Movieline‘s Stu VanAirsdale put on his reporter’s hat, got out the notepad, laced up the shoe leather and located the top-secret spot where John Hughes died. It’s at 60 West 55th Street in front of a green-painted wall of some sort. There’s a tiny little candle shrine next to the main door.

“An unexpected element has been added” to “the unvarying male uniform in the precincts of Brooklyn cool,” reports the N.Y. Times Guy Trebay, “and that is a burgeoning potbelly one might term the Ralph Kramden.

“What the trucker cap and wallet chain were to hipsters of a moment ago, the Kramden is to what my colleague Mike Albo refers to as the ‘coolios’ of now. Leading with a belly is a male privilege of long standing, of course, a symbol of prosperity in most cultures and of freedom from anxieties about body image that have plagued women since Eve.

“‘As women have come to outnumber men in the workplace, it becomes more important than ever for guys to armor themselves,’ said David Zinczenko, the editor of Men’s Health, with the ‘complete package of financial and physical,’ to billboard their abilities as survivors of the cultural and economic wilds.”

What?

Lone Scherfig‘s An Education (Sony Classics, 10.9) is going to have clear sailing as far as critics and the Academy and somewhat educated 30-and-overs are concerned. There’s never been any doubt about that. But there will be a connection problem, apparently, with younger twentysomethings, and I’m not just talking about the Eloi.

I’m talking about guys like my son Jett — Jett of all people! a guy who almost always gets it and tunes into a very wise frequency with the right kind of well-read, sensitive-soul attitudes — having problems with the idea of an older guy in his 30s (played by Peter Sarsgaard) taking out a much younger girl of 16 (Carey Mulligan) with her parents’ consent. Nick Hornby ‘s script, set in 1961 England, is based on Lynn Barber‘s true story, and is all laid out with very skillful sophistication, but Jett was going “what?” the whole time.

He explained after the screening that he couldn’t relate to the ethical world of the film. He was appalled, in other words, that no characters went up to Sarsgaard and said, “What are you doing, man? You’re almost 40 and she’s 16!” (The movie wants us to think of Sarsgaard as being roughly 31 or 32, but there are a couple of shots of his creased neck that make him look like he’s pushing 40.)

Jett couldn’t understand, in effect, what it was like for young women in a pre-women’s-liberation, pre-Beatles-era when many if not most women went to college in order to meet the right guy to get married to. An era in which fathers and mothers sent daughters to college expecting this to happen. (Especially fathers like the one Alfred Molina plays in the film, a decent but provincial schlub who’s very, very concerned about the cost of sending his daughter to Oxford.) An era in which some women got married right out of high school, for heaven’s sake.

If a guy in his early to mid 30s was to show serious interest in a 16 year-old today he’d be regarded as something close to a pedophile, and perhaps even arrested and prosecuted for this, but it was a different world back in the early John F. Kennedy era. It was the ’50s, basically. The ’60s didn’t begin in the States until JFK’s murder. They probably began in England with rise of the Beatles, which began to happen in the middle of ’63, which is also when kitchen-sink movies like The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and This Sporting Life began to really sink in and shape the conversation.

And as I said, Sarsgaard’s David is so correct and charming and continental — a likable, sophisticated, free-thinking sort who knows how to handle Mulligan’s parents and would have fit right in as one of Julie Christie‘s jilted boyfriends in John Schlesinger‘s Darling, which came out only four years after the events in An Education. And he’s really not into Mulligan’s character for young-girl sex — he just wants to hide away from being a 30something guy and live in a world of fresh attitude and hip urbanity and all that. He wants to float along.

But Jett couldn’t find his way into it. We argued about this somewhat, and he spat out at one point that “nobody’s going to go see it.” What? All the blood drained from my face. I wasn’t exactly saying to myself “my God, my son is turning into an Eloi” — he’s not — but I realized when he said this that the Eloi are going to blow this film off without a moment’s hesitation.

Three days ago Newser‘s Michael Wolff posted a frankly-written piece about the lack of any real reporting concerning the death of John Hughes. It basically took off the tap shoes and asked “so what really happened to the guy, without the garlands and the birdseed?” Wolff’s conclusion: “The media really does protect its own. Even at the expense of a juicy story.”

A somewhat less-than-svelte John Hughes (l.) sometime around 2000.

Two days before Wolff’s piece the above photo of a 50 year-old Hughes (taken in 2000) appeared on a blogspot called Northwardho. The headline asked why were only older photos of Hughes (mostly from the mid ’80s) used for obits and none of his older self. Perhaps because Hughes more or less became Howard Hughes over the last 15 years or so?

“Certain deaths do something weird to the media mind and temperament,” Wolff wrote. “John Hughes, a maker of what are essentially genre slapstick films, has, by his early death the other day, become a great auteur and, as well, a saint, without anyone seeming to be remotely nosy about the strange circumstances of his life and untimely end.

“At the height of his career — he was not just one of the most commercially successful writers and directors in Hollywood but a zeitgeist phenomenon — he drops out. Just leaves. Then, last week, at 59, walking on a Manhattan street, he falls down dead. So, come on, what happened to the guy? Can’t anybody write a decent obit anymore?

“Somewhere in here there is obviously a very good story — a more compelling one than the one about the brilliance of Sixteen Candles.

“Possibly herein lies a great moral tale. Did Hughes spurn the movie business for all the reasons we wish someone would spurn it? That would be more meaningful than The Breakfast Club. Or did Hollywood spit him out? Was he too innocent for the place — that would fit his own genre.

“Or was it drugs? Or other personal demons? And dead at 59 on a street corner? I can’t find anyone, in the reports of his demise, who raises much of an eyebrow about this. So…was he overweight? Inquiring minds really do want to know.

“The deference must be noted.

“This intersection of death and pop culture figures is an obviously strange one. Nostalgia turns out to be a more powerful media force than gossip. Where the premature death of a significant pop culture figure used to be an opportunity to examine the nature of fame and accomplishment, now it’s become a semi-mystical event. We pile on the meaning–and the memories.

“It has to do, surely, with being young — when Ferris Bueller’s Day Off actually meant something. It’s our lost youth that we’re treating with such sensitivity.

“It’s Michael Jackson‘s world — where only the culturally tone deaf speak ill of him.

“It’s a sort of moral attention. Somebody who’s had purchase on our emotion, and who dies before his time, enters into some media safe ground. We respect our pop culture dead.

“The media really does protect its own. Even at the expense of a juicy story.”

The primal emotional history that 20somethings have with Transformers toys (a residue of their post-toddler/tweener period) was a big factor in the success of the film versions. It’s not rocket science. Likewise the primal loathing felt by kids from age seven to twelve about Legos has, I would presume, also been retained. Young boys stop playing with Legos and move on to war toys when they’re five or six, and once they’ve left Legos behind they despise the younger kids who are still into them. Trust me — I’ve been there and seen how my boys’ attitudes changed, etc.

Hence, most twentysomethings have negative associations about Legos if only because most of us remember our post-toddler/tweener periods better than our toddler periods because our brains are more developed and retain more when we’re seven-and-older. Hence the Legos movie that Warner Bros. would like to make will be aimed at family crowd and this hasn’t much chance of being another Transformers/G.I. Joe. Movies based on toys are hot only if the toys are big with seven-and-older crowd.

People have already figured this out, right? Fine. I’m just underlining.

The Legos movie banner is being carried by WB executive Dan Lin. No offense but I think it’s fair to say that Lin, who has also “shepherded” Sherlock Holmes (which means he’s a total cheerleader for the obvious bullshit Indiana Jones/Crouching Tiger/Matrix/James Bond tone of that film), is a fresh incarnation of Satan. In the same way that George Lucas, Stephen Sommers, Michael Bay, the Charlie’s Angels-era McG and other directors of that stripe summon images of horns and hooves and sulfur breath. A devil in the way that William Hurt‘s news anchor character was said to be one by Albert Brooks‘ character.

Ten questions and observations about the forthcoming free showings of a 16-minute Avatar reel — a nationwide event that Cameron has called “Avatar Day” — at over 100 IMAX theatres on Friday, 8.21, or eight days hence:

(1) The only way to get tickets will be to visit the Avatar website a few minutes before noon Pacific/3 pm Eastern on Monday, 8.17, and click away at the very top of the hour and hope for the best. Oh, puhleeze pick me and damn you to hell’s caverns if you don’t! Damnyoupickmedamnyoupickpickmedamnyoupickme…. pickme! Will the website crash/freeze from all the traffic? Will visitors be given a pair of tickets or will it be strictly one-per-customer? Update: A pair, according to Fox distributon chief Bruce Snyder.

(2) Suggestion: the Avatar site administrators should allow people to log on and join a queue starting at 12:01 am Pacific/3 am Eastern on Monday, 12.17, just as hard-ticket sellers allow hardcore buyers to line up on sidewalks hours before. It should be technically arranged that only those in the online queue who refresh the page at regular intervals (i.e., once an hour or once every 30 minutes) will be allowed to stay in the queue. This will keep out the pikers (i.e., those who will log in at midnight/3 am and then go to sleep).

(3) How will the chosen be verified and admitted? One way would be to send a bar code pass of some kind to their email box and then tell them to bring a print-out. Except this would result in thousands of illegitimately-copied passes presented at the door. The only way to avoid this is for the chosen to be allowed to go to theatre ticket windows and ticket-dispensing machines in advance of the Friday, 8.21 showings and pick up their tickets after their driver’s licenses or passports have been scanned. Surely the organizers aren’t going to request the chosen to line up a couple of hours in advance so their IDs can be individually checked by ushers before receiving their tickets.

(4) As HE reader “Brendan” asked this morning, there are roughly 160 IMAX theatres in the U.S. Which of these will show the Avatar footage? “Over 100” doesn’t sound like it’ll play in all of them. Where’s the list, guys?

(5) Footage from the film that wasn’t shown by Cameron at ComicCon will be part of the reel — cool. Nonetheless, Cameron unveiled 23 or 24 minutes worth of 3D footage in San Diego. Why aren’t general audiences being given a chance to see this on top of the new footage, which presumably won’t amount to more than a minute or two extra? Why only 16 minutes’ worth?

(6) The presumed answer is that exhibitors don’t want the two freebie showings — set to happen at 6 and 6:30 pm — to cut into regular Friday-night revenues, which is why the unveilings are playing during mom-and-pop dinner hour. Crowds will move in at 5:40 or 5:45 pm, the first 16-minute showing at 6 pm, the crowd evacuated by 6:20 or so, new crowd comes in for second showing which won’t start at 6:30 pm but more like 6:35 or 6:40 pm, and second crowd out by 7 pm or so. Which will allow the evening’s first regularly paid show to start at 7:30 pm or thereabouts.

(7) Will a certain number of elite online/print press people be given tickets on a side-door basis so as to attend, report and observe (which I hope/intend to do) or will they have to randomly/democratically slog it out with everyone else and hope that fortune smiles?

(8) Avatar‘s production costs will be a reported $240 million when all is said and done, and the marketing will cost at least another $70 or $80 million…no? (More?) A total investment of $320 million or thereabouts, which means Fox’s break-even point will be…I’m not sure. What’s the formula these days? It used to be that theatrical revenues had to bring in twice (or two and a half times) the negative cost. Now with explanded overseas, DVD/Bluray and other ancillaries the ratio is a bit lower. Or so I’ve been told. Will the Avatar break-even need to be $550 million theatrical? I’m not sure any more. I need to sort this through.

(9) As L.A. Times reporters John Horn and Ben Fritz point out, “Advance screenings of movie footage for the press and at events such as Comic-Con are fairly common for big-budget Hollywood releases. But it’s unprecedented for a studio to show an extended excerpt of a film in such a broad public setting months before it hits theaters.” They also report that “Fox is not paying IMAX to use its theaters for the preview, though the studio is bearing the cost of producing and distributing the digital prints. IMAX will provide 3-D glasses.”

(10) An Avatar trailer in all formats (IMAX 3D, IMAX2D, digital 3-D, 35mm 3-D, 35mm flat, online) will be released “next Friday,” the Horn/Fritz story says. In other words, tomorrow? They probably mean the trailers will debut the same day as the two-times-only reel.

This will be the most exuberant preview happening since the first-ever showing of the Phantom Menace trailer in November of ’98. I was there at the Fox Village theatre. It was that film’s absolute finest hour. It was all downhill after it opened, esteem-wise. But the trailer-watching vibe was phenomenal. The house was charged, people were howling, Paul Thomas Anderson was there, etc.

I’ve never been a Hillary Clinton fan but I totally sympathize with those snippy comments she made yesterday in Kinshasa, Congo. When a questioner asked her “Mr. Clinton’s” view of World Bank concerns about a multi-billion-dollar Chinese loan offer to the Congo, she got her back up and then some. “You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?” she said. “My husband is not secretary of state, I am. If you want my opinion, I’ll tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channeling my husband.” She could have ignored the implication but it’s fine that she didn’t. I feel her irritation, which makes the first time I’ve felt supportive of her in many a moon.

Initially posted by People and In Contention. The real Amelia Earhart was so egoistic that she had her initials painted on her aviator jumpsuit, like some present-day bling-bling football player? Find me the photograph that proves this because I don’t believe it. The Earhart I’ve read about didn’t see herself as a rock star. She was brave, dedicated, modest, hardcore, etc. Yes, I could be wrong.

Without saying anything I need to say something else about Aaron Sorkin‘s The Social Network screenplay. On top of my previous observation that some may be inspired down the road to compare the finished film to The Treasure of Sierra Madre. What I’m saying is, I believed each and every line without reservation. It didn’t feel written but creatively transcribed and pruned in the highest interpretation or understanding of that term.

Here’s a well-written, unusually candid-sounding recollection of the late John Hughes by Molly Ringwald, posted in today’s N.Y. Times. I can’t recall reading anything like this by any actor or actress about a just-passed director. Usually it’s all hearts and flowers.

“None of the films that Hughes made [after The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles] had the same kind of personal feeling to me. They were funny, yes, wildly successful, to be sure, but I recognized very little of the John I knew in them, of his youthful, urgent, unmistakable vulnerability. It was like his heart had closed, or at least was no longer open for public view.

“A darker spin can be gleaned from the words John put into the mouth of Allison in The Breakfast Club: ‘When you grow up…your heart dies.’

“I’m speaking metaphorically, of course. Though it does seem sadly poignant that physically, at least, John’s heart really did die. It also seems undeniably meaningful: His was a heavy heart, deeply sensitive, prone to injury — easily broken.

A lot of famous actors performed cheap and regrettable gigs when they were young, and would naturally like these necessary-at-the-time, nose-holding gigs to be forgotten all around. Joan Crawford, Michelle Pfeiffer, Debra Winger, etc. Don’t even start.