The LAT fronts, and everyone covers, the death of John Hughes, the Hollywood director, producer, and screenwriter whose films about teenage angst in the 1980s helped define a generation. He was 59 and died of a heart attack. His biggest hits included Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He changed the way teenagers were depicted in movies at a time when Hollywood studios began to realize the purchasing power of that age group. His biggest success in terms of box office was as writer and producer of Home Alone. In the early 1990s, he largely disappeared from the Hollywood scene, although he occasionally wrote under a pen name. "He's our generation's J.D. Salinger," filmmaker Kevin Smith told the LAT. "He touched a generation and then the dude checked out."