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As already reported on Pop Culture Beast, Hollywood and the film world at large has lost one of its greatest, most diverse, and most underrated talents. Probably because of his relatively few credits as director (only eight films) people seem to forget that John Hughes is responsible for some of the most beloved family films ever made, as well as being a pioneer of the comedy genre. Hughes had a significant impact on my personal interest of film, and I hope that he will be remembered as one of cinema’s great talents.I first came across Hughes as a child and in something of a circuitous way. Like most people my age, my introduction to John Hughes was because of his amazing family films most of which he did not direct but wrote. Starting with the release of 1990’s Home Alone, even as a child, I was hooked. Thinking back now, I think the reason this film was so widely loved has something to do with the tremendous respect that Hughes’ writing extends to children; Hughes was truly a master at writing three-dimensional child characters, a talent that would come up again and again throughout his career but is perhaps best known by Macaulay Culkin’s performance as Kevin McCallister in Home Alone, and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
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This respect for children, treating them as autonomous beings, with their own perspective, and intelligence, and creativity, would bring me back again and again to movies penned by Hughes. Following Home Alone with Curly Sue (sadly his last film as director), and then Beethoven, Dennis the Menace, and even the guilty pleasure of Baby’s Day Out, Hughes proved time and again that he was a master storyteller, and one of the few artists that could understand children.
As an adult I became aware of some of Hughes’ “better” films including Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Planes, Trains & Automobiles and Vacation. In addition to all being some of the most hilarious films ever made, these are genuine and mature works, capable of generating enormous belly-laughs while staying grounded and having a subtle sophistication that is absent from most mainstream comedy. Hughes was a master of capturing personality and putting it into his films; in many way that is what all of his films are about, staying true to oneself in the face of adversity whether it be a high school administrator, a struggle to get home for the holidays, or a family vacation that can’t seem to go right. This theme, a constant throughout Hughes’ work, is personified by John Candy’s portrayal of Del Griffith in Planes, Trains & Automobiles.
“You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I'm an easy target. Yeah, you're right, I talk too much. I also listen too much. I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you... but I don't like to hurt people's feelings. Well, you think what you want about me; I'm not changing. I like... I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. 'Cause I'm the real article. What you see is what you get.”
Hughes made films that act as a mirror to society. Even his most adult fare, which Planes, Trains & Automobiles certainly is, are moral lessons, acting to remind adults of the simplest lessons that are also the easiest to forget.“You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I'm an easy target. Yeah, you're right, I talk too much. I also listen too much. I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you... but I don't like to hurt people's feelings. Well, you think what you want about me; I'm not changing. I like... I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. 'Cause I'm the real article. What you see is what you get.”
Hughes will probably be best remembered for his work in the teen genre. Even though I admire many of Hughes’ teen films his best, and my favorite John Hughes film, is The Breakfast Club. The indelible portrayal of what it means to be teenage, The Breakfast Club will surely live on as one of the most beloved films of all time. Unlike Sixteen Candles or Weird Science, which have a more specified, gendered, targeted audience, The Breakfast Club is the rare movie that is able to appeal to virtually any audience (except, maybe, for people born before 1970 as the Bowie quote that opens the movie seems to imply). Having the perfect balance of what makes Hughes’ family films great (a respect for what it means to be a teenager, fully-formed characters that are not taken for granted, a sweetness and simplicity) and what makes his more adult comedies great (a love of life, themes of personality, hilarious moments), The Breakfast Club is one of the truly great films of all time. The Breakfast Club is brilliant, among other reasons, because of how paradoxical it is: the film is simultaneously fascinated with the personality aspect of people, while simultaneously being a movie about how really we aren’t that different. This conundrum is one of the most accurate and beautiful summations of people that there has ever been; Hughes is aware that people are not just one thing, but rather all things while still being one person.
“Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you're crazy to make an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain... And an athlete… And a basket case… A princess… And a criminal… Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.”
John Hughes, though never the most obvious choice, is one of the greatest American filmmakers that there has ever been. He has been extremely influential to many people, and there will forever be imitators of his work. I, for one, am glad that he was able to share his creativity with us.
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