Psychedelic Furs frontman says Pretty In Pink filmmaker misinterpreted song

<p>Richard Butler, 64, said the film, released in 1986, had been a "double-edged sword" for the band, as it introduced them to a new audience but alienated existing fans.</p><p>Pretty In Pink, starring Molly Ringwald, is recognised as one of the "brat pack" films alongside The Breakfast Club.</p><p>Butler says that the film's writer, John Hughes, took the meaning too literally and had the film centre on a woman in a pink dress, while Butler says it actually referred to a wayward girl and her nudity.</p><p>However, Butler was more complimentary of the use of their song Love My Way in Luca Guadagnino's film Call Me By Your Name, starring Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer.</p><p>He said: "I thought that was great. It could have almost been a long-form video for that song in terms of paralleling the meaning of it.</p><p>"Other things like Pretty In Pink, John Hughes - God rest his soul - kind of got the wrong end of the stick with that song.</p><p>"He made it to be literally about a girl that was wearing a pink dress and it wasn't about that at all. It was about a rather unfortunate girl.</p><p>"Me saying pretty in pink meant somebody who is naked. It was a metaphor... given that, the movie did us a lot of good. It was a double-edged sword because it increased our audience but a lot of people that were the darker set of our fans thought: 'It's a brat pack movie scene now and we are not really into that.'"</p> <p><strong>:: Listen to the Backstage podcast on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/backstage/id1449619878" target="_blank">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvMzI4NzI1MS9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVk" target="_blank">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5lUMl2swObUj56TGMibLzm" target="_blank">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://www.spreaker.com/show/backstage_17" target="_blank">Spreaker</a></strong></p><p>Butler added that he was offered a role in a film about the Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani after Hughes discovered his love of art.</p><p>He added: "I did hang out with John Hughes and he was showing me some clips from another movie he had done, Ferris Bueller's Day Off.</p><p>"He was talking about this part when they were walking around the Chicago art museum and I was calling out the paintings as he passed them.</p><p>"And he said 'Wow, have you ever wanted to be in a movie?' and I said 'Not particularly' and he said 'I'm thinking about doing a film about Modigliani and you would be good in that role'.</p><p>"I thought, 'Well that's very strange' and I didn't think much more about it and nothing ever more was said about it."</p>