"Pretty In Pink" screening tonight, and a YouTube miracle!

One of John Hughes most popular teen films will be showing tonight at the Hollywood Outdoor Cinema. The LA Times had an article about it, noting that the turnout will probably be bigger due to Hughes passing in Thursday. In fact they're expecting this to turn into a tribute night, with an already scheduled "Pretty In Pink" dance following the movie.

Yesterday I thought to myself that if this is going to be more of a tribute evening, I should contact the organizers about showing the "Through The Eyes Of John Hughes" music video I cut. So I sent an e-mail, with a link to the clip online, through the official site and not a half hour later the phone rang. They watched it, they loved it, and definitely want to run it right before the movie!! Yes!!!

And another great thing has occured! Right after Hughes death on Thursday, I was trying to find another video upload site where I could put the music video. YouTube had silenced the audio portion months ago because it conflicted with the copyright Warner Music Group had with "Don't You (Forget About Me)" by Simple Minds. I did manage to post it to vimeo.com, but it was taken down the next day, also because of copyright bullshit. So, being a persistent ass and not wanting to be defeated, I posted it AGAIN on vimeo.com under a different name. That continues to be up there since yesterday morning. However just on a whim, I decided to give YouTube one more shot and uploaded it one more time, also under my channel user name. I think the gods (who must be big fans of John Hughes) were smiling and granted me passage unfettered!

The truth of the matter is, that Simple Minds song has changed hands as far as who owns the rights since YouTube silenced my original upload. Sony has control of the song now. And to my amazement, they only required an advertisement banner pop up at the beginning, directing you to where you can buy "Don't You (Forget About Me)"! So now I'm back in business!!!

On Thursday, after the news broke of John Hughes death, the view counter on the audio-silenced version began to climb rapidly. That morning it was at 15,859 hits, and that was over a two year period. In 24 hours it climbed to 18,000, and is now at over 20,000 hits!!! Even without audio, simply because people were coming there to connect! Pretty much immediately I put a banner over the clip, pointing the way to the new uploads. The hit counters on those combined are well over a thousand now!

Here is the NEWLY UPLOADED version of my music video tribute, "Through The Eyes Of John Hughes"! Once again, enjoy!