Welcome to the 21st century, John Hughes! Our favorite movie maestro has re-emerged, this time writing a short piece for Zoetrope All-Story about the genesis of his screenplay for "National Lampoon's Vacation."

It's an amazing piece (click here to read it), full of more personal details about his life than have been released to date. Among the gems you'll discover:

• "Vacation" was originally called "Vacation '58" and was based on a family trip from Detroit to L.A.'s Disneyland. It was written by the point of the view of "Rusty," the male child of the family.
• Hughes wrote it while he has working full-time for a Chicago advertising agency. It was intended to run in the "National Lampoon" magazine, for which he was secretly a part-time editor.
• The entire story was written by Hughes when he was snowed-in at home in Chicago in 1979.
• His story didn't have the movie's happy ending.

"I wrote the first sentence -- 'If Dad hadn't shot Walt Disney in the leg, it would have been our best vacation ever!' -- and the rest was automatic," Hughes explains in his essay

Hughes' short piece is fascinating to read, a peak into the mind of someone we all can't stop admiring, and a reminder that he's lost none of his writing talent.