The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. You may have seen that I’ve been watching these movies in the last few weeks. All these movies have multiple things in common: They’re all from the 80’s, they’re all high school movies and yes: They’re all directed by John Hughes.
Sadly, John Hughes passed away in 2009, so we won’t be getting any more of his movies. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t celebrate him and his movies.
Hughes was a writer, director and producer for lots of movies. His career started as writer for National Lampoon, a magazine. Later on, these stories he wrote became movies in the 80’s. His first movie was National Lampoon’s Vacation, where National Lampoon’s European Vacation and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation followed. I must secretly confess that I haven’t seen those, but they are on my to-watch list!
In 1984 he made directed his first movie: Sixteen Candles. I’ve seen this movie two weeks ago for the first time and I liked it. I wasn’t the only one who liked it: It got lots of praise for honestly showing what high school life was like for upper middle classes.
Sixteen Candles was the first of what would become a series of high school movies from John Hughes. It was followed by Wierd Science, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. All movies where set at the same high school: Shermer High School.
Late in the 80’s, Hughes didn’t want to be the typical teen comedy writer and started working on Planes, Trains and Automobiles, which had great reviews. After this, he didn’t make the great ones he had been making before, but this would come to an end with a new movie: Home Alone.
I guess everybody has seen – or at least knows – Home Alone and knows what a success it was. It became the top grossing movie of 1990 with a final gross of $285.761.243. This was a record and is listed as the highest-grossing live-action comedy ever in the Guinness World Records. He also wrote two of the sequels: Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and Home Alone 3.
The last movie he directed was Curly Sue in 1991. He got out of the spotlight in 1994 and there wasn’t that much news from him. In 2009, he died at 59 years old, suffering from a heart attack.
John Hughes made a great deal of movies. Most of them as a writer, some as a (executive) producer and a few as a director. He was known for casting the same actor multiple times: Molly Ringwald was his muse and was main actress in The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink. Anthony Michael Hall was main actor in The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles and Weird Science, Edie McClurg was in six(!) of his movies, as a minor character, most noticable in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as the secretary. John Candy also can be seen in lots of Hughes’ movies. Vince Vaugn, a friend of Hughes, said that John Hughes would probably had directed more movies if John Candy hadn’t died that early.
So as I have been watching three of his films, I wholeheartedly want to recommend these to you.
Sixteen Candles A girl, Samantha, turns 16. This should be the best day of her life, but it turns out to be the worst. Her family forgets her birthday as her sister is getting married the day after. She is secretly in love with older guy Jake and geek Ted is in love with her.
The Breakfast Club Five teens are having detention, on a Saturday. None of them seem to have something in common. A spoiled girl, an athlete, a geek, an outcast and a delinquent. They are obligated to stay in the library from 9 tot 3 and write a 1000-word essay about who they think they are. The groups seems to have a lot more in common than they initially thought.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Ferris Bueller is this bit crazy teen who is determined to stay a day home from school. He fakes being sick and tries to have a great day in the city of Chicago with two of his friends. The principle however thinks that Ferris isn’t really sick and tries to prove this for himself as he chases Ferris and his friends.
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