Thaindian News

Aug 7 (IBNS) Famous director John Hughes, who was at the helm of Breakfast Club, passed away in Manhattan Thursday after a heart attack. He was 59.

He is survived by his wife of 39 years, Nancy; two sons, John, a musician, and James, a writer; and four grandchildren, reports Variety.com. John suffered the heart attack while he was taking a walk.

John stopped directing in 1991, but he continued to write and produce films.

John captured the zeitgeist of 1980s teen life as writer-director of “The Breakfast Club” and “Sixteen Candles” and produced and scripted family hits such as “Home Alone.”

After an impressive string of hits — “Home Alone” is still one of the top-grossing live-action comedies of all time.

Hughes, who never won a major show business award, stopped directing in 1991 and virtually retired from filmmaking a few years later, working on his farm in northern Illinois.

The filmmaker, whom critic Roger Ebert once called “the philosopher of adolescence,” was a major influence on filmmakers including Wes Anderson, Kevin Smith and Judd Apatow, who told the L.A. Times last year, “Basically, my stuff is just John Hughes films with four-letter words.”

“I feel like a part of my childhood has died. Nobody made me laugh harder or more often than John Hughes,” said Apatow in a statement.