The Breakfast Club

In 1985 I was a year away from dropping out of college, drunk almost nightly, trying to forget where I was from and where I was soon to return. I didn’t know who I was, but I knew who I didn’t want to be. Tied by an invisible tether to my father, a man who would divorce and marry still another time, gambling on a better future at the expense of the time, destined to repeat—and to be alone with his memories of a wasted past.

With this as my backdrop, movies were my escape. Movies and books. A hero always knew what to do, always said the right thing at the right time. It was kind of depressing now that I think about it, living up to an impossible ideal. The teen movies of the time were all about sexual immortals to whom intercourse was a simple matter of choosing who, but never a question of if. For me it was more like if ever.

Then along came John Hughes, the writer, director and producer of The Breakfast Club. He had already brought us Vacation and Sixteen Candles at the time, and would continue with other brilliant films such as Weird Science and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but The Breakfast Club in my humble opinion was his best work.

He brings together five entirely different stereotypes of high school students in a Saturday detention at the school library—the rich and popular girl, the jock, the outcast, the pot-smoking rebel, and the bookworm. Only the jock and the princess run with the same crowd at school, but social boundaries cannot withstand the deluge of commonality.

Each of them is challenged by one another, until layer after layer is peeled back to expose a frightened and vulnerable person who is afraid to stand alone. Each is tortured by the hopes and dreams—and apathy—of their parents. In the end they are bonded, as if the intensity of the day had melted all social constraint, leaving them stuck together like a smoking mound of cooling lava. We are left with a glimmer of hope as Claire gives Bender one of her earrings as a token of her commitment to the future.

That’s where the fairy tale ends, and well it probably should. John Hughes has been approached for a sequel, but he declines:

"I know everybody would love to watch it. But I'm too fond of those characters," Hughes said. "I thought about it. I could do it in prose. I know what will happen to them. I know them. But to do it with real actors - with Molly and Judd and Ally - they'd never come back together again. There's no excuse that could ever put them in the same room ever again. There isn't anything in their lives after high school relevant to that day...It's like Ferris Bueller. You don't want to see him today. You'd hate him. He'd either be a bum or a politician."

So that is the question: What happens to the characters on Monday? The logical conclusion in my mind is that things eventually return to what they were before. One day won’t erase a lifetime of programming. The outcasts had nothing to lose, but eventually they will succumb. Claire will try to avoid John in the halls, but John Bender will press the issue with her, to the point where Andrew will step in on her behalf. Actually, this changes things a little, because I can envision the two becoming friends again. I don’t see Claire ever coming around. Brian, the brain, will say hi in the halls, but when met with tepid responses from Claire and Andrew, will wilt back into his place. How do you find common ground for all these disparate characters? We know that they all suffer from oppressive parenting, but what else could draw them together that would be strong enough to overcome the pressures of their peers?

The sequel I think would have to take place far into the future, after Claire has a couple children with a frustrated ex-jock who can’t make ends meet, after Brian has leveraged his education into a lucrative career, perhaps as a CEO of an internet company that IPOed for huge money, after Andrew’s knee finally did blow out in college leaving him with nothing but a bad drug habit and imagined enemies. Ally Sheedy though, she grew up nicely. She really was a transformed beauty after the movie, and regardless of whether or not she was accepted for her transformation, she was truly transformed inside. She gained confidence and became an actress of school plays, and eventually joined a comedy troupe. Later in life she finds Andrew and finds that both of them have changed places in life. Bender realizes after high school that he has nothing, and will amount to nothing. He has it out with his father, and realizes he has to leave the house on his own. At this moment he realizes the futility of his situation and digs in deep and finds strength. He takes a job as a mechanic, the only skill that he has. He crosses paths with Brian, who commissions him to build a custom car for him.

How do they come together, all of them? I don’t know yet. But let me pose that question to you, my dear readers. Give me your take on the future. How can we put them back together in a believable fashion? I want to propose to Mr. Hughes that there is a way.