Author Jason Diamond pays tribute to his youth with a John Hughes inspired playlist
Jason Diamond grew up in a Chicago suburb obsessed with iconic filmmaker John Hughes. His new memoir Searching for John Hughes shares the story of how Diamond found a connection in the less than perfect lives of the suburban Chicago teens he saw in iconic films like The Breakfast Club, coming from a broken home himself. We asked Diamond to put together a playlist and below are the songs he thinks capture the essence of growing up John Hughes style.
Dream Academy, "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want"
"I think there are maybe two or three scenes in all of John Hughes' filmography that are absolutely perfect and this is definitely one of them. It's where Ferris and his friends are hanging out in the art museum in Chicago which I've visited a million times. To me, that scene where they are holding hangs with all the little kids and running past the sculptures, it just represents trying to recapture something that when you're a teen you might realize you're losing."
Patti Smith, "Gloria"
"All the kids I went to school with, they were seeing whatever new movie was in theatres and I was listening to punk like Patti Smith and watching John Hughes films and that was my world."
Chuck Berry, "Run Rudolph Run"
"There's the famous scene where the McCallisters are running through O'Hare airport in 'Home Alone' and it's just one of my favourite scenes because it's people running. It's this stressful situation of being in an airport around the holidays and Chuck Berry somehow makes it better and that's a hard thing to do."
The Psychedelic Furs, "Pretty In Pink"
"I'd go to work in a coffee shop or at a bar or a restaurant and I'd be serving people who had more money, looked better and had better jobs and then I'd go home and work on this biography and the biography was doomed to fail. I didn't realize it when I was in my early twenties but it was a quest for me, it was something to hold on to, it was something that was mine. And I would listen to this song and listening to this song recharges me."