HALL: Some interesting things about John.
Here I was, this 15-year-old, little, scrawny kid,
and he was just so cool about the whole process.
With John Hughes, he had his pulse on adolescence.
You know, in general, he had a really good sense of it.
There was always this feeling that John never really grew up,
you know, that he was one of those characters
who still could think like a teenager.
He remembered what it was like to be a teenager.
He knew that when you're an adolescent,
the world is so centered around what you're going through
and everything filters through that.
I mean, these are all things that you can be clinical about,
but he wasn't clinical about it.
You always felt like he lived it.
I think that John,
because of his work in Lampoon
and because of his sort of vivid imagination and writing style,
was not too far apart emotionally from the teenage years,
and there were things that had happened to him that he'd remembered.
So, whether he had a pulse on teens at that time,
he had a pulse on teens of his generation,
and he spoke to some sort of truth.
My experience of John is that he is an incredibly...
He was very open when we did Breakfast Club.
He is very sensitive, very funny, really excited about making this movie.
And not a person who is cut off from how he feels about anything.
Just sort of delighted by everything.
CODY: I just don't feel that there are a lot of filmmakers out there
with the same affection for youth culture
that John Hughes clearly had.
NELSON: John probably felt that
he was maybe sick of the term "kids' movie" being a negative term.
Meaning, if it's a kids' movie,
then it can't really be about anything,
then it will be frivolous.
Whereas, I think we all remember
some of our most serious times in our lives have been in high school when...
You know, you look back and you go, "What an idiot."
But it's, like, things were very serious.
Things were of great concern to you in high school.
I don't think anybody can copy him, is what the problem is.
You know, he's just so original,
and pulling the people in and his ideas.
And I know that there are lots and lots of movies and television shows
about the kids in high school, the group in high school,
but I don't think anybody can quite get that particular style
that he has and that he always had,
so, you know, what are you gonna do, 'cause it's only him.
HALL: I think John's narrative voice
took everything in another direction,
because he had a great ear for dialog, for talent,
for character, for everything.
He was able to sort of see it all and put it all together.
He must have known that he had essential stories to tell
about high school,
and he must have been so aware of the moment
that he was living in, the mid-1980s,
because every detail in his movies even now looks right.
It's like going through your yearbook.
And I think that's why kids my age loved those movies so much
was because they really... I remember when The Breakfast Club came out,
and I was a junior in high school.
It just seemed like finally someone made a movie about
what I think about and how I feel.
HALL: And you sort of identify those songs not just from a period,
but from periods in those films.
I remember, at the time,
part of the myth of John Hughes that we all knew about
as young filmmakers was
he sat at a desk and he played all this great music all the time
and that, you know, the music was a big part of what he did
and that that was his sensibilities.
Now, I have no idea if there's any truth to that.
I have no idea whatsoever, but that's what we all believed.
The way John does things, it's like he pin-drops sounds,
and he pin-drops attitudes.
That's how he makes his films, which is highly unusual,
because he's on the pulse of something.
HALL: He had his ear to the curb, so to speak, in terms of music.
Yeah, he always sort of integrated that into the writing
and also the producing of the films.
It's the way the songs were juxtaposed with the scenes that made them effective.
I mean, the songs themselves are not super cutting edge,
but they're used so well, they're not just dropped in there.
You know, the timing is always impeccable.
And I always appreciated that there was the David Bowie quote
at the beginning of The Breakfast Club.
Even though I don't believe we actually hear that song Changes.
It's such a great quote.
My proudest thing about Breakfast Club?
It's more than anything, performances or characters or anything else,
that David Bowie quote was mine.
I found that David Bowie quote in the beginning of the movie,
and I showed it to John, and he thought it was great.
And then he never said another word about it.
And I saw the movie for the first time,
and there it is, like, right in the front of the movie.
That's my proudest moment.
CODY: And Don't You (Forget About Me) is amazing,
because it's just this, like, soaring anthem,
and you get that sense of triumph at the end of the movie,
with Bender, you know, pumping his fist in the air, and it's...
I mean, if you think about it, it was just a movie about a Saturday spent in detention,
and yet you feel like some kind of battle has been won.
You know, that's effective use of music.
Yeah, that song, I can't believe it.
That song is still... You know, it's around all the time.
It's funny when you see a new generation discovering things that are so familiar.
"You know, have you heard this amazing song by Simple Minds?"
"Yes. Yes, I have."
NELSON: Hughes wrote a great script.
It's not like he's precious about each word.
He is precious about his own sense of truth.
Do you want the truth'?
Yeah, I want the truth.
I think he said that he had written Breakfast Club
a really long, long, long time before,
and he had it in the drawer or something.
You know, in the industry, it's called a talking heads movie,
where, you know, there formerly had been films like My Dinner with Andre,
or, you know, maybe European films, where it's so simplified.
But with that it was really like filming a play.
John said something like that he wrote the first draft in a weekend.
And both Emilio and I, it was almost simultaneously,
I was like, "First draft. Okay, how many drafts do you have?"
And Hughes said, "Well, I got a few. Why?"
And Emilio and I were like, "Could we read them?"
This is during the rehearsal process.
So, he was like, “Sure.“
We read them. I was like, "John, how about if we put this?"
He was like, "Sure. Let's try it."
John was awesome about making sure we had rehearsal time,
which is a foregone conclusion these days, you don't have that.
You just show up on the set. "Where's my trailer'? Where's makeup?"
But with that, we rehearsed it.
We really sat just the six of us in a room,
while the sets were still being finished and made,
and, you know, we all had a lot of time to talk about it
and share our insights about what we were gonna do and how it could play out.
But the rehearsal was key.
NELSON: Yeah, I really thought that that's how they made movies.
It certainly is the best way to go about making a good movie, I think,
assuming everyone's on the same page and confident and ready.
SHEEDY: He just wanted everybody to come in with their character
and start playing around. That's how he shot it.
I mean, he was so open to anything that anybody brought in,
or anything that happened in the scene, you know,
any riff that you'd do off his writing.
He wasn't precious about anything.
Claire'? Want to see a picture of a guy with elephantiasis of the nuts'?
"Elephantiasis of the nuts" or whatever'?
Judd came out... I don't know where that came from.
KAPELOS: John let us have five, six takes.
I mean his shooting ratio was pretty high.
And then he would let us go off,
and occasionally what went off would be used.
There was a lot more improvisation.
We had a script supervisor, Bob Forrest, I think his name was.
How are you doing, Bob, if you're out there'?
I think Bob came out. He was cajoled out of retirement
to do The Breakfast Club.
And shortly after the completion of Breakfast Club,
he, for sure, retired.
Molay really pumps my nads.
Moliére.
He stopped taking notes and brought in a little tape recorder
that he would like turn on, 'cause it was just...
'Cause Hughes would put that 1,500 foot mag on the camera.
And that stuff, like, Anthony Michael Hall, it's just genius of him,
when he's getting stoned.
"You know, chicks, they can't hold their smoke." And he's just going on.
And we did a few takes of it, and he's literally going on and on.
You can hear eventually the click, click, click of the film
in the mag, 'cause it's run out,
and it's just going around. We're all aware,
but it's not like Hughes doesn't know what that sound is.
But we're gonna watch Michael for a while. Why not'? He's great.
(CLAIRE CHUCKLING)
Chicks cannot hold their smoke. That's what it is.
It's hard to try and recreate teen-speak when you're not a teenager.
It is. And it's hard to make it sound authentic.
And I don't think there is a false note
in terms of the vernacular in any of John Hughes' films.
Can you hear this'?
You want me to turn it up'?
I think a lot of it he made up.
Like, in Breakfast Club, like, what does he call the guy'?
Like a magma zoom dweebie or something.
I don't think that was like a preexisting insult.
But it's so awesome and people remember it.
...face it, you're a neo-maxi-zoon-dweebie.
Neo-maxi-zoon-dweebie.
SHEEDY: Every single character pretty much in the movie has him in it.
He said Allison is me, but he also said that everybody's me.
Just in terms of
telling the story of these five specific stereotypes,
what worked is,
no matter who you were, you can put yourself in one of those boxes.
So that made... Right from the start, it makes the film very relatable.
Everybody's gone to high school.
So, there's a good chance that you're going to reach
a very big audience,
because everybody knows what you're talking about.
BRIAN: Saturday, March 24, 1984.
Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois...
He was just able to pull it out and not be trite about it,
or not be overly simple about it.
They're complicated, all his characters, all of them, actually.
Even in the really broad comedies, they're complicated.
John's heart, it's just awesome.
I think that it's demonstrated by all of the characters in all of his films.
SIEGA: It just kind of opened up those doors and said, you know,
these stereotypes are there because kids in general
need a place to hide when they're in high school.
And you sort of hide in your little box.
HALL: People can relate to being marginalized in whatever way,
in a relationship, in a family, at home,
because of their ethnicity, whatever.
And I think what's interesting,
the film dares to kind of attack that in a way
by using these characters. So, it was a brilliant idea.
KAPELOS: Those little moments where you see where these kids are coming from,
where they've already had to put on their armor, and just the way
the car drives away from Ally, you know, the whole thing.
You know, it's very subtle at the beginning.
It gives us a nice setup to those guys. And the fact that Bender has no parent,
that he's just walking on his own.
I mean, I think that those are really good setups.
I think that the kids have a lot of armor
that they slowly take off during the film.
That was the biggest challenge,
is having them arrive at school with their coats
and giving them their IDs, so to speak.
You already get a feeling of what you're dealing with, with these guys.
SHEEDY: Marilyn Vance had these boards.
They were like vision boards, basically,
that somebody will make with, you know, ideas for different characters
and cutouts from magazines, and she just had like...
Allison was all over it. It was just fantastic.
That was to John's direction,
because when you're sitting in a space for a longtime,
and you're just looking at each other, and you're in a room with strangers,
and you start...
You know, the air gets tight, and you get all those feelings,
and suddenly one's taking off the coat,
and, you know, you're kind of adjusting to your atmosphere,
and that's the progression.
LEHMANN: That's the genius of these films, is that
the level of the young characters and the older characters,
they are not caricatured even when they're played as character types.
And that's why John Hughes was a far better writer,
doing that sort of material, than anybody else.
ALLISON: Your middle name is Ralph, as in puke.
Your birthday, it's March 12. You're 5'9 1/2".
You weigh 130 pounds.
When The Breakfast Club came up and we had shot Sixteen Candles,
I remember John called me
and he then told me about the premise and the whole thing.
And I remember him pointing out
the details of that character and how it would be different.
You know, he's more introverted, quiet, little shy guy
that ultimately becomes the voice for the group.
He writes the letter and the whole thing.
Who are you'?
I am a walrus.
LEHMANN; He plays a geek,
but he plays a geek because he's a misfit and he's awkward.
He's an awkward adolescent.
And he's not the cool guy, and he's not the best-looking guy,
but he's the guy that you automatically go to for sympathy
in all these films.
In Breakfast Club, we 're not saying, "I'm Judd Nelson. "
We're saying, "I'm Anthony Michael Hall. That's who I am."
I think even the Judd Nelsons of the world probably identify
with Anthony Michael Hall in that film.
Michael's just lovable. You know, you can't root against him.
Ever laid anyone around here'?
Oh. You and Claire did it'?
Like, when I out him, I go, you know, "You've been with her?"
When I say, "He says that you two..."
And then Molly turns on Michael for a moment,
and he's still gonna be my friend, you know what I mean'?
He's got a kind of confidence
that there's nothing we can really do to hurt him.
The only thing that can hurt him is himself.
Brian, how you doing'?
Your dad work here'?
NELSON: You know, Michael is embarrassed. There's no doubt about it.
They know each other, and it's not a bad thing,
but he's embarrassed about it.
But he realizes it right away when I make fun of him,
and we all see him now having to cover.
Then when he's upset that Molly says,
"On Monday we're all gonna be how we were."
He's very believable
when he says he would not do that. I believe him.
Well, I just wanna tell each of you that I wouldn't do that.
I wouldn't and I will not.
'Cause I think that's real shitty.
And he shows us when he's nice to Carl on the way out.
See you, Brian. Hey, Carl.
No, that's actually amazing.
Yeah, like, you get the sense that him and Carl are buddies.
Claire makes the most astute observation
'cause she says, "Because you have nothing to prove.
"Your friends idolize us."
Or something like that, which is true.
You know, he has nothing to lose by befriending them.
You're so conceited, Claire.
You're so conceited.
And there's that amazing moment
of Anthony Michael Hall's wrenching sobs.
Well, fuck you. Fuck you.
Michael was just... He's so...
He's a very sweet, sweet man.
And he was just... He was lovely.
And he... I don't care, he doesn't like this,
but I had this nickname for him which was Milk and Cookies,
and I called him that all the time, which he did not like at all.
I don't know what that means.
Would she say that to Sean Penn after Bad Boys was wrapped'? I don't think so.
It's just so funny.
And then during that whole thing, I don't know,
I just had to make, like, a mental block against Michael for the whole thing.
I remember there's that little moment where, like, I hit myself
on the shoulder or something as if I'm doing a good job.
Yeah, it is cute, you know.
It's just a way to kind of wrap it up and it's a way to give...
You know, the other two have sort of paired off.
He got the shaft in that sense.
But he's also the smartest one,
and he would have written the best letter.
And so that's why it had to be him, as well.
That was sort of Brian's department, to take over there for everybody at the end.
'Cause the thought being that he, you know, excels as a student,
but he's also sort of digested the group therapy aspects of it
and is then assigned to write that letter at the end.
ANDREW: ...coach thinks I'm a winner.
So does my old man.
I'm not a winner because I want to be one.
I'm a winner because I got strength and speed, kind of like a racehorse.
That's about how involved I am in what's happening to me.
KAPELOS: Emilio, to me, in The Breakfast Club is a real sleeper of a character.
There's something subtle and brewing about him that doesn't necessarily come off,
even when you see the film for the first time.
And I think that the more you see the film,
the more you appreciate his performance,
which I think is very subtle and good.
CODY: I think it's obvious that John Hughes' allegiance is with geeks.
So I imagine, and this is just speculation on my part,
but I imagine that it was challenging to write this sort of relatable jock.
And he pulls it off.
And you do feel for him. I like him.
Of the five who seemed so disconnected,
to me he seemed like the guy who made the most effort.
He's kind of like the pivot man in the five of them
where he'd come to the defense of Molly Ringwald
if Judd Nelson kind of said something inappropriate.
Two hits. Me hitting you, you hitting the floor.
I think he was very honest in the way he treated Ally Sheedy.
She was being weird and he'd say, "Why are you being so weird?"
Okay, fine. But I didn't dump my purse out on the couch
and invite people into my problems...
More than any one of them,
if you really think about when you first meet Andy,
he's in the pickup truck with his dad, and his dad says...
You wanna miss a match'? You wanna blow your ride'?
Now, no school is gonna give a scholarship to a discipline case.
He really doesn't say a whole lot,
but you know immediately when he gets out of the truck and he slams the door,
you just kind of know immediately without him saying anything
that his dad is putting this pressure on him.
That may not ring as true to many people, but it does to athletes.
They know exactly what he's talking about. It's all...
It's just that the elite athlete reveals
him or herself, a lot of times, pretty early.
I expected a little more from a varsity letterman.
And the pressure begins on them that he's gonna go to college
'cause he's gonna get a scholarship,
without which he's not gonna go to college.
He's gonna get a shit job,
which means that maybe when I say,
you know, "Andy here is thinking about a job
"in the custodial arts or whatever,"
and that moment where it's like,
at least for me reading, it's like, you go,
"That's not a fun moment for Andy."
You know, and that pressure and then why he's in there, you know.
Tells this ridiculous story about taping a guy's butt cheeks together.
I mean, it is ludicrous, but it happens.
I think he's great in the movie.
...Is that I did it for my old man.
I tortured this poor kid
because I wanted him to think that I was cool.
He also had great energy and great working spirit
and to the point where, like, in between takes, he'd be writing.
I mean, the guy was on it.
He does a cool dance.
(ROCK MUSIC PLAYING)
(WHOOPS)
(LAUGHING)
The one thing that jumps out at me is Emilio Estevez kind of running around
and singing, and he runs into a room, and he screams, and the window shatters.
It's completely absurd,
but somehow John Hughes manages to kind of weave in these absurd moments
and then, still, the movie makes perfect sense.
It's a movie, so you get to sometimes do things
that are unlikely but not impossible.
I mean, there was nothing done that was impossible in this movie.
He's using these devices that are more visual
than expositional.
But you understand exactly
what Emilio Estevez is going through at that moment.
He certainly packed a big lunch.
CLAIRE: Excuse me, sir'? I think there's been a mistake.
I know it's detention, but I don't think I belong in here.
John Hughes obviously drew a lot of poetic inspiration
from Molly's performances,
and at some points, he lets her take over the character.
But it's a really innovative bit of casting in Breakfast Club,
because he's having her play somebody
who would've been friends with Caroline in Sixteen Candles.
Like, she's in. She's popular, she's rich, she has sushi for lunch,
and yet she's extremely vulnerable.
If Molly wasn't written in such a way in The Breakfast Club
and her background wasn't written in such a way,
I wouldn't know what to draw from basically.
He gave the road map to the look,
so she's a prissy girl.
First I wanted her to be, like, the rich little girl in pink
and a little beret and, you know, the diamond earrings,
little studs and little short skirt.
And that was kind of... She was edgier than that.
So then we went into that Ralph Lauren kind of
straight wrap skirt with the boot,
and it had attitude. Her clothes had an attitude.
She had attitude.
Now, Molly, in front of her father, gives me an earring.
So she's gonna have to...
She's choosing that road for herself, which is quite wonderful.
'Cause she and daddy are not gonna get along the next day.
It's gonna be good for me, so I'm okay with that.
I think that Molly gets really unfairly tarred
with really owning that character in Breakfast Club too much.
I mean, I think she was doing a lot of acting,
and she brought a lot of herself to it.
But Molly is a very, very intuitive and subtle person,
and she played that character to the hilt.
Molly was just beyond her years. It never made any sense
that Molly was... What was she, 16, when we were doing it'?
Molly never seemed like she was 16, ever.
She's just beyond being a teenager,
or she was back then and now she is, you know...
Well, I felt like she grew into herself in her 30s.
It's sort of like Molly was always 30, you know.
And it never felt with Molly, like, "Molly is, you know, five years younger,"
or whatever it was, than the rest of us and still in school.
It just seemed like, "Why is Molly in school?" You know, like that.
HALL: She is very shy, and she was throughout the making of those films.
I mean, there's a certain... Just a quietness, you know.
She kind of remains a little bit at a distance.
But it's natural to her. It's not, like, an air.
You know, it's nothing that she's putting on in a way.
She had, like, really interesting and eclectic tastes
that weren't necessarily like a Southern California teenager
that you would expect, you know.
What's that'?
Sushi.
Sushi'?
Rice, raw fish and seaweed.
In retrospect, you think back about, "Okay, that's raw fish
"for four hours sitting in a classroom, that's got to be nice."
NELSON: it was so great 'cause we had time off and at lunch, I'm like, cruising around.
"Who can I fuck with?"
(SPITTING)
When Judd came into the audition for The Breakfast Club,
you probably heard the story, but he just came like the way you saw him in the film.
I mean, he was, like, in the jacket,
he had the gloves, he had the ball,
he had the boots, the "fuck you" attitude, the whole thing.
NELSON: I was getting a little rambunctious, I think,
in the waiting room outside,
and the receptionist called for security.
And so the elevator doors are opening with security,
just as someone opens the door from the side and goes,
"Judd Nelson?" I go, "Yeah, it's me. It's me."
And so I go in and it's like...
I was a little bit adrenalized, I would say.
I was like, "Yeah, okay, the cops didn't get me."
When Judd walked in, he had made this sort of method choice
to just be like, "I am Bender,
"and when are you guys gonna fucking figure it out?"
It's risky. It's a risky way to do it, but it just seemed that, you know...
Certain roles, it's gonna be hard for them to believe that you can pull it off
if you're not already pulling it off.
With Judd Nelson's character, I mean, there was a point.
If he came in in the black leather jacket, too obvious.
You know, here he's wearing flannel, he's wearing a T-shirt underneath,
he's got layers, he's got his boots that look horrible,
he's got his awful pants and that tweed overcoat.
All his stuff was basically recycled.
You make it look like it's been lived in, loved in, in his particular character.
Totally works.
People wanted that coat. People wanted to look like him.
His attitude was perfect.
I liked that other people started wearing the clothes,
because my mother had been giving me a hard time for a long time.
"What's with the boots'? Why are you tying the shirt around your waist'?
"Tuck it in. Tie your Shoelaces." It's like, "Mom."
She's like, "You're a bad example. Kids are gonna fall."
It's, like, better than being pushed, I guess, you know.
VANCE: The Seattle sound copied the grunge look of Judd Nelson
in The Breakfast Club, okay, that was him.
That was a changing moment for me, because I did go out and buy a trench coat.
You know, and I put pins on it, and I grew my hair.
And I wanted to get my ear pierced so some girl would give me her earring.
In the way that I think I related to Andy's character as who I was,
in that film Judd Nelson was who I kind of wanted to be.
It's a really great performance,
and again it probably affected a lot of kids the way it affected me.
You walk out of that experience a changed person.
The Breakfast Club actually does get pretty heightened.
It gets pretty melodramatic. I mean, at one point, like,
Bender is, like, pacing through the library,
doing like a monologue about being beaten.
You know, it's not super subtle.
But it's effective, and I think that's why people love that movie
is because it's not afraid to go there.
I think he had to be big in order to come across as the rebel.
His performance is a little bit bigger
and more showy than everyone else's,
but it needed to be.
See, this is what you get in my house when you spill paint in the garage.
All those moments where he's tearing up the book,
the door slams, and he curses at Paul Gleason when he leaves.
Fuck you!
Or him just openly being defiant.
Everything builds up to the moment
where Molly Ringwald kisses him on the neck.
Why'd you do that'?
'Cause I knew you wouldn't.
That redeemed him completely in some way.
He's, for the first time, completely not really sure what to do.
He can't do anything. He can't tear anything apart,
or yell, 'cause he is completely disarmed.
And then she gives me a gift,
which is interesting, and I like that John has me take it.
'Cause theoretically, after my big speech about buying stuff,
am I gonna be so, you know... "No, take it. Don't be an ass."
If for no other reason than I can talk to her, you know, Monday, maybe.
STUEVER: I've watched that movie, and I still love that movie,
and I still love to dislike that guy.
And I think Judd Nelson has had to bear that cross
all these years, you know. I think people still strongly identify him in that role.
I like that they respond well to that character,
and I like that I was able to serve John's material.
But it is strange that then I'm confused with that guy.
He is really a funny guy. He's very unlike his character.
Super cool, so funny.
You know, when I look back at my career, like, certain people stand out,
and Downey was one of the funniest ones. You know,
Judd is another one of the funniest guys I've worked with.
Great, great spirit.
Well, I love Judd.
Judd is geniusly funny,
you know, really verbal.
He's a real unusual character, Judd. He's just who he is, and...
I was really close to him back then, because then during Breakfast Club
it just got... He was fantastic,
and then we got to do St. Elmo's Fire,
and then we did this movie that ended up being disastrous.
But it was Blue City. I just, you know...
We were just really comfortable with each other.
And Judd definitely came ready in that role. I mean, he was...
He had a great passion and a focus then, 'cause he knew he had landed a great role.
And he delivered.
NELSON: Hughes writes this thing where the girl's gonna rub her head
to make the dandruff fly out like snow
over this beautiful drawing that she has done just with a pen.
We learned so much about the girl then.
Ha!
Eat shit.
(WHIMPERING)
Allison was pretty exactly howl felt in high school.
Allison is a part of me. I mean, that she didn't have to come from anywhere.
I didn't have to find her.
She comes in this sort of a coiled, shell of a woman, young woman.
You know, she just has these, like, burning looks at people.
You know, she's an incredible actress. She's great.
And that's an incredible performance as well.
Ally is so... She's so gifted, man.
Is it bad'?
Real bad'?
Parents'?
Yeah.
What do they do to you'?
They ignore me.
Yeah.
When they ignore you, you're not even there.
These are her parents. That's the closest family unit so...
Ally was so wonderfully damaged, it's just like...
She's so great. Allison, man, that's a... What a role.
SHEEDY: I knew what I wanted her to look like,
'cause in high school
there wasn't really any Goth stuff going on at all.
I think that came after Breakfast Club, like further along,
but there were these girls that I really thought were incredibly hip and cool,
and they were all the really pale-looking girls
who hung out in coffee houses
and listened to beat poetry, you know.
I thought that was really amazing.
That's what I wanted Allison to look like.
I just wanted... I really wanted that.
And he let me do it. I mean, it was super pale.
And black eyeliner, and that's it, you know.
Done, over and out. It was great.
VANCE: So we gave her that in the beginning, and the darkness.
You know, her behavior was chewing her nails and spitting it out
and just behaving so grossly,
because she wanted that kind of attention.
And underneath everything was that little white camisole
that showed this poor, poor fragile person who really wanted to be pretty
and really wanted to be accepted that way.
And that's how we were able to reveal her character.
I think Ally Sheedy's character definitely sells out.
I never got the impression that her, you know,
black stuff on her eyes, as Claire calls it,
or her clothing or her tousled hair,
I never got the impression that those were affectations, you know.
I thought that was genuinely her.
Why'? Claire did it.
CODY: I guess Allison should feel entitled to try on that persona if she wants to,
but having been a very weird, sort of black-eyeliner wearing,
weird landscape-drawing chick in high school, you know,
I felt slightly betrayed.
You know, you really do look better without all that black shit on your eyes.
Hey, I like that black shit.
Yeah, I fall in the sellout camp.
I do. I definitely do.
She plays such an odd, individualistic kind of character,
and then she becomes more conventional to me.
But I never had a problem with it.
I just thought it was another thing to talk about in relation to the movie.
Whether what she does is considered a sellout or not,
it actually seemed pretty real.
She didn't.
She let Molly do something for her.
That's what it really is about.
And she even says, again, Hughes...
Why are you being so nice to me'?
'Cause you're letting me.
“Cause you let me."
It's so honest and so, you know, a real connection.
So we don't know if she's selling out. She's just letting
Molly clean her up a little bit, in that, you know, high school way.
If you felt that was true, that Ally Sheedy betrayed,
you know, who she was at the end of the film,
I think you could say the same for every single one of them.
Because they all go through some kind of evolution, some sort of change.
Hers is a little bit more physical.
I think it was just about everybody wants to be liked.
HALL; She's probably in fact,
maybe alongside my character, probably the most empowered by the day, it seems.
I think that the transition, character wise,
is that she feels safe enough to be prettier,
you know, and to kind of come out of her shell in a way.
That's one of the most beautiful scenes, I think, in the film.
And there's also that really nice score, which again, it just lifts it.
What's wrong'?
Nothing's wrong.
It's just... You're just so different, you know.
I can see your face.
Is that good or bad'?
It's good.
I did talk to John about it,
and my thing was I didn't think that she should be somebody who has
a whole bunch of makeup put on her face and then suddenly she's beautiful,
so I wanted it to be, if we were going to do it, I wanted it to be that she...
'Cause she has all this stuff on her face, so white and all this eyeliner,
that Molly would be taking it off, so it's kind of like,
"Let's get rid of this mask or..." You know'?
This thing that you've been playing,
and this is what you really look like.
That works, that's okay. I didn't think I needed to
have a pink shirt on all of a sudden.
I feel like, I could have taken off my sweater
and had some kind of like guy muscle T or something.
Or she didn't have to take off her sweater. I mean, it was enough.
You know, just like stop hiding behind your hair and...
You know, so I felt like it went a little bit over the top.
I remember him and Tom Del Ruth, who shot it, talking about how to
do it really simply so it wasn't this sort of glamour sequence.
And I think that all in all they did really well with it.
CARL: I am the eyes and ears of this institution, my friends.
By the way, that stock's 20 minutes fast.
The one thing that people have come up to me since,
and I don't know whether you know this,
but people are doing The Breakfast Club as a high school play now.
I mean, it's been transcribed, and kids are doing it in school.
So I'm meeting kids that came up and played Carl.
You know, "I played Carl. I didn't realize how hard a role it was, you know."
I say, "There are no small parts, just small actors."
The janitor is sort of this very quick-witted character.
I think he describes himself as a serf or a peon,
which are not words you expect to hear out of the janitor's mouth,
and you get this sense that, you know, this guy was maybe the wiseass
once upon a time and now here he is,
and these kids are daring to condescend to him.
It's really cool.
Another tour-de-force role.
HALL: And that's a great and a very important role in that film,
I think, because what he does
is he kind of brings, you know, Gleason's character to life for himself.
You took a teaching position, 'cause you thought it'd be fun, right'?
Thought you could have summer vacations off.
And then you found out it was actually work.
That really bummed you out.
He just kind of shows him himself, in a way.
You know, and here I am the janitor and you perceive yourself as some, you know,
tough-ass teacher who is doing what he is in fact just doing,
just monitoring kids on the weekend, you know.
I remember that scene particularly 'cause he was so good in that scene.
He and Paul were great together.
KAPELOS: I was working on the premise in my head
that this is a teacher that I might have had.
Now that I'm the janitor, he likes to lord it over me.
Now this is the thought that wakes me up in the middle of the night.
That when I get older, these kids are going to take care of me.
I wouldn't count on it.
I slept in the janitor's office at the school
and rarely associated with the cast,
if ever, and I think John wanted to keep me away from the cast.
And that sort of worked with the sort of isolation I had in dealing with them,
and when I came into that set with all that paraphernalia,
the first scene I shot in Breakfast Club
was unloading the garbage, and, you know,
"By the way, that clock is 20 minutes fast."
That whole segment,
I hadn't really met with the guys, I hadn't really known the cast.
So there was this sense of detachment
and not being part of their group.
You guys think I'm just some untouchable peasant, serf, peon, you know'?
Maybe so. But following a broom around after shitheads like you
for the last eight years, I've learned a couple of things.
I look through your letters. I look through your lockers.
I listen to your conversations. You don't know that, but I do.
Carl the janitor resents the kids.
But he does get them. He nails them.
You know, he really puts it to them,
you know, verbally, in a way that the principal can't.
KAPELOS: Well, you know there is this arrogance to teens, right?
That anybody over 18 is just a jerk and, you know, has fallen off the earth,
in terms of their world view.
And, you know, it's just not true.
And somebody's got to hip them to that.
He had that strange expression on his face, you know,
like he knew better than us. It's unsettling.
You know, when you think you know better than them,
and he's true when he says how we perceive him.
Though my character not so much, 'cause I do see him all the time.
And he says that thing, Hughes again, that thing
where he goes, "I've been through your lockers.
"I got the keys to all your lockers."
And it's like...
Wait.
(NERVOUS GROAN)
And it's like, it's great. It's like, okay.
Okay, so now that I know that Carl is going through my shit... Okay.
When I got the part,
I remember thinking about the janitors that were in my high school.
And there was this one guy that was, I would say, all-seeing.
And when John had that line, you know,
"I read your notes. I'm the eyes and ears of this institution,"
I really pegged on to that one, because I really got the feeling
that these guys knew a lot more about us than we cared to let on.
People to this day don't realize that
there is a shot of me at the beginning of the movie
in the case, and that I actually went to that high school.
John and I talked about that.
And then my whole subtext was maybe I was a little bit of those guys there,
so the fact that I could relate to those kids
as sort of having left the womb 10 years prior
is, I think, an important fix on it.
'Cause, you know, I'm really paired up with Carl.
You know, as we walk out, I love that beat. It's like,
"See you Saturday, Carl." "Yeah, see you." You know what I mean'?
I'm there as much as he is.
I mean, I haven't had a Saturday off in years.
See you next Saturday.
You bet.
(SCHOOL BELL RINGING)
JOHN; Dick?
Excuse me, Rich. Will milk be made available to us'?
Well, well. Here we are.
What's going on in there'?
(EXCLAIMING)
All right!
Why is that door closed'?
(SHOUTS)
Pricks.
John Hughes was not particularly charitable to public educators.
Paul Gleason's character in The Breakfast Club is the principal
who has, not a leisure suit, but the '80s version.
Does Barry Manilow know that you raid his wardrobe'?
One good thing about that character is that it's clear
that he's in detention, too.
That by having to be there to discipline these kids on a Saturday,
he has to be there as well,
and he doesn't appear to have a lot to do at school that day, either.
It's a bad day for him.
Paul Gleason's a good actor, and he could play that role
without turning it into a caricature,
which I think is crucial to the success of that movie.
You know, even though we all watched it identifying with the kids,
on some level you have to believe that the adults are real.
And he's real. We know that there are people like that,
and you know that they have a heart somewhere.
You can be sympathetic to them,
but, you know, you don't wanna see them caricatured.
The adult characters are amazingly set up
for the kids to bounce from and off of.
And in Paul Gleason was the perfect character.
My God, he's holding court, and then you could see...
The only authority this guy had was at school over these kids.
And Judd was punching at it, kicking at it.
Paul was a great guy to have as, like, an adversary. He was great.
And he brought so much to that, as well.
Looking at himself in the glass,
the reflection of the fire extinguisher thing,
like... As he's walking on. It's like he's so cocky.
(EXCLAIMING)
All right!
Paul Gleason didn't have to ever try to be funny, he just was.
I don't know who came up with that weird contraption on his desk.
He's spinning something at some point. It was great.
Out.
I'm thinking of trying out for a scholarship.
Give me the ball, Bender.
NELSON: He wants the ball, and what am I gonna do?
Like, I'm gonna go like... 'Cause I wanna...
And every take I do is slightly different.
And so when I rolled it to him, he booted that ball at me.
I was like, "Yay!" But I knew he was gonna do that, too.
You kind of hope that he's not gonna hit you,
but you have to take it if he does.
Let's go. Keep your fucking hands off me!
STUEVER: When he's having that standoff with Judd Nelson,
you feel this sympathy for both of them, you know.
Like, you're supposed to feel, "Oh, the principal, he's just this jerk,"
but you just feel like what do you do with,
essentially, a fully grown man
who doesn't wanna be in high school
and is giving you this sort of interminable shit
about everything'?
There's the threat of violence.
They're gonna, like, throw down.
That freaks me out.
And I'm gonna kick the living shit out of you, man.
I'm gonna knock your dick in the dirt.
NELSON: I really thought he was gonna whack me,
and I would've taken it. I had to, you know.
And so I kind of flinch, and he didn't do anything.
And he goes, "Yeah, I knew it. You're a gutless turd."
I'm like, "Damn ..
I mean, there's real anger in Paul's character that's palpable.
When Kapelos catches Paul reading the files,
and he goes like, "Oh, Dick."
And then he's like, "No. I don't think we have to say anything about this."
You know, it's like... That great thing, it's like...
So he looks like a kid then, too.
KAPELOS: And after about two, three takes,
John came up to me and says, "Cut him off.
"Ask him for 50 bucks."
And the look on his face was pretty real,
because we yelled cut and he started bearing down on me,
going, "Why are you interrupting me'? And what's going on?"
And it was difficult for a few moments after that,
because he didn't expect that.
What? Fifty bucks.
John asked me about casting, and he brought up Paul Gleason's name,
and we'd both seen him in Trading Places.
And there was this hilarious scene which he called to mind,
which made us both laugh, where this old lady approaches him
and he's on the pay phone, and she wanted to use the pay phone.
And he just had this great kind of stern look
that he could always, like, summon,
and the lady comes up to the pay phone,
he looks at her and he goes, "Fuck off!"
And it's just, like, one of the funniest things ever.
Unbelievable. It's like... I'm watching and my jaw was like...
That's excellent, you know.
Clarence Beeks who ends up in that monkey suit. Oh, God.
But Paul was a great guy. I mean, Paul is a guy
that became a friend of mine.
You know, I'd hang out with Paul and meet him for lunch.
And, you know, he was like an uncle or a dad.
You know, he was always that go-to guy,
a really known and loved character actor.
He was very much a part of the process, encouraging of all of us as young actors,
and really hip and right there.
God rest his soul. He was a good guy.
Don't mess with the bull, young man, you'll get the horns.
BRIAN: But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain.
ANDREW: And an athlete. ALLISON; And a basket case.
CLAIRE; A princess.
JOHN: And a criminal.
BRIAN: Does that answer your question?
I'll never forget
the first time I saw Breakfast Club with a big audience.
And it was in the west side of Chicago.
And the audience was kinetic, electric, with sort of a response.
Kids would say a line onscreen, and kids in the audience would respond.
And there was a sort of, you know, prayer group meeting to it
that I think people recreate in their own home movie environments now
when they see those movies.
Around 10 years after Breakfast Club came out, I felt like, "What?
"Is this movie never gonna go away?"
I mean, I'm trying to do this. I'm trying to do that.
I'm trying to, you know, grow up as an actress. Blah, blah, blah.
Now I'm very comfortable with where I am.
And I like it.
I like it that I have a daughter who's never seen a movie I've been in,
but I think she's gonna like this one when she sees it.
I like that it isn't dated, and it's still around.
It's like a once-in-a-lifetime part.
People don't get those kind of parts very often.
So, I feel like, actually, it's this huge gift, the whole movie.
But at this point, I can't believe that I was in a movie
that has had that kind of...
Made that kind of stamp or had that kind of effect on so many people.
It's crazy.
You know, I've had a lot of time to think about
the value and the sort of impact that
that film had
and I'm honored by that and blown away to be a part of it.
And I think that really my feeling about why The Breakfast Club works
is that it's a sort of deconstruction of stereotypes.
It allows us to see everybody where we think they are,
and then by the end, you know, if there is a moral or a fable to it,
that it's we're all more alike than we thought, you know.
And I think that that's powerful.
Okay, fine. But that doesn't make it any less bizarre.
What's bizarre'? I mean, we're all pretty bizarre.
Some of us are just better at hiding it, that's all.
And it was strange when it came out that
I would get letters from all over the world.
Like, I didn't realize that the high school experience,
not specifically, but in a general sense,
it's similar to people in Scandinavia, based on their letters,
or people in Eastern Europe, it was like, "What? What?"
'Cause we think it's gonna be so much different. It's not.
LEHMANN: These are characters that still exist, you know.
They're not characters that only existed in 1984.
These are the kind of people that are still in high school.
JOHN: So you just stick to the things you know,
shopping, nail polish, your father's BMW, and your poor, rich,
drunk mother in the Caribbean. Shut up!
And as far as being concerned about what's gonna happen
when you and I walk down the hallways in school,
you can forget it, 'cause it's never gonna happen.
Just bury your head in the sand and wait for your fucking prom!
I hate you.
Yeah'? Good!
CODY: What was interesting about The Breakfast Club,
what was new about The Breakfast Club,
was the fact that it took teenagers' concerns seriously.
It was intense.
It did not condescend to its audience.
It was a serious film about young people's emotions.
And that was what made it punk rock.
LEHMANN: The whole thing of John Hughes and his movies and how they were,
they had become the standard for youth movies and teen movies,
and we had this big love-hate with them, because we love the movies.
We talked about it when we made Heathers, you know.
"What do you think about those John Hughes' movies?"
"Well, they're really good. They're really funny."
"What's your favorite?" "I like Sixteen Candles."
"I like Breakfast Club." Whatever it is.
In a lot of ways, Heathers was kind of an extension,
or in many ways an homage to what John was doing.
Just the fact that the term "teen movie" even exists is kind of insulting.
Nobody says adult movie.
You know, these are just films that happen to have teenage protagonists.
And there's so much opportunity for storytelling
and character development.
You can tell just about any story.
You're just seeing it through the lens of adolescence.
A lot of people could look down their nose and go, "Oh, teen movie."
But, I mean, that encompasses a lot of different kinds of movies.
I mean, if you think, Clockwork Orange...
He didn't go to school, 'cause he had a pain in the gulliver.
Well, then that means it's a teen movie.
Now would you call Clockwork Orange a teen movie'?
Just because you've only been alive for 15 years
doesn't mean you're any less anything, except old.
That's all it means. Doesn't mean you're less experienced, necessarily.
It doesn't mean you're less intelligent.
Doesn't mean you're less sensitive.
It doesn't mean you're taking things less seriously.
It's like, these are for younger human beings.
Don't, because they're only 10,
start thinking that they don't know what you're talking about,
'cause they do.
Don't leave people out in the cold, don't.
And don't talk down to people, don't.
It never works out.
BRIAN: Sincerely yours, The Breakfast Club.
People were always asking that when it first came out,
"Well, what do you think is gonna happen on Monday?"
I was like,
"I don't know."
I'd like to see how Allison comes in to school on Monday.
I think I'll support Allison either way.
Whatever she does, that's how I'm gonna play it.