Most of Hughes's works were set in Chicago at the fictional Shermer High School and were coming-of-age teen comedy films.

[1] After his death, his legacy was honored by many, including at the 82nd Academy Awards by actors he had worked with such as Ringwald, Matthew Broderick, Anthony Michael Hall, Chevy Chase, and Macaulay Culkin among others.

[4][5] Actors whose careers Hughes helped launch include Michael Keaton, Hall, Bill Paxton, Broderick, Culkin, and members of the Brat Pack group.

He spent the first twelve years of his life in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, where he was a fan of Detroit Red Wings right winger Gordie Howe.

[13] After dropping out of the University of Arizona,[14] Hughes began selling jokes to well-established performers such as Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers.

[15] Hughes used his jokes to get an entry-level job at Needham, Harper & Steers as an advertising copywriter in Chicago in 1970[16] and later in 1974 at Leo Burnett Worldwide.

Hughes's work on the Virginia Slims account frequently took him to the Philip Morris headquarters in New York City, which allowed him to visit the offices of National Lampoon magazine.

[1] Soon thereafter, Hughes became a regular contributor;[17] editor P. J. O'Rourke recalled that "John wrote so fast and so well that it was hard for a monthly magazine to keep up with him.

[17] Among his other contributions to the Lampoon, the April Fools' Day stories "My Penis" and "My Vagina" gave an early indication of Hughes's ear for the particular rhythm of teenspeak, as well as for the various indignities of teenage life in general.

The resulting film became the second disastrous attempt by the flagship to duplicate the runaway success of National Lampoon's Animal House.

[20] Hughes's directorial debut, Sixteen Candles (1984), won almost unanimous praise when it was released in 1984, due in no small part to its more honest depiction of navigating adolescence and the social dynamics of high school life in stark contrast to the Porky's-inspired comedies made at the time.

To avoid being pigeonholed as a maker of only teen movies, Hughes branched out in 1987 by writing, directing, and producing the hit comedy Planes, Trains and Automobiles starring Steve Martin and John Candy.

His later output was not so well received critically, with films like Dutch (1991), written and produced by Hughes, performing poorly at the box office.

By that time, in 1991, his John Hughes Entertainment production company had signed various deals with 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros.[21] Actor John Candy created many memorable roles in films written, directed or produced by Hughes, including National Lampoon's Vacation (1983), Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), The Great Outdoors (1988), Uncle Buck (1989), Home Alone (1990), Career Opportunities and Only the Lonely (both 1991).

"He talked a lot about how much he loved Candy—if Candy had lived longer, I think John would have made more films as a director", says Vince Vaughn, a friend of Hughes.

[1] Hughes's greatest commercial success came with Home Alone (1990), a film he wrote and produced about a child accidentally left behind when his family goes away for Christmas, forcing him to protect himself and his house from a pair of inept burglars.

Some of the subsequent films he wrote and produced during this time also contained elements of the Home Alone formula, including the successful Dennis the Menace (1993) and the box office flop Baby's Day Out (1994).

Screenplays credited to the Dantes nom de plume include Maid in Manhattan, Drillbit Taylor and Beethoven.

What we did talk about was the 20th century's dominant scrambled egghead bien pensant buttinski parlor pinko righty-tighty lefty-loosey nutfudge notion that middle-class American culture was junk, that middle-class Americans were passive dimbulbs, that America itself was a flop and that America's suburbs were a living hell almost beyond the power of John Cheever's words to describe ... We were becoming conservatives—in the most conservational sense.

[40] In the following years, Hughes rarely granted interviews to the media, save a select few in 1999 to promote the soundtrack album of Reach the Rock.

On the morning of August 6, Hughes was taking a walk close to his hotel on West 55th Street in Manhattan when he suffered a heart attack.

[53][54] Hughes is referenced in the song "Hello Chicago" by the collaborative project between Jesu and Sun Kil Moon, and appears on the album 30 Seconds To The Decline Of Planet Earth.