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“Live Moves Pretty Fast,” John Hughes and the North Shore
Publication Date: 10 August 2009
Source: Ageless North Shore - http://ageless-northshore.com/john-hughes-north-shore/
Several years ago, on a walk around the neighborhood, my son-in-law stopped to take a photo of a house (now for sale) at 379 Beech Street in Highland Park. It is best known as Cameron Frye’s house from the John Hughes film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. We walked there last Saturday. Somehow I expected to see teddy bears or posters or offerings to the memory of John Hughes.
Instead it was a slightly overcast, humid day; the streets were quiet. The memories stayed in the movie and in our minds.
Early on in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off a very young looking Matthew Broderick has a monologue in the shower. It provides the key to his perception of the teenage experience. Not only does “life move pretty fast,” but much of what we are taught (in his case, European history) does not relate to real life. In the case of Ferris, the study of “isms” does not help out the fact that he doesn’t have a car.
The death of John Hughes at the age of 59 as he walked in Manhattan is a reminder that life can also leave you pretty fast.
In his classic teenage angst films of the 1980s Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Ferris, John Hughes explored the longings, emotions, fears and delirious newness of interacting with the world. As we get older nothing really changes except the newness. Since we don’t have “newness” as an excuse, we compensate with wisdom.
The death of John Hughes is particularly poignant for those of us from the North Shore because Hughes featured our suburbs as back lots and as characters in his films. I found a particularly interesting site created in 1998 (and updated since then) by Alexander Rubinow, then an aspiring film maker and now a video and film editor at an LA production company. Alexander and his friends photographed local locations of John Hughes films. Click on this for a charming tribute to John Hughes
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