JOHN HUGHES: Making lha Movies Young Peopio Love HH erris Heuller's Day Off, says John Hughes, "is about this high sch<x>l kit) who tuts class and goes to the ■ big ciry for the day with his best friend and girlfriend But, it really is about personal freedom and how differ ent things are when you have decided for just one day to be free." Hughes, world class creator and cutter of films ranging from Mr Mom to Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club, is perched on the edge of a long grey couch at his offices at Paramount Studios in Hoi lywood With the exception of Stephen Spielberg, no recent young filmmaker has enjoyed such speedy success. During the past three years or so, his efforts have made hundreds of millions of dollars and displayed the comic verve and range of a Charlie Chaplin or Wbody Allen Just by making movies about kids Some, like The breakfast Ctuh, are tightly choreographed, literate ballets One or two others, like the National Lampoon s Summer Vacation, may have had their most crucial scenes conjured on the back of a cocktail napkin But, mostly, Hughes’ work is ambi tious, smart, riveting and funny And no current movie maker is as gtxid at mixing belly laughs with heart and compassion. Terris Heuller is his latest “It's about freedom from worry Ferris doesn't worry, doesn't sweat anything It's also about a change in reality If you've ever stayed home from school or work for reasons other than being sick, you see how different the world looks " Hughes looks far less like the stereo typical tanned Hollywood mogul than, BY MARK CHRISTENSEN .say. a rather bookish member of an En glish rock howl Tall An explosive mane of long, (lark hlorul Ivair. Glasses A black cloth coat, thoroughly wrinkled silver slacks and a white shirt with sleeves so long that his cuffs touch his knuckles "I’d much rather be a musician than a movie maker, but I'm |ust about tone deaf To me, tuning a guitar correctly Is one of the world's major mysteries ' Nev ertheless, his aggressive use- of new mu sic has become a stock in trade "Simple Minds sold SO,000 albums until 'Don't You' broke on breakfast Club "But there will lx- a change with the music on hems. What 1 want to do is use a big sound, a state of the an production using edge bands that press the enve lope or whatever the spac e people call it bands like Zig Zag Sputnik, then, couple that with a more accessible sound I want to foc us my movies on bands who have the right to be heard by the great Top Forty masses New stuff Be cause, like, when I go to Chicago, I listen to three stations and get nothing but San tana and Layla ' It's like somt-bexly fell asleep on the 1972 button." A former writer for National Lampoon, Hughes left the magazine several years ago to wrile wliat are popularly perceived as "teen flicks," a realm previously domi nated by big breasts, beer drinking and fart jokes His efforts (usually) to elevate the genre have made for films that re create adolescence with an energy, in ventiveness and exactitude that can be drop dead eerie. Who can forget Anthony Michael Hall in Sixteen Canities, the kid with the spi dery hands and concave chest who, while wooing Molly Kingwald, allows, some what parenthetically, that his social status in the school is insured by the fact that he is "king of the dipshits " Or, later, when he wakes after a drunken night of evident debauchery and de virgmizing with his high school s brassiest sex|x>t, the new, rather blithely unanchored Hall asking her, "Did I enjoy it?" Hughes' cmhuMa.Mii for these kinds of shenanigans is surprising in light of the fart ihai his own adolescent experience was not idylic In high school, I was a serious outcast. a laughingstock I look li I look ti ami I thought. I'll show you, I II show you This was, like, in 196"' "I went to a |ock y school. \X'c hail a serious dress code I almost didn't gradu ate, Ix-iause my liair touched my collar Hack then, I wanted to lx- Picasso, Mi t helangelo, James Joyce or Boll Dylan That's where I took my solace IVople would make fun of me, anil I'd think, 'That's okay Picasso would like me ’ I'd come home at uighi, and I'd sit ai my win dow and pul on my albums and read my British music magazines I didn't waul lo belong, because I couldn't belong "The guy who was the teacher in Hrvakfast (Hub was my gym teat her He didn't like me because of my hair, so he flunked me senior year in gym, which meant, to graduate. I hail to lake double gym anil healih You know, sit in i lass anil look at VI) ravaged genitals anil slide shows alNHil how to brush your teeth Were other characters in his films taken directly from experience? ' Yeah The (erk rich kid in I’rvtty In link I hail a guy like him haunt me all the way through high school Money to burn His older brother had an Alfa, the big nice one, and parked it outside with the lop down in the rain I would walk by and see the rose wood but klmg on ihe dash I couldn't un derstand how kills could live like that I just wasn't part of that world And college was scarcely an Improve ment. " I hated it intensely I was enor mously homesick and felt completely displaced I went to college in Ari/.o na, a big party school, a big fraternity school The anti war movement was very small, and the cops were very tough "I was des|x-rately in love with my wife, wIki was then my girlfriend She was still in high school I spent 91,000 lirst semester just on phone bills. ”1 had problems with the six ial nature of the school I wasn't a fraternity type Ami I had a knack for attracting hostile authority figures I mean, during the Rev olutlonary VKtr 1 would have been over at Tom Payne's house saying. Hey. let's get some boats, cross the Atlantic and make them live under US for a while' " Finally, after two or three and a half years, Hughes got a belly full of academia and. on hear « Ing John larnnon'*"VHirking Class Hero". '{■ decided to head hack home Conditions did not improve immedi ately "Nancy and I she was 20, I was 3 21 lived in a converted boxcar The rent was only II10 a m< >nth Hut. we couldn't make it and ended up living in my par ents' basement for eight months," But things got better After failing the'wrlttng tests"of half the ad agencies In Chicago, he got a fob at l.ei i Burnett where he final ly found a niche "I went to work in the day and came home In the dark I started ai IK.S00 a year, doubled my salary within six months and doubled it again a year after that I (list ke(H eating up Kisses One time the guy above me did an ad the com pany didn't like I asked fora shot at it and stayed up all night doing sixteen varla lions on lIk- Itlea I had They liked one and. the next thing I knew. I had Ins job I was a creative director at 2S or 26 " Then came National lamfxton, where Hughes filled upwards of 120 magazine pages a year with stories like "sexual Har rassment I low to 1 >o It The rest, as they A say, Is history So. has success changed John Hughes? Evidently, not much Hughes still spends as much time as possible back home in Chicago "I still own a house there I just put a new roof on it, so, if there are winos living there while I'm gone, they won't get wet I don't mix much socially out here I've only gone to two so called Hollywood' parties in my life, one be cause I’J O'Rourke made me, and the other because it was an MTV premiere for /Ve'/rv In Pink " Big Money doesn't seem to Interest him either "I've got a business manager 1 haven't seen in a year and a half Basically, I know I'm better off now betause I can afford to buy lots more records " But what about the future? "I'd like to have my own building, my own o|>era tlon I'm not that nuts about movie lots I'd like to write a Ivxik, maybe a novel, but I don't think I've mastered that form yet I'd love to do some 9,000 page thing. "I've got another him scheduled to start shooting this summer. Some Kind of VHwderful It s college, my first foray into college Its about the difference between the first year and the last, the struggle for dignity and identity Right now, I'm making two movies a year with very direct involvement But I could do three a year, produce two and direct one The thing is, I 've got a million ideas It's choosing which ones to exe cute that's tough 11 if mu ■ Above: A* th* ciass-cutbng lead m Ftrrit Btuler't Day Oft, Matthew Broderick indtAget in tome eenoui ratax atton. Hughe* deicnbet hit dm about the high achooier't day on ttte Imi m “about perioral freedom," and “a change in reaHy.Hyou*ve ever Hayed horn* from achool or work for reoaonaofherbian being »ck, you raaiz* now wTWtfn me wono toons Lett Annie Potts, who start as a funky record store manager, re* Irves some of her senior prom memories wiui atony nwtgwaKi in ^ «.-< **-.«— *—-i_ rfVUj W rmm. DwOW MUVV McCarthy (Left with Pnttym Pink -» “ - «* »*’— —i-i-s »-i-~ cottars wosy ningwaw ana jonn Cryer) pity* the “jerk rich Wd” inspeed by s reaHMe Hughes high school classmate who partied his Alfa "outside with the top down in the ram. I would wak by and see the rosewood buckling on the dash." "la high school, I was a soploas outcast,... Pooplo would aiaho fun at me sad I'd thlak, 'That's okay. Picasso woald like mo'.''