Good one.
John Hughes.
It really started with National Lampoon’s Vacation.
Writer.
Chase.
Ramis was at the stick.
Egon from Ghostbusters.
Hughes really took off with Sixteen Candles.
He directed.
And that’s the first I saw of the big trilogy.
Those ’80s movies which transcend decade and genre:
Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink.
The middle one is the best.
Hughes needed a dry run with Sixteen Candles.
The Breakfast Club was the home run.
The grand slam.
Which leaves some holes.
European Vaction [writer].
Weird Science [hasn’t aged well…unless you’re a horny boy].
By Pretty in Pink, Hughes had relinquished direction to Howard Deutch.
Bueller [director] hasn’t aged that well.
WarGames [piece on #QAnon in the works] is much, much better.
Some Kind of Wonderful is another Deutch-directed hole.
Crosses paths with Back to the Future [Lea Thompson].
All of which is to say that Uncle Buck pales in comparison the the true Candy/Hughes masterpiece: Planes, Trains and Automobiles [sic].
No Oxford comma.
Holes.
She’s Having a Baby [director].
PTA [director] was his second great auteurist masterpiece after The Breakfast Club.
But in Hughes, auteur once again becomes AUTHOR [in the sense of writing].
Hughes was no caméra–stylo savant–no Orson Welles or Hitchcock of angle and mise-en-scène.
It’s the story that matters.
And yet…Judd Nelson’s neorealist performance in The Breakfast Club must have made Hughes the Rossellini of the ’80s…if for only a moment.
[and Nelson its James Dean…briefly]
The Great Outdoors [writer] is worse than even Uncle Buck.
Which is to say, Uncle Buck is WAY better than The Great Outdoors.
But both pale in comparison to Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Christmas Vacation was a comeback.
Jeremiah S. Chechik owes his career to Hughes [writer] and Randy Quaid [genius].
Hughes only directed once more after Uncle Buck.
Curly Sue.
Sad.
And his writing went strictly downhill after the rollercoaster pinnacle of Home Alone.
Money isn’t everything.
-PD
paulydeathwish 