Write What You Know
The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty in Pink, National Lampoon’s Vacation: these movies defined a decade. They were some of the most successful films of the 1980s and remain culturally iconic even today.
These movies along with other 80’s classics including Mr. Mom, Uncle Buck, and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles were all written by the same man: John Hughes.
Hughes was one of the most successful screenwriters and producers of the decade, yet in the early 1990’s after continued success with the Christmas classic, Home Alone, he stepped away from Hollywood and moved his family back to the Midwest.
There does not seem to be one great artistic failure or fallout that led Hughes to make this decision. He just quietly moved back to his Chicago hometown and stopped writing movies.
John Hughes Knew Chicago
Looking at Hughes’s work as a whole and you will notice a pattern. Almost all of his films take place or feature the city of Chicago.
In fact, many of his movies take place in the fictional Chicago suburb of Shermer, Illinois. It is no coincidence that Hughes’s own hometown of Northbrook used to bear the name Shermerville until 1923.
National Lampoon’s Vacation, Hughes’s first big hit, features a Chicago family on a road trip to a fictional version of Disneyland. It was based on Hughes’s own memories of his family vacations as a child.
“I happen to go for the simplest, most ordinary things. The extraordinary doesn’t interest me. I’m not interested in psychotics. I’m interested in the person you don’t expect to have a story. I like Everyman.”
John Hughes
Write What You Know
A common piece of advice given to writers today is that they should “write what they know.”
Hughes’s success in the 1980’s seems to support this advice. He wrote about the Midwest characters and culture that he knew so well.
But remember, Hughes moved back to the midwest and lived there until his passing in 2012. There he lived happily without making movies.
It may be that Hughes did more than just write what he knew; he wrote what he loved.
He loved Chicago. He loved the Midwest suburbs. He loved his family. That’s why he moved back there.
John Hughes wrote about what he loved and found some incredible success.
Maybe the advice to writers shouldn’t be “write what you know.” Maybe, instead, it should be “write what you love.”
Are you a writer? What do you know and love? Write about it.
Read more about John Hughes’ life and passing in this Vanity Fair article.
