DVDs TO GO: Two greats, gone

For the News & Messenger

Movie lovers received a double blow late last week with the deaths of writer/director/producer John Hughes at age 59 and controversial screenwriter and novelist Budd Schulberg at age 95.

This week, rather than look at recent releases, I want to suggest some of these two talented men’s films to watch and savor.

John Hughes

National Lampoon’s Animal House provided Hughes’ career with a big boost, as he wrote scripts for several episodes of ABC’s short lived television adaptation of the movie, Delta House. His years as a
writer for National Lampoon magazine helped him win that job, which lead to his working on other Lampoon films. Vacation and Christmas Vacation revitalized Chevy Chase’s career and boosted Hughes’
credibility with studio big wigs.

Sixteen Candles established Hughes as the sharpest chronicler of what it was like to be a teen in Middle America in the 1980’s.

His screenplays and direction probed the tensions and class distinctions in school and at home. Generational lack of communication and the difficulties of establishing your own identity were the subtexts
of the plots. The humor in his films was never as mean spirited or gross as what passes for laughs in most of today’s films for and about teens.

Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, Some Kind of Wonderful, even the seemingly simple Ferris Bueller’s Day Off had moments of genuine emotion and depth sprinkled throughout the laughs. He gave
young viewers a sympathetic ear that actually listened to them, instead of mocking and/or exploiting them.

Though his films aimed at adult audiences didn’t always hit the mark, two of them — Planes, Trains and Automobiles and She’s Having A Baby — brought the best qualities of the teen films to their
audiences. In addition to the youthful performers he developed, such as Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson and Andrew McCarthy, Hughes’ work with seasoned actors like Steve Martin,
Kevin Bacon and John Candy, produced some of their best performances.

Budd Schulberg

Budd Schulberg was born into the movie business. His father was the head of Paramount Pictures, for which Schulberg wrote screenplays in his twenties. After World War II, he became a novelist and
penned the first major “backstage” Hollywood novel, What Makes Sammy Run?

Schulberg unapologetically named names before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the early 1950s, which may have lead, in part, to his being chosen to write the screenplay for On The
Waterfront in 1954. He compared Terry Malloy’s (Marlon Brando) decision to testify against corrupt union officials to his own decision to talk to the Committee. Schulberg’s script took one of Waterfront’s
eight Oscars in 1955.

Schulberg’s novel, The Harder They Fall, about the brutal underside of boxing, became the final film of Humphrey Bogart’s career in 1956. His A Face in The Crowd, released in 1957, was a chillingly
prescient tale of the power of television, advertising and the cult of personality to create demagogues.

The film featured Andy Griffith in a stunning and engrossing performance as “simple country boy” Lonesome Rhodes.

Hughes’ funny and touching tales of finding your own direction in life and Sculberg’s clear-eyed examinations of the struggle for survival in the urban jungle will ring true for years to come.

Check them out soon— you’ll be a better movie viewer for the experience.

Joe Barber’s entertainment reports and reviews can be heard Fridays through Sundays on the WTOP-FM Radio Network (103.5, 103.9, 107.7 & Wtop.com.) He can be seen regularly on WETA-TV’s
Around Town and Fridays on Comcast Sports Net’s Washington Post Live!