Pretty In Pink: A Love Triangle in Retrospect

Test audiences in the 80s were right about the original ending and we all need to come to terms with that. 

Pretty in Pink feels both modern and dated in a very specific way all John Hughes teen films do. So influential are they, so referenced, that watching the originals can almost feel like a muted dull affair. This is what people have been referencing and talking about for decades? This film? This dress? This love triangle? 

I’ll admit, I never found myself rushing to watch Hughes work, I had seen The Breakfast Club on television reruns for years growing up as a child into teenagerdom sure. I can see Bender, played by Judd Nelson, pumping his fist defiantly in the air as the cool vibe tones of Simple Minds Don’t You (Forget About Me) plays to the sharp swagger of his steps across the well kept greenery of a classic high school football field. 

And neither cinema nor pop culture hasn’t forgotten either, have we? 

Hughes films have stood the test of time becoming cultural touchstones particularly in the teen movie genre. We see his stratification of the haves - popular rich kids - and have nots - middle class to poor kids - morph into Mean Girls table settings and status quo musical numbers on Disney. While the use of music to needle drop emotion wasn’t invented by Hughes his teen flicks certainly perfected the art for the sub-genre; for each The New Guy blasting out the sounds of Simple Plan’s "I’m Just a Kid", we can trace the legacy back to Some Kind of Wonderful’s "Miss Amanda Jones". 

Able to combine teen angst, drama and romance in ways that felt neither belittling or insensitive, Hughes provided a very specific subset of teenagers and young adults with films that treated its characters, acknowledged that they had valid interior lives and feelings worthy of exploration and respect. 

You can see that interiority in Pretty in Pink’s protagonist Andie, as well as Hughes' later cinema influence on the teen genre in Duckie, and The Love Triangle that is Duckie, Andie and Blaine. This specific triangle and trope - a beautiful but unpopular young woman, her long time best friend who’s been pining for years, and the handsome popular young man who sweeps her off her feet - was perhaps most famously parodied in 2001’s Another Teen Movie in which Molly Ringwald made a cameo. 

Andie feels surprisingly modern even by contemporary standards. This is not a passive nor overly idealistic female lead. She may be smitten with Andrew McCarthy’s rich boy Blaine, but she never compromises herself for him. More so, Andie has a life outside of Blaine, the drama playing outside of the romance between her and her father Jack, played with wonderful nuance by Harry Dean Stanton, provides the film with its best moments. Only matched by Andie’s relationship with Annie Potts bouncy, sardonic, yet empathetic Iona. 

Truly Andie’s relationships with the adult characters provides both the most emotional resonance and the most thorough character development in the film. 

Yet those aren’t the parts people want to talk about. They want to talk about the love triangle, and the love triangle has been what has since been debated in the years since the film's release.

Who should Andie really have ended up with? 

Famously test audiences abhorred the original ending in which Andie and Duckie reunite at prom and share a dance culminating their teen love. Director Howard Deutch said of the test screenings after, “Up to that point, the [test] screening had been like a rock concert. And we got to the ending, and they started to boo.” According to Deutch the “whole movie was built to have Jon Cryer end up with Molly. True love triumphs.” 

Both Ringwald and Cryer would give their own accounts in the coming years, with Ringwald claiming she felt Andie and Duckie never had “that sort” of chemistry and Duckie read as closeted. Likening their movie friendship, to her own real life friendship with a then-closeted gay man, Matt Freeman, who worked on set as a PA at the time of filming. Cryer, however, has stringently disagreed with Ringwald, saying that audiences of the time didn’t see him as a “leading man”. 

Reportedly both Deutch and writer John Hughes were “stunned” by the audience reception towards the original ending, and allegedly Hughes “gave” Deutch the directors chair for Some Kind of Wonderful as an olive branch to mend their friendship after the fallout from changing the Pretty in Pink ending. More on that perhaps, another time. 

I have to say here, test audiences were correct in my opinion, and I almost find it baffling to suggest otherwise. That is, correctly, harsh of me to say aloud. Especially when I understand why, in comparison to flamboyant, seemingly rebellious, and more contemporary Duckie, Blaine seems like a square. 

Duckie is “cool” and more than that, he’s garnered a reputation for his steadfast devotion. Hughes and Deutch certainly believed they were writing a story of an underdog romance, rather than a star crossed lovers one. 

I will admit, I saw none of this in the film itself. If perhaps the protagonist of the film was Duckie rather than Andie, this intention would have worked far more. In fact, I often times found myself outright disliking Duckie. This dude? This is the dude that's been the root cause of debate for decades past? This dude is the one who became one of the most influential character archetypes in teen branded cinema?

Yeah, that dude Duckie.

However I understand the opposing perspective here. Duckie is after all, the one pining for Andie from afar, though it's hardly secretly.

Almost every bit of dialogue in the first act from him towards Andie is shameless pushy flirting. Andie, in return, seemingly just puts up with Duckie’s immature antics; a fashionable shrug, a put-upon eyeroll, the way Andie acts doesn’t line up with the idea of potentially requited love or feelings buried under the blanket of long term friendship. 

Take, for example, Duckie’s much beloved "Try A Little Tenderness" scene, in which he lip syncs and dances around Andie’s place of work - a record store - in well choreographed chaos developed by Kenny Ortega (High School Musical).

What we, the audience, seem to remember first and foremost is the energy of the scene. The delightful way Cryer commits, and delivers. What we do not, is Andie’s entirely disinterested if not outright annoyed facial expressions throughout. 

What stuck in the culture’s mind is Duckie’s undeniable style, the funky patterns, the shameless attitude, the John Lennon sunglasses, and the shoes. Oh, the shoes. 

Therefore we forget, or maybe soften, the harsher edges of Duckie’s character. Edges it would seem, Hughes and Deutch didn’t notice but teenage girls at the time surely did.

Such as Duckie’s insistent need for Andie’s constant attention, even if that means calling her four to five times seemingly in a row if the voicemails are anything to go by. Or purposely ringing the store alarm bothering her at work, or bothering her so often that when Andie is invited to chat via a mysterious computer message she responds tiredly, “What Duckie I’m working.” Duckie even has the audacity, taken by some surely as bravery, to declare to Andie’s father he’ll be marrying Andie, she “just doesn’t know it yet”. 

Jack handles this with all the grace you’d expect from an adult, in that he calmly asks Duckie what Andie thinks, of which Duckie brushes aside as unimportant. Instead of reprimanding the young man, he gives him much needed advice that being honest with your feelings and accepting the other person's feelings, even if they do not return your own, is a part of growing up too. 

I believe the biggest indicator that this was not, in fact, some underdog love story takes place in act one.

On a ride home Andie is driving through a rich neighborhood, commenting on all the beautiful houses. Andie, being both poor but also an artist herself, can see both the opulence and beauty in these homes. More so, she muses, than the people who own them. Duckie, meanwhile, is having an entirely different conversation about the music playing in the car. 

“They just don’t make good music anymore,” Duckie, laments at 18 and already on his way to boomer-dom. 

These two characters are having entirely two separate conversations, which showcases how far apart they are emotionally. Entirely on two different wavelengths of thought and consideration for each other. Duckie may believe he loves Andie, but is what he actually loves the security and comfort she provides as a steady presence in his life? 

We never truly know, Duckie is strangely absent for a majority of the movie. There is little development between him and Andie after Duckie storms out in a jealous huff when Blaine and Andie go on their first date in act two. Later, when Andie takes Blaine to her favorite club - the joys of fake IDs - Duckie is so rude Blaine calls him out on it saying, “you’re making Andie uncomfortable.” 

And that’s really the crux of it isn’t it? It’s less about which character we think “deserves” Andie, or which character we think is “cooler” and more about what Andie herself wants as that is what the story is ultimately about. What Andie wants. This is her coming-of-age tale, not Duckie nor Blaine's.

Does Andie want Duckie? Or is this merely a case of feeling bad for the “nice guy” always coming in last for the girl? Both Duckie and Blaine are shown to be pining after Andie from afar, but it’s Blaine who takes the initiative to pursue her. Something Duckie never does even though he’s had much more time and chances. Are we supposed to reward Duckie for getting into a fight with Steff, played by a brilliant James Spader giving even more brilliant evil bisexual energy, to defend Andie’s honor when Duckie himself also insulted her? When Blaine had already rebuffed Steff and the bullying blonde Kate and got called a slur for it? 

[Whew, the 80s.]

This is the part where I play both sides and acknowledge Blaine’s own imperfections, which is mainly ghosting Andie before prom and being rich. The expectation of the ghosting, I would have thought following the narrative pathways laid prior in acts one and two, would be Blaine realizing his fears weren’t worth losing the love he found with Andie. Who, unlike Andie, didn’t have a parent there to tell him love is worth fighting for. Not that Blaine is thereby unforgivable and should be entirely denounced. Thus making Duckie the de facto “winner” of Andie. 

If Duckie initially seems more sympathetic it is more likely because he’s poor, and to be frank, much more entertaining to watch than Blaine as individual characters. 

Duckie is like a teen 80s version of Chandler with better fashion sense, or perhaps Chandler is an adult 90s version of Duckie with worse fashion sense. Either or.

He feels modern in a way Blaine feels dated, via his fashion, his attitude, his sarcasm. He feels right alongside modern day teen characters like Cameron from Netflix’s He’s All That, Stiles from MTV’s Teen Wolf, or Jughead from CW’s Riverdale. All tweaked versions of "A Duckie Dale". 

The outcast, the not-a-jock but not-a-nerd either, the one who always has a witty and perfectly timed sarcastic comment to to whip out to the audience's glee.

Did glee have a Duckie Dale? I prefer most often not to remember glee in detail but I know they had a Blaine!

This history and pop culture influence therefore makes it especially ironic that it is Duckie’s attitude in Pretty in Pink is the one that feels the most dated. The entitled best friend, the nice guy who’s devoted but disrespectful when rebuffed. A more stylish revenge of a nerd. 

This is a harsh assessment of Duckie, one Hughes and Deutch clearly don’t share. I respect that, just as I respect Deutch for taking the audience response into consideration when changing the ending. Even if he was a highly patronizing in his response saying teen girls “didn’t care about the politics they just wanted the pretty guy”. He didn’t have to change the ending, but he did and the film is better for it. 

I think his comment however does a disservice to teen girls; personally I imagine they wanted the pretty guy yes, but also the guy who was brave enough to ask them out, go to a club where he was uncomfortable, and stood up to his friends for them and apologized when wrong. Over a best friend who endlessly one-sidedly flirted with them, behaved jealously when they began dating, and believed their own wants didn't matter. Hughes always gave his teen characters interiority, I would hope we could extent that to real teenagers as well.

Maybe, in the end, teen girls were invested in the love story we saw the most of on screen, the story where Andie was the focus as she was always meant to be, rather than the one that was playing inside Duckie’s head.

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