It’s odd to consider which celebrity death will hit you the hardest. Michael Jackson’s bizarre and untimely passing certainly floored people around the planet. But for me, it’s this morning’s passing of John Hughes while he was walking in New York City at the also-far-too-young age of 59 that has hit me like a ton of bricks. 

Just last night, I went through my DVD collection and stacked up all the movies I own of his, and was planning to spend the next week watching them whenever I had a spare moment. Just thinking of the titles brought back 25 years’ worth of memories, from “Sixteen Candles” to “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” and from the three Chevy Chase “Vacation” movies to the immortal holiday classic “Planes, Trains & Automobiles.” 

“Pretty in Pink”

These weren’t just movies to me, and to many others in my generation and the ones since. They were touchstones of our lives, that freeze-framed moments and memories both of the times we watched them and the amazing way in which they seemed to shine a light on our existence. And in particular, one character and one movie of John’s shaped my entire showbiz career ambitions. 

“Pretty in Pink” is the movie that made me want to write movies and led me to idolize John Hughes as a movie god ever since. Why? Well, I used to have a crush on Molly Ringwald but I got over that – especially when I met her for about two seconds last fall and she blatantly tried to keep it at two seconds. (Rude!)  (more…)

“Wax on, wax off.” “He slimed me.” “Fortune and Glory, kid.” “I’ll be back.” “Don’t get him wet. Keep him out of bright light. And never feed him after midnight.”

It’s hard to believe that a quarter century has passed since that magical movie summer of 1984. The calender year of George Orwell’s dire dystopian nightmares had arrived, but instead of a nation writhing in servitude to Big Brother, America was delighting in the prosperity engineered by Big Gipper. Throughout the summer of ‘84, the greatest president of the twentieth century was cruising to the single largest electoral total ever amassed by a presidential candidate in our history, and “It’s Morning Again in America” commercials were playing on TV’s across the land to widespread approval. (more…)