Watch Sixteen Candles on TCM

The 1984 movie Sixteen Candles will be featured on TCM TV channel. John Hughes’s 1984 directorial debut lifted the teen comedy out of the cinematic gutter, made Molly Ringwald an icon of teenage longing, helped launch the careers of a generation of young actors, including Anthony Michael Hall and John Cusack, and established the young filmmaker as the bard of adolescent angst. In addition, Sixteen Candles influenced a subsequent generation of filmmakers, including Kevin Smith and Wes Anderson, who, like Hughes, specialized in capturing the preoccupations and issues of youth.

Hughes, a former gag writer for old-style stand-up comics and a contributor to National Lampoon, was a novice Hollywood screenwriter when he landed the opportunity to direct Sixteen Candles. He had penned the scripts for National Lampoon’s Class Reunion [1982], Mr. Mom [1983], and National Lampoon’s Vacation [1983], but the latter two comedies had not yet been released. Hughes’s script for Sixteen Candles ended up on the desk of producer Ned Tanen, the former president of Universal Pictures, who had just left the big studio to form his own production company, Channel Productions. Tanen specialized in youth-oriented movies and had produced a handful of notable hits in the genre, including Animal House [1978] and Fast Times at Ridgemont High [1982]. When he read Sixteen Candles, Tanen recognized the script’s potential and quickly picked it up for production. He not only allowed Hughes to direct but also agreed to produce the young filmmaker’s completed script for another teen film called “Detention,” later retitled The Breakfast Club [1985]. Tanen opted to produce Sixteen Candles first, because he thought it more commercial than The Breakfast Club, which was a dialogue-driven chamber piece that took place more or less in one room.

TV Schedule: Thursday, July 15,2010 10:00 PM