Try A Little Tenderness

With the passing of John Hughes, it's a sad day for GenXers. I think some of the best times I had in high school were at the movies. Any way that I could buy or beg my way into a theater, I was there. And if you were a teenager in the 80s, John Hughes movies were definitive. The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller, 16 Candles. Molly Ringwald could show up at any class reunion for any class of 80-something anywhere in this country and be treated like an old classmate.

I've always wondered how John Hughes felt about Pretty in Pink. I've heard that originally Andie was supposed to end up with Ducky. But the studios made him change the movie so that she ends up with Blane. That was the big win for her. Her happily ever after. Like that didn't mess up a whole generation of women. Walking off into the sunset with the preppy douche bag who doesn't have the balls to stand up for you. Instead of the new wave guy with the awesome shoes and a penchant for Otis Redding who, not incidentally, loves you. Bad move, Andie. Bad move.

But how much did that have to screw with John Hughes's head? He wrote Pretty in Pink as well as directed. And I would bet a box of Krispy Kremes that he was Ducky. Then some studio guy comes in and says that you aren't good enough to be the big screen happily ever after for the heroine, and you're going to have to hand her over to the weak little pretty boy who broke her heart. That is damn cold blooded. And heartbreaking. I'd have wanted to say "Fuck you" and walk out. He didn't. What he did was write the story again, flip the gender roles, and Ducky wins in the end. Of course, he had to get a sex change to do it, but he could do worse than end up as Mary Stuart Masterson in Some Kind of Wonderful. (Yeah, like it's a coincidence that Eric Stoltz is a redhead.) He was ballsy enough to stick it out, and make it right. Good for him.