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You can quote lines from Sixteen Candles (“Last night at the dancemy little brother paid a buck to see your underwear”), your iPod playlist includes more than one song by the Psychedelic Furs and Simple Minds, you watch The Breakfast Club every time it comes on cable, and you still wish that Andie had ended up with Duckie in Pretty in Pink. You’re a bonafide Brat Pack devotee—and you’re not alone.

The films of the Brat Pack—from Sixteen Candles to Say Anything—are some of the most watched, bestselling DVDs of all time. The landscape that the Brat Packmemorialized—where outcasts and prom queens fall in love, preppies and burn-outs become buds, and frosted lip gloss, skinny ties, and exuberant optimism made us feel invincible—is rich with cultural themes and significance, and has influenced an entire generation who still believe that life always turns out the way it is supposed to.

You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried takes us back to that era, interviewing key players, such as Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Andrew McCarthy, and John Cusack, and mines all the material from the movies to the music to the way the films were made to show how they helped shape our visions for romance, friendship, society, and success.

SUSANNAH GORA is a filmjournalistwho haswritten for Variety and Elle andwas an editor at Premieremagazine. She appears regularly
on networks like VH1, NBC, and E! to discuss entertainment news and pop culture.

"As readable as it is informative, Susannah Gora’s book sets these influential films into a cultural and cinematic context—and provides compelling behind-the-scenes stories about the people who made them."--Leonard Maltin

"A must-have for fans of '80s teen flicks...what makes it so readable is the juicy, behind-the-scenes stuff."-- Mike Householder, Associated Press

"Gora interviews all the major actors and players anew, and knits together a narrative that, in the end, gives fans a clear, sound understanding of what commercial and cultural forces produced these films — "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club," "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off," "Say Anything" and more — and why they still mean a great deal to so many." — Chicago Sun-Times

"I've become addicted to Susannah Gora's new book, "You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried," her masterful documentation of Hughes and the Brat Pack films." —Steve Spears, St. Petersburg Times


From the Hardcover edition.