John Hughes, 1980s Teen Movie Filmmaker, Dies

John Hughes, the filmmaker responsible for the "Weird Science", "The Breakfast Club", and "Pretty in Pink", just for starters, died Thursday, August 7, at the age of 59. According to CNN, John Hughes was taking a morning walk in Manhattan when he died of a heart attack.

As a child of the '80s, I was a fan of John Hughes' work without even realizing who John Hughes was. In the 1980s, John Hughes gave us great movie classics such as "Sixteen Candles", "The Breakfast Club", "Weird Science", "Pretty in Pink", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", "Some Kind of Wonderful", "Planes, Trains, & Automobiles", "She's Having a Baby", and "Uncle Buck".

Of all these John Hughes films from the 1980s, I have to say "The Breakfast Club" was my favorite. "The Breakfast Club" still ranks up there as one of my favorite movies of all time. "The Breakfast Club" came out in 1985, and since I was just seven years old and wasn't allowed to watch such grown-up movies, I didn't see it until I was a bit older when "The Breakfast Club" was a regular classic movie on HBO.

I could easily identify with the characters in "The Breakfast Club", and I had a bit of a crush on one of the characters. No, it wasn't Emilio Estevez's portrayal of Andrew Clark that set my heart to throbbing. It wasn't even the bad boy Judd Nelson's character John Bender that made me giddy. It was the geek. Yes, I was in love with Anthony Michael Hall.

Also in 1985, Anthony Michael Hall went on to star in the John Hughes film "Weird Science" with Kelly LeBrock and Ilan Mitchel-Smith, another John Hughes favorite for me.

In the 1990s, John Hughes was a writer for some great movies my friends and I enjoyed, and my children love today. "Home Alone" and "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York" have my children glued to the television when these John Hughes films air. They are also big fans of the "Beethoven" series, a story of a very slobbery St. Bernard dog, of which John Hughes was also a writer.

John Hughes was an integral part of my life. He introduced me to the perils of cliques in "The Breakfast Club". By the end of the movie "Sweet Sixteen", John Hughes had me wishing I was 16 and looked like Molly Ringwald. John Hughes introduced me to Anthony Michael Hall, whose face decorated my walls as a pre-teen. While John Hughes' films didn't win many awards, John Hughes' films will forever go down in history as iconic 1980s classic movies.

Sources:
"'Sixteen Candles,' 'Breakfast Club' director Hughes dead at 59", CNN.com

"John Hughes", IMDB.com