Don't You (Forget About Me): John Hughes dies

Film director John Hughes has died.

What a huge bummer: it's like finding out that a piece of Chicago and your childhood itself has died on the same day.

Hughes is the director of some of my favorite films: Sixteen Candles, the Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles among them, and he did more to put Chicago on the map than any other filmmaker. He also started his career as a copywriter in Chicago at the Leo Burnett agency.

"Hughes took teenagers seriously, and his films are distinctive for showing them as individuals with real hopes, ambitions, problems and behavior," says Roger Ebert, film critic at the Chicago Sun-Times.

It's true. He had a knack for great dialogue and understanding how teenagers speak; it's tough to choose favorite lines, but - if pressed - I'd go with these:

Sixteen Candles:

• "I'll bet you a dozen floppy disks you don't even get a tit."
• "Hey, Jude..."
• "Jaaaaaaake!"
• "I'm not really a farmer. I'm a freshman."
• "She's totally serious, asswipe." "Chill."
  

Ferris Bueller:

• "I did not achieve this position in life by having some snot-nosed punk leave my cheese out in the wind."
• "Bueller. Bueller. Bueller. Bueller..."

Breakfast Club:

"Obscene finger gestures from such a pristine girl."

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles:

• "Train don't run out of Wichita...'lessen you're a hog or cattle."
• "You nearly crushed my head like a melon!"
• "That's how Houdini died, you know."

Hughes died of a heart attack at age 59.