John Hughes Dies at 59

Unless you were comatose during the entire decade of the eighties, you can't help but be aware of the movies of director John Hughes - Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Home Alone... the list of instantly recognizable titles, like a list of Hall & Oates radio hits, just goes on much longer than you might have expected.

High art? Not really. Reliably (maybe deceptively) insubstantial, and shamelessly aimed right at the demographic center of the country's pop sensibilities, Hughes' writing and direction were designed to achieve the broadest appeal possible. By turns naughty and immature, cool and trendy, corny and schmaltzy, Hughes had this hand on he pulsing jugular of the ticket-buying public.

It's too easy to dismiss Hughes as a hack, a purveyor of cinematic cotton candy, founder of the Gen-X-ploitaion genre, working in a limited palette of teen angst, schoolboy humor, clueless adults, predictable sentimentality, double-takes and pratfalls.

But understanding the common life of common folk isn't as easy as it sounds, nor is it a necessarily a fruitless artistic endeavor. Broad popularity may, of course, come from a calculating appeal to the baser instincts (which Hughes wasn't above either), but it may also flow from a higher source - from a common appreciation for the bumps and thrills of everyday life.

There are two John Hughes films that are staples in our house, movies we watch at least once a year, if not more; these are Uncle Buck (the dialog of which my brother and I can probably reconstruct verbatim) and Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

Both these films are, on the surface, goofball comedies. One could write the promo copy for Uncle Buck blindfold... something like; "Irrepressible (and irresponsible) free-wheeling bachelor uncle is suddenly called upon to babysit his straight-laced brother's kids in the suburbs... hilarity ensues.". The same is true for Planes, Trains and Automobiles; "A bumbling and gregarious screwball salesman and a fastidious and upscale (and uptight) business professional become reluctant traveling companions. Hilarity ensues. Will their misadventures keep them from making it home in time for Thanksgiving? The wackiest buddy comedy since The Odd Couple.". The scripts ought to be so obvious that they write themselves... except they aren't and they don't.

Both of these comedies boast a surprising amount of character development, and both probe the human condition and the importance of family in artistically significant ways. Both also benefit immensely from overachieving performances from the lead cast... from John Candy (in both films) and Steve Martin (Planes...).

Martin and Candy are a joy to watch together in Planes..., bringing more authenticity and nuance to their roles than I think any other contemporary duo could have pulled off with the same material, and more emotional depth than any screwball comedy has a right to. I recognize both the main characters in Planes Trains and Automobiles... not just because I have known both kinds of guys, but because I have (at one time or another) been both kinds of guys. I have been the self absorbed prig - cold, and too wrapped up in my own life to notice or care much about the struggles of others. Too concerned about my own dignity. I have also been the crass, obtuse, naive and unaccountably optimistic buffoon, always assuming that everyone is glad to see me, and that everyone is equally glad to listen to any mundane comment that might come out of my mouth. I have been the affable mooch who overstays his welcome.

I think most people have played both roles to some extent.

Martin's and Candy's dual performance is at times truly painful to watch, which makes the hilarious moments (of which there are plenty) ring that much truer. One of our favorite family films (in spite of one inexplicable and inexcusable string of expletives, which we mute every year).

SPOILER ALERT:
There is a scene in Uncle Buck that is well worth noting. In it, Buck has been left in the lurch by Tia, his teenaged niece who had promised to babysit her younger siblings while Buck went to the horse track to play a tip that will likely bring him enough income to last him half a year, at least. It's a BIG DEAL for him.

Seeing no alternative, he loads the two cute little kids into his giant old beater of a car and heads to the horse track, where madcap hilarity ensues, the kids quickly get into big trouble and lead some shady underworld crooks on a merry chase, several snack vendor carts are overturned and Buck, in a comedy of errors, ends up riding the prize-winning horse to an unlikely victory, hanging on for dear life all the way.

Except, that's not what happens at all. What happens is that Buck loads the kids in the car and is all set to go to the track. The car is running. He looks at himself in the mirror. He looks at the kids bundled in the back seat. He looks back at himself... he stares into space, and in a tortured agony of conscience and worry he decides he can't go through with it. This all plays out on his face in just a few seconds, a performance comparable to Jimmy Stewart's masterful and wrenching depiction of George Bailey's desperate prayer at Martini's bar in It's a Wondeful Life.

Buck is tired and ashamed of leading the worthless life of a petty gambler. He is more concerned about the runaway Tia, and about bringing two innocent young munchkins to a rather seedy fixed horse race, than he is about his own momentary welfare. He (not without pain) lets the horse race go, unloads the kids and calls for help. He mans up.

This is Hughes taking the road less traveled, passing up the easy joke in exchange for a truly great and moving human moment. The zany horse track action must have been nearly as tempting to director Hughes as the easy money was to the character, Buck Russell. But Hughes (through Buck) went for something better, and was rewarded for his effort.

It's an overlooked scene, and one I've never heard discussed, but it just about makes me cry every time I see it.

Comments

[Paul S.]

The more shallow of the stock attributes of his movies, as the ones you mention, pretending to be about the "teen suburban pysche" or what have you, now make me cringe. But the funny thing is, I was never really aware of the self-conscious reverse-moralizing (clueless adults/teens armed with awareness) of his films in the eighties. I was always picking up on the other stuff; the good stuff.

And the good stuff that is there is almost artlessly there. Though some of his movies can be self-consciously aware of what they are about, like teen angst, and spell it out, his movies attain somehow (as though artlessly) to "the heart of the matter".

No, not a very profound or deep heart of the matter, but he locates the heart and definitely says, "This matters, and is not to be trivialized." The zaniness of his movies was taken by the likes of the Farelly Brothers and Sacha Baron Cohen; they took the zaniness and pumped it full of their own cruel, cynical disorder, and threw away the heart.

Where would I be without John Hughes' movies? They are a part of my consciousness, my memory.

Thanks for the excellent post, Tim.

[Matheus]

Nice tribute, Tim. I already knew from Jimmy's blog that you were a fan of Planes, Trains and Automobiles, so I came here to see what you would write about Hughes' death, but I had no idea that you also liked Uncle Buck, Hughes' best movie in my opinion. I liked what you wrote about the apparent superficiality of his movies, because in the case of Uncle Buck, it took me a lot of time to really see through the essence of the movie since I saw it for the first time on television as a child in 1991. On my latest viewings, I was finally able to realize that, more important than the (still wonderful) comedy stuff was Buck and Tia's two-way path into maturity, him finally overcoming his fear of commitment while learning his own family vocation, so to speak; and her finally seeing in him the kind of parental love she rejected from her own parents and learning to see the world beyond her own prejudices. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Buck and Tia have their first argument, if I remember correctly, and then she runs to her room and he goes ahead to see what she's doing, then she hesitates for a brief moment and they exchange a very brief look to each other, beautifully shot by Hughes. I for one don't see this kind of subtlety much nowadays, not even in these assembly-line fancy dramas that are nominated for Oscars by the bunch.

I was amused by the irony that, when Hughes was a prolific filmmaker, in the 80's, Terrence Malick was the recluse outcast. Now that Malick resumed his career, Hughes took his legendary place. That gave me hope that he would eventually come back.

Take a look at the London Times' obituary and this recent article on Hughes, pretty much the only source of information about him I was able to find before his death.

[Matheus]

There was some problem with the links: here and here.

[Matheus]

Now I see they wouldn't be displayed, anyway.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6749974.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/mar/25/entertainment/et-goldstein25

[Lisa Gilliam]

I wasn't able to watch Uncle Buck… I guess I should grab a DVD copy now. Do you think there still are copies out there? It was shown last in 1989. I guess your spoiler alert caught me.