Does anyone else get the impression that Steve Guttenberg must be pretty flipping terrified at the moment?

Michael Jackson – the man behind all the songs you loved from the 1980s – is dead. Ed McMahon – the man who sat next to the late-night TV host you loved in the 1980s – is dead. And now John Hughes – the director of just about every film you loved from the 1980s – is dead as well. Guttenberg is next. He has to be.

John Hughes, the man behind The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, died of heart attack yesterday in Manhattan. He was 59.

As far as celebrity deaths go, this isn’t shaping up to be a very good summer. They’re dropping like flies. Bobby Robson, our favourite England manager. Steven Wells, our favourite NME journalist. Farrah Fawcett, our favourite Charlie’s Angel. David Carradine, our favourite secretly transvestite cupboard-based auto-erotic asphyxiation practitioner. All gone. And now John Hughes, the man who had a hand in almost every film we loved growing up has gone too. Reuters reports:

Filmmaker John Hughes… died suddenly of a heart attack in New York on Thursday. He was 59. Hughes, who had largely turned his back on Hollywood in the past decade to become a farmer in the Midwestern state of Illinois, collapsed while strolling in Manhattan, where he was visiting family.

While the death of John Hughes won’t jolt the world like the death of Michael Jackson did – we feel fairly secure in predicting that no 12-year-old boys from Britain’s Got Talent will sing directly at his solid gold coffin during his memorial – his influence was arguably just as great.

Director of five back-to-back classic teen movies – Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Planes, Trains & Automobiles – in the space of four years, John Hughes managed to infuse his comedy with a melancholy, an awareness of the fleeting nature of time, that couldn’t help but resonate with the young generation he was playing to. Plus he wrote Home Alone, and who doesn’t the love the sight of Joe Pesci getting horrifically injured by a tin of paint? Huh?

So although the death of John Hughes has come as a nasty surprise, at least his work will remain. And Ferris Bueller’s Day Off will remain effortlessly quotable for decades. It’s not a bad legacy to have.

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