Weird Science (1985)
In April of 1984, on the strength of his yet-to-be-released debut feature as director, Sixteen Candles, and his scripts for The Breakfast Club and Weird Science, the prolific John Hughes entered into a $30 million, three-year deal with Universal Pictures to write, direct, develop, and/or produce two or three medium-budget movies a year for the studio.
According to producer Joel Silver, Hughes got the idea for Weird Science after seeing a really attractive woman while they were having lunch in the Universal commissary and then a prolonged time while sitting in Silver’s office waiting for him to finish a phone conversation. Silver had crates of old EC comics in his office because he had acquired their TV & movie rights. Hughes observed the comics getting unpacked, one being the sci-fi anthology title “Weird Science”, a twenty-two issue series published in 1950-53).
Although Hughes says the story idea was entirely his own, some speculate that he may have looked inside the issue of “Weird Science #5” and read the eight-page story from Al Feldstein called, “Made of the Future”. The issue has to do with a man named Alvin whose fiancee leaves him for his best friend. His mind in a fog, he wanders into a guided architectural tour of Rockefeller Center. He soon realizes that the patrons of this tour are from the future, visiting to see the 1950s. He stows away on their futuristic vehicle, traveling two hundred years into the future.
While in the year 2150, Alvin sees an ad telling lonely men to seek out the futuristic “Construct-A-Wife” kit, which, if you purchase the Deluxe model, promises him the perfect wife: a gorgeous woman that never nags, always smiles adoringly, and will do all of the chores without complaint. Alvin procures a kit and a seat on the next tour back to the 1950s, where he immediately builds the perfect woman in his bathtub. He marries his new gorgeous and adoring wife and shows her around town to make everyone envious, including his ex. The story ends when his new wife decides to take the Rockefeller Center tour and disappears, leaving Alvin forever trying in vain to find that tour from the future again.
Hughes pitched Silvrer on a story about two misfit teens conuring up the sexy woman they’d seen in the commissary to be their perfect girlfriend. He imagined the kids eating popcorn while using a computer to simulate the perfect female. They scan pictures of gorgeous women into the computer and, after a bolt of magic, she appears. But instead of them controlling her, she’s controlling them. Silver liked it and agreed to produce.
Hughes worked on the script the following Saturday after shooting all day on The Breakfast Club and by Monday night he was mailing the first draft to Silver. Hughes juggled duties between finishing up The Breakfast Club, which he loved, and Weird Science, which he considered a trifling and dopey comedy.
His muse, Anthony Michael Hall turned down the next entry in a series Hughes started, European Vacation, to do Weird Science. This kicked off a recurring joke to have the Griswold kids played by different actors in every subsequent Vacation movie. This was Hall’s fourth and final appearance in a film written by Hughes.
Casting director Jackie Burch saw Ilan Mitchell-Smith in The Wild Life and thought he’d play well opposite Hall. Ilan knew Hall from attending the same school in New York for child entertainers (Professional Children’s School). Ironically, Ilan didn’t like his on-screen best friend but thought Bill Paxton, who plays his bully brother Chet, was the nicest guy he’d ever met. Less ironic was that he had a genuine crush on his on-screen girlfriend Judie Aronson. Unfortunately, he was 20 at the time and he was 14, putting her out of his league.
For Lisa, they auditioned many beautiful unknown actresses like Robin Wright, Sharon Stone, and Demi Moore. Hughes also sent a script to Kelly LeBrock, who he saw in The Woman in Red and thought would be perfect. Robin Wright had the part for three months but left to do the soap opera “Santa Barbara”. Hughes requested LeBrock but she was in the south of France with her husband Victor Drai, who was producing the film, The Bride. LeBrock was having such a good time hanging out with that film’s stars, Sting and Jennifer Beals, that she couldn’t be bothered to come back to the States to audition, suggesting they get Kim Basinger instead.
Hughes moved on to Rod Stewart’s model girlfriend Kelly Emberg. After weeks of rehearsals and initial shooting, Hughes wasn’t content with Emberg’s acting skills and asked for LeBrock to give it another look. She asked for more money than she thought they would pay. They paid it, so off to Skokie, IL for the shoot. LeBrock was also intimidated she was one of the oldest actors on the set and had the least amount of acting experience. She also had to work with costumes that didn’t quite fit her because they were made for Emberg. The wardrobe department did what it could.
This wasn’t the first time that LeBrock took Emberg’s place. LeBrock also had a fling with Emberg’s boyfriend, Rod Stewart, in 1984 after inviting him to the premiere of The Woman in Red, and he invited her afterward to spend time with him on Catalina Island. The fling went on for a month. Two years later, Emberg and Stewart were in a restaurant that LeBrock was also at, LeBrock had a waiter deliver a note to Stewart’s table saying, “I miss you.” Unfortunately, Emberg read it, putting a temporary damper on the relationship. Although she had been friends with Emberg, LeBrock claims Stewart told her they had split or she would not have engaged with him in such a manner. Stewart patched things up with Emberg, taking her to vacation in Spain, LeBrock threw a party in his Malibu home, causing all manner of costly damage.
Bill Paxton got the bullying older brother Chet’s role. Paxton told makeup artist Michael Germain to give him an intense look. Germain came up with the idea of the flattop with long, slicked-back sides. Germain thought he’d be fired for doing it without permission but Paxton insisted. Luckily, Hughes loved the look. Paxton had to also don this ugly Chet suit when Lisa turns his character into a festering blob. When he found it too claustrophobic to endure, they had two little people inside to control it instead. Makeup creator Craig Reardon was asked to make the blob do a variety of vulgar things like flip the bird and pick its nose to flick a booger but Hughes ended up not using most of it in the final cut. One scene e that was cut so that the Chet blob would be more of a unique surprise was the bullies escaping from the part and then turning into a donkey and pig.
Robert Rusler was going to be cast opposite Craig Sheffer for the bullies but Sheffer left to do That Was Then This Is Now. Robert Downey Jr. was sent over to Burch and she felt strongly about him to send him immediately to Hughes. Hall, who was in Hughes’s office, took an immediate liking to Downey and he got the part.
John Hughes contacted Vernon Wells to do a parody of his character in The Road Warrior as the leader of the party-crashing biker gang. Wells didn’t want to leave Australia for a bit part but they offered enough money to make it worth his while. Warner Bros. objected that they couldn’t make it Wez so they retooled the look to make him Wez-like but not Wez.
Best friends Gary and Wyatt are suburban Chicago high school geeks tired of being everyone else’s doormat. They want girlfriends but their lack of social status makes it impossible. When the traditional methods prove fruitless, the duo uses Wyatt’s computer to create a virtual girlfriend for them to ask questions to. However, their digital concoction actually comes to life in the form of a smart, gorgeous, and magically gifted woman they name “Lisa” (named after Apple’s “Lisa” computer), who makes it her mission to transform these dweebs to be the kind of men that other boys want to be and other girls want to be with.
A “Bride of Frankenstein ” (if she were hot and smart) premise for the teen sex-laden 1980s film era, Weird Science is writer-director John Hughes‘ high-concept comedy that triggers more happy moments out of nostalgia than it does from anything that happens during the course of the movie. Like many 1980s comedies aimed at adolescents, it’s liberal in sex and potty humor, and guns utilized in point-blank-range-to-the-face fashion.
Originally, the plot had been kept secret to avoid a TV ripoff coming out prior to the film’s release. Hughes wrote again from his teenage experience of feeling like a misfit and an outsider, but this was his fantasy – to have the girl of his dreams and go from a zero to a hero among his peers. The story questions if popularity for being the person you aren’t through artificial means with more than being admired by the few who know who you really are.
The two teen stars play likable geeks among flavorless peers. The only distinction beyond them is the douchebag duo who find ways to humiliate them. The only adult character given any distinction, Wyatt’s sadistic older brother Chet, makes sure that their home life is as painful as their school life. LeBrock, at her most fetching, gets to play the cheesecake “Mary Poppins” role for all it’s worth, and though she is absent from the film for much longer stretches than she should be, she’s sells the film in a way it is hard to imagine anyone else could at the time.
Although a fantastical premise, the film travels down routine avenues toward its ultimate destination, including their house party while the family’s away, driving a hot car, and snatching the desirable girls from their jerk-wad boyfriends. In between, not much sense can be made even in its self-contained universe of ideas. It doesn’t make sense for a computer to generate a woman from another room, or for her to have the brain of a genius from inputting nothing more than a picture of Albert Einstein’s head. Suspension of disbelief is required for a few yuks. While amusing, Weird Science frustrates by having a good premise devolve into a lengthy “Animal House meets The Road Warrior” finale.
Much has been written about the childish shenanigans behind the scenes. A $100,000 scene involving a full-sized missile on hydraulics crashing up through the house was ruined when Anthony Michael Hall passed gas and the on-screen cast couldn’t stop laughing. They fixed the scene by filming the missile going back down and played it in reverse.
The shower scene between LeBrock and the young actors went from a couple of hours to a couple of days because the boys kept getting the giggles. LeBrock had pasties on her chest and skimpy bottom to cover her nudity. LeBrock says she would probably be arrested today for making out with a fifteen-year-old, and that she threatened to kick Ilan’s ass after he stuck his tongue deep in her mouth on the first take.
As a running joke between himself and Robert Rusler, Downey began making threats to others that if they didn’t treat him well, he would “take a dump” in their office or trailer. It started as a joke but soon he actually went through with it to prove he was as outrageous as he was advertising. Reportedly, Downey defecated on a chair of Babette ‘Renee’ Props trailer because she got on his nerves (in a “Playboy” interview, he said it was in Kelly LeBrock’s trailer). Props defended Downey’s false protestations of innocence to producer Joel Silver, who was ready to fire him, effectively saving his career.
Hughes never delves beneath the superficial elements of the storyline, content to show the requisite titillation and teen partying that sold tickets at the box office in that era. Unlike his other teen films of the 80s, Weird Science doesn’t offer the character development of serious undercurrents that Hughes would become known for. Instead, he turns in an inventive but not very far-reaching teen sex comedy, with only the basic premise setting it apart from at least a dozen others to come out in 1985. LeBrock, Paxton, and a catchy hit Oingo Boingo title song are the legacy of this film for nostalgia buffs, but it’s a disappointment in most other regards given the promising talent and ideas.
Weird Science was only a modest hit in 1985, making $24 million off of its $7.5 million. It debuted under Fright Night‘s first week and European Vacation‘s second week, not to mention its fellow Universal juggernaut, Back to the Future. It fell out of the top ten by week three but found its audience on home video and endless cable showings.
Themes include finding contentment in oneself, rather than being who bullies or babes or big bothersome brothers think you should be. The teenagers have two issues to overcome: their inexperience with girls and their low standing in their social circles. Creating Lisa is their way of fixing both. They give her a genius-level brain, so smart they’re intimidated by her, despite her programmed attachment. Other than kissing, they don’t use her for sex; she operates more like a nanny and chaperone than a lover.
Lisa quickly realizes that she wasn’t conjured to be their plaything so much as to help their confidence. She defends them with Gary’s neglectful parents and gives Gary’s brother Chet some comeuppance. But she realizes that they can’t rely on her to magically fix everything if they want to grow from boys to men. She puts together a party to bring all their peers, and Lisa concocts party crashers for the boys to have to stand up to for their self-esteem and to garner the respect of their classmates. By doing so, they finally get what they wanted, girlfriends, but not the perfect girl they created that they think they needed.
The opening and closing scenes in the high school gymnasium were reshoots added in post-production. They felt they needed something humorous to kick into the Danny Elfman song and intro and they felt the ending they had left things on too sad of a note for the audiences who liked Lisa.
The film also earned $15 million internationally under alternate titles: Electric Venus (Japan), Touch Me, I’m Yours (Denmark), Oh, This Science (Russia), Cool Magic with Lisa (Germany), Dream Woman (various), The Explosive Woman/Girl (Italy & some Spanish countries), Impure Science (Bulgaria), What a Crazy Woman (Portugal), Girl with a Computer (Poland), Electronic Magnolia (Greece), Modern Nursery (Taiwan).
Weird Science has a fervent fanbase among Hughes fanatics, but it does require an understanding of the 1980s, when nerds were definitively uncool and the hottest women were consummately objectified. This may prove to be rather bothersome to those viewing it today through ‘woke’ lenses, especially by those who are sensitive to seeing bullying, sexism, and reinforcement of racial and gender stereotypes. The scene where Hall imitates a black person at a blues club came from the time when he would visit Hughes’ house and would watch old comedy videos, including Richard Pryor standup routines. Hall imitated Richard Pryor’s ‘Mudbone’ character to make Hughes laugh, incorporating it into The Breakfast Club and Weird Science.
After Weird Science, John Hughes’s exclusive deal with Universal Pictures was renegotiated due to constant friction between himself and the studio on The Breakfast Club. Under the new agreement, he was allowed to seek work elsewhere, ultimately choosing Paramount Pictures, where his friend Ned Tanen had been hired as President and he was promised much more creative control. Consequently, Hughes rushed to complete Weird Science, a film he grew to feel more an obligation than an inspiration for a studio he grew to despise. Hughes went on to call Weird Science a very bad picture, a rushed job, and a hackneyed plot that he is ashamed of, though he wouldn’t disown it.
Hughes looked forward to making better films with Paramount, starting with a drama set in 1962 called The Last Good Year, another Anthony Michael Hall vehicle that promised to take him into adult character status. That film was not meant to be.
Alas, Hughes had unspoken “falling outs” with actors who turned him down to do other things with their careers. Hall claims that Hughes also wrote the roles of Ferris Buehler and Duckie in Pretty in Pink with Hall in mind, but it was not meant to be (Contrarily, Hughes said in an interview that Matthew Broderick is the only person he could imagine playing Buehler. John Cusack was the only alternate. Some speculate Hall was meant to play Cameron Frye). Hall left for “Saturday Night Live”, inviting his new friend Downey to come along with him for the 1985-86 season. Hall was also picked by Stanley Kubrick to star in Full Metal Jacket but negotiations stalled out. Hughes offered Paxton a small part in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but Paxton was hoping to land a bigger role and declined; Hughes never offered him another role afterward.
- Ilan Mitchell-Smith left acting in the early 1990s and became a professor of Medieval Literature. He returned in 2017 for a bit part on a Weird Science-themed episode of “The Goldbergs”.
- Followed by a TV series in 1994-98. Hughes didn’t know it existed until he saw a TV commercial.
- In 2013, an edgier, R-rated remake from producer Joel Silver was announced with Michael Bacall scripting. The woman is created by a 3D printer. It’s been in development hell ever since.
Qwipster’s rating: C+
MPAA Rated: PG-13 for sexuality, nudity, violence, teen drinking, and language
Running Time: 94 min.
Cast: Anthony Michael Hall, Ilan Mitchell-Smith, Kelly LeBrock, Bill Paxton, Suzanne Snyder, Judie Aronson, Robert Downey Jr., Robert Rusler
Director: John Hughes
Screenplay: John Hughes