By MICHAEL CIEPLY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/August 7, 2009
LOS ANGELES — John Hughes, the once-prolific filmmaker whose sweet and sassy comedies like “Sixteen Candles” and “The Breakfast Club” plumbed the lives of teenagers in the 1980s, died Thursday on a morning walk while visiting Manhattan. He was 59.
The cause was a heart attack, according to a statement from the publicists Paul Bloch and Michelle Bega.
Mr. Hughes turned out a series of hits that captured audiences and touched popular culture — and then flummoxed both Hollywood and his fans by suddenly fading from the scene in the early 1990s. He surfaced sometimes as a writer, occasionally under his pen name, Edmond Dantès, the real name of the Dumas hero in “The Count of Monte Cristo.”
John Hughes in 1990
(Paul Natkin/WireImage)
His seeming disappearance inspired a 2009 documentary, “Don’t You Forget About Me,” by four young filmmakers who went in search of a man who was by then being compared to J. D. Salinger because of his reclusiveness. It became a tribute to Mr. Hughes’s influence on youth culture.
Mr. Hughes, who began his career as an advertising copywriter in Chicago, had been living quietly on a farm in northern Illinois. He is survived by his wife, the former Nancy Ludwig, whom he met in high school; two sons, John and James; and four grandchildren.
John Wilden Hughes Jr. was born on Feb. 18, 1950, in the suburbs of Detroit before moving, at 13, to the Chicago area. His father worked in sales, and he lived in a middle-class, all-American reality that became the mainstay of his films.
“I didn’t have this tortured childhood,” he told The New York Times in a 1991 interview. “I liked it.”
While visiting New York during his advertising days, Mr. Hughes hung around the offices of National Lampoon magazine and was published when he showed a gift for comedy. Once having begun work as a screenwriter, he pursued the craft relentlessly.
In the 1991 interview, he said: “If I’m on a roll, and I finish a script at 3:00, I’ll start another at 3:02.”
Mr. Hughes’ biggest success, in box-office terms, was the “Home Alone” series, of which he was the writer and a producer. The first film, released by 20th Century Fox in 1990, turned the simple tale of a young boy, played by Macaulay Culkin, who was forgotten by his vacationing family, into a monster hit. The film took in more than $285 million at the domestic box office and spawned two sequels.
He had a reputation for discovering and bringing out the best in young actors. In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Culkin said: “I was a fan of both his work and a fan of him as a person. The world has lost not only a quintessential filmmaker whose influence will be felt for generations, but a great and decent man.”
Mr. Hughes’s greatest professional effect came from a series of teen-oriented films he directed in the 1980s, beginning with “Sixteen Candles” in 1984. It was a whip-smart but tender look at coming of age, with Molly Ringwald as a girl whose 16th birthday is forgotten in the whirlwind of her sister’s wedding; it featured emerging actors like Anthony Michael Hall, John Cusack, Joan Cusack and Jami Gertz, among others.
“The Breakfast Club” followed in 1985, with “Weird Science,” immediately behind, in the same year. By then, the troupe of young actors who showed up in films by Mr. Hughes and others who worked in the same vein had expanded to include Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy; they were tagged “The Brat Pack.”
Probably no film so completely captured the arch and almost noxious, yet somehow loveable, quality of Mr. Hughes’s characters as “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” The movie, released by Paramount Pictures in 1986, starred Matthew Broderick as a ne’er-do-well high-schooler who spends more energy avoiding the classroom than he might have used inside.
“He can lie, manipulate and con people with inspired genius, especially in the service of a noble cause such as playing hooky,” Nina Darnton wrote of the Bueller character in a less-than-admiring New York Times review.
But the movie took in $70 million at the box office, and wound up 20 years later on an Entertainment Weekly list of the 50 best high school movies of all time, alongside others from Mr. Hughes.
If the magic seemed to fade — Mr. Hughes’s last movie as a director, “Curly Sue,” fell flat in 1991 — he continued to write for the screen. As recently as last year, working as Edmond Dantès, he shared a story credit with Seth Rogen and Kristofor Brown on “Drillbit Taylor,” in which Owen Wilson played a low-budget bodyguard hired to keep a couple of kids from getting pushed around.
Some in Hollywood surmised that he had stepped away simply because, for all his successes, he did not particularly like the film business and its ways. He was known as a stickler for control who often tangled with executives even as he made their companies a fortune.
Yet Mr. Hughes ultimately marked the business so indelibly that his name has become identified with an entire genre: comedies about disaffected youth.
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Hughes was a master of light, right notes
The filmmaker's world was white, comfortably middle-class and suburban. His view encompassed an easy sentimentality, a measured angst, an outrageous sense of fun.
By BETSY SHARKEY
Los Angeles Times Film Critic
http://www.latimes.com/
August 7, 2009
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.
Writer-director John Hughes, right, on the set of "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" with stars John Candy and Steve Martin. (Joyce Rudolph / Paramount Pictures)
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.
And a generation of kids and future filmmakers like Kevin Smith and Judd Apatow embraced it.
Hughes, who died Thursday at age 59, was fascinated with the human as outsider. Outsiders like "Pretty in Pink's" Molly Ringwald who just wanted to fit in. And outsiders who couldn't care less: Matthew Broderick as Ferris Bueller on his legendary day off, Judd Nelson's not quite broken Bender in "The Breakfast Club," Anthony Michael Hall's martini-mixing geek in "Sixteen Candles," all members of the players club before they were 17.
But Hughes' outsiders lived in a different part of town than, say, Francis Ford Coppola's gritty, wrong side of the tracks "The Outsiders." Hughes outsiders were white, comfortably middle-class and probably from one of Chicago's affluent suburbs, where he grew up and returned in the '90s when he'd had his fill of Hollywood. Things were only slightly sad or bad in his films, there were no serious train wrecks -- only feelings got hurt, and the endings were usually happy ones.
He reflected a very specific slice of Americana that like many, I understood. A pop culture filmmaker adored in the heartland, he knew how to hit all the light notes - an easy sentimentality, a measured angst, an outrageous sense of fun. His was a spoon-full-of-sugar kind of filmmaking that was often exactly what I wanted, if not what I needed.
The slights that life hands us was one of his favorite playgrounds. Forgotten birthdays, forgotten kids, forgotten families -- "Sixteen Candles," "Home Alone," "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" -- someone was forever being overlooked.
When you're Ringwald, and a soft, pouty, still awkward 16, it hurts; when you're an 8-year-old screaming terror embodied by Macaulay Culkin, it's the best Christmas gift ever; and when you're John Candy's middle-aged lonely traveling salesman in a life where nothing, including the suit, fits, it's tragic.
For a period of time, Hughes was so dominant -- certainly in the U.S. where he always played best -- that it's hard to believe that he only directed eight films. He wrote 30 others -- the "Home Alones," most notably -- that were produced, 16 of them in the '80s, 13 in the '90s, and contributed characters or ideas to a handful of others.
Of all of his films, there are two that will forever be quintessentially Hughes for me: "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," absolutely swimming in attitude, which captured brilliantly and irritatingly the kind of cockiness that you envy as a teen, hate as an adult, recognize no matter what age you are, and "The Breakfast Club," life deconstructed in high school detention, the archetypes and the anxiety playing out in real time.
By "Curly Sue" in 1991, Hughes had apparently tired of fighting battles with studio executives who second-guessed him.
He left Hollywood behind and headed back to the Chicago area, where he would still dabble in the business from a distance.
But really, Hughes was a creature of the '80s, and if he hadn't left Hollywood, it was on its way to leaving him.
Comedy took on more of an edge, went raunchier, darker, meaner than Hughes ever could.
In the end, like so many of the characters he created, Hughes had become a cinematic memory stream of another time when things didn't seem so bad.I will light 16 candles and remember.
betsy.sharkey@latimes.com
Hughes dead at 59Director-writer's coming-of-age movies dominated the '80sBy Mark Caro
Chicago Tribune reporter
http://www.chicagotribune.com/August 7, 2009
Few filmmakers define an era, a genre and a place like John Hughes did with his '80s comedies often set on Chicago's North Shore.
"Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (1986)He may not have been a critic's darling, but his name became synonymous with a brand of comedy in which young, rebellious, yet good-at-heart characters battle an establishment that seemed to rankle the filmmaker as well. Films such as "The Breakfast Club," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Home Alone" took on an iconic status, all while his productions revitalized the local film industry and launched scores of careers.
A reclusive figure who in recent years lived in part on a farm in Harvard, Ill., Hughes, 59, died Thursday of a heart attack while walking in Manhattan, his spokeswoman Michelle Bega said. She said the filmmaker was visiting family in New York.
"I feel like a part of my childhood has died," "Funny People" director Judd Apatow said in a statement. "Nobody made me laugh harder or more often than John Hughes."
Macaulay Culkin, launched to stardom as the burglar-bashing kid in the Hughes-written and produced "Home Alone" (1990), said, "I was a fan of both his work and a fan of him as a person. The world has lost not only a quintessential filmmaker whose influence will be felt for generations, but a great and decent man."
"I am truly shocked and saddened by the news about my old friend John Hughes," said Matthew Broderick, who lived out the ultimate Chicago fantasy as the title character of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (1986). "He was a wonderful, very talented guy, and my heart goes out to his family."
Other young actors boosted by Hughes included Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Joan Cusack and her younger brother John in "Sixteen Candles" (1984) and Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson in "The Breakfast Club" (1985).
But Hughes' impact when far beyond performers.
"He put Chicago on the map," said Ernie Malik, unit publicist on nine Hughes-produced movies. "Movies had been made in Chicago before the 1980s but not to the extent and in the numbers that John got produced."
Said Chicago Film Office director Rich Moskal: "His films shooting in Chicago spawned an entire generation of film workers. They went on to be wardrobe designers, gaffers, directors of photography, producers and filmmakers themselves."
Born in Lansing, Mich., Hughes was an ad copywriter and creative director at Leo Burnett in Chicago before breaking through with the screenplays to the 1983 hits "Mr. Mom" and " National Lampoon's Vacation." Then working in the Illinois Film Office, Al Cohn remembers the young Hughes coming in and wanting to launch his directing career in the Chicago area.
"It was interesting to watch his rise from just one of a number of people who come into the office to talk about their hopes and dreams to become this icon of teenage films," Cohn said.
Hughes was as prolific as he was successful, working on multiple films a year with what Moskal called "a Midas touch. There was a time where everything he directed, everything he produced, everything he wrote, all the music that he selected to be in his films were nothing shy of hits."
After "The Breakfast Club" came movies he directed ("Weird Science," "Ferris Bueller," "Planes, Trains & Automobiles") and those he wrote and/or produced ("National Lampoon's European Vacation," "Pretty in Pink," "Some Kind of Wonderful"). "Home Alone" grossed almost $300 million domestically, a huge number in 1990.
David Rochester, who lived down the street from where some of the scenes from "Home Alone" were filmed in Highland Park, remembered Hughes describing the new movie.
"He said it would be a great movie, that it would be the kind of movie that would be played over and over again every Christmas," Rochester said. "I thought he had delusions of grandeur. Of course he was exactly right."
Hughes continued working on several projects at once. "He stayed up all night," Malik said.
Melissa Rochester Rosen, 31, was in 7th grade during the filming. She said their house can be seen when Macaulay Culkin is walking down, missing his family. He looks into a home with holiday activity – that's the Rochester house. She even got to appear in the film when a scene needed reshooting but the extras had gone home. Hughes asked her to stand in instead. "It was very exciting," she said. "I felt like I was being directed by John Hughes."
Hughes had a large farm near Harvard, but was rarely seen and was very private, said neighbors Bill and Sylvia Daletski, whose six-acre property adjoined his. They described him as a good neighbor.
The couple never met him but said they once spotted John Travolta out for a morning walk. Hughes had guest homes on his property, they said.
Hughes put on a large 4th of July fireworks display that his neighbors enjoyed watching. "That was the highlight of John Hughes living there," said Sylvia Daletski.
Jennifer Green, artistic director of the Piven Theater Workshop in Evanston, said Hughes gave opportunities to many young Chicago-area actors including, John and Joan Cusack. "A lot of our more illustrious alumni saw some of their first film work in his productions," Green said. "I think when John Hughes came to town to cast, he made a commitment to offer roles to local talent. Some of those people have gone on to become nationally known."
In 1991 and 1992, Hughes was responsible for the screenplays of "Career Opportunities," "Dutch," "Curly Sue," "Beethoven" (under the pseudonym Edmond Dantes) and "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York."
Meanwhile, he remained in the Chicago area. "He never played the role of Hollywood superstar," Moskal said. "In fact it was just the opposite of that. His reasons for working and living in Chicago's North Shore were that he did not enjoy the trappings of Hollywood."
But after "Curly Sue" flopped, Hughes began withdrawing and never directed another film despite abortive attempts.
Cohn recalled being location manager on one of Hughes' subsequent projects based on a script called "Chambermaid." It fell apart and eventually became the Jennifer Lopez vehicle "Main in Manhattan." Hughes got a story credit as Edmond Dantes on that one, as he did on the Apatow-produced failed 2008 comedy " Drillbit Taylor."
"Very recently he toyed with the idea of making a film for the 2016 Olympic bid," Moskal said. "He was very interested in doing it. Clearly after all these years he loved Chicago and wanted to create a film to promote that to the world community, but like many of John's recent projects, it stayed in his head and never took hold."
Hughes routinely turned down or didn't respond to interview requests over the past decade, and little is known of how he spent his time. "He was sort of a regular, simple guy and someone who ended up having an interest in trees and cattle and different kinds of livestock," Cohn said. "The few times I saw him in recent years was at Blackhawks games."
"For some reason he walked away," Malik said. "I don't know why. I'm not sure anybody in town does. But I guarantee you there's a stack of scripts sitting in his house that has never seen the light of day, and one wonders if they ever will."
The Associated Press, Tribune movie critic Michael Phillips and freelances reporter Susan Berger, Brian Cox and Andrea Brown contributed to this report.RelatedThe movies of John HughesJohn Hughes' teens: Where are they now?In MemoriamJohn Hughes, RIPBy
Ben Stein on 8.7.09 @ 6:09AM
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/John Hughes was a stunningly talented director, a wildly funny writer, a great friend, a Republican in a town where being a Republican takes some courage. But most of all, he was a poet. He was to the postwar middle class white kid what John Keats was to the age of upheaval during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars.
Ben Stein in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"John Hughes had many brilliant insights: his portrayal of the carnage that modern business travel wreaks in men's lives in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" was by far the best evisceration of what deregulation has wrought, and a powerful comment about the loneliness of the life of the working middle-aged traveling man. His understanding of the mindset of the rich pre-teen child -- total paranoia combined with almost Hitlerian fantasies of power and sadism -- was made funny in his "Home Alone" movies. His thought that family is far more of a combined prison and circus than a heaven was brought to hilarious life by his National Lampoon's "Vacation" series.
But the insight that will make him immortal came in his teen movies, "The Breakfast Club", "Pretty in Pink", "Sixteen Candles" and my favorite, the one that changed my life, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". This insight was that the modern American white middle class teen combines a Saudi Arabia-sized reservoir of self-obsession and self-pity with a startling gift for exultation and enjoyment of life. No one had ever thought to note that along with James Dean's sulky self-obsession might also come a shriek of happiness at just being alive. John Hughes -- Republican -- saw that potential, saw that the individual still had the ability to transcend whatever was weighing him or her down and come out leading a parade down Michigan Avenue.
This insight sized up teens perfectly but also ennobled them, which made them -- and all of us -- love him. In a way, he was describing modern man of any age.
There is no one else who can lay a glove on this insight or portray it so magnificently in the young American.
John Hughes was irreplaceable.
- Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He writes "Ben Stein's Diary" for every issue of The American Spectator
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