The Breakfast Club is a 1985 American coming-of-age comedy-drama film written, produced, and directed by John Hughes. It stars Emilio Estevez, Paul Gleason, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, and Ally Sheedy. The film tells the story of five teenagers from different high school cliques who serve a Saturday detention overseen by their authoritarian vice principal.
Hughes had written the script in 1982, and began casting for the film after the release of Sixteen Candles (1984). Filming took place from March to May 1984, and the entire film was shot at Maine North High School in Des Plaines, Illinois. Although the film is technically not an independent film due to Universal Pictures' involvement as a producer, The Breakfast Club has been popularly recognized as one; the low budget, Universal not being the primary production company, and the overall feel of the film are factors to its recognition.
The film premiered in Los Angeles on February 7, 1985, and was theatrically released by Universal Pictures on February 15, 1985. It grossed $52.1 million against a $1 million budget, and earned acclaim from critics, who consider it to be one of Hughes's most memorable and recognized works, and is considered one of the cornerstone films of the 1980s. The media subsequently referred to the film's five main actors as members of a group called the "Brat Pack". In 2015, the film was digitally remastered and was re-screened in 430 theaters in celebration of its 30th anniversary.
In 2016, The Breakfast Club was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film has been considered as one of the best films of the 1980s, and one of the best teen films of all time.
Plot
On Saturday, March 24, 1984, five students at Shermer High School in Shermer, Illinois, report for an all-day detention: socially awkward nerd Brian Johnson, jock Andrew Clark, shy loner Allison Reynolds, popular girl Claire Standish, and rebellious delinquent John Bender. They gather in the school library and meet with their Vice Principal Richard Vernon, who warns them not to talk or move from their seats and assigns each of them the task of writing a minimum one-thousand-word essay describing who they think they are.
Bender ignores the rules and spends his time antagonizing the others and defying Vernon, who gives him eight additional weekends of detentions. After lunch, the students sneak off to retrieve Bender's marijuana stash from his locker. When they see Vernon returning to the library, Bender deliberately gets caught to allow the others to sneak back in.
Locked in a storage closet as punishment, Bender is further berated by Vernon. Vernon tells him that he wants Bender to prove how tough he is and attempts to goad Bender into hitting him. Bender is visibly afraid and does not move. After Vernon leaves him, he escapes into the ceiling panels and falls into the library, where the others hide him from Vernon.
The students pass the time arguing, listening to music, and smoking marijuana, gradually opening up about their home lives and their reasons for being in detention: Claire's popularity subjects her to intense peer pressure, while her bickering parents use her against each other. She received detention for skipping school to go shopping. Bender reveals the physical abuse he and his mother suffer at the hands of his father, including cigar burns and other injuries. He is serving detention for pulling the fire alarm. Andrew became influenced by jock culture and is intimidated by his father to succeed in wrestling, to the point of being unable to think for himself. He was given detention for taping a student's buttocks together in an attempt to win both his teammates' and his father's approval. Brian is under so much academic pressure from his parents to get good grades that he contemplated suicide after getting an F in shop class. He was sent to detention for bringing a flare gun to school in order to commit suicide. The gun exploded in his locker. Allison is compulsively dishonest with neglectful parents. She steals and hoards small things. She says that she will use them should she ever run away from home. She also says that she showed up to detention for lack of anything better to do.
Despite their differences, the students realize they all face similar problems: Andrew and Allison bond over their complex relationships with their parents; Brian and Claire each feel anxiety over being virgins. While the group suspects that their new friendships will end once detention is over, they do admit they will look at their peers differently from now on.
Meanwhile, Vernon complains to the janitor, Carl, that students have become increasingly arrogant over the course of his teaching career, but Carl suggests that Vernon is the one who has changed and cares too much about what the students think of him.
The group convinces Brian to complete Vernon's essay on everyone's behalf. Claire gives Allison a makeover, which sparks romantic interest from Andrew, and Bender crawls back through the ceiling to the closet, where Claire challenges her "pristine" reputation by kissing him. As the students part ways, Allison and Andrew kiss, and she rips the state championship patch off his letterman jacket to keep. Claire gives Bender one of her diamond earrings, and they share their own kiss.
Vernon reads Brian's essay, which asserts that the vice principal has made petty assumptions about all of them and declares that "each one of us is a brain (Brian), an athlete (Andrew), a basket case (Allison), a princess (Claire), and a criminal (Bender). Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club." Bender walks home across the school's football field, triumphantly raising his fist in the air.
Cast
Emilio Estevez as Andrew Clark, an athletic student in Saturday detention Paul Gleason as Richard Vernon, the school vice principal who oversees the Saturday detention Anthony Michael Hall as Brian Johnson, a brainy student in Saturday detention John Kapelos as Carl Reed, a school janitor Judd Nelson as John Bender, a delinquent student in Saturday detention Molly Ringwald as Claire Standish, a popular student in Saturday detention Ally Sheedy as Allison Reynolds, a loner student in Saturday detention Ron Dean as Mr. Clark, Andrew's father Mercedes Hall as Mrs. Johnson, Brian's mother Mary Christian as Brian's sister Tim Gamble as Mr. Standish, Claire's father Perry Crawford & Fran Gargano as (respectively) Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds, Allison's parents John Hughes as Mr. Johnson (uncredited cameo), Brian's father
Production
Development The title was originally The Lunch Bunch, but a friend of Hughes' from another school had a detention class called "The Breakfast Club", so he decided to go with that. Hughes wrote the script around the time when he was writing Sixteen Candles, but he wrote the Sixteen Candles script in mere days, and it impressed the studio executives who chose it to be his directorial debut.
Casting Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall both starred in Hughes's 1984 film Sixteen Candles. Towards the end of filming, Hughes asked them to be in The Breakfast Club. Hall became the first to be cast, agreeing to the role of Brian Johnson; his real-life mother and sister played his character's mother and sister in the film. Ringwald was originally approached to play the character of Allison Reynolds, but she was "really upset" because she wanted to play Claire Standish (then named "Cathy" in the first draft of the script), which saw the auditions of Robin Wright, Jodie Foster, Diane Lane, and Laura Dern. She eventually convinced Hughes and the studio to give her the part. Joan Cusack was considered for the role of Allison before Ally Sheedy was ultimately cast.
Emilio Estevez was originally cast in the role of John Bender, but when Hughes was unable to find someone to play Andrew Clark, Estevez was recast. Nicolas Cage was considered for the role of John Bender, which was the last role to be cast. Alan Ruck also auditioned for the role, but the choice was narrowed down to John Cusack and Judd Nelson. Hughes originally cast Cusack, but decided to replace him with Nelson before shooting began, because Cusack did not look intimidating enough for the role. At one point, Hughes was disappointed in Nelson because he stayed in character and harassed Ringwald off-camera; the other actors had to convince Hughes not to fire him. Todd Bridges was offered to audition for an unspecified role after Hughes walked to him on the plane, but he later walked away after one of the studio executives informed him that they didn't know how to write for black people. Rick Moranis was originally cast as the janitor, but was released by Ned Tanen, the film's producer, who felt that Moranis' portrayal as an over-the-top Russian caricature did not suit the serious nature of the film. Moranis was replaced by John Kapelos.
Filming In 1999, Hughes said that his request to direct the film met with resistance and skepticism because he lacked filmmaking experience. He ultimately convinced the film's investors that, due to the modest $1 million budget and its single-location shoot, he could greatly minimize their risk. Hughes originally thought that The Breakfast Club would be his directorial debut. He opted for an insular, largely one-room set and wrote about high school students, who would be played by younger actors.
Principal photography began on March 28, 1984, and ended in May. Filming took place at Maine North High School in Des Plaines, Illinois, which had been closed in May 1981. The same school was used for interior scenes of Hughes's 1986 film Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which also featured exterior shots from nearby Glenbrook North High School. The appearance of the library at Maine North High, considered too small for use in the film, prompted the crew to build a virtually identical but larger set in the school's gymnasium. The actors rehearsed for three weeks and then shot the film in sequence. Nelson tried other opinions for the ending scene until eventually landing the fist pump. The dance sequence was originally scripted with Claire dancing alone, but Ringwald felt embarrassed about performing solo and Hughes agreed to have the others join her. On the Ferris Bueller's Day Off DVD commentary (featured on the 2004 DVD version), Hughes revealed that he shot the two films concurrently to save time and money, and some outtakes of both films feature elements of the film crews working on the other film. The first print was 150 minutes in length.
During a cast reunion in honor of the film's 25th anniversary, Ally Sheedy revealed that a director's cut existed; but Hughes's widow, who was also present, did not disclose any details concerning its whereabouts. In 2015, the first draft of the film's script was discovered in a Maine South High School cabinet as district employees were moving offices to a new building.
Poster The film's poster, featuring the five characters huddled together, was photographed by Annie Leibovitz toward the end of shooting. The shot of five actors gazing at the camera influenced the way teen films were marketed from that point on. The poster refers to the five "types" of the story, using slightly different terms than those used in the film (and in a different sequence), stating "They were five total strangers with nothing in common, meeting for the first time. A brain, a beauty, a jock, a rebel and a recluse". The Breakfast Club poster "family shot", notably including Bender's raised fist, was satirized in the poster for the comedy-horror film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. It also inspired the title page of chapter 29 of the manga series Akane-banashi.
Themes