Thursday, August 06, 2009

Tough Loss

I have today off work and despite it being a gorgeous day, I committed myself to staying home and writing. As I'm sitting here pecking away (and not doing very well at that), I find out that one of my heroes, John Hughes, has died of a heart attack while out on a morning walk. Very very sad. I just pulled up the IMDB list of his writing credits. Some of my all-time favorites...

Dutch
Home Alone
Christmas Vacation(!!!!)
Uncle Buck
The Great Outdoors
She's Having a Baby
Plains, Trains, & Automobiles
Some Kind of Wonderful
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Pretty in Pink
Weird Science
European Vacation
The (fuckin!) Breakfast Club(!!)
Sixteen Candles
National Lampoon's Vacation

I can't think of a single writer with a resume that could come close to that in terms of movies that people love to the point that they will watch them again and again and again. On that list, everything from "Home Alone" down to "Sixteen Candles" are one after another with not a dud to be seen in between. That's a six year hot streak of 13 movies that will stand the test of time. Just awesome.

It's just an odd, odd summer, isn't it?

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