the most recent issue of vanity fair is running an excellent set of articles and photos profiling the late john hughes. included are a set of photographs documenting some of the director's personal belongings, a collection of short stories, and a feature tracing, among other things, hughes' legacy and his passion for music and writing. here's a bit out of a segment on molly ringwald's muse-like hold on the director:
As the story goes, commercial considerations weren’t the only impetus for Hughes’s writing Sixteen Candles. While leafing through headshots in search of potential Breakfast Club cast members, he froze upon the glossy of a pale-skinned young actress with red hair and puffy, tired eyes—pretty, but not conventionally so.
“From what I heard from him,” says Ringwald, “he put my headshot on the bulletin board by his desk and wrote Sixteen Candles over a weekend. And when it came time to cast it, he said, ‘I want to meet her: that girl.’”
read more.
and a few of the photos:
a box of demo and mix tapes hughes compiled for use in his films.
a sketch from one of hughes' notebooks.
the backing of hughes' director chair from the set of sixteen candles - signed by cast and crew.
"You know everything is not an anecdote. You have to discriminate. You choose things that are funny or mildly amusing or interesting. You're a miracle! Your stories have NONE of that. They're not even amusing ACCIDENTALLY! "Honey, I'd like you to meet Del Griffith, he's got some amusing anecdotes for you. Oh and here's a gun so you can blow your brains out. You'll thank me for it." I could tolerate any insurance seminar. For days I could sit there and listen to them go on and on with a big smile on my face. They'd say, "How can you stand it?" I'd say, "'Cause I've been with Del Griffith. I can take ANYTHING." You know what they'd say? They'd say, "I know what you mean. The shower curtain ring guy. Woah." It's like going on a date with a Chatty Cathy doll. I expect you have a little string on your chest, you know, that I pull out and have to snap back. Except I wouldn't pull it out and snap it back - you would. Agh! Agh! Agh! Agh! And by the way, you know, when you're telling these little stories? Here's a good idea - have a POINT. It makes it SO much more interesting for the listener!"
on
Thursday, February 18, 2010
2 comments:
An interesting collection, and Kamp clearly admires his subject, but a lot is left out. To read this article, you'd think Hughes had gone into some kind of nobly monastic, Salingerian seclusion after 1990, leaving a perfect string of zeitgeist-encapsulating paeans to youth and innocence as his sole legacy. No mention is made, for instance, of the fact that he continued to pitch movies under the pseudonym Edmond Dantes (like the insulting and borderline-racist J-Lo vehicle "Maid in Manhattan" and 2008's abysmal "Drillbit Taylor"). I confess to having loved his movies when I saw them as a child and an adolescent, but I certainly don't think the man a saint of the cinema. The Onion A.V. Club did a terrific job with their roundtable retrospective, "Last Thoughts on John Hughes."
http://www.avclub.com/articles/last-thoughts-on-john-hughes,31509
Very creative stuff here! I dig it :)
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