Hughes died suddenly while taking a morning walk in New York City. The writer, director grew up in the Chicago area and directed such hits as Pretty In Pink, Planes, Trains & Automobiles and Weird Science. Many of his films were set in the Chicago suburbs.
Hughes had gotten his start as a writer for National Lampoon magazine. Hughes had a gift for discovering talent. Molly Ringwald, stars like Robert Downey Jr., Bill Paxton, Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer had major career breaks courtesy of Hughes productions. His 1986 teen classic 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off,' which he wrote and directed, helped turn Matthew Broderick into a leading man.
John Hughes: The soundtrack to a generation
Many of his 80's Teen films have the same name as song titles: 'Sixteen Candles' (Stray Cats), 'Pretty in Pink' (Psychadelic Furs), 'She's Having a Baby' (Dave Wakeling) which are also heard in the film.
A great teen movie needs a soundtrack. Youth is captured better in song than on film, and behind every brain, athlete, basket case, princess or a criminal is a score. John Hughes knew how to find it.
Teen angst doesn't belong to one generation more than any other. Isolation, awkwardness and a general distrust of authority are staples, whether kids are listening to the Beatles on vinyl, or Paramore on an iPhone.
But if the boomers had Woodstock, Generation X had John Hughes.
What was it like to grow up in the '80s? One can reference a string of political or cultural touchstones, or one can turn to Hughes for the quickest, easiest and shortest answer. It sounded, perhaps, something like Simple Minds' “Don't You Forget About Me."
Too often, soundtracks for mainstream films are little more than advertisements for record labels -- quick, name three songs from 1999's “American Pie." But Hughes was one to carefully sculpt mix tapes to accompany his pictures. Simple Minds may have had a following in the U.K. long before Hughes put them in “The Breakfast Club," but they were on the fringes of youth culture in America before the 1985 film was released.
This is why the song worked. It didn't matter if one was a fan of Simple Minds' four and a half minutes of synth rock romanticism -- battle lines are drawn over music when one is a teen -- it captured a moment, and a movement. After the release of “The Breakfast Club," the song shot to the top of the charts, and to this day remains a symbol of teen films.
But “The Breakfast Club" wasn't where Hughes set the precedent for intertwining music into his films. Though not represented on the soundtrack, the music in “Sixteen Candles" captured a range of teenage emotions. Recklessness? The Specials' punk-spiked “Little Bitch." Gooey romantic anticipation? The Thompson Twins' “If You Were Here." Totally crazy this-is-the-end-of-the-world heartache? Spandau Ballet's “True."
One can argue, perhaps, that Hughes was in some part responsible for the proliferation of '80s synth rock. Yet it's the sound most closely associated with the era, and Hughes captured the sound at its most diverse. His films, for instance, could comfortably jump from the melodrama of the Smiths to the electro-fierceness of New Order.
