Howard Hughes was this visionary who was obsessed with speed and flying like a god. . . I loved his idea of what filmmaking was.
In the years since I worked with John Hughes, there were many years where I literally had hundred of doors slammed in my face because I wasn't that kid anymore, and I wasn't a character actor, and I wasn't a leading man, and I wasn't whatever Hollywood was looking for.
Mark Hughes crossed every I and dotted every T.
John Hughes had such a huge impact on filmmaking.
If you think about black art, all black art, whether it's Invisible Man or whether it's James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Hurston, or Richard Wright, they all deal with elements of identity and trying to humanize our experience and our struggle in the world where people have been indifferent to who we are and what we are. It's basically just saying that our lives have meaning.
The trumpet player, Ronnie Hughes, has still got his chops today but for some strange reason the culture doesn't call him because he's 83-years-old. And these people are in their 70s and 80s and 90s and came with such verve every day and would still be shooting these 10 and 12 hour days. So, that in itself made this an extraordinarily special occasion for all of us. It wasn't a job for the crew after a few days, it took on another tone.
[John] Hughes was well aware that to ignore the seriousness of young people is to encourage things like Columbine, so you might want to listen. And we were all pretty serious, a little bit, in high school. Some a little more than others.
You could not have done it better than Hughes.
Our expanding ethnic diversity of this century, a time when we will all be minorities, offers us an invitation to create a larger memory of who we are as Americans and to re-affirm our founding principle of equality. Let's put aside fears of the disuniting of America and warnings of the clash of civilizations. As Langston Hughes sang, Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe.
John Hughes loved improvisers.
My life with Howard Hughes was and shall remain a matter on which I will have no comment.
There were a few things that, in rehearsal, any one of us might try. [John] Hughes would go, "I like that," to me spitting up in the air and catching it in my mouth. It was just something I did in a rehearsal and Molly [ Ringwald] went, "Ewww. " And John went, "Can you do that again?" And I went all day long, and he was like, "Okay, let's do that. "
[John] Hughes really wanted it to sound authentic. He was a real collaborator. He encouraged us to bring to the material things we thought were maybe more truthful.
It is tragic that Howard Hughes had to die to prove that he was alive.
I've been connected to the most culturally important albums of the past four years, the most influential artists of the past ten years. You have like, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, Nicolas Ghesquière, Anna Wintour, David Stern.
Have you ever seen that guy who has the record for fattest man in the world? Bob Hughes, the fattest man in the world. . . 1400 pounds. Ladies and gentlemen, the man has let himself go.
We expect kids to go straight from Shel Silverstein to William Shakespeare. There needs to be a bridge of relatable, fun, rhythmic verse that gets kids to cross over, so to speak, so they can appreciate Mary Oliver and Naomi Shihab Nye and Langston Hughes.
All of my most significant moments somehow involved music. It's like my life was a John Hughes film and somebody had to put together the perfect soundtrack.
We [ with Emilio Estevez] asked if we could take some things [ in Breakfast Club] that weren't in the shooting draft, but from earlier drafts, "Can we maybe use this?" And Hughes was very amenable to all that. And there was some stuff that I liked, and I said, "How about this?" And he went, "Well, we'll check with Molly [Ringwald]. Those scenes are with her. And if she likes it, fine. " So it was just wonderful. It was great.
At boarding school you had to wear your name across your chest and your back, and obviously I had a pretty funny name. It wasn't Brown or Smith or Hughes.
