I never paid that much attention to John Hughes.

Don’t get me wrong.  I saw most of his movies.  I loved most of them; Breakfast Club, Pretty In Pink, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Planes Trains and Automobiles, even Home Alone – all of them were fun, clever, well-written…

…but not, in my case, because they captured what teenage life was really really like, as MPR’s film critic noted yesterday in reporting on Hughes’ passing from a heart attack yesterday.  It struck me as being a great look at what teenage life was really really like in Evanston Illinois.  Not where I came from, I grumbled.  And I was in my twenties by this point, and kinda past the whole “teenage” thing (He did contribute what I’d call one of my life’s mottos; “You can never go too far”). 

And still I loved the movies; Breakfast Club was wonderful; Pretty In Pink rocked my world; I don’t laugh any less at Ferris Bueller now than I did 20 years ago; Planes Trains and Automobiles was not only hilarious but poignant.

But while I knew and loved the movies, I didn’t know so much about Hughes himself.  Hughes was almost a brand in his own right, like “Kleenex”; say “John Hughes Movie”, and everyone knew the basic formula right off the bat.

Allison Byrne Fields has the best piece I’ve seen yet, ever, on Hughes the person, told from the perspective of a teenage penpal of Hughes’:

“I’d be honored to be your pen pal. You must understand at times I won’t be able to get back to you as quickly as I might want to. If you’ll agree to be patient, I’ll be your pen pal.”
For two years (1985-1987), John Hughes and I wrote letters back and forth. He told me – in long hand black felt tip pen on yellow legal paper – about life on a film set and about his family. I told him about boys, my relationship with my parents and things that happened to me in school. He laughed at my teenage slang and shared the 129 question Breakfast Club trivia test I wrote (with the help of my sister) with the cast, Ned Tanen (the film’s producer) and DeDe Allen (the editor). He cheered me on when I found a way around the school administration’s refusal to publish a “controversial” article I wrote for the school paper. And he consoled me when I complained that Mrs. Garstka didn’t appreciate my writing.

Read the whole, wonderful, poignant thing. 

You can never go too far.