My John Hughes obit is up on the homepage today. A sampling:
It’s worth noting that Hughes emerged from the 1960s and ’70s in much the same way as P. J. O’Rourke and Denis Boyles, his friends and fellow National Lampoon editors, with politics that ran counter to the counterculture. The two decades before Hughes emerged as a filmmaker were filled with representations of America as a bitterly divided and deeply unjust place. According to Ben Stein — the former Nixon speechwriter Hughes made famous for a new generation with his brief role in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off — Hughes even ended up a Republican.
[snip]
If there’s a better celluloid expression of ordinary American freedom than Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I have yet to see it. If you could take one day and do absolutely anything, piling into a convertible with your best girl and your best friend and taking in a baseball game, an art museum, and a fine meal seems about as good as it gets. Tellingly, almost all the humor and conflict in the movie comes from an obsessive school bureaucrat and those who would get in the way of Ferris Bueller’s freedom to experience the perfect spring day in Chicago. Ben Stein put it this way: “John Hughes — Republican — saw that potential, saw that the individual still had the ability to transcend whatever was weighing him or her down and come out leading a parade down Michigan Avenue.”
A few other notes on Hughes — I referenced this in the piece, but if you haven’t read this account of how John Hughes became pen pals with one of his teenage fans in the late 80s, you really should. More than anything that gives a lot of insight into what a decent human being he was. Also, here’s some yet more bits of Hughes miscellania that didn’t make it into the piece…
First, the “Fight Club Theory” of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is pretty amusing:
My favorite thought-piece about Ferris Bueller is the “Fight Club” theory, in which Ferris Bueller, the person, is just a figment of Cameron’s imagination, like Tyler Durden, and Sloane is the girl Cameron secretly loves.
One day while he’s lying sick in bed, Cameron lets “Ferris” steal his father’s car and take the day off, and as Cameron wanders around the city, all of his interactions with Ferris and Sloane, and all the impossible hijinks, are all just played out in his head. This is part of the reason why the “three” characters can see so much of Chicago in less than one day — Cameron is alone, just imagining it all.
It isn’t until he destroys the front of the car in a fugue state does he finally get a grip and decide to confront his father, after which he imagines a final, impossible escape for Ferris and a storybook happy ending for Sloane (“He’s gonna marry me!”), the girl that Cameron knows he can never have.
I discussed Hughes a bit with Warren Bell, a hollywood producer and former Cornerite. Bell once controversially posited on the Corner that Ferris Bueller was a film about fascism — I think I respectfully disagree. However, I did find Bell’s reaction to the “Fight Club theory” most amusing:
Raises troubling questions about Cameron; e.g., he has an imaginary frenemy that he pictures in the shower singing Wayne Newton?
Also, see this comprehensive list of “Crimes committed by Ferris Bueller during his Day off.”
P.S. I noticed yesterday that A. O. Scott in the New York Times yesterday referred to Hughes’ politics as “counter-counterculture.” My piece was written and submitted before then, so great minds think alike and all that.