Oh, this one’s a keeper.

A quintessential rite of passage for any girl born between 1965 and 1980, depending on the mood, John Hughes’s Pretty In Pink becomes a) the reason why an awesome soundtrack was put together; b) a very Eighties take on the Cinderella paradygm; c) the lowest common denominator for anything connected to nostalgia; and d) all of the above.

It also makes for a classic trailer, in its own right. The opening credits montage of Molly Ringwald getting dressed and ready for school [i.e. is the chick flick equivalent of the other Eighties staple, the “hey, let’s go grab some guns” action montage] is spliced throughout the whole thing, acting as a visual refrain to the Psychedelic Furs’ lyrics for the title song. Every possible subplot is explored, as far as the teen characters are involved (guess that poor Harry Dean Stanton not letting go of his deadbeat wife didn’t resonate at the box office), while the main plot is, well, laid bare. At least the third act resolution is left as a guess.

Which makes me think of another trailer that made the rounds back then (video release, maybe? dunno), this one with an unusually Duckie-heavy slant. Did wacky borderline obsessive third wheel sell more than star-crossed class-transcending teenage love? Really? Oh, ok.

If you never saw it as a grownup, be sure to check out The Spader in all his own sniveling glory. He looks so much better with the benefit of some distance.

A few weeks ago I had the dubious privilege of introducing a girlfriend to John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club. She kept a stiff upper lip until the end credits were rolling. Then she turned to me and said, “you know, I always thought it was a comedy”.

Blame it on the trailer: general vibe falls squarely in the “kids today and their wacky (but still sort of wholesome) hijinks” category, what with the running in the hallways, the rockabilly riff coming up halfway, and all those shots of the leads busting random moves.

In retrospect it’s a little weird that they threw the pot smoking in, but maybe it was the then-compulsory bait for the lowbrow comedy crowd. Why, was “Molly Ringwald holding a lipstick between her tits” an unmentionable asset those days? (Come to think of it, it probably was.)

Strangely enough, there’s no mention whatsoever of the hu-u-u-u-u-uge amount of drama inside.

Marketing divisions all over the world were still to discover the “1980s are the new 1950s” angle, and teenage angst would become a newly profitable genre only later in the decade. Were it made now, the trailer would come with its own built-in LJ community. I guess.

Random wisdom from YouTube commentators: “theres a guy in my language class that looks almost exactly like the jock.”