I am so sorry to report today that legendary 80s director and screenwriter John Hughes, responsible for such teen classics as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty in Pink, and Sixteen Candles, has passed away at the age of 59. Hughes died after suffering a heart attack while taking a walk in NY yesterday morning, where he was visiting family. For the past 15 years, Hughes has lived a reclusive life with his family on their farm in Harvard, Illinois outside of Chicago. He has not directed a film since 1991 and has not granted an interview since 1994. Last year, the LA Times ran a piece on Hughes in which directors Kevin Smith and Judd Apatow heaped praise on his work, and credited Hughes for introducing them to the outsider adolescent genre that characterizes their films. Smith called Hughes “our generation’s J.D. Salinger,” and said he’d love to sit down and talk to him at some point but that he’d never been able to find someone who knew how to get in touch with him:

Writer-director John Hughes, Hollywood’s youth impresario of the 1980s and ’90s who captured the teen and preteen market with such favorites as “The Breakfast Club,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Home Alone, died Thursday, a spokeswoman said. He was 59.

Hughes died of a heart attack during a morning walk in Manhattan, Michelle Bega said. He was in New York to visit family.

A native of Lansing, Mich., who later moved to suburban Chicago and set much of his work there, Hughes rose from comedy writer to ad writer to silver screen champ with his affectionate and idealized portraits of teens, whether the romantic and sexual insecurity of “Sixteen Candles,” or the J.D. Salinger-esque rebellion against conformity in “The Breakfast Club.”

Hughes’ ensemble comedies helped make stars out of Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy and many other young performers. He also scripted the phenomenally popular “Home Alone,” which made little-known Macaulay Culkin a sensation as the 8-year-old accidentally abandoned by his vacationing family, and wrote or directed such hits as “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” “Pretty in Pink,” “Planes, Trains & Automobiles” and “Uncle Buck.”

“I was a fan of both his work and a fan of him as a person,” Culkin said. “The world has lost not only a quintessential filmmaker whose influence will be felt for generations, but a great and decent man.”

Other actors who got early breaks from Hughes included John Cusack (“Sixteen Candles”), Judd Nelson (“The Breakfast Club”), Steve Carell (“Curly Sue”) and Lili Taylor (“She’s Having a Baby”).

Actor and director Bill Paxton credited Hughes for launching his career by casting him as bullying older brother Chet in the 1985 film “Weird Science.”
“He took a tremendous chance on me,” Paxton said. “Like Orson Welles, he was a boy wonder, a director’s director, a writer’s writer, a filmmaker’s filmmaker. He was one of the giants.”

Hughes films, especially “Home Alone,” were among the most popular of their time and the director was openly involved in marketing them. But, with his ever-handy “idea books,” Hughes worked as much from personal life as from commercial instinct. His “National Lampoon” scripts were inspired by his own family’s vacations. “Sixteen Candles,” in which Ringwald plays a teen whose 16th birthday is forgotten, was based on a similar event in a friend’s life.

In a statement quoted on People.com, Ringwald said she was “stunned and incredibly sad” to hear about Hughes’ death.

“He will be missed — by me and by everyone that he has touched,” she said. “My heart and all my thoughts are with his family now.”

Tall and pale, with a high head of hair and owlish glasses, Hughes caught on just a couple of years after MTV was launched. MTV teens were drawn to his stories, innocent compared to the films and world events of the 1960s’ and ’70s. The conflicts were about self-discovery and fitting in rather than hard drugs, political protest or race.

[AP via News.google.com]

I don’t often admit this, but I’m 36 years old. Hughes’ films came out when I was in high school and I’ve easily seen some of them dozens of times, namely Weird Science, Sixteen Candles, and The Breakfast Club. His movies characterized my adolescence and became part of my history. Hughes came into our lives and through deft storytelling and quirky characters he captured and helped define what we were going through. He slipped out before we really had a chance to thank him.

John Hughes is survived by his wife and high school sweetheart, Nancy, by two sons, John Hughes III, 33, and James Hughes, 30, and by four grandchildren.

The Sixteen Candles trailer:

The trailer for The Breakfast Club

And Weird Science. (NSFW boobies)

80s director John Hughes is responsible for the concept for the new film Drillbit Taylor, written by Seth Rogan and Kristofor Brown, but his name appears nowhere in the credits. The film is based on one of his old ideas, and a producer who still keeps in touch with him, Tom Jacobson, got his permission to use it. Jacobson is the husband of Donna Arkoff Roth, who produced Drillbit along with Judd Apatow.

The thing is, this Jacobson guy is just about the only person who knows how to contact Hughes, 58. When Hughes left Hollywood in 1995 after creating teen classics like Weird Science, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Breakfast Club, he shut that world out entirely and never looked back. Hughes lives in Chicago now but no one knows where. Even director Kevin Smith says he can’t get in touch with him for a little fanboy Q&A:

“John Hughes wrote some of the great outsider characters of all time,” says Apatow, the writer-director-producer whose new film, “Drillbit Taylor,” is loosely based on an old Hughes story idea. “It’s pretty ridiculous to hear people talk about the movies we’ve been doing, with outrageous humor and sweetness all combined, as if they were an original idea. I mean, it was all there first in John Hughes’ films. Whether it’s ‘Freaks and Geeks’ or ‘Superbad,’ the whole idea of having outsiders as the lead characters, that all started with Hughes.”

Hollywood is full of older masters who’ve been mentors to younger acolytes. But Hughes, 58, is the only one who’s disappeared without a trace; he quit directing in 1991, moved back to Chicago in 1995 and has basically stayed out of sight ever since.

“He’s our generation’s J.D. Salinger,” says Smith, whose film “Dogma” shows its heroes, Jay and Silent Bob, on a pilgrimage to Shermer, Ill., a mythical town that only exists in Hughes’ films. “He touched a generation and then the dude checked out. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be doing what I do. Basically my stuff is just John Hughes films with four-letter words.”

Smith says whenever he’s in Chicago promoting a film he asks his local publicist if they know how to find him, to no avail. The one person who made contact was Vaughn, who grew up in the North Shore suburbs and met with Hughes when shooting “The Break-Up” in the area in 2005. It’s in keeping with this aura of mystery that while Hughes came up with the idea for “Drillbit Taylor,” the Owen Wilson comedy that opened Friday to lackluster reviews, his name isn’t anywhere on the film. But his handprints are everywhere.

[From The LA Times via The Huffington Post]

If Hughes never made those amazing 80s movies that defined my generation, we might not have all the quirky characters and excellent coming of age films now. It’s nice to hear these younger directors say he’s their primary influence.

You wonder what kind of incredible films this guy could have produced if he kept working, but maybe he assumed that his best work was already out there and he got sick of the Hollywood scene. Hughes also directed Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Uncle Buck and Curly Sue Home Alone, and his work branching out into adult comedies was not as well received. (Update: Thanks to Keith for pointing out that Hughes wrote, but did not direct, Home Alone.)

According to The John Hughes Files, Hughes moved to Northbrook, Illinois, at the age of 13. He started out working as an ad copy writer and ended up writing for National Lampoon magazine, where his short story “Vacation ’58″ became the basis for the Chevy Chase film.

Wikipedia notes that Hughes has not granted any interviews since 1994. He did record a director’s commentary in 1999 for the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off DVD, and there was a photo taken of him in 2001 visiting his actor son on a set.

Fan Site The John Hughes Files claims he is still working as a writer behind the scenes for Disney, but that news seems to be old because he is not listed with many writing credits after the late 90s.

This story really intrigues me and I would like to see Kevin Smith and Judd Apatow be able to do a joint interview with him. He probably thinks he’s just a boring regular guy and doesn’t want to make a big deal out of his success, but his self-imposed exile comes off as such a mystery.

“Catcher In The Rye” author JD Salinger is still alive at 89, but no one has interviewed him since 1980 and he has not published anything since 1965. It might be little early to compare Hughes to Salinger, but there are definite parallels, as Kevin Smith mentioned.

A Sixteen Candles user-created trailer:

Here are some clips from The Breakfast Club set to “Don’t you forget about me”

And Weird Science. (NSFW boobies) I must have seen this movie 20 times.