Beer?

"Beer?"

"It's seven o'clock in the morning, Jack."

"Scotch?"

John Hughes, as a writer tapped into a comedic vein that few ever find. Any time you watched a movie during the eighties you just knew when he had his hands in it. Most people that experienced their teen years during the glory days of parachute pants, vans and new wave music can list Mr. Hughes filmography off he top of their heads. He touched a nerve with all of us and he will be missed.

The silver lining, if there can be, is that a whole new era of filmmakers will be exposed to his writing. He didn't make, "movies that matter". But his movies did matter, it was his audience that didn't. Which I guess is why he spoke so clearly to it. His movies were easy and accessible. They were silly and goofy, but always poignant and relateable. Every one of his movies had a message that we could all get our hands around. Even Bueller offered, the whole "Life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop to look around once in a while you could miss it." Is it deep? No. But neither were we. And that's the point. While he wasn't solving world problems, he was helping his target demo negotiate through puberty.

When was the last movie made that really tapped into that audience. High School Musical? People just don't make his kind of movies anymore. It is a shame that he never got the credit that he deserved while he was alive. He was also responsible for some of he best comedic performances of all-time.

Anthony Michael Hall deserved an Academy Award for his role as the Geek in Sixteen Candles. There I said it. He was BRILL-iant in that movie. I'm not kidding. Watch that movie again and tell me that he wasn't more worthy than Haing Ngor in the Killing Fields. I mean, I get it Ngor told an important story about Cambodia and we have all grown because of it, but he wasn't as good as AMH. There isn't a false beat in the performance. I mean, he should have been nominated for pretending to have the hots for Molly Ringwald alone. With apologies to Haley Joel Osment, it was singularly the BEST acting performance by a kid ever.

From Mr. Mom to Home Alone, John Hughes put together a string of characters that will stand the test of time. Matt Broderick, Alan Ruck and the creepy Jeffrey Jones in FerrisBueller. That movie will always a touchstone for high school coolness; John Candy in, well, everything; Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern and Mac Culkin in Home Alone, while the former two play the modern Stooges the later will always be the touchstone for childhood coolness with a heart; and Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom all benefited from the writing talents of Mr. Hughes. He knew how to speak to his audience and he never spoke down to them.

These days, for the most part, movies for children are geared toward the adults that bring them, with in-joke spewing magic genies and musical numbers that are so trumped up you'd think they were wearing a hair piece. And as for the current crop of Teenage movies these conveyor belt created, vomit inducing piles of Duce are so dumbed down that you wonder if the writers were actually in high school. If you don't believe me try and sit through anything brought to you by the producers of Stomp My Dance-Off, or whatever.

John Hughes was successful because he remembered what it was like to be a kid and he respected the growing pains we all felt during adolescence. He knew what it was like to be the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess and the criminal. Let's face it during the 80's he had us all brainwashed.

Sincerely...