#movie:the-breakfast-club

[ethanalter]

10 Classic '80s and '90s Movies That Influence 'Spider-Man: Homecoming'

Tom Holland and Jacob Batalon in Spider-Man: Homecoming (Photo: Sony Pictures)

Warning: This post contains spoilers for key scenes and plot points of Spider-Man: Homecoming.

If you’re a Marvel Comics fan, Spider-Man: Homecoming is a veritable gold mine of Easter eggs from the wall-crawler’s 55-year-and-counting career of catching thieves just like flies. At the same time, it’s equally rich with homages to popular teen movies from the ’80s and ’90s. Even before the film went into production, Marvel Studios chief, Kevin Feige, made a point of describing it as a “John Hughes movie,” directly name-checking the writer and director responsible for so many of that era’s high school classics.

In separate interviews with Yahoo Movies, star Tom Holland explained that director Jon Watts gave the young cast a must-watch list of classic movies to watch before shooting began, while Homecoming  co-writer John Francis Daley elaborated on the Spidey-Hughes connection. “What John Hughes was best at was finding the funny in the relatable… and to keep Peter as a truly normal, grounded, relatable person I think is really set him apart from all the other versions of Spider-Man that people have seen.” Homecoming‘s cinematic influences do extend beyond Hughes, though. Here’s a list of 10 teen favorites that are overtly, or subtly, referenced by Spider-Man and his amazing friends.

Matthew Broderick in ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ (Photo: Everett Collection)

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) This one is kind of a gimme; while in hot pursuit of the Vulture’s henchmen, poor Peter Parker (Tom Holland) has to forego his usual web-slinging action due to the fact that he’s in that dreaded low-rise territory known as suburbia. Crashing through backyard after backyard, he passes a pool party where Matthew Broderick’s own climactic backyard chase from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is playing out on a TV screen. “Great movie,” Peter calls out as he continues on to the next yard. (Wonder if he considers Ferris Bueller to be as ancient a film as The Empire Strikes Back?) “That scene is a perfect example of our challenge to take Spider-Man out of a world where he’s comfortable,” director Watts told Yahoo Movies. “If you put him in the suburbs where there’s nothing tall to swing from, what does he do? It was a great opportunity to put him in an awkward situation.”

Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy in ‘The Breakfast Club’ (Photo: Universal/courtesy Everett Collection)

The Breakfast Club (1985) At a press conference in June, Zendaya revealed that Ally Sheedy’s proto-Goth girl, Allison Reynolds, is a direct ancestor of her Homecoming character, Michelle “M.J.” Jones. And the two do have a lot in common, including a quiet manner that masks a caustic wit, as well as a flair for epic side-eye and eye-rolls. In fact, Michelle is glimpsed sitting in detention alongside Peter — the Anthony Michael Hall of her school — in one memorable Homecoming scene, despite the fact that she’s not even supposed to be there. Speaking with the press, Zendaya made it clear that she hopes modern teens take away the same lesson from Michelle that their parents learned from Allison, namely that: “It’s OK to be weird. If you make things awkward and uncomfortable, that’s cool. I love that Michelle’s outspoken and says what everyone’s thinking, but she just doesn’t care.”

William Zabka and Ralph Macchio in ‘The Karate Kid’ (Photo: Mary Evans/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection)

The Karate Kid (1984) He may not pledge allegiance to Cobra Kai, but Flash Thompson (Tony Revolori) is totally the Johnny Lawrence to Peter’s Daniel LaRusso. Whether calling him “Penis Parker” (itself an indirect shout-out to another ’80s classic, E.T.) or engaging in some decidedly unsportsmanlike trash talk during Academic Decathlon training sessions, Flash is always eager to humiliate his rival on the most public stage possible. But Peter, like LaRusso before him, scores the final knockout, hijacking Flash’s car and leaving him by the side of the road with his homecoming date. Revolori, who previously played the hero of Wes Anderson’s acclaimed 2014 film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, has said that he enjoyed breaking bad in Homecoming, especially since the movie doesn’t make an issue about his race. “The fact that there’s not a single line of exposition to explain why I look the way I look. I’m just in the movie. It’s not about being a certain race, and I think that’s the kind of diversity we need in Hollywood right now.”

Can’t Hardly Wait (1998) If only Peter had re-watched this nostalgic ’90s favorite before heading over to Liz Allan’s shindig, he would have realized that a high school house party is the absolute worst place to try and impress the girl you’ve been crushing on for years. Sure enough, his plan to swing in and make a big splash as Spider-Man is thwarted by an unplanned side mission involving the Shocker. Can’t Hardly Wait‘s Preston (Ethan Embry) is similarly unable to persuade his dream girl, Amanda (Jennifer Love Hewitt), of his affection due to a series of increasingly crazy circumstances. According to Daley, an early version of the storyline involved Peter hosting the party instead of Liz, but is similarly prevented from joining the festivities in costume. “All the cool kids from school burst into his bedroom while he’s gone and just start going through all his s—t, like all the toys he still kept.” Adds Daley’s co-writer, Jonathan Goldstein: “That’s very Hughes-ian, like the characters Anthony Michael Hall used to play. The kid who’s too old to still be doing this stuff.”

Anthony Michael Hall, Kelly LeBrock, Ilan Mitchell-Smith in ‘Weird Science’ (Photo: Universal Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection)

Weird Science (1985) We should probably be glad that geek buddies Peter and Ned (Jacob Batalon) are only applying their serious science and tech skills to making web fluid and hacking Tony Stark-designed super-suits. Otherwise, they might go and do something really weird…like building a cyber-girlfriend who steps out of the computer and into reality. Here’s another fun connection between Weird Science and Homecoming: Robert Downey Jr. is a big ol’ spoilsport in both. Back in ’85, he dropped a red Icee on dorks Gary and Wyatt, and 32 years later, he drops a bomb on Peter by taking away the teen’s Spider-Man suit after his Staten Island Ferry mishap.

Jon Cryer and Molly Ringwald in ‘Pretty in Pink’ (Photo: Paramount / Courtesy: Everett Collection)

Pretty in Pink (1986) High school law eschews the designated dork from taking the pretty girl to the big school dance. But Hughes went and upset the natural order of things by having Duckie (Jon Cryer) swoop in and rescue his best friend and longtime crush object, Andie (Molly Ringwald) from being stood up at the prom by status-conscious Blane (Andrew McCarthy). Truthfully, it was a bridge too far for audiences at the time, who demanded that the ending be reshot with the pretty girls and the popular guy walking off into a happily ever after. For a brief moment, though, Duckie got to be the hero who gets the girl, a geek dream that Peter gets to live out when he asks the significantly more popular Liz to the homecoming dance and she says yes. For better or for worse, he ultimately loses the girl to her villainous dad rather than a petty prepster.

Michael J. Fox in ‘Back to the Future’ (Photo: Universal/courtesy Everett Collection)

Back to the Future (1985) No sooner has he gotten to Hill Valley High’s “Enchantment Under the Sea” dance than Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) has to ditch his date — and future Mom — Lorraine (Lea Thompson) in order to take care of some pressing time travel business. Peter isn’t able to bust a move at his school’s homecoming soiree either, regretfully abandoning Liz on the dance floor in order to thwart her Vulture father’s plot to raid Tony Stark’s airborne storage locker. At least Marty gets to invent rock and roll during his time brief time at the Hill Valley dance; Peter has to bail before he can show off how he can out-Rihanna Rihanna.

Jennifer Connelly and Frank Whaley skate the night away in Career Opportunities (Photo: Universal Pictures)

Career Opportunities (1991) Peter Parker isn’t the only nerd lucky enough to spend a night locked in a facility with Jennifer Connelly. This John Hughes-scripted comedy traps awkward outcast Jim (Frank Whaley) and knockout Josie (Connelly) in a Target store after closing time, where they have to contend with their wildly different backgrounds, as well as a pair of bungling burglars. Midway through Homecoming, Spider-Man’s attempt to foil a Vulture robbery lands him in deep storage inside the U.S. Department of Damage Control, with only his “suit lady,” a.k.a. his in-suit A.I. K.A.R.E.N. (voiced by the Beautiful Mind Oscar winner), for company. We’ll leave it to you to decide whether Target for the Damage Control storage locker has better toys.

Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985) Not a teen movie, you say? Perhaps that’s true, but Tim Burton’s feature filmmaking debut is nevertheless an ’80s classic for young kids and teenagers alike. Besides, it can’t be accidental that Spider-Man’s first big victory in Homecoming involves stopping a bicycle thief. And he doesn’t even have to leave Queens to do it! Poor Pee-wee Herman has to travel all the way to Texas to recover his beloved two-wheeled ride. Here’s an eye-popping face-off we want to see in the Homecoming sequel: Spider-Man vs. Large Marge.

 Watch: Tom Holland Wants His Peter Parker to Be This Generation’s Marty McFly:

Get more Spider-Man scoop from Yahoo Movies:

Your Ultimate Guide to the Spider-Man: Homecoming Easter Eggs

Decoding the End Credits of Spider-Man: Homecoming

Revisiting the James Cameron Spider-Man Movie That Never Was

[batty4batz]

Identities Preferences: Ames: Favorites

Food:Steak

Snack: Pork Rinds

Drink: Pr. Pepper

Candy: Necco Wafers

Movie: The Breakfast Club

Tv show: Supernatural

Music type: Rock

Band:Five Finger Death Punch

Song: Question Everything

Game: Skyrim

Color: Green

Animal: Cats

She likes to play role playing games and play games like Skyrim. She loves to shoot and is a big fan of the call of duty games. She is the type of person that will wander off into the woods to go on a hike and enjoy nature. She doesn’t get angered easily and but when she does, she tries her best not to go off because if she does Devlin will step out. She tries her best to talk things out but doesn't always work. She tends to be pretty chilled out most of the time but can get jealous and self conscious easily. She has some self esteem and self image issues and she does he best to work through them but doesn't always work.

Amethyst: Favorites

Food: Salmon

Snack: Popcorn

Drink: Dr. Pepper

Candy: Cotton Candy

Movie:The Princess Bride

Tv show: Supernatural

Music type: Rap Rock

Band: Hollywood Undead

Song: Bitches

Game: Slime Rancher

Color: Light Pink

Animal: Bats

She is a playful one. She likes to do role playing games and fun little video games like slime rancher. She also quite the thrill-seeker, she loves roller coasters and amusement parks. She loves the beach even though she hates waters (confusing, I know) and she loves to be in the sun. She likes going on walks and sitting in the grass. She absolutely loves cuddles, holding hands, kisses, and to hear compliments, along with being called Kitten. She is a total hopeless romantic. She tends to shy away from anger and negative energy. She hates being yelled at or when people raise their voices at or around her. She will instantly go very quiet or will stop fronting. Other than that shes just flat out playful and is usually always cheery and happy even in hard times.

Alice: Favorites

Food: Mashed Potatoes

Drink: Cherry Pepsi

Candy: Lemonheads

Movie: Pretty in Pink

Tv show: Arrow

Music type: Today Rock

Band: Breaking Benjamin

Song: Diary of Jane

Game: Splendor

Color: Dark Navy Blue

Animal: Foxes

She is the most mature out of us all. She tends to come out in situations that need to be cooled down but gets easily frustrated when someone doesn't listen. She likes board games but isn't much into role playing or video games. She does like to play paintball and sometimes go rollerblading and bowling. Shes big into politics and likes to talk about them.

Devlin: Favorites

Food: Steak

Drink: Monster

Candy: Twizzlers

Movie: The Saw movies

Tv show: Criminal Minds

Music type: Metal

Band: Disturbed

Song: Immortalized

Game: Grand Theft Auto 5

Color: Wine Red

Animal: Wolves

He is a kinda a narcissistic sociopath. He plays games like GTA 5 and Dead Rising. He likes to fuck shit up. He is easily angered and will go off on you undoubtedly. She has absolutely no filter and will say everything he is thinking if it is either offensive or rude. She has a terrible temper and will throw shit at you if you piss him off enough. He can get along with others if he wants but piss him off and you might regret it.

[gwynnew]

Judd Nelson Is Still Pissed at the Guy Who Coined the Term 'Brat Pack'

Judd Nelson (top center) with Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, Emilio Estevez, and Molly Ringwald in a publicity still from ‘The Breakfast Club’

In 1985, Judd Nelson starred as tough-guy rebel John Bender in The Breakfast Club, and was declared a core member of the ‘Brat Pack’ by New York magazine. Thirty years later, Nelson says that the ‘Brat Pack’ label wreaked havoc on his friendships and career — and if he could do it over, he’d go back and punch the journalist who coined the term.

Related: 'St. Elmo's Fire' Turns 30: The Brat Pack Cast Then and Now

During an interview with The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, Nelson said that he was immediately suspicious of New York writer David Blum, who joined him and Breakfast Club co-star Emilio Estevez for a night on the town in L.A. while researching an ostensible profile of Estevez. Ultimately, that article painted Nelson, Estevez, Rob Lowe, and a number of their contemporaries as spoiled, irresponsible, womanizing, marginally talented wannabes. (Nelson was specifically dubbed “the overrated one.”)

“I knew there was a problem right away…This guy [David Blum], just something about him, he had a stink to him,” Nelson told Ellis. “I think that in retrospect, I would have been better served following my gut feeling and knocking him unconscious. I at least would have felt better about the thing.”

As a result of the article, Nelson was pressured to distance himself from the actors he considered his friends and colleagues. “These were people I worked with, who I really liked as people — funny, smart, committed to the work. I mean, no one was professionally irresponsible,” he explained. “And after that article, not only are we strongly encouraged not to work with each other again — and for the most part we haven’t —  but it was insinuated we might not want to be hanging out with these people. And it was like, I didn’t know that good friends are so easy to come by in this world that they should be tossed asunder.”

“And to think that we’re some kind of gang, or group!” he continued. “I lived in New York City. I don’t go three thousand miles to have a beer…But it just seemed like we were like fruit picked too soon, and then being blamed for being picked too soon.”

Nelson isn’t the only Brat Pack actor who resents that New York article. In fact, nearly everyone associated with the label has voiced their objection to it. The day the piece was published, Emilio Estevez called Blum to tell him, “You’ve ruined my life… My friends hate me now and won’t speak to me.��� Breakfast Club director John Hughes called the article “unfair,” saying that the Brat Pack moniker “suggests unruly, arrogant young people, and that description isn’t true of these people.” Andrew McCarthy has said that he never partied with the so-called members of his “pack.” (“I don’t think I’ve seen any of these people since we finished St. Elmo’s Fire. And I’ve never met Anthony Michael Hall,” he told People in 1999.) Ally Sheedy told Interview that her career faltered after the article, because of “this terrible association with us, that we were these kids who had too much, too fast.” And six months after the article ran, Rob Lowe was already sick of being asked about the Brat Pack.“Will it ever end?” he said with a sigh during an AP interview in January 1986. “It’s a romantic notion that we all hang out together, but it’s not true.” Mare Winningham, the St. Elmo’s Fire star who was completely ignored in the article, has called the Brat Pack label “a bullet I dodged.”

Even Blum had his regrets. He complained in a June 1987 Los Angeles Times article that he was “very depressed” by the aftermath of his piece — particularly the fact that he was unable to leverage his clever phrase for monetary gain, even though he’d taken a stab at selling a “Brat Pack” TV movie. And to think: If Judd Nelson had his way, he’d have a black eye on top of that.

[movies-magazine1742-yahoopa-blog]

Banished From 'The Breakfast Club': Actress Recalls the Burn of Getting Cut From John Hughes's Film

The cast of ‘The Breakfast Club’: Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald, and Anthony Michael Hall (Photo: Everett).

By Karen Leigh Hopkins as told to Michelle Fiordaliso

For an aspiring actress from Sandusky, Ohio (population 25,000), auditioning for and getting cast in the role of a fresh-out-of-college gym teacher in John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club was the big break I’d been hoping for. My character — who was at school for a Saturday practice — originally began as a swim instructor but evolved into a gym teacher because I actually taught aerobics professionally at the time. John told me that my part was meant to bridge the gap between the students and the establishment. For my big scene I’d deliver a speech in the library to the five kids saying, “This is just a small part of your total life history.” What that meant was that even though everything feels intense in high school, that time ends and then real life begins. And the life I had dreamt of felt like it was just beginning.

We had been filming in Chicago. One morning I was at the hotel getting ready to leave for set when the phone rang. It was Jackie Burch, our casting director. I was being sent home. That day. What?! The information didn’t compute. I asked her why but she didn’t know. What happened? It felt sort of like, well, exactly like high school. One day you’re in with the cool kids and the next day you’re an outcast — as in out of the cast.

Related: SXSW: ‘The Breakfast Club’ Restored for 30th Anniversary Screening

I still don’t love flying, but let’s just say that plane ride home was the worst one I’ve ever taken. I thought about the scene we’d filmed in the library a few days prior. John kept whispering random jokes into my ear so that my lines would crack Anthony Michael Hall up — I remember one was about Lionel Richie. Each take took on a slightly different tone. In hindsight, if I’d been told this scene was going to be cut, I would’ve been shocked because it seemed to be going so well. On the plane, despite my soft seat in first class, I couldn’t find any comfort. In the absence of any real explanation I filled the void with lots of possible ones — each one more negative than the next.

Karen Leigh Hopkins at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City (Photo: AP).

Call it magical thinking or insanity but I still held out hope I’d be in the final cut. Jackie [Burch] had seen footage after I was sent home and told my agent it was good. So when the film opened I was still pathetically hoping there’d be a glimpse of me. I know. Don’t say it. I went to an afternoon showing alone and guess what? I wasn’t in the movie. My mother called and said, “Honey, just come home. I’ll bake you a white cake.”

Leonard Cohen has said, “Writing is a desperate activity.” I was living in an alley apartment at the time, had 21 bucks left and was trying to figure out how I’d pay my rent in two weeks time. I wrote my first script, The Kindness of Strangers, in those 14 days and gave it to my acting agents to sell. The script was never produced, but was bought — by Paramount’s Ned Tanen, who had produced The Breakfast Club and recognized my name when the script landed on his desk. I called my mother, who worked at a car factory making rubber parts, and asked for her to be pulled off the line to talk. “What happened?” she asked, panicked. “You can quit your job, mom. I’m going to buy you that house on Cedar Brook Lane.”

Related: ‘The Breakfast Club’: Read THR’s 1985 Review

It was a surprise when friends recently sent me articles from Vanity Fair (an excerpt from the new book John Hughes: A Life in Film) and The New York Post saying that my Breakfast Club character was merely there to provide a gratuitous nude scene where the kids sneak out and watch me showering through a peephole. What shower scene? I don’t remember one in the script, and I never filmed one. John kept conveying that my part was meant to be the slightly older person who makes it safely to the other side of high school and shows it can be done. There was a provocative scene in the script where the principal was meant to watch me working out but that scene didn’t get shot. 

While I’d been waiting for an answer for years — and as a writer I understand re-writes — this version of events doesn’t click. If the filmmakers had been scouting for a “buxom” bombshell, they could’ve done better than me. And if the other female cast members felt the part was misogynistic, as a recent Vanity Fair article suggested, I never heard anything to that effect. It certainly doesn’t seem true to the character John created or conveyed to me. But if that was the reason I could’ve handled it; instead I was left to speculate. The truth may hurt but it’s always better than not knowing

As the 30th anniversary re-release of The Breakfast Club approaches, the mention of my role in the press has felt oddly validating. It’s given me permission to reflect on that time and affirms that being a part of the film wasn’t a figment of my fertile imagination. It was a beloved movie — a cult classic — and I will always wish I could’ve been a permanent part of it, but that doesn’t erase the joy of simply being cast and getting to shoot it. I never did get to see myself on screen delivering the wise speech John wrote — the speech that was meant to remind audiences that a confusing and sometimes painful period like high school ends, and then you can either leave it behind or get stuck in it forever, but I did have the opportunity to live the lesson of those words.

Watch a clip from 'The Breakfast Club' below:

[kevinpolowy]

First Draft of 'Breakfast Club' Script Unearthed at Shuttered Chicago High School

John Hughes’s 1985 coming-of-age classic, ‘The Breakfast Club’ (Universal)

As far as excavations go, this is the movie memorabilia equivalent of a paleontologist digging up a rare dinosaur fossil. Staffers at Maine South High School in Park Ridge, Illinois, were cleaning out a file cabinet when they came across an early draft of the screenplay for John Hughes’s '80s teen classic The Breakfast Club.

As reported and photographed by Chicago Tribune’s Pioneer Press, the script was dated Sept. 21, 1983 and is labeled “First Draft Screenplay.” The movie didn’t go into production until March 28, 1984. The newspaper notes one obvious difference between this early version and the final shooting script: Molly Ringwald’s character is named Cathy Douglas on paper; she became Claire Standish in the film.

(Photo: Jennifer Johnson/Pioneer Press)

Hughes, a native of nearby Northbrook on Chicago’s North Shore, filmed The Breakfast Club at the shuttered Main North High School, which was closed in 1981. The movie starred Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, and Ally Sheedy as five high school archetypes (the beauty, brain, jock, rebel, and recluse, respectively) who famously bond over Saturday detention.

The Tribune points out other markings on the script that confirm its authenticity: The fact that “Reviewed and approved by Dr. Murphy” is etched on the manuscript’s cover. John Murphy was the district superintendent at the time, and thus had to sign off on the film’s content before allowing the production to take place in his school. (This also probably explains why the script ended up in a school filing cabinet in the first place.)

(Photo: Jennifer Johnson/Pioneer Press)

Current superintendent Ken Wallace told the Tribune that “in the upper left corner [of the screenplay], there is what appears to be pizza grease.” No word on whether that came from a John Hughes slice, though.

Related: Banished From 'The Breakfast Club’: Actress Recalls the Burn of Getting Cut From John Hughes’s Film

The script was found among some other documents pertaining to the film’s production, including a rental contract between the studio, Universal, and the school district that set a fee of $48,000 and other correspondence that revealed the movie was almost titled Saturday Breakfast Club.

“We close with nothing but the fondest thoughts and memories of Universal Studios and 'The Breakfast Club,’” Donald Stillwaugh, a school district coordinator wrote in one letter discovered. “We trust the film will be a huge success.”

Mr. Stillwaugh clearly knew what he was talking about. The Breakfast Club, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in February, is considered one of the best high school films ever made.

You can read the full story on the Chicago Tribune.

[benfalkyahoomovies]

How The Breakfast Club Became A Classic

They told us not to forget about them and they were right. On 15 Feb 1985, ?The Breakfast Club? was released ? and 30 years later, it remains one of the most iconic teen movies of all time.

- How Home Alone Became A Modern Classic - Guess The Oscar Legend Offspring - 14 Actors Who Suffered Serious Injuries On Set

Telling the story offive diverse high school students locked up for the day in detention, it?s heartfelt, hilarious and authentic. Here?s how they did it.

Origins

For people of a certain age, the name John Hughes inspires a particular kind of awe. The ad copywriter-turned-filmmaker was responsible for several of Hollywood?s most enduring teenage movies, as well as writing brilliant comedies like ?National Lampoon?s Vacation?, ?Mr Mom?, ?Uncle Buck? and ?Home Alone?.

But when the reclusive writer/director died tragically in 2009 aged just 56, it was his contribution to teen cinema he would be most fondly remembered for ? ?Pretty In Pink?, ?Sixteen Candles?, ?Ferris Bueller?s Day Off? and of course, ?The Breakfast Club?.

?When I got my first real development job at Universal, I didn?t even really know what I supposed to be doing,? remembers Adam Fields, who was an assistant at Hughes?s talent agency when they first met and got walking while wandering the halls.

?I kind of knew I was supposed to call writers and get scripts. So I called John and said, ?Do you have any scripts?? and he said, ?Yeah, I wrote two this weekend.?

The first turned out to be 1984?s ?Sixteen Candles?, which featured Hughes muse Molly Ringwald as a high school-er pining over a boy, while annoyed that her family has forgotten her 16th birthday.

Also starring Anthony Michael Hall, it struck a nerve if not a commercial jackpot, as well as helping to marshal the burgeoning Brat Pack movement that had been started by ?The Outsiders?.

The second film ? named after a phrase Hughes had heard his ad colleague?s teenage son using about Saturday morning detention ? was ?The Breakfast Club?.

Getting the band together

The success of ?Sixteen Candles? meant that ?Club? ? which Hughes had originally written as a play ? barrelled headlong into pre-production. Fields was the executive in charge, while it was down to casting director Jackie Burch to find the five actors who would be spending Saturday in cinematic detention.

?I think it was just a good time for young actors making movies back then,? says Fields (pictured above). ?Movies were inexpensive to make, very inexpensive to market. I don?t remember ever having a conversation about needing ?names?, which you have now.?

Ringwald and Hall were a given thanks to their relationship with the writer/director. ?I think John saw a lot of himself in Michael,? says Fields (Hall?s three-pronged thespian name swaps his real-life first names around). Emilio Estevez as jock Andrew and Ally Sheedy as outsider Allison came next, but Hughes had trouble finding an actor to play John Bender, the loudmouth, edgy ?criminal? who rounds out the club.

John Cusack had worked on ?Sixteen Candles? and came close to landing the part, but lost out at the last moment, mainly thanks to Burch?s insistence he wasn?t right. Instead, it was Judd Nelson who eventually won out, having come into the audition in character and blown the cast away with his intensity. His performance would go on to break a million teenage girls? hearts.

On location

With cast in place and following three weeks of intense rehearsal, filming began in an abandoned high school near Chicago, the area Hughes liked to shoot all his movies.

?It was a high school that had been built and no-one came, so ultimately it just sat there,? recalls the film?s cinematographer Thomas Del Ruth (pictured above). ?They had two interior gyms and one was huge and that was what John Corso the production designer decided to build the [library] set. The entire film takes place inside the school itself or just outside. We were never more than two hundred yards from the school at any point.?

Filming in the Illinois winter felt a world away from Hollywood, which was just what Hughes intended.

?It felt so innocent back then,? says Fields. ?You didn?t have the micromanaging of a film that goes on now. I don?t remember any executives coming to set.? He laughs. ?But I do remember being really frigging cold.?

"The inside was super-heated,? remembers Del Ruth. ?There was the heating in the corridors and we had hundreds of movie lights. The crew would hang out on the second floor because it was out of the way and out of camera and a lot of the time, the assistant directors would have to walk around during takes and wake them up because they were snoring, which would break up the scene. It was like the tropics up there.?

Hughes left Del Ruth and production designer John Corso to concentrate on the visuals, preferring to focus on the performances. His close relationship with Hall and Ringwald was palpable and caused difficulties, especially because of Method actor Nelson, who liked to taunt his on-screen love interest. Some of his comments infuriated his director so much that he was almost fired, saved only after one of the producers told him to tone down his behaviour.

But Nelson wasn?t the only one who stayed in character. ?Ally Sheedy spent the entire 12 to 14 weeks not saying a word!? says Del Ruth. ?She was always hiding from camera ? she was into her character 100%.?

However, for the cameraman, the set was far from the nest of teenage angst we see on-screen.

?I just think of John laying casually with his shoes off below the camera, directing,? he says. ?He was in a hammock. It was like a little boy that was fascinated with something.?

After detention

With production over, Hughes went to Los Angeles where he rented Donald Sutherland?s house while he edited the movie. Already knee-deep in his next film ?Weird Science?, a lot of the shaping of ?The Breakfast Club? was left to legendary editor Dede Allen, who had worked on classics like ?Bonnie and Clyde? and ?Dog Day Afternoon?.

?She took a very motherly approach to John and he allowed her to do that,? says Adam Fields. ??The Breakfast Club? was a much funnier, sillier movie until she got in there and with John made it more poignant and touching. I think the tone of the movie changed in post-production.?

Gone was an unnecessary fantasy sequence and scenes like one in which the male characters spied on a bunch of attractive older women taking an aerobics class in the school?s gym.

Hughes had also encouraged the cast to do some improvisation on set, moments of which remained in the finished product, like during the bit where they all get stoned.

Says Fields, ?John had a magical way with the cast. It was almost like his own repertory theatre.?

Legacy

Like many enduring films, ?The Breakfast Club? wasn?t a smash hit on release, taking in a modest amount at the box office. Some critics noted its qualities and the charisma of its actors, while Simple Minds? credits song ?Don?t You (Forget About Me)? reigned supreme in the charts.

But it wasn?t until years later that the movie?s true impact could be fully estimated.

?For me the barometer of that stuff is my 16-year-old daughter,? explains Fields. ?She?ll email me something that?s brought up about it by her generation. When subsequent generations are talking about a film, that?s when it becomes iconic.?

Adds Del Ruth, ?When I say I did ?Stand By Me? or ?The Breakfast Club?, people go oh my God, regardless of whatever else you might have done. Ironically, those were the things I thought would probably be the least mentioned.?

So far, no-one has had the chutzpah to try and reboot ?The Breakfast Club?, though the notoriously protective Hughes estate is unlikely to let anyone near the rights, even after his death.

Director Jason Reitman staged a fun, celebrity live-read of the script in 2011, with Jennifer Garner in Ringwald?s role and ?Breaking Bad? star Aaron Paul as Bender, but apart from that, there?s ? thankfully ? not been a sniff of remake.

And 30 years on, it?s clear the participants look back at the original with a huge amount of love.

?It was a great time,? says Fields. ?We probably couldn?t get those movies made today.?

After his Brat Pack success, Hughes continued to write and produce, focusing more and more on family movies like the ?Beethoven? series and ?Curly Sue?. There was the odd gem such as ?National Lampoon?s Christmas Vacation? and ?Planes, Trains and Automobiles?, but not long after he quit Hollywood and returned to Chicago with his family.

He all but ex-communicated protégés Ringwald and Hall when they struck out on their own (not entirely successfully) and would occasionally write scripts-for-hire under the pseudonym Edmond Dantès.

But while his films were varied and occasionally brilliant, few were such a pure distillation of his talent and perspective as ?The Breakfast Club?, which remains a classic watched by each successive wave of teenagers.

Why? Simple.

?The film hasn?t dated,? says Thomas Del Ruth, ?because the truths that were presented in 1985 are exactly the same in 2015.?

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Photos: PA/Giphy/MCA/Everett/Moviestore/Rex/NC/Keystone USA/Eric Charbonneau

[ymoviesuk-group]

The Actress Who Was Banished From The Breakfast Club

By Karen Leigh Hopkins as told to Michelle Fiordaliso

Karen Leigh Hopkins at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City (Photo: AP).

For an aspiring actress from Sandusky, Ohio (population 25,000), auditioning for and getting cast in the role of a fresh-out-of-college gym teacher in John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club was the big break I’d been hoping for. My character — who was at school for a Saturday practice — originally began as a swim instructor but evolved into a gym teacher because I actually taught aerobics professionally at the time. John told me that my part was meant to bridge the gap between the students and the establishment. For my big scene I’d deliver a speech in the library to the five kids saying, “This is just a small part of your total life history.” What that meant was that even though everything feels intense in high school, that time ends and then real life begins. And the life I had dreamt of felt like it was just beginning.

We had been filming in Chicago. One morning I was at the hotel getting ready to leave for set when the phone rang. It was Jackie Burch, our casting director. I was being sent home. That day. What?! The information didn’t compute. I asked her why but she didn’t know. What happened? It felt sort of like, well, exactly like high school. One day you’re in with the cool kids and the next day you’re an outcast — as in out of the cast.

Related: SXSW: ‘The Breakfast Club’ Restored for 30th Anniversary Screening

I still don’t love flying, but let’s just say that plane ride home was the worst one I’ve ever taken. I thought about the scene we’d filmed in the library a few days prior. John kept whispering random jokes into my ear so that my lines would crack Anthony Michael Hall up — I remember one was about Lionel Richie. Each take took on a slightly different tone. In hindsight, if I’d been told this scene was going to be cut, I would’ve been shocked because it seemed to be going so well. On the plane, despite my soft seat in first class, I couldn’t find any comfort. In the absence of any real explanation I filled the void with lots of possible ones — each one more negative than the next.

Call it magical thinking or insanity but I still held out hope I’d be in the final cut. Jackie [Burch] had seen footage after I was sent home and told my agent it was good. So when the film opened I was still pathetically hoping there’d be a glimpse of me. I know. Don’t say it. I went to an afternoon showing alone and guess what? I wasn’t in the movie. My mother called and said, “Honey, just come home. I’ll bake you a white cake.”

Leonard Cohen has said, “Writing is a desperate activity.” I was living in an alley apartment at the time, had 21 bucks left and was trying to figure out how I’d pay my rent in two weeks time. I wrote my first script, The Kindness of Strangers, in those 14 days and gave it to my acting agents to sell. The script was never produced, but was bought — by Paramount’s Ned Tanen, who had produced The Breakfast Club and recognized my name when the script landed on his desk. I called my mother, who worked at a car factory making rubber parts, and asked for her to be pulled off the line to talk. “What happened?” she asked, panicked. “You can quit your job, mom. I’m going to buy you that house on Cedar Brook Lane.”

Related: ‘The Breakfast Club’: Read THR’s 1985 Review

It was a surprise when friends recently sent me articles from Vanity Fair (an excerpt from the new book John Hughes: A Life in Film) andThe New York Post saying that my Breakfast Club character was merely there to provide a gratuitous nude scene where the kids sneak out and watch me showering through a peephole. What shower scene? I don’t remember one in the script, and I never filmed one. John kept conveying that my part was meant to be the slightly older person who makes it safely to the other side of high school and shows it can be done. There was a provocative scene in the script where the principal was meant to watch me working out but that scene didn’t get shot.

While I’d been waiting for an answer for years — and as a writer I understand re-writes — this version of events doesn’t click. If the filmmakers had been scouting for a “buxom” bombshell, they could’ve done better than me. And if the other female cast members felt the part was misogynistic, as a recent Vanity Fair article suggested, I never heard anything to that effect. It certainly doesn’t seem true to the character John created or conveyed to me. But if that was the reason I could’ve handled it; instead I was left to speculate. The truth may hurt but it’s always better than not knowing

As the 30th anniversary re-release of The Breakfast Club approaches, the mention of my role in the press has felt oddly validating. It’s given me permission to reflect on that time and affirms that being a part of the film wasn’t a figment of my fertile imagination. It was a beloved movie — a cult classic — and I will always wish I could’ve been a permanent part of it, but that doesn’t erase the joy of simply being cast and getting to shoot it. I never did get to see myself on screen delivering the wise speech John wrote — the speech that was meant to remind audiences that a confusing and sometimes painful period like high school ends, and then you can either leave it behind or get stuck in it forever, but I did have the opportunity to live the lesson of those words.

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[benfalkyahoomovies]

The Breakfast Club Cast: Where Are They Now?

They were members of the Brat Pack, the coolest and best young actors of the Eighties. But how did the stars of the 1985 John Hughes classic 'The Breakfast Club' fare after they left detention? Lets find out 30 YEARS after the film was released.

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Molly Ringwald

As Claire, the princess of the group who can do something clever with her cleavage to put lipstick on, Ringwald and her red hair defined the generation. As Hughes? muse, she inspired his early films, including ?The Breakfast Club? and ?Pretty In Pink?.

Away from Hughes though, things weren?t quite so successful. Keen to break out of her teen princess persona, she was in Jean-Luc Godard?s bizarre 1987 version of ?King Lear? and played a teen mother in ?For Keeps?, neither of which helped her career and which damaged her relationship with Hughes.

She kept on working in a variety of unseen indie films, turning down ?Pretty Woman? and ?Ghost? along the way, before getting married and moving to France (she subsequently divorced).

It was only once the late Nineties came around that she seemed to really embrace her Brat Pack past, cropping up in knowing cameos in ?Teaching Mrs Tingle? and ?Not Another Teen Movie?.

She did theatre in the West End, while her screen career took off again thanks to the critically-acclaimed ABC Family show ?The Secret Life Of The American Teenager?, in which she played the mother of Shailene Woodley?s lead character.

More recently she has embraced her literary side, penning a best-selling autobiographical self-help book and a well-received collection of short stories, as well as an advice column in The Guardian newspaper.

Now 46, she is married to a Greek-American writer and book editor seven years her junior and together they have three children. Next year, she?ll star in the live-action adaptation of Eighties musical cartoon ?Jem and the Holograms?.

Judd Nelson

Nelson almost didn?t play Bender ? twice. John Cusack was initially cast, but Hughes had a change of heart and decided Nelson better personified the steely ?criminal?. Then during filming, the actor was almost fired after he got so into character that he started bullying Ringwald, much to the writer/director?s annoyance.

Since then, Nelson?s career has been constant, but up and down. He starred in seminal Brat Pack pic ?St. Elmo?s Fire? the same year as ?The Breakfast Club?, but was then nominated for a Worst Actor Razzie the following two years. Then in 1987, he also scored a Golden Globe nom for TV movie ?The Billionaire Boys Club?.

He never scaled the same heights as he did in the mid-Eighties, but there have been bright spots along the way, like ?New Jack City? and ?Airheads?. He?s also flourished on TV, reprising his ?Breakfast Club? role in an episode of ?Family Guy? and spending three years on the Brooke Shields sitcom ?Suddenly Susan?.

Not someone to crave the limelight off-screen, the 55-year-old was engaged to Shannen Doherty and dated porn star Tabitha Stevens. He?s also one of Robert Downey Jr?s best friends. With four movies set to come out in 2015, he currently features in new musical TV series ?Empire? alongside Terrence Howard.

Anthony Michael Hall

Another of Hughes? protégés, Hall (who in real life goes by the name Michael) was the beating heart of ?The Breakfast Club? as well as being the funniest member (pot scene anyone?). His character Brian is thought to be the writer/director?s alter ego.

Having started off as a child actor, he played Rusty Grisworld in the Hughes-penned ?National Lampoon?s Vacation?, leading to their collaboration proper, which began with ?Sixteen Candles?.

?Weird Science? followed ?The Breakfast Club?, but he turned down ?Ferris Bueller?s Day Off? and the role of ?Duckie? in ?Pretty in Pink? as he too sought to escape the Brat Pack shadow.

It didn?t quite work out, at least initially. 1986?s ?Out of Bounds? was a critical and commercial flop, a year-long stint on ?Saturday Night Live? (with mate Robert Downey Jr whose oldest son he is godfather to) was a bust and contract negotiations put paid to the starring role in Kubrick?s ?Full Metal Jacket?.

He briefly left showbiz to get himself off the booze and returned with a beefier frame in ?Edward Scissorhands? and ?Six Degrees Of Separation?.

Since then, his best-known work has been on television, first as Bill Gates in ?Pirates Of The Silicon Valley? and then as the lead in an adaptation of Stephen King?s ?The Dead Zone?.

He also had a small but pivotal role in ?Foxcatcher?, as well as featuring in ?The Dark Knight?.

Off-screen, it?s been a bit more difficult. In 2009 he was accused of assaulting an ex-girlfriend, while it was also revealed he suffers from bipolar disorder. The condition led to him getting sued by the insurance company for ?The Dead Zone? after he missed several days of filming to be treated for problems related to the illness. Then in 2011, the actor was arrested again after allegedly threatening a neighbour.

The now-46-year-old also runs a child literacy programme and sings in a band called Hall of Mirrors.

Ally Sheedy

Sheedy, 52, came to the role of outsider Allison in ?The Breakfast Club? as something of a child prodigy, having danced with the American Ballet Theatre aged 6 and written best-selling children?s book ?She Was Nice To Mice? when she was 12.

Deciding to become an actress, she starred in ?WarGames?, while 1985 also saw her in ?St. Elmo?s Fire?. Her biggest hit since has probably been ?Short Circuit? alongside a comedy robot, while she got buzz for her performance in 1998 indie ?High Art?. 

Other than that, while she?s worked pretty much constantly, her projects have been fairly nondescript, other than a cameo in ?Home Alone 2? and John Candy-starrer ?Only The Lonely?, which was produced by Hughes.

She suffered an addiction to prescription drugs in the latter part of the Eighties and went to rehab, after which she released a critically-reviled poetry collection and married Angela Lansbury?s nephew. They had a child together in 1994 before filing for divorce in 2008.

Emilio Estevez

With Martin Sheen as a father and Charlie Sheen as your brother, it was inevitable that Estevez (his dad?s original surname) would go into the family business. After scoring a cult hit with ?Repo Man? in 1984, the actor tested for the role of John Bender, but was cast as sporto Andrew when Hughes couldn?t find anyone suitable.

The 52-year-old performer?s post-Brat Pack acting career was initially the most successful, starring as Billy the Kid in ?Young Guns? and its sequel, as well as ?Stakeout? and the evergreen ?Mighty Ducks? franchise. 

But performing clearly got less interesting for Estevez (maybe appearing with Mick Jagger in ?Freejack? put him off) and he soon turned his attention to writing and directing. 

2006 ensemble drama ?Bobby? had a starry cast and solid reviews, while he is a successful TV director, helming episodes of ?CSI:NY? and ?Cold Case?. He also directed his old man in 2010?s ?The Way?.

Coolest post-?Breakfast Club? moment on-screen? A toss-up between getting impaled at the beginning of ?Mission: Impossible?, or an uncredited appearance as a young Jed Bartlet in ?The West Wing?.

He?s currently in a long-term relationship with a woman called Sonja Magdevski (he was married to Paula Abdul back in 1992, divorcing two years later), while he?s father to two grown-up children from a previous relationship.

There?s a vineyard on his property in Malibu too, California and together with Sonja, he has a part-time wine business.

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Photos: Moviestore/Rex/MCA/Everett/Buzz Foto/PA

[kevinpolowy]

First Draft of 'Breakfast Club' Script Unearthed at Shuttered Chicago High School

John Hughes?s 1985 coming-of-age classic, ?The Breakfast Club? (Universal)

As far as excavations go, this is the movie memorabilia equivalent of a paleontologist digging up a rare dinosaur fossil. Staffers at Maine South High School in Park Ridge, Illinois, were cleaning out a file cabinet when they came across an early draft of the screenplay for John Hughes?s '80s teen classic The Breakfast Club.

As reported and photographed by Chicago Tribune?s Pioneer Press, the script was dated Sept. 21, 1983 and is labeled ?First Draft Screenplay.? The movie didn?t go into production until March 28, 1984. The newspaper notes one obvious difference between this early version and the final shooting script: Molly Ringwald?s character is named Cathy Douglas on paper; she became Claire Standish in the film.

(Photo: Jennifer Johnson/Pioneer Press)

Hughes, a native of nearby Northbrook on Chicago?s North Shore, filmed The Breakfast Club at the shuttered Main North High School, which was closed in 1981. The movie starred Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, and Ally Sheedy as five high school archetypes (the beauty, brain, jock, rebel, and recluse, respectively) who famously bond over Saturday detention.

The Tribune points out other markings on the script that confirm its authenticity: The fact that ?Reviewed and approved by Dr. Murphy? is etched on the manuscript?s cover. John Murphy was the district superintendent at the time, and thus had to sign off on the film?s content before allowing the production to take place in his school. (This also probably explains why the script ended up in a school filing cabinet in the first place.)

(Photo: Jennifer Johnson/Pioneer Press)

Current superintendent Ken Wallace told the Tribune that ?in the upper left corner [of the screenplay], there is what appears to be pizza grease.? No word on whether that came from a John Hughes slice, though.

Related: Banished From 'The Breakfast Club?: Actress Recalls the Burn of Getting Cut From John Hughes?s Film

The script was found among some other documents pertaining to the film?s production, including a rental contact between the studio, Universal, and the school district that set a fee of $48,000 and other correspondence that revealed the movie was almost titled Saturday Breakfast Club.

?We close with nothing but the fondest thoughts and memories of Universal Studios and 'The Breakfast Club,?? Donald Stillwaugh, a school district coordinator wrote in one letter discovered. ?We trust the film will be a huge success.?

Mr. Stillwaugh clearly knew what he was talking about. The Breakfast Club, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in February, is considered one of the best high school films ever made.

You can read the full story on the Chicago Tribune.

[ymoviesuk-group]

How The Breakfast Club Became A Classic

They told us not to forget about them and they were right.On 7 Feb 1985, ‘The Breakfast Club’ premiered in Los Angeles – and 30 years afterwards,it remains one of the most iconic teen movies of all time.

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Telling the story offive diverse high school students locked up for the day in detention, it’s heartfelt, hilarious and authentic. Here’s how they did it.

Origins

For people of a certain age, the name John Hughes inspires a particular kind of awe. The ad copywriter-turned-filmmaker was responsible for several of Hollywood’s most enduring teenage movies, as well as writing brilliant comedies like ‘National Lampoon’s Vacation’, ‘Mr Mom’, ‘Uncle Buck’ and ‘Home Alone’.

But when the reclusive writer/director died tragically in 2009 aged just 56, it was his contribution to teen cinema he would be most fondly remembered for – ‘Pretty In Pink’, ‘Sixteen Candles’, ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ and of course, ‘The Breakfast Club’.

“When I got my first real development job at Universal, I didn’t even really know what I supposed to be doing,” remembers Adam Fields, who was an assistant at Hughes’s talent agency when they first met and got walking while wandering the halls.

“I kind of knew I was supposed to call writers and get scripts. So I called John and said, ‘Do you have any scripts?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, I wrote two this weekend.”

The first turned out to be 1984’s ‘Sixteen Candles’, which featured Hughes muse Molly Ringwald as a high school-er pining over a boy, while annoyed that her family has forgotten her 16th birthday.

Also starring Anthony Michael Hall, it struck a nerve if not a commercial jackpot, as well as helping to marshal the burgeoning Brat Pack movement that had been started by ‘The Outsiders’.

The second film – named after a phrase Hughes had heard his ad colleague’s teenage son using about Saturday morning detention – was ‘The Breakfast Club’.

Getting the band together

The success of ‘Sixteen Candles’ meant that ‘Club’ – which Hughes had originally written as a play – barrelled headlong into pre-production. Fields was the executive in charge, while it was down to casting director Jackie Burch to find the five actors who would be spending Saturday in cinematic detention.

“I think it was just a good time for young actors making movies back then,” says Fields (pictured above). “Movies were inexpensive to make, very inexpensive to market. I don’t remember ever having a conversation about needing ‘names’, which you have now.”

Ringwald and Hall were a given thanks to their relationship with the writer/director. “I think John saw a lot of himself in Michael,” says Fields (Hall’s three-pronged thespian name swaps his real-life first names around). Emilio Estevez as jock Andrew and Ally Sheedy as outsider Allison came next, but Hughes had trouble finding an actor to play John Bender, the loudmouth, edgy ‘criminal’ who rounds out the club.

John Cusack had worked on ‘Sixteen Candles’ and came close to landing the part, but lost out at the last moment, mainly thanks to Burch’s insistence he wasn’t right. Instead, it was Judd Nelson who eventually won out, having come into the audition in character and blown the cast away with his intensity. His performance would go on to break a million teenage girls’ hearts.

On location

With cast in place and following three weeks of intense rehearsal, filming began in an abandoned high school near Chicago, the area Hughes liked to shoot all his movies.

“It was a high school that had been built and no-one came, so ultimately it just sat there,” recalls the film’s cinematographer Thomas Del Ruth (pictured above). “They had two interior gyms and one was huge and that was what John Corso the production designer decided to build the [library] set. The entire film takes place inside the school itself or just outside. We were never more than two hundred yards from the school at any point.”

Filming in the Illinois winter felt a world away from Hollywood, which was just what Hughes intended.

“It felt so innocent back then,” says Fields. “You didn’t have the micromanaging of a film that goes on now. I don’t remember any executives coming to set.” He laughs. “But I do remember being really frigging cold.”

"The inside was super-heated,” remembers Del Ruth. “There was the heating in the corridors and we had hundreds of movie lights. The crew would hang out on the second floor because it was out of the way and out of camera and a lot of the time, the assistant directors would have to walk around during takes and wake them up because they were snoring, which would break up the scene. It was like the tropics up there.”

Hughes left Del Ruth and production designer John Corso to concentrate on the visuals, preferring to focus on the performances. His close relationship with Hall and Ringwald was palpable and caused difficulties, especially because of Method actor Nelson, who liked to taunt his on-screen love interest. Some of his comments infuriated his director so much that he was almost fired, saved only after one of the producers told him to tone down his behaviour.

But Nelson wasn’t the only one who stayed in character. “Ally Sheedy spent the entire 12 to 14 weeks not saying a word!” says Del Ruth. “She was always hiding from camera �� she was into her character 100%.”

However, for the cameraman, the set was far from the nest of teenage angst we see on-screen.

“I just think of John laying casually with his shoes off below the camera, directing,” he says. “He was in a hammock. It was like a little boy that was fascinated with something.”

After detention

With production over, Hughes went to Los Angeles where he rented Donald Sutherland’s house while he edited the movie. Already knee-deep in his next film ‘Weird Science’, a lot of the shaping of ‘The Breakfast Club’ was left to legendary editor Dede Allen, who had worked on classics like ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ and ‘Dog Day Afternoon’.

“She took a very motherly approach to John and he allowed her to do that,” says Adam Fields. “‘The Breakfast Club’ was a much funnier, sillier movie until she got in there and with John made it more poignant and touching. I think the tone of the movie changed in post-production.”

Gone was an unnecessary fantasy sequence and scenes like one in which the male characters spied on a bunch of attractive older women taking an aerobics class in the school’s gym.

Hughes had also encouraged the cast to do some improvisation on set, moments of which remained in the finished product, like during the bit where they all get stoned.

Says Fields, “John had a magical way with the cast. It was almost like his own repertory theatre.”

Legacy

Like many enduring films, ‘The Breakfast Club’ wasn’t a smash hit on release, taking in a modest amount at the box office. Some critics noted its qualities and the charisma of its actors, while Simple Minds’ credits song ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ reigned supreme in the charts.

But it wasn’t until years later that the movie’s true impact could be fully estimated.

“For me the barometer of that stuff is my 16-year-old daughter,” explains Fields. “She’ll email me something that’s brought up about it by her generation. When subsequent generations are talking about a film, that’s when it becomes iconic.”

Adds Del Ruth, “When I say I did ‘Stand By Me’ or ‘The Breakfast Club’, people go oh my God, regardless of whatever else you might have done. Ironically, those were the things I thought would probably be the least mentioned.”

So far, no-one has had the chutzpah to try and reboot ‘The Breakfast Club’, though the notoriously protective Hughes estate is unlikely to let anyone near the rights, even after his death.

Director Jason Reitman staged a fun, celebrity live-read of the script in 2011, with Jennifer Garner in Ringwald’s role and ‘Breaking Bad’ star Aaron Paul as Bender, but apart from that, there’s – thankfully – not been a sniff of remake.

And 30 years on, it’s clear the participants look back at the original with a huge amount of love.

“It was a great time,” says Fields. “We probably couldn’t get those movies made today.”

After his Brat Pack success, Hughes continued to write and produce, focusing more and more on family movies like the ‘Beethoven’ series and ‘Curly Sue’. There was the odd gem such as ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’ and ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’, but not long after he quit Hollywood and returned to Chicago with his family.

He all but ex-communicated protégés Ringwald and Hall when they struck out on their own (not entirely successfully) and would occasionally write scripts-for-hire under the pseudonym Edmond Dantès.

But while his films were varied and occasionally brilliant, few were such a pure distillation of his talent and perspective as ‘The Breakfast Club’, which remains a classic watched by each successive wave of teenagers.

Why? Simple.

“The film hasn’t dated,” says Thomas Del Ruth, “because the truths that were presented in 1985 are exactly the same in 2015.”

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Photos: PA/Giphy/MCA/Everett/Moviestore/Rex/NC/Keystone USA/Eric Charbonneau

[ymoviesuk-group]

The Breakfast Club: Where Are They Now?

They were members of the Brat Pack, the coolest and best young actors of the Eighties. But how did the stars of the 1985 John Hughes classic fare after they left detention?

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Molly Ringwald

As Claire, the princess of the group who can do something clever with her cleavage to put lipstick on, Ringwald and her red hair defined the generation. As Hughes’ muse, she inspired his early films, including ‘The Breakfast Club’ and ‘Pretty In Pink’.

Away from Hughes though, things weren’t quite so successful. Keen to break out of her teen princess persona, she was in Jean-Luc Godard’s bizarre 1987 version of ‘King Lear’ and played a teen mother in ‘For Keeps’, neither of which helped her career and which damaged her relationship with Hughes.

She kept on working in a variety of unseen indie films, turning down ‘Pretty Woman’ and ‘Ghost’ along the way, before getting married and moving to France (she subsequently divorced).

It was only once the late Nineties came around that she seemed to really embrace her Brat Pack past, cropping up in knowing cameos in ‘Teaching Mrs Tingle’ and ‘Not Another Teen Movie’.

She did theatre in the West End, while her screen career took off again thanks to the critically-acclaimed ABC Family show ‘The Secret Life Of The American Teenager’, in which she played the mother of Shailene Woodley’s lead character.

More recently she has embraced her literary side, penning a best-selling autobiographical self-help book and a well-received collection of short stories, as well as an advice column in The Guardian newspaper.

Now 46, she is married to a Greek-American writer and book editor seven years her junior and together they have three children. Next year, she’ll star in the live-action adaptation of Eighties musical cartoon ‘Jem and the Holograms’.

Judd Nelson

Nelson almost didn’t play Bender – twice. John Cusack was initially cast, but Hughes had a change of heart and decided Nelson better personified the steely ‘criminal’. Then during filming, the actor was almost fired after he got so into character that he started bullying Ringwald, much to the writer/director’s annoyance.

Since then, Nelson’s career has been constant, but up and down. He starred in seminal Brat Pack pic ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ the same year as ‘The Breakfast Club’, but was then nominated for a Worst Actor Razzie the following two years. Then in 1987, he also scored a Golden Globe nom for TV movie ‘The Billionaire Boys Club’.

He never scaled the same heights as he did in the mid-Eighties, but there have been bright spots along the way, like ‘New Jack City’ and ‘Airheads’. He’s also flourished on TV, reprising his ‘Breakfast Club’ role in an episode of ‘Family Guy’ and spending three years on the Brooke Shields sitcom ‘Suddenly Susan’.

Not someone to crave the limelight off-screen, the 55-year-old was engaged to Shannen Doherty and dated porn star Tabitha Stevens. He’s also one of Robert Downey Jr’s best friends. With four movies set to come out in 2015, he currently features in new musical TV series ‘Empire’ alongside Terrence Howard.

Anthony Michael Hall

Another of Hughes’ protégés, Hall (who in real life goes by the name Michael) was the beating heart of ‘The Breakfast Club’ as well as being the funniest member (pot scene anyone?). His character Brian is thought to be the writer/director’s alter ego.

Having started off as a child actor, he played Rusty Grisworld in the Hughes-penned ‘National Lampoon’s Vacation’, leading to their collaboration proper, which began with ‘Sixteen Candles’.

‘Weird Science’ followed ‘The Breakfast Club’, but he turned down ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ and the role of ‘Duckie’ in ‘Pretty in Pink’ as he too sought to escape the Brat Pack shadow.

It didn’t quite work out, at least initially. 1986’s ‘Out of Bounds’ was a critical and commercial flop, a year-long stint on ‘Saturday Night Live’ (with mate Robert Downey Jr whose oldest son he is godfather to) was a bust and contract negotiations put paid to the starring role in Kubrick’s ‘Full Metal Jacket’.

He briefly left showbiz to get himself off the booze and returned with a beefier frame in ‘Edward Scissorhands’ and ‘Six Degrees Of Separation’.

Since then, his best-known work has been on television, first as Bill Gates in ‘Pirates Of The Silicon Valley’ and then as the lead in an adaptation of Stephen King’s ‘The Dead Zone’.

He also had a small but pivotal role in ‘Foxcatcher’, as well as featuring in ‘The Dark Knight’.

Off-screen, it’s been a bit more difficult. In 2009 he was accused of assaulting an ex-girlfriend, while it was also revealed he suffers from bipolar disorder. The condition led to him getting sued by the insurance company for ‘The Dead Zone’ after he missed several days of filming to be treated for problems related to the illness. Then in 2011, the actor was arrested again after allegedly threatening a neighbour.

The now-46-year-old also runs a child literacy programme and sings in a band called Hall of Mirrors.

Ally Sheedy

Sheedy, 52, came to the role of outsider Allison in ‘The Breakfast Club’ as something of a child prodigy, having danced with the American Ballet Theatre aged 6 and written best-selling children’s book ‘She Was Nice To Mice’ when she was 12.

Deciding to become an actress, she starred in ‘WarGames’, while 1985 also saw her in ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’. Her biggest hit since has probably been ‘Short Circuit’ alongside a comedy robot, while she got buzz for her performance in 1998 indie ‘High Art’. 

Other than that, while she’s worked pretty much constantly, her projects have been fairly nondescript, other than a cameo in ‘Home Alone 2’ and John Candy-starrer ‘Only The Lonely’, which was produced by Hughes.

She suffered an addiction to prescription drugs in the latter part of the Eighties and went to rehab, after which she released a critically-reviled poetry collection and married Angela Lansbury’s nephew. They had a child together in 1994 before filing for divorce in 2008.

Emilio Estevez

With Martin Sheen as a father and Charlie Sheen as your brother, it was inevitable that Estevez (his dad’s original surname) would go into the family business. After scoring a cult hit with 'Repo Man' in 1984, the actor tested for the role of John Bender, but was cast as sporto Andrew when Hughes couldn't find anyone suitable.

The 52-year-old performer’s post-Brat Pack acting career was initially the most successful, starring as Billy the Kid in ‘Young Guns’ and its sequel, as well as ‘Stakeout’ and the evergreen ‘Mighty Ducks’ franchise. 

But performing clearly got less interesting for Estevez (maybe appearing with Mick Jagger in ‘Freejack’ put him off) and he soon turned his attention to writing and directing. 

2006 ensemble drama ‘Bobby’ had a starry cast and solid reviews, while he is a successful TV director, helming episodes of ‘CSI:NY’ and ‘Cold Case’. He also directed his old man in 2010’s ‘The Way’.

Coolest post-‘Breakfast Club’ moment on-screen? A toss-up between getting impaled at the beginning of ‘Mission: Impossible’, or an uncredited appearance as a young Jed Bartlet in ‘The West Wing’.

He’s currently in a long-term relationship with a woman called Sonja Magdevski (he was married to Paula Abdul back in 1992, divorcing two years later), while he’s father to two grown-up children from a previous relationship.

There's a vineyard on his property in Malibu too, California and together with Sonja, he has a part-time wine business.

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