Coming of Age Films Quotes

This was only Taika Watiti fourth film [Hunt for the Wilderpeople], but I think he brings a very original way of looking at stuff and I think if you look at Boy, for instance, which is a beautiful film, that was his second feature, and it's heartbreakingly sad, but it's also simultaneously very funny. There are not many people who can do that.

I think I was, like, 23 or something [on The Breakfast Club]. I was the oldest of the five. Emilio [Estevez] and Ally [Sheedy] were a year younger. The only real difference was that Molly [ Ringwald] and Michael [Hall] still had to go to school. They could shoot, like, a half day. So a lot of my close coverage was done with Molly's stand-in, so Molly could do her schoolwork.

I was just after Generation X. I missed the John Hughes movies; I had to watch them on TBS.

Hal Ashby is one of my favorite filmmakers.

John Hughes had such a huge impact on filmmaking.

I'd seen all of John Hughes's movies. All the Spielberg stuff. A bunch of '80s horror, like 'Evil Dead.'

Much has been written about Generation X and the films about it. Clerks is so utterly authentic that its heroes have never heard of their generation. When they think of "X," it's on the way to the video store.

It's weird because I think of movies like Reality Bites or something, where, even though my life was nothing like that, I hadn't done something contemporary for a while, and it's easier. You do try to make something your own.

[John] Hughes is a great loss, I think. He was the first filmmaker that could look at someone who was young without seeing them as being less.

I grew up in the '80s and John Hughes was the filmmaker making serious movies for teenagers.

When I saw 'Pretty In Pink' at the cinema at the age of 11, I just thought it was a period piece from maybe 100 years previously. I had no idea that was what everybody was supposed to be wearing.

It sounds so negative of me to say, but I don't feel like there were many coming-of-age films when I was growing up. I think that when I was a teenager, I felt really misrepresented in the teenage roles that I was watching onscreen. Especially in women.

There's always some generational-guys-hanging-out movie that is made every few years, I think, and some of them are great.

You know you're getting old when kids start to dress like you used to and movies are made about your teen life.

'Moonlight' is a story that hasn't been told. Whether placed as queer black cinema or urban male cinema, the lack of coming-of-age films featuring people like Chiron and set in places like inner-city Miami is pronounced and unfortunate.

I didn't want to make teenage comedies, and I didn't want to make really trashy films. I wanted to make films that were a bit challenging.

My favorite was 'The Lost Boys.' Corey Haim wore this trench coat, and I made my mum buy me a trench coat. I wore it to school, to primary school.

Movies serve many purposes, and I've visited many of those genres, from the most light, frivolous comedy that is just trying to make you laugh, to movies that explore the most complicated side of the human soul. As an actor, I play all of those things, and I still like it.

I love the tradition of male coming-of-age films like 'Saturday Night Fever' or 'Mean Streets' or 'Go.' I love those films that work music into those stories.