John Hughes Interviewed by Kevin Bacon (1986)

[Music] both pretty pink and some kind of wonderful take a look at the social structure of in American high school and how economics affect that you know if you're rich you're in if you're poor you're out do you think this is a realistic portrayal of what high school life is like in America and if so are you making some kind of a political statement with this yeah I think it's I mean from my experience both of the suburban communities that I lived in I mean you know when you have a public school system there is it there is an economic disparity there are people who are gonna have a lot of money those people don't last month I grew up in Grosse Pointe Michigan which is a lot of 'mobile money and my father didn't own the automobile company I worked for the automobile company little French I know these people I knew kids that the third grade would say when I'm 18 I'm getting 22 million dollars you know I was just it always bothered me not that they were getting in I don't know I just you know I I always had a problem with you have your finger so much on the pulse of what is happening with with young people right now and how do you maintain that I mean you go and hang out with them or I mean it well that most of the actors have been pretty young so I've been around them on a working relationship I get a lot of mail which is great I mean in one letter get everything that you ever want to know about what what's going on with you and I'm just real true to those those feelings and you know I mean what it's like to feel completely grown up completely capable of being responsible for yourself and having someone saying in the midst of all of your problems what timing of you home for dinner I mean I remember that stuff or not being given credit for the scope of a problem any father was say three years from now you'll laugh about it well you're not laughing right now is there character in some kind of wonderful that you relate to the most well the Eric Stoltz character Keith I know quite a bit about I mean I want to be a painter in high school I thought that it was a cool thing to do no one else did of course so I mean I understand when you're passionate about something at that age it consumes you in my case it was his art goes a long way towards getting you through loneliness because you've always got your your art to fall back on and it builds a certain amount of self-reliance and I didn't really much care what other people thought of me because I could go look at my work and say I like that and I did that and it was you know self recognition so I mean I identify with that with that character quite a bit and how about Amanda what what did what does she represent she's a girl who is on the same side of the tracks as Keith but she because she's pretty crosses over and really for no reason other than that crosses over to the other side and has compromised a lot of her values to belong to that that other group and finds that she's in a way been bought she sold her solenoid and he really sees sees a that she is from his side she's more in common with him in his interpretation than she does with the people who have bought her and brought her over and always remind her of the fact that she's not one of them that they allow her to be a part of them that she doesn't naturally fit which I thought was something is intriguing to me at that point in which you realized my god I've I've sold out on myself and that's really what happens to this girl tell you a little bit about the date what date is the date is really the crowning moment he does there's a lot there's a lot of circumstance comes into play a lot listen this girl wants to get away from her boyfriend keith is fascinated by her and it's been watching and following her for some time and he just happens to pick the night that she has decided to get rid of this guy to be the night when he makes his move and unbeknownst to him she consents to go out with him just to just because it's convenient and she's emotional and she's upset and she just says yes just to get back at her boyfriend she does this it's all done very rash and then the rest of the film deals with how do you get yourself out of the situation that you've gotten into just just done they heated the heat of emotion and it's brought her to this decision how does she deal with it yes she used this guy but is he using her as well what what constitutes using someone is at the core of this and that's with the core of the date and he's on the day with the two girls drama girl who was falling in love with her friend it's a terrible predicament and is helping him with this date with this other girl so as a the the friend side of her is helping Keith with another girl when you first started writing for for the cinema did you have in mind to direct or was that just the natural next step I was just working to be accepted as a writer which I you know never thought and everybody my family's always been in the business like a generic businessman you only wear one of those white suits with a brown stripe down that says businessman and blocked letters and so anything create I mean creative with you could be an advertising executive that was acceptable because you wartime you went to a job and you work for a company and you sold products but you were able to think up stuff and be creative so it was cooking a long time to accept the fact that I was actually earning a living as a writer so you weren't you were working in advertising at first yeah and then I went to the Lampoon and and audibly horrible you understand but it quite a change from writing Kellogg's commercials to some of the things I did at the Lampoon that was a liberating experience so what was the moved from Lampoon into screenwriting into directing out of that the Lampoon además came out big yet so there was a premium on anybody who was ever day yeah you were who anyone who had any experience writing you know in Hollywood likes to follow you know they go stand where lightning is struck and wait for it to strike again so everybody got development deals and I somehow managed to make good on a couple of them and then I wrote the vacation story vacation 58 which became vacation with the trivia choice and wrote mr. mom and I was Houston magazine writing which was non-stop constant deadlines so I when I started writing scripts I applied those same things the same sort of deadlines and pressure running and I did the magazine business and in the advertising business before that and I you know I just started grinding these scripts out and they one after the other getting made and I saw them on the screen and I thought well that isn't exactly what I had in mind it was also going to meetings with directors you know having come out of a magazine where no one ever edited my work I mean we we have we had a tremendous amount of freedom the writers at Lampoon to suddenly be sitting in a conference room with 30 people saying I don't know you know maybe he maybe you shouldn't get in the car there maybe you should get in the helicopter nice you know and I knew how the thing worked and I created the characters and I thought oh I knew I knew the internal workings of these things and then to have to go deal with the committee I thought there's got to be a better way than this and then I wrote sixteen Candles and said now I have to direct this one what role does peer pressure play in your characters lives and in the lives of American teens in general I think that it's the it's the single most destructive thing that that you'll face I mean it is it is the source of all of those problems if you bend to it you will find yourself doing things that you know aren't right you it is so important for you to belong to something that is that at that age as you're trying to identify yourself who you know Who am I and where do I fit how do I belong and all this that pressure to belong is so enormous that it can be extremely destructive you know the smart ones in the schools are the ones that know how to use that pressure and apply it or they you know they may be using it unknowingly but but it's you know I felt you know that that dare you know the whole thing about I dare you you know it's it's isn't at all you say crazy there's a kid that means something and it can be really can be really dangerous and it and it excludes people and it's it's just it's something that that needs to be continually reviewed do you feel like you have a responsibility to young people to give them the right message I mean I'm not in a position to give anybody messages but I hope that they come out of the films with and I think in some cases have is a fundamental belief in yourself and a certain amount of self-reliance that don't bother with with what other people say about you and proceed on the path that you think is right for yourself and you know listen to listen to your own feelings and respect yourself

Channel: Mike Krumlauf

Views: 18,822

Rating: 4.9586205 out of 5

Keywords: John Hughes, Kevin Bacon, Interview, Some Kind of Wonderful

Id: LvcJSwuvAGI

Length: 10min 44sec (644 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 05 2018