If you're currently between 32, 33, and about 45 you already get it. But it's still hard to explain what John Hughes was and what he meant. Not because he was an auteur, but because he was an entertainer first. A chipper. He made it happen. And damnit if his stuff didn't have the resonance others lacked. Did John Candy ever have a better role than Uncle Buck? I'm not sure.
Jaime Weinman -- as usual, the #$@% smartypants, nails it when he says that Hughes was always really a writer first. (I link to his entry there, but I think that observation was one he Tweeted.)
And that's so. But ... still.
Would that 15 percent of the teen movies that come out now had as much heart as this guy's stuff.
I don't think I have yet - but if I ever do write, and see executed, a story as affecting and as real and as emotionally true - while being FUNNY, remember, as John Hughes, I will consider my career a great cracking success.
Oh, and VSL reminded me today about how awesome Whit Stillman was, too. But that's another story for another time.
You know who writes scripts with that kind of punch and heart? Elan Mastai. Hey. How's he doing?
Oh John, John, John, for all the respect you never got or awards you never received, there are we who are legion who venerate you and your output.
We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. What we did *was* wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to see us - in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal.
Thank you. Rest in Peace.
UPDATE: I've got this in a separate post above -- but if you're looking for appreciations of the man's life -- this is the one that you need to read.
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