In her best-selling book Eat, Sleep, Pray, Love, author Elizabeth Gilbert explains that each city has a word. That is, each major city has a word that defines the undercurrent or essence of that city and its general inhabitants. For example, Rome is “sex”: a city of relationships and delicious food, of sensual sculpture and architecture, and a place where people go to live a life of the senses. Keeping with this theme, Gilbert says New York is “achieve,” Los Angeles is “succeed” and Brussels is “conform.”
Gilbert takes this one step further and says that each individual has a word that describes their core essence. When someone’s word does not match up with the city he or she lives in, that city may not be the city to stay in.
I was reminded of this theme a few weekends ago while watching “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” (Strange, I know, but I hope to make sense of this shortly.) While watching John Hughes’ beloved movie about a cocky, self-assured high school kid and his adventures in and around Chicago, it occurred to me that Hughes wasn’t just making movies about growing-up as an adolescent in the 1980s. He was saying something about his persona through his movies — he was making a public declaration about who he was and how he viewed himself.
We’ll come back to this.
I’m a big fan of Woody Allen’s movies. While his humor is what draws many, including myself, there’s something else that makes “Manhattan” or “Annie Hall” or “Radio Days” worth watching: New York City. As Lauren Wilcox wrote in The Washington Post Magazine last March (emphases are mine):
The more I watched [Woody] Allen’s early New York films, the more they seemed to be different versions of the same movie. Actors and eras sometimes change, but the heart of the narrative never does: characters’ minor dramas against the mundane pageantry of the city, the idiosyncratic and irrepressible rhythm of its daily life. And ultimately, of course, the city is Allen’s star. Faithful to his muse, he gives it a dozen headlining roles, stubbornly ignoring its bad days, its fits of pique, its long dark moods. No matter what decade it is, no matter what boom-time fever or economic gutter the city actually is in, the performance he coaxes from it is always the same: chaotic and delightful, romantic and seedy, a brilliant, good-hearted mess. A knockout, no matter what anybody says.
The city is Allen’s star because for him it’s the obvious choice. My wife, like Allen, is a proud and demonstrative New Yorker. To have been born and raised in any of the boroughs is to stake a claim against those without the same good fortune. As if I needed reminding, my wife likes to quote John Updike when espousing the greatness that is her city:
“The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”
Hughes, like Allen, casts his city as the true star. On a basic level, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “Sixteen Candles,” and “The Breakfast Club” serve as reminders that adolescence is rarely easy and increasingly hard. But on a deeper level, these movies serve as a love letter to Chicago. A brief look at some of the most famous scenes from his movies reveal an intimate connection with the city, a place he spent his entire career. As Hughes once said about Chicago, it’s a “working city, where people go to their jobs and raise their kids and live their lives.”
Allen and Hughes identify with their cities on such a visceral level that it was (and for Allen remains) impossible to separate their work from their persona. If art imitates life, and if where you live is so inextricably linked with who you are as a person, then casting one’s home as the star is perhaps the truest expression of this.
Getting back to Gilbert’s theme of cities, words and ourselves, perhaps it’s not as complicated as she makes it out to be. I doubt Allen or Hughes would limit either city to one word, just as I doubt they would limit themselves to one word. How could they, after all, when they devoted countless scenes to their stars?
Disclaimer: I’ve not read Gilbert’s book and have no intention of ever doing so. I don’t want to see the movie, either.
I think that when you look back at John Hughes and Woody Allen movies, what’s impressive is that the characters in both intrinsically fit their cities of origin. Hughes’ characters are uniquely Chicagoan much the way Allen’s are New Yorkers. You don’t have to see the Statue of Liberty of Wrigley Field to know this, it’s just the way it is. Hell, the Breakfast Club was set in a nondescript school.
I think this location-aligned character development is most impressive with Hughes as Chicago doesn’t really have the notable landmarks that New York has to set the scene. Chicago has Wrigley Field, the building formerly known as the Sears Tower and….. really, that’s about it. Hughes is forced to have his characters connect to the city in a much deeper way. The character back-story development is so deep that you almost believe that John Hughes sat down and figured out the number of Cubs games Ferris Bueller went to as a kid.
On a personal level, one movie in this vein that I have this type of connection with is “Fast Times A Ridgemont High” by Cameron Crowe. Being from Southern California, I have seen the Spicoli’s and Damon’s in my own life. The movie really captures the essence of going to high school in the region. Well, the movie is a bit outdated but from what I’ve seen and been told, it isn’t very far from the truth.
Anyway, there is no way a movie like that could be set in Houston. The influences behind the characters in the movie are just to Californian (i.e. the need for big waves and a cool buzz), much like the characters in a Hughes or Allen movie are unique to their locales.
Bringing up a bigger point, I think what makes the movies by Hughes, Allen and Crowe so special is their ability to stick with you. The films somehow capture you emotionally and suck you in. It’s almost as if you are looking into a window of reality as it existed in earlier times. I don’t know, it’s very hard to explain as it’s not so much an intellectual feeling but more of an emotional yearning.
I think this is what draws you into the city, this emotional connection with the character. It makes you feel like you are a part of the city. You feel their wants. You want to eat at their local pizza parlor, shop at their favorite stores, do what they do.
But, the again, it’s probably just gas.