What John Hughes Taught Me About
the Importance of a Name

I met John Hughes for the first time at my house when I was about 13. I was busy wading through the misery of my middle school years. He must have come over to meet with my father, a movie producer, but what I remember is him taking a seat at the kitchen table where I was doing homework. John Hughes was only in his thirties, but he seemed old to me at the time. I was into art and he was fascinated with my sketchbook, which served for me as a sort of diary. The pages were filled not only with drawings, but poems, ideas for stories and notes from friends. He took out his own Moleskin notebook and let me skim through it. His handwriting was neater, but it didn’t look all that different from mine. He pointed to the cover of my book, which had a heart drawn on it, executed in green Sharpie by my friend Krista. Written inside the heart were the following sentences; “Amanda rocks,” and “Amanda is the coolest,” and “Amanda is my BFF.”

“Who is Amanda?” he asked, confused. My name, after all, is Sloane.

“I go by my middle name at school,” I said, explaining that I’d ditched the name Sloane the year before, in 7th grade, because it was bad enough having frizzy red hair and freckles in Los Angeles without being saddled with a “freak” name. This was the early 1980s, and the Sawyers and Apples of the world had yet to make their introductions.

John wanted to know more.

“Well,” I said, delighted to have an audience,  “Amanda, like Jenny or Danielle, is a ‘pretty’ girl name.”

John nodded. “And that’s important,” he said, somewhere in-between a question and a statement.

“Duh.”

John listened to me complain until my father arrived. I was a champion complainer. John Hughes was a champion listener. That day he listened to me complain not only about my name, but about how much I hated school, how much I loathed my pretty older sister, and how much I resented the fact that the boys in my school were clearly too superficial to like me and were preoccupied instead with drooling over my best friend, Danielle.

It was a heady conversation. He wasn’t the first adult to take interest in my life. My father and I were very close; he knew my friends and he was entertained by the trivialities of my daily dramas, but I was keenly aware, even at 12, that John Hughes, unlike my father, didn’t owe me his attention. More to the point, he wasn’t just amused by the petty preoccupations of a pre-teen; he understood and validated them as significant. Needless to say, I enjoyed his company.

After that, John Hughes would call the house on and off, sometimes to talk to my father about business, often to talk to me. My dad would occasionally be annoyed, but usually indulgent. If I were in the midst of some tween crisis, however insipid, John Hughes would check in more frequently to see how the events had played out. He understood how the world could change in just a few hours at my age. After all, his best movies took place over a short, emotionally charged period of time; a disappointing birthday weekend, a day in detention, an epic afternoon playing hooky. He seemed to have easy access to his own adolescent feelings; he understood the emotional space between self-entitlement and self-loathing.

I never felt like John Hughes was mining me for information in part because he wanted my opinion on things too. Did I like so and so book, did I see this movie and, almost always, he would play a new song by a new band over the telephone. I remember when he played Don’t You Forget About Me by a band I’d never heard of called Simple Minds. I told him it was “just okay.”

By the time Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was released in 1986, the year I turned 16, I hadn’t spoken to John Hughes in well over a year. I understood that he was busy, even as I was perfecting the art of applying self-tanner. My father hadn’t said much about the new movie so I was shocked to discover that Hughes had named Ferris’s exquisite girlfriend, not Tandy, as was written in the original script, but Sloane. Sloane was not a name one heard back then so I had to assume I’d made an impression. At least my name had.

To an author, character names matter. I recently learned that Ian Fleming wanted “the plainest-sounding name” for his fictional super spy. He borrowed that name from an American ornithologist, not because he admired his work (though he did) but because James Bond was the “dullest” name he’d ever heard. According to The Washington Post, he later apologized for any inconvenience using his name might have caused the scholar and told Mrs. Bond: “In return, I can offer you unlimited use of the name Ian Fleming for any purposes you might think fit. Perhaps one day your husband will discover a particularly horrible species of bird which he would like to christen in an insulting fashion by calling it Ian Fleming.” As far as it is known, the real James Bond didn’t mind the identity theft but I imagine it caused him some minor embarrassments.

*

My sister recently asked why I’d named the beautiful but insufferable sister in my new novel Amanda, my middle name. She wanted to know if I still thought of Amanda as a pretty girl’s name (like Amanda Jones from John Hughes’s Some Kind of Wonderful) or if I’d just wanted to distract her (and perhaps those who know us) from interpreting the character as an unflattering portrayal of her.

I chose the name Amanda, though, and Janine for her sister, because I see them as so quintessentially American, names the unorthodox son of a Jewish immigrant (Marty Kessler) might well have chosen for his modern daughters. I like to pick a character’s name based on what I imagine that character’s parents might have expected of their children. Readers can glean a lot of information from a character’s name.

But names also take on a life of their own. In my novel, There’s a Word for That, the characters’ names play a central role creating conflict. Amanda’s sister, Janine Kessler, is a former childhood television star, now burdened by the notoriety of her name, buried under the weight of an identity she can’t shake. Bunny Small (a character in the novel whose name is at odds with her powerful and charismatic personality) borrows her son’s name, Henry Holter, for the hero in her massively successful series of young adult novels.

Far from flattered, Henry is oppressed by the eponymic tribute, his anger the point upon which their contentious relationship spins. But neither Janine nor Henry feel they can change their names, the insult to their parents is finally too great. Much like myself, my characters have mixed feelings about their names. Would I have liked my name better had John Hughes not borrowed it for Ferris Bueller, or would I have liked it less?

Last week I was at shopping at Sephora, a store that sells high end cosmetics and beauty products.  As I was checking out, the salesman looked at my credit card and smiled, not because I’d just been conned into spending $200 on empty promises, but because of the name on my card.  He told me that every time he hears the name Sloane it reminds him of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  Had I ever seen it? Of course I’ve seen it. Hasn’t everyone?

I smiled and nodded. I certainly didn’t tell him that my father produced the movie, or that I had briefly known John Hughes. I didn’t say anything, in part because that would be completely obnoxious, and in part because I don’t like disappointing people. I’ve never been able to think of myself in a league with Sloane Peterson.

I’ve now spent more than 30 years listening to stranger’s talk about Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  Every time I introduce myself, use my credit card, or go the doctor.

Unlike in middle school, I’m now at peace with the name. I have, however, had mixed feelings about it being so tied up with a character who was so memorable precisely because she was so tough to live up to. Sloane Peterson wasn’t saving lives or bettering the world, but she was, to me, simply the coolest. Maybe it was her laid back, fearless attitude, so unlike my neurotic, Jewish deportment, maybe it was her smooth tan legs, so unlike my freckled limbs, or maybe it was just that white fringe jacket paired with the shorts and boots, so unlike my high school uniform; the stonewash denim vest paired with neon leggings and jelly shoes.

As I’ve gotten older, as Ferris Bueller‘s Day Off has aged, I don’t get asked about my name quite as often. It’s no longer so unusual. There are Sloanes on TV and movies and Sloane Stephens playing tennis and even a little girl named Sloane in my sons’ school (who was named after Sloane Peterson). I’ll never know how big or small a part my relationship with John Hughes weighed in on his decision to name his character after me. Maybe it was a tribute because he saw a better version of me trapped inside that teenage bundle of insecurity, maybe it was a consolation prize because he thought I’d never measure up, or maybe, most likely, he just liked the name. I imagine he wanted a name that would stand out with the character. I wanted a name that would allow me to fit in.