For white suburban American youth who came of age in the 1980s in North America, John Hughes provided the silver screen reflection of your own public high school experiences.  The writer and director of Sixteen Candles, the Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off had an uncanny knack for capturing the way teens spoke, felt and related to both their peers and the adults who parented and taught them in films that never spoke down to their audience.  Whether you were a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess or a criminal, John Hughes spoke your language and normalized your experiences.

The next two weeks of Cinefiles comics will be our “School’s Out for Summer” weeks where we will delve deeply into the world of John Hughes and explore several of his most beloved movies and some of the actors who helped make those films a reality.