How can you write about John Hughes' brilliant career without mentioning "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"? This film presented the paradigm of '80s coolness, with Ferris' mix of offhanded bravado and technical savvy inspiring a generation of boys who saw themselves straddling the line between dork and cool-guy. Not a jock or a slacker or a criminal, Hughes constructed Ferris as a new hybrid of teenage stud: the Superfiend. More than any other Hughes film, "Bueller" offers explicit instructions on parental deception and authoritarian subversion.

-- Jonah Hoyle

How, how, how could Maura Kelly write an article on the great work John Hughes did in the '80s and not mention "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"? Even more than "The Breakfast Club," that movie has evolved into a classic. Roger Ebert has often cited the many letters he receives from fans calling the movie the funniest of all time. Like "Sixteen Candles" and to a lesser extent "The Breakfast Club," this movie uses its humor to illuminate the process of exploring who you are, which all teens go through. Jeannie's envy of Ferris, Cameron's meltdown over his father and Ferris' genuine thoughtfulness about his youth and his future show as well any other Hughes film what it was like to be a teen in the '80s.

	Print story E-mail story

-- Nicole Cody

Maura Kelly kinda moved me to tears. But don't tell anybody.

-- James DeFord

Ms. Kelly obviously has never seen the movie "Dogma," or she would know that the reference to Shermer, Ill., is a throwaway joke using two supporting characters, hardly the "plot center for the two main characters" she makes reference to. Not that Kevin Smith doesn't have great respect for Hughes -- but let's not trivialize Smith's film by mischaracterizing it in a major e-zine.

-- J. Bearse

Thanks for the article on Hughes' impact on teens like me in the '80s. No doubt, the guy provided the script and soundtrack of my life during those years, along with Cameron Crowe's "Say Anything." On the subject of Hughes' later movies, which may have been more profitable yet were less soulful, I think he subconsciously hinted at this fall from grace in "Pretty in Pink." We ALL know that Duckie should have gotten the girl, yet McCarthy wins in the end. Duckie represents independent filmmaking: risky yet edgy, and more authentic. McCarthy represents big budget movie-making: loaded with cash, perhaps a bit shallow, but safe in its predictability. Like Molly, Hughes chose the wrong one.

-- Lettie Flores

My thanks to Salon journalist John Farrell for allowing us to see his true motivation in the beginning of his pro-Einstein article, rather than have us wait till the end. From the get-go, it is obvious that Farrell is out to protect, at all costs, the current scientific establishment who has revered Einstein ever since his relativity theory apparently saved them from the devastating results of the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment.

If you're not familiar with Michelson-Morley, their experiment with the speed of light posed the following dilemma to Einstein: "The problem which now faced science after the Michelson-Morley experiment was considerable. For there seemed to be only three alternatives. The first [and the second] was that the earth was standing still, which meant scuttling the whole Copernican theory and was unthinkable" ("Einstein: The Life and Times," 1971, p. 80)

To protect Copernicus, and thus save 500 years of science from total embarrassment, Einstein took a third option, which was to invent a whole new physics. That he did, complete with his own math and geometry, and contorted images such as twins who age at different rates; mass that assumes infinite proportions, and speed that has no bearing on its source.

Brilliant Careers: Sound and Vision Audio and video highlights of our Brilliant Careers profiles