John Hughes

John Hughes (born February 18, 1950, Lansing, Michigan, U.S.—died August 6, 2009, New York, New York) was an American film director, writer, and producer who in the 1980s established the modern American teen movie as a genre. Hughes successfully portrayed the reality of adolescent life while maintaining a funny and lighthearted tone.

As a teen, Hughes moved with his family to Chicago, the city whose environs would later serve as the setting for many of his films. He attended the University of Arizona in Tucson, left before graduating, and returned to Chicago to work as an advertising copywriter. He began his comedy career writing jokes for stand-up comedians such as Rodney Dangerfield. His film career was launched when he began writing screenplays for movies produced by National Lampoon magazine.

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After finding success as a screenwriter for Class Reunion (1982), National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), and other comedies, Hughes wrote, directed, and sometimes produced the string of teen-oriented films that would make him famous; he founded his own production company in 1985. Sixteen Candles (1984), followed by The Breakfast Club (1985) and Pretty in Pink (1986), made stars out of a group of young actors—Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, and Judd Nelson, among them—who collectively became known as the Brat Pack. (This name was a play on the Rat Pack, a close-knit group of celebrities of an earlier era that included Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr.)

(Discover “12 Essential Brat Pack Flicks.”)

Hughes also found success with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), a movie famous for the lead character’s “breaking of the fourth wall,” looking straight into the camera and talking directly to the viewer, and a film he wrote, directed, and produced. Starring Matthew Broderick as a boisterous hooky-playing high-schooler, the film typified the “us versus them” mentality of Hughes’s most beloved films. Hughes collaborated with the well-established comedians John Candy and Steve Martin in Planes, Trains, & Automobiles (1987); Candy later appeared in the Hughes-penned Uncle Buck (1989).

In financial terms, Hughes’s greatest success was Home Alone (1990; directed by Chris Columbus), a film starring Macaulay Culkin as a child left to his own devices when his parents lose track of him on their way to a vacation in France. It inspired three sequels (Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Home Alone 3, and Home Alone 4), all of which were written by Hughes. Although he continued to produce and to write screenplays during the 1990s, he directed his last film, Curly Sue, in 1991. He produced Miracle on 34th Street (1994), a remake of the classic 1947 film, and New Port South (2001), a film written by his son James. Among the films he was credited with writing (under his pseudonym) were Maid in Manhattan (2002) and Drillbit Taylor (2008). He died of a heart attack while in Manhattan.