Pretty in Pink, 1986
My personal favorite movie. I took the photo of the cassette soundtrack because it shows the awesome collection of artists assembled for this film. It’s the best. I went through two cassettes and two CDs back in the day. Onto the film. I had to write an IMDB synopsis and submit it because the three they had were terrible (all written by men) and didn’t get what the movie was about. One called Andie awkward. Excuse me. Ok, here’s my synopsis:
Andie (Molly Ringwald) is an outcast at her Chicago high school, hanging out either with her older boss (Annie Potts), who owns the record store, Traxx, where she works, or her quirky classmate Duckie (Jon Cryer), who has had a crush on her for years. When one of the “richies” and popular kids at school, Blaine (Andrew McCarthy), asks Andie out, it seems too good to be true. As Andie and Blaine start falling each other, they are determined to not let their social statuses affect their relationship. Will that happen or will it break her?
Kerry Faler
I saw Pretty in Pink first when I was almost 12. I was already listening to the college radio station in my town, and though being only a pre-teen, I identified with Andie. My family never went without, but we didn’t have money. We lived in an increasingly more rough area of town. I saved babysitting money to buy records. When I was in middle and high school I had clothes from The Limited and Express, but not many. Those were my nice clothes. My other clothes were from J.C. Penney. My first homecoming dress was a blue knit two-piece with a ruffled skirt. I think it was on clearance at Dillard’s. I wore that dress two years in a row. Same thing with my other homecoming dress. Andie had a rougher life than me, but I loved her music, her music, and her hair. And Andrew McCarthy.
The big difference between truth and fiction was that all of my friends, save one, had money. Lots. Not a word was ever said about where I came from or what my parents did for a living. This is a theme of Pretty in Pink. Andie was poor. She literally lived on the wrong side of the tracks. We see the tracks!
At the end of the movie, Andie puts the final nail in the coffin of who she is. She goes to the prom, sans date, and when her father asks if she really wants to go, she says “I just wanna let them know they didn’t break me.” That’s the core of the film. And the music is amazing.
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