In the ’80s and ’90s, no filmmaker seemed more ubiquitous than John Hughes.  From Breakfast Club to Sixteen Candles and all the Howard Deutch Hughes-esque copy-cat efforts, the Hughes stamp seemed to be on everything.  You still can’t escape his classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off… if you subscribe to cable TV.  And while the Hughes approach seemed awfully juvenile for its time, it seems positively tame today in light of the Judd Apatow and Will Ferrell schools of humor.  Hughes now even feels frighteningly sophisticated and mature.

So what does this have to do with Tarkington?  According to the website Slash Film, Hughes made the following remark in an article for Zoetrope magazine:

As a print humorist—envisioning myself as Chicago’s Booth Tarkington Jr.—I willfully knew nothing of show business. …When I arrived at the incipient powerhouse Creative Artists Agency in my poplin suit and rep tie, I was mistaken for an IRS agent.

So I guess it’s no surprise that Hughes’ humor seems awfully old-fashioned today.