40 years ago, through the lens of John Hughes, I fell in love with the now embattled city of Chicago... [View all]

[PeaceWave]

For a generation of kids hitting their teens in the 1980's, there was one film director who towered above all others. John Hughes was writing and directing the films that hit closest to our hearts. Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and many other Hughes films were by no means perfect. But, however imperfect, they belonged to our generation. And, we needed them. We'd grown up in a world threatened by the insanity of nuclear annihilation and we needed a fucking break from it - even if only for 90 or 120 minutes on a Saturday afternoon at the theater in the mall. In this way, John Hughes took us all to one foreign land, over and over again. Chicago.

Hughes adored Chicago. Building on the success of the Chicago set Risky Business (a film he did not write or direct), Hughes set seven films - including the aforementioned Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off - in the city and its surrounding suburbs. All were box office hits fueled by teenage audiences. And, in this way, Chicago - not Los Angeles, not New York - became the mecca for an entire teen generation's imagination. Chicago was complicated and interesting and fun and hip. It was the home of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks and George Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte and so much more. Feelings spanning the breadth of moving you to tears to moving you to fall in love. And, as kids not yet adults, we were quickly learning that life would be just such a wild ride. Not surprisingly, many of us would later hang on our dormitory walls prints of the art Hughes had introduced us to through film.

All of this is to say that, having fallen in love with you Chicago so many years ago, we can never forget you. Though a dictator now bangs at your city gates, the spirit that imbues your people can never be defeated. And, if John Hughes were alive today, I am sure he would say that Chicago, of all cities in this country, is capable - if need be - of taking a stand, of defending itself and not sitting on its ass as the events that affect it unfold to determine the course of its citizens' lives.