Here’s a well-written, unusually candid-sounding recollection of the late John Hughes by Molly Ringwald, posted in today’s N.Y. Times. I can’t recall reading anything like this by any actor or actress about a just-passed director. Usually it’s all hearts and flowers.

“None of the films that Hughes made [after The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles] had the same kind of personal feeling to me. They were funny, yes, wildly successful, to be sure, but I recognized very little of the John I knew in them, of his youthful, urgent, unmistakable vulnerability. It was like his heart had closed, or at least was no longer open for public view.

“A darker spin can be gleaned from the words John put into the mouth of Allison in The Breakfast Club: ‘When you grow up…your heart dies.’

“I’m speaking metaphorically, of course. Though it does seem sadly poignant that physically, at least, John’s heart really did die. It also seems undeniably meaningful: His was a heavy heart, deeply sensitive, prone to injury — easily broken.