Diary of a Low Budget Superhero

"Saturday, March 24, 1984. Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois, 60062.

'Dear Mr. Vernon: We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. And what we did was wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to see us.'"

Follow up:

We just watched The Breakfast Club on Sunday, mere days before John Hughes died. It had been awhile since I'd seen it, but it's one I love going back to again and again. I even have the movie poster pinned to the wall of my studio. I put on The Breakfast Club to watch while perusing my new cookbooks and jotting down recipe ingredients to pick up at the store, but before long the movie sucked me in, and drew Joe from over in his studio where he'd been mixing...it's that kind of movie.

This time I noticed something I hadn't before. "Jesus, I never realized how existential it is," I said to Joe. I intended to write up an entry about it, so striking was this realization. Some of you probably spotted it years ago.

When the story begins, each of the characters have committed, before we meet them, some bad behavior that lands them in this place. They're confined now, with a guardian. There is no getting out of this sentence, and while at first they torment each other, their only salvation is to find a way to get along. Through accepting each other they must accept themselves.

This is also the plot of No Exit. There's even the soul-baring moment when they each have to admit what they did.

The Breakfast Club was made in 1985. I was 15 and fascinated by it, and as I've grown older and with each viewing over the years, through my ever-more-mature eyes, I was still fascinated but for different reasons. It always resonates. It's timeless. It's not even my favorite John Hughes movie (not even my favorite Molly Ringwald movie) but for this reason alone I say John Hughes deserves a special place in film making history.

I still say Molly Ringwald's Pretty in Pink prom dress radiated rancid waves of ugly so intense the air practically rippled with it.

But in death all is forgiven.

Rest in Peace, John Hughes.

Read Joe's thoughts about John Hughes here: The Limits of Science.