Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free John Hughes trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This John Hughes trivia quiz covers the filmmaker who defined the 1980s teen movie and then wrote the biggest live-action family comedy of all time. It runs from his days selling jokes to Rodney Dangerfield and writing for National Lampoon, through the run of Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, to Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Uncle Buck, Christmas Vacation and Home Alone, and on to the pseudonymous scripts he wrote after leaving Hollywood for Chicago. Expect questions on the Shermer detention essay, the Ferrari that was not supposed to leave the garage, the test audience that changed Pretty in Pink, the Gordie Howe jersey, the nine-day Home Alone draft, the Edmond Dantes credit and the New York magazine article that gave the Brat Pack its name. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who grew up on these films, a third need a good memory for casts and dates, and the rest reward the completists who know his last directing credit and his first. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Hughes and his films before publishing, and each question carries the sentence that establishes it. If you think one is wrong, use the report button and we will look again.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1984 film was John Hughes's directorial debut?
Sixteen Candles
Its honest picture of high school life stood out against the Porky's-style comedies of the time and won near-unanimous praise.
Q 02In which Chicago suburb did Hughes spend his teenage years, attending Glenbrook North High School?
Northbrook
He met his future wife Nancy Ludwig, a cheerleader, at the school that inspired his most famous films.
Q 03Before films, Hughes sold jokes to which comedian, among others?
Rodney Dangerfield
The jokes got him an entry-level advertising job in Chicago, where he later created the Edge "Credit Card Shaving Test" campaign.
Q 04Which magazine did Hughes write for before films, publishing the story that became Vacation?
National Lampoon
Editor P. J. O'Rourke said he wrote so fast and so well that a monthly magazine struggled to keep up.
Q 05Which 1983 comedy, Hughes's first hit screenplay, sends the Griswolds cross-country to Walley World?
National Lampoon's Vacation
It grew out of his magazine story "Vacation '58", based on his own family trips as a child.
Q 06Which actor got his first lead role in Mr. Mom, written by Hughes in 1983?
Michael Keaton
The success of Mr. Mom and Vacation in the same year earned Hughes a three-picture deal with Universal.
Q 07In his 1984 debut film, Hughes's heroine Samantha Baker has a crush on which high school senior?
Jake Ryan
Molly Ringwald's Sam is meanwhile pursued by Anthony Michael Hall's freshman Ted, known as The Geek.
Q 08In The Breakfast Club, what does Vice Principal Vernon assign the five students to write?
A 1,000-word essay on who they think they are
Brian ends up writing it for everyone, declaring each of them a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal.
Q 09The Breakfast Club is set in which fictional Illinois town that recurs across Hughes's films?
Shermer
The whole film was shot at the closed Maine North High School in Des Plaines between March and May 1984.
Q 10Which Scottish band recorded "Don't You (Forget About Me)" for The Breakfast Club?
Simple Minds
Producer Keith Forsey and guitarist Steve Schiff wrote it; several other acts also turned it down first.
Q 11Weird Science was based on a 1951 pre-Comics Code comic story by which writer?
Al Feldstein
The story "Made of the Future" appeared in the magazine of the same name; Oingo Boingo wrote the title song.
Q 12Which new wave band wrote and performed the title song of Weird Science?
Oingo Boingo
The film grossed $38.9 million on a $7.5 million budget and became a cult classic.
Q 13Ferris borrows which prized car belonging to Cameron's father?
A 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder
The mileage disaster on the way home sets up the film's most famous act of rebellion.
Q 21Which three Hughes films made Molly Ringwald a teen idol?
Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink
In 2026 she said Hughes did not want his films remade, and that she agreed.
Q 22The term "Brat Pack" for Hughes-era young stars was popularised by a 1985 cover story in which magazine?
New York
David Blum wrote it after seeing young actors mobbed by fans at the Hard Rock Cafe in Los Angeles.
Q 23Which two actors star as the mismatched travellers in Planes, Trains and Automobiles?
Steve Martin and John Candy
Q 14Which two songs does Ferris lip-sync on a parade float in Chicago?
Danke Schoen and Twist and Shout
Broderick said the Wayne Newton number was choreographed but the Beatles song was made up on the spot.
Q 15Cameron's Red Wings jersey in Ferris Bueller's Day Off had belonged to which player, a hero of Hughes?
Gordie Howe
Hughes spent his first 12 years in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and the star later sent him one of his own jerseys.
Q 16Alan Ruck was cast as Cameron after Hughes remembered his audition for which Breakfast Club role?
Bender
The part went to Judd Nelson; Ruck was in his late twenties when he played the 17-year-old Cameron.
Q 17Ben Stein's monotone lecture in Ferris Bueller's Day Off concerns which piece of legislation?
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act
The scene was not in Hughes's script; Stein improvised the economics lecture.
Q 18Pretty in Pink takes its title from a song by which band?
The Psychedelic Furs
The band re-recorded the track for a soundtrack that has been called among the most brilliant in modern cinema.
Q 19Why was Pretty in Pink reshot so that Andie does not end up with Duckie?
Test audiences booed the original ending
Cryer said he was shocked, since he felt the whole film had been built around Andie and Duckie getting together.
Q 20Who directed Some Kind of Wonderful and Pretty in Pink, both written by Hughes?
Howard Deutch
Deutch also directed The Great Outdoors for Hughes; the Wonderful cast was Eric Stoltz, Mary Stuart Masterson and Lea Thompson.
Hughes made the film partly to avoid being pigeonholed as a maker of teen movies.
Q 24Neal Page in Planes, Trains and Automobiles is trying to get home to Chicago in time for which holiday?
Thanksgiving
The film has become a staple of American Thanksgiving-week viewing.
Q 25Which 1988 Hughes-directed film stars Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern as newlyweds?
She's Having a Baby
It underperformed, grossing $16 million against a $20 million budget; the Great Outdoors cast cameo in its end credits.
Q 26Which future Oscar nominee made her film debut in The Great Outdoors (1988)?
Annette Bening
Dan Aykroyd and John Candy play the feuding in-laws vacationing at a Wisconsin lake resort.
Q 27In his 1989 comedy, John Candy's bachelor Buck is called in to look after whose children?
His brother's
The family emergency leaves him minding three kids, including a young Macaulay Culkin.
Q 28Hughes suggested Macaulay Culkin for Home Alone because of his work on which earlier Hughes film?
Uncle Buck
Chris Columbus directed; Hughes wrote and produced and finished the first draft in nine days.
Q 29How long did Hughes take to write the first draft of Home Alone?
Nine days
It was the top-grossing film of 1990 and remains the most successful live-action family comedy ever.
Q 30Where is the McCallister family headed when they leave Kevin behind in Home Alone?
Paris
The sequel sends the family to Florida and Kevin, alone again, to New York.