T/S: John Hughes vs. Judd Apatow

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.

there are a million teen movies better than FBDO!

Dazed and Confused for one, Over the Edge for another, shit I think I even enjoy Revenge of the Nerds more

ts: films starrin cherie currie vs films starrin joan jett!

JJ wins obv but i would say that

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

The teens on "The Price is R ight" are less smug. God, Ferris Bueller would have made Reagan a happier, prouder dad.

There's an anecdote involving Jack Nicholson at a FBDO screening.

Ferris Bueller is molten Reaganism in its purest form.

no, that's Adventures in Babysitting.

Better than Abe Froeman, the Sausage King of Chicago?

Better than Sloan Peterson?

Better than the 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California?

Come on - D&C is GREAT...really great. Over the Edge, also very good. But in boxing terms, Foreman and Frazier to FBDO's Ali.

Ferris Bueller is molten Reaganism in its purest form.

YES

(and by YES I mean that's why its kinda gross to have to live through)

guys, I take your point, but seriously, Adventures in Babysitting!

Isn't that the one where Elizabeth Shue sings blooze? Jeezum.

Aren't Ferris Bueller and Adventures in Babysitting pretty much the same movie?

one stars a girl the other stars a boy. MARKETING!

there should be a thread about "pretty much the same movie"

yes. most Reaganite moment in that movie: Shue's best friend Brenda, who the whole movie is devoted to "rescuing," and with whom we're meant to sympathize is stuck without money in a bus station in the terrifying city (as opposed to the suburbs, which the movie champions). she's on the phone in a phone booth which a homeless man knocks on, yelling, "that's my home!" she removes his personal effects from the booth and says, "you just moved!"

Am I totally imagining this, or isn't/wasn't there some bad blood btwn Apatow and some guy who was largely responsible for "That 70's Show"? I remember reading a series of emails btwn the two of them which was pubished in Harper's magazine's "Readings" section a few years back. I guess they had been really tight at some point, but then had a falling out of some sorts. Anyhow, as I recall, the "70's Show" guy came off as being something of a jerk.

Apatow definitely >>>> John Hughes, but I still like 16 Candles lots, annoying racist parts notwithstanding. Also, I don't want to like Ferris Bueller, but it's an undeniable classic that will outlive, say, The Breakfast Club.

At least we can feel confident that Judd Apatow will never sink down into Home Alone-territory...

You forgot: Brenda makes a point of how smelly and disgusting these peopel are, and being afraid of them for that reason.

(xpost)

*people

How come noone is talking about Heavyweights????

yeah, I didn't want to go into detail, but there are many many moments like that in the movie.

xposts

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