John Hughes

Hughes's ability to tune into the lifestyle, language and emotional concerns of the MTV generation was evident in films such as Sixteen Candles (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (both 1986).

Crucially for the young audiences which took him to their hearts, he was on their side, portraying young people as individualists confronting a conformist adult world.

"Many film-makers portray teenagers as immoral and ignorant, with pursuits that are pretty base," he once said. "They seem to think that teenagers aren't very bright. But I haven't found that to be the case. I listen to kids. I respect them."

John Hughes was born on February 18 1950 in Detroit, Michigan. "There weren't any boys my age," he later recalled, "so I spent a lot of time by myself, imagining things." His family later moved to Chicago, where his heroes were The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Picasso.

After Glenbrook North High School, John briefly studied at the University of Arizona before dropping out and returning to Chicago to take a job as a copywriter with an advertising agency.

In the late 1970s he joined the editorial staff of the satirical magazine National Lampoon, which at the time was moving into film production. He got his first break when he was invited to write the screenplays for National Lampoon's Class Reunion (1982) and National Lampoon's Vacation (1983). He also wrote the screenplay for Mr Mom (1983) – about a couple who swap roles after the husband loses his job – which grossed more than $200 million.

Unhappy at the way in which his screenplays had been handled, in 1984 Hughes decided to try his hand at direction. The result was Sixteen Candles, with Molly Ringwald as a lovelorn high school pupil whose parents fail to mark her 16th birthday owing to their preoccupation with the arrangements for her older sister's wedding. Hughes wanted to make a movie "from the girl's point of view... because girls tend to have a more considered view of life".

He both wrote and directed The Breakfast Club, which concerns five high school pupils with different personalities ("a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal") who become friends while thrown together as they serve a Saturday detention.

Hughes wrote the screenplay for Pretty in Pink, also starring Molly Ringwald, a comedy about a working-class girl pursued by two boys, one rich, one poor, and returned to direction with Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the story of a teenage boy in the Chicago suburbs who feigns illness to avoid school and spends a day exploring the city. Some Kind of Wonderful (1987), for which Hughes wrote the screenplay, was described by one critic as "Pretty in Pink with a sex change".

In 1987 Hughes moved away from the teenage genre as writer, producer and director of Planes, Trains & Automobiles, starring Steve Martin and John Candy, about two businessmen on a problematic trip from New York to Chicago. His other projects included the comedy She's Having a Baby (1988), Uncle Buck (1989) and Beethoven (1992).

Between 1982 and 1990 Hughes was involved in making 21 films. But after the huge success of Home Alone he appeared to lose his touch. Although he continued to produce and to write screenplays, his last credit as a director was in 1991, for Curly Sue.

John Hughes, who died from a heart attack, married, in 1970, Nancy Ludwig, who survives him with their two sons.

Published August 7 2009