T/S: John Hughes vs. Judd Apatow

Ringwald crowning scene was classic

Hughes' one good movie -- Ferris Bueller. Apatow wins without even trying but thankfully is clearly better on merit anyway etc.

Whew! I was worried about nostalgia clouding judgment.

Hughes/Ringwald movie where she gets knocked up

She gets knocked up in For Keeps but it's not Hughes.

Also, I will happily let nostalgia cloud my judgment. I don't care how much I love Apatow and everything about his movies. ENBB + JH FE.

the summer I was thirteen I watched Pretty in Pink every day. I have no idea what was going on there.

maybe the difference here is that ILE prefers Apatow's more naturalistic/believable characters to Hughes' stage-y teen fantasy caricatures...?

There is something about Hughes' stuff that feels remarkably clumsy and high school drama club-ish (especially Breakfast Club), even when it is broken up by funny supporting turns and pitch-perfect sdtk choices

16 candles is redeemable, actually

I liked Some Kind of Wonderful cuz Eric Stoltz was such a babe.

I'm scared to see any Apatow as his big fans here are so frequently wrong.

guys, a lot of Hughes movies are "redeemable"!

x-post -- Wrong about...?

16 candles is redeemable, actually

No, that's the worst of the Ringwald trilogy.

SKOW - Eric Stoltz is still a babe and Watts was the awesome in that movie. I wanted to be her when I was little.

whoops - she wasn't "the" awesome but she was def awesome.

I was confused for a second there because I didn't see river wolf post on this thread...

Anyway, Apatow could make crap for the rest of his career and I'd still vote for him on the basis of Freaks & Geeks alone.

for the record, the Hughes stuff I had in mind for this thread is:

Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
Pretty in Pink (1986)
Weird Science (1985)
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Sixteen Candles (1984)

I think Sixteen Candles is easily the best and even that has a bunch of cringeworthy moments - really its the supporting cast (Anthony Michael Hall, all the grandparents, etc.) that lend it any kind of energy.

and as for Apatow:

Freaks and Geeks
Undeclared
40 Year Old Virgin
Knocked Up
SuperBad

that's the worst of the Ringwald trilogy

weird. The Breakfast Club? Pretty In Pink?

aw, screw it. No need to argue. They're all pretty bad.

wait a sec, didn't Apatow just PRODUCE Superbad?

(ie, it's only his movie when you count $$$)

wait a sec, didn't Apatow just PRODUCE Superbad?

just like hughes only produced Some Kind of Wonderful

Producers have influence.

I'm scared to see any Apatow as his big fans here are so frequently wrong

Trust the criticism, not the critic, etc.

oh, he also wrote SKOW... I stand corrected

Apatow also produced ANCHORMAN.

hmmm yeah okay including production credits seems a little sketchy, kind of a grey area there

its like if Hughes had produced an Anthony Michael-Hall penned script right after Breakfast Club or something

But didn't he conceive of and write Superbad, but didn't have time for it? ...

weird. The Breakfast Club? Pretty In Pink?

The Breakfast Club is good up until the final 15 minutes or whenever Ally Sheedy gets her makeover. Pretty in Pink is also enjoyable and doesn't have weird racist stuff in it. It's also more stylish and zeitgeisty. When I watched all of these movies for the first time, in the summer of 1999, Pretty in Pink was the one that felt like an 80s Movie™ (Duckie listening to the Cure, Spader as linen-wearing proto-yuppie), whereas Sixteen Candles was just a bad teen movie that happened to be set in 1984. (Maybe 1984 wasn't the 80s yet?)

But didn't he conceive of and write Superbad, but didn't have time for it? ...

No, Seth Rogen and Evan-what's-his-teeth conceived of and wrote Superbad when they were teenagers.

I was totally appalled when, viewing TBC in eighth grade, I saw that Hughes had turned Ally Sheedy into Blair of "The Facts of Life."

Seth Rogan and another dude have been writing Superbad since they were teenagers, but Apatow shepherded it into production/casting/etc..

but Rogen has had a hand (and a role) in most of the Apatow movies and TV shows since F&G, so it's kind of hard to separate them. Maybe Apatow is getting too much credit.

Yeah it should be considered out of contention. But so what. Freaks and Geeks still wins it.

the breakfast club has almost as many one-dimensional cultural stereotypes as titanic

i mean, really. it's just a bad movie, full stop.

but john hughes movies are not really about characterization beyond type. they're an arena for Issues to Be Worked Out. I guess that's why none of you like them, which is fair, but it doesn't make sense to be all, "the problem with the breakfast club is that the characters are shallow."

Apatow's got his brand now, and it seems like he's giving his regulars the chance to write and direct stuff now that he can:

Step Brothers (2008) (pre-production) (producer)
You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008) (filming) (producer)
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) (post-production) (producer)
Drillbit Taylor (2008) (post-production) (producer)
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) (post-production) (producer)
... aka Walk Hard (USA: short title)
The Pineapple Express (2008) (completed) (producer)

Hughes is a bro and he made some pretty good non-teen movies (especially Planes, Trains & Automobiles!) before he descended down the path of Home Alone-type shit.

But Ferris Bueller? That's kind of like the Muhammad Ali of teen comedies.

but john hughes movies are not really about characterization beyond type. they're an arena for Issues to Be Worked Out.

^^^^^ YES

Issues often worked out in a rather conservative offensive way though (see: TBC Ally Sheedy makeover, Ringwald getting the rich slimeball at end of PIP, FB's smug "stop and smell the roses at other people's expense" moral etc.)

LET THE GOTH BE A GOTH you BASTARDS

"conservative"

But Ferris Bueller? That's kind of like the Muhammad Ali of teen comedies.

Bloated and brain-damaged?

I mean it should be obvious that a lot of Hughes' films resolve in this deeply reactionary way that explicitly reinforces the status quo (which had supposedly been torturing his characters' throughout the course of his films)

x-post

Ringwald getting the rich slimeball at end of PIP

this is incorrect! the politics of PiP are really, really earnest, but they're good.

(nb: I have no ability to be objective about this movie.)

TBC shd have faded out to RAMMSTEIN

But Ferris Bueller? That's kind of like the Muhammad Ali of teen comedies.

Bloated and brain-damaged?

I was actually thinking the greatest of all time?

Seriously. Name me one better than FBDO in the Teen Comedy category. One.

Dazed & Confused

its interesting to compare Hughes' spate of teen movies to its immediate predecessors like Little Darlings, Over the Edge, Foxes, etc. where the emphasis was always on TEENS GONE WRONG OH NOES WHAT HATH THE 60s WROUGHT. Hughes' vision is much more reassuring and polite.

Brokeback Bueller

lol

guys guys guys Bueller has already totally gay-ed it up as Harvey Feierstein

that movie is so gay.

gayer than making out with Paul Rudd

xposts okay, so maybe I've just fallen into a Denby trap of thinking there's a real contemporary problem with female characterization.

Where does Mean Girls go in this arrangement?

not a romcom

I mean in the Apatow/Hughes debate abt teen movies.

(idealization of suburbs and corresponding fear of urban-dwelling minorities/homeless, loads of mindless conspicuous consumption, etc etc)

Where were middle-class white teenagers supposed to escape other than to the city? It's a practical place for adventure and danger (and thus easy fodder for a film plot). Do you think fear of inner-city crime was something Reagan created? As crime grew worse since the 1960s people moved out and became afraid of going there. Surprise!

And how was the mindless consumption of the 1980s any worse than what occurred int he 1960s and 1970s? I'll tell you why it was worse, because Reagan was president when it happened. (He should've used his satanic powers for good and stopped it, right?)

what the fuck are any of you talking about?

who knows, more rudd pix plz

http://sportsmedia.ign.com/sports/image/article/753/753003/rowdy-roddy-piper-interview-20070103015702914-000.jpg

stupid 80s pop culture being "reaganite" = god can we please retire this uber-boring critical trope PLEASE

someone should write an article on how harold lloyd movies are reflective of the intellectual shallowness and corrupt pursuit of self-interest of the warren g. harding years.

I wonder if twenty years from now we'll be talking about how "Superbad" was all about the Iraq war and the reason the two boy's friendship was straining in the movie was because they were worried about Iran getting the bomb or the possibility of a draft. Don't look at the superficialities of the plot! It's about Bush pulling their innocent world apart!

Plz to reread thread for the specific context in which I wrote "Reaganism."

someone should write an article on how harold lloyd movies are reflective of the intellectual shallowness and corrupt pursuit of self-interest of the warren g. harding years

Hasn't this been done already?

"Relax....You folks have nothing to worry about....I'm a professional"

http://img015.photo.wangyou.com/2004/12/11/35990/200511268706274.jpg

=

http://images.umvd.com/Toenails/aca1b72e511d4a5e8c91730619993ec4.jpg

http://www.80s.com/saveferris/images/cast/ward.jpghttp://www.80s.com/saveferris/images/cast/edson.jpghttp://www.80s.com/saveferris/images/cast/perlich.jpg

http://www.80s.com/saveferris/images/cast/coffey.jpg http://www.80s.com/saveferris/images/cast/schmock.jpg http://www.80s.com/saveferris/images/cast/montague.jpg

http://www.80s.com/saveferris/images/cast/barberi.jpg

And how was the mindless consumption of the 1980s any worse than what occurred int he 1960s and 1970s?

Let me try this, briefly... The difference is the '80s is when conglomerates and bizmen who had not MADE THEIR CAREERS IN THE FILM BIZ began controlling the studios and what did or didn't get made. Which is why you get fewer Altmans, Rafelsons etc being greenlighted for anything at the margins of the studio system.

Reagan and mindlessness as the paramount value in mainstream entertainment are both SYMPTOMS of (de facto) unregulated capitalism; one didn't cause the other.

Again, as Jack Nicholson said at a Bueller premiere he attended: "These people are trying to kill me."

I would really enjoy seeing a full-on bromantic comedy about how two adult men become friends!

Only tangentially to the point, nabisco: One of the gay NYC weekies is comparing the 'bromance' in Superbad to Midnight Cowboy.

^weeklies

oh i see, it was conglomerates and bizmen driving everything in the 80s, and not the mass cultural backlash against the 70s, something that the kids of the 80s were raised into and then sought to get out from under (LIKE OH SAY IN THE CINEMA OF JOHN HUGHES).

I'm sure infantile 70s cowboy/lone ranger Jack's a much nicer guy than buttoned-up 80s family man (oh no, "family"!) Matthew Broderick

those Altmans and Rafelsons, they respect the women, I tells ya

Biden-fan gabbneb characteristically obtuse about '80s capitalist ethos and backlash vs counterculture being related.

Reagan and mindlessness as the paramount value in mainstream entertainment are both SYMPTOMS of (de facto) unregulated capitalism; one didn't cause the other.

how do you explain Forrest Gump?

no, see i get which way they're related - backlash ridden by deregulators rather than deregulators somehow having diktat-like impact on mass culture

he doesn't understand forrest gump any better than he understands ferris bueller

In what context, kenan? I've never seen Gump and have no desire to.

(but I also find Clinton to be the most Reaganesque of RWR's successors)

xpost It's psychological horror.

Yesterday morning it was a perfectly decent thread. Now look at it.

it all comes down to "liberal" gabbneb's cognitive dissonance about his love for an ostensibly conservative film

<A href=http://www.cinematical.com/2007/08/22/could-a-ferris-bueller-sequel-be-on-the-way/>;Bueller SEQUEL?!?</a>

that was discussed upthread (highly unlikely, to say the least)

i have less than zero invested in ferris bueller

i just like to point out mormonism

i spose i shouldn't waste my time on the easy stuff tho

hey there's no mormons in Less Than Zero!

this thread was insane, just insane