This week Dwayne and Heather kick off with “This Week in Gen X History,” before diving into the main event: John Hughes, the filmmaker who basically invented the modern teen movie and then vanished from Hollywood almost as fast as he conquered it. From his Michigan childhood to the fictional town of Shermer he built out of his own Chicago suburb, they trace the wild run of films that came out of him in the mid-80s, and the controversies that still follow a few of them around today.
Topics covered:
This Week in Gen X History
Hughes’ path from National Lampoon writer to teen movie auteur
The making of Sixteen Candles and its Long Duk Dong controversy
The Breakfast Club’s two-day script and its own reckoning around Bender and Claire
Hughes’ recurring “muses”: Anthony Michael Hall, Molly Ringwald, John Candy
How music shaped his films, including the “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” story and the Beatles influence throughout his work
Hughes’ retreat to a farm in Illinois and his friendship with John Candy
MUSIC CREDITS
Brief audio clips are used from Sleepless in Seattle (1993, TriStar Pictures) in the “This Week in Gen X History” segment, and from Sixteen Candles (1984, Universal Pictures) in the main discussion, along with short excerpts of “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds and “Twist and Shout” as featured in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. All clips are used briefly for the purpose of commentary and critique under fair use (17 U.S.C. § 107).
Licensed music for this episode provided through Envato Elements.