Facts, Trivia, and Tidbits Behind Your Favorite John Hughes Movies

“The Breakfast Club” was tightly plotted to build up each of the diverse characters, allowing us to see how people from different walks of life can come together to become friends, even lovers. One of the most pivotal scenes in the movie is when the characters all sat in a circle on the floor of the library and told stories about why they were in detention.

John Hughes told all of the actors to ad-lib – it wasn't scripted at all. How they managed to create such a memorable scene without as much planning escapes us. It was so good it got a shout-out in season three of “Stranger Things.”

When the film “Sixteen Candles” was in production, it was discovered that Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall – two of the film's leads – didn't like each other. For what was essentially a teen romantic comedy, this makes things a little difficult. But John Hughes had a plan to salvage his directorial debut: take them to a record store. Not the most detailed plan, but it seemed to work.

Ringwald and Hall ended up bonding over their similar taste in music, and they were able to parlay that similarity into their on-screen relationship. Apparently, they both liked the band The Rave-Ups, which Molly wrote in her character's notebook.

The movie “Weird Science” is an odd eighties mash-up of a teenage boy's biggest fantasies. Two computer whizzes use their skills to create the perfect woman, which makes their lives all sorts of...weird. During a Comic-Con interview, Kelly LeBrock (who played Lisa) revealed that the scene with Ilan Mitchell Smith kissing her went a bit too far.

He stuck his tongue down her throat, and she told him afterward: “If you ever do that again, I'm going to kick your...” well, she didn't say “butt,” let's put it that way. We don't doubt she could have done it, too – she looked ready to rumble for the entire movie.

“Pretty in Pink” stars Molly Ringwald in a movie about high school and social cliques during the eighties. In other words, it's a John Hughes movie. Hughes might have only served as a writer and co-executive director, but his fingerprints are still all over the place.

At one point, Philip F. “Duckie” Dale, played by Jon Cryer, gets thrown into the girls' bathroom. During the chaos that ensues, Duckie spies the tampon machine, and says with exasperation: “We don't have a candy machine in the boys' room.” This line was ad-libbed by Jon Cryer on the spot, and it adds a touch of humor to the scene.

Ferris Bueller's day off contains a couple of interesting things, including a cameo by the eventual famous actor Charlie Sheen. Sheen's role was quite small, really just a cameo, and it's listed as “boy in the police station who knows Ferris.” However, this character (Who has also been called “Garth Volbeck”) was obviously a ne'er-do-well, and someone who was a little strung out.

In order to create this look, Charlie Sheen stayed awake for more than forty-eight hours before the scene was shot. He certainly looks it, too, with red eyes, a confused expression, tousled hair, and pale skin. Maybe that's why he got away with his later antics for so long.

“Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” isn't your standard John Hughes film – for one thing, it stars adults instead of high school kids. But it's still a favorite since it has Steve Martin and John Candy. How do you beat that? It's pretty tough. However, we were close to not getting Steve Martin, but a few scenes, in particular, convinced him to join the project.

They were the seat adjustment scene while in the car, and the F-word tirade that Martin's character explodes into while trying to rent a car. Both of the scenes are regarded as some of the movie's best, and they were good enough to get Martin to sign on.

While filming the John Hughes movie “Uncle Buck,” John Candy wanted to have a little bit of fun. One night, Candy went to a bar with Music Supervisor Tarquin Gotch, and spent the entire night talking with people and, importantly, not getting any sleep. When John Hughes heard a caller on a radio show talking about meeting John Candy the next morning, he was upset with the actor.

Hughes canceled the scenes for the day and sent Candy home to get some rest, despite Candy trying to argue that Uncle Buck was supposed to look tired and disheveled.

When people think of John Hughes films, they think of Ferris Bueller or “Sixteen Candles,” but there have been plenty of other films he's worked on, such as the raunchy “National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation,” from 1989. During the film, Clark (played by Chevy Chase) has finally had enough of his Christmas lights not working.

He starts going to town on the plastic Christmas decorations in the yard, but the fight didn't go as planned. Chase broke his pinky finger punching Santa Claus. After that, he resorted to kicking and clubbing the decorations. However, it seems he managed to finish the scene in one take.

Right after finishing “Goodfellas,” Joe Pesci moved over to filming the holiday classic “Home Alone” with Macaulay Culkin. The movie was written and produced by Hughes, and Pesci had a problem. “Goodfellas” is historically violent and rude, with an incredible number of f-bombs dropped during the long runtime. Pesci was so used to running his mouth that he had trouble not swearing.

They had to put a swear jar on the set just for Pesci. He resorted to saying “fridge” instead of the F word, and also grumbled under his breath, doing what Pesci referred to as “cartoon cursing.”

With the overwhelming success of “Home Alone,” the sequel was going to have a big budget and plenty of money to dole out. This included the main man himself, Macaulay Culkin, who raked in $4.5 million dollars for revising his role in New York. This was the most money for any actor twelve years or younger to ever earn from a single film.

However, we know now that this money wasn't handled well by Culkin's parents, making this interesting fact somewhat sad. Thankfully, Mac seems to have gotten past it and landed on his feet.

John Hughes might not have directed the 1996 live-action film “101 Dalmatians,” but he did write and co-produce it. While not one of the movies people often remember him for, Hughes has made more money from this flick than any other film in his long career. How could this be? Sure, the movie was a success, but Ferris Bueller! “Home Alone!” “The Breakfast Club!” Why would this Disney film be so worth his time?

It's all because of the merchandise. Hughes worked out a contract that included a piece of the merchandising profits, which led to quite a bit more in the checks as time went on.

One of Hughes's most famous films is the movie “Sixteen Candles,” starring Molly Ringwald, Michael Schoeffling, and Anthony Michael Hall. It came out in 1984, and it was all because of one person...Ringwald herself. Hughes happened upon a headshot of the young actress and was inspired by her appearance.

He put the picture over his desk and wrote the film over a single weekend, keeping Ringwald in mind for the lead role the entire time. This plan proved to be a huge success, as it not only brought Ringwald into the spotlight, it also began the films Hughes would make centered around high school life and teenage characters.

“The Breakfast Club” is remembered fondly as one of John Hughes's best. It's all about growing up, but one of the main actors in the ensemble cast took that a little too literally. Anthony Michael Hall, who played Brian Johnson, hit a growth spurt during the production.

Judd Nelson, who played John Bender, said that Hall was shorter than him at the beginning of filming, but had grown over him by the end of it. Most of the cast were in their twenties, but Hall was only sixteen, as was Molly Ringwald. It's thought he grew a full three inches during filming.

“Pretty in Pink” came out in 1986, and once again starred Hughes's main muse, Molly Ringwald. As you might imagine, the color pink plays prominently. Using fabric from several different dresses, Ringwald's character Andie is able to put together a prom dress that, as you might have guessed, is pink.

It's a bit of an odd design, but it's certainly flattering for the attractive Ringwald. It's too bad, then that she hated it. While Ringwald had signed off on the dress, the final product brought her to tears. The bad kind. She didn't like the puffy sleeves or the shapeless silhouette, but there was no time to adjust it.

At one point, while in his room, Ferris Bueller plays his clarinet in a hideous, screeching tone. He tells the camera he never had a single lesson – and the same is true for Matthew Broderick. Despite that fact, however, when he spotted a clarinet on the set of the movie, he said that he could play it, and they decided to add a scene.

The first take made it into the finished film since everybody thought it was so funny. Of course, Broderick had no skill at the clarinet, but that doesn't really matter at this point – it was another funny moment in a movie full of them.

There are a pair of John Hughes movies that end with the exact same shot, centered on the exact same actor – any idea? Here's a hint: the actor is the late, great John Candy. It's not too hard to figure out past that since John Candy was only in...oh, eight films from John Hughes. Well, that still makes things a little easier.

Both of the films have Candy as one of the leads, which makes it easier still. Still can't figure it out? They're “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” and “Uncle Buck.” Both of the movies end with a freeze frame of Candy with a thin smile.

“National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation” is an exceptionally oddball movie, with lots of twists and turns. How many Christmas movies include SWAT teams? Really not that many. In fact, probably only one, this one. During that scene, Beverly D'Angelo, who plays Ellen, decided to improvise one of the takes and grab Chevy Chase's crotch, on the off-chance that the shot would make it into the finished product.

Whether it was in spite of the grab or because of it, the shot did, in fact, make it in. We wonder if she was happy that it made it in. In a screwball comedy like this film, it does fit relatively well.

“Home Alone” wasn't the first movie Macaulay Culkin was in – it wasn't even the first John Hughes movie he was in! He appeared as a precocious little tyke in the 1989 movie “Uncle Buck,” which stars John Candy as the titular uncle. As Mac was only nine years old at the time, he wasn't up to having long lines memorized just yet.

In order to facilitate the scene where Mac's young character interviews Uncle Buck, his lines were written on index cards and attached to John Candy's face. Since Culkin was already supposed to be looking at Candy, it didn't hamper the scene at all.

“Home Alone” is an incredible movie, and not just because of Kevin McAllister's antic's stopping the wet bandits. The urge of Catherine O'Hara's character to find her son is palpable, and something that John Hughes made sure was present. He did his due diligence filling every plot hole about a mother forgetting one of her kids at home, something he figured most mothers would be loath to do.

And it absolutely worked – it seems all too natural that Kevin's mom could have forgotten him at home while everyone else was on their way to their vacation.

Joe Pesci is a great guy for a lot of reasons, but he can be sort of grumpy if you catch him at the wrong time. At one point, during the filming of “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,” Macaulay Culkin approached him after one scene and asked him why he (Pesci) never smiled. Pesci's response? He told Culkin to shut up.

For some reason, Culkin seemed to enjoy this. Pesci would later relate that Culkin was pampered by a lot of people during the period, and Pesci's brand of tough love was a lot different from all that. Something to balance out all the star power.

In 2014, “Ferris Bueller's Day Off” was selected by the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. This means that they thought the film had historical, cultural, or aesthetic reasons for being counted among the best movies that the United States has produced. It only adds up to twenty-five films each year, so being included is without a doubt an honor.

Then, just two years later, “The Breakfast Club” was also chosen to be included in the registry. It's just a shame that Hughes, who passed away in 2009, wasn't able to see his work appreciated in such a way.

During the filming of “The Breakfast Club,” Judd Nelson stayed in character as John Bender the entire time. You may remember him not showing respect toward anyone, especially not anyone associated with the school. This, as you might imagine, made things a little difficult. He even bullied Molly Ringwald when the cameras weren't rolling, pretending she was her character Claire Standish.

John Hughes didn't like it and nearly fired Nelson because of it. However, Richard Vernon's actor Paul Gleason defended Nelson, going to bat for his skills as an actor. Thankfully, Nelson made it all the way, and the rest is movie history.

A lot of moments from “The Breakfast Club” are iconic – the scene of them sitting on the floor and talking, all of them showing off their lunches, and more. Perhaps the most memorable, however, is that of John Bender (Judd Nelson) walking off into the sunset with his fist raised in the air. It's an iconic symbol of the eighties and of cinema in general. And it wasn't even scripted!

John Hughes asked him to play around with a few different actions. On the final take, after they thought they had gotten everything they wanted, Nelson threw up his fist without telling anyone he was going to do it.

One of the ideas that John Hughes had for “The Breakfast Club” was to have the actors and characters reunite every ten years for sequels that showed them in different places in their lives. However, this idea never got off the ground thanks to a number of things.

Hughes's relationship with actor Judd Nelson was one of them – Hughes had stated he would never work with Nelson again. Another was Hughes's relationship with Ringwald, who had decided to move on from the teen genre and go for more adult roles. Somehow, Hughes was unable to accept this, and the professional relationship, which had been going so well, ended.

At one point in the film “The Breakfast Club,” the five students do a choreographed dance. Originally, only Claire (Molly Ringwald) was supposed to dance, but Ringwald was uncomfortable dancing on her own. John Hughes decided the solution was to have the entire cast dance. It's a goofy, wacky sequence from start to finish...and Ringwald regrets having forced the issue.

She says that not only was her dancing not good, but the fact she didn't do it solo gave the scene an artificial, almost MTV quality. She thinks it ended up hurting the movie, but it probably didn't do that much to harm it.

In "The Breakfast Club" Ally Sheedy's character, Allison, shakes dandruff onto her penciled drawing to make it look like snow. Gross. A common rumor is this was actually Ally Sheedy's dandruff, which would have been double gross, but it's not the case. It turns out it was actually finely grated Parmesan cheese.

However, Ally Sheedy did actually eat Allison's stomach-turning lunch, which was a sandwich made from Pixie Stick dust, Cap'n Crunch cereal, and pure, unrefined sugar. Despite all that sweetness, we can't even imagine it tasting all that good, and it must have been a beast to try to chew and swallow.

The library that holds almost the entire “The Breakfast Club” movie was built in the gymnasium of Maine North High School entirely for the film. In Chicago, not in Maine. Two years before they filmed there, in 1982, the school had closed down, and it was being used by the park district.

It was also being used by the Chicago Blitz, a team in the United States Football League, a now-defunct competitor to the NFL. At some point after the film was finished, the Illinois State Police bought it and transformed it into a police station – it's still one today.

Ally Sheedy, who played Allison in “The Breakfast Club” had auditioned for the part of Samantha Baker in “Sixteen Candles,” which came out in 1984. Unfortunately, Hughes had pretty much written the part of Sam for Molly Ringwald.

During the interview, Sheedy had a pair of black eyes due to a set building accident. The injuries gave her a creepy, almost gothic look, and though she didn't get the part of Samantha, Hughes remembered the dark girl in time for one of his later movies. When he wrote Allison, he kept Sheedy in mind and gave her a call to audition, and she made it with flying colors.

In "The Breakfast Club", a lot of the close-up shots of Molly Ringwald's character, Claire, were actually Molly's double. Molly was a mere sixteen years of age at the time and thus had to be in school during a lot of the shooting time.

She also couldn't work too late into the night due to minor labor laws. In order to keep the shooting on schedule, and not take several years to film a single movie, they had to go with the double for a lot of the shots, even if she wasn't necessarily required.

If you've seen “Sixteen Candles,” you might remember the distinctive hat that Molly Ringwald wears at the beginning of the movie, and the way it's tilted back. While it suits the character perfectly, the film's costume department begged Ringwald not to wear the hat. She was adamant about the decision, saying that it worked with her character.

Eventually, Hughes stepped in and allowed it, and the decision turned out to be a hit – after the movie came out, teenage girls started wearing similar hats. They even did so with the hats tilted back to put their faces at center stage, just like Ringwald did. You know a girl with a hat is just so...whew.

“Sixteen Candles” has to do with, as the title might give away, a birthday cake. Ringwald's character Sam has turned sixteen, but her family only seems to care about her older sister and the preparations for that older sister's wedding. At the end of the movie, Sam finally gets her cake, and a kiss from her love interest Jake Ryan.

Despite the romantic scene only being forty-five seconds, it was a nightmare. The cake started melting thanks to the titular candles. They eventually had to replace the cake with a cardboard cake, complete with real candles. Things were still a hassle, as they had to keep Ringwald's flowing dress from catching fire.

In 2003, the USA Network was working on pre-production of a sequel called “32 Candles.” It would have, once again, been on the birthday of Samantha Baker. It would have been a made-for-television film and would have reunited the original cast, but the plan fell through. It's never been revealed why as we imagine a lot of people would enjoy seeing what Sam, Farmer Ted, and Long Duk Dong have been up to.

Justin Henry, who played Sam's little brother, said his character was going to be a gynecologist. Ringwald was reluctant about the project, saying that she thought it wouldn't be a great idea to do a remake of such a classic film.

Molly Ringwald gets the most talk during “Sixteen Candles,” but the male leads Anthony Michael Hall and Michael Schoeffling deserve some time. Both of these roles might have instead been played by famous actors. Jim Carrey auditioned to play “Farmer Ted,” but John Hughes only had eyes for AMH for this role, saying he gave the nerdy character a lot more humanity.

In addition, Ringwald herself was pushing for Jake Ryan to be played by none other than Viggo Mortensen – Aragorn in “The Lord of the Rings.” Mortensen would have been a whole decade older than Ringwald, but according to her he made her “weak at the knees.”

One of the parts of “Sixteen Candles” that is the most off-putting to people in the decades following the movie's release is that of Long Duk Dong, an unfortunately-named exchange student that goes with Sam to the dance. While many found the character offensive and stereotypical, critics such as Roger Ebert wrote that actor Gedde Watanabe was able to salvage the character.

In the audition, he pretended not to understand English, despite having been raised in Utah. Hughes and casting director Jackie Burch were completely fooled. Watanabe also pretended to be from Korea, despite being Japanese American. Imagine Hughes's shock when Watanabe started using his perfect English.

“Sixteen Candles” was filmed outside Chicago, in the quiet village of Skokie in Cook County, Illinois. While the adult cast members could go into the big city and live it up, the younger cast members found they didn't have many options for entertainment.

Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall spent a lot of time in the hotel where they were staying, which also held a lot of Bat and Bar Mitzvahs. Skokie had a large Jewish population, and the young actors would regularly talk their way into these parties in order to spend time with people their age.

While it's easy to see Sam's parents as inattentive and mean for most of “Sixteen Candles,” Paul Dooley and Glynn Carlin encouraged Hughes to make their characters nicer. They both thought it was important to show that the parents weren't neglectful, just busy preparing for a big wedding. They persuaded Hughes to rewrite sections of the script, allowing them to apologize to their daughter.

In fact, Dooley only agreed to the part if Hughes would add an apology. Hughes even added a scene last minute, in which Sam's father consoles her about her unrequited love for Jake.

While “Sixteen Candles” was a hit when it was in theaters, it only reached its current legendary status thanks to its release on VHS. It earned twenty-four million dollars on a budget of only six-point-five million in theaters, and the release of the videotape made it a classic.

Janet Maslin wrote for the “New York Times”, calling it sophomoric but often effective, with occasional lapses in taste. Most of the movie is cheerful and light, and Hughes has a knack for showing things from an adolescent perspective, including behavior, that a lot of people would rather forget.

You may remember that John Cusack's career got a big bump from appearing in “Sixteen Candles,” but his sister, Joan, was also in the movie. You can spot her wearing a neck brace on the bus as Anthony Michael Hall unsuccessfully hits on Ringwald near the beginning of the movie. However, there's another sibling in the movie – Ringwald!

Beth Ringwald plays Patty Baker, the girl that flirts with athletes in the boy's locker room until she is carried out. Despite the identical last name, Sam and Patty Baker are not related. Likely, this was just an inside joke stemming from the real-world relation.

Late in “Sixteen Candles,” after Sam's sister has gotten married, hunky Jake Ryan pulls up in a red sportscar to talk with Sam. The license plate is the number 21850, and it's a sneaky Easter egg – it's John Hughes's birthday! He was born on February eighteenth, 1950, and aside from the year, he shares a birthday with star Molly Ringwald, who is exactly eighteen years younger than him.

This coincidence might have inspired Farmer Ted and Sam to share a birthday in the film – Farmer Ted sings a song and she tells him to stop, but it's a relationship-changing moment.

One of the biggest moments from “Ferris Bueller's Day Off” is the big parade, which is held for Ferris, as many think he is dying. During the parade, several of the people that are seen dancing, such as construction workers and window washers, have nothing to do with the film.

They were just people doing their jobs and dancing to the music that was being played. John Hughes spotted it and found it funny, so he told the camera operators to film it, and the shots made their way into the finished product.

Cameron and Ferris Bueller seem to have a real friendship in “Ferris Bueller's Day Off”...and that's because the actors, Alan Ruck and Matthew Broderick respectively, were already friends. Ruck's agents convinced the producers of the film to let Ruck audition by pointing out he and Broderick had already acted together as characters of the same age on the Broadway show “Biloxi Blues.”

Broderick is six years younger than Ruck, who was around thirty during the time of the film. The two shared a trailer on the set of their movie – Broderick's trailer was much bigger than Ruck's, so Ruck just moved in at Roderick's request.

Molly Ringwald has often been called John Hughes's muse, and thanks to the success of the films in which they worked together, it's not a bad call. Ringwald was also hoping for a part in “Ferris Bueller's Day Off,” specifically that of Sloane Peterson, but Hughes turned her down, saying that the part was too small for Ringwald.

He was also hoping for an older actress to play the part, as Ringwald was only seventeen at the time. The part would eventually go to actress Mia Sara...who was only a single year older than Ringwald. Well, eighteen is older than seventeen, we guess.

While romantic relationships aren't a big part of “Ferris Bueller's Day Off” compared to some of Hughes's other teen movies of the era, they led to a surprising number of marriages. Firstly, Matthew Broderick and Jennifer Grey got engaged just before the movie's release. You may remember Grey as the actress who played Ferris's older sister, Jeanie. This raises a few questions.

Furthermore, Cindy Pickett and Lyman Ward, who played the on-screen couple of these parents, met during the filming of the movie and eventually got married, having a pair of children before getting divorced in 1992, only six years later. Broderick and Grey ended up breaking off the engagement before marriage.

One of the more memorable (yet unimportant) parts in Ferris Bueller is Ben Stein's turn as a dry as frozen toast economics teacher who calls out Bueller's name a few times before launching into a hilariously uninteresting lecture about supply-side economics. Stein is now a television industry professional, but at the time Stein wasn't an actor.

The only thing he was scripted to say was the roll call, and Hughes just told him to give a real lecture in a dry and uninteresting tone of voice. It wasn't going to be in the movie, but the student extras thought it was so funny, that the lecture made it into the finished film.

While the car that Cameron's dad owns is one of the pivotal items in the film, the characters never actually drive a Ferrari during the movie. The car is actually an MG chassis with a fiberglass body designed to approximate the real thing, and the rest were camera and editing tricks.

Renting a real Ferrari would have been too expensive, especially due to the things the car goes through. Three copies of the car were made in order to keep costs down. Despite them still being replicas, one of the cars sold for two hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars in 2013.

Ed Rooney, the principal of the school from which Bueller is playing hooky, catches the three main kids on the TV at a ball game, but the game they actually went to was a different one. The game the actors actually attend is the September twenty-fourth, 1985 game between the Montreal Expos and the Chicago Cubs. However, the game shown on TV was the June fifth, 1985 game between the Cubs and the Atlanta Braves.

This is due to the Braves and the Expos wearing similar road jerseys during the 1985 season. This scene actually drew a complaint from famous film critic Gene Siskel, who said that real Chicago kids prefer to sit in the bleachers.

When people think of “Ferris Bueller's Day Off,” they think of a classic eighties film that has lots of memorable moments and funny lines. But it wasn't always such a movie. Broderick, Ruck, and Sara (the three main actors) saw the movie a few months before the scheduled premiere and didn't laugh once. They thought they had made a dud, and Paramount executives seemed to agree when they saw the early cut.

John Hughes and the film's editor, Paul Hirsch, spent two busy weeks cutting and pasting the film into the movie that would make its way into our hearts. It's amazing that just editing can make such a difference.

While “Home Alone” is the biggest claim to fame for Macaulay Culkin, his younger brother also has a role. Kieran Culkin appears as Kevin's bed-wetting cousin Fuller. This was Kieran's acting debut, and he's gone on to amass an impressive amount of credits. He was in “The Cider House Rules,” “Igby Goes Down,” “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” and the FX television show “Fargo.”

He's received Golden Globe nominees in both 2019 and 2020 for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television thanks to his role in the HBO show “Succession.”

Movies aren't usually the kind of thing to achieve a world record, but “Home Alone” did it. Most child endangerment? No – it was the highest-grossing live-action comedy ever, domestically. It made over seventeen million dollars in its opening weekend, appearing in over twelve hundred theaters. That doesn't seem like much these days, but that's 1990 money.

It had the number one spot for a full twelve weeks, and it was in the top ten until June of 1991 – more than six months. It held that Guinness record for a whopping twenty-seven years until the Chinese movie “Never Say Die” took its place in 2017.

During the invasion in the last act of “Home Alone,” Kevin uses his older brother's pet tarantula to scare the characters Pesci and Stern play. It was, of course, a real tarantula, and it did actually crawl across Stern's face – but he allowed it for only a single take. What wasn't real was the blood-curdling scream that Marv unleashes as he realizes what he has on his beautiful mug.

He had to mime the scream and dub it in later, in order to avoid scaring the spider. No doubt Stern was happy that the producers allowed him to do this.