Physical Development
1950 saw the birth of John in a little Midwest village. He had three sisters and was the sole male. For his first 12 years in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, he was a Gordie Howe supporter of the Detroit Red Wings. When he was younger, John remembered being “sort of quiet.” He was the middle child, having a younger brother and an older sister. Despite being hard-working blue-collar laborers with limited finances, his parents ensured their children had everything they needed. John was a bright, cheerful, and healthy young man. He was well-liked by his classmates and an excellent athlete. While in high school, John was interested in extracurricular activities and had several romances. He liked pushing boundaries and had a rebellious spirit. He occasionally had minor problems, though.
John’s family relocated to Northbrook, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, in 1963. His father found employment there selling roofing supplies. John went to Glenbrook North High School after attending Grove Middle School, where he found inspiration for the movies that would later establish his career. In high school, he met Jane, a cheerleader who would become his wife. John used movies as a getaway when he was a teenager. Jackson Peterson, a boyhood buddy, said about John: ” She [Marion] would undoubtedly be crucial to what John wanted to accomplish. His mom and dad often scolded him (Kaimaxi & Lakioti, 2021).” John was a devoted follower of the Beatles, and numerous pals claim that he was pretty knowledgeable about films and the Rat Pack
Cognitive Development
Cognitive Progress John majored in physical education while attending college and was awarded a scholarship for his athletic prowess. He was a bright student who did well but partied too much and caused trouble. John spent the night in jail after being arrested for drinking and driving. Additionally, it was discovered that he had taken an exam with a cheat sheet, which led to his being expelled from the team for a semester. John changed his behavior after realizing he was going in the wrong direction. After graduating from the University of Arizona, John began selling jokes to well-known comedians including Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers. Hughes used his sense of humor to get a job as a marketing copywriter at the beginning level at Newton, Harper, and Try to steer in Chicago in 1970 and later at Leo Burnett International in 1974. He created the Edge “Credit Card Shaving Test” marketing campaign.
John routinely traveled to the Philip Martin corporate offices in New York City as part of his job on the Carolina Slims account, allowing him to go to the National Lampoon magazine offices. After that, John started to contribute regularly; according to editor Patric O’Rourke, “John wrote so quickly and brilliantly that it was hard for a magazine to maintain pace with him.” His first story, “Vacation ’58,” which later served as the inspiration for the movie National Lampoon’s Vacation, was inspired by the vacations he took with his family as a child (Rottenberg, 2021). The April Fools’ Day pieces “My Penis” and “My Vagina,” among his other works to the Lampoon, provided an early hint of John’s ear for the distinct rhythm of teen speak as well as for the humor of the day.
National Lampoon’s Class Reunion, his first script to gain credit, was written when he was still a staff member at the publication. The eventual results movie turned into the flagship’s second failed attempt to compare Animal House’s phenomenal succes. However, national Lampoon’s Vacation, John’s subsequent screenplay for the imprint, would become a massive success in 1983. This, along with the popularity of another John screenplay in the same year, Mr. FG, led to Universal Pictures offering Hughes a three-film deal.
John first met Jane when he was in his early 30, and they married and had two kids. John was a good husband and father involved in his children’s lives and supported their hobbies. He supervised his son’s baseball team and attended each of his daughter’s dance performances. As his children grew older, John started thinking about his mortality and gave up smoking, and started exercising. He also started spending more time with his mother and siblings. John wanted to ensure he was there for his children like his parents had been there for him.
John is currently in his early 70s. He keeps himself active even though he is retired by going for walks and playing golf. His descendants, including his children and grandchildren, share a close link with him. However, he is content with his life’s direction and the person he has turned out to be. Therefore, John’s physical, cognitive, and socioemotional growth at each stage of his life must be considered when examining John’s life from the perspective of developmental psychology.
John and his wife Jane possess atypical marital habits and jokingly refer to their union as a “poor marriage for life.” He and Jane acknowledged extramarital affairs and supported the right to do so. John claimed to want a polyamorous relationship with his wife Jane and the dancer Misty Copeland, but after counseling, he gave up. Jane, his family, and the business John Development Inc. are situated in Beverly Hills, California. Performed a bungee leap from a chopper in the Grand Canyon to mark his 50th birthday. Lloyd’s of London provided John’s $200 million leap insurance to support the Global organization Citizen.
Social Emotion Development
John was well recognized for his quick wit and a good sense of humor, both of which were inborn and integral parts of who he was. His sharp mind never faltered, and his impromptu remarks often brought laughs and life to gatherings. Most importantly, he was a gentle, caring, and humble man who never stopped being thankful for the life he had. John has always enjoyed photography and devoted endless hours to editing pictures for Trinity and KCD yearbooks in his darkroom (Rottenberg, 2021). John’s photographs are displayed at the Johns’ house during his family holidays and travels. Until the aftereffects of a stroke in 2011, he worked on his love of photography well into retirement.
John first moved to Madison Avenue before moving to Hollywood. John, a college dropout without academic credentials, had a sense of humor. John was a professional gag writer for comics like Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers while enjoying a living doing odd jobs. He occasionally witnessed his jokes being spoken on T.V. programs like “The Tonight Show,” but John could not support himself by telling jokes for $10 each via Vanity Fair (Rottenberg, 2021). After putting together a portfolio of yuks, John sought employment in advertising and was hired by the principal advertising agency Leo Burnett. At Leo Burnett, he advanced through the ranks and finally began working on important accounts like Virginia Slims.
John had certainly come a long way, but selling people cigarettes that were absurdly long was not his passion. But he ended himself in New York City, where the National Lampoon magazine is based, because of his advertising business. John’s goal was to work for National Lampoon. He wrote for the magazine while still employed by Leo Burnett, working with managing editor P.J. O’Rouke on articles like “National Lampoon Sunday Newspaper Parody.” Hughes ditched his gray flannel suit for a featherweight mullet as his career at the National Lampoon flourished, and in 1979 he left Leo Burnett to focus solely on comedic writing.
An advantageous offer from Warner Bros. set John’s scripting career in motion. He began working for National Lampoon in 1979, and thanks to the popularity of the film “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” Hollywood was receptive to the Lampoon team’s proposals. In 1982’s “National Lampoon’s Class Reunion,” a parody horror film set at Lizzie Borden High School, Hughes received his first screenwriting credit with P.J. (Codilan, 2019). O’Rourke claimed that he “was the one who got violent and had the vocabulary for it.”
John had good fortune despite his unlucky screenwriting start. Warner Bros. reportedly acquired the rights to “Vacation ’58,” his 1979 National Lampoon short story about the Griswold family’s disastrous cross-country trip to Disneyland. John accepted the studio’s invitation to create the screenplay for the adaptation. Unfortunately, Harold Ramis took up John’s directing duties for “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” thus John was not involved. However, John found his lack of influence over the finished product to be so grating that it motivated him to direct his screenplays.
John is one of the few American film masters who successfully, cleverly, and brilliantly caught the spirit of the 1980s and early 1990s in the United States. In such masterpieces as “The Breakfast Club” and “Pretty in Pink,” John may be most known for his empathic, character-driven, and flawlessly soundtracked explorations of teen angst (at least the kind experienced by white suburban teens) (Codilan, 2019). In addition, he is the creator of the hugely popular “Home Alone” trilogy as well as the hilarious yet touching comedy “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,” and more.
Regarding box office, John’s biggest hit is Chris Columbus’ Home Alone (1990), featuring Macaulay Culkin as a young boy abandoned by his parents while traveling on holiday in France. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Home Alone 3, and Home Alone 4, all written by Hughes, are the result of its inspiration. He continued to develop and produce screenplays throughout the 1990s, but Curly Sue, his final picture, was directed by him in 1991
John was a sought-after Hollywood talent in the early 1990s, buoyed by the cultural impact of his 1980s teen flicks and the enormous box office success of “Home Alone.” John signed a seven-movie agreement with 20th Century Fox in 1991 after a bidding war involving many big studios, allegedly worth $200 million (according to the Los Angeles Times). The pact included a “Home Alone” sequel (Han, 2021). Concern as to whether or not John could replicate the magic of that movie was the subject of a magazine story that was so damning it led to Hughes virtually entirely leaving Hollywood.
John was passionate about his hometown, even when he was only starting as a director. As a result, he pushed Universal Pictures to film his movies in Northbrook (source: The New York Times). Even more vehemently, he declared to Roger Ebert, another legendary figure in Chicago’s film industry, “I’m going to do all my movies here in Chicago.” John may have thought the Midwest was the ideal location for his movies, but he frequently ran afoul of Hollywood producers (Han, 2021). According to Spy Magazine, John was so outraged by Universal Pictures forcing him to finish the editing on “The Breakfast Club” in Los Angeles that he terminated his contract with the company and entered a new one with Paramount Pictures.
Known as the “Philosopher of Puberty” and the “Auteur of Adolescent Angst,” John won the hearts of young people who were only trying to communicate (via NPR). Baby Boomer John created the tone of Generation X teen life by bridging the age gap. John was old enough to be the adult in the room but young enough to be sensitive to adolescent problems when he was in his 30s and at the height of his teen film career. And he took such worries seriously, unlike other oldsters. “People forget that when you’re 16, you are probably more concerned than you will ever be again,” John said in an interview with Roger Ebert in 1984 about the films “Sixteen Candles” and “The Breakfast Club.” Hughes produced films that did not merely portray teenagers as objects of exploitation but as entire people.
John loved music, and it was an all-consuming enthusiasm that his films outlined (via Vanity Fair) (via Vanity Fair). Consider scenes where John Bender (Judd Nelson) triumphantly pumps his fist in the air to the tune of “Do not even You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds or Samantha (Molly Ringwald) finally gets her birthday wish fulfilled to the tune of “If You Were Here” by Thompson Twins. Ducky Dale’s (Jon Cryer) impassioned lip-syncing of Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” is another. Combining extraordinary situations with the ideal melody allowed for the creation these legendary scenes (Gasiorowski, 2018). He continued to develop and produce screenplays throughout the 1990s, but Curly Sue, his final picture, was directed by him in 1991. He remade the 1947 classic Miracles on 34th Street and his son James’s 2001 feature New Port South. In addition, he was given writing credits for several movies, including Maid in Manhattan (2002) and Drillbit Taylor (2008).
Some of John’s most well-known scripts were created in just a few days thanks to his lightning-fast writing speed (via Vulture). Many of John’s screenplays were never turned into films, while some of them, like “Planes, Train and Automobiles” and “Weird Science,” became ’80s classics. Johns’s family discovered a ton of unproduced writing after his passing. His screenplay for the movie “Grisby Go Broke” became well-known online, and there were rumors that Paramount Pictures would create the film after his death (via Vulture). However, no production company has since tried to do a project based on Johns’ writing because Paramount rejected the concept. John’s unproduced film work mirrored a large portion of what was seen on television and in movies during his lifetime. With scripts like “National Lampoon’s Jaws 3, People 0,” an abandoned “Jaws” parody, “teen dramas influenced by musical mixtapes,” and a live-action “Peanuts” adaption, John was not exactly expanding his range of artistic endeavors. Even yet, his output’s sheer volume is still incredibly outstanding.
References
Codilan, R. R. (2019). Waray scripting language (WSL): A mother tongue-based scripting language. Indian Journal of Computer Science and Engineering, 10(3), 58–73. Web.
Gasiorowski, D. (2018). Photographing children in Mexico City’s red-light districts. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 38(1), 66–81. Web.
Han, J. (2021). Movie narrative: A study on the narrative beat of movie scenes. Arts Studies and Criticism, 2(1). Web.
Kaimaxi, D., & Lakioti, A. (2021). The development of congruence: A thematic analysis of person-centered counselors’ perspectives. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 20(3), 1–18. Web.
Rottenberg, E. (2021). Freud’s Jewish jokes: The case of jokes and their relation to the unconscious. Paragraph, 44(1), 103–116. Web.