The passing of Budd Schulberg was not the only loss in the entertainment industry this week. John Hughes, a much younger writer, producer and director, also died. Being a bit busy raising children and a tad too old, I missed most of John Hughes's films in the '80s and early '90s. By the time my kids reached their teenage years, Sixteen Candles (1982), The Breakfast Club (1985), Weird Science (1985), and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) , had become a rite of passage. And they were cult films for the "old" Gen X'ers who saw them in their original release.
Writing on National Review Online, Mark Hemingway shows us that, in spite of the wackiness on film, Hughes sent his readers home filled with lessons in good, old-fashioned American family values. Those lessons are the glue that holds our seemingly fragmented society in a delicate balance. He was a rare individual who knew how to package glue successfully. It's too bad Hughes left us so early because I suspect were going to need plenty of glue in the coming years.
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"The key to faking out the parents is the clammy hands. It's a good non-specific symptom. I'm a big believer in it. A lot of people will tell you a good phoney fever is a deadlock, but you get a nervous mother, you could wind up in a doctor's office--that's worse than school. You fake a stomach cramp, and when you're bent over, moaning and wailing, you lick your palms. It's a little childish and stupid, but then so is high school."
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