Repost: Weird Science (June 6th at the Aut-O-Rama Drive-In)

[WEIRD SCIENCE screens Tuesday June 6th at 11:45 pm at the Aut-O-Rama Drive-In.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Adolescent audiences eagerly flocked to it, critics hated John Hughes' WEIRD SCIENCE when it premiered in 1984 (what was I doing? Lots and lots of college homework, you know, for that career and the good jobs that I was never going to have). The persnickety movie-scribe establishment including Hughes supporters like Roger Ebert, took the movie as an almost personal betrayal by writer-director Hughes, whose 16 CANDLES, PRETTY IN PINK and THE BREAKFAST CLUB seemed to save society from many PORKY'S-inspired lowbrow 1980s youth comedies that were all about teen sex and revenge-pranks.

To them, Hughes was a cinematic messiah and master of mass-audience Teen Comedy-Dramas With Heart and Soul. Until WEIRD SCIENCE, of course, that suddenly dove head-first into exaggerated juvie sex references and revenge-pranks, taking full advantage of the newly created PG-13 rating.

Here is what the critics forgot (but which I probably could have told them, if I weren't busy doing lots of college studies and homework, you know, for that career and the good jobs I was never going to get. Have I neglected to mention that yet?):

Pretty in Pink (August 7th at the Palace Theatre, Playhouse Square)

[PRETTY IN PINK  screens Thursday August 7th at 7:30 pm at the Palace Theatre, Playhouse Square.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Actress Molly Ringwald and myself have a fateful tie. I don't believe you young, millennial attention-deficit/autistic kids reading the internet right now appreciate just how big an icon Molly Ringwald was in the 1980s. She made the covers of Time and Rolling Stone, acted in a series of teen-movies-with-heart scripted by John Hughes.

But here's the Charles Cassady connection. When I graduated from college during the darkest Reagan years, I had my first entertainment column - granted, only a monthly - with a magazine published for cinemas by a small New York ad agency. 

Weird Science (screens April 19 at midnight at the Capitol Theatre)

[WEIRD SCIENCE screens Saturday April 19th at midnight at the Capitol Theatre.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Adolescent audiences eagerly flocked to it, critics hated John Hughes' WEIRD SCIENCE when it premiered in 1984 (what was I doing? Lots and lots of college homework, you know, for that career and the good jobs that I was never going to have). The persnickety movie-scribe establishment including Hughes supporters like Roger Ebert, took the movie as an almost personal betrayal by writer-director Hughes, whose 16 CANDLES, PRETTY IN PINK and THE BREAKFAST CLUB seemed to save society from many PORKY'S-inspired lowbrow 1980s youth comedies that were all about teen sex and revenge-pranks.

To them, Hughes was a cinematic messiah and master of mass-audience Teen Comedy-Dramas With Heart and Soul. Until WEIRD SCIENCE, of course, that suddenly dove head-first into exaggerated juvie sex references and revenge-pranks, taking full advantage of the newly created PG-13 rating.

Here is what the critics forgot (but which I probably could have told them, if I weren't busy doing lots of college studies and homework, you know, for that career and the good jobs I was never going to get. Have I neglected to mention that yet?):

Go Home Alone, with the Cleveland Orchestra, on December 18 at 7:30 p.m.

Event preview by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Now that LeBron James has gone, the only thing significant about Cleveland, we can all agree, is the Cleveland Orchestra.

This world-class symphonic ensemble was formed in the early 1970s by Michael Stanley and has become internationally renown for renditions of such historic compositions as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Mozart's "Requiem," the tone-poem "Finlandia" by Sibelius, and the TV theme music for Ghoulardi. The long career of the Cleveland Orchestra has not been without controversy. Violent fans of the Cleveland Orchestra - informally known as Juggaloes - rampaged and destroyed the Cleveland Health Museum and the Cleveland Institute of Art. When Cleveland classical-music radio station WCLV-FM held a "nickel beer night" at the old Municipal Stadium, with the Orchestra dynamiting a stack of disco LPs, the fans, mingling with rioting brass and the woodwind sections, damaged the lakefront facility so badly that it had to be completely rebuilt as Browns Stadium. Cleveland sports teams were sentenced to lose in perpetuity as punishment.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (September 16th at the CWRU Film Society, Strosacker Auditorium)

[FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF screens September 16th at 7:00 pm, 9:00 pm and 11:00 pm at the Case Western Reserve Film Society, Strosacker Auditorium.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

It’s not his fault, I guess, but in dying in August, 2009 John Hughes did me a grave disservice. I was supposed to have a rare my-name-in-lights cover story in one of the local alternative-media tabloids, full of liberal-progressive political screeds and phone-sex ads. I must confess, I rather forget exactly what the story concerned, so it couldn’t have been all THAT earth-shaking. But still… Anyway, John Hughes, cinematic chronicler of 1980s teen emotion (and a writer for the National Lampoon) suddenly died. And thus was my cover story consigned to the back pages, while some other writer penned a long tribute to Why Hughes Mattered to a generation. Oh, and hot swimsuit girls are waiting to talk to you! Call 1-976-FAKEORGASM.... Might even have been syndicated content from out of town. My piece at least had something to do with Cleveland, I think.