Today started off great. I decided to go with my roommate Curtis and check out a unit at the place he's moving into. He was getting one last box out of his car and I was just fumbling around on Twitter on my phone like I normally do when I was hit with the bombshell: John Hughes died. John freaking Hughes. The man's films had a pretty profound impact on my life, especially when I was in high school. Even though they were made for folks in high school ten years before me, the influence was still very palpable and I think it's still lingering around for future generations.

I think the first Hughes movie I watched in theaters was actually Uncle Buck, which came out when I was 9. It's also when Hughes' career direction was starting to change toward family friendly movies. I discovered Ferris Bueller when I was in Jr. High thanks to a lazy substitute who just happened to have the video in his briefcase and from then on I was hooked. My sophomore year of high school I watched Some Kind of Wonderful for the first time and it quickly became my second favorite movie of all time.

That brings us to today. Hughes opened the floodgates for me to so many other great teen angst comedies and influenced so many of my favorite filmmakers, Kevin Smith being one of the more obvious. When I heard the news about John's death, I kept thinking about a quote I had read of Kevin's in an L.A. Times article from last year about how much of a recluse Hughes had become:

"He's our generation's J.D. Salinger," says Smith, whose film "Dogma" shows its heroes, Jay and Silent Bob, on a pilgrimage to Shermer, Ill., a mythical town that only exists in Hughes' films. "He touched a generation and then the dude checked out. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't be doing what I do. Basically my stuff is just John Hughes films with four-letter words."

I always dreamed of the day Hughes would come back, sickened by some of Hollywood's poor excuses for teen comedies these days, showing us all how it's really done. Perhaps it's for the best that now that won't be happening. We have the movies to remember him, to remember a time, to reflect on our own memories. Now I'm just bummed we never got the Hughes' approved special editions I'd been longing for for so many years. So long, John. My fist is raised to you today, Bender style.