Hughes Created Classics That Defined My Youth

CLEVELAND - With the sad and sudden death of filmmaker John Hughes yesterday, I feel compelled to give thanks to the man for creating some of my all-time favorite movies.

Mr. Hughes, you rock!

Hughes got his start in the 1970's as a writer, but where his brilliance began to impact my life was in the 1983 Chevy Chase film, National Lampoon's Vacation. He wrote the screenplay, which was inspired by long trips he and his family took when he was a kid. The hi jinks and often slapstick humor (masterfully executed by the bumbling Chase) in this flick delighted me to no end. Even now, I chuckle every time I see it on television.

I understand that Hughes' most iconic work is as the director of such classic 1980's teen comedies as Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

However, I never watched those movies in their entirety but I was certainly aware of them when they hit theatres and then, VHS. I did see bits and pieces of the flicks, and my favorite moment may have been in Sixteen Candles, when the geeky Anthony Michael Hall showed an entire gym full of students Molly Ringwald's panties to win a bet.

Hughes was so awesome that he actually made Matthew Broderick (as the titular Ferris Bueller) seem cool and worth emulating.

Another of Hughes' creations, the seldom mentioned but highly entertaining 1985 film, Weird Science was super popular in my book. My cousin and I used to watch that movie all the time and we even believed that it could be possible to create a real-life, bodacious white chick by using nothing more than a computer and a little imagination. That was an awesome film and Kelly LeBrock never left my "to-do list."

It is worth mentioning that Hughes wrote and produced the wildly successful Home Alone film, which catapulted 10-year old Macauley Culkin to superstardom upon its 1990 release, and its two ensuing sequels.

No, I wasn't a follower of his most revered films, nor was I even in the targeted age range for those classic teen flicks. But John Hughes left an indelible mark on my life with his meticulously realistic work. His movies weren't designed to win Academy Awards, all they were meant to do was give a voice to a generation of developing adults.

That's not a bad legacy at all.