What I Was Thinking

I've been doing some reading on John Hughes, researching what might have happened to the characters of the Breakfast Club on Monday. My idea was to create a blog, which I did, called shermerhigh.blogspot.com, and create accounts for each of the characters--Claire, Andrew, Brian, John and Allison; and even Carl the Janitor and Principal Vernon--then go back in time before the detention and have each relate their personal high school and family experiences, then the events leading to the Saturday detention, reactions Saturday night and/or Sunday, then start into Monday. I watched the movie and took notes on every small detail, such as the names of various teachers mentioned such as the guidance counselor, a Mr. Clark and a Mr. Tierney (with a history of slight mental illness), etc.

Then I read two interviews with John Hughes, who grew up in Shermerville, which was recently renamed to Northbrook, which is the actual location of the high school used in the movie, as well as in Weird Science and a few others I think. He explained that due to community expansion and big business muscling out small farms, farm communities became what he called bedroom communities, where the local kids became outnumbered by the rich kids. John Bender was one such kid.

It struck me then that as much as I relate to Bender, he doesn't belong to me. John Hughes created him and only he truly knows where he is bound. Hughes wrote and produced a movie called Reach the Rock, which got a critical and popular thumbs down, about a man who is blamed for his friends' death, who leaves town and comes back years later and raises hell. Not very uplifting. Hughes comments that the protagonist is as if John Bender had stayed with Claire after Breakfast Club and never moved on. I guess Vernon knew what he was talking about when he said, "Look John Bender up in five years and see how funny he is then."

The original version of the Breakfast Club was two and a half hours, but the studio made him cut it to ninety minutes. Not only that, but the studio destroyed all the negatives, leaving Hughes with the only copy of the original movie. Can you say, "Director's cut?"

At any rate, I'm moving on. The idea of the blog came from reading The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster. It had a short run on blogspot, but it became quite famous after being written up on Slashdot. The blog was written from the perspective of Darth Vader throughout episodes 4 through 6, better known as the original trilogy. It was pure genius and a wonderfully entertaining read. You can find it now if you are interested. But this feels different somehow, because his was a joke and mine would be more of a serious effort, which would simply be plagiarism. And that is a very bad word indeed for someone who hopes to create.

So here's hoping I can create characters so meaningful, if only to a cult few.