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None of the reports about director John Hughes's death specified exactly where in Manhattan he collapsed from a heart attack, and you can see conspiracy theories already sprouting on the internets, with one Hollywood Elsewhere commenter wondering, "I have been trying to discover WHERE in Manhattan he dropped dead since the day he died... Is he, in fact, not even dead yet? I'm not entirely joking." Well, Movie Line has just pinpointed where he passed away on the morning of August 6th: 60 West 55th Street, outside Alain Ducasse’s brasserie Benoit; there is now a small shrine with a photograph of Hughes and sixteen candles on the sidewalk. But that's probably not going to satisfy Michael Wolff, who's written a provocative essay titled "Who Killed John Hughes," which posits: "Certain deaths do something weird to the media mind and temperament. John Hughes, a maker of what are essentially genre slapstick films, has, by his early death the other day, become a great auteur and, as well, a saint, without anyone seeming to be remotely nosy about the strange circumstances of his life and untimely end... So, come on, what happened to the guy?" Let us know who you think killed Hughes, preferably IN ALL CAPS.
John Hughes's Manhattan Death Shrine Revealed
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It's the same media that NEVER mentioned Muslims' hatred of Israel as a possible motive for 9/11.
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SOMETIMES PEOPLE JUST DROP DEAD. THE END
OBLIGATORY "DID HE DIED" MEME
HE DIED! (end of story.)
CURLY SUE!
I'M NOT REALLY SURE WHAT HAPPENED.
YOUR MOM!
THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID
WHY IS THIS EVEN AN ISSUE?
I SEE A BILLY MAYS-ESQUE TWIST COMING
A 'TWIST & SHOUT'?
MICHAEL JACKSON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111
The make-shift shrine is classy, THIS GOTHAMIST THREAD IS NOT!!
"WHO KILLED JOHN HUGHES"
When after all it was you and me
Mostly you
The man has died, may he rest in peace. How anyone can question it is beyond me. My friends attended his funeral; they are good friends of his son.
Right on John! John Hughes was influential during a tiny slice of the cultural (ahem) Hollywood history (ahem, ahem, gag).
Can you imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth that will occur when the following die?:
George Lucas
George Romero
The Wachowski Brothers
Michael Bay (for that matter)
This is just a short list of Hollywood "luminaries" that have contributed nothing of REAL cultural significance. Save it people! Hollywood films and pop music have contributed zilch towards the advancement of mankind. I contend that the effect of their escapist diversions has been the exact opposite of what is truly important in this world--reality, peace, reading, knowledge and world history.
I'll be down on the Acela directly, to begin my vigil.
John, I think you misunderstood Mr Wolff's commentary on Newser and HuffPo. He was saying that the media in general did a rather shabby job writing the initial wire service obit, without really going into details, not gory details, but just medical forensic details, and thanks to Stu VanAirsdale gumshoe work, we now know. He beat AP and Reuters at their game. And his make-shift shrine is a sweet piece of urban engineering and a new StrawBerry Fields Forever might make its mark for the Hughes Generation on that street site. Nice. Wolff did not mean WHO killed Mr Hughes, he meant WHAT killed Mr Hughes and he said so in his piece. Read it again. He wondered if maybe Hollywood spit him out (Wolff had not read Alison Bryne Fields very popular bleuology (that's blog eulogy) when he wrote that piece because now we all know that Hughes told Alison that he left Hollywood in part because he wanted to raise his kids far away from that den of BS and also because he felt that Hwood had sort of caused John Candy's early death at 43 and Hughes never forgave Hwood for that. That's all that Mr Wolff was asking: Did Hollywood Kill John Hughes? Turns out Hollywood did not kill John Hughes, he died of some kind of myocardial infarction of the clogged artereies kind in a rather fast "pokkuri" [google it] sudden popping off. Almost 60, his ticker was tired of ticking. It will happen to all of us eventually. My only question which nobody has answered yet is this: why did none of the newspaper or blog stories about his passing show readers or viewers ("screeners" as some people call online "readers" -- are you reading this or are you screening this, John?) why did none of the newspapers worldwide show a recent photo of Mr Hughes. I mean it's not 1984 forever. There are two nice decent photos of him in 2001, looking a bit like Francis Ford Coppola with a beard, salt and pepper, and a very nice family pic of him at a Detroit Red Wings game on January 1, 2009, with his two sons seated next to him on both sides. Why is everyone apparently afraid to publish either of those two "recent" photos? YOU CAN SEE BOTH OF THEM AT MY BLOG THAT NOBODY VISITS AT: "NORTHWARHDO" in the blogspot community. Both photos btw are from IMDB data base and in the public domain. And in neither photo is he fat. So case closed. Clogging of the arteries led to JH's early demise. He will be missed. The shrine rocks. Read Colby Cosh's very good piece in the National Post in Canada, he says same things as Michael Wolff. Rest in peace, John Hughes!
http://northwardho.blogspot.com has the two photos, one in b/w .....one in color.
Alexander Rubinow, who went to same high school as JH, also has a good blog with the two photos here:
http://www.geocities.com/xanderubi/html/john_hughes.html
JOhn, this is what Wolff really was asking:
"Possibly herein lies a great moral tale. Did Hughes spurn the movie business for all the reasons we wish someone would spurn it? That would be more meaningful than the Breakfast Club. Or did Hollywood spit him out? Was he too innocent for the place—that would fit his own genre.
Or was it drugs? Or other personal demons? And dead at 59 on a street corner? I can’t find anyone, in the reports of his demise, who raises much of an eyebrow about this. So…was he overweight? Inquiring minds really do want to know."
Yes, yes, obviously. It was my choice to take the headline "Who Killed John Hughes" sardonically and unleash the CAPS. Why haven't THE POLICE INTERROGATED CURLY SUE!?
CURLY HU?
Do you think the shrine can stay up there for a year at least?
THE DOCTOR WHO MISSED HIS CLOGGED ARTERIES.
SLAPSTICK??
THE TOBACCO LOBBY
i went this afternoon looking for it and didn't see it. has it been taken down?
Who knows. The man who called the emergency phone line that day is probably haunted by the fact that he helplessly watched Mr Hughes die that morning, so maybe last thing he wants is a reminder of that incident. We should let it go. Let it be. Move on. Maybe it's better that the shrine is gone. People who want to find the general area where it happened can still quietly pay their respects without actually making a shrine of the place. And without bothering anyone in the neighborhood. And without bothering any of the nearby shops and apartment buildings. Let it go. Let it be. Move on. Rest in peace, John Hughes, (1950 - 2009)... We hardly knew ye.....
DUCASSE DID IT...WITH A VARIETY OF PENS.