Where Is John Hughes?
"JOHN HUGHES hasn't set foot in Hollywood for years, but his influence has never been more potent. The king of 1980s comedy, Hughes now qualifies as something of a Howard Hughes-style recluse -- he doesn't have an agent, doesn't give interviews and lives far away, somewhere in Chicago's sprawling North Shore suburbs where most of his films were set."I'm not the biggest fan of his films, but this is an interesting article. Read the rest of it here.
Labels: '80s comedy, '80s film, article, film industry, john hughes, la times, patrick goldstein, recluse
posted by Jeff Pidgeon at
7:45 AM
5 Comments:
So maybe the rumors of Hughes writing entire screenplays in a weekend were true...perhaps he felt there was no challenge and just got bored...just a thought. I might add, I'm happy if I can write a couplet over the weekend. Bob
I wish they'd interviewed you for the article--it'd make it a lot more intersting imho to have an alternate POV in there.
I was disappointed in it-it was just several filmmakers/producers saying how much they adore Hughes...not a thing about the central subject/"mystery": so, where is he? Why on earth would a wildly successful, powerful director-writer-producer who presumably loves making films(he sure was prolific enough) completely "check out"? Why is it necessary for him to barely exist on anyone's radar these days, including important contemporary filmmakers who simply would like to thank him or talk with him?
There's definitely a story there but the Times sure didn't report it.
(btw, I must be the only person alive who remembers the kind of lousy films like "She's Having a Baby".)
Hughes would not be the first or the last person to just walk away from all of the Hollywood fluff and nonsense.
My guess is that he just reached a point where he had enough. So, why not retreat to where you feel most at peace? That's why I keep buying those lottery tickets.
As for the privacy thing, I can understand that, too. Think Chaplin and how he stayed out of the limelight in his later years. kind of just comes a point where you focus on what's important to you personally.
If that means that Hughes is fine with shopping at the local market and living off the map, that works for me.
It's always nice to have contrasting viewpoints, but I don't think it'd work well here, since they're painting Hughes as a Salinger type pursued by a throng of admirers.
I wasn't interested in teen films much as a teenager, so I didn't see most of Hughes' films until some time after they were released.
I think the only one that I saw in the theater was The Breakfast Club. I like the premise and the characters, but I thought that the way they paired up at the end defeated the purpose of the story as a group moving beyond their clique roles.
I think it's highly possible that Hughes simple grew tired of the film business and left. I'm not sure Chaplin is the best example, though - he was exiled from America, and really wanted to continue making films (and did, overseas).
I don't think most of Hughes' films (Home Alone notwithstanding) were performing as consistently as he moved into the '90s. That might have been a factor, too.
Boy, in that photo he looks like Kevin Bacon in "She's Having a Baby." Autobiographical indeed.
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