You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried - The Brat Pack, John Hughes, and Their Impact on a Generation

Susannah Gora

Crown Archetype

2010

384 páginas

12h 48m

ISBN-10: 0307408434

Concentrating on the making of such seminal films as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s Fire, Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful, Say Anything, Home Alone, and, of course, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Gora’s celebration of writer-director John Hughes (1950–2009) tends to be exhaustive and often exhausts. Gora cites the New York Times’ A. O. Scott on Hughes—he “was our Godard”—and Roger Ebert’s characterization of him as “the philosopher of adolescence” to orient her essay exploring what she calls cine-sociology, “the concrete sociological impact that movies can have on our lives.” She discusses the origin of the sobriquet Brat Pack, offers biographical portraits of Hughes and many of the actors most associated with his movies, discusses the music of the so-called Brat Pack films (it was a crucial factor in their success), and considers how the Brat Pack films changed a generation. Although probably too self-important for its own good, this is still a must for Hughes admirers and students of American pop culture.