John Hughes, Chronicler of ’80s Teens, Dies

Teen comedy is not a movie genre that ordinarily allows for much eloquence or emotional truth. But back in the 1980s, a few films–Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink–perfectly captured the adolescent zeitgeist. They were the work of John Hughes, the intimate chronicler and confidant of that young generation. His death in Manhattan on Aug. 6, of a heart attack at age 59, came as a shock to those whose growing pains he had so cogently monitored–and to anyone else who appreciates the craft of movie-writing.

An ordinary Midwestern boy who never forgot his roots–and who stayed married to the cheerleader he wed when he was 20–Hughes wrote humor pieces for National Lampoon before transferring his fascination with family life to the big screen. His Vacation comedies starred Chevy Chase as a doofus dad leading his brood on disastrous trips. Hughes also launched two other hit franchises: the Home Alone trilogy, about an abandoned kid, and the Beethoven series of St. Bernard family farces.

Some were clever, some not so. But all showed an acute empathy for their subjects. Especially in his teen films, Hughes seemed so close to his high schoolers that he might have been inside them. Fans saw his movies and asked, “How did he know that?”

Ben Stein, the writer and commentator who played the frustrated teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (“Anyone? Anyone?”), called Hughes “the Wordsworth of the suburban-America postwar generation.” Others might see Hughes as a sunnier Salinger, or a hipper Norman Rockwell. But today’s 30-somethings, who grew up on his movies, don’t need a label to remember Hughes. Their tribute is the hole in the yearning hearts he spoke to–and filled with humor–when they were teens.