The cult 80s films of the late director and film producer John Hughes are characterized by numerous musical highlights. Now the soundtracks from his films will be collected in a box set entitled Life Moves Pretty Fast: The John Hughes Mixtapes. The collection is slated for release on November 11th via Demon/Edsel.
“Life Moves Pretty Fast”: 74 hits in one box
The box set is described as “the first official compilation of music from the films of legendary filmmaker John Hughes”. Covering Hughes’ career from 1983 to 1989, it includes soundtrack clips from the films Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, National Lampoon’s Vacation”, “Some Kind of Wonderful”, “She’s Having a Baby”, “The Great Outdoors”, “Uncle Buck” and “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”. The project was curated by Hughes’ supervisor Tarquin Gotch.
“Life Moves Pretty Fast” is available as a 74-track 4xCD with a bonus 7-inch and a cassette, as a limited edition 73-track 6xLP on red vinyl and as a 25-track 2xLP. Both the deluxe CD set and the limited vinyl collection come with a memoir catalog by Matthew Broderick, James Hughes and Tarquin Gotch and a track-by-track description.
All versions of the box set also include Simple Minds’ song “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” as well as tracks by Kate Bush, Oingo Boingo, OMD, Big Audio Dynamite, the Psychedelic Furs and more.
Tribute to John Hughes
Gotch still remembers the old approach with the soundtracks. “Back when we were working on these film scores, the best way to send music around the world was on cassette, via Fedex. We sent John tapes of newly released music, demos, mixes ready (and in return he sent us VHS videos of the scenes that needed music),” he said.
Hughes’ son, James Hughes, who worked with Demon Music Group on the release, added: “It serves as a reminder not only to the musicians who made it up [John Hughes] in the 1980s, but also because of how intensively his search for music went beyond this era. Up until his last days he was still collecting prodigious amounts of music from around the world, a far cry from the New Romantic and New Wave sounds that still define him to many.”
The box set can here be pre-ordered.