John Hughes (film director)

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John Hughes II (b. February 18 1950, Lansing, Michigan) is a noted American film director, producer and writer, responsible for some of the most successful comedy films of the 1980s and 1990s, including Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Home Alone. He has also written screenplays using his pseudonym, Edmond Dantès (name of the main character in Alexandre Dumas' novel The Count of Monte Cristo).

A 1968 graduate of Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook, Illinois, Hughes used Northbrook and the surrounding North Shore area for shooting locations in many of his films. He started out as a writer for the National Lampoon Magazine, and his first film, Class Reunion, was the first of many of his National Lampoon movies. He wrote, but did not direct, the three Vacation movies released under the National Lampoon banner, the 1983 original National Lampoon's Vacation, 1985's European Vacation, and 1989's Christmas Vacation (which he co-produced).

He is probably best known for writing the genre-defining coming-of-age 1980s teenage dramatic comedies co-starring Molly Ringwald: Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink (the first two of which he also directed).

He also wrote and directed Weird Science and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which were also teen comedies, but the humor in both films was broader, and likely had a stronger appeal to young males than his other films. Many of his teen comedies were set in the fictional Shermer, Illinois (Shermerville was the original name of Hughes' hometown, Northbrook).

These films (save Weird Science) were acclaimed by many critics for their complex, three-dimensional portraits of the tragicomedy of adolescence, as well as their acute probing of the social hierarchies of high school (See also Brat Pack), and as a result, have aged better than most films of the genre ^{[citation needed]}.

To avoid being pigeonholed as a maker of teen comedies, Hughes branched out in 1987, directing what many perceive to be his funniest film: Planes, Trains & Automobiles starring Steve Martin and John Candy. His later output would not be so critically well received, though films like Uncle Buck proved popular. Hughes's greatest commercial success came with Home Alone, a film he wrote and produced about a mischievous child who was accidentally left behind when his large family went on vacation, leaving him to his own devices in an upscale Chicagoland home being chased by a pair of burglars. Home Alone would be the top grossing film of 1990, and remains the most successful live-action comedy of all time. Hughes has not directed a film since 1991's Curly Sue.

He has been noted as an inspiration for many in the film industry including Kevin Smith, as noted in his film Dogma (interestingly, it is also stated in the film that Hughes sold his soul to the Devil for Home Alone's success).

His son, John Hughes III, records music under the name Bill Ding for Chicago's Hefty Records. These include And the Sound of Adventure (1996), Trust in God, But Tie Up Your Camel (1997), and the Horrendously Named EP (1998). More recently, John Hughes III has recorded under the name Slicker.