RIP John Hughes

Dear Mr. Vernon,

We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong, but we think you’re crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal.

Does that answer your question?

Sincerely yours,

The Breakfast Club.

It has gone disappointingly under-reported. I found out because I went to the guy’s site, planing to email with a small enquiry:

http://www.blakesnyder.com

Not to hi-jack the Hughes thread, though:

This has made me sad :o(

Bah. Watched Ferris Bueller last week. Will watch The Breakfast Club over the weekend.

And Andrew, you watched Home Alone in a month that wasn’t December? That’s wrong, man!

>Home Alones 1, 2 and 3 (they?re good, leave me alone)

Can’t agree with you on 3, but the first is an utterly classic Christmas film, and the second a solid – if retreading – sequel.

> http://wellknowwhenwegetthere.blogspot.com/2009/08/sincerely-john-hughes…

> One of the best things I?ve ever read.

This.

He made Uncle Buck aswell? He is a bloody good writer.
Might watch The Breakfast Club tonight.

To say I was gutted would be a massive understatement, very few things have made me cry, this news was one of them.

“I didn’t know John Hughes, but he felt like my friend, he told me ? and millions of others ? that it was OK to be yourself. It meant the world.”

He written Planes Trains and Automobiles ASWELL!!! Bloody Hell, why isn’t he more famous.

> Bloody Hell, why isn?t he more famous.

Given how well-known he was – despite becoming so reclusive in recent times – I think the question is ‘How did you miss him?’!

He didn’t “make” Home Alone. Sorry to be pedantic, but I’ve seen this error in a lot of poorly researched obituaries today.

> He didn?t ?make? Home Alone.

I’d argue his role as writer and producer – the only producer not credited as an exec – absolutely entitles him to be called ‘maker’.

Auteur theory’s fine as a theory, but directing a thing doesn’t always make you its author.

> Which seemingly means, as a consequence, that Chris Columbus didn?t make Home Alone?

Not at all. No more than it means the DP didn’t make it either, despite being there and grafting every day.

Given that the public doesn’t always have a grasp of what, exactly, a director even does, it’s not unreasonable for the term ‘maker’ to be applied a little loosely. ‘How these things are understood’ is ‘whose film it is’ not ‘who directed it’. The title is meaningless to many.

At very least, ignoring the unreasonable – and constant – bias towards the director in film journalism, surely the person in most creative control is permitted the ‘maker’ title?

We’re not talking about tick-box producing in this instance, we’re talking about the producer hiring the director the way the director hired the DP – all in service of the producer’s script. His characters, his story, his visual imperative, his casting, his stylistic flourishes, his relationship to the studio. How is that not ‘making the movie’?

‘John Hughes directed Home Alone’ is an inaccuracy to be corrected. ‘John Hughes made Home Alone’ is base-line true, and at best a judgement call. One depending entirely on how you think your audience will read that statement. And I’d suggest that a film-centric publication could use it with a strong understanding of how that film was created, and generic publications could comfortably argue that plenty of their readers wouldn’t view ‘maker’ as specific to a director’s role, since they may not know what that role truly entails.

Which is to say: I don’t believe you can, by default, assume that every use of ‘maker’ is born of ignorance or misunderstanding, since a strong understanding of the production would lead one to see Hughes as at least equally deserving of the title. And, in truth, probably MORE deserving.

>Does anyone know why he stopped directing?

The link above seems to suggest that he became disillusioned with Hollywood and blamed them for overworking and killing his friend John Candy.

According to Wiki he retired from the public eye and moved to Wisconsin in 1994. John Candy died in 1994.

> Put it this way; Home Alone is a John Hughes Production, a Chris Columbus film.

So: they both ‘made’ it. No producer, no film.

> you can?t dispute the fact that by ?maker?, most people would read ?director?.

I think I did dispute just that, since I don’t think the implied meaning is, automatically, director.

Nobody would dispute “Broccoli and Wilson, makers of the Bond films, today announced Lee Evans as the next 007”, or “Jerry Bruckheimer, the maker of such popcorn fodder as Top Gun, Con Air and The Rock, was killed today when he was crushed under a crate of ‘sunset’ camera filters.”

It does happen a lot, though. How many people know, for example, that George Lucas has only actually directed six films in his career? But he’s still seen as the “maker” of all the Star Wars films, and along with Spielberg, of Indiana Jones.

> But to the average member of the public, they see ?maker? and read ?director?.

As I say, I’m not convinced the average member of the public knows what ‘a director’ does or sees an appreciable difference between that role and a producer.

A Wikipedia page being publicly edited doesn’t equal average public opinion, since the ‘filmmaker’ page will have been edited by cineastes. That’s a page built by people who know what a director does, which isn’t the same as proving what the average person thinks a director is, what a filmmaker is.

When a member of the public hears ‘buffalo’, they imagine a certain type of animal. Doesn’t mean they feel qualified to provide information on the animal regarding its specific definition and difference from ‘bison’.

There’s a ‘right or wrong’ issue here – see the Wiki for deus ex machina, where incorrect use is apparently publicly accepted – but also a semantic one since ‘made X film’ isn’t automatically read off the page the same as ‘filmmaker’. Calling Hughes ‘the maker of Home Alone’ doesn’t read the same as ‘Home Alone filmmaker John Hughes’.

Certainly, I don’t think you get to call someone definitively ‘wrong’ for using the term ‘made’ in all contexts. Certainly the link you provide is clumsy, clumsy journalism. Doesn’t make SoundableObject’s – quite different – use incorrect. Indeed, the more informed you assume the reader (or writer) to be, the more it’s an accurate statement.

> Try it with ?Bob Gale, the maker of Back to the Future, fell out of a tree earlier today while spying on his future wife? and it becomes less succinct.

Which only brings us back to ‘creative vision’ and ‘control’. That it works for some and not others only goes to show that it’s a term that has to be taken in context, that can’t simply be seen as ‘always meaning director to everyone’. (Even if we could be comfortable about how ‘everyone’ views the term, which we can’t.) The context of Hughes and Home Alone is it’s his flick more than it is Columbus’ – who directed the way TV is directed, without reasonable claim to fullest ownership.

NO ONE CARES.

Harsh.

Harsh but fair.

Duplicate post, D’oh!

And call it All-New Home Alone 3D X-Treme

Oooh I’m doing that thing again aren’t I? That thing where I post every blathering stream-of-consciousness thought that pops into my head, and then people start ripping me for talking to myself as if the world may end because of it.

For administration purposes, I presume….

I feel like I ought to go see a doctor. For a while there, I thought I might have multiple personality disorder. Well, I’m still in two minds about it. If you think that’s odd, a friend of mine only has sex with women who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. Sad fucker.

Boom, boom.

Hmmm, there’s a time and a place isn’t there?

R.I.P. John Hughes

Oooh I?m doing that thing again aren?t I? That thing where I post every blathering stream-of-consciousness thought that pops into my head, and then people start ripping me for talking to myself as if the world may end because of it.

For administration purposes, I presume?.

No. Just because it’s fucking annoying.

>I?m not sure releasing a version that Hughes actively rejected – to the point of having the cut negative material burned – qualifies as a suitable memorial. (Don?t get me wrong, I?d love to see the scenes, it?s just the polar opposite of what the man would have wanted.)

I thought it was the studio that wanted it shorter, I did read that John did own the only copy of the full cut.