A: Yeah, I know. I know. She's dead, by the way. The girl playing Bennie, Alexa Kenin, died not long after we made the movie. There are several sort of mysteries about her death. At the time, we were told she had an allergic reaction to an asthma inhaler. But I heard years later that she had actually been beaten by her boyfriend or something like that. To this day, I don't know exactly what happened.

Q: When was that? Recently?

A: No, that was right before the film came out. The film is in memory of Alexa Kenin. There's a little 80s mystery for ya. What the fuck happened to Bennie?

Q: At the end of Pretty in Pink, you didn't get the girl, but you got Kristy Swanson.

A: Yes, by golly. That's not so terrible, that I got Buffy the Vampire Slayer, thank you very much.

Q: Were you up for Ferris Bueller's Day Off?

A: No. They started shooting Ferris right as we were ending Pretty in Pink. There was overlap and there was no way for me to do it.

Q: The only person who was in both? Kristy Swanson.

A: Yes, by golly! Kristy was only added at the end when we did the reshoots on Pretty in Pink.

Q: What was the original ending?

A: Duckie shows up at the prom and they end up dancing the Moonlight Dance together to David Bowie's "Heroes." And that was the end of the movie.

Q: Fuck. No way!

A: Yeah, and as we were shooting it there were a couple of problems. Molly had been ill with a stomach flu and we were shooting it and she literally collapsed while we were dancing the Moonlight Dance which, you know, sort of put a dent in her moment at the prom. We had to stop shooting for half a day because she was really ill. So we couldn't really shoot the scene the way we wanted to shoot it, you know. And then the preview audience didn't react well to it.

Q: God. It seems like so much more of a highbrow ending.

A: I know. I know. It was a couple of things. They felt like if the audience had invested so much in the romance between Molly and Andrew, that they'd really want it to have a more hopeful ending. Also, John Hughes didn't want to send the message that it is bad for poor people and rich people to try and fall in love, because the class thing is insurmountable. To this day, people regard that as a criminal ending that Duckie doesn't get her.

Q: True!

A: People come up to me with the sort of anger that they really should be keeping for war crimes in Bosnia. They take it out on the ending of that film, saying "You were robbed, man!"

Q: You were.

A: I just say, let it go. It's just a movie.

Q: The worst thing though is that it's so unbelievable. Blane is such an asshole.

A: Yeah. And he's got no lips, for God's sake. That's the big problem.