Remembering John Hughes

Hughes defined the Eighties high school experience in films like Pretty in Pink (above) and The Breakfast Club

Before Judd Apatow gave us Freaks and Geeks, there was writer/director John Hughes (The Breakfast Club), who passed away from a heart attack this morning. A "philosopher of adolescence," as Roger Ebert once dubbed him, Hughes told stories of awkward teenage moments in that shallowest of decades, the Eighties. Through the wild suburban romps of hijinks and uncomfortable tears, he showed that high school caste boundaries could be crossed and that all these other kids around you weren't so strange after all, in a time when jocks and pretty, rich girls and freaks and bad kids and nerds intermingled much less than they do today. Every movie had someone who took a chance, and it was never about whether the result had good or bad consequences, but that they took a chance at all. Hughes' characters bravely stepped outside their comfort zones, whether it was padded with Laura Ashley floral madness like Molly Ringwald's character in Sixteen Candles or Alan Rudd's Cameron literally smashing out of his antiseptic bubble in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Hughes helped define a generation's experience and reshape their expectations, and teen movies will always be held to this standard. He will be missed.