, as Joe Elliott walked into the wizard’s castle, pulled the sword from the stone, and lifted it to the heavens. “Excalibur!” she proclaimed.
I figured this was my sign to make a move. So when I walked her home, I told her I had a crush on her. She said, “Oh, that’s nice,” but not in a sarcastic way. Her voice sounded sad. She invited me in and turned on MTV. It was a Cher Rock Block. We both sat quaking on her couch. Cher was wearing a black leather jumpsuit and draping herself around her hot young Italian-stallion boyfriend, belting “I Found Someone.” Neither of us said a word. What do I do now? Do I say something? Do I lean in to kiss her? Should I say good night?
The next Cher video was the one called “We All Sleep Alone.” I said good night.
The next day, Paula called and invited me to a motorcycle festival. Neither of us mentioned the night before. That was a great Cher video.
The highlight of our summer was the night we went to see Debbie Gibson live at the New Haven Coliseum. Naturally, we made Debbie Gibson a mix tape. We loaded it up with punk rock women—the Slits, the Raincoats, X-Ray Spex, Patti Smith. We figured we would toss the tape onstage so Debbie would hear it later and go punk rock. We had the plan down perfect—we even slid the tape into a gift bag that had a teddy bear, since we knew from reading Bop that Debbie kept a collection of stuffed animals from her fans. We even wrote our phone numbers on the tape in case Debbie had any questions.
Debbie Gibson was great that night, doing all her hits and a few costume changes. She also did a terrible ballad, “Lost in Your Eyes,” as a sign of her mature new direction. What is it with disco girls? Why do they always want to grow up to turn into Barbra Streisand instead? Paula and I were up front on the floor, surrounded by screaming little girls, and we decided Johnny Depp was there in spirit. I sneaked up to throw Debbie our gift bag, but the security guards had other ideas. In fact, they got extremely agitated at the sight of an adult male approaching the stage, which was definitely understandable. I tried to explain I had a present for Debbie, but Tiny and Bruno were not so interested in my mix tape for Debbie, and I was lucky to get back to my seat with all of my teeth.
After the show, we were in the crowd heading out of the Coliseum, and Paula elbowed me. “That’s the guy.”
“What guy?”
“The video guy.”
“Holy shit.”
There he was—Debbie’s video guy, the guy who played her love interest in the “Foolish Beat” video. There was no mistaking him, with his blue eyes and lofty cheekbones. He was leaning up against the wall, chatting with another member of the Debbie entourage. I have no idea why the “Foolish Beat” boy was there, or why he was expecting not to get recognized given that MTV was playing the video day and night. Paula and I decided it would be totally cheesy to go talk to him, so it was my job. In one of my all-time low points as a human being, I rushed up and shook his hand. I asked, “Will you give her a present from us?” He rolled his eyes and said, “Uh, surrrrre.” I gave him the gift bag with our mix tape.
Paula and I went to the bar and toasted Debbie’s punk rock future. The future was incredibly bright. Debbie Gibson was going to go punk rock. Johnny Depp was going to inspire world peace. And there was still enough summer left for me to make a move.
When Paula left town, she left fast. One day I called her house and her housemate told me she was gone. Didn’t even know where. I never got to say good-bye, but I would have only said something stupid. The tiny kindnesses that passed between us were real. They were the kind of tiny kindnesses that teach you how to imagine bigger ones. But summer was over. And what about the cast of our little Dial MTV soap opera? What happened to the icons who shared our little moment in time?
Debbie Gibson? She never called. Did she ever hear that tape? Of course not. Her next album, Electric Youth, was terrible, which surprised exactly two people. She is now a famous Broadway star named Deborah.
George Michael? He eventually came out. This surprised the same two people.
Def Leppard? Their next album was called Adrenalize. It had a great song called “Stand Up (Kick Love into Motion),” but no one cared.
The hot boy from the “Foolish Beat” video? He was also in Debbie’s “Lost in Your Eyes” video. I don’t know if he ever came out, and not even I care.
Cher? Broke up with the hot young Italian stallion who was in that video. Stayed famous, which surprised everyone.
Lita Ford stayed cool and always will be cool. Tiffany put out a great second album that flopped, but I could still sing you most of the songs on it. Axl Rose lost his mojo, Adam Curry cut his hair, and Johnny Depp is still the most important person on the planet every now and then, especially the haircut he had in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape four years later.
Thanks to all concerned. It was a summer. A year later, there was another one. The world has lots of summers, whether you choose to show up for them or not. This was a huge surprise to both of us.
TONE LOC
“Funky Cold Medina”
1988
Why do I love the cassingle? As Whitney herself might say, I don’t know why I like it . . . I just do!
More and more, my cassingles are the format that rivets this decade into my head. It sums up the Hot Radio explosion of the ’80s, all the Latin disco and rap kids coming out of nowhere with 1-900 numbers and a date on Club MTV with Downtown Julie Brown. If any objet d’pop lives and dies with this decade, it’s this humble little gadget, even though the cassingle survived the ’80s and carried the news on into the ’90s, especially since releasing a cassingle always remained a very ’80s thing to do. If there was ever a format designed to be played once and then thrown away, it’s this one. Which also applies to some of my favorite songs from around this period.
The cassingle was the pop format of the gods. They were ninety-nine cents, the same price as a seven-inch single in the 1970s or an iTunes download in the 2000s, the price that somehow people decided was the maximum they would pay for a hit song without feeling clipped. There aren’t any hit-song formats I don’t love, but this is the best. Little loved, not built to last, encased in flimsy little folded-cardboard cases, cassingles were humble servants of the pop moment, but they were capable of grandeur. They began to show up in the racks in the middle of the 1980s, just as the Walkman and the boom box became the standard playback media; they were gone by the 2000s, when the hard drive took over. But for the years in between, those hardworking little gadgets were the coin of the realm when it came to pop dreams. They were shiny, brittle and cheap, exactly like the songs they delivered.
Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut Page 16
