Hefty Plans
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“I try to have a humble approach to the money,” says Hughes from his Bucktown apartment, which also houses the Hefty office and a steel-doored electronic recording studio. Indeed, none of Hefty’s promotional materials mentions Hughes pere. Then again, as with Peter Getty’s Emperor Norton label, they don’t really need to. “People know who my dad is,” says Hughes. “I can’t escape it–not that I want to, because I have no problem with my relationship with him. But I’m not going to front on it. I want to be totally self-sufficient. It’s going to be slow, but I’m totally committed to making it successful.”
Hughes had also begun working as the musical supervisor for Reach the Rock, the directorial debut by his father’s longtime employee Bill Ryan, which was to be distributed via the elder Hughes’s production deal with Universal. Hughes III had started out giving his father and Ryan casual advice, and before long they saw fit to turn the job over to him. “I’ve introduced my dad to a lot of music, and he wanted to put music in the film that would make a difference,” Hughes says.
