Thursday, March 18, 2010

Life Moves Pretty Fast

I am a bit late to the game on this one, but I had to comment on the touching tribute to John Hughes that many of his former actors gave at the Oscars. It coincided with a great article in the March Vanity Fair by David Kamp that attempted to give insight into the reclusive writer and director.

As a solid member of GenX, I can't deny how Hughes defined my teen years. To be honest I can't even fully explain it in some ways, how a man 20 years older than me, could so capture all that I felt, all that I wanted to be, and all that I knew was out of my reach. He simply had a gift.

It was hard watching the Oscar tribute for me. It was emotional and touching, but on a personal front it was also disturbing to see how my idealized visions of youth—Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Matthew Broderick, Anthony Michael Hall, Jon Cryer, Ally Sheedy and even Macaulay Culkin—are older, different, grown up. Because that means I am too. I hope that they feel that they are better now than they were then, as I do. But it is nice to know that when they need to know how far they have come, they have Mr. Hughes movies to go back to and remind them of who they were. Again, thank you Mr. Hughes.

1 comment:

creative kerfuffle said...

it made me feel old too. and it was sad. the tribute was poignant (though i didn't like molly's hair for some reason, yes, childish of me). i had no idea hughes was such a recluse. i'm glad his family was there though, that was really nice.