When I’m feeling unwell, I like to sit at home and watch 80′s movies. In fact, just about any time at any point I like to watch 80′s movies. I lived on those things, they defined my childhood to some extent. I used to sit there and think about what happened after the credits rolled, what happened to the characters. I’d wonder if Ferris would spend some time in prison, would Cameron become a motivational speaker? What happened to each and every one of the fairly asshole-y people from St. Elmo’s Fire? Where did it go from there, in those days when John Hughes was the closest thing to a saint in my life?

I’ve got some rough ideas. Allow me?

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Some Kind of Wonderful (a film I hated and which every girl in my school would sigh and say “I am Watts. I get it.”, to which I would think “Right, you’re a spineless asshole in love with a total loser then?”) – Watts realizes what a fickle asshole Keith is and dumps his ass, giving back the diamond earrings which he is able to pawn off and pay for community college, where he is known for being a beatnik poet of not remotely good poetry. Amanda becomes an actress where she is the author of not remotely good cat cartoons, and then fades into obscurity. Masterson becomes a high school history teacher and tries to turn mopey angry students into scholars, while quietly counselling the girls’ volleyball team in How to Avoid Assholes Who Buy You Jewelry.

Breakfast Club – Andrew and Ali marry, becoming the couple next door as they raise their three sons, two of them are wrestlers under Andrew’s watchful eye (when he is not working at his desk job for an insurance brokerage and regretting those 30 extra pounds he’s gained since his wrestling days), the third one distinctly into drama and his mother’s eyeliner, both of which his parents studiously overlook after family counselling. They have a happy marriage, Ali being a member of the PTA and a pillar of the community, none of whom know of her secret dreams of being a karaoke star.

Bender and Claire dated for another two months before breaking up (one month of those two seeing Clarie spent waiting for her to get out of being grounded for giving away one of her 16th birthday present diamond earrings). At graduation Claire went to Brown University and met and married Roxwell de Madsen, a New Yorker whose family has claims to huge family inheritances and who, years into their marriage, had a man on the side who he has dress up in corsets and mop his floors whom Roxwell watches while he devours scones. Claire suspects but would rather not know, which is helpful as her best friend comes behind a label that reads “Beefeater”. Bender becomes a born-again Christian and motivational speaker who preaches against the evil that is drug addiction. He is single apart from his four cats and his collection of Smurfs.

Brian and his mate start a software company in their garage. They become billionaires and he thinks of those days in detention and how his new mates blanked him the Monday following at school. He names his anti-viral software patches “Bender”, “Ali”, “Andy” and “Claire”, the irony of which is lost on all of them.

Footloose – Ren leaves the Midwest town after someone burns the feed warehouse to the ground in a religious fit, and he becomes a grunge singer in Seattle. He and Ariel drift apart after some of his mates sees a photo of “his girl” in a cowboy hat and red boots, and he is unable to live that down for a while and so opts to distance himself from the woman who was the inspiration for “I Scream At Trains, Scream Scream!”. Ren takes up with a woman who calls herself AnAThemA*, who has a coat of Care Bear heads which she wears without irony, and who has tattooed down both arms “This is not real skin”. Ariel becomes a talented cartoonist and moves to New York, flogging the idea of a series successfully and becoming an MTV commercial sensation with her new cartoon. She names one of the characters after Ren. She names the other one Stimpy.

Pretty in Pink – Andie and Blaine go on to university together, where Andie majors in fashion and helps Blaine interpret his Goethe texts in the philosophy classes he insists on taking. They live in a converted warehouse in New York which Blaine furnishes with items he says he’s salvaged, but which are bought from Crate & Barrel with Mummy and Daddy’s platinum Visa card. Andie wins a spot on Project Runway with her quirky fashions, the likes of which make Blaine more and more uncomfortable in public about, while Blaine takes a position on Wall Street as a trader, which makes Andie more and more uncomfortable about. The final straw on their fragile love comes when Tyra Banks shoots Andie down on her choices of pink and red and tulle on the catwalk, calling it “So not fierce it’s retro fierce”, and when Andie comes home and throws down her Big Bird handbag and has it own with a not overly sympathetic Blaine, they break up and end it, with Andie continuing to cry on the programme and Blaine taking up with Bunny, the woman his parents really wanted him to be with and buys a house in the Hamptons. Andie, alone and mourning the fact that Ducky (who runs a specialist shoe boutique which he loves, although he watches Andie in Project Runway every week, watching in his underpants while eating curry and chips) bounces all of her calls, overdoses on adhesive glitter and sequins.

Sixteen Candles – Sam, recovering from burns to her bridesmaid dress she acquired courtesy of kissing Jake Ryan over a flaming birthday cake, later finds out she not only has to recover from second degree burns but also has to recover from the raging syphilis Jake Ryan passes on. They break up, Sam becoming a raging feminist (as aided by her sister Caroline’s marriage to the Single Biggest Useless Tosser In History), shaving her head and acquiring a large gathering a university, where she becomes a lecturer in Feminist Studies, focussing her attention on “Feminism in Modern Society: The Roles of Birthday Cakes and P.E. Showers”. Jake Ryan starts a popular clothing shop which specializes in lumberjack shirts, which he later sells to Abercrombie & Fitch and retires at the age of 26.

The Geek and his mates Bryce and Cliff (proving that headlamps do have a purpose) start a software company in their garage. They become billionaires and he thinks of those days in school and how the whole school blanked him the Monday following Caroline’s accusation that he cut her hair, followed by the tormenting embarrassment of not remembering he’d actually lost his virginity in the back of a Bentley. He names his anti-viral software patches “Caroline”, “Jake”, and “Sam”, the irony of which is lost on all of them.

Long Duck Dong goes on to rule the world.

Bottom Line – diamond earrings and Molly Ringwald spell the destruction of relationships, and geeks rule the world.

-S.