John Hughes passes away

Yestrday we lost someone who really understood the difficulties of the akward teenage years. John Hughes was visiting family in Manhattan and decided to go for a walk when he had a heart attack and passed away. He was 59 years old. With most of my formative years being in the 80’s, Hughes’s movies not only captured the awkwardness that I was living, but the music from these movies became the soundtrack of my life. He had so many great movies and characters that a day wouldn’t go by where my friends and me wouldn’t say a quote from one of the movies or listen to a song or group featured in the movies. I still bust out some quotes on a regular basis! I can hear songs from his movies and picture the scene where the song was playing. Hughes had a way of matching the music perfectly with the scene and usually the groups he would use were not well known at that time and the movie(s) launched them into stardom. Bands like, The Psychedelic Furs, Simple Minds, General Public, The Vapors, and OMD just to name a few. Not only did he launch great music careers, he also launched the careers of many famous actors. Some were known as the Brat Pack. Actors like Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Andrew McCarthy, Judd Nelson, John Cusak, Jon Cryer, Ally Sheedy and Molly Ringwald all got their big breaks in Hughes films.

He had so many great movies, but here is a list of the movies he directed that touched me the most:
Sixteen Candles
The Breakfast Club
Pretty in Pink
Weird Science
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
She's Having a Baby
Some Kind of Wonderful
Uncle Buck
Home Alone
Planes, Trains & Automobiles
Vacation, European Vacation, & Christmas Vacation

I don’t know of any other director that captured the 80’s teen angst or related so well with a generation. He will be missed!