Seeking "Big Baby"

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L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein posted a 3.24 piece on '80s-youth- comedy poobah John Hughes, honoring the now-reclusive director as the author of the original treatment of Drillbit Taylor and the father of the Judd Apatow and Kevin Smith-type comedies filling screens today. Defamer found Goldstein's piece unsatisfying, however, and yesterday ran a request for reader questions to be sent to Hughes for some kind of follow-up. I don't have a question for Hughes, but I have a question about him that I'd like answered.

It concerns an article about Hughes in the National Lampoon. Or maybe it was in Spy magazine. Sometime in the early to mid '80s, one of these two ran what seemed at the time to be a heavily-sourced, hugely entertaining account of Hughes' petulant, sometimes irascible behavior as observed by anonymous colleagues and assistants. The article was called "Big Baby," and it had, I recall, a distinctive painting of enfant terrible Hughes on the opening page.

I trusted it partly because of Hughes' writing history with the Lampoon going back to the '70s. With NatLamp staffers (or former staffers) having their own first-hand knowledge of the guy, I figured they had to have pretty good sources. Obviously this observation is moot if it was written for Spy.

If anyone has a copy of "Big Baby" and could send me a scan of the pages, I would make it available here. Please send a scan of the cover page also, information about the issue (date, issue #, other articles), and so on.

comment #1

Rich S. says ...

Hughes was responsible for the single funniest thing I ever read in National Lampoon, Vacation '58. The Chevy Chase movie never even touched it. You used to be able to find it online, but I think they took it down. Very, very funny stuff.

comment #2

Rich S. says ...

Nope, here it is:

http://www.bizbag.com/Vacation/Vacation%2058.htm

comment #3

DavidF says ...

Obviously Hughes has done some good stuff (Ferris Bueller is the one I most like, I find the others a bit too stereotypically-80s) but I'm not sure he is artiste enough to be pulling this recluse act.

It's all a bit weird.

Also, he looks like Robert Zemeckis in that pic.

comment #4

Mgmax says ...

"The vacation sort of went downhill after that."

I've seen Hughes around town (years ago we saw Schindler's List together-- well, several rows apart), my guess is he's someone who likes his privacy, not a recluse in any mysterious sense. Hardly the only North Shore guy with money who keeps a low profile. At one point in his 20s or 30s he was simultaneously working at Leo Burnett, editing the Lampoon, and had a development deal at Paramount. Now he's taking it easy.

comment #5

christian says ...

If you compare Hughes' 80's teen comedies to the ones manufactured today, his look like small masterpieces. How many fart jokes in 16 CANDLES, FERRIS BUELLER and THE BREAKFAST CLUB? Zero.

comment #6

moorish says ...

Whatever else you can say about John Hughes and his movies in the negative (and there is quite a bit), I have to give him this:

Planes, Trains and Automobiles is a CLASSIC.

comment #7

BurmaShave says ...

christian is forgetting when Bill Paxton turns into a huge shit-monster in WEIRD SCIENCE, which is still a classic.

comment #8

Alan Cerny says ...

I'd love to see the extended BREAKFAST CLUB, which is rumored to go upwards of 2 and a half hours.

And PLANES TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES is a goddamn masterpiece.

comment #9

George Prager says ...

There was a SPY magazine story on Hughes back in the day. He would fire people for breathing.

in other news:

Richard Widmark dies at 93
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/arts/26cnd-widmark.html

comment #10

christian says ...

I left out WEIRD SCIENCE for obvious reasons. It's his most broad teen comedy, and was less successful than his others.
I'm just saying that Hughes didn't cater to the obvious. Universal thought the BREAKFAST CLUB was practically Ingmar Bergman.
I too would love to see his three hour cut. I thought he was a terrific director and his style definitely influenced filmmakers.

comment #11

rocco says ...

'Dutch, ' 'Christmas Vacation' and 'She's Having a Baby' are three more writing efforts that trump all but a handful of comedies each year.

comment #12

chicbn872 says ...

Sigh. I am really quite sick of everyone dropping down on their knees over "The Breakfast Club" and "Planes, Trains, & Automobiles". The fact that Jon Hughes wrote "Home Alone", "Uncle Buck", "The Great Outdoors", "She's Having A Baby", "Dutch", "Beethoven", "Flubber", "Baby's Day Out"...do I need to go on? He has destroyed any legacy he may have had, if there indeed was one. "The Breakfast Club" is the closest he ever came to anything poignant and "Sixteen Candles", while complete cheese, is the funniest thing he ever wrote.

Other than that...I feel that John Hughes is a massive hack.

comment #13

T. Holly says ...

This good shit is on DVD; search ebay for "national lampoon magazine dvd."

I'll give you the obscenely long direct link in the next comment, because it's going to fuck up the comments section; that way Wells can delete it to keep things pretty.

comment #14

T. Holly says ...

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sofocus=bs&sbrftog=1&dfsp=32&from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=national+lampoon+magazine+dvd&sacat=-1%26catref%3DC6&sargn=-1%26saslc%3D2&sadis=200&fpos=90038&sabfmts=1&saobfmts=insif&ftrt=1&ftrv=1&saprclo=&saprchi=&fsop=32%26fsoo%3D2&fgtp=

comment #15

MickTravis says ...

Ever since I read it years and years ago, I've looked for what I thought was a long and fascinating Spy expose on Hughes.

Then I stumbled across this old article in Premiere ...

http://www.riverblue.com/hughes/articles/drjekyll.html

... which made me wonder if I'd mixed up the two magazines in my mind. I'd thought the details about the set decoration in "Planes, Trains" were from Spy.

That may not be the article, but if it isn't, it's very close.

comment #16

Deschain says ...

T.Holly to avoid blowing up the comment section, use tinyurl

http://tinyurl.com/27wwvn

There, fixed it for you

comment #17

robbiefantastic says ...

planes, trains and automobiles is definitely a classic......and i watch christmas vacation everytime it is aired around christmas time and still laugh out loud......i love that flick so much a friend's girlfriend actually bought me the dvd last year for christmas.....

"morning, shitter's full!"

comment #18

giantman says ...

I have to agree, Christmas Vacation is simply amazing and Planes, Trains and Automobiles is one of the great buddy movies of all time. (One of, didn't say best.) Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, She's Having a Baby, these films should embarrass all those that are trying and failing at making those types of movies today. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

His legacy isn't perfect, as several commenters have pointed out, but he managed to capture a generation on film better than most. Especially the '80s, I'm having a hard time thinking of anyone else who captured that decade better in so many films?

comment #19

T. Holly says ...

Had to do a second take, I thought you wrote Christine Vachon is simply amazing...

Thank you Robbie, I thought the web was just for translating French to English; you fixed it and the thread it still fucked up, I win!

comment #20

DavidF says ...

I feel bad for not mentioning Planes, Trains... earlier. That and Ferris Bueller are my faves of his. I'll watch Breakfast Club if it's on TV but find it's depth a bit overrated.

According to that article Ferris Bueller made only $70 mil at the box office. Remember when a movie could make $70 mil and be huge? Crazy.

comment #21

SaveFarris says ...

Everything you wanted to know about Big Baby can be found at the link: http://www.glenbigbaby.com/

comment #22

corey3rd says ...

enough with this worshipping of John Hughes. Do you people realize he's the reason we have Maid in Manhattan and Drillbit Taylor? You thought it ended with Curly Sue and Dutch?

John Hughes teen movies were watered down "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." Damone would have destroyed Farmer Ted. And Jennifer Jason Leigh wasn't a tease like Molly Ringwald.

comment #23

Terry McCarty says ...

For all Goldstein's gushing over comparisons of Hughes and Apatow, the most important ones--recycling plots and characters and flooding the market with too much product--went unmentioned.

comment #24

MiraJeffAICN says ...

Chic, I don't get it. Home Alone is a classic. I used to come home and watch it every day of 2nd grade. Uncle Buck and Great Outdoors are solid John Candy comedies. Beethoven is a fun kid's movie elevated by Grodin's curmudgeon shtick. And I also really liked Dutch starring Ethan "Embry" Randall. Those nude playing cards are always worth a look, and Ed O'Neill was great. I loved their love-hate relationship in the film. No excuses for Baby's Day Out, but dude, John Hughes is no hack. He's a fucking master. What is wrong with you people?

comment #25

Edward Havens says ...

Let's face it... Hughes was a great writer but nothing special as a director. There is nothing about his style that differentiated the films he did direct, such as Sixteen Candles or The Breakfast Club, from those he merely wrote and produced, like Pretty in Pink or Some Kind of Wonderful. It's as if the soul of his words should have been enough to prop up the blandness of the visuals.

comment #26

MickTravis says ...

I wholeheartedly disagree.

His debut was solid and assured, especially for a writer-turned-director (whom you'd think would start with a logistically simpler movie like "Breakfast Club"). And each subsequent movie expanded upon the style of the previous one.

Up until the meltdown -- which I blame on the problems encountered on "She's Having a Baby," the effect of media scrutiny on an introvert and his inability to keep his costs in line -- he was forging a distinct and unique style. SHAB was his "Avalon," his "Apocalypse Now."

As a kid growing up, I knew very little about shit like auteur theory, but I remember watching "Pretty in Pink" on its release and understanding a big difference between that and the Hughes I'd seen before.

comment #27

lazespud says ...

Uh MiraJeffAICN, unless you're joking, you have to be kidding that your reason for calling Home Alone a classic is because you watched it every day in 2nd grade?

good lord.

Home Alone may or may not be a classic, but any opinion that anyone has about any work of popular culture that was arrived at between the ages of zero and about 10 needs to be completely discounted. We're mostly just not capable of rationally putting our childhood thoughts into context...

I mean I loved HR Puff-n-stuff when I was 7, and I still thinks its a subversive classic show, but any rational person I talk to looks at me like I've got rocks in my head when I bring it up...

comment #28

Dzayson says ...

Sorry, but I enjoy the hell outta watching The Great Outdoors.

comment #29

pm123 says ...

I'll probably get yelled at but...

In my opinion....

John Hughes is an American genius. He is one of the few American filmmakers (along with John Ford and a few others) who deeply understands the fundamental American mythos: the eternal tension between the home and the frontier (see "A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema," by R. B. Ray). Just as all John Ford's films are about the simultaneous unattainability of both the domestic bliss of home and the freedom of the frontier, so John Hughes' films are all about the impossibility of reconciling the desire to be the outsider, the loner, the individual, with the comfort, stability and safety of home. In Hughes' case, Home is the North Shore of Chicago, which is his stroke of genius. He uses the world he knows best to perfectly evoke the warm, womb-like safety and comfort of Home, and at the same time, thrills us with the desire to be the individual, the outlaw, the outsider. Neither alternative is perfect, neither alternative is preferred. The genius is in the simultaneous portrayal of both as desirable. And the conclusion, in ALL of his movies? YOU CAN'T HAVE BOTH! Whichever one you choose, you lose something you love. It's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" set in Evanston! Pure genius. "Home Alone" strikes a DEEP chord, at least until Chris Columbus screws it up with the pratfalls. No one else, and certainly no other filmmaker in the last 20 years, has so eloquently portrayed the quintessentially American dilemma - "How do I keep my precious freedom and still find the comfort of home and family?"

comment #30

MiraJeffAICN says ...

Lazespud, surely my reason for calling it a classic isn't because I watched it a lot. That doesn't make any sense. My reason for calling it a classic, and thus, my reason for watching it a lot, is because it's great. It's not like I haven't seen the film in 15 years. It holds up every holiday season, even on TV. For that matter, so does Lost in New York. It's a classic because I know I'll be showing it to my kids in 10-15 years. Not that It's a Wonderful Life bullshit. And I'm sorry if that's everyone's favorite Christmas movie to watch around the fireplace with the family, but us Jews have no reverence for it. Not that Home Alone is a Jewish movie by any means, but it's not exclusively gentile, which is pretty much the audience that It's a Wonderful Life was made for. Gimme Big Mac over Jimmy Stewart any day. (Half of H-E readers slap hands to face and scream!)

comment #31

Mgmax says ...

Home Alone is surprisingly weak, with sub-Stooges violence that is rarely if ever funny.

"Not that It's a Wonderful Life bullshit."

MiraJeff, MiraJeff... remember that this is the movie Capra made after filming the death camps. Now go watch it again. It's a movie about the one decent man who stands between us all and the abyss. It's the bleakest fucking movie ever made in Hollywood, the only one that looks us right in the eye and says, but for an accident of birth, we could have been running the ovens, we're no better than them except when there's someone around us who's better than them and helps us find the better angels of our nature. Okay, that may not be as powerful a message for you as "8-year-old kicks ass," but with any luck, someday it will be.

That said, I think a couple of Hughes' films will last, most of all Planes, Trains and Automobiles, which has two of the best and most likable comedians of our era in a story which gives them the chance to display a lot of warmth toward each other. Exactly the kind of thing that becomes more poignant and meaningful once the people who made it are no longer with us.

comment #32

christian says ...

"There is nothing about his style that differentiated the films he did direct, such as Sixteen Candles or The Breakfast Club, from those he merely wrote and produced, like Pretty in Pink or Some Kind of Wonderful."

This can be proven false by merely watching his films. He had an immediately recognizable style, with pitch perfect editing and composition, and the best use of music during the 80's. He had an instinctive style of filmmaking and I wish he had stuck in the game.

Watch this scene and tell me how rote and hack this is:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=nmDvdGCEWvE

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