Max has taken a shine to the works of John Hughes recently . The other week there we watched Uncle Buck which I found a little bit saccharine but the boy thoroughly enjoyed. To be honest until I started watching it again I had forgotten that it was one of Hughes' films.
Max had already purloined my copies of Some Kind Of Wonderful and Pretty In Pink after watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off. What most of the John Hughes films had was great soundtracks from artists such as The Smiths, Otis Redding, The Jesus And Mary Chain etc.
As Max liked these films so much I decided to introduce him to the ultimate teen film, Gregory's Girl. I knew that he would enjoy it, as he already had Restless Natives which is put on on a regular basis. So we sat one night and sniggered through the whole film and while watching it, it suddenly struck me the total lack of a soundtrack, there was some incidental music but nothing more. This got me thinking as to what music from 1980/81 I would include in the film and after much consideration decided that the film didn't actually need a soundtrack as it had taken me thirty years to realise that one was missing so it couldn't be that important.
I then thought about the John Hughes films and what they would be like without their soundtracks and decided unlike Gregory's Girl I don't think that many of his would have been as successful without the music.
Here is one of my favourite tracks from my favourite Hughes film, Some Kind Of Wonderful and a couple of classic scenes from Gregory's Girl
Stephen Duffy - She Loves Me
3 comments:
Nice story Drew, but I can't imagine that a teen film will work without a soundtrack. To my shame I have to admit, that I never heard about Gregory's Girl before, because it is never shown in Germany. Maybe too Scottish - I don't know. If the film is as good as the short clip - I can understand you. By the way Bill Forsyth's Local Hero is also great and was very successful in Germany. Go on introducing your son.
Totally agree that John Hughes movies rely on the soundtrack. The thing that has always annoyed me about his films is the devil's contract that so many bands that I love signed when working with Hughes and his go to music producer Stephen Hague.
We all know what The Breakfast Club wrought for Simple Minds, but bands like the Psychedlic Furs and Orchestral Manouevers In The Dark never quite recovered their edge after the Hand of Hughes. New Order may have survived a bit better because they contributed music already created and were already moving away from the Fairlight sounds they played with in the middle 80's.
Walter - Gregory's Girl, I think is maybe a bit too Scottish for others.
Echorich - good comment, there is a really terrible mix of The Hardest Walk on Some Kind Of Wonderful which might have been remixed by Hague
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