The Writer's Poke

At the end of the film, Theodore (Gene Wilder), wearing Charlotte's (Kelly LeBrock) husband's bathrobe, jumps off the ledge of her apartment.  On the way down, he has an epiphany. Why was he chasing after the Woman in Red? He has a perfectly good wife and family at home. At that moment, he decides he will never act so impulsively and crazy again.  Then he sees the blonde photographer down below. She's taking his picture, and he decides he likes the look of her legs. Maybe, just maybe... but then the frame freezes in midfall. Has Teddy learned his lesson? Apparently not. The blonde photographer is Sandra Wilder. For a second, I was hoping she was his real-life wife, but when I Googled her, I quickly learned they were no relation. Gene Wilder is a stage name, after all, and Sandra's last name, just a coincidence (and Wilder was married to co-star Gilda Radner at the time).  I did find out that Sandra Wilder was the girl in the Scorpions' "No One Like You" (1...

I'm sure I only noticed this because I watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) and Weird Science (1985) back-to-back, but both John Hughes films freeze on the chaos/change agent character at the end of the film. In Planes, the freeze is on the smiling Del (John Candy); and in Weird Science, the freeze is on the winking, smiling, and now high school boys' gym coach, Lisa (Kelly LeBrock). I thought about that for a while, because maybe Del and Lisa are more similar than you'd think on the surface. In any event, they serve similar purposes in each movie. But when you start watching Weird Science, you're not worried about the freeze shot at the ending. In fact, although I've seen the film a number of times, I've never thought about it being a "Hughes" movie. However, his Chicago fingerprints are all over it. (Even in Planes, another movie I don't immediately think of as a Hughes movie, when they show the exterior of Neal's -- Steve Martin -- ...