John Hughes

John Hughes was born February 18, 1950 in Lansing, Michigan to a mother who volunteered in charity work and a father, John Hughes, Sr., who worked in sales. A 1968 graduate of Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook, Illinois, Hughes used Northbrook and the surrounding North Shore area for the setting of many of his films.

Hughes 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 1980's teenage dramatic comedies Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Many of these films 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.

To avoid being pigeonholed as a maker of teen comedies, Hughes branched out in 1987, directing 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' greatest commercial success came with Home Alone, a film he wrote and produced about a mischievous child (played by Macaulay Culkin) who was accidentally left behind when his large family went on vacation, leaving him to his own devices in an upscale North Shore 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.

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