Legendary Movie Man John Hughes Dead At Age 59
I have a serious case of the sads (hattip MK at Dlisted) today upon learning the man who defined my youth on film has gone to the great big movie screen in the sky.
John Hughes, responsible for some of the greatest movies ever made in the 80's, died of a heart attack yesterday at the age of 59. Oddly, we've recently embarked on a journey of his films, including Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Weird Science, Breakfast Club, National Lampoon's Vacation (the whole series), and Home Alone (1 and 2). This list is merely touching the surface of the films Hughes was responsible for either writing, directing or producing.
John Hughes single-handedly made Molly Ringwald a household name, and quite honestly, no other filmmaker has come close to capturing the teen-angst of Generation X better than he did.
John began his career writing for the parody magazine National Lampoon (responsible for the great Animal House — another one of my favorite movies - though Hughes was not involved in that film.) Specifically, I am most fond of Pretty In Pink, which pretty much summed up my one and only major heartbreak in high school (except mine didn't end happily ever after) and for that, I will forever be in debt to Mr. Hughes.
Here's more on the legend from the LATimes:
Filmmaker John Hughes burned brightest in the '80s, when he defined teen angst in terms of the caste system of the suburban high school experience, a thread that others would pick up again and again.His films were talky, in a good way. Like the kids whose stories he was telling, he let them ramble. Teen self-absorption was treated with reverence, not ridicule. The world might make fun of them, their classmates, their brothers and sisters too, but never John Hughes.
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