Pretty In Pink

by Jonathan Bernstein

  Soon Lisa teaches the still-timid Wyatt how to kiss with his mouth open and delivers a stirring squeeze to his hitherto untouched buttcheeks while doing so. She also takes vengeful note of the way his vicious militiaman brother Chet (Bill Paxton, broader than Broadway) knocks him about. She even allows herself to be flaunted as a sex toy to score points off the boys’ high-school tormentors, Ian and Max (Roberts Rusler and Downey Jr.) when the smirking studs follow her like puppies only to see her slide into Gary’s car and submit to his slobbers. “She likes the rough stuff, what can I do?” He shrugs at them, savoring the sound their jaws make as they hit the curb. Lisa’s outstanding contribution to the establishment of her creators’ self-esteem comes with her decision to throw a big, loud, wild bash. Wyatt whimpers that he doesn’t want a party in his house—his parents are, of course, away for the weekend. She tells him, “If you want to be a party animal, you have to learn to live in the jungle.” Then, in the movie’s one flat-out funny scene, she goes to pick up Gary and confronts his parents, coming on smug and obnoxious like a female Ferris Bueller as dressed by Retail Slut. “I’ve whipped up this nasty little soiree,” she tells Gary’s aghast dad. “Sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll, chips, dips, chains, whips, a couple of hundred high-school kids running round in their underwear.” When dad objects to her presence and goes to call the cops, she pulls a gun on him before escorting Gary out the house and wiping his parents’ memory circuits.

  In a genre where interminable party scenes are a requirement, Weird Science boasts maybe the most murderous and endless party scene of them all. A million and one ideas that probably snapped, crackled and popped on the printed page entirely fail to catch fire on screen. The whole high school converges on Wyatt’s house. Ian and Max offer the skinny twits they call girlfriends to Gary and Wyatt in exchange for another perfect woman. They forget to hook up the Barbie doll to the computer and create a nuclear missile instead. Another freak electrical storm causes 8 × 10s to come alive, traps a teen inside the TV and sucks most of the contents of the house up the chimney. Wyatt’s crusty grandparents arrive and Lisa puts them in suspended animation and sticks them in the closet. She then ponders the challenge of bringing out Gary and Wyatt’s inner strength. This is accomplished by conjuring up a biker gang of raging mutants (The Road Warrior’s Vernon Wells and The Hills Have Eyes’ Michael Berryman among them) to crash the party and scare the kids. The psychos grab Ian and Max’s whimpering girlfriends and this, finally, brings the boys to ass-kicking life. “Let me tell you something,” snarls Gary. “You don’t come into my friend’s house, riding your motorcycle, smashing things up. You’re going to apologize to all these people.” The Mohawk draws a gun but Gary grabs it, pulls out the gun Lisa used on his dad and pushes it into the party crasher’s face. “You can leave in peace or you can stay and die,” he hisses. “That’s my boys,” twinkles Lisa. And suddenly, they’re men of respect. Not only that, but Ian and Max’s two sappy girlfriends, Hilly and Deb, are theirs for the taking. Deb wonders how Gary could ever want her when he’s got someone as shatteringly gorgeous as Lisa.

  Here’s where Hughes pulls out his crayon to underline the movie’s message: “Lisa is everything I ever wanted in a girl before I knew what I wanted. If I could do it over again, I’d make her just like you.” Wyatt expresses the same sentiments when he kisses Hilly and applies the buttcheek squeeze halfway into the act. Though Lisa’s ultimate vengeance on Chet raises a smile—she turns him into a fecal version of Jabba the Hut—Weird Science, a film that could have been this much fun, is a thudding disappointment. Ironic, then, that a movie whose creator couldn’t conjure up sufficient plot to fill ninety minutes of screen time would subsequently become a weekly TV show utilizing and jettisoning multitudes of storylines, almost all of them more ingenious than the source.

  * * *

  Pretty in Pink (1986) is the one that put Molly Ringwald on the cover of Time. It’s ridiculously sentimental, utterly inconsequential and only a sharp tug on my nostril hairs can bring me quicker to tears. Hughes writes and produces (onetime music-video helmer Howard Deutch directs) another story of social pressures; this time it’s poor but honest girl meets rich but backbone-free boy. How impoverished is Ringwald’s Andie Walsh? So poor that she literally lives on the wrong side of the tracks (one shot of the film shows a train chugging past the Walsh home). She shares this modest accommodation with her defeated, do-nothing dad, Jack (Harry Dean Stanton, looking like he’d wandered onto the wrong set but couldn’t muster up the energy to move). “Daddy, wake up,” she urges his lifeless husk, “I want you to go see the woman about the job.” A vintage slacker, he’s skilled at changing the subject. “Is school good?” Andie shakes her head. “It never is.” He inquires further, “You been asked to the prom?” A sore point. “No.” Trying to perk her up, he says, “Let me see this outfit. Is this your latest creation?… What did this cost you?” She beams and says, “Fifteen dollars for the shoes, and I made the rest.”

  Andie, sadly, has no place in the eighties. Her ability to whip thrift-store samples into a head-turning little number goes unadmired in an environment where designer originals are the only indicators of a person’s worth. Worse still, she’s forced to attend a school with a built-in ruling class. While the punks and the peasants sniff glue and shoot the shit in the scummy schoolyard, the pampered progeny of the privileged (the “richies”) lord it over them. “Where’d you get your clothes,” sneer a cabal of richie bitchies in Andie’s history class. “Five-and-dime store? Attractive.” When her teacher dumps a shitload of extra homework on the harpies as punishment for their unshackled snobbery, Andie pleads for leniency on their behalf. The rich girls demand that their punishment be reinstated. They hate her.

  Andie has further richie irritation in the shape of Steff. It’s a shame some carnival act went and christened himself Vanilla Ice because the moniker is much more appropriate to describe the style and stance of James Spader. This actor is the absolute embodiment of smooth cruelty, and he was never more hiss-ably irresistible than in Pretty in Pink. Emanating contempt and lassitude from every pore, his Steff seems much less like a high-school student and more like a studio exec cruising the schools for some pliable talent till the whole Heidi Fleiss thing dies down. Leaning back against Andie’s crappy car, Steff peers snake-eyed at her from over his shades. “Andie, you look ravishing,” he oozes. She freezes like she’s trapped by some grotesque predator (which, of course, she is). “I’m talking about more than sex here,” he smirks. She tries to get into her car. He waggles his scary tongue at her. “You’re a bitch.” As she goes, he mocks, “I’d go and see a doctor ’cause that condition of yours could get a lot worse.”

  On the other side of the coin from Steff’s malicious intentions is the hopeless devotion of goofball pipsqueak Duckie Dale (Jon Cryer), who scampers like a puppy by her side, endlessly declaring his fealty (“May I admire you again later today?”).

  Andie’s position as conscientious objector in the class war is about to be put to the test when a rich slice of white meat called Blane (Andrew McCarthy) spots her ambling into school. Her presence makes such a mark on him that he shows up at the grubby New Wave record shop in which she toils after school and tries to act inconspicuous flipping through the racks while the store’s trend-damaged owner Iona (Annie Potts in a not-terribly-hilarious running gag) terrorizes a shoplifter with a staple gun. Andie pretends not to notice Blane pretending not to notice her, but she tenses inside and out when he affects a casual stroll up to the counter, asking her advice on the quality of a Steve Lawrence album. Blane does something even cuter in computer class next day, logging onto her screen and posting a picture of himself. She chews her lips in delight. That night, she lies in bed staring at the phone, begging, “Please call, please, please, please,” but only getting the usual 400 messages from Duckie. Finally, Blane ventures into the dark side of the school, coming on as tentative as Hugh Grant in the mosh pit, but summoning up the courage to ask Andie out that
Friday night.

  The forces of darkness conspire to puncture this potential romance before the date has even taken place. Steff, riven with concern, tells Blane he saw him talking to the redhead with the bee-stung lips. “My best friend’s conversing with a mutant … it’s your life, it’s none of my business.” Blane, his spine turning into a string of spaghetti, whimpers, “You really don’t think she’s got something?” Steff shoots him that blank-but-deadly stare. “No, I really don’t.”

  The big night of the date, Duckie, more lovestruck by the second but unable ever to communicate his feelings to Andie in anything other than performing-monkey manner, shoots into the record shop and does a choreographed, down-on-my-knees, gotta-jump-back-and-kiss-myself-one-time, lip sync to Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness.” It’s a showstopping number and its timing is exactly wrong because Andie has to tell the twerp she can’t hang out with him because she’s seeing Blane. “You’re gonna go out with this guy? He’s gonna use your ass and throw you away. I would have died for you.…” splutters the Duckman, the foundation of his world crumbling. Andie tries to mollify him. “If I hate him because he’s got money, that’s the exact same thing as them hating us because we don’t.” Duckie is not only not mollified, he crosses the fine line that separates childlike from bratty. “I live to like you and I can’t like you anymore. So when you get your heart splattered all over hell, and you’re feeling really low and dirty, don’t run to me to help pump you back up because maybe, for the first time in your life, I won’t be there.”

  For their big date, Blane wants to take Andie to a party smack in the heart of richieville. She’s reluctant but he waxes heroic. “If you’re above it, I’m above it.… We’ve gotta deal with this.” The bash is in the sprawling elegance of Steff’s family home (his parents are, of course, in Europe) and is filled to bursting with bored buff blond nazis guzzling Cristal and making out on the stairwell. Andie is well aware she’s in enemy territory (“Nice pearls. This isn’t a dinner party, honey,” hiss some nasty girls). Every time blank-faced Blane opens a door he accidentally exposes Andie to more fleshy decadence. Finally, he stumbles in on Steff, who’s rolling around with Andie’s history class bête noire, Bennie (Kate Vernon). Steff, relishing the discomfort, insists the miserable pair take a load off. After some moments of being sneered at by Bennie, Andie wants to leave.

  Blane is contrite (“I made a mistake. I overestimated my friends”) and attempts to make amends by insisting they go somewhere she feels at home. Unfortunately, the dingy cellarful of noise she frequents is now under the ownership of the drunken, bruised and entirely obnoxious ego of the Duckman, whose bitterness and attempts to transfer his wounds drive Blane and Andie into the night. Finally, he offers to take her home, but she asks him to drop her off at Trax (the record store). He tells her it’s no trouble to drop her at her door. “Don’t you understand,” she blurts out, “I don’t want you to see where I live, okay?” Just when you think this Blane guy is an empty vessel, he suddenly says the right thing. “If I was in a Turkish prison, I’d have a great time with you.” Then he asks her to the prom and it’s all over. She kisses him fully and deeply. A moment later, she rushes into the house and screams with joy. Dad, of course, is still up—almost comatose, but still up. “He asked me,” she squeals. “You in love?” She gushes, “I think I am.… His name’s Blane, he’s a senior, so beautiful. He’s a richie … he drives a BMW. I’m not sure they’re going to accept me.… It’s not just his friends, it’s my friends, too. It’s everybody. I’m just not real secure about it.” The old rogue is all understanding. “A good kiss can scramble anybody’s brains.” Then he turns pensive, “I’m sorry that I’m the one you have to talk to about these things.” Andie shrugs off his reference to the mother who abandoned them both: “I’m not. She couldn’t have said it any better than you.”

  But Andie’s happiness is set to be short-lived. Steff hauls Blane over the coals for lowering the tone of his get-together. “I thought it was very uncool of you last night. It was way out of order to foist her on the party. Nobody appreciates your sense of humor. In fact, we’re all puking from it.… If you’ve got a hard-on for trash, don’t take care of it around us.” Lowering the boom on Blane, Steff continues, “Your parents, they’re really going to be thrilled. I’ve seen your mother go to work on you, Blane, it’s vicious. When Bill and Joyce get through with you, you won’t know whether to shit or go sailing.… If you want your little piece of low-grade ass, fine, go on and take it, but if you do, you’re not gonna have a friend.…”

  Making out with Andie in the stables of his family’s country club, Blane make a stumbling attempt to declare his emancipation from social constrictions. “Corporate families replaced royal families. I’m the crown prince of McDonagh Electrics.… I could just tell them all to go to Hell.… This is going to happen, OK? I really want this to happen.” His panicked eyes tell a different story. Next time he hears from Andie, he’s lying on his bed listening to her bewildered voice on his answering machine, wondering why he never answers her calls and if they’re still going to the prom.

  Compounding her misery is the lurid pink dress her Dad gives her as a prom surprise. “It reminds me so much of your mom,” he sighs. “She always wore pink.” This pushes Andie over the edge. She accuses her father of deliberately missing job appointments and attacks him for dwelling on the past. “Why can’t you just forget her.… She’s never coming back.… I loved her, too, you know, she just didn’t love us back.… I knew it all along. I mean, when I was five, I felt it.… I was fourteen and I knew it, you were fifty and you didn’t.” This has the effect of shaking dad out of his funk. “Since when is a daughter supposed to know more than her father,” he murmurs and then he says—he actually says—“I’ve just been a blind fool.”

  Andie gets to humble another blind fool when she spots Blane in the corridor. “Why haven’t you called me … What about prom, Blane?” His eyes dart all over the place. He starts to sweat and fidget. He starts babbling about having had a bad day and getting into trouble for the time they made out in the stables. He even insults her with that old standby “A month ago I asked someone else and I forgot.” Andie goes bananas. “You’re a liar. You’re a filthy fucking no-good liar! You don’t have the guts to tell me the truth.… You’re ashamed to be seen with me.… You’re terrified your goddamn rich friends won’t approve.” She beats him about the head and shoulders, then runs off. “Forget about it, man,” sympathizes Steff, gleefully. “The girl was, is and will always be nada.” Duckie, skulking nearby, overhears this slur and, like an enraged chimp, hurls himself at Steff, flailing away, his love and loyalty returning to the surface.

  Andie becomes the embodiment of grace under pressure. She takes Iona’s prom dress and the lurid pink gift from her father and, with her artistic bent, converts them into something that is less a garment than a statement: a cool, pink, fuck you, a sexy suit of armor deflecting the stares and sneers she knows will come her way when she walks into the prom … alone! “I’m just gonna go in, walk in, walk out and come home,” she tells her admiring dad, who has, after her lecture, got himself together, put the picture of his wife facedown in the drawer and started hitting the pavement in search of an honest day’s work. “I just want them to know they didn’t break me.”

  The self-esteem that was surging through her veins suddenly looks to be leaking out her ass as she draws ever closer to the throbbing beats and squeals of delight signifying prom-in-progress. She stands rooted to the spot, a miserable vision in pink, tempted and tossed aside by a thoughtless rich prick. Just a stupid girl who thought she could rise above her station. And then like a goofball knight in flip-top glasses, the Duckman, resplendent in some sort of rockabilly baroque number, materializes by her side. She rushes, tearfully, to embrace him. “May I admire you?” she gasps. They take simultaneous deep breaths, summon up some reserves of courage, Duckie says “Let’s plow” and they enter the fray.

  As origi
nally filmed, Pretty in Pink climaxed with Andie and Duckie’s triumphant appearance at the prom. They outlooked, outclassed and outdanced everyone there. Their poor but honest moral superiority gnawed deep into the corrupt souls of the richies who were forced to deal with their own worthlessness. Apparently, test audiences balked at this outcome. They wanted to see the poor girl get the rich boy of her dreams. They didn’t care about the dignity of the oppressed.

  For years, fans of the film have expressed dissatisfaction with the altered outcome, feeling that the wrong guy gets the girl. And I too, empathizing automatically with the lovelorn goofball, thought the Duckman was gypped. But look again at that last scene. Andie and Duckie enter the hall to the accompaniment of OMD’s plangent “If You Leave.” Blane, who’s come by himself, sees them and this motivates him to cut the ties with his Iago. “You buy everything, Steff, but you couldn’t buy her and that’s what’s killing you.… She thinks you’re shit and deep down you know she’s right.” Blane leaves the suddenly deflated Steff and approaches the nervous pair. He shakes Duckie’s hand like a mensch. Then he gazes sadly at Andie. “You don’t need me to say I’m sorry.” She says, “I’m fine.” He looks at her. “Oh well, if that’s true, then I’m glad.… I believed in you … I just didn’t believe in me. I love you. Always.” And with that, he leaves. Andie doesn’t move. Duckie rises to the occasion in one of movie history’s great instances of self-sacrifice. “Andie, he came here alone. You’re right, he’s not like the others. If you don’t go to him now, I’m never going to take you to another prom ever again, you hear me? This is an incredibly romantic moment and you’re ruining it for me.” She throws caution to the wind and rushes out. Which leaves a rueful Duckie, pondering his future solitude … for about half a second, till he sees a blond babe (Kristy Swanson) beckoning to him from the dance floor. He mouths “Moi?” She nods, and it’s such an improbable occurrence that he breaks the fourth wall and gives us a “You believe this?” look. Out in the parking lot, rain is lashing down on Andie and Blane who are locked in a kiss so powerful and healing that she drops her handbag. And the OMD song is still playing. Sorry, there’s something in my eye. Look, I’m all for identifying with the underdog, but this ending is right up there with the all-time great five-hankie classics.