According to IMDB, John Hughes wrote or contributed to thirty-seven movies. He is loved for most of them and revered for a few that include "Sixteen Candles","The Breakfast Club", and "Pretty In Pink". If you haven't seen them, your teenage years in no way crossed the eighties.
Critics have claimed that the endings tended to be a bit too forced and the intermingling amongst the types to be romanticized at best. After watching them again since Hughes' passing, I find that I still disagree. Part of the charm of these movies was watching those moments, however brief, when kids with different ideals were forced to come to terms with what the real world would offer after school was completely out, when the safety of the pack mentality would be disrupted by transitions, and each individual would be left to stand alone on his or her merit, with only their record collections to provide clues as to how they defined themselves.
Hughes was known for using music like no one ever had at that point and the song choices always came from the left bank of the mainstream of American pop culture and, if not at the time of release then at the time of filming, just ahead of the curve. I never saw one of his movies without thinking, "I can't believe he used _____!!". Each film had a moment where the scene and the song would meld so perfectly that I would never hear the song without seeing a Hughes visual again. "Sixteen Candles" and Thompson Twins' "If You Were Here" comes to mind first, but there's also one of those moments in "Pretty In Pink" and it's even better.
Having declared himself through with Andie after she destroys a dream that he's waited years to come true by choosing another boy, a rich boy named Blane, to fall for, Duckie's world has crumbled. Unaware of Duckie's feelings or unwilling to see them - a vagueness that is just one of the many problems with "Pretty In Pink" that makes it the weakest of the three films, she further humiliates his desires by bringing the rich boy to the very club that he's finally managed to slip in to - under the pretense of being the son of Iona, Andie's boss and mother figure - after months of waiting outside night after night for her. Andie's world has also been shaken as her first romance forces her to mingle with the rich crowd that treats her like trash, and then again, when Duckie treats Blaine with equal disdain. Iona, herself, gets a jolt when Duckie gives her a kiss full of pent-up needs and anger to spite Andie, making her aware of what's missing in her relationships.
Cue the anxious and tentative plinkety plink opening of New Order's "Shellshock" as we see morning after begin and Duckie once again on riding his bike in circles just out of sight of Andie's house, unable to stay away, hoping he won't see something that makes his heart stop beating.
Bravo.
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