John Hughes Dies at 59

John Hughes has died of a heart attack. John Hughes suffered the heart attack while taking a morning walk during a trip to NYC to visit family. He directed such ’80s hit films as “The Breakfast Club,” Weird Science,” “Sixteen Candles” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” He was 59.

Director John Hughes captured the drama of life between childhood and adulthood like no other. With movies like “The Breakfast Club” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” he crafted stories filled with the sort of high school angst that only comes from experience. He made it cool to be a geek, and gave audiences a cast of characters who learned to look past the boundaries of their lunchroom cliques.

John Hughes is best known for writing and/or directing some of our favorite films from the 1980’s – National Lampoon’s Vacation, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, European Vacation, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Planes Trains & Automobiles, Uncle Buck, Christmas Vacation, and Home Alone. Hughes dropped out of filmmaking in 1991.

John Hughes will be missed.

John Hughes began his career as an ad copyrighter in Chicago, where he created the famous Edge “Credit Card Shaving Test” marketing campaign. He wrote jokes for Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers, before writing a letter to National Lampoon Magazine inspired by his family trips as a child. This of course became the basis for the film National Lampoon’s Vacation.

His directorial debut was in 1984 with the film Sixteen Candles, which became the first in a series of high school movies, sometimes starring a group of actors referred to as the Brat Pack. In 1994, Hughes retired from the public eye, rarely granting or giving interviews to the media. He wrote a couple screenplays and did some rare script and treatment work using his pseudonym, Edmond Dantès (a reference to the protagonist of Alexandre Dumas’ novel The Count of Monte Cristo). Those films include Beethoven, Maid in Manhattan (story) and Drillbit Taylor (story).