Stephen Chbosky
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The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Directed by Jim Sharman
influenced The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
Music
Though some things get lost in translation, there are compensating virtues: The dialogue is filled with nifty literary references, a clever nod to "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" is great fun, and the emotional roller coaster rings true.
The movie is a big Valentine box of creamy nostalgia: for the early ’90s, for the musical touchstones of the period (The Smiths, The Rocky Horror Picture Show) and for the lovely delusion that outcasts are the hippest kids around.
There's an affectionate nod to The Rocky Horror Picture Show and British bands the Smiths and Dexys Midnight Runners, and a suitable, crowd-pleasing denouement featuring David Bowie's classic ''Heroes''.
They introduce him to their (sort of) indie lives, in which they recreate “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” at the local arthouse every weekend.
They glory in the music that Charlie loves, dress up and act out The Rocky Horror Picture Show on the weekend with their avant-garde friends and party like they’re already in college.
They introduce him to the Smiths, mix tapes, and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” as well as to various pharmaceutical pleasures and risks.
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Directed by John Hughes
influenced The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
Themes Visuals
Even without the music, baby boomers and Gen Xers will fondly recall any number of director John Hughes’s character-driven ensemble dramadies, such as The Breakfast Club.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower recalls dozens of high school movies from Fast Times at Ridgemont High to Lucas to The Breakfast Club to Mean Girls and so on...
Teen angst is a well-worn topic on screen, and prone to both critical dismissal (Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series) and captivation (John Hughes' The Breakfast Club).
High School in the late 1980’s and 1990’s bore little resemblance to the hyper-stylized version portrayed by John Hughes in films like The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink.
You’ve seen it all before, from Holden Caulfield to “The Breakfast Club” to “Degrassi High”: misfit teens in suburbia having wee existential crises, massive unrequited crushes, and emotions no one else has ever felt before.
All I can say with any certainty is that Chbosky’s Perks is the first film in far too long to stand shoulder to shoulder with Hughes’ The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful – screenplay bibles for emotionally adrift teenagers.
He likes Star Wars and learning about space.
Auggie is a science geek who loves “Star Wars” and Minecraft, ice cream and X-Box sports games; he’s fueled by all-American fantasies of going to outer space.
He loves “ Star Wars ” and Minecraft.
While he certainly gets handed his fair share of gut punches and is forced to shed more than a few tears, he is also a sweet and normal kid who loves Star Wars and expresses a wonderful sense of self-deprecation -- opening the movie by referring in voice over to his birth as a joke, with his deformity being the punchline.
When your main character dreams up encounters with Star Wars characters that come to life; when his school has Mandy Patinkin as the principal; when the film stops to demonstrate and explain a very cool refraction experiment that you can subsequently try at home – well, sometimes you have to just let go and surrender yourself to the wonder.
Born with severe facial deficiencies (explained as the result of an unlucky combination of bad genetics from his parents played by Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson, also described as a disease that could have easily went to his four years older sister Via), Auggie, as he is nicknamed by his family, is an introverted child fascinated by astronomy and sci-fi entertainment such as Star Wars undergoing homeschooling conducted by his mother Isabel.
Pretty in Pink (1986)
Directed by Howard Deutch
influenced The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
Visuals Themes
High School in the late 1980’s and 1990’s bore little resemblance to the hyper-stylized version portrayed by John Hughes in films like The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink.
Chbosky employs the comedic-dramatic tightrope frequently walked by the late John Hughes in such mid-80’s, adolescent-skewing classics as The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Pretty in Pink, as well as an arsenal of me-decade tunes by such singers as David Bowie, The Smiths, Morrissey and, naturally, Dexys Midnight Runners.
All I can say with any certainty is that Chbosky’s Perks is the first film in far too long to stand shoulder to shoulder with Hughes’ The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful – screenplay bibles for emotionally adrift teenagers.
But that something is way too dramatic for a movie that in spirit is closer to Pretty in Pink than Cries and Whispers .
In some ways, “Wonder” feels like another “Mask,” the moving 1985 film about a teenage boy named Rocky with a skull deformity.
Peter Bogdanovich did it in “Mask” (1985), his straight-up tale of a teenager with a face of scowling strangeness who came to embrace the person he was.
His life up to now has not been easy despite his generally sunny attitude: He was born with a craniofacial disorder, which puts him, for comparison, in the same category as the Eric Stoltz character in the 1985 movie, Mask.
Comparisons will be made to Peter Bogdanovich's Mask, but where that film surrounds its goo with edgy surfaces, Wonder is full-on tender.
While countless novelists have written screenplays, it’s extremely rare for one to also direct a film version of his own work — the only two I can think of off the top of my head are Norman Mailer (“Tough Guys Don’t Dance’’) and Stephen King (um, “Maximum Overdrive’’).
Every writer thinking they'd be better off directing their own book should sit down and watch Maximum Overdrive, Stephen King's embarrassing 1986 directorial debut—and, to date, his only attempt at feature filmmaking .
Words on Bathroom Walls (2020)
Directed by Thor Freudenthal
influenced by The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
Plot Themes
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: It somewhat mirrors The Perks of Being a Wallflower with its mentally ill protagonist, first-person narrative style and new-kid-in-school plot.
However, one wishes Words on Bathroom Walls captured the raw emotional depths of films like The Perks of Being a Wallflower or Edge of Seventeen .
Now following in The Perks of Being a Wallflower ‘s shoes, another story of young love, self-acceptance, and mental illness is offered in Words on Bathroom Walls .
The setup for director Thor Freudenthal’s (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) drama might sound like something you’ve seen countless times before in movies like The Perks of Being a Wallflower or Girl, Interrupted, but there is a distinctive approach that Words on Bathroom Walls takes that is more realistic and uplifting than most teenage love stories.
Late in the film, Via is part of a production of “Our Town,” and there is in Chbosky’s film a touch of Thornton Wilder and a feel for the honest everyday rhythms of life.
And a massive plot-point involves this cluster of extremely savvy indie music buffs in 1991 somehow not managing to recognise David Bowie's legendary 1977 single "Heroes".
Basada en el best seller de la escritora R.J Palacio, Chbosky, con un tono alentador, invita a la apreciación de la vida, con sus complicaciones y sus momentos óptimos, sin caer demasiado en excesos lacrimógenos que ofrecen los retratos del bullying y de los individuos que luchan contra la adversidad, como en El Gran Simon (Simon Birch, 1998).
The Edge of Seventeen (2016)
Directed by Kelly Fremon Craig
influenced by The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
Themes Visuals
Some are light like Juno and Easy A whereas others are heavier such as Thirteen and The Perks of Being a Wallflower .
Director Kelly Fremon Craig’s decision to bring a more John Hughes’ vibe to her film rather than the sun-drenched depression the likes of The Spectacular Now and The Perks of Being a Wallflower brought to the screen was a brave one.
But it can hold its own against “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” “Clueless” and other movies that have raised the bar on teenage movies.
In the best teen films, from “Sixteen Candles” to “Clueless” to “Superbad” to the greatest high school movie of the last ten years, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” the main characters have a way of occupying the moral high ground.
Not since “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” have I seen a drama comedy evoke the themes of John Hughes so beautifully.
Christian Slater, Winona Ryder and Shannen Doherty were all in their teens in 1988 when they shot Heathers, still the definitively corrosive portrait of life and death in high school (and soon to be a Bravo TV series).
Sixteen Candles (1984)
Directed by John Hughes
influenced The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
Themes
It may sound like John Hughes, but Chbosky hasn’t reinvented the likes of Sixteen Candles here, despite a pleasing cameo by Joan Cusack as a sage shrink.
Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)
Directed by Howard Deutch
influenced The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
Themes
All I can say with any certainty is that Chbosky’s Perks is the first film in far too long to stand shoulder to shoulder with Hughes’ The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful – screenplay bibles for emotionally adrift teenagers.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015)
Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
influenced by The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
Visuals Themes
Stealing many of its visual cues from Wes Anderson and borrowing liberally otherwise from the likes of its fellow recent YA adaptations “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and “The Fault in Our Stars,” “Me and Earl” unquestionably would have starred Michael Cera, had it been made 5 or 6 years earlier.
It’s a coming of age movie on a par with other recent exceptions to the rule, like The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) and the still-playing (if only just) Dope.
David Lynch did it in “The Elephant Man” (1980), his shrewdly restrained, underbelly-of-London Gothic horror weeper, which revealed John Merrick, beneath his warped and bubbled flesh, to be a figure of entrancing delicacy.
But when they have, the results have often been moving and memorable — like David Lynch’s “The Elephant Man” and Peter Bogdanovich’s “Mask.”
Dazed and Confused (1993)
Directed by Richard Linklater
influenced The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
The two of them co-starred in one of my favorite films, "Dazed and Confused," and it was just great to see them together again.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018)
Directed by Desiree Akhavan
influenced by The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
Themes
It all reminded me of my immediate reaction to watching Stephen Chbosky’s magnificent 2012 adaptation of his own novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower for the first time, and it’s safe to say Akhavan’s effort will likely have the same sort of lasting impact and resonating staying power that one has proven to have.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
Directed by Amy Heckerling
influenced The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
Themes
The Perks of Being a Wallflower recalls dozens of high school movies from Fast Times at Ridgemont High to Lucas to The Breakfast Club to Mean Girls and so on...
Chemical Hearts (2020)
Directed by Richard Tanne
influenced by The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
Characters Themes
Henry is practically a cardboard cutout of Logan Lerman’s character in The Perks of Being a Wallflower , and sometimes Grace’s dialogue and mannerisms are so aggressively “edgy” that she feels like a remnant of the Tumblr “I’m not like other girls” phase as opposed to an actual fleshed-out human being.
It’s similar in tone to the sturdy indie The Spectacular Now or something like The Perks of Being a Wallflower .
With Green came more authors delving deeper into the psychological upheaval felt by high schoolers, resulting in streaming and cinematic adaptations of 13 Reasons Why and The Perks of Being A Wallflower.