Forty years after its unlock, Sixteen Candles has an plain position in the pantheon of American comedies. The box-office wreck has remained a staple in the coming-of-age genre, even if its legacy has develop into clouded in contemporary years.
The film, written and directed via John Hughes, won rave critiques from renowned critics like Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel on the time of its unlock, however even then, it faced grievance for its offensive stereotypes.
Molly Ringwald starred as Sam Baker, a youngster with a weigh down on senior Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling) and with oldsters who forgot her sixteenth birthday. Meanwhile, freshman Ted, a.okay.a. The Geek (Anthony Michael Hall), has eyes for Sam, and foreign exchange scholar Long Duk Dong (Gedde Watanabe) is staying at her house, forcing her to sleep at the sofa.
In the years since its liberate, Ringwald has come to phrases with both the great and dangerous sides of a film she will be able to now watch with her youngsters. Keep reading for the whole lot she has said about Sixteen Candles and its sophisticated legacy:
‘These Movies Are Very White’
Speaking on the Miami Film Festival in April 2024, Ringwald weighed in on how a remake of Hughes hits like Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink would have to differ from their originals — in a word, variety.
“Those motion pictures are very white and they don’t truly represent what it's to be an adolescent in a faculty in America these days,” Ringwald mentioned.
It was announced in 2022 that Selena Gomez used to be growing a half-hour sitcom titled Fifteen Candles, loosely according to Sixteen Candles, however following a bunch of Latina teens as quinceañera season approached. Ringwald praised the idea, preferring that to a straight-up reboot.
“I'm so glad about that. I truly do really feel like when other folks all the time ask me about rebooting my movies, I'm like, ‘No, those movies have been wonderful,’ however what they must do is take inspiration from them and do one thing totally different but inspired, so that just sounds unbelievable,” she informed Deadline.
Times Are Different
Amid talk of the allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh all the way through his 2018 confirmation hearing, Ringwald opened up about how times have changed since she filmed those motion pictures with Hughes and weighed in on the just right and the unhealthy.
“Everyone says and I do imagine [it’s] true, that occasions had been different and what was applicable then is unquestionably not applicable now and nor should it had been then, but that’s kind of the way in which that it used to be,” she instructed NPR. “I think very differently about the movies now, and it’s a troublesome position for me to be in as a result of there’s a lot that I like about them.”
“And of course I don’t wish to appear ungrateful to John Hughes, she added, “however I do oppose a large number of what's in those films.”
Watching With Her Daughter
Ringwald shares daughter Mathilda and fraternal twins Adele and Roman with husband Panio Gianopolous. In 2018, she disclosed that she watched her films with Mathilda, which impressed her to jot down an essay in The New Yorker looking again on them. She has now not but watched them with Adele, who she mentioned “is essentially the most woke person that you’ve ever met.”
In the NPR interview, Ringwald mentioned how watching with Mathilda changed how she sees her motion pictures.
“I do see it otherwise,” she said. “I mean, there have been parts of that film that troubled me then. Although everybody likes to say that I had, you realize, John Hughes’ ear and he did pay attention to me in a lot of tactics, I wasn’t the filmmaker. And, you know, every now and then I'd tell him, ‘Well, I feel that this is kind of cheesy’ or ‘I believe that that is beside the point’ or ‘this doesn’t ring true,’ and every so often he would concentrate to me but in different circumstances he didn’t. And, you understand, you don’t wish to talk up an excessive amount of. You don’t wish to move the road. Or at least that’s the best way that I felt at the time.”
Ringwald added in a 2021 interview with Andy Cohen that staring at her films with Mathilda “used to be such an emotional enjoy that I haven’t — I haven’t found that strength to observe it with my two other youngsters.”
‘It’s Not Funny. It’s Creepy.’
Even on the time, some components of Sixteen Candles have been too problematic to incorporate in the general lower. In her essay for The New Yorker, Ringwald recalled a moment where her persona’s father used to be meant to invite, “Sam, what the hell happened in your underpants?”
Ringwald wrote, “My mom objected. ‘Why would a father know what took place to his daughter’s undies?’ she asked. John squirmed uncomfortably. He didn’t imply it that way, he mentioned — it was once just a funny story, a punch line. ‘But it’s now not humorous,’ my mom said. ‘It’s creepy.’ The line used to be changed to ‘Just be mindful, Sam, you wear the pants in the circle of relatives.’”
The Date Rape Scene
One of the most problematic scenes in Sixteen Candles comes when Jake gives up his drunk girlfriend, Caroline (Haviland Morris), to The Geek in alternate for Sam’s lingerie. The Geek then takes footage of Caroline, and the 2 wake up the next day to come in bed together.
“Thinking about that scene, I turned into curious how the actress who played Caroline, Haviland Morris, felt about the personality she portrayed,” Ringwald stated in The New Yorker in 2018. “So I despatched her an electronic mail. We hadn’t noticed or spoken to each other since she was 23 and I used to be 15. We met for coffee, and when we had crammed each other in on all the intervening years, I requested her about it. Haviland, I used to be surprised to be told, does no longer have the same issues with the scene as I do.”
She endured, “In her mind, Caroline bears some duty for what occurs, on account of how under the influence of alcohol she gets on the birthday celebration. ‘I’m no longer saying that it’s OK to then be raped or to have nonconsensual sex,’ Haviland clarified. ‘But ... that’s not a one-way street. Here’s a lady who gets herself so bombed that she doesn’t even know what’s occurring.’”
Long Duk Dong
Ringwald doesn’t dance around the problematic nature of Long Duk Dong, the Chinese foreign currency student in Sixteen Candles. Even a New York Times review written in a while after the film’s liberate referred to as the character “unfunny” and a “doubtlessly offensive stereotype.”
Naturally, Ringwald concurs.
“The character of Long Duk Dong, in Sixteen Candles, is a grotesque stereotype, as other writers have detailed far more eloquently than I may just,” she wrote in The New Yorker.
She Doesn’t Want the Movies ‘Erased’
Despite her grievance, Ringwald feels that Sixteen Candles and her other films with Hughes have their place in historical past.
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“I believe like that’s what makes the films in reality glorious, and it’s additionally something I sought after to go on document talking about — the weather that I in finding troubling and that I need to trade for the long run,” she told Cohen. “But that doesn’t mean in any respect that I need them to be erased. I’m proud of those films, and I have numerous affection for them. They’re so much part of me.”
Ringwald additionally famous that marginalized groups that Hughes’ comedies focused had been frequently not represented in any respect in movies in the 1980s.
“There’s elements of those movies that I find homophobic. On the other hand, they’re additionally about people that felt like outsiders,” she mentioned. “So they speak to numerous people who feel — you recognize, they’re difficult.”
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