Movieline's Stu VanAirsdale tracked down the 911 reports and found that Hughes collapsed in front of 60 W 55th St. Sweetly, he then set up a shrine of 16 candles. Well, you know what the legend is: if you put on your lipstick with your breasts and spin around in a circle three times saying "long duck dong" then Jake Ryan will show up in a red convertible and take you to his dining room table where he will kiss you sweetly over your birthday cake. The ghost of John Hughes will make your dreams come true!

Chicago Now brought our attention to the listing for the $2.3 million pad which is in Chicago suburb Highland Park. Aside from being a landmark, the house has four bedrooms, four baths and four additional rooms totaling 5,300 square feet.

Someone needs to tell the listing agent that a picture of a Ferarri slamming through the house's back window might at least get some potential buyers to check the place out. However, based on the design aesthetic, it appears that—like Ferris Bueller costar Jennifer Grey—the last time it had some work was in the '80s.

The essay published on Speakeasy, written by a WSJ graphics editor named Jovi Juan and titled "John Hughes, 'Sixteen Candles' and Me," is actually quite endearing once you get rein in your "oh not another one of these" reflex and actually read it, particularly Juan's passage about having his family's lawn mowed by Gedde Watanabe, the actor who portrayed Long Duk Dong.

I wasn't too happy about Long Duk Dong. I mean, he was the only guy in the cast who kinda looked like me. Did he have to talk like a boat person? Couldn't he be a contender for a better-looking babe? He was, incidentally, the only one in the cast I met. I was mowing my front yard, no doubt ruining another shot. And he came over and asked if he could mow for awhile. I said sure and watched him walk back and forth, cutting my grass, smiling as if this was a great way to spend an afternoon. He stopped after a bit, and, laughing, shook my hand and went back to the set.

Being the angry, disaffected teenager that many of us were, Juan says that when the film was being shot at the house next door he was ambivalent, even dismissive, towards the events taking place a few feet away from his childhood bedroom, so much so that he didn't actually see the film until long after its theatrical release when he watched a VHS copy of Sixteen Candles with some friends. Understandably, Juan now expresses regret over having that attitude toward the film.

Its opening scene is a truck delivering newspapers. It passes under a canopy of trees, a cathedral of great green boughs. By the time I saw it, most of those trees were gone, struck down by Dutch Elm disease, even the ones in front of my house. It also makes me sad that I didn't find any real joy in its filming. There I was with a front row seat to an American classic, and what did I do with it? I turned away, yawning, leaving the show just as it was getting good. It took me years and many more mistakes to learn to grasp the singularity of moments, the importance of saying goodbye, of glancing back as you leave a place forever, of letting yourself be star struck.

Kinda touching, no? Now with that said, can we go ahead institute a 48-hour rule on these sort of tribute essays or whatever you call them, as in any and all such remembrances must be published on the internet within 48-hours of the death of the person being fondly remembered? Such stories being run in print media outlets will be granted extra time (A week? Two?) to compensate for print being the tortoise to the internet's hare. Can we get a vote on this?

Now, on a somewhat unrelated note, have you ever wondered whatever happened to the guy who played Jake in Sixteen Candles? Did he get fed-up with losing every available job for his type to Matt Dillion and give up acting? Well tonight my curiosity about Jake's fate got the best of me so I did some digging around.

As it turns out, the actor who played Jake Ryan, Michael Schoeffling, had roles in eight other films after Sixteen Candles (One of which was in the film Belizaire the Cajun, which was, coincidentally, filmed in the swamps near where I grew up). Schoeffling, who's now 48 years old, gave up acting in 1991 and lives in rural northeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and family, where he makes his living as a carpenter and woodworker. In 2002, GQ termed him the "Salinger of male models/actors." Maybe he'll emerge to make an appearance at Hughes' funeral?

Hughes died last Thursday, and by noon on Friday, Canadians Matt Austin, Kari Hollend, Mike Facciolo, and Lenny Panzer had inked a deal to have their recently-complete Hughes-centric movie Don't You Forget About Me released by Alliance Films. They also wound up on CNN and with a huge uptick in traffic to their blog.

Started more than three years ago, the crew set out to track how and why Hughes faded into obscurity after a run of such successful films. Of course, as the crew told the Globe and Mail they're a little sad that their success is largely due to Hughes death.

"It's a very uncomfortable feeling and you can't help but feel guilty," Ms. Hollend said. "You never want to feel like something good has happened to one person as a result of something bad happening to someone else."

While the group scored some interviews with Ally Sheedy, Andrew McCarthy, and Mia Sara (Sloane from Ferris Bueller's Day Off!) still no news on whether or not they bagged a conversation with the man himself. You do need a reason to go see the movie, now don't you! We do know that Molly Ringwald declined to participate.

Ms. Ringwald (The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink) declined numerous interview requests, for what Mr. Austin suspects are similarly melancholy reasons: "She was very close with him and I think she didn't want to speak on his behalf."

The release date is still being set, but we'll be calling in sick and stealing our father's Ferrari to go to the premiere.

It was somewhere around 1985'ish...Sometime post-The Breakfast Club, but pre-Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I was in my senior year of high school with a head filled with contempt for anything that brought joy and solace to my fellow man, especially to my fellow teen man. MTV? Fascism unleashed. Live Aid? A sign we were entering the final days. Shoulder pads? Might as well be stapling patches of asbestos under your jackets with IVs sending it directly into your blood stream.

Yes, indeed. I wasn't in a mood to just sit quietly and go along with nothing. And least of all with John Hughes movies.

So one Saturday morning, when my friends Will, Joey and I took a table in the now-demolished Marjan's Deli in Brentwood, our jaws dropped to see our arch-nemesis sitting at the booth just across the tiny aisle from us. There we saw the destroyer of teendom himself, sitting with what appeared to be his wife and two young children.

While we stifled giggles and swallowed all the words we might have said to him, ("I guess this Breakfast Club will let anyone in") had we the guts, Joey peered closer and announced, that, in fact, although it looked almost like him, it was not the great auteur, just a guy who looked kinda like him. We all looked back and agreed, the man might be huge, but he was not Hughes.

With relief we settled in, relieve that we wouldn't have to confront on that morning any dangerous moral questions like, "Do you sell your soul if you eat lox, eggs and onions three feet away from a director whose work you despise?"

Getting comfortable again, we turned back to the work of le Hughes, talking over what bugged us so much about it. We discussed how he had ruined his brilliant subversive National Lampoon's Vacation short story, turning it into a mushy family film. We considered the racism of the Long Duk character in Sixteen Candles, Bender's laughable teen street talk in Sixteen Candles, the horrifying mock depth of the art gallery scene in Ferris Bueller. As we dug into the subject we grew more animated, more excited and, in the lovable manner of teen boys everywhere, incredibly loud

We were just diving into the "Twist and Shout" sequence when we glanced over at the next table. Two children looked at us, their eyes pools of sadness deep as infinite space itself. Across the table, their parents gaped at us, their faces frozen in horror and rage, as though saying, What kind of monsters are you? The neighboring tables, too, glared with hatred.

On closer inspection, taking a third look, perhaps, we realized, it was maybe John Hughes.

And at that moment I became a writer.

John Hughes made me realize then and there that if you were going to go around hating everything in the world, I needed to find away to express that that didn't shove it in the face of my target's children and just as important, didn't expose me to the risk of being tarred and feathered by an angry brunch mob in my neighborhood deli.

It occurred to me then and there, that of all the paths one could take in life, that of the written word, in the privacy of one's home, was calling out to me.

And in time, mellowed by the years, haunted by those children's eyes plaguing my sleep, I came to find myself laughing at part of Sixteen Candles. And the Randy Quaid scenes in the vacation movies.

5.) Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Written and directed by Hughes, he said that he based the character of Cameron on himself, and based Ferris on what he always wished he could be. But it was Ferris' jealous, cynical sister Jeanie (Jennifer Grey) that perhaps provided some of the biggest laughs.

4.) The Breakfast Club
Written and directed by Hughes, this is the quintessential Brat Pack film.

Hughes made a cameo, playing Anthony Michael Hall's father.

3.) Pretty in Pink
This movie always confused me as child, because '80s style guides implied that redheads should always avoid wearing pink, and instead, stick to green. But who doesn't love Duckie?

2.) Weird Science
While the whole computer geeks creating their own model magical dream girlfriend plays into male fantasies, there's something about the themes of Weird Science—underdogs coming out on top with the help of supernatural powers—that hold universal appeal.

1.) Sixteen Candles
John Hughes' directorial debut still stands as an absolute classic, and as such, warranted two clips.

I couldn't help but add this one, because while I was only about 5 years old when I first saw it, somehow, a quarter of a century later, the behavior of these two drunk chicks still rings true.

Hughes wrote, directed, or produced some of the most beloved and influential films of the 1980s, from National Lampoon's Vacation through Planes, Trains, & Automobiles. He revolutionized family friendly live-action comedies in the 1990s. And despite his reputation as a retired recluse, he was credited under a pseudonym for work on both Maid in Manhattan and Drillbit Taylor in the 2000s.

But (the huge influence of Home Alone on a slightly younger generation aside) he'll obviously be best remembered, forever, for his still-beloved high school comedies. They were, and are, remarkable for a few reasons: strong female leads or supporting characters, a focus on a slightly idealized and exaggerated reality instead of peeking-in-the-girls-locker-room outrageousness, and, as we mentioned, class.

His movies dealt seriously, if not always realistically or positively, with class as experienced by, not coincidentally, public school teenagers growing up in the North Shore suburbs of Chicago. His rich suburban kids are neglected by parents more concerned with material goods than their children's well-being and his poor suburban kids are often just flat-out neglected or abused.

Hughes was raised in the Chicago suburbs, where he developed his loathing for (and, frankly, fixation on) the entitled trust fund kids."I knew kids that in the third grade would say, 'When I'm 18, I'm getting $22 million dollars.'" This never translated into political liberalism for Hughes (he shared that weird '80s pretend-counterculture conservatism with a lot of his talented comedian colleagues), but the consciousness of having not-so-much and being forced into dealing with those fascinating creatures who have too much underpins all his crucial '80s work.

So. Yes. Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, the gender-flipped (and superior) Some Kind of Wonderful, the still-hilarious Ferris Beuller's Day Off and The Breakfast Club—that's a pretty good legacy, and they're so ingrained in the popular culture that it's hardly worth it to exalt each one in detail.

The entirety of Pretty in Pink is available on YouTube, for now. The opening Ferris Bueller monologue remains a comic masterpiece.

Hughes began his career as a copywriter, sold jokes to Rodney Dangerfield, and eventually joined the National Lampoon staff. Despite his incredibly influence and obvious status as an auteur, he directed only eight films, from 1984 through 1991.

"[I]t's not [worth it]," one former Hughesland resident concludes. 'Because his movies ultimately aren't that good. I don't think anyone should treat people like shit and get away with it just because they're a filmmaker. It would be different," he suggests, "if he were Martin Scorsese." ...

When the script for [Career Opportunities] predictably yielded a dog, Hughes re-shot several scenes, and when that didn't work, he threw tantrums and demanded that Universal remove his writing and producing credits from it. A top Universal executive remembers, "He said he was a big-time guy now, and that he did Home Alone, and that we couldn't do that to him. He said, 'You're selling shit under my name.' We refused. His name is a selling point, even if you're selling shit."

The rest of the expose (tastefully titled "Big Baby") is just as brutal — yet oddly endearing in a Forest-Whitaker-in-Last-King-of-Scotland kind of way. We really do love our "doughy-complected" tyrants for better or worse, yet while we wouldn't let him fish-hook us by our nipples, we had planned to keep things fairly transparent with contextualized replies straight from Hughes himself. Alas, the combination of such a stinging press history and this week's swift, severe refusals doesn't bode well for our best intentions, but we must assume they reflect Hughes' idea of the right thing to do. If only that idea involved getting back to making movies as well.

• 'Big Baby' Scanned [Hollywood Elsewhere]

In it, newest addition to the How I Met Your Mother family Britney Spears reprises her role as a doctor's receptionist who, in a recurring gag we're certain seemed funny in the writers' room, cries whenever she's yelled at on the phone. Throw in a lightbulb moment and some skillful editing courtesy of Defamer videographer Molly McAleer, and Britney is now berated by Ferris Bueller's Day Off's Cameron, one of John "Frannie and Zooey" Hughes's most memorable comic creations (with props, of course, to Alan Ruck). Asked for any insights into her latest work, McAleer simply shrugged, and, in her cavalier, Claire From Six Feet Under - the Art School Years way, simply said, "I just thought it would be hilarlar to have Cameron yelling at her," pausing for a moment before adding, "I thought it also demonstrated that when put up against people with actual comedic chops she's really really terrible, as opposed to kind of decent next to a bunch of hacks."

• Previously: Two Minutes To Save Britney's Career [Defamer]
• How I Met Your Mother [CBS]

"Mr. Hughes has a policy of not speaking to the press or granting interviews to any media. Thank you for your interest in our client."

Whatever. It's a temporary setback to a noble cause we're confident can, should and must still win out at the end of the day. Your questions remain essential to the crusade, however, so if you haven't given Hughes or best shot (or forwarded this to at least a dozen friends and colleagues), then follow this link already and submit your two cents.

As Goldstein describes in today's Big Picture:

Hollywood is full of older masters who've been mentors to younger acolytes. But Hughes, 58, is the only one who's disappeared without a trace; he quit directing in 1991, moved back to Chicago in 1995 and has basically stayed out of sight ever since. ...

No one who knows Hughes is eager to theorize about why he dropped out of sight. It's possible that the filmmaker, who gave studio executives headaches when he was riding high, simply grew tired of the messy business of making movies and chose to pursue a simpler life.

It's honorable work overall, but Goldstein's failure to procure straight answers leaves us feeling shortchanged. So in the spirit of reader service and our own unflagging curiosity, we're hereby issuing the John Hughes Q&A Challenge directly to Hughes himself. But this requires participation from the whole Defamer community, so listen up:

1) Commenters: We're opening the floodgates! Veteran and rookie commenters, submit your questions for John Hughes below. Keep 'em classy, although any inquiries about the post-graduation sex and dating lives of The Breakfast Club are admittedly fair game.

2) Tipsters, spies and industry moles: Help us help you. Get this challenge to John Hughes. We're hoping for a personal response to his favorite questions at Defamer by the end of this week.

Let the virtual interview (and the word-of mouth) begin!

• John Hughes' imprint remains [LAT]

[Drillbit] is based on a treatment Hughes wrote years ago for Paramount; he never turned it into a script. But two years ago, after Apatow's breakout hit The 40-Year-Old Virgin, the studio enticed him to develop Drillbit.

Hughes decided to not come aboard but has "story by" credit under his longtime pen name Edmond Dantes, protagonist of Alexander Dumas' novel The Count of Monte Cristo. It's the first participation in a feature of any sort for Hughes since he received "story by" credit on 2002's Maid in Manhattan and 2003's Beethoven's Fifth.

Even Apatow has never met Hughes, a notoriously studio-hating brat with the uncanny talent to churn out screenplays faster than most writers can finish a cigarette (''I may get in a lot of shit for this, but the last 40 pages of Home Alone took eight hours to write,'' he memorably told EW in 1994). He has yet to emerge from hiding in Illinois or express any interest in reclaiming his spot as the industry's reigning comedy kingpin, which is fine by us; we love a guy who knows to quit while he's ahead lest such overextended wares as Drillbit Taylor or, worse yet, Apatow's forthcoming mistake Step Brothers have our eyes rolling until they cramp. We strongly urge Brett Ratner, an unwavering devotee of Experimental Rejuvenating Arts&trade including tranny fellatio and frozen-yogurt chauffer bonding, to give a similar reclusion a go.

• Hughes treats Apatow to laughs [Variety]