Michael LownA Tribute to John Hughes
August 7th 2009 11:17
Adding to ayear all ready filled with both shocking celebrity passings, famed '80s director/writer/producer John Hughes has passed away at the age of 59. Some probably won't regonize the name, but Hughes created dozens of '80s classic, at the same time creating a new breed of teenege comedy films.
Hughes first started his career around the '70s as one of the original writers for National Lampoon, as well as writing for their films such as Class Reunion. He did hit it big until he wrote the Chevy Chase classic Vacation, directed by Harold Ramis (he also wrote and produced subsequent sequels European Vacation and Christams Vacation).
In 1984, Hughes turned to both directing and writing in the now classic 80s film, Sixteen Candles. Showing teenage angst as they start to grow into adulthood, audiences were surpised, in a decade filled with films like Porky's, to see teenage characters with geniune problems. Hughes continued to direct his batch of "brat pack" films, including Wierd Science, Pretty in Pinkl, The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. With his assortment of memorable characaters (from the geeky Ducky to the too-cool-for-school Ferris Bueller), he made actors like Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, and Matthew Broderick into household names.
In '87, Hughes proved to his fans he can also direct for adult: the film was Plane, Trains, and Automobiles, an R-rated comedy which continues to remain his most critical-hailed work. He continued to direct until his final film, 1991's underperforming Curly Sue, and then focused entirely on writing once again.
Easily his biggest hit was Home Alone in 1990. The film, directed by Gremlins writer Chris Columbus, became the higgest grosssing film in the box office that year as well as the most successful comedy of all time, launched Malculey Culkin into superstardom, and lead the way for an equally succesful sequel.
Hughes continued to write, but nothing reached the quality of popularity of his 80's work (Beethoven, Baby's Day Out, Flubber), and started to pull away from the spotlight. By the late 90s, he was nowhere to be seen. Much like other filmmakers Terrence Malick and writers J.D. Salinger or Thomas Pynchon, Hughes become increasingly reclusive. He never gave interviews and was rarely photographed in public. Screenplays he had written beforehand were still made in movies (Maid in Manhatten, Drillbet Taylor), even though he was created under the pseudonym Edmund Dantes, which most literary buffs would know as the protagonist in The Count of Monte Cristo.
Hughes death not alone marks the passing of a great director and writer, but a legend of his generation and created several films that cleary defined our childhoods.
John Hughes
1950-2009
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