John Hughes Weekend.
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009
I’m having a John Hughes weekend and here is why.
I’m guessing that a full on-demand service for legally downloading or streaming films in a high quality format from an extensive and comprehensive library is a couple of years away. When that happens, and when I’m able to watch what I want when I want it will be the culmination of something that started in the mid eighties when my parents first bought a VHS and when I joined the local video library.
Prior to that choice was limited. The local cinemas were mostly single screen and as for telly, I’m not sure choosing to watch what ITV and BBC decided to screen was really a choice at all. The video library changed that.
There may have been about 200-300 films to choose from, which now, with the wonder that is Lovefilm at my disposal, seems a bit pitiful but at the time it was just extraordinary. It was the moment when suddenly I had a fairly decent say in what I could watch, and pretty much the first films I rented were John Hughes’ films. Of course they are mawkish and daft – but I always thought they were tightly scripted and great fun and I’m very fond of them.
And so this weekend, because of his stupidly early death I’ve decided that in my house it’s John Hughes’ weekend and I’m going to loose myself in a mid eighties reverie. I’m going to watch 4 or 5 of his films and I’ve made a Playlist at Spotify . And I’m going to re-read the novel Less Than Zero.
(The odd thing about that playlist is that with one or two exceptions I would have run screaming from those bands and those songs. These days most of them just make make me giggle. It’s a collaborative list so anyone can add stuff if they can be arsed. Only one or two of the songs have anything to do with John Hughes – but the songs remind of the world that those films come from).
