John Wilden Hughes, Jr. (February 18, 1950 – August 6, 2009) was an
American film director,
producer and
writer. He scripted some of the most successful films of the 1980s and 1990s, including
National Lampoon's Vacation;
Ferris Bueller's Day Off;
Weird Science;
The Breakfast Club;
Some Kind of Wonderful;
Sixteen Candles;
Pretty in Pink;
Planes, Trains and Automobiles;
Uncle Buck;
Home Alone and its sequel
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
Personal life
Hughes was born in
Lansing,
Michigan, to a mother who volunteered in charity work and John Hughes, Sr., who worked in sales.
A 1968 graduate of
Glenbrook North High School in
Northbrook, Illinois, Hughes used Northbrook and the adjacent
North Shore area for shooting locations and settings in many of his films, though he usually left the name of the town unsaid, or referred to it as
"Shermer, Illinois", Shermerville being the original name of Northbrook. In high school, he met Nancy Ludwig, to whom he was married from 1970 until his death. They had two sons, John Hughes III, born in 1976, and James Hughes, born in 1979.
Career
Hughes began his career as an
advertising copywriter in
Chicago in 1970 after dropping out of the
University of Arizona.
[McLellan, Dennis. "John Hughes dies at 59; writer-director of '80s teen films," Los Angeles Times, Friday, August 7, 2009.] During this time, he created what became the famous Edge "Credit Card Shaving Test" ad campaign.
