Pretty in Pink's Original Ending Got Booed?!

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Thirty-five years ago, John Hughes’s film Pretty in Pink landed in theaters. Thirty-five years later, it remains a seminal film about the high school experience, touching on topics of crushes, classes, and classism.

In the film, Molly Ringwald’s working-class character Andie ends up with Andrew McCarthy’s “richie” Blane. However, that wasn’t the intended ending for the film. The original ending had Andie ending up with Jon Cryer’s character, Duckie, with the two dancing together at prom. However, in early screenings of the film, the ending didn’t go over well.

Director Howard Deutch said, “The movie’s playing like gangbusters. And then it got to the end, the prom, and Jon gets Molly. And the audience started to boo. They almost walked out, and I was, ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’ The whole movie was built to have Jon Cryer end up with Molly. True love triumphs.

“All I remember is the studio having to put me up at the hotel where we were filming because I was so sick,” said Ringwald of filming the original ending. “I would rest between takes, and someone would have to come and get me to go back on the extremely hot dance floor. I remember Jon and I spinning around and around until I literally passed out in the middle of the prom.”

Filming had wrapped months earlier, when the studio called on the film’s stars to come back to completely reshoot the ending.

“At the time, I was annoyed, because I wanted to be the guy who got the girl,” Cryer said. “I was shooting another film at the time and they flew me back to L.A. — it wasn’t until then that I got the sides and they told me, ‘Oh, yeah, by the way, your character is not getting the girl anymore.’”

However, as time has passed Cryer now has a different feeling towards the film’s ending.

“A lot of people feel [Andie spurning Duckie] is a historic injustice along the lines of the massacres of Serbia, or whatever,” Cryer said. “But it is not that. It's just a movie, folks. I'm happy the way it came out. The movie holds up great."