John Hughes, Bard of Teen Angst, Dead at 59
Thu., Aug. 6, 2009 9:09 PM PDT by Joal Ryan
Paul Natkin/Getty Images
Odds are you didn't go to high school with John Hughes. Odds are it sure seemed like you did.
Hughes, the popular, almost-mythic filmmaker who made teen angst hurt so good in biting comedies such as Sixteen Candles only to leave Generation Xers largely on their own as the Molly Ringwald-ruled 1980s ended, died after suffering a sudden heart attack during a walk this morning in Manhattan. He was 59.
"Bueller? Bueller?...Anyone? Anyone?"
—Ferris Bueller's Day Off
"John Hughes wrote some of the great outsider characters of all time," Judd Apatow, the currently hot filmmaker from the Hughes mold, told the Los Angeles Times last year.
It probably would be quicker to list the 1980s movies Hughes wasn't responsible for as either a writer, director or producer.
His credits included: Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink, all starring Ringwald; Weird Science, Some Kind of Wonderful and She's Having a Baby, all quotable—and quoted—in their own right; and, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the signature Matthew Broderick, if not Hughes, comedy.
Though most associated with the 1980s, the 1990s brought Hughes his biggest box-office hits via the Home Alone franchise.
Hughes' quick mind and evidently even quicker typing fingers also produced the Michael Keaton hit Mr. Mom, the John Candy-Steve Martin hit Planes, Trains & Automobiles and the Chevy Chase blockbuster National Lampoon's Vacation.
"They think he's a righteous dude."
—Ferris Bueller's Day Off
The secret to Hughes' success, especially in the 1980s, might have been as simple as his novel outlook on an oft-maligned species: the American teenager.
''I don't think of kids as a lower form of the human species,'' Hughes said in the New York Times in 1986.
Born in 1950 in Michigan, Hughes' writing career began in Chicago, the leafy suburbs of which served as future home to the Buellers, the Saturday-morning detention gang at Shermer High and nearly all his screenplay characters.
In 1979, the former ad copywriter and National Lampoon magazine staffer scored his first Hollywood credit on a short-lived sitcom spinoff of Animal House. Within five years, Hughes was in the director's chair on Sixteen Candles.
''I stumbled into this business, I didn't train for it," Hughes told Entertainment Weekly in 1994. "I yelled 'Action!' on my first two movies before the camera was turned on."
Actors whose careers were helped mightily by Hughes' allegedly accidental one include Jon Cryer, Anthony Michael Hall, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson and Home Alone revelation Macaulay Culkin. Some, like Sheedy, Estevez and Nelson, became members of the unofficial 1980s film society known as the Brat Pack. Some, like Culkin, featured in the Candy-starring Uncle Buck, worked on multiple Hughes films.
No Hughes actor was more associated with Hughes than Ringwald.
"I can't believe this. They f--king forgot my birthday."
—Sixteen Candles
Ringwald was the teen queen to Hughes' king; the fresh-faced sayer of his tough truths. The two made three movies from 1984 to 1986. Some 25 years later, audiences were still waiting to attend their reunion. A Sixteen Candles sequel was talked about but never made.
"I would ordinarily not want to do something like that, but I think that Sixteen Candles lends itself to [a sequel]," Ringwald told AOL this year. "I mean, Breakfast Club is just so perfect as is. I guess Pretty in Pink is possible, but Sixteen Candles is really the one...It was such a Cinderella story. And I was interested to see what happened to this girl."
"Demented and sad, but social."
—The Breakfast Club
Hughes walked away from directing after the 1991 family film Curly Sue. And while he continued to produce and write (occasionally as Edmond Dantés, a pen name used on the Beethoven movies, Jennifer Lopez's Maid in Manhattan and the Apatow-produced Drillbit Tayor), he abdicated his angsty crown.
Wrote Variety of Hughes in 2008: He "doesn't give interviews, has no publicist and lives in Wisconsin."
Kevin Smith, one of the numerous writers and directors raised under the influence of the classic Hughes teen comedies, once called the filmmaker his generation's J.D. Salinger, after the reclusive Catcher in the Rye author.
In typical shrug-it-off fashion, Hughes refused to make his absence from directing, if not Hollywood, sound like a big deal, and certainly not like a mysterious deal.
"I don't like getting up early, and it takes a long time," Hughes told Ink 19 when asked if he'd direct again.
Survivors include Hughes' wife of 39 years, Nancy, and two sons, including the music producer John Hughes III.
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
—Ferris Bueller's Day Off
(Originally published Aug. 6, 2009 at 1:57 p.m. PT)
...javlja mi se da će na Popboksu u narednih 36 sati osvanuti fini tekstić-zahvalnica velikom majstoru by poor moi... osnovni je red!
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Thursday, August 6
John Hughes R.I.P.
A musical tribute John Hughes R.I.P.
Variety reports that film director John Hughes died this morning at the age of 59. Hughes was on a visit to New York when he suffered a heart attack while on a morning walk. Hughes directed The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Weird Science. He also wrote and produced Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful, as well as many, many others.
This isn't, strictly speaking, a music news story, but Hughes' 1980s movies are jammed with iconic music moments: Judd Nelson's fist hitting the sky to the sound of the Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget About Me)", Duckie wailing "Try a Little Tenderness" to Andie Walsh, Ferris Bueller singing "Twist and Shout" from a Chicago parade float. Music from the Psychedelic Furs, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, and the Smiths showed up in his movies. The Pretty in Pink soundtrack is one of the best new wave compilations in history. (Hughes' son John Hughes III also runs the Chicago-based indie label Hefty and records music as Slicker.)
Hughes' movies did as much to define and embody that particular cultural era as any other body of work, and they've left an indelible stamp on several generations. (For instance, just try reading an interview with M83 that doesn't make reference to Hughes.)
Below, we've compiled a few of our favorite music moments from John Hughes films. Enjoy.
Duckie singing "Try a Little Tenderness" in Pretty in Pink:
Ferris singing "Twist and Shout" in Ferris Bueller's Day Off:
Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work" in She's Having a Baby:
Dream Academy's cover of the Smiths' "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" in Ferris Bueller's Day Off:
The Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget About Me)" video, with Breakfast Club clips:
A montage of Pretty in Pink clips set to OMD's "If You Leave":
Another Pretty in Pink montage, this one set to the Psychedelic Furs' "Pretty in Pink":
Posted by Tom Breihan on August 6, 2009 at 5 p.m.
While John Hughes's The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Home Alone proved to be both box-office powerhouses as well as culturally significant landmarks, his sudden death from a heart attack Thursday is proving equally noteworthy, for the shockwaves it is sending throughout the acting community that he helped to launch.
Known as the "Brat Pack" – a term coined in a 1985 New York magazine feature on the then-rising Hughes and the cast of his coming-of-age comedies – the writer-director-producer's stable of fresh-faced performers included such now-household names as Sean Penn, Steve Carell, Macaulay Culkin, Matthew Broderick, Jon Cryer, Charlie Sheen, Molly Ringwald, John Cusack, Emilio Estevez, Andrew McCarthy, Anthony Michael Hall and Ally Sheedy, among others.
While Pretty in Pink star Ringwald recalled Hughes, 59, as "an important part of my life," and Ferris Bueller himself, Broderick, considered him "my friend," others remember the filmmaker as follows:
• "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." – actor MACAULAY CULKIN
• "John was an amazing mentor to me during the time we were shooting Curly Sue. He had a childlike spirit that connected us instantly and always made me feel loved. He will be missed but his work speaks for itself and will live in his honor." – actor ALISAN PORTER
• "John Hughes's iconic films gave a powerful voice to a generation. He will be missed but never forgotten!" – actor DEMI MOORE
• "I will always cherish the time I spent with John Hughes.I was so grateful for the opportunity to walk around in his shoes and try to see the world through through his brilliant eyes. Sharing his films with my kids over the years I can see the timelessness of his work." actor KEVIN BACON
• "His films helped establish an international notion of ordinary American teenagers, and he was as popular abroad as at home. Once when I was visiting the largest movie theater in Calcutta, I asked if Star Wars had been their most successful American film. No, I was told, it was Baby's Day Out, a Hughes comedy about a baby wandering through a big city, which played for more than a year." – critic ROGER EBERT
• "He was a wonderful man, a genius, a poet. I don't think anyone has come close to him as being the poet of the youth of America in the postwar period. He was to them what Shakespeare was to the Elizabethan Age." – actor-economist BEN STEIN
• ""I asked John how long it took to write Planes, Trains and Automobiles, he said, 'I wrote it over the weekend.' The weekend. That shows you what he was able to do." – actor-writer STEVE MARTIN
• "John always treated me with respect and consideration. He encouraged a real and active collaboration; he was most generous with his insight ... My heart breaks for his family ... I know many people whose lives were touched by John will be saddened today. I know I am." – actor JUDD NELSON
• "He took a tremendous chance on me. 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." – actor-director BILL PAXTON
• "My family and I are deeply saddened and in shock. Our only goal is to support his family and make sure they're fine." – Hughes's attorney JAKE BLOOM
• "He changed my life forever. Nineteen years later, people from all over the world contact me telling me how much Home Alone'meant to them, their families, and their children." – actor DEVIN RATRAY
• "John told me about why he left Hollywood ... He was terrified of the impact it was having on his sons; he was scared it was going to cause them to lose perspective on what was important and what happiness meant ... Tonight, when I heard the news that John had died, I cried. I cried hard. (And I'm crying again.) I cried for a man who loved his friends, who loved his family, who loved to write and for a man who took the time to make a little girl believe that, if she had something to say, someone would listen." – Hughes's pen-pal ALLISON FIELDS
• With reporting by JENNIFER GARCIA,NATASHA STOYNOFF, ULRICA WIHLBORG and the ASSOCIATED PRESS, FOX BUSINESS NEWS, THE GUARDIAN and MTV
http://www.popboks.com/tekst.php?ID=7570 (http://www.popboks.com/tekst.php?ID=7570)
Until last week, Toronto filmmaker Matt Austin-Sadowski and his three collaborators had a completed feature-length documentary about John Hughes' legacy but no distribution deal.
Then a terrible thing happened. The screenwriter and director of "Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club" died of a heart attack at age 59. And suddenly a micro-budget film chronicling four young Canadians' 2008 search for the reclusive Hughes -- not Howard Hughes-level reclusive, but reclusive by retired-from-Hollywood standards -- shot into the limelight.
"Don't You Forget About Me," to be released this year by Alliance Films, takes its title from the song popularized by the '80s band Simple Minds and used in "The Breakfast Club," which remains a Reagan-era teen-angst touchstone for a lot of people.
In the documentary, Hughes alums Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy and others reflect on what Hughes' image of high school misfits and cliques and crises meant to a generation, as well as to the generation right behind. (Roger Ebert also appears in "Don't You Forget About Me"; he was interviewed not long before complications from cancer surgery left him unable to speak -- though he's writing as much, and as well, as ever.)
Austin-Sadowski got to know his favorite Hughes picture, "Sixteen Candles," by way of a big box of VHS tapes. "My father had a video store," he says, "and I'd gone through all the crap movies he had in there. But then I found that one.
"I don't want to be melodramatic and say John Hughes changed our lives, but I would say he changed our perspective on ourselves. And that's pretty huge when you're a teenager. He showed us representations of ourselves that felt truly genuine."
In the wake of Hughes' death, Austin-Sadowski and his colleagues Michael Facciolo, Lenny Panzer and Kari Hollend are shooting a brief epilogue "as we speak." Beyond that, it's the same 75-minute project. (The Web site is dontyouforgetaboutmethemovie.com).
The tantalizing question: Did the filmmakers ever talk to Hughes on camera? Not even Austin-Sadowski's wife knows for sure, the director claims.
"Everything's happened so fast," he says, quietly, referring to the breathless week since Hughes' death.
Sorry sto ozivljavam rahmetli topik, ali ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGawOk107eU
... trazio sam neke OMD spotove za If you leave i naisao na ovo ... I sav sam se raspekmezio!
:cry:
PS
Ma je li moguce da je proslo godinu dana!
Uopšte ne razumijem šta ljudi vide u tom rahmetli Hjuzu. Eto recimo taj Priti in pink je tako stupidan film da je to strašno. Neko ko onako upropasti Herija Dina Stentona zaslužuje da bude obješen.
Harv, shame on you!
...grlena pohvala za film izrađen po šnitu i sa punim pijetetom za ono što nam je maestro Hughes ostavio u amanet - EASY A koji je prava poslastica, gotovo pa genijalno postavljen i izveden pokušaj na temuremiksa kanonskog omladinskog filma i bez sumnje jedan od najboljih filmova 2010. Godine. Za kojom god se vizurom posegne ovo je odličan film, izvanredno ostvarenje koje uspeva da pronađe equi-distancu prema ponajboljem iz nasleđa tinejdžerskog filma i prema savremenom izrazu kada je repertoarski film namenjen mladima u pitanju. Zbilja redak spoj šarma, veštine i komunkiativnosti, pravi pop-dragulj...