John Hughes' Movies Were More Closely Connected Than You Ever Imagined

Folks really love an interconnected cinematic universe these days, but it turns out that classic comedy director John Hughes was way ahead of the game. There are a few obvious connections between his movies, which are largely coming-of-age tales set in the fictional town of Shermer, Illinois, but in a 1999 interview with Premiere, Hughes revealed that some of his most beloved movies are all deeply intertwined. Fans had already figured out that "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "The Breakfast Club" were connected because they both took place at Shermer High School, and according to Hughes, there was much more. The only problem is that some of those connections never actually made it onto the big screen. 

While Hughes spent over a decade creating a sort of creative bible all about Shermer and the people who inhabited it, only a small fraction of what he wrote in there ever made it into his movies. Thankfully, he revealed some of those connections to Premiere (archived here), and fans can extrapolate on their own from there. It would have been neat to read a published version of those notes, but hey, at least we have a few extra hints about the extended Shermer-verse.

Much like author Stephen King's connections through his novels using the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine, Hughes thought he would interconnect his films through Shermer, as he explained: 

"When I started making movies, I thought I would just invent a town where everything happened. Everybody, in all of my movies, is from Shermer, Illinois. Del Griffith from 'Planes, Trains & Automobiles' lives two doors down from John Bender [from 'The Breakfast Club']. Ferris Bueller knew Samantha Baker from 'Sixteen Candles'. For 15 years I've written my Shermer stories in prose, collecting its history."

Shermer was based on Hughes's own real-life hometown of Northbrook, a small town on the north side of Chicago, and on the nearby towns and neighborhoods that made up the suburban midwest. The characters that inhabit these movies feel like they really could live a few doors down from one another. Even some of the films Hughes wrote but didn't direct are part of this Shermer-verse, because Shermer is featured in not only his films "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," and "Weird Science," it's also part of the Hughes-penned "Reach the Rock," "National Lampoon's Vacation," and even the Christmas classic "Home Alone." 

Interconnected fictional universes are nothing new, and Hughes definitely wasn't the first writer or director to do it, but his movies did have a massive impact on young creatives who would go on to do the same thing themselves. Kevin Smith is probably the best example, having created the interconnected View Askewniverse and even commenting directly on John Hughes in his movie "Dogma" by having Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith) trying to find Shermer because they think it's a real, wonderful place. Like Hughes, Smith's movies are connected and he sometimes hires the same actors to play new characters, and all of them mix humor and heart. 

The one movie that die-hard John Hughes fans tend to exclude from the Shermer-verse is "Weird Science," despite it taking place in Shermer. Since the other movies all feature real-world logic and very human characters and "Weird Science" is a wild sci-fi/fantasy flick about a pair of teens who bring a doll to life to be their dream woman, that differentiation is understandable. Then again, it's kind of fun to imagine the stories the "Breakfast Club" kids might tell about the crazy house party someone once had that got crashed by mutant bikers. Why not?