This image was lost some time after publication.

Picking up on director John Hughes where our recent appreciations, laments and inquiries left off, Patrick Goldstein today has a more sweeping survey of the prolific filmmaker-turned-Great Lakes recluse. Of course we all know he's missed, as Goldstein's sources avowedly confirm (and despite his pseudonymous, decades-old contributions to Drillbit Taylor). But with little apparent likelihood for the director to return to work, we at Defamer are compelled to take matters into our own hands with our ambitious John Hughes Q&A Challenge. Allow us to explain after the jump.

As Goldstein describes in today's Big Picture:

Hollywood is full of older masters who've been mentors to younger acolytes. But Hughes, 58, is the only one who's disappeared without a trace; he quit directing in 1991, moved back to Chicago in 1995 and has basically stayed out of sight ever since. ...

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.

It's honorable work overall, but Goldstein's failure to procure straight answers leaves us feeling shortchanged. So in the spirit of reader service and our own unflagging curiosity, we're hereby issuing the John Hughes Q&A Challenge directly to Hughes himself. But this requires participation from the whole Defamer community, so listen up:

1) Commenters: We're opening the floodgates! Veteran and rookie commenters, submit your questions for John Hughes below. Keep 'em classy, although any inquiries about the post-graduation sex and dating lives of The Breakfast Club are admittedly fair game.

2) Tipsters, spies and industry moles: Help us help you. Get this challenge to John Hughes. We're hoping for a personal response to his favorite questions at Defamer by the end of this week.

Let the virtual interview (and the word-of mouth) begin!