John Hughes, the beloved writer and director of 1980s teen classics like The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, died today in New York City of a sudden heart attack. He was just 59. In memory of Hughes and in honor of his still highly popular oeuvre, we pay tribute with these YouTube scenes.
Maybe the most famous movie lip-sync ever. Ferris Bueller (an impish, fresh-faced Matthew Broderick) twists and shouts on a parade float, and all of Chicago joins in.
Long, long before Judd Apatow hogged all the credit, John Hughes let the nerdy guy finish first with Duckie, Molly Ringwald's best friend in the Hughes-penned Pretty in Pink. Jon Cryer wins over Ringwald—and every girl, ever, in the history of girlkind—with this endearing lip-sync of Otis Redding's "Try A Little Tenderness." You got to!
Aside from the racial faux pas that was an exchange student named Long Duk Dong (see below), Sixteen Candles pitch-perfectly captured teen angst. "This information can not leave this room, OK? It would devastate my reputation as a dude. (pause) I've never bagged a babe. I'm not a stud." (Anthony Michael Hall may have been 16 when he said that, but he looks all of 12.)
The famous dance scene in The Breakfast Club. Hughes had a thing for the life-as-music-video dance montage.
John Candy, lovable and goofy, against Steve Martin, grumpy and smoldering. Planes, Trains and Automobiles was holiday staple that became an all-seasons classic.
