Reel Classics: ‘The Breakfast Club’

The Breakfast Club opens with a quote from the lyrics of a David Bowie song, “Changes,” from 1971:  “...And these chil­dren, that you spit on, as they try to change their worlds, are immune to your con­sul­ta­tions, they’re quite aware what they’re going through....”  Then, in a voice-over nar­ra­tion by Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall), we hear: “Saturday, March 24^th, 1984. Shermer High School. Shermer, Illinois, 60062. Dear Mr. Vernon: We accept the fact that we had to sac­ri­fice a whole Saturday in deten­tion for what­ev­er it was we did wrong. What we did was wrong, but we think you are crazy to make us write an essay telling you what we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to see us. In the sim­plest terms, the most con­ve­nient def­i­n­i­tions, you see us as a ‘Brain,’ an ‘Athlete,’ a ‘Basket Case,’ a ‘Princess,’ and a ‘Criminal.’ Correct? That’s the way we saw each oth­er at sev­en o’clock this morn­ing. We were brainwashed.” 

Thus begins the day in the life of five very dif­fer­ent (in appear­ance any­way) teens attend­ing deten­tion at their high school. Claire Standish (Molly Ringwald) is from an upper-class fam­i­ly and is part of the clique that is “most pop­u­lar in school.” Her fam­i­ly has mon­ey and spends it freely. What we even­tu­al­ly learn of Claire is that she is from a dys­func­tion­al fam­i­ly. Her par­ents are on the verge of divorce and use Claire as a weapon against each oth­er. She is under intense pres­sure to be “per­fect” and con­stant­ly strives to please others. 

Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez) is on the school wrestling team and under intense pres­sure from his father to be the best. His father is obsessed with his son being “the best” and puts a great deal of pres­sure on Andrew—to the point of being abusive. 

Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall) is from a mid­dle-class fam­i­ly that pres­sures him to be a straight A stu­dent. They per­ceive him as a future CEO of some great busi­ness. They are very demand­ing of him, and he, in turn, is extreme­ly obe­di­ent, shy, naïve, and the butt of jokes from classmates. 

John Bender (Judd Nelson), along with his moth­er, suf­fers emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal abuse from his father. He is seen as an out­cast at school, into heavy met­al, drugs, and very macho. He is not well-liked by his classmates. 

And final­ly, we meet Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy), who is quirky and free-spir­it­ed — a bit of a freak. But she also tends to lie and steal (most­ly items she thinks she may need when she final­ly escapes from home). Her par­ents ignore her, and she does not feel their love — almost as if she didn’t even exist to them. 

The school’s Vice Principal, Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason), over­sees this group. It is appar­ent that Mr Vernon only sees what is evi­dent on the sur­face of each of these stu­dents and makes lit­tle to no effort to try to under­stand who they tru­ly are. 

And the rea­sons these five stu­dents were assigned deten­tion? Claire skipped class to go shop­ping. Andrew taped a guy’s butt cheeks togeth­er in the gym lock­er room. Brian brought a flare gun to school, which went off in his lock­er, caus­ing a fire. John Bender pulled a false fire alarm. And, accord­ing to Allison, she didn’t do any­thing — she didn’t have any­thing bet­ter to do or any­where else to go. But, we must remem­ber, she is also a liar, so who knows? 

So, as we hear from Brian in the ear­ly voice-over, we find a group of stereo­types — the brain, the princess, the jock, the out­law, and the freak. But as the sto­ry pro­gress­es, we learn that peo­ple are not just what they may appear to be on the sur­face (thus, the dan­ger of cast­ing peo­ple into stereotypes).

As the day begins, we learn that the stu­dents see each oth­er as the “stereo­type” as well. However, as the day pro­ceeds, they begin to talk and share and learn about how much they have in com­mon as peo­ple ver­sus just what is dif­fer­ent. This is the mes­sage in this sto­ry. Do not judge by appear­ances. Do not make assump­tions based on stereo­types. We have things in com­mon — beliefs, val­ues, hopes and dreams. We must look for and see these com­mon­al­i­ties — not just focus on what is different.

As their day wears on, they share per­son­al sto­ries, fears, and dreams, and they even share a bit of  pot hid­den in John Bender’s lock­er. They dis­cuss the dys­func­tion with­in their fam­i­lies and the stress and pres­sure of par­ents’ expec­ta­tions. Brian shares that he brought the flare gun to school with the thought of com­mit­ting sui­cide after get­ting an “F” in one of his classes.

They also share joy and laugh­ter as they play music and dance togeth­er. These five young peo­ple from very dif­fer­ent back­grounds and cliques with­in the school find each other. 

Mr. Vernon does not under­stand these stu­dents. He sees them as the stereo­types they rep­re­sent. He com­plains to the jan­i­tor that stu­dents have changed from when he was a teacher. He states that stu­dents are less dis­ci­plined and more arro­gant than in the past. However, the jan­i­tor chal­lenges that per­cep­tion by stat­ing that it is Mr. Vernon him­self who has changed. 

At the begin­ning of the day, Mr. Vernon had giv­en the stu­dents an assign­ment to write a thou­sand-word essay about who they think they are. If they had done that at the begin­ning of the day, they would like­ly have writ­ten about how oth­ers see them — the stereo­type. However, their views had changed by the end of that nine-hour deten­tion. They saw each oth­er and them­selves much more dif­fer­ent­ly. This is summed up in the final scenes where the group decides to have Brian com­plete the essay for them all. We heard the begin­ning in the voice-over at the start of the film. The final com­ments of the essay state, “...we think you’re crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us. In the sim­plest terms, the most con­ve­nient def­i­n­i­tions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a ‘Brain,’ and an ‘Athlete,’ and a ‘Basket Case,’ a ‘Princess,’ and a ‘Criminal.’ Does that answer your ques­tion? Sincerely yours, The Breakfast Club.” 

The Breakfast Club was released in 1985 and was one of a string of very suc­cess­ful teen-cen­tered movies made by John Hughes. Others include Sixteen Candles, Pretty In Pink, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Hughes was both a direc­tor and screen­writer. Other films in his reper­toire include Mr. Mom, Uncle Buck, Home Alone, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. 

The Breakfast Club was to be Hughes’ first direct­ing effort. However, there were holdups in cast­ing and financ­ing. In the mean­time, he wrote anoth­er screen­play for a film called Sixteen Candles. He was signed to a deal to direct both pic­tures, with Sixteen Candles being the first. 

The orig­i­nal title of The Breakfast Club was Detention. However, Hughes changed the title after hear­ing a friend’s son refer to his high school’s Saturday deten­tion as “The Breakfast Club.”

Many well-known actors and actress­es were con­sid­ered for the roles. Robin Wright, Jodie Foster, Diane Lane, and Laura Dern all audi­tioned for the role of Claire. Molly Ringwald was already cast in the part of Allison but real­ly want­ed the part of Claire and lob­bied Hughes hard for it. She even­tu­al­ly con­vinced him to give her that part, and Ally Sheedy took the role of Allison. 

Emilio Estevez was ini­tial­ly cast as John Bender but was switched to the role of the ath­lete Brian. Nicholas Cage was con­sid­ered for the role of Bender, but Hughes chose John Cusack. It didn’t take long for Hughes to replace Cusack with Judd Nelson as he thought Cusack was “too nice” to play such a char­ac­ter. He lat­er con­sid­ered fir­ing Nelson as he thought Nelson was mean and harassed oth­er cast mem­bers (espe­cial­ly Molly Ringwald). However, he kept Nelson on at the insis­tence of oth­er cast mem­bers, who con­vinced him that Nelson was just work­ing to stay in char­ac­ter. He vowed, how­ev­er, not to work with Nelson again.

The song from the film’s sound­track, “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”  is by the group “Simple Minds.”  It was part of the film’s offi­cial sound­track and became a num­ber one hit on the Billboard charts in 1985.  One of the film’s scenes has John Bender walk­ing across a foot­ball field with that song play­ing and rais­ing his fist in a sign of defiance. 

The pho­to for the movie poster was tak­en by famous pho­tog­ra­ph­er Annie Leibovitz, who had many pho­tos in Rolling Stone mag­a­zine and oth­er publications. 

The Breakfast Club was a box office suc­cess. It was made on a bud­get of $1 mil­lion but earned over $45 mil­lion domes­ti­cal­ly and over $51 mil­lion worldwide. 

Critics also liked the film. Roger Ebert described the per­for­mances as “won­der­ful” and said, “... it’s about kids who grow will­ing to talk to one anoth­er, and it has a sur­pris­ing­ly good ear for the way they speak.” Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune wrote: “This con­fes­sion­al for­mu­la has worked in films as dif­fer­ent as Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, The Big Chill, and My Dinner With Andre, and it works here too. It works espe­cial­ly well in The Breakfast Club because we keep wait­ing for the film to break out of its claus­tro­pho­bic set and give us a typ­i­cal teenage movie sex-or-vio­lence scene. That doesn’t hap­pen, much to our delight.” The New York Daily News crit­icwrote, “Hughes has a won­der­ful knack for com­mu­ni­cat­ing the feel­ings of teenagers, as well as an obvi­ous rap­port with his excep­tion­al cast — who deserve top grades.”

The New York Times placed the film on its  “Best 1000 Movies Ever” list, and Entertainment Weekly ranked it num­ber one on its list of “50 Best High School Movies.” In 2016, the Library of Congress select­ed The Breakfast Club for preser­va­tion in the National Film Registry. 

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) gives the film a rat­ing of 7.8 out of 10. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a Critics Score of 87% and an Audience Score of 92%. 

While check­ing my Roku device, I found no free stream­ing sites, but the Clark County Public Library has two copies of the DVD on the shelf. 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Wikipedia.

I’ll be back soon with the next Reel Classic, but before I leave you with the trail­er below, let me remind you that if you enjoy these clas­sic movies, please join me on the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6 PM at the Clark County Public Library for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics.”  I present a clas­sic com­e­dy film, usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a vin­tage car­toon. Popcorn and drinks are pro­vid­ed. More infor­ma­tion about the next film is avail­able on the library’s web­site and Facebook page, as well as the WinCity Voices Facebook page.