When you grow up, your heart dies.

I'm late on this whole John Hughes dying thing, probably because ignoring the fact that the director who made the formative films of my emo teenage-dom (Jake Ryan, Ferris Bueller, Duckie Dale) could no longer tap into the twisted, wicked nature of adolescence seemed like an easy thing to do. But I'm pretty sure that Molly Ringwald's column in The New York Times a few days after his death on Aug. 6 sums up all my thoughts very nicely.

My fave part:

I wanted to grow up, something I felt (rightly or wrongly) I couldn’t do while working with John. Sometimes I wonder if that was what he found so unforgivable. We were like the Darling children when they made the decision to leave Neverland. And John was Peter Pan, warning us that if we left we could never come back. And, true to his word, not only were we unable to return, but he went one step further. He did away with Neverland itself.

Sidenote: I don't care how heavy-handed and decidedly unsubtle it was, "The Breakfast Club" will always be important to any girl born after Richard Nixon resigned, and especially to me.


+ Photo courtesy of Duke University