Guess we'll never see that comeback happen now.

A true shame, at his age. Granted he hasn't made a movie in years, but he leaves behind a legacy of some of the finest coming-of-age movies ever made, a slew of memorable comedies like NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION and PLANES TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES, and also one of the biggest hits of all-time in HOME ALONE....not to mention films which have become contemporary classics like CHRISTMAS VACATION as well. His output as a producer and writer was also prolific back in the '80s.

A genuine loss.

R.I.P. John Hughes

What a shocker. It was a sudden death, of a heart attack while he was taking a walk in NYC. He was 59. The writer/director/producer will be remembered for his unique ability to speak to kids, tweens, teens and young adults with movies that became instant pop culture classics with such seminal films like Home Alone, The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Though the busy filmmaker's career had gone quiet in recent years, his films shaped the 1980s and 1990s and early 2000s in a way few in Hollywood can claim. He leaves behind a rich legacy.


http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/r ... hn-hughes/

What an incredible legacy he leaves behind in film making. RIP indeed.

I was shocked to hear about this one. Someone at work mentioned this to me, but I thought they were mistaken.

I too was hoping he would come out of retirement at some point and do another film, but unfortunately, that's no longer possible.

Back in the 1980's, Hughes could do almost no wrong. Almost every movie he wrote or directed not only did very well at the box office but displayed an uncanny intelligence. The Breakfast Club comes across a bit dated and a bit self-important when I look at it now, but when I was 16, it was meaningful for both being insightful and for not talking down to its audience. (If anything, that film talked UP to the teens it was trying to reach.) Ferris Bueller is possibly the single best live action Bugs Bunny cartoon I've ever seen. And Planes Trains is a classic example of taking really funny/angry material in one moment and completely humanizing it in the next. The cut to John Candy's reaction from Steve Martin's rant at him is one that puts both Martin and the audience to shame, at the same time.

That said, it's a shame that his output in the 90's regressed badly, to the point that he was producing things like Dennis the Menace and Baby's Day Out. It was as if he had move backward in age from the teenagers in the 80's to the young Macaulay Culkin of Home Alone to the little girl of Curly Sue and finally the infant on the street in Baby's Day Out. And somewhere in there is the first of many Beethoven family dog comedies.

After that, he mostly vanished from the film world. There were occasional appearances here and there. He contributed a commentary to the 1999 DVD of Ferris Bueller and he showed up for the premiere of his son's movie a few years ago. But for the most part, he seemed content to stay with his family in Chicago or New York and live off his residuals and profit participation (which was immense). At the time of his death, he hadn't been heard about for years. There were rumors of problems on the sets of the last films he'd directed, and rumors that he'd had a falling-out with John Candy before Candy's death. And he was known as a director to shoot a staggering amount of film (at least two of his films - Breakfast Club and Planes, Trains were known to have significantly longer versions locked away in studio vaults or Hughes' own storage). He was known for being difficult not only with his co-workers onset, but also with the power players back in the studio offices. It's likely that the last problem was a big factor in his disappearance from the film scene.

I wish he would have made some kind of a comeback, but then I also wish that Stanley Kubrick would have made a few more films with the time he had...

In a way Hughes opened the doors to the teen genre (or brought it to the fore) and closed it upon leaving the industry. 20 years since his heyday and the genre is still all his very own.