John Wilden Hughes Jr. (February 18, 1950 – August 6, 2009) was an American filmmaker. Beginning as an author of humorous essays and stories for National Lampoon, he went on to write and direct some of the most successful films of the 1980s and early 90s, including the comedy National Lampoon's Vacation (1983), and the sequels, National Lampoon’s European Vacation (1985), and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), the fish out of water comedy Mr. Mom (1983), the coming-of-age comedy Sixteen Candles (1984), the teen sci-fi comedy Weird Science (1985), the coming-of-age comedy-drama The Breakfast Club (1985), the coming-of-age comedy Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), the romantic comedy-drama Pretty in Pink (1986), the romance Some Kind of Wonderful (1987), the comedies Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), She's Having a Baby (1988), and Uncle Buck (1989), the slapstick comedy Baby's Day Out (1994), the family movie Beethoven (co-written under a pseudonym with Amy Holden-Jones) and the Christmas family slapstick comedy movie Home Alone, and it’s sequels, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and Home Alone 3.
