"You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, and Their Impact on a Generation" (Crown, 384 pages, $26), by Susannah Gora: Did you know that people come up to Matthew Broderick — often at ball games — to ask if it's his day off? How about that fans incessantly pester Judd Nelson for the punch line to the one about the blonde, the dog and the salami? Or that Gedde Watanabe auctions off voicemail messages as Long Duk Dong for charity?
Those totally tubular tidbits and many more grace the pages of "You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried," film journalist Susannah Gora's look back at seven movies that defined that most awesome of decades, the 1980s.
Those who have seen (and who under 50 hasn't seen at least a few of them?) "Sixteen Candles," ''The Breakfast Club," ''Pretty in Pink," ''Ferris Bueller's Day Off," ''Say Anything," ''St. Elmo's Fire" and "Some Kind of Wonderful" won't be able to put down this book.
Gora tracked down more than 100 interview subjects, many of them closely tied to the productions, including almost all the stars and supporting players, the filmmakers and others.
The only big omission is the late John Hughes, who directed "Sixteen Candles," ''The Breakfast Club" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," and in Gora's estimation "remade American teenhood in his own image" and in the process became "the bard of youth." In the end, Gora deftly sidesteps the lack of primary material from Hughes by relying on published interviews and the recollections of those who knew the filmmaker.
The book ostensibly is about the sociological impact these films had on the teenagers and young adults of the era and among succeeding generations, but at its core, what makes it so readable is the juicy, behind-the-scenes stuff.
Consider these nuggets:
—John Cusack nearly nabbed the iconic role of John Bender in "The Breakfast Club" — a role that eventually went to Nelson — and was none too pleased at having been turned away.
—The prom scene at the end of "Pretty in Pink" had to be re-shot when a test audience of teenagers hated the film's original outcome in which Molly Ringwald's Andie Walsh character ends up falling for her best friend, Phil "Duckie" Dale (Jon Cryer), instead of the hunky, but distant Blane McDonnagh (Andrew McCarthy).
—Peter Gabriel initially turned down "Say Anything" director Cameron Crowe's request to use his song "In Your Eyes" during the pivotal scene in which Cusack's love-struck Lloyd Dobler holds a boombox over his head in an effort to win back Diane Court (Ione Skye). Gabriel did so thinking Crowe was the director of the John Belushi biopic "Wired" and wanted to use the song during a scene depicting a drug overdose. When Crowe set Gabriel straight, the singer agreed to screen some footage of the movie and eventually relented.
The title of Gora's book comes from a "Breakfast Club" line in which the rebel Bender tells Ringwald's popular, well-to-do Claire Standish: "Sweets, you couldn't ignore me if you tried."
But another line from the Hughes canon is much more fitting for those considering whether to purchase Gora's debut work.
It was uttered by The Geek (Anthony Michael Hall), the freshman pipsqueak who fawned over Ringwald's sophomore Samantha Baker in "Sixteen Candles."
"You wanna know what happened?" Hall's character asks. "Buy the book."
