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The clear winner is easy. When I heard Clint Eastwood would appear in a car commercial and have a pep talk with America, I expected something a little more light. Maybe they’d use his “Dirty Harry” image in some satirical way. Who knows. But, when the advertisement started playing, the entire room (which was previously filled with talk and laughter and some yelling) went silent. Everyone was glued and listened to every word that slipped from Eastwood’s mouth. It was a pep talk alright. And I say we band together and start a petition to nominate Eastwood for an Oscar for his little pep talk. The second he starts walking towards the screen, he consumes you in his shadow. He speaks from experience and he speaks almost as a godfather to us all. By the end of it I wanted to stand up and salute the flag. It makes one more and more excited to see Eastwood return to the front of the cameras for his next flick.

Coming in a close second would have to be the king of funny: Jerry Seinfeld. He brings the laughs in his car commercial. He never relies upon copying his “Seinfeld” image to bring the laughs. He builds on it and that’s why we love and miss him so much. His dryness and his wit and sometimes overacting are exactly what we want and he gives it to us all in the name of advertising:

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Coming in dead last is the advertisement relying completely on the glory days of Matthew Broderick. I love “Ferris Bueller” as much as the next guy, but the reason he and this commercial fail is because they rely completely on that image. They just simply copy act after act and line after line from the movie. It requires nothing and gets nothing in return. Eastwood and Seinfeld gave us new and that’s what we want:

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If there’s any meaning to take from these advertisements, it’s this: America misses the old school. We miss real men like Eastwood sitting us down and telling us: “It’s alright sonny. Don’t you worry.” We miss Seinfeld’s wit making us laugh in a genuine way. Nowadays, we are left with Taylor Lautner pretending he’s an action hero and “30 Rock” pretending it’s a hit with America like “Seinfeld.”

We don’t want these guys mimicking their old selves (hence: Matthew Broderick). We want them still rocking the screens and the hearts and minds of America. Yet, Hollywood doesn’t seem to get that we like real men and genuinely funny people.

It’s halftime, Big Hollywood, let’s send them a message.

Admittedly, I have not seen every John Hughes movie. Before his passing, though, I had seen only a few of his most well-known pictures like “The Breakfast Club,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” and “Home Alone.”  Last weekend, after the death of Hughes, I watched two of his other well-known movies, “Pretty in Pink” and “Sixteen Candles,” for the first time in commemoration of his death and to see why these films had such an effect on the young people of the 1980’s.

Because I was not a teenager during the 80’s, I did not have the opportunity to watch Hughes’ movies during the decade that Hughes helped define for so many young moviegoers. I was a child of the “Home Alone” era, not a teenager of the “Breakfast Club.”

However, after watching “Pretty” and “Sixteen” last weekend, it is clear why Hughes was such a phenomenon as a writer for so many young people of that generation. Each Hughes film that I have seen has a simple and often an easily relatable premise. A group of complicated and unique teenagers spend detention together. A mischievous high school boy skips school with his friends. A high school girl deals with social and class distinctions in dating.

However, these overall plots do not tell the whole stories of these films because in these films, the characters are dealing with more than the premise suggests and many of those characters discover things about themselves and about others that they might have missed had they not looked “around every once in a while.” The group in detention learns about how complicated fellow students who are often defined by high school “stereotypes” (i.e. the athlete, the nerd, the rebel etc.) can be. The high school boy who skips class realizes, among other things, his best friend’s deep frustration with his father who seems to love his car more than his son. The girl who deals with class distinctions learns how people can defy their social classes and their peers if they choose to.

Renowned film critic Roger Ebert recently wrote, “Few directors have left a more distinctive or influential body of work than John Hughes. The creator of the modern American teenager film, who died Thursday in New York, made a group of films that are still watched and quoted today.”

Even though many would say that John Hughes reached his peak in the 1980’s, people are still watching and enjoying his films today for the first time (I can personally attest to that fact).  The number of tributes to Hughes over the past several days shows how important Hughes was as a writer and as a director. Taking Ferris Bueller’s advice, since John Hughes died last week, many people have stopped and looked around and they have realized how much they will miss John Hughes.