“At the time I came along,” reflected John Hughes, “Hollywood's idea of teen movies meant there had to be a lot of nudity, usually involving boys in pursuit of sex, and pretty gross overall. Either that or a horror movie. And the last thing Hollywood wanted in their teen movies was teenagers!” Then there was the issue of adolescent life experience. “I think it's wrong,” declared the director, “not to allow someone the right to have a problem because of their age. People say, ‘Well, they're young. They have their whole lives ahead of them. What do they have to complain about?’ People forget that when you’re 16, you’re probably more serious than you’ll ever be again. You think seriously about the big questions.” He went on to add, “Kids are smart enough to know that most teenage movies are just exploiting them. They’ll respond to a film about teenagers as people. [My] movies are about the beauty of just growing up.”
The story of a girl whose family forgets her sixteenth birthday when it falls on the day of her older sister’s wedding was John Hughes’s 1984 directorial debut. As for the origins of Sixteen Candles, the moviemaker remarked, "It really happened to a friend of mine.” When composing the script, Hughes made a conscious decision. “It was my intent to write it from the female point of view,” he said, “because this genre is generally about males, and sex is a predominant theme. I think they tend to ignore the families. When you're 30, you forget that at 16 sex was not your primary motivation; you were much more interested in having a boyfriend or girlfriend.”For the movie which became John Hughes’s triumphant collaboration with actress Molly Ringwald, commercial success was not a forgone conclusion. “I was very worried,” Hughes confessed, “that some of the long dialogue scenes would get booed off the screen, but I think they work because by the time you reach them, you've gotten to know the characters. I used music in the study-hall scene to sort of propel along a scene that I felt was important but was very slow and very early in the film.”
A year later, The Breakfast Club reunited Ringwald with Hughes to provide a teenage version of The Big Chill (1983); in the film, five high school students representing the different stereotypes, from the rich kid to the nerd, bond during a weekend class detention. Adding to the hip factor was the soundtrack which featured three different mixes of the Simple Minds tune Don’t You (Forget About Me). The preview with the studio exectutives turned out to be less than stellar. “The film ended,” recollected the filmmaker, “they stood up and didn't say a word. I said, 'I think they don't like it.' The producer said, 'It's a piece of s---. It's horrible. It's just a bunch of kids in school talking.' They thought it would be Animal House meets My Dinner With Andre. They put it out in February, which is an awful month [for films], and it was a hit right away. It made $50 million in four weeks and Simple Minds went to #1."“The idea for Weird Science,” said John Hughes in reference to his other film released in 1985, “came about while waiting for a meeting with producer Joel Silver. I got real excited about it and told him the story, and he liked it. I started writing on a Saturday and mailed a draft out on Monday night. That Sunday we made the deal.” The story was influenced by the sexy pinup posters that hang on bedroom walls. “Two lonely guys tried to create the perfect woman,” explained Hughes, “but, they didn't. They created a physical fantasy who turned out to be an actual person. They hadn't planned on getting a real person, just a great body. They were concentrating on the physical, which is only a very small part of anybody's identity.”
1986 would see the moviemaker repeat the feat of screening two of his movies in the same year. Howard Deutch made his directorial debut with the Hughes penned and produced, Pretty In Pink. It cast Molly Ringwald as a poor high school student who falls for a rich classmate; the title was taken from a Psychedelic Furs song that was also used in the picture. (The formula proved to be so successful that Deutch’s sophomore effort in 1987 called Some Kind of Wonderful, also scripted and produced by John Hughes, was essentially the same story with the gender roles reversed.) As for the second picture, Matthew Broderick played the lovable rogue in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. When faced with an impending graduation, Ferris decides to skip off from his classes while he still has the chance. Shot at the high school where John Hughes was once a student, Broderick speaks directly to the camera, thereby, making the audience feel as if they are participating in his mischievous escapades.There was more than a sense of nostalgia behind the film’s creation. "Chicago is what I am," declared Hughes. "A lot of Ferris is sort of my love letter to the city. And the more people upset with the fact that I film there, the more I'll make sure that's exactly where I film." He went on to say, "It's funny, nobody ever says anything to Woody Allen about always filming in New York. America has this great reverence for New York. I look at it as this decaying horror pit. So let the people in Chicago enjoy Ferris Bueller."
When asked why the city is so important to him, the filmmaker answered, "Chicago is the middle of the country: If it works there, it'll work anywhere. One of the problems of living out here [Hollywood] and getting into this community is that you lose contact with the people you're writing for. I like the industry and the people in it, but everybody out here screens a movie at their house. I'm interested in people who don't see it with perfect projection and excellent Dolby. When I mix the films, I assume they're going to be seen at the Cheyenne 'sixplex' where the systems probably haven't been maintained right. Now that's the way most people see them. Losing that contact is my biggest fear."
Released in 1987, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles deals with the misadventures of two men who attempt to get home in time for Thanksgiving. Inspiration came from the moviemaker’s days in the advertising industry when he had to take shuttle flights. "I always wondered about that guy in the middle seat who was always so tired and took his shoes off as soon as he got on the plane," recalled Hughes. "I have a great affection for those guys; my dad and my grandfather were both salesmen. And I admire them. To me, though Neal [Steve Martin] may be more refined and Del [John Candy] may be something of a jerk, Neal needs Del. Privileged people do not have street-smarts, and when their connections don't work, they are totally helpless. Del will always get home. Not with any kind of luxury or class, but he will get there. If Neal doesn't catch the Concorde, he's not gonna make it."Filming was made difficult due to lack of cooperation on the part of the transportation industry and the weather, however, these were not the most daunting challenges faced by John Hughes. "There were ways to handle the logistical things,” began the director, “but staging that stuff in the motel room where Steve [Neal] and John [Del] spend their first night together, that was the real nightmare. How do you reveal those two guys waking up [unconsciously arm-in-arm] in the morning? How fast should the camera pan? What details should it pick up? The timing's critical, and then how do you get out of a scene like that? Those kinds of things are what really took the work. Getting 300 people to walk across a field in below zero weather - there are an infinite number of solutions to those kinds of problems. But staging a comic moment is the most difficult thing in the world."
The shift to an adult-oriented world was a major change for the man normally associated with adolescent cinema. “I hate to say I'm moving beyond anything, because I don't want to denigrate that work or that audience," replied John Hughes, “but most of my stories are going in other directions now. It got to a point where I was starting to repeat myself. How many ways can I shoot a high-school hallway? I'm sure there are millions that I haven't thought of yet, but I felt I should get away and explore what's next. That's really what She's Having a Baby (1988) is about. It's where you go after high school."1989 had John Candy playing the wayward relative with a heart of gold in Uncle Buck; the character, as Hughes put it, is “completely illiterate in the ways of a family”. By placing Candy in parental control of a group of neglected children, comic mayhem ensues. "The only thing he would have to offer is time and interest,” said Hughes. “The parents were jerks. I'm sort of hard on parents. I grew up in a family where kids came first."
The biggest commercial hit for John Hughes occurred in 1990 with the debut of Home Alone. The concept for the project, which made Hollywood celebrities out of director Chris Columbus (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) and child actor Macaulay Culkin, occurred while Hughes was planning a vacation for his family. "I was thinking,” remarked the film’s scriptwriter and producer, “and then I got this weird feeling - What if we left one of the kids? Bang. This is cool. This could be a movie." He went on to add, "One of the things I most enjoyed about Home Alone was that I made a segment of the marketplace laugh at things they don't usually laugh at." He said, "It wasn't macho jokes. It was this little kid running around dropping paint cans on guys. And you could hear grown men laugh. That was really satisfying for me. To be able to sit in a mixed audience, and they're all laughing at the same thing. That was really fun. I was sitting there saying to myself: 'I know how to do this.' "The last time John Hughes sat behind the camera was in 1991, with the father and daughter con artist comedy Curly Sue. Despite retiring from directing to spend more time with his family, Hughes remained active as a creative force behind two Home Alone sequels, Beethoven (1992), Miracle on 34th Street (1994), 101 Dalmatians (1996), Reach the Rock (1998), and Maid in Manhattan (2002). He remained unapologetic for being a populist storyteller. "I have no interest,” Hughes declared, “none whatsoever, in doing something for myself instead of for the audience. My movies are popular because they do what they're supposed to do. You get what you think you're going to get. They're not pretentious. They're not hyped. They're accessible." Upon further reflection, he remarked, "Most of my material is about life getting changed, or realizing something. Ferris says, 'Life moves pretty fast - if you don't stop and look around, you could miss it.' That's the thing I most fear - missing my life."
The man, who made stars of Matthew Broderick, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Macaulay Culkin and John Candy, and inspired a new generation of filmmakers such as Kevin Smith (Clerks), Wes Anderson (Rushmore) and Judd Apatow (Knocked Up), died on August 6th, 2009, while visiting his family in Manhattan.
Read John Hughes' original Vacation story here, or watch a tribute film to commemorate his 1991 Producer of the Year Award from the National Association of Movie Theater Owners.
Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.
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