“Don’t you forget about me,” Simple Minds sang in their hit tune from “The Breakfast Club.”
Not likely, when it comes to the movie’s director. Though John Hughes died in 2009 (he suffered a fatal heart attack while walking on West 55th Street), his work continues to stand the test of time.
A new book, “John Hughes: A Life in Film” (out Tuesday), attempts to tell both Hughes’ story and the ones behind his films — including those signature teen-centric comedies from the 1980s.
“My movies are popular because they’re familiar,” Hughes once said. “Armageddon doesn’t interest me as much as a good family fight.”
The book’s author, Kirk Honeycutt, a longtime journalist who interviewed Hughes through the years, shares anecdotes behind five of the writer-director’s most popular movies.
“Sixteen Candles,” 1984
“Gedde Watanabe [right, with Deborah Pollack] played Long Duk Dong, a clichéd Asian character. But they actually spent the better part of two days filming a big musical number with him at the prom — he did a big dance number and rapped about how much he loved America. It would have been interesting to see how people reacted to the character if that scene remained. I think it would have made him less controversial.”
“Pretty in Pink,” 1986
“They had to reshoot the ending, because the original one where Andie [Molly Ringwald] and Duckie [Jon Cryer] ended up at the prom dancing — with implications they’ll get together — was disliked by test audiences, especially young girls who felt Molly needed to end up with the cute guy [Andrew McCarthy]. They had McCarthy back six months later to shoot a new ending. He was doing a play, for which he had shaved his head. It’s a bad wig he’s wearing [in the final scene, above]. John said to me, ‘I wasn’t happy about the reshoot but when I saw that wig, I started laughing and didn’t mind so much.’ ”
“The Breakfast Club,” 1985
“This movie was supposed to have a nude scene. During the day of detention, the [students] would have sneaked out of the library and found a peephole in the women’s locker room. There they spy the synchronized-swimming coach topless. Someone was even cast for the part: Karen Leigh Hopkins. But there was a rebellion by the actresses [Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy] and the female producer [Michelle Manning] against the scene. ‘This is really sexist and misogynistic,’ they hammered at [Hughes]. He thought about it and cut it out of the movie.”
“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” 1986
“For the scene where Ferris sings on the float during the parade, they had to shoot the real Von Steuben Day parade in Chicago over one weekend. Then the next weekend, they had to have a fake parade to get more shots. They had to get people willing to show up for free. They went to radio stations and put ads in the paper. In the end, 10,000 people showed up for the fake parade, which was more than for the real parade. Matthew Broderick and choreographer Kenny Ortega had worked out a dance sequence for the actor atop the float. Broderick had dislocated his knee a few weeks earlier filming the scene at the end of the movie where he’s running through yards on his way home, so the choreography had to be scrapped.”
“Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” 1987
“Steve Martin told me [Hughes] encouraged ad-libbing. So he and John Candy are shooting this scene in this broken-down car with no roof, and it’s minus-10 degrees outside [in Buffalo, NY]. Every time they ad-libbed, you have to cover it [reshoot the scene from a different camera angle] 50 times. It was getting ridiculous, the multiple coverage they needed for every line. Martin and Candy agreed not to ad-lib anymore because they were freezing to death. They loved ad-libbing, and unfortunately were doing too good a job of it and increasing their chances of getting frostbite.”