Hans 2021 Movie Draft: Round Four-Pick Five-The Breakfast Club 1985
Hanspostcard has a movie draft challenge. This is my Round Four pick.
Category: Comedy
Film: The Breakfast Club
“So, Ahab, can I have all my doobage?”
“Chicks cannot hold dey smoke, dat’s what it is.”
The opening narration to this film is spoken by Anthony Michael Hall (Brian Johnson/The Brain):
“Saturday, March 24, 1984. Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois, 60062 (fictional town). […] You see us as you want to see us… […] You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. […] That’s the way we saw each other at 7:00 this morning. We were brainwashed.”
This is my graduating class…the class of 1984 (despite the age of some of the actors). Released February 15, 1985, I was in my freshman year of college and it was a bittersweet revisit. I knew these characters…every single one of them. My high school even had a library that resembled that set. This movie was made with only a one million budget but, brought in $51 million and, in 2016, was selected for preservation with the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. There is no CGI or special effects. There are no sweeping views of beautiful locations. There are no “shoot-em-up-bang-bang” sequences. There is some action with the cast running through the hallways, dancing while high and Judd Nelson (John Bender/The Criminal) falling through the ceiling tiles. This is, primarily, a study of human nature, parental influence, peer influence, subtle & overt abuse and the struggle to understand. It’s heartbreaking, it’s hilarious and it is so Generation X. ~Vic
Written, produced and directed by John Hughes, it also stars Emilio Estevez (Andrew Clark/The Athlete), Molly Ringwald (Claire Standish/The Princess), Ally Sheedy (Allison Reynolds/The Basket Case), Paul Gleason (Asst. Principal Richard Vernon) and John Kapelos (Carl Reed/The Janitor).
You be the judge.
Trivia Bits:
♦ The scene in which all characters sit in a circle on the floor in the library and tell stories about why they were in detention was not scripted. Writer and director John Hughes told them all to ad-lib.
♦ There is a deleted scene of Claire and Allison in the bathroom that didn’t show up until the Blu-Ray edition was released.
♦ Sixteen year old Hall hit a growth spurt during shooting and outgrew 24 year old Nelson, prompting Nelson to joke about writing letters to geneticists.
♦ Bender’s joke about the blonde, the poodle and the six foot salami has no punchline as it was never in the script.
♦ Nelson was nearly fired for method-acting harassment.
♦ Hall’s mother & sister play themselves in the movie.
♦ Keith Forsey wrote the lyrics to Don’t You (Forget About Me) and Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music was approached to sing it. Billy Idol was also approached and recorded his own version, later. An offer to Chrissie Hynde lead to her, then, husband Jim Kerr of Simple Minds.
♦ Nelson improvised the part at the closing of the film where Bender raises his fist in defiance. Everyone loved it and it has also become an iconic symbol of the 1980s as well as cinema history.
Additional Reading:
Original ‘Breakfast Club’ Screenplay Found (Chicago Tribune)
The Breakfast Club Cut Content (Lost Media Archive Wiki)
Opening Scene
Cosmic-Observation 
February 20, 2021 at 3:39 PM
I did like that movie and I think sometimes a big-budget only helps to distract the watcher when the movie is bad. I am reminded of Jaws. Their fancy, expensive, mechanical shark never worked right so they had to film many scenes without it. The movie actually benefitted because the unseen shark was even scarier.
LikeLike
February 20, 2021 at 3:57 PM
Yeah, the human mind can fill in the gaps and can conjure far worse imaginings.
A good script, decent ad-libbing and charming actors can carry a movie, well. Jaws had the character actors. Ever seen The Meg? That is Jaws on CGI steroids.
LikeLiked by 1 person
February 20, 2021 at 4:09 PM
No, did not see the Meg but would consider watching it.
LikeLike
February 20, 2021 at 4:43 PM
It’s OK. It’s not Academy Award material for sure. It’s mostly a Jason Statham vehicle (a British Bruce Willis clone to me) and fits his background as a semi-professional diver. It’s not terrible. If you’ve ever seen Longmire, Aussie Robert Taylor has a small part in it…looking as constipated as he did in the series.
LikeLike
February 20, 2021 at 7:26 PM
Great look of the film, and nice trivia as well. The Sheedy comparison is, well… I don’t necessarily agree but I can see where your friend was coming at.
LikeLiked by 1 person
February 20, 2021 at 11:29 PM
I stated in a comment on Hans site, to another commenter, that I had trouble finding a photo of me that resembled her. The co-worker told me that in 1985, after the movie was released. The photo of me, above, is from 1981…so, I guess I still maintained the resemblance to him four years later. And, he did word it “You ‘remind’ me of Ally Sheedy,” not “You look just like her…” So…there’s that.
Actually, I got more comparisons to Sigourney Weaver than Sheedy. From 2013 to 2016, I had random strangers tell me that. I was a Driver’s License Examiner from 2014 to 2016 and I had a lot of people tell me that. The young ones would say “You look like that lady in Avatar.” The older ones would say “You look like the woman in Ghostbusters.” I had lightened my hair and that seemed to trigger those comparisons. My dark hair goes “tabby-cat orange/red” with HP.
LikeLiked by 1 person
June 11, 2021 at 10:00 AM
[…] classic. I still have the sticker that I got when I went to see this at the theater in 1982. Like The Breakfast Club, this movie means something to me. Released the summer before my junior year, this movie got me […]
LikeLike
June 11, 2021 at 5:19 PM
[…] classic. I still have the sticker that I got when I went to see this at the theater in 1982. Like The Breakfast Club, this movie means something to me. Released the summer before my junior year, this movie got me […]
LikeLike