Molly Ringwald “exploded” onto the scene in 1984 with Sixteen Candles. Unbeknownst to me she had earlier been on a year of The Facts of Life and Diff’rent Strokes. She and a number of others thought The Breakfast Club was a more important film. Yeah? Just seemed like a bunch of brat drama queens to me. Her best movie to me will always be Candles. I suppose that’s why Pretty In Pink is a little painful for me to watch sometimes. It was gritty, gritty I say! The alcoholic father, the poverty. My big problem with it was the contrived romance between Molly and Andrew McCarthy. There didn’t seem to be any basis for the infatuation. No foundation was laid. We’re just supposed to accept that Andrew McCarthy is the love of her life for no apparent reason. There’s a movie from 1982 I’d like to see called Tempest that sounds very interesting.

I suppose my other problem with Pink is I’ve just never been a James Spader fan (and Duckie is an irrational stalker dork). 1987’s P.K. and the Kid sounded interesting, I was thinking oh, 18 year old Molly… then I saw that it was filmed in 1982 and wasn’t going to be released until her megahits (Candles & Club) rocked the film world. Then P.K. was finally released and went straight to video. Finishing out the 80s you had The Pick-up Artist, For Keeps? and Fresh Horses (interspersed through this and the next 30 years were TV projects too numerous to mention). Of those 3 the only one I knowingly saw was For Keeps?. I just vaguely thinking “oh that’s good!”, it had kind of a serious vibe to it. These films begin a period where if you look at the film ratings, they get panned. Bad.

The Pick-up Artist is interesting in that writer-director James Toback begins a long association with Robert Downey Jr in the same way director John Hughes had built his career on his ties to Molly. Actor / director teams have done that throughout the history of film, which can be good and bad. So many directors have just 1 film in them and reusing the same people over and over doesn’t help them to change. In Molly’s case she would seem to have the worst luck in choosing work. She turned down the 4th John Hughes project, Some Kind of Wonderful (which got an aggregate 7.1 rating on IMDB). About all her stuff has gotten 4.7 – 5.1 on a 10 scale, really bad.

One of her personal quotes about her “brat pack” movies was when she says, “I think I was blessed to be given the opportunity…“, you “think” you were blessed? That could just be taken the wrong way by me, but when added to other things it gives the aura of a prima donna. Its Hollywood’s eternal struggle, they want to make depressing stuff that grosses people out because that to them that is ‘art’. Most people going to a movie just want to know, ‘Is this going to make me feel good?’ Its why Oscar movies are the ones nobody watches, the professionals like them. John Wayne wasn’t big at the Academy, but he was huge at the box office. Justine Bateman had a creepy little interview with Larry King about her new book. She liked everything about fame except the fans!

It explains so well why nothing good comes out of Hollywood, they’re working for themselves, not the fans. They just expect them to buy it. In Molly’s case she turned down parts in Blue Velvet, Pretty Woman and Ghost. Its incredibly ironic. She absolutely hates having to talk about the movies that made her famous, but confined her work to crap in the ensuing years! What did you think people were going to want to talk about? Its got to be a tough business to be in, you need a huge ego to carry you through, but at the same time its very easily pricked. I guess that’s why there’s so many basket cases in Hollywood.

Molly’s fame is a strange one. You could tell in the early 80s film producers knew they had something, they just didn’t know what. I’m not sure they knew what to do with her. You kind of get the feeling with a couple of different films that they tried the Pretty Baby thing, like with Brooke Shields (I wonder if they’re friends? They’re only a couple of years apart and had a similar career path, really bad movies). I’m not sure how much ‘there’ was ever there. How much was bad acting? How much was bad material? And in the end it doesn’t matter a damn how technically proficient you are, its a matter of do people like you? Do they find you attractive? Its the difference between Tom Selleck in Magnum and Blue Bloods, will they still love you, when you’re sixty four?

I think Molly’s success came down to two things. In Candles her character was incredibly self-deprecating. Humble. The underdog. People like that. I also think it was John Hughes best vehicle. He was fresh. Had a very tight budget (they couldn’t even pay for air-conditioning in the gymnasium scene). He was young and hungry. The other aspect to her fame was one you just can’t bottle; sex appeal. I could have said charisma I suppose. That ‘it’ factor. She had it. In the pictures I chose below I don’t remember a person who came across so poorly in a photograph, her medium was definitely film. I think in the end her ego got in the way.

American actress Molly Ringwald as Claire Standish in ‘The Breakfast Club’, directed by John Hughes, 1985. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)

But then my taste in music is similar to my taste in movies. I don’t have very fancy tastes. I like music that sounds good (what a concept huh?). The lyrics don’t have to be ‘deep’. The arrangement doesn’t have to be complex. Think, ‘Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again’. Nothing earth shattering about it, just very, very beautiful. I guess that’s why I prefer Sixteen Candles over The Breakfast Club, I don’t need some dark melodrama, just a happy little romance. i.e. Charlize Theron in Young Adult, not Prometheus. Movies of 1941 are a case in point. Citizen Kane is supposed to be the great cinematic masterpiece. Me? I’d prefer Andy Hardy’s Private Secretary or The Maltese Falcon.