Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Searching for John Hughes
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.jasondiamond.net/
CITY: Brooklyn
STATE: NY
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.jasondiamond.net/about/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2016158774
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2016158774
HEADING: Diamond, Jason
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670 __ |a Diamond, Jason. Searching for John Hughes, ©2016: |b title page (Jason Diamond) page 4 of cover (Jason Diamond is the sports editor at Rollingstone.com and founder of Vol. 1 Brooklyn. His work has been published by the New York Times, Buzzfeed, Vulture, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Pitchfork, Esquire, Vice, and many other outlets. He was born in Skokie, Illinois, but currently lives in Brooklyn…)
PERSONAL
Born in Skokie, IL; married.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Rolling Stone, New York, NY, sports editor. Founder of the Vol. 1 Brooklyn Web site and Julius Singer Press; former editor at the Jewcy.com Web site and Men’s Journal. Has worked variously as a deejay, bookseller, cook, server, and barista.
WRITINGS
Contributor to publications, including the Paris Review, New York Times, New Republic, Vice, Esquire, Pitchfork, Vulture, and Buzzfeed.
SIDELIGHTS
Jason Diamond is a Brooklyn-based writer. He is the sports editor for Rolling Stone and the founder of Julius Singer Press and of the Vol. 1 Brooklyn Web site. Previously, Diamond served as an editor for the Jewcy.com Web site and for Men’s Journal.
In 2016 Diamond released his first book, Searching for John Hughes: Or Everything I Thought I Needed to Know about Life I Learned from Watching ’80s Movies. Diamond explains that his initial idea was to write a biography of the seminal director of teen movies in the 1980s. However, the book ultimately morphed into a memoir. In an interview with Andrew Husband, writer on the Uproxx Web site, Diamond stated: “I took the longest way possible to write this book. I would not suggest that to anybody, but I’m just really excited I got to do it. It’s not the book on John Hughes that twenty-three-year-old me imagined I’d be writing, so there’s something kind of meta and weird about that, but I got to tell my story while discussing somebody whose work I really respect in a weird, interesting way. I’m just really happy that it got done.” Regarding the connection he felt to Hughes’s films, Diamond told Erica Rivera, a contributor to the Crave Online Web site: “When I started seeing those John Hughes movies when I was a kid, I was like: ‘I really want this kind of life.’ In those movies, there was some strife, and people had family problems, but to me, that looked so normal. That’s what I wanted to reach for, to get to a place where problems could float away at the end of the day and everyone’s happy. I really wanted that because my family life was so not any of that.” In the book, Diamond notes that his mother left the family, and his father was abusive. Diamond suffered from depression as a young adult in New York. He also endured countless setbacks on his proposed biography before finally choosing to write about his own life.
Diamond discussed his honesty in the book in an interview with Michael Schaub, a contributor to the online version of the Los Angeles Times. He stated: “You can’t really hold anything back. I’m not some swashbuckling Hemingway violent drunk, I don’t [have] all these crazy, wild stories. But if I’m going to tell my story in any way, it has to be as honest as possible, and it has to give out the fact that I am a human and I am prone to a lot of failing. And if I didn’t do that, A, the book would be crappy, and B, I’d be lying. I just don’t want to do that.” Diamond told Ryan W. Bradley, a writer on the Electric Literature Web site: “I really wanted the book to be about failure, embracing the things that seem like huge screwups and wastes of time, but in the end make us who we are. I also wanted to look at myself and frame those years spent trying to write the biography as some cross between Larry David and Don Quixote or Ignatius J. Reilly. Some guy so obsessed with this one goal that he doesn’t see how silly or shitty he’s being. I thought that was a funny idea.”
A reviewer in Publishers Weekly suggested that Searching for John Hughes “may appeal to Hughes diehards, but readers simply looking for a fresh memoir should look elsewhere.” However, a Kirkus Reviews critic described the volume as “both funny and heartbreaking.” The critic added: “It is also a memorable reflection on what it means to let go of the past and grow up. A quirkily intelligent memoir of finding oneself in movies.” Booklist writer Kristine Huntley called it a “candid, grounded, relatable memoir.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, October 15, 2016, Kristine Huntley, review of Searching for John Hughes: Or, Everything I Thought I Needed to Know about Life from Watching ’80s Movies, p. 9.
Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2016, review of Searching for John Hughes.
Publishers Weekly, September 12, 2016, review of Searching for John Hughes, p. 47.
ONLINE
AV Club, http://www.avclub.com/ (December 5, 2016), Nathan Smith, review of Searching for John Hughes.
Crave Online, http://www.craveonline.com/ (November 6, 2016), Erica Rivera, author interview.
Electric Literature, https://electricliterature.com/ (July 11, 2017), Ryan W. Bradley, author interview.
HarperCollins Web site, https://www.harpercollins.com/ (July 11, 2017), author profile.
Interview Online, http://www.interviewmagazine.com/ (December 1, 2016), Royal Young, author interview.
Jason Diamond Home Page, http://www.jasondiamond.net (July 11, 2017).
Los Angeles Times Online, http://www.latimes.com/ (April 21, 2017), Michael Schaub, author interview.
National Public Radio Online, http://www.npr.org/ (November 29, 2016), Drew Toal, review of Searching for John Hughes.
Uproxx, http://uproxx.com/ (November 26, 2016), Andrew Husband, author interview.*
Jason Diamond was born in Skokie, Illinois just before Ronald Reagan took office, although he remembers absolutely nothing about the Carter administration. He grew up in the Chicagoland area and moved to New York in his early 20s, but loves both places equally and with all of his heart. Jason has worked as a barista, server, fry cook, bookseller, and DJ. In 2008, he founded the site Vol. 1 Brooklyn. Vol 1. has since launched Julius Singer Press and curates regular free literary events, including the popular 3-Minute Stories series. He was the editor of the Jewish pop culture website Jewcy.com, the literary editor at Flavorwire.com, a former associate editor at Men's Journal, and currently the sports editor at Rolling Stone. He has written for The New York Times, The Paris Review, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, The Wall Street Journal, New Republic, Vice, Bookforum, Tablet, The Awl, Pitchfork, McSweeny's, NPR, The Rumpus, and many other fine outlets. His memoir, Searching For John Hughes (William Morrow/HarperCollins), will be released in November 2016.
Jason is a Cancer. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, two cats, and a dog named Max.
Jason Diamond is the sports editor at Rollingstone.com and founder of Vol. 1 Brooklyn. His work has been published by The New York Times, BuzzFeed, Vulture, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Pitchfork, Esquire, Vice and many other outlets. He was born in Skokie, Illinois, but currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife, his two cats and his dog named Max.
QUOTED: "I really wanted the book to be about failure, embracing the things that seem like huge screw ups and wastes of time, but in the end make us who we are. I also wanted to look at myself and frame those years spent trying to write the biography as some cross between Larry David and Don Quixote or Ignatius J. Reilly. Some guy so obsessed with this one goal that he doesn’t see how silly or shitty he’s being. I thought that was a funny idea."
Ryan W. BradleyFollow
Writer, Artist, Vegan, & Other Junk. Forever Alaskan. Clearly lacking willpower. New book, Nothing but the Dead and Dying out now!
Jan 2
Jason Diamond on Chasing the 80’s and Finding a Memoir
Talking celebrity, myth and growing up in Chicagoland with Jason Diamond, author of the new memoir ‘Searching for John Hughes’
The first John Hughes movie I remember seeing is probably Home Alone, but given that I was born in 1983, the same year Mr. Mom hit theaters, and the fact that I have three older siblings, there’s a good chance his films were a backdrop to much of my childhood. Of course, I am not alone in this or Jason Diamond’s stunning memoir, Searching for John Hughes wouldn’t exist.
Personally, while I find Hughes’ films entertaining (my favorite being Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), I’ve never thought of him as a touchstone for my cinematic proclivities. Recently we introduced our eight year old son to Home Alone and that was the first time I’ve watched a Hughes film in more than a decade. That said, when I first heard about Diamond’s memoir I was excited. Though I don’t remember much about the 80's (the grunge years were more aligned with my early memories of childhood), I find myself nostalgic for the decade. Another byproduct of having older siblings, I’m sure.
I was instantly glad I picked up Searching for John Hughes. It was evident from the start that the book was more than just a reverie. Diamond has created a memoir that makes you, the reader, one of his closest friends. He is intimate and vulnerable, yet he keeps his humor and optimism. It is a trick all the more impressive given Diamond’s turbulent adolescence and nomadic early adulthood. With John Hughes to guide him and the backdrops of Chicago and New York to provide a counterpoint of stability, Diamond brings readers into his efforts to create both an homage to Hughes and a niche for himself as a writer. I found myself inspired at every turn, impressed by the balancing act and the precision with which he creates beauty out of struggle and a love for the films of an 80’s auteur.
Ryan W. Bradley: I believe celebrities — from athletes to movie stars — are the modern equivalent of mythological pantheons. I think our connections to celebrity go beyond entertainment. In ancient cultures myths were a way of understanding what we had no basis for understanding. Do you feel that way about your connection to Hughes’ films, and pop culture at large? What has your connection to his films helped you understand?
Jason Diamond: Oh yeah, for sure. I tend to interact with celebrities and famous people somewhat frequently in my line of work these days, and I’m still taken aback when I see them in person for the first time. They’re not the person on that little electric picture box in my living room anymore. It takes a few seconds to adjust.
As for the Hughes films, it’s pretty simple: they were filmed in the part of the Chicagoland area I grew up in. That, and I was first exposed to them by teens around the time films like Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink were released, so it sort of felt like they were letting me into their cool world. I’d watch those movies and think, “Ah, so this is what life is going to be like one day. Not bad.”
Bradley: That connection led you to a really interesting journey as a writer, from the effort of writing a biography of Hughes to eventually writing a memoir informed by that endeavor. The framing seems natural, and there was a sense that even early on you were drifting that way, even if you didn’t notice it at the time. Was it difficult to switch gears and let yourself be the focus?
Diamond: I’m glad you think that. I felt like it was a really weird idea, but people have been telling me it makes sense. I really wanted the book to be about failure, embracing the things that seem like huge screw ups and wastes of time, but in the end make us who we are. I also wanted to look at myself and frame those years spent trying to write the biography as some cross between Larry David and Don Quixote or Ignatius J. Reilly. Some guy so obsessed with this one goal that he doesn’t see how silly or shitty he’s being. I thought that was a funny idea.
In terms of switching focus, I don’t think it was that difficult. I’d toyed with the idea of writing a book of essays about growing up so I went back and looked at those notes and outlines, and sort of thought about how if I’m going to write a book about myself and my obsession with these movies, I need to write it in such a way that anything I write about my life somehow connects back to his films. I’ve read too many memoirs where it’s supposed to be about the writer and X, but you don’t get much about X. Since his films had such a profound impact on me, I really needed to make sure I could connect any life event back to his movies and what they’ve meant to me over the years.
What sort of took me by surprise is how much all of the books I’ve read and loved kinda came back to help me in certain ways. Like I’d think “How would Didion say this” or “How would Waugh frame this scene.” Obviously I never came close to writing like those people, but it showed me just how much obsessively reading throughout my life has helped me as a writer. Like little parts, maybe a sentence or two, I’d call up those books and writers and they really helped.
In Search of the Ultimate Teen Movie Soundtrack
A Literary Mixtape, by Jason Diamond
electricliterature.com
Bradley: For many people the hardest part about writing memoir is including the people around them, that worry about how family and friends will feel about what they’ve written. You don’t necessarily have relationships with the people who come out the worst in your book, but I imagine there was still some anxiety about putting that on the page. Although even when you had the right to be negative you didn’t dwell on it. There’s a lot of hope in the book. How much of that balance was conscious and did it help alleviate any potential worries about what you were making public?
Diamond: Weirdly enough, the anxiety didn’t pop up while I was writing it. I feel pretty free when I’m writing, like it’s my own thing even though I’m writing about real people and events. I think after it came out, when the first of many friends was like, “I never knew all this stuff,” and another said I made them cry, that was a weird feeling. It made me a little anxious. I didn’t really think much of how the book might affect people.
I’m a pretty hopeful person for the most part, and being anything other than that in the book would have been dishonest. Being hopeful and also incredibly stubborn helped me get through some difficult times, and I feel like that mix comes out in the book. I was ultimately able to see that I want things to turn out good in the end, no matter how silly that might seem. Looking at it that way, more than anything, helped alleviate any fears I may have developed along the way. Like I was happy in the end that I presented my story in a way that says things can suck but things can also get better. It’s so easy to lose sight of that in our day to day, and as a writer, it’s our job to present the truths of an often sad and ugly world, I recognize that. But I’m also a fan of the beauty and the little glimmers of goodness you see from time to time.
“It’s our job to present the truths of an often sad and ugly world, I recognize that. But I’m also a fan of the beauty and the little glimmers of goodness…”
Bradley: That was really present in the book. I got the feeling that I wasn’t just learning about your life, but also hearing your voice. As someone who has written bits and pieces of a memoir over the last few years, I find I get really hung up on that part, on the voice that I present. I try to tell myself I can write it the way I write fiction, but still find it difficult to do. You had obviously written fiction and nonfiction for years, but how much did you pay attention to the style of the narrative? Did it take experimenting with your voice to find the fit for the material?
Diamond: Actually, it’s a funny thing, but I write so much that I really just sat down with my outline, my ideas of what I wanted to do and where I wanted to do it, and let it come out organically. One thing I noticed that I found really interesting was that things I consider influences would pop up as I was writing, certain writers or books I’ve read, I’d notice little faint traces of influence here and there. Also, as somebody who writes and edits for a living, I found it really interesting to just sit with one thing for a long time instead of an essay that I write and edit in a week or two that’s 2000 words. Trying to maintain the one clear voice was something I was worried about, but as I kept writing I realized it was pretty easy for me to do since I was writing mostly about myself. I’m not so sure I’d be able to do that if I was writing fiction, or at least it would take me a lot of time and editing to accomplish it.
Bradley: You mention your work as an editor, which is a skill set and art form that is very different from writing. Was there any particular editorial advice you’ve given other writers that you made a point of keeping in mind with your own work?
Diamond: For longer stuff, I tend to tell them not to go back and edit while they’re writing. I know every writer tends to do things differently, but nine times out of ten when a writer comes to me and says they’re stuck on something, I’ll ask if they’re editing as they write and they usually say yes.
Another trick, one that I really had to stick to, is being able to walk away. I can write and write and write all day, but you do hit a wall, and you need to walk away, go for a walk, read a book, anything.
Bradley: That’s interesting. I have talked to so many writers who either edit as they go or start a writing session by editing the previous session’s output (which I am guilty of as well). The walking away makes perfect sense to me. I’m always surprised by writers who are super consistent in their routine. I can’t make myself write, I have to actually want to do it or it’s going to be a case of me feeling like I’m doing homework, which I barely did when I was in school. Sometimes that means doing something — anything — else.
You tell a lot of stories in the book and they span a large portion of your life. Were there stories you wanted to tell but had to hold out of the project because they didn’t fit within the framework and theme of the book? Do you have more personal stories you are looking to tell in a subsequent memoir?
Diamond: Yeah, I sort of wanted to write more about fucking up as a teen, but I think I’ll save that all for the next thing. I think I was trying to connect my life with those movies so much, and since Hughes is connected with teen films, I had to have some of my own teenage life in there. But when I was sketching things out, I kept thinking how funny or weird certain experiences I had were. I’d love to write about them somehow. I learned a lot about restraint before I wrote this book and I’m glad I did. Learning not to squeeze every little thing in and also being able to let go of certain ideas or paragraphs or passages. I had to do a lot of that.
QUOTED: "When I started seeing those John Hughes movies when I was a kid, I was like: 'I really want this kind of life.' In those movies, there was some strife, and people had family problems, but to me, that looked so normal. That’s what I wanted to reach for, to get to a place where problems could float away at the end of the day and everyone’s happy. I really wanted that because my family life was so not any of that."
Author Interview | Jason Diamond is “Searching for John Hughes”
New memoir traces impact of John Hughes' films, Chicago suburbs, and the Cubs on author's life.
image: http://cdn3-www.craveonline.com/assets/uploads/2015/08/Author-Erica-Rivera-CR.jpg
Erica Riveraby Erica RiveraNov 6th, 2016
image: http://cdn1-www.craveonline.com/assets/uploads/2016/10/Searching-for-John-Hughes-author-Jason-Diamond-by-Elyssa-Goodman-e1477754424842.jpg
Searching For John Hughes author Jason Diamond
Photo: Elyssa Goodman.
image: http://cdn1-www.craveonline.com/assets/uploads/2016/10/Searching-for-John-Hughes-e1477757413189.jpg
Searching for John HughesIf you came of age during the ‘80s or ‘90s, you’ve likely seen a John Hughes film, whether you intended to or not. Jason Diamond didn’t just watch them– he studied them and longed to embody the world of bumbling, adorably flawed teens from classics like The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Diamond’s new book, Searching for John Hughes, is not just a fan’s elegy to the late, great writer and filmmaker but a memoir framed by the influence of Hughes’ films in Diamond’s life and how he sought escape through them. The author’s own story of wayward adolescence in Chicago’s suburbs at the end of the 20th Century is every bit as nuanced and tenderhearted as the films that so captivated him in his youth.
Diamond now lives in New York and is the founding editor of Vol. 1 Brooklyn and sports editor for Rolling Stone.
Crave: What about John Hughes’ films resonated with you?
Jason Diamond: When I was a kid and I watched them, I instantly was like, “I know where that is. I know where these movies are being filmed.” Seeing what looked like my backyard instantly grabbed me. From there, I just started watching his movies; they’d be on or the babysitter would bring a VHS tape over, and I’d be like, “This is cool. This is what I imagine being a teen is like and what normal families are like.”
Also: Interview | Emily Witt on “Future Sex”
Do you think Hughes’ movies have withstood the test of time? Do they still make you feel those feelings when you watch them now?
Yeah. Obviously, there’s a little bit of a difference because I’ve immersed myself in so much research about his movies and his life. I still find myself going back to them when I feel like I need something, when I’m feeling down, when I’m feeling out of it, I’m going to watch “Ferris Bueller” or “Home Alone”. The movies are like an old friend.
In the book, you write, “I used those John Hughes movies as my road map for life. You should never do that.” Why not?
Escapism. We take movies or books or things that we like and have a few hours where we don’t have to deal with the drudgery of life and all those terrible things that are always happening. I think I took it a little further. When I started seeing those John Hughes movies when I was a kid, I was like, “I really want this kind of life.” In those movies, there was some strife, and people had family problems, but to me, that looked so normal. That’s what I wanted to reach for, to get to a place where problems could float away at the end of the day and everyone’s happy. I really wanted that because my family life was so not any of that. I was like, “Maybe if I pay attention to these people, one day I’ll be like them.” They’re movie characters. They’re fictional creations. You’re not going to be like them. I had to learn that. It took a while.
Is there one character that you particularly connected with?
I think Allison from “The Breakfast Club”. When I first saw that movie, I could see a lot of myself in her: the teen who is obviously different and relishes being different. As a kid, I really wanted people to like me and wanted people to talk to me, but I was so awkward and weird, I didn’t know how to be like, “Hey, let’s be friends. I’m not so weird.” As a kid, I looked at her and identified with her because she’s the goth weirdo of “The Breakfast Club”. As I got older, I realized it was deeper than that.
Do you think there’s a comparable filmmaker now?
It’s so hard to write those kinds of stories this day in age. John Hughes was sort of like a place and time. He was somebody who knew how to pull people’s heartstrings. He could be sappy and it worked. And I don’t think sappy works as well these days. And that’s fine. There’s only so much sap we can handle.
It’s interesting that he captured adolescence so well even though he was writing from an adult perspective.
That’s something that people have always been fascinated by. First things first, he was a writer. That’s how he saw himself. I think that’s why people connected with him. I don’t mean to compare him–because the comparison has been made a thousand times–but the J.D. Salinger comparison does make sense to me because he wrote about young people in a way that really resonated, and then what did he do? He up and disappeared.
Did Hughes inspire you to be a writer?
I didn’t really realize, until I wrote this book, how much he has inspired me as a writer. I don’t know if he inspired me as much to become a writer but he definitely inspired my writing in a lot of weird ways. I think my Midwestern side comes out a lot in the essays I write and the subjects I want to focus on. I’ve read a lot of his writing for National Lampoon and it’s sexist and crude and not really my thing, but he definitely is an influence on me. The stuff he created is in what I do.
When I read the final version of my book, I was sort of like, “Yeah, I can kind of see a big John Hughes influence here.” Which is kind of funny because I wasn’t going for that. Except for the happy ending. I wanted to leave it off with a happy ending because I always thought that was a John Hughes thing.
Your story could be a movie. It has all of the cinematic elements.
My wife made a joke about that, but I don’t think so. I wouldn’t want to see that. I don’t think I want to see anything I ever do on a screen.
You talk about the importance of the Cubs in terms of the culture of Chicago in the book. It seems timely given that the team finally won the World Series. How do you feel about that?
Oh my God. It’s insane. I was watching the game the other night and as soon as it was over it dawned on me: I just saw the Cubs win a World Series game! I don’t want to sound like a total jock or sports nerd, but one of the last things I remember talking to my grandfather about before he died was the Cubs. I have a lot of bad family memories, but a lot of good family memories are about the Cubs. I’m a massive, die-hard Cubs fan. It’s super intense.
I keep joking that I couldn’t have fit more into one month: I’ve got the Cubs in the World Series, this crazy election, and my book comes out.
It’s all happening.
Yeah. I might need a break.
What would you say to Hughes now, if you could?
I would thank him. I live a life where I’m surrounded by books and movies and I listen to lots of music and I’m inspired by a lot of art that I love, but his has lasted and his has impacted me more than anybody else I could think of. I have some issues with his films that I get to in the book. There were certain things that, as I grew older, thought, “That’s bad.” Like Long Duk Dong and the Jake Ryan rapey teen in Sixteen Candles. But I would tell him “Thank you.” I have few regrets in this life but I really wish I could have told him that.
Read more at http://www.craveonline.com/art/1154473-jason-diamond-john-hughes#yifuCmYHBPL5eXYe.99
QUOTED: "I took the longest way possible to write this book. I would not suggest that to anybody, but I’m just really excited I got to do it. It’s not the book on John Hughes that twenty-three-year-old me imagined I’d be writing, so there’s something kind of meta and weird about that, but I got to tell my story while discussing somebody whose work I really respect in a weird, interesting way. I’m just really happy that it got done."
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In 2009, Roger Ebert penned a glowing obituary for the director John Hughes that described the filmmaker as “the creator of the modern American teenager film,” Ebert credited his subject with “[establishing] an international notion of ordinary American teenagers” — especially since he, more than anyone else among his peers, “took teenagers seriously… as individuals with real hopes, ambitions, problems and behavior.”
Although his new memoir, Searching for John Hughes, is less about the storied movie director and more about himself, Rolling Stone sports editor Jason Diamond manages to turn the same descriptive lens Ebert praised in Hughes onto himself and his hometown idol. The new book, which goes on sale today, was originally supposed to be a biography about Hughes Diamond began writing in his early twenties, but that particular project never came to fruition.
What did happen, however, had a profound effect on Diamond’s personal life and professional aspirations. The young, inexperienced writer managed to overcome a broken home in Skokie, Illinois and develop a career thousands of miles away in Brooklyn, contributing to the New York Times, The Paris Review and The New Republic. And he finally got to turn his abandoned Hughes biography into something much more sweeter.
How does it feel that the book, which you’ve been working on in one form or another for a long time, is finally coming out?
I got one of those email questionnaires for an interview the other day, and it asked me how long it took to write this book. The short answer is a year and a half, but the real answer is a little over a decade, though I’m not really going to say that because it’s not totally true. It’s so fun and so great that it actually got to happen. I took the longest way possible to write this book. I would not suggest that to anybody, but I’m just really excited I got to do it. It’s not the book on John Hughes that 23-year-old me imagined I’d be writing, so there’s something kind of meta and weird about that, but I got to tell my story while discussing somebody whose work I really respect in a weird, interesting way. I’m just really happy that it got done.
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Does the Hughes family know about your book?
I’m assuming they’ve probably seen something about it. They live in Lake Forest just outside of Chicago, and I think the book is getting some press out there. Since John Hughes is pretty well known, whenever a book has his name in the title I assume they probably hear about it. Also, one of his sons is a really good writer. I have a couple of degrees of separation from him. I’m assuming they’ve seen or heard about it, and I hope I get to talk with them — any of them. That’d be really nice. Once I go to Chicago for the book tour, they’ll probably hear about it then with the advertising blitz.
Is that director interview what ultimately inspired the book as it is now, or did something else happen to nudge you along?
I’d kind of had some ideas along those lines, that maybe I should write about this experience of trying to write a book. That, and framing it as a memoir about failure that would focus on the earlier years depicted in the book. I wanted it to be this silly romp, something much funnier than what I’d originally been thinking, though it wasn’t until after I wrote it that I realized it wasn’t as funny as I’d wanted it to be.
Through it all what I was mainly thinking about were books like A Confederacy of Dunces and Don Quixote, in which the protagonist is totally ignorant to how silly they’re being. They go on these quests they think they’re totally right to do, but they’re actually not. I was acting like those characters at that point in my life, and I wanted to write about that, so I did. Larry David is also a big influence. You know, like when you totally think you’re in the right but what you don’t realize is you’re alienating people. That’s what I was doing.
You tend to structure each chapter around one or two particular Hughes films. Was this your intent while writing the book, or did it just happen?
It was kind of organic. I don’t know if you could really say “kind of organic” about anything, but as I was writing it, I would envision the particular part I wanted to write about. It would just pop into my head and I would immediately think it was similar to Home Alone, Sixteen Candles or whatever movie came to mind. Sticking with a particular theme was important, so I figured I’d stick with those comparisons and make them work. Honestly that was kind of my intention to begin with, with writing a memoir, since so many memoirs are crap.
I’m not trying to degrade memoirs, but the great memoirs are the ones where people actually write their stories, their lives, in an interesting way. That’s the challenge I faced, because I’m not the most technically savvy writer. I’m not a wordsmith. Not going to dazzle you with my prose, so I needed to figure out a way to tell my story in an engaging way. Framing it via Hughes’ movies, and how they specifically connected to me during the times I was writing about, would do that for me.
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Reading the book felt like watching the beginning of a Hughes movie, to some degree. The reader follows you, as one of Hughes’ downtrodden, misunderstood teenagers, as you struggle with writing the book and trying to make a name for yourself.
It’s a real thing. We’re taught from an early age we have to do things a certain way. We’re taught from day one, when we start learning things, you have to do things this way in order to be happy. It’s this crazy thing, and I heard all of that growing up — you have to go to college, you have to get married, and all that. Still to this day, I’ll impose these mental signposts, telling myself I have to be better, do better and be great at whatever I do. I’ve nearly killed myself trying to accomplish this, but somewhere along the way I learned it’s okay to go in a different direction, away from the path you’re told to follow.
You often recount watching certain Hughes films throughout the book. Sometimes it depends on the time of year, others in regards to what you’re experiencing then. Are you still able to watch Hughes as much these days?
I can still watch them. The funny thing about his movies is they’ve become dependent on my mood. If I’m feeling a Breakfast Club kind of day, then I can totally watch that. Every year around this time I watch Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I don’t think that’s ever going to change. I’m probably going to watch Home Alone next week. I watch a lot of movies, but I can always go back to John Hughes.
When you really don’t have a home growing up, these things that you love — these books, these movies — they can kind of become your home. You can go back to them and they’ll make you happy. His movies still do that for me. I’ve been able to look at them from every possible angle, and I’m very happy I’ve been able to do that and still feel the way I do. There are things I’m still not happy with in certain ones, but that’s home. That’s family. You’re not going to be totally satisfied, but I’m glad I can always go back to them.
QUOTED: "You can't really hold anything back. I'm not some swashbuckling Hemingway violent drunk, I don't [have] all these crazy, wild stories. But if I'm going to tell my story in any way, it has to be as honest as possible, and it has to give out the fact that I am a human and I am prone to a lot of failing. And if I didn't do that, A, the book would be crappy, and B, I'd be lying. I just don't want to do that."
Q&A Jason Diamond on accidentally writing his memoir, 'Searching for John Hughes'
'Searching for John Hughes' by Jason Diamond"Searching for John Hughes" by Jason Diamond (William Morrow)
By Michael Schaub John Hughes Chevy Chase
Jason Diamond’s debut book wasn’t supposed to be a memoir. The writer and Rolling Stone sports and culture editor started out trying to write a biography of his childhood idol John Hughes, director of the films “Home Alone,” “16 Candles,” “The Breakfast Club,” “Pretty In Pink” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and the hero of Diamond’s hometown of Chicago.
The project didn’t go anywhere, but it provided the inspiration for “Searching for John Hughes: Or Everything I Thought I Needed to Know About Life I Learned From Watching '80s Movies,” Diamond’s memoir, published in November by William Morrow. The book recounts Diamond’s troubled childhood in the Chicago suburbs, his experiences with homelessness, and his quixotic quest to write Hughes’ biography while working selling coffee and cupcakes in New York. It also takes a look at the iconic ‘80s comedy films that got him through it all.
Diamond spoke to The Times via telephone from New York, where he lives.
Can you explain how the book changed from where it began?
I had been on kind of a losing streak professionally, and I was feeling really defeated about a lot of things. I got to thinking about the last time I had felt so down, or if there was something I could recall that was even worse. And I immediately clicked back to when I came to this realization after several years that I'd been trying to write a book that I had no business writing. It's a pretty hard thing to accept. So that started making me feel a little better, and I started thinking, "Maybe I should write about that." I've always been into books like [Ivan Goncharov's] "Oblomov" and [John Kennedy Toole's] "A Confederacy of Dunces," because I have a tendency to be like those Don Quixote kind of characters who think they're supposed to do something brilliant and big, and they're acting kind of crazy without realizing it. I wanted to write something like that, because that's how I looked at my life for those couple of years. When I started talking to editors, the one I liked the most was like, "I want to know about your entire life," and honestly, [the idea] had never even dawned on me until that moment.
You had a difficult childhood, a difficult young adulthood. What was it about John Hughes' movies that helped you get through it?
I'm a sucker for — I always say "happy endings," but it’s not just happy endings. I like the idea that things can be better than they are. People read the book, and they're like, "Man, you had such a rough childhood," [but] the weirdest thing is that I'm the most positive person. I look at the bright side of everything. I joke that it's because I'm Jewish and a Chicago Cubs fan, and up until last year, it was like those two things meant, "Losing!" [Laughs.]
I feel like at their core, that's what [Hughes'] movies are about. Things are better than they are. You think your parents aren't going to remember your birthday, but they'll come downstairs and your dad will softly remind you how much he cares about you. Or you could have that perfect day where you and your friends ditch school and steal a Ferrari.
The other thing, maybe just as importantly, was that they took place, and were a lot of the times filmed in, my backyard, basically, in Chicago. That really meant a lot to me, and it made me connect with those films. You don't really get a lot of that with Chicago. You get Saul Bellow, but I was so young, I wasn't reading that yet. The Chicago connection was really important.
I feel like when you watch "Breakfast Club" you're forced to choose which one you are, and I realized I was definitely an Allison.
— Jason Diamond
Do you think his portrayal of Chicago in the movies was accurate?
A lot of people talk about the lack of representation. I counted like eight black people throughout his movies in the '80s — one of them is a Michael Jordan cut-out. He doesn't really go out of his way to be like, "Hey, there's going to be some black people in these movies, and they're going to be part of the neighborhood or part of the school." And even as a kid, I noticed right away when I was 13, there were also no Jewish families. Ferris Bueller is played by a Jew, and his sister is played by a Jew, but he's not Jewish. And actually looking back on it, all of that is what it was like growing up in the part of the Chicagoland area I grew up in. I was one of three Jewish kids, maybe, in my school, and there were maybe two black kids and a few Latino kids. It was very white. So he does get that, and I think it's an unfortunate thing, because I think he could've really introduced this idea that everybody can live together; it doesn't have to be weird and separate like it is. So he unfortunately, I think, nailed that. But [his movies] look like Chicago. “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” I personally think it's his best movie, because it really does just nail Chicago so beautifully. And I know he really wanted to show the city he loved in a certain way, and I think he did a great job of that.
A big theme of the book is trying to do something and failing at it. Was it hard to write about that? I feel like it must be tempting for a lot of writers to gloss over those moments or to downplay them.
No. Honestly, I don't like holding things back. I remember watching basketball, and you'd see Dennis Rodman grab a rebound so fiercely, you'd get so pumped up, and he'd be like, "I play with a lot of emotion. You're going to see it all come out when I play." I kind of approach writing in that way. Not so much where I'm going to get a bunch of tattoos and write this really bad memoir called "Bad as I Wanna Be" or go to North Korea. But I always think of that. You can't really hold anything back. I'm not some swashbuckling Hemingway violent drunk, I don't [have] all these crazy, wild stories. But if I'm going to tell my story in any way, it has to be as honest as possible, and it has to give out the fact that I am a human and I am prone to a lot of failing. And if I didn't do that, A, the book would be crappy, and B, I'd be lying. I just don't want to do that.
Would you say that John Hughes had any influence on you as a writer?
I've thought about that a whole lot. I was asked that right as the book came out, and it was so hard for me to really say. I'm from the Midwest, so I'm kind of an "Aw, shucks" kind of guy at times. I do think that watching those movies so many times helped smooth out this sort of cynical distrust of the world and of culture that I might otherwise have from years of [bad] experiences. It definitely might have influenced the way I go about presenting things and telling stories, but as a writer, going back and reading his "National Lampoon" stuff, I'm like, "Hell, no, that didn't influence me at all." But the movies influenced me as a person, and as a person I'm a writer, so they kind of go hand-in-hand. Stylistically, no. The movie writer who has influenced is Nora Ephron. That's the person who I like to think about when I'm writing.
While you were writing the book, and even now, do you go back and re-watch Hughes’ movies?
Yeah, oh my God. After the book came out, not so much. There was one night when I was in Chicago on the book tour. It was after the book release, and I walked past this old movie theater, and they were showing "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" [which Hughes wrote and produced] and I was like, "How many times am I going to be able to say that I'm in my hometown, it's snowing out, and I just did my book release party, and I got a couple hours to kill, I'm going to see this movie." It was actually weirdly emotional to see Chevy Chase, which, you know, you should never get emotional about Chevy Chase. [Laughs.] I just watched "Home Alone 2." It was on in a bar the other night. "Pretty in Pink," I [recently] watched that.
"Home Alone 2" is severely underrated.
I don't know if you've ever looked this up online, but there's a lot of John Hughes movie theories. I have this theory that Kevin McCallister is the reincarnated H.H. Holmes, the notorious serial killer from Chicago, the "Devil in the White City" guy, because he just really likes torturing people in houses. There's something kind of dark about that to me. He's a creepy kid.
Are there any characters from the movies that you identify with particularly, or that you did as a kid?
I think the first one was definitely Molly Ringwald in "Pretty in Pink," because I just remember really being into the fact that she didn't care what anybody thought of her. She didn't let Steff get away with talking badly to her. I remember thinking, “I want to be that cool one day.” I'm still striving for that. I don't know if it'll ever happen. I feel like when you watch "Breakfast Club" you're forced to choose which one you are, and I realized I was definitely an Allison. I still feel that way. And Cameron. I also felt like Cameron [from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”] sometimes.
I identified with Cameron as a kid. I'm not sure why.
It’s weird, because we don't really see Cameron's parents. We don't get the full gist of what's so bad about them. We just see this really minimalist glass house in the forest. It's a beautiful house, by the way, in real life. But we don't really get to hear his back story, and we have an idea that it's bad, but we're not sure how bad. With John Bender [in “The Breakfast Club”], we know it's that bad. He's in a really bad situation. With Cameron, you really have to do a lot of thinking. He's a very cerebral character and I don't think we give him credit for that. He's so cerebral that there are Internet forums dedicated to talking about how Ferris Bueller is all in Cameron's head. It's like a Tyler Durden [from “Fight Club”] thing. He makes up Ferris and Sloane and the whole thing. It's pretty fascinating stuff.
People are still watching these movies. What do you think makes them, at least for some people, hold up so well?
I think everything eventually gets cool over time. You can say there's the teen aspect, because despite the fact that it looks outdated, the films still [reflect] the same kind of weird, emotional blender that kids put themselves through, when they're crushing on somebody, or having problems at home, or trying so hard that you're driven to depression. Those things still resonate. Things just mature. '60s garage rock was just a bunch of wild kids making music, and now a Sonics record is considered high art, and in the '60s it was just a bunch of kids making noise. Things seep into the canon, they make their way in, and it's hard to argue their importance after 30 years because they've influenced so many people and meant a lot to millions of folks throughout the world. You can go from [J.D.] Salinger to Judy Blume to John Hughes to a lot of young adult fiction we're seeing today, like Rainbow Rowell and John Green. He's in that canon of things that may have been aimed at teens, may have been about teens, but people grew up with it, and they're passing it down and carrying it on and finding new ways to tell those stories.
What do you think people in 2017, in this kind of fraught day and age we're in, what do you think we can learn from John Hughes' movies?
One thing, and this is important, is that things aren't always as great as they look. John Hughes painted this picture that everything's going to be OK, and everything's going to work out. And I like that, it's nice in a movie. But in real life, you've got to be constantly vigilant, because things don't always work out the way you want. You have to take it day by day. His movies aren't great epics, they take place in a day or two days, usually, and the characters in those movies really do take their lives day by day. In “Ferris Bueller” especially, [there’s] this idea that you can make your life a little better, and you can change things, and you can do what you want and be a little rebellious and it'll work out. I think it's important to remember those things. The kids that he's focusing on are just trying to get a date to the dance. You should take what you have the day it's there, and work with that.
CULTURE
JASON DIAMOND AND THE MYTH OF JOHN HUGHES
By ROYAL YOUNG
Published 12/01/16
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Jason Diamond's debut memoir Searching for John Hughes (William Morrow) is a funny, quirky, aching coming of age tale. Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago in a dysfunctional home, Diamond always felt like a misfit. He was drawn to fictional worlds, especially novels and the films of John Hughes, which were shot literally "in his backyard" and depicted an existence he glorified. Moving to New York with big dreams of becoming a writer, Diamond ended up slinging cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery, wondering what happened to his aspirations.
Through sharing his trials and errors—being broke, working on a John Hughes biography he never finishes, loneliness—Diamond's tone is not self-pitying but rather lyrical and hilarious. He laughs at his missteps and by doing so eventually overcomes them. Diamond reminds readers that anyone who has ever felt like an outcast—more Cam, the sad eyed best friend sidekick than Ferris Bueller, or the sulky band of weirdos from The Breakfast Club—perhaps in the end has a more interesting story to tell.
We spoke with Diamond about escaping your past, bravery, not quitting, Nazis, how movies shaped him, and what it means to become your best self.
ROYAL YOUNG: What's it like escaping your past and shaping a new identity?
JASON DIAMOND: For me, even though I grew up right near Chicago, which is a great big city, I think I always knew I needed to go somewhere different. I think a lot of people feel that way. The minute I realized it was time to do that was when I told myself I needed to be in charge of my life and get my shit together. I didn't know how I was going to do that.
YOUNG: Where do you think that boldness comes from? It takes a lot of bravery to decide to change your life.
DIAMOND: I moved around a lot as a kid, so moving to a new city—whether it was the suburb next door—it was never easy, but I got used to that vagabond existence. Through high school, it was a survival thing; I was always sleeping in different places so that wasn't hard. Boldness came from curiosity. I had 500 dollars in my bank account; I could spend 100 dollars on a Greyhound ticket just to see what happens. Midway through the worst bus ride, I realized there was nothing to go back to and I had to make it work. I don't know if that's boldness as much as sink or swim.
YOUNG: Your early experience of instability, which could be perceived as negative, ended up serving you really well.
DIAMOND: Yeah, it definitely did. When people say it's sad, yeah, I was really sad a lot and crap happened, but I'm not like Rocky Balboa, I'm just not really good at quitting. I had all these ghosts in my head yelling me that I suck, but you have to hold on to those things—that hatred and fear—and use them to keep going.
YOUNG: You describe in the book inner hatred, but also outward hatred, like witnessing Nazis. Growing up an outsider.
DIAMOND: My grandparents on my dad's side lived through the Holocaust. I was born in this town that I think at the time had one of the largest populations of holocaust survivors outside of Israel and New York. One of my early memories that stuck with me my entire life [was that] they built a monument of a mother holding a baby, this really sad statue, and people carved swastikas into it. My mom said, "I need to show you this, because this is your background." She explained the Holocaust and what my family went through, and at that moment, I was four or five, I realized there are people that will try to hurt you and hold you down. Obviously Nazis and fascists are different from assholes in high school, but it alerted me to this sad narrative of humanity that there are people who want to live and then the people who want to hold them down. I've tried to not be one of the latter my entire life.
YOUNG: You have a line that you viewed "movies as blueprints for what you wanted life to be."
DIAMOND: Movies and novels, the two things that informed and taught me the most, are forms of escapism. I thought that was how life could look if you wanted it to. John Hughes's movies served as a perfect example. I saw nice homes with nice lawns and good-looking high schoolers whose biggest problems were some girl or boy didn't like them. I thought that was incredible. My parents separated when I was three, so that dream was shot, but I still had dreams of a perfect life. There's no such thing as a perfect life, but if you hold on to that long enough and watch it get chipped away, that's really hard to deal with. I had no one telling me otherwise.
YOUNG: There's a duality here. Yes, you moved around a lot and it was unstable, but that enabled you to move to New York. Yes, your idea of life through movies and novels was unrealistic, but it enabled you to eventually find love and write a book. The things that could have held you back ended up pushing you forward.
DIAMOND: Yeah, it's a funny thing. You've written a memoir, so you know how it is. You get to reflect and it's this amazing thing where you can't believe that all this stuff amounted to something, and therefore you amounted to something. To me, that's beautiful. This is kind of what I thought I wanted. You work for it, but it still happens.
YOUNG: What do you think becoming means?
DIAMOND: There are different ways of looking at it. Becoming a writer, which is a theme in the book, you can always be writer. It's not so much a metamorphosis as it is finding what you want. You can also become something you don't want to become, but it's a change, a new phase. Hopefully one you want.
YOUNG: There's this struggle throughout the book of feeling weird, abnormal, and creative, but wanting to be normal. Maybe becoming is about becoming your truer self.
DIAMOND: Yeah, I was really conscious of that and the process of writing the book helped me hash that out. I always felt like a weird outsider and I did at some point in my life start to embrace that. I'm happy I do, but I think you're conditioned, especially in America, that there is this line you have to walk down. Anybody who wants to move off that path at any point in their life is my hero. Anybody who goes off that path has to wrestle with that. There is no normal life; it's just an idea we've been fed. People who realize that tend to be the happiest.
QUOTED: "both funny and heartbreaking"
"It is also a memorable reflection on what it means to let go of the past and grow up. A quirkily intelligent memoir of finding oneself in movies."
Jason Diamond: SEARCHING FOR JOHN HUGHES
Kirkus Reviews.
(Sept. 15, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Jason Diamond SEARCHING FOR JOHN HUGHES Morrow/HarperCollins (Adult Nonfiction) 15.99 11, 29 ISBN: 978-0-06-242483-9
A Brooklyn-based writer and editor’s memoir about how watching John Hughes films as an adolescent gave meaning to his troubled life.Rolling Stone sports editor Diamond grew up a member of the Jewish minority in
suburban Chicago. For the first few years of his life, his mother and his candy manufacturer father lived an American dream that included “two cars [and]…a house…built with the money made from rotting the
teeth of children who could only afford to spend a quarter on snacks.” His life changed dramatically after his parents divorced. By the time he was 7, he had attended four different schools and become “the weird kid
[whom] nobody knew.” It was then that a babysitter introduced him to Hughes’ Pretty in Pink, which immediately became his favorite film for the comfort it gave him that even kids who were different could
“still be cool.” As Diamond grew older and began watching more of Hughes’ movies, he found that they helped him to make sense of things like the social divisions in high school, where “everyone
had his or her place, just like in a Hughes movie.” But then his mother, who could not cope with their rocky, adversarial relationship, moved away and left her son to fend for himself. Clinically depressed, homeless, and often
drunk or high, Diamond turned even more to Hughes’ feel-good films to help him make sense of an unforgiving world. He then moved to New York, where he decided that he would write the director’s biography.
After spending most of his 20s bouncing between Chicago and New York, often unhappy and endlessly revising a book he would never publish, his life finally came together. Both funny and heartbreaking, Diamond’s memoir
is not just an account of how one director’s films impacted—and perhaps saved—his life. It is also a memorable reflection on what it means to let go of the past and grow up. A quirkily intelligent memoir of
finding oneself in movies.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Jason Diamond: SEARCHING FOR JOHN HUGHES." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463216039&it=r&asid=f1340d287905e684e7ed0ab6f7573469. Accessed 29 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463216039
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QUOTED: "candid, grounded, relatable memoir."
5/29/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Searching for John Hughes; or, Everything I Thought I Needed to Know about Life from
Watching '80s Movies
Kristine Huntley
Booklist.
113.4 (Oct. 15, 2016): p9.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Searching for John Hughes; or, Everything I Thought I Needed to Know about Life from Watching '80s Movies. By Jason Diamond. Nov. 2016. 304p. Morrow, paper, $15.99 (9780062424839). 791.43.
Growing up in the idyllic Chicago suburbs where director John Hughes set so many of his movies, Diamond was first introduced to Hughes when his babysitter showed him Sixteen Candles on video. Though it launched a lifelong love
of the director's work for Diamond, his own childhood didn't mesh with the life Hughes glorified. Diamond's father was brutally abusive to him, and his mother (who eventually won sole custody) abandoned him by moving away while
he was in high school. Diamond managed to couch surf before being taken in by a sympathetic teacher. After graduation, Diamond relocated to New York and found work as a barista while his desire to be a writer and pen a biography
of Hughes, his idol, crystallized. But as Diamond labored on the manuscript, he struggled with depression and insecurity about his career and life in comparison with those of the privileged peers he grew up with. Children of the 1980s
and anyone who has worked for years to make a dream come true will recognize themselves in Diamond's candid, grounded, relatable memoir. --Kristine Huntley
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Huntley, Kristine. "Searching for John Hughes; or, Everything I Thought I Needed to Know about Life from Watching '80s Movies." Booklist, 15 Oct. 2016, p. 9. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA468771182&it=r&asid=d1d79d339c2ebc82ef55b6992e2f8017. Accessed 29 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A468771182
---
QUOTED: "may appeal to Hughes die-hards, but readers simply looking for a fresh memoir should look elsewhere."
5/29/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1496083847761 3/3
Searching for John Hughes
Publishers Weekly.
263.37 (Sept. 12, 2016): p47.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Searching for John Hughes
Jason Diamond. William Morrow, $15.99 trade paper (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-242483-9
In his memoir, Rolling Stone editor Diamond relates the story of his failed attempt to write a biography of director John Hughes while working in Manhattan coffee shops and being almost too pretentious to stomach. Diamond grew up
in the Chicago suburbs that inspired much of Hughes's early work and escaped a broken home (abusive father, runaway mother) to scrape by in New York City, where he eventually began compiling his biography of Hughes. In between
depressive episodes and alcohol-fueled bad decisions, Diamond plugs away at the book; when no sources are forthcoming, he resorts to lying to publicists, stalking, and outright inventing tales of Hughes's day-to-day life (which,
alongside factual discrepancies, make it difficult to discern any truth from Diamond's accounts) to move the manuscript forward. All this, combined with Diamond's disdain for (and discomfort with) everyone around him, makes it
extremely difficult to empathize with him as a 20-something. Diamond's book may appeal to Hughes die-hards, but readers simply looking for a fresh memoir should look elsewhere. (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Searching for John Hughes." Publishers Weekly, 12 Sept. 2016, p. 47+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA464046291&it=r&asid=83121b3710a9604409cc57b88fe1acb3. Accessed 29 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A464046291
BOOK REVIEWS
'Searching For John Hughes,' And Finding Yourself
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November 29, 20167:00 AM ET
DREW TOAL
Searching for John Hughes
Searching for John Hughes
Or Everything I Thought I Needed to Know About Life I Learned from Watching '80s Movies
by Jason Diamond
Paperback, 240 pages purchase
The elusive dream of adolescent empowerment has been with us for at least as long as we've had Clearasil or wedgies. Tweens, teens, and everyone in between have enough wherewithal to know what they want, but not enough agency in their own lives to get it. And director John Hughes tapped into that youthful anxiety perhaps better than anyone in the history of Hollywood. Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Weird Science, The Breakfast Club, Home Alone and his other early films all gave a voice to those caught in the age old battle between us and them.
Hughes spoke directly to the hopes, fears and impotence of disaffected suburban kids of my generation, and Jason Diamond, author of the memoir Searching For John Hughes, is no exception. Diamond grew up in the same Chicago suburbs that Hughes mined for inspiration, even if Diamond's upbringing was less idyllic than that of the McCallister family. His emotionally and physically abusive father makes Cameron's old man look like dad of the year. As for his mom, she throws up her hands and leaves him to fend for himself when he's still a teenager. He has no one. No one, that is, except John Hughes.
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Somewhere along the line, as he tells it, Diamond decides he wants to move to New York and become a professional writer. His first big project? The definitive biography of a certain reclusive director. The only problem is that Diamond doesn't know the first thing about how to do it, even if he's telling people in his life otherwise. "I would write the John Hughes biography that nobody else had ever attempted," he writes. "I would pay the highest tribute to a man whose work had such a huge impact on me, whose vision I had basically based my worldview on. This was my big idea, the one I came up with while drunk and lying."
Diamond helps us ... understand that our love for these flawed, wonderful movies were never really about John Hughes at all. It was about us the whole time.
Drew Toal
Diamond becomes a little obsessed, and sometimes it seems like he spends more time talking about the biography at bars than he does actually writing it. A world-weary bartender in Chicago, after hearing Diamond's spiel, shares some needed folksy insight: "It sounds like this book is more about you than it is about John Hughes."
And, of course, he's right, both about Diamond's quixotic biographical project and the the memoir it became. The weakest parts of Searching for John Hughes occur when he belabors that conceit — Diamond works like hell to fit his own narrative into this Hughesian framework, and sometimes it's a stretch. (Is every guy from high school some variation on the archetypal handsome jock, Jake Ryan? Sometimes it feels like it.)
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But this memoir is satisfying in a way that a Hughes film never could be, and the author's story will be achingly familiar to anyone who relied on Hollywood for a respite from reality but who came away disappointed. To paraphrase The Breakfast Club, those of us who went searching for John Hughes (figuratively, if not literally) saw him as we wanted to see him, in the simplest terms, and the most convenient definitions. Sure, all us disaffected '80s kids wanted to live in a John Hughes movie, but it's just possible we didn't think through the implications.
"I told myself that getting into his life and putting something into the world, that was what I needed to make all of my problems disappear," Diamond admits. He does, and he does, but not in the way he expects. And while Searching for John Hughes isn't exactly the book he originally set out to write, it's clearly the book he was meant to write. Diamond helps us — with an assist from that wise bartender — understand that our love for these flawed, wonderful movies was never really about John Hughes at all. It was about us the whole time.
BOOK REVIEW
A writer goes Searching For John Hughes
By Nathan Smith @nathansmithr
Dec 5, 2016 12:00 AM
Photo: Rebecca Fassola
Photo: Rebecca Fassola
171
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Searching For John Hughes: Or Everything I Thought I Needed To Know About Life I Learned From Watching '80s Movies
Author: Jason Diamond
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
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In the 1980s, few films resonated with teens as much as those by John Hughes. Portraying teen life in the Chicago suburbs, films like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club coupled humor with angst to portray the bittersweet experience of adolescence. Jason Diamond’s memoir Searching For John Hughes recounts his deep-rooted obsession with Hughes and long attempt to write a biography about the cult Hollywood director. The result is mixed, as Diamond combines incautious candor and self-pity in his arduous decade-long adventure.
Beginning with his painful childhood—one which saw his father regularly beat him and his mother shuffle him between psychiatrists—Diamond turned to Hughes’ films for emotional respite and escapist pleasure. Movies like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Pretty In Pink represented important “blueprints” to life for this one “weird kid nobody knew.” When he comes of age, Diamond leaves his hometown of Chicago—the setting of most of Hughes’ films—for New York, eager to start life anew as a writer. His first project: a biography of John Hughes.
But Diamond soon lets this obsession consume him. When he hits a roadblock in his research, he lies to publicists to try and interview some of Hughes’ former stars (including Joan Cusack) while greatly inflating the progress of his book to friends and former classmates to make it sound more meaningful and lucrative than it is. As he spends years working away on this seemingly impossible manuscript, Diamond recalls painful episodes from his 20s: near homelessness, alcohol-fueled binges, and lonely weekends watching (and rewatching) Hughes’ films. “I [would] always let the tape run out,” he writes.
Searching For John Hughes’ strength lies in Diamond’s intensely personal references to Hughes’ body of work and his light cultural criticism of the films. (“In Home Alone, we’re presented with the epitome of Hughes’ Rockwellian vision of a place with people of a higher tax bracket.”) Moreover, Diamond’s reflections on both suburbia—the way it both castigates and liberates—and Hughes are thoughtful and considered, offering a refreshing understanding about the way Hughes was so drawn to these suburban landscapes.
There are shortcomings in Diamond’s book, the first of which is that little is actually revealed about Hughes—in spite of the extensive research Diamond apparently did—as Hughes acts in more figurative than literal terms in the story. Diamond often permits his self-pity to get the best of him, endlessly recounting moments of rejection—from editors, agents, parents, friends—which finally wear the reader down. These episodes turn continually into passages marked by intense cynicism and frustration, and often make it difficult to sympathize with Diamond, despite the many physical, financial, and emotional hardships he indeed experienced trying to complete this book.
Searching For John Hughes does nevertheless demonstrate not only how our cultural obsessions can be so all-consuming—and even a little self-destructive—but also how pop culture can be emotionally stabilizing and nourishing. Diamond’s tragicomic memoir attempts to offer readers some important life lessons, but falls short with its self-pity and solipsism.