John Hughes, candle-lighter

The story evokes memories of Hughes' teen sagas, being a comic tale about a trio of nerdy high-school freshmen who recruit a supposedly fearsome bodyguard to protect them from a nasty school bully. As the film's scruffy hero, Wilson is something of a throwback to John Candy's character in "Uncle Buck," Hughes' 1989 comedy that stars Candy as a bedraggled bachelor forced to look after his brother's three smart-aleck kids.

Based on a treatment Hughes wrote some years ago, the "Drillbit" story is credited to frequent Apatow collaborators Seth Rogen and Kristofor Brown, who also wrote the screenplay, and Edmond Dantes, a favorite Hughes pseudonym. Susan Arnold, who produced the film with Apatow and her partner, Donna Arkoff Roth, is married to producer Tom Jacobson, who is one of the few people in Hollywood still in contact with the reclusive filmmaker.

"Tom is the unsung hero here," says Roth. "He'd always remembered the story and knew there was a great movie in there. He got permission from John to use it and got us involved." Arnold and Roth were fans of Apatow, who once had offices on their floor at Revolution Studios. "We'd always felt we were lucky to get Judd involved," says Arnold.

If anyone is a repository of Hughes lore, it is Jacobson, who calls him "one of the most interesting people I've ever met" but is scrupulously tight-lipped when it comes to offering any speculation about the filmmaker's retreat from view. When Hughes was looking for someone to produce "Ferris Bueller," Paramount executive Dawn Steel introduced him to Jacobson, who spent a decade working on various Hughes films.

Jacobson says Hughes could write the first draft of a script in a week. "Once he had the characters and a strong idea, it would carry him all the way through," he recalls.

Hughes' method of shooting comedy has become virtually an industry standard. He'd often let the camera roll through four or five takes in a row, looking for the right tone and rhythm for a scene. "He loved his actors and loved language, so he'd shoot a lot of film," says Jacobson. "It became a big thing in comedy after John did it -- listening to the actors and looking for those great moments. John would hear a line and get the actor to go with it. It really wasn't the actors who were improvising. It was John improvising."

No one who knows Hughes is eager to theorize about why he dropped out of sight. It's possible that the filmmaker, who gave studio executives headaches when he was riding high, simply grew tired of the messy business of making movies and chose to pursue a simpler life.