The death of John Hughes will cause a pang of collective nostalgia among the generation who grew up with his 1980s films, writes Ryan Gilbey
ANYONE WHO HIT adolescence in the 1980s is likely to reserve some affection, however grudging, for the writer-producer-director, John Hughes, who has died aged 59 of a heart attack. Hughes rarely gave interviews and hadn’t directed a movie since 1991.
“He’s our generation’s JD Salinger,” noted film-maker Kevin Smith last year. “He touched a generation and then the dude checked out.”
Despite his elusiveness, Hughes's reputation remained intact, thanks to his mid-1980s run of so-called Brat Pack movies, named for the unofficial stock company of young actors on which they drew. Beginning with Sixteen Candles(1984), and moving on to The Breakfast Club, Weird Science(both 1985), Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off(both 1986) and Some Kind of Wonderful(1987), these films were brashly American: a recurring theme was what to wear on prom night, while young British audiences looked on enviously at the sight of teenagers driving spiffy cars to school. But the perceptive and light-hearted portrayals of teen angst bridged any cultural chasm.
Hughes's widely adored protagonists could range from a misfit in thrift-shop threads (Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink) to a slick Jack-the-lad outwitting the teacher who would thwart his truancy (Matthew Broderick in F erris Bueller's Day Off). What united these figures was the spirit of individuality and defiance they retained in the face of a stifling, conformist adult world. No wonder the films were prized by audiences of equivalent age, who felt flattered by these celebratory snapshots of their generation.
“Many film-makers portray teenagers as immoral and ignorant,” Hughes remarked in 1985, “with pursuits that are pretty base . . . But I haven’t found that to be the case. I listen to kids, I respect them.”
The newcomers who got their breaks in his work responded to his sympathetic perspective. Ringwald, the star of three films scripted by Hughes, said in 1986: “I think the reason why I like working with John is that he really understands kids because he genuinely likes young people. He doesn’t condescend to them. He treats us not like adults or kids, just as a person. He writes about kids in a really intelligent way. And he’s a good person.”
On the rare occasion that Hughes did discuss his working methods, it was with a melancholy tinge: “I so desperately hate to end these movies that the first thing I do when I’m done is write another one. Then I don’t feel sad about having to leave and everybody going away. That’s why I tend to work with the same people; I really befriend them.”
HUGHES WAS BORN in Lansing, Michigan, to a mother who did voluntary work for charity, and a father with a job in sales. He described himself as an introspective child who felt cast adrift after the family uprooted to Chicago when he was 11. His youthful passion was music and he enjoyed a spell as a self-professed hippy. He would later characterise his high-school years as unexceptional, ironically so given the major role that school life would play in his writing. It was there that he met his future wife, Nancy Ludwig, whom he married at the age of 20 shortly before dropping out of the University of Arizona.
Hughes took menial jobs while writing in his spare time, and claimed to have assigned himself the task of dashing off 100 jokes every day. The best of these he then dispatched to stand-up comics, who paid him $5 per gag (except for Joan Rivers, who stretched to a generous $7).
In 1979, two years after the birth of his first son, John III, Hughes swapped his job as an advertising copywriter for the editorship of the irreverent National Lampoon magazine, which had been publishing his writing for some time. From there, he got his first break as a screenwriter under the auspices of National Lampoon, which was seeking a follow-up to its 1978 hit comedy, Animal House. In 1980, his second son, Jamie, was born.
Hughes became renowned as Hollywood's script doctor of choice, but his Midas touch when it came to his own work was slower to materialise. He locked horns with the director of his first produced screenplay, the horror-comedy National Lampoon's Class Reunion, and the film was considered a disaster. He also co-wrote the unremarkable swashbuckling adventure, Nate and Hayes.
But in 1983, Hughes's winning streak began with two hit comedies, both concerned with the fluctuating role of the modern father: National Lampoon's Vacationand Mr Mom. The following year, he made his directorial debut with Sixteen Candles, from his own screenplay about a girl whose 16th birthday is overlooked by her family. This good-natured comedy, reassuringly chaste in an era of bawdy teen hits, featured many of the ingredients that would constitute the Hughes formula, including a quirky love triangle later reprised in Pretty in Pinkand Some Kind of Wonderful. Ringwald, in the lead role, and Anthony Michael Hall, as the nerd who lusts after her, made a lasting impression. Both actors rejoined Hughes for his next film, The Breakfast Club, about five high-school students thrown together in an all-day detention.
The Breakfast Clubis arguably Hughes's most popular and influential movie. It helped that most viewers could identify with at least one character among the movie's mix of stereotypes (characterised in the script as "a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal"). An anti-establishment bent only sealed the film's appeal.
Hughes's reign as Hollywood's foremost chronicler of hormone-frazzled high-schoolers lasted a few more years, during which he acquired a reputation for being difficult and demanding. In 2005, Peter Bart wrote in Varietythat "working with Hughes during his peak years was akin to a tour of duty at Abu Ghraib. He randomly fired aides and assistant directors and daily reminded everyone around him that he was the resident genius."
After his final teen script, Some Kind of Wonderful, Hughes seemed intent on proving his versatility as a writer-director outside that genre, first with the rambunctious but sugary road movie, Planes, Trains and Automobiles(1987), then the romantic comedy, She's Having a Baby(1988). His scriptwriting became increasingly prolific, but quality control had declined, and audiences no longer had any sense of who John Hughes was.
He was to direct two more features: Uncle Buck(1989) and the queasily sentimental Curly Sue(1991). Those films, which both hinged on cute child actors (including, in Uncle Buck, the future star of the Hughes-scripted Home Alone, Macaulay Culkin), hinted at a future spent cranking out wholesome family entertainment. So it proved. Subsequent screenplays, some credited to Edmond Dantès, a nom de plume borrowed from Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, included the canine comedy, Beethoven(1992); the kiddie-slapstick of Dennis(1993) and Baby's Day Out(1994); the schmaltzy remake of Miracle on 34th Street(1994); the live-action 101 Dalmatians(1996); Flubber(1997); and the unnecessary Home Alone 3(1997).
Hughes himself seemed not to crave approbation, or to harbour illusions about his work. “I don’t think I’m making any great statements,” he said in 1998, “and I certainly don’t think I’m making art.” He is survived by his wife, Nancy, sons John and James, and four grandchildren.
– Guardian service