Owen Glieberman of Entertainment Weekly wrote about Hughes’ death, at 59, of a heart attack.
“It would, perhaps, be an overstatement to say that John Hughes invented the modern, post-counterculture Hollywood teen comedy (hello, Fast Times at Ridgemont High!). But it still feels as if he did. It feels as if he invented it, patented it, perfected it, abandoned it, then sat back and watched, for two decades, as it imitated (often lamely) what he’d brought to the screen. When Sixteen Candles first came out, in 1984, it so deftly caught the media-wise slang, the music, the “Whatever!†jadedness, the geek chic, the style-conscious you-are-what-you-look-like ‘tude, and — beneath all that surly precocious cynicism — the vestiges of innocence, romance, and longing that gave the then barely named Gen-X its light-and-dark, sweet-and-sour spirit that it seemed as if Hughes must have had an army of secret youth consultants on the set. How did he know all that stuff, and get it so right?” Read the rest of Owen’s post here.
In memory of the genius (yes, I dare say genius) behind some of the best movies of our youth, let’s take a little YouTube trip through the best of John Hughes.
Mr. Mom (1983)
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=solr1W5idNY]
National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983)
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn6uqwSjDjY]
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82Wc92bFiZk]
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYTdILs7-1Q]
Sixteen Candles (1984)
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tktNZpUTMoQ]
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByFDq-92JvI]
Weird Science (1985)
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tiKR7eVfxY]
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfipl5BYBqo]
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91oESPRinas]
Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY4tw7egGn0]
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=984mYA6YVdA]
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCqcMOB6STc]
Alternate version:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu80vwfXzGs]
Uncle Buck (1989)
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eWbelibi9M]
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlwVvuduWgE]
(Sorry about the quality of this one, the only other once I could find was in German.)
no breakfast club??
No DUTCH????
Can I get a little Bear getting all the hair on his ass shot off? Great Outdoors?
More Christie Brinkley Please!!!!
The teenage movies that described my generation were “Rebel Without A Cause” and “Blackboard Jungle”. No laughs. We were born during the Depression, raised during a World War and the Korean War, and entered our teens along with the rise of Joseph McCarthy.
I am Uncle Buck, except I don’t have the great Ernie throwback to wear around. Where did he FIND that size 4X in 1989??
I adored Sixteen Candles.
Great movies. He did get it. A little bit of innocence, a little bit of cynicism, and little bit of reality. Perfection at times. Too bad the 90’s came for ole Huey.
Here’s something fun: Rumor starts in the comments section of BCB, sourced by “multiple fan reports” (gasp! maybe even dozens!) that Z hurt his back taking pre-game BP. Now Wittenmeyer is running with it: http://www.suntimes.com/sports/baseball/cubs/1707635,CST-SPT-csep09.article
In a city full of pisspoor sportswriters, he may have just leaped to the front of the pack.
Here’s something not fun.
Two games out and falling…
OT. Check out the beating Kaplan is taking on his blog.
He’s a little orange baby seal.
The Cubs are deader than I am.
Still, the only way a Cubs fan can ever be happy is to die, so I guess I’m better off.