John Hughes and Ally Sheedy

I am very sad about John Hughes’ death. He was influential to me as a writer and his movies were influential to me as an American teenager who was frequently unhappy during high school. When I got to interview Ally Sheedy in the ’90s I felt I was meeting an icon and we spent a long time talking about the shooting of The Breakfast Club. She talked about the makeover scene at the end of the film, when Molly Ringwald’s character gives her a makeover: “It was originally written as a makeover, but I asked John Hughes to change it because I didn’t want them to put makeup on me so I suddenly appear like this pretty girl.” She tried to make it that Molly was taking off Ally’s goth mask, instead of turning her into a pretty girl, though it didn’t come off that way in the movie.
Anyway, you can read the whole interview.
One of the things I didn’t like about John Hughes was the way the guys always came around, or the girls came to see the Duckies for the gods they really were. This doesn’t happen so often in real life, especially not during the teenage years.
I’m posting a piece I wrote about John Hughes when I was at NYPress about this romantic misleading.