To anyone who came of age in the 1980s, the movies of John Hughes were a revelation -- a perceptive and compassionate mirror that not only flattered its target teenage audience but also empathized with their adolescent turmoil in a way no other filmmaker previously had.

Hughes, who died Thursday at age 59 after suffering a heart attack while visiting family in Manhattan, already was an established screenwriter of comedies (Mr. Mom and National Lampoon's Vacation) in 1984 when he directed his seminal teen trilogy of Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Weird Science.

Those movies made stars of actors Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall and Judd Nelson and became sacrosanct to a generation of adolescent moviegoers previously weaned on raunchy, sex-filled comedies that were occasionally good (Porky's) but mostly just crummy and exploitative.

In the modern era of Twilight, Gossip Girl and NYC Prep, the novelty of Hughes' connection to his teen audience -- the way he gave eloquent, contemporary voice to their timeless insecurities and alienation -- is difficult to imagine. Also revolutionary was the boldness of his approach: Before The Breakfast Club, the concept of an R-rated Hollywood movie for young adults that consisted solely of five characters talking about themselves was the stuff of science fiction.

Hughes continued his successful track record with his next two films: Ferris Bueller's Day Off, in which Matthew Broderick cemented his stardom as the world's most personable truant, and Planes, Trains and Automobiles, his first movie about grown-ups, starring Steve Martin and John Candy, who only happened to behave like kids.

His three subsequent films -- She's Having a Baby, Uncle Buck and Curly Sue -- were modest-sized hits, but the last two felt conventional and formulaic, lacking the heart Hughes had always put invested. He never directed another movie after 1991, opting instead to serve as screenwriter or producer on more teen classics (Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful) and some monster hits (including Home Alone and the live-action 101 Dalmatians) that brought him the financial freedom to live and work away from Hollywood in his home base in Chicago.

Hughes granted few interviews after he retired from directing, and after a 1993 profile in Spy entitled ``Big Baby'' painted him as temperamental and difficult to work with (``Hughes is not a bad man; he just does bad things''), he stopped giving interviews altogether and joined the J.D. Salinger School of Seclusion.

His interest in filmmaking also waned over the years: His most recent credits include screenwriting duties on straight-to-video sequels to Home Alone and Beethoven, a movie about a slobbering St. Bernard.

But Hughes' disappearance from the public eye only served to further his mystique among Generation X'ers and among subsequent generations that discovered Hughes' films on cable and home video in their parents' living rooms. Whatever criticisms one might have about Hughes' films in retrospect -- their exclusively white protagonists, their occasional racial caricatures, their obsession with the upper middle-class to the exclusion of all else -- are overriddenby the balming effectthey had on adolescent angst.

Hughes' movies reassured us that we weren't alone, that being a complete geek was OK and that sometimes the nerd did get the girl, in a way Hollywood films had never done before.

Don't You Forget About Me, implored The Breakfast Club's theme song.To a generation now entering its 40s, there is no forgetting John Hughes.

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