She Won’t Forget About Him: Molly Ringwald Remembers John Hughes

Every great artist has his muse: Dante had Beatrice; Man Ray had Kiki de Montparnasse; and John Hughes had Molly Ringwald, who starred in his movies “Sixteen Candles,” “The Breakfast Club” and “Pretty in Pink.” These movies established Mr. Hughes, the screenwriter and director, as an empathetic observer of a teenage generation and Ms. Ringwald as a paragon of 1980s film and fashion.

Mr. Hughes, who died last year at age 59, will be the subject of a two-day celebration, “John Hughes: We Can’t Forget About Him,” being held by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. (A. O. Scott of The New York Times appraised his work here.) On Sunday, the society will show five of Mr. Hughes’s films, including “Sixteen Candles” and “Pretty in Pink,” at the Walter Reade Theater. And on Monday, a screening of “The Breakfast Club” at the Paris Theater will be followed by a Q. and A. with Ms. Ringwald and her cast mates Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy, conducted by Kevin Smith.

Ms. Ringwald spoke recently with ArtsBeat about her work with Mr. Hughes, his filmmaking legacy and how she thinks her movies will be received by her children. These are excerpts from that conversation.

How did you and John first get connected?

He had already written “Breakfast Club” and was casting that in Chicago, and over that July 4th weekend, he wrote “Sixteen Candles.”

He had just moved to [the agency] I.C.M., and I was at I.C.M. at the time, and they’d given him a stack of headshots, and mine was one of them. For some reason, he picked out my headshot and had it up on his bulletin board, and he wrote “Sixteen Candles” looking at my pictures. So I was literally the inspiration for this character and he didn’t know me at all. When they came to L.A. to cast and said, “Who do you want to meet with?” he said, “I want to meet with that girl.” So we met and immediately, just completely hit it off. While we were doing “Sixteen Candles,” toward the end, he asked [Anthony] Michael [Hall] and I to be a part of “Breakfast Club.”

What would have happened if you were given this script that you were told was written for you – or, at least, for your headshot – and you discovered you didn’t like it?

I had already read it and thought that it was hilarious, so I was really leaning positively toward the meeting. If somebody told me that now, I would be amazed. But when you’re a kid, it’s like, “Yeah, sure.” It didn’t really seem that extraordinary. “Yeah, why not?” It makes sense.

It’s often said about John that he was a rare adult who knew how to write for young actors. Could you sense that just from his screenplays?

Absolutely. So many scripts I would read – and I still find this to be the case – whenever there was a teenager, it just does not sound remotely like a teenager. It sounds like it’s written by an adult for a kid. And then the kid actor is trying themselves sound like a kid, and they just don’t. For some reason, when I read John’s dialogue, it was totally unique. It was like his own language. But it made sense. I didn’t necessarily hear anybody that was talking like that. But we could.

I read “Sixteen Candles” in the back of my parents’ car, and I kept laughing out loud. And I was reading them these random bits of the script, and they were like, all right, we’ll take your word for it, it’s funny.

Were your parents O.K. with some of the more outrageous things you were called upon to do in that film?

They were totally fine with it. I remember, my mom had one objection to a scene with my [onscreen] father [played by Paul Dooley], actually. There was some tag at the end where the dad says, “Sam, what happened to your underpants?” or something like that. And my mom said, “You know, that just doesn’t really seem very appropriate to me.” And John was like, “You know what, you’re right.” He wasn’t thinking about it in those terms. He was just thinking of a funny line. And he changed it.

So he wasn’t precious about his screenwriting?

He was very amenable to things like that. The more we played with his script, the more he became absolutely delighted when we came up with stuff. I’ve never worked with anyone before or since that had that sort of confidence. John was insecure in many ways, but about that, he was very confident.

Even on “Sixteen Candles,” which was the first film he directed?

He knew that he was a novice, but he approached everything with excitement. He wasn’t one of these people who tried to puff up their chest and pretend like they’re an expert. He was like, yeah, this is my first project. Isn’t this great? Before he used a monitor, he used to just sit under the camera. During “Sixteen Candles” and “Breakfast Club,” all the time, he was under the camera or right by the camera. Most directors just use the video screens. But when I worked with him on those first two movies, he was always so close, so it really felt like he was a part of the scene.

When you were offered “The Breakfast Club,” and you saw how emotionally raw it was for its time, were you in any way intimidated about making a film like that?

I had total confidence in that script – I would say more than any other project that I made with him. Originally, he talked to me about playing the role that Ally played [Allison, the “basket case”]. And I was really upset because I wanted to play Claire [the “princess”], who was called Cathy at the time. She was so different from the way that I saw myself, and more the way I saw my older sister, because my sister was very popular. She was what they called a sosh at her school. John was like, “Well, let me talk to the studio, because I was thinking about you for this part.” Then a couple days later, he said, “Yeah, you can play that part.”

By John’s own admission, he was not a very good re-writer. Everything came out in bursts of inspiration, and then the studio would read it and say we’d really like this or we’d really like that, and he would try to appease people by rewriting. The only model the studio had for teen movies at that point was the “Porky’s” films. So he added this scene where [Principal] Vernon [played by Paul Gleason] was spying on this naked teacher swimming, and the janitor catches him. It got a lot further away from that initial script. We had a really long rehearsal process, and John called me up and said, “Are you excited about starting?” And I said, “Yeah, but it’s a lot different than that original script.” And he sounded alarmed and he said, “What do you mean?” The next day he brought in a stack of scripts to the rehearsal room and we literally just went through them, all of us. He ended up cutting out the teacher thing and he put all this other stuff back in. The script we actually filmed was much closer to what we’d originally read.

Was this rehearsal time crucial for you and the other “Breakfast Club” cast members to bond with one another?

I think so. But it was also a little bit nerve-racking because Judd Nelson almost got fired. He was doing this sort of Method-actor thing, I think, and he was being very provocative with me. Making jokes – I think he made some sort of blind joke, and my dad was blind – he was just trying to get under my skin, like Bender tries to get under Claire’s skin. It really didn’t bother me, but John was extremely protective of me and it just infuriated him. And he almost fired him, and we all banded together and really talked John out of firing Judd. [laughs] It really made us seem like a real group.

This sounds like a dry run for the movie itself.

It was like the little drama during the rehearsal period. I remember Ally spearheaded this meeting in the hotel room, and she was telling [Judd]: “All your energy is going out. You need to get focused like a laser beam.” Which I actually thought was really good advice.

Was it bittersweet for you as your film career diverged from John’s?

Yeah. I was ready to graduate, as it were. I really wanted to work with other people, and I think I was sort of nervous about only being associated with this one director. If I look back on it, I try not to have regrets about anything, but I do wish that I would have not worried about that so much. I wish, in a way, that I wasn’t in such a hurry to grow up. Because when you’re that age, you just think, Nobody’s going to see me as a grown-up. And you don’t realize how fast you’re a grown-up. [laughs] I always felt like John and I would work with each other again. I liked the movies he did after, and as I said in my Op-Ed piece, they’re really wonderful movies but I feel like his heart wasn’t connected to those movies in the same way.

Did you continue to keep in touch with him during this time?

Not really, no. He kind of sequestered himself. He moved back to Chicago. He didn’t really have much to do with Hollywood. I can’t speak for him, but I felt like he felt rejected in some way by me. But I did write him a letter when I was living in Paris, and I got back this enormous bouquet of flowers, so I felt good to know that I did connect with him, that he read what I wrote and it meant something, so I’m really grateful for that.

This may be a little premature, but have you thought about how your children will react to seeing you in these movies?

I really feel like I want my daughter – all my children, but specifically my 6-year-old, because she’ll see them before my twins – I really want her to come to the films organically. I don’t really want to force anything on her. And I feel like when she’s the right age she’ll just discover them. I have this fantasy of us watching them together, but chances are she’ll probably go to a slumber party and watch “Sixteen Candles.” In a lot of ways, I think that would be better.