Ringwald addresses the now-common issue of separating the artist from the art. Some people on Twitter lambasted Ringwald for criticizing the work of a man who is now deceased and cannot defend himself. It's self-serving, frankly disgraceful to have done what she's done. Film Filmmakers ProducerLife actorslife writing writerslife Filmmaking. This, from Molly Ringwald, is such a stellar example of what a personal reckoning looks like, and how nuanced you can make it.
This is a really, really good reflection from Molly Ringwald. It's a very fine contribution to the ongoing conversation about how we reconcile things we have affection for with context we know is important. John Hughes let the cast look at early drafts of the script to pick out parts that they liked. Judd Nelson and Emilio Estevez would try to go to local schools and "blend in" which was hard because they were both 23, harder still because Estevez was famous because of movies like The Outsiders and Repo Man already made him famous.
Nelson had better luck than Estevez, and actually became part of a clique of local young men from one of the Chicago area high schools, and he admits he would use his "fake ID" which was his real Id to get them beer and even buy them pot a couple times when they wanted it. Judd Nelson John Bender was the last to be cast. He compared Hall to a young Spencer Tracy.
Kubrick wanted to cast him in the lead role of Pvt. Joker in his upcoming film Full Metal Jacket , but after months of negotiations Hall turned down the offer. The part went to Matthew Modine. While Maine North High School was no longer a fully-functioning high school at the time of filming, the school was in use as the Alternative Resource Center A.
Students that were a chronic disciplinary problem, considered to be unruly or disruptive to the learning process of others, would find themselves at Maine North every day, as an alternative to expulsion, or other disciplinary measures.
Maine Township still conducts the A. In , Molly Ringwald Claire Standish wrote a piece in The New Yorker in which she described watching the film with her year-old daughter. Although she was bothered by scenes of sexual abuse and harassment in this film and other films and material by John Hughes , she stood by the work, recognizing that these issues were a product of the times and that Hughes' films were still beneficial in helping teens assert their independence and identity.
The song which Judd Nelson Bender hums the guitar riff to at the beginning of the movie is the opening of "Sunshine of Your Love" by Cream. Cream's song "Badge" also features in Fandango Nelson also starred in this movie. During this period, early and mid 80s, when John Hughes was at the height of his powers, Hughes, Anthony Michael Hall and Molly Ringwald were essentially in a clique together strange as that was since Hall and Ringwald were teenagers and Hughes was in his 30s.
Feeling like he'd missed out on the group bonding activities that usually make up people's childhood, Hughes wanted to be a teenager again, and maybe was reliving this through Hall and Ringwald.
And Hall and Ringwald genuinely liked him, he was like their crazy, funny older brother, who also happened to be a Hollywood power player who had vaunted them both to the top of the A-List.
So for a year or two, , during the filming of Sixteen Candles , The Breakfast Club , Pretty in Pink and Weird Science , the three of them would hang out, go to restaurants and clubs and concerts and were friends. In fact, this might have very well gone on forever if Hall and Ringwald hadn't put a stop to it. And at that point the terrible trio broke up, and in fact they rarely if ever spoke to Hughes much again after that. Hughes stopped making teen movies and started making kids movies, Uncle Buck , and the incredibly successful Home Alone , which at that point was the most successful comedy ever made.
But many felt the magic was gone, that without his teen muses Hall and Ringwald, and without the comfort of the genre he created, Hughes' spirit and creativity sort of died, and the movies he made after were never quite the same. Both Hall and Ringwald, as well as others, have spoken extensively about this in interviews. John Hughes wanted the music to be heavy on drums and bass, to mirror the emotions of the characters.
Keith Forsey was chosen to be the composer because he was a drummer. Ally Sheedy said during a interview that her son never wanted to watch any of her films, but when he was 13 he had to watch The Breakfast Club because it was part of his young Beck Lansbury's film class curriculum. She said that afterwards he told her it was a good movie, that he liked her character, and that he thought she did a good job.
She also joked that it gave her a little tiny modicum of coolness with him. Molly Ringwald had a cameo, and Anthony Michael Hall was mentioned. Molly Ringwald has said in interviews that this movie is about "the universal feeling we all have especially in high school: that we are all outsiders, we all feel alone, and yet we all want to be accepted.
Simple Minds were initially reluctant to record "Don't You Forget About Me ", believing that it was just a throwaway song for a forgettable movie.
They recorded the song within three hours and then forgot about it, as they continued to work on their next album. After the movie came out, the band discovered that the song has reached 1 in the US charts.
Many people feel that the original prototype for this movie was Whose Afraid of Virginia Wolfe, with its Broadway Encounter Group Formula, which had people holed up together in a room and arguing, shouting, divulging personal secrets and revelations and confronting each other to move the drama. William Friedkin 's movie The Boys in the Band about the New York gay scene post Stonewall had a similar format; A Chorus Line, Michael Bennett's smash musical about the gritty lives of Broadway dancers, also followed this formula pattern, and Lawrence Kasdan 's classic The Big Chill also followed a similar formula, and was another obvious influence on the The Breakfast Club In fact, most critics called this the "Little Chill" or the "Big Chill" for teenagers.
The Breakfast Club had a huge influence itself. Movies like Richard Linklater 's Before Sunrise series, which features Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy arguing and improvising on their feelings of life for young people, were directly influenced by The Breakfast Club Another movies influenced by it is Peter's Friends a group of classmates and friends reunited after ten years to spend together New Year's Eve.
The film takes place on Saturday March 24, The date is for real. The line "You couldn't ignore me if you tried" is also the title of a book about the teen movies of the s. It was written by Susannah Gora and published on February 9, In it, Gora talks about Brat Pack created in the decade of skinny ties and where outcasts and prom queens fall in love, preppies and burn-outs become buds, frosted lip gloss and optimism to feel invincible, in addition to cultural themes and its meaning, and how it has influenced an entire generation who still believe that life always turns out the way it is supposed to.
It includes interviews to Molly Ringwald , Anthony Michael Hall , Ally Sheedy , Judd Nelson , Andrew McCarthy and John Cusack , besides material from the movies to the music to the way the films were made to show how they helped to shape the vision for romance, friendship, society, and success in the 80s ahead.
Bill Murray was briefly considered for the role of Carl. After Andrew finishes pulling out his lunch from the paper bag then turns around to Bender, audience can see for a second Judd Nelson breaking character when he smiles at Emilio Estevez. This is played off as a joke because of course the nerd would be friends with the janitor. Later, in a cut scene, it's revealed Carl was the one who found the flare gun in Brian's locker. In early drafts of the script, Claire Molly Ringwald was called Cathy.
Originally, this film was to have three girls and three boys. Contrary to popular belief, the final scene on the football field was not filmed at Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook, Illinois. The football field was on the east side of the building, and has since been converted to condominiums. Those were the only two John Hughes movies that accomplished this. In , The Breakfast Club was selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".
Despite Vernon wanting a one thousand word essay from everyone, the final essay ended up being a total of 96 words. Alison Ally Sheedy says that she can play "Heart and Soul" on the piano with her feet. This is the song that Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia played, using their feet, on the giant piano in the toy store in Big They also played chopsticks on the piano.
This is completely for language, and an implied off-screen sexual moment some would say a harassment or assault moment between Bender and Claire.
Amazingly, this movie got an R rating when Sixteen Candles , which also features full on nudity, an implied rape or harassment scene between Haviland Morris and Anthony Michael Hall , Molly Ringwald dropping the F bomb, and also sorts of other salty language, and adult situations, got a PG rating.
Also amazingly, this is back from a time when filmmakers weren't so hyper about having every movie they make, even movies aimed at teenagers, getting a PG rating. This movie got an R; was a box office smash, and still beat out Sixteen Candles , which was PG, at the box office. These days if the movie was made Hughes would be bending over backwards to get a PG rating, as almost all filmmakers have to do these days.
What they ate for lunch: Andrew Emilio Estevez : a bag of chips, chocolate cookies, three sandwiches, milk, a banana, and an apple. Claire Molly Ringwald : sushi rice, raw fish, and seaweed. John Judd Nelson : nothing.
Brian Anthony Michael Hall : soup, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the crusts cut off , and apple juice. Back when this movie was filmed, sushi was just beginning to become popular in the US and was not remotely as ubiquitous as it is now. Hence Claire's explanation and Bender's snarky reaction. To break up a highly claustrophobic talkathon, John Hughes had originally written a sequence in which the school's synchronized-swimming team came by to practice with its extremely sexy P.
The youngsters would sneak out of the library and find a peephole into the women's locker room. There, they would spy the well-endowed P.
Karen Leigh Hopkins was even cast in the role. But during rehearsals in Chicago, his two young actresses, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy , joined swiftly by co-producer Michelle Manning , ganged up on him saying they strongly objected to the gratuitous female nudity in the screenplay.
They felt it was really sexist and misogynistic even though Ringwald's character did the same thing by staring at a naked female classmate in the school showers in Hughes' previous film Sixteen Candles That night Hughes revised the script where a janitor replaced the P. Thankfully, the male janitor wasn't naked either. Hopkins was let go since her role was no longer needed. But Hopkins, who later became a screenwriter, stated in a interview that she didn't know anything about a nude scene and she definitely never filmed one.
She said she was cast as a gym teacher who gives the five kids a speech about life after high school. That scene was never filmed though because she was suddenly let go with no warning or explanation. She didn't hear about the topless scene story until many years later. Simple Minds was so unimpressed with the prospects for the soundtrack entry "Don't You Forget About Me " that the lead singer recorded the "La la la la" out-bridge chorus as gibberish to fill out the track after the initial recording session.
He planned to replace it with proper lyrics the next day, but the rest of the band loved it and convinced him to keep the "la la la la" in place. It ended up being an iconic part of a 1 hit. Laura Dern tried out for both female parts in The Breakfast Club and was rejected.
Later she referred to John Hughes movies as "that teen junk". Dern bounced back and got two great parts that year: the lead in Joyce Chopra 's Smooth Talk and the female lead in David Lynch 's Blue Velvet He was bitter about the rejection also but went on to star in many other teen classics of the s. In a article for the New Yorker, Molly Ringwald said she and her mother tried to get John Hughes to not film the scene where Bender peeks at Claire's panties as she's sitting at her desk in a short skirt, but Hughes refused.
Ringwald said he hired an adult woman as a stand in for the shot because she was a minor at that point and she didn't think it was legal to film a minor's panty-covered crotch. But she said that even having another person pretend to be her was embarrassing and upsetting to her mother, even though they both knew about the scene when Ringwald accepted the role.
Ally Sheedy said in that she disliked her character Allison's end-of-film makeover where Molly Ringwald 's Claire transformed Allison's appearance, covering her in blush and eye-shadow and giving her a pink dress and headband to wear. Sheedy didn't like the message it relayed: that she had to change herself to get a boy to notice her. Sheedy said she and Ringwald petitioned John Hughes to change it to promote a less negative message.
She didn't want Claire to put make-up on Allison's face, and had hoped that her physical transformation would involve merely slipping off her enormous black sweater and wearing with pride the plain white shirt she had on underneath.
But he didn't go for that. It was the eighties and they wanted an ugly duckling becomes a swan transition. Molly Ringwald talked about her famous lipstick trick during a interview with Entertainment Weekly: "There is a story behind that: John Hughes wrote it but never actually thought about me having to do it.
He kept putting it off until the end of filming that long scene. I kept bringing it up, like, 'Hey. We gotta figure this out. Are we going to have robotic breasts?
Of all the five teens, Brian Anthony Michael Hall is the only one whose middle name is revealed Ralph, as in "puke". One bitter irony for Hughes is that he got along very well with Cusack in the pre-production process, while his on-set relationship with Nelson was so bad that Hughes swore he would never work with Nelson again and in fact never did so.
As with The Graduate , WarGames and other teen- and youth-oriented movies of its ilk, most of the adults in this movie are made out to be monsters or symbols of authoritarianism and how teens are mistreated in society. The parents and Principal Vernon are all mostly abusive to the youths in the movie; they are there to show how youths are mistreated in society and provide the impetus for the plot.
Similarly in The Graduate, all of the characters who are over 21 are referred to as "Mr. Robinson" or "Mrs. Robinson"; we never learn their first names because they are supposed to be ciphers and symbols for authoritarianism, exemplifying how Ben and Elaine are chewed up by society unless they rebel. In WarGames, David Lightman's parents and the administrators in Washington are mostly painted as boobs - the idiots that let the crisis develop in the first place.
This film is part of the Criterion Collection, spine Amazingly, ten years after this came out, in , Molly Ringwald was offered another teenage girl part. She was offered the role of Sidney Prescott, the main star in Scream eventually played by Neve Campbell.
Although Ringwald was flattered she turned him down, saying "I don't want to be a 28 year old still playing high school girls in movies". Hughes took the name of this prominent road and used it for his town name. Sean Penn could have played the Bender role. John Cusack was also up for the role but John Hughes didn't think he had the necessary toughness; Cusack tends to come across as a sweetheart in all his roles.
Brian's Anthony Michael Hall personality completely changes once he smokes pot. He starts talking like Chubby Checker and making raunchy jokes. It's also in this scene that the clean cut character is revealed to have a pornographic picture in his wallet. Hall would revisit the "ebonics" drawl in Weird Science , released the same year, while his character is drunk.
This is made apparent in the scene where they are marching along the library railing when all the dancing starts. John Candy was considered for Carl. Bender spends most of the movie harassing Claire. There's even a scene of implied assault or harassment, where Bender bites or touches Claire off-screen and she kicks him. Bender is rewarded for all this bullying by having Claire kiss Bender, give him her earring, and essentially starting a relationship with him.
Molly Ringwald herself has spoken out about this since the onset of the Me Too Movement, and how disturbed by all of this she is, particularly about the mixed messages this sends to her daughter and the next generation; particularly since The Breakfast Club turned basically in a right of passage movie for all teenagers of the later generations. During the scene when Andrew and Allison are talking about unsatisfied home lifestyle, you can see a missing drawer from the card catalogs. This was due to Bender removing it in a previous scene to rearrange the cards.
Molly Ringwald said in that she finds the crowd-pleasing romance between her character and Bender, played by Judd Nelson , difficult to root for now. She said "Bender sexually harasses Claire throughout the film. When he's not sexualizing her, he takes out his rage on her with vicious contempt, calling her 'pathetic,' mocking her as 'Queenie. Claire acts dismissively toward him, and, in a pivotal scene near the end, she predicts that at school on Monday morning, even though the group has bonded, things will return, socially, to the status quo.
He never apologizes for any of it, but, nevertheless, he gets the girl in the end. Most of the cast is playing against type in this movie. And Judd Nelson, as a matter of fact, usually plays a clean cut character in the movies, not a punk: In St.
Elmo's Fire , From the Hip , Blue City and the TV series Suddenly Susan he plays preppy, clean cut characters; more like Andrew Clark, than the shady criminal he plays in this movie. Molly Ringwald is also definitely playing against type here. She usually plays distressed outsider girl roles, not the rich Heathers-type snob of Claire Standish.
But then Anthony Michael Hall , who plays a geek in Weird Science , this and Sixteen Candles , is definitely playing to type; as is Ally Sheedy , who plays an eccentric weird girl in this, WarGames and High Art as well. Paul Gleason who plays an abusive authoritarian character in Trading Places , is also playing to type.
John Hughes is seen picking up Anthony Michael Hall from the school at the end of the movie. Everyone's lunch gets ridiculed except for Bender he doesn't have one.
There is a top ten hit songs associated with all of John Hughes ' teen movies. Music is a huge part of all of Hughes' movies, and The Breakfast Club is no exception; although except for the Karla DeVito 's "We Are Not Alone", with MTV dance montage; and the ongoing riffs on the theme song; this movie has the least musical montages of any of Hughes' movies.
It's all part of the carefully controlled atmosphere Hughes is trying to establish in this very serious encounter group therapy movie. Some have criticised Ringwald, however, arguing she should not complain about the director who made her a star. This article is more than 3 years old. Actor who starred in popular s film advocates critical stance towards art of past.
0コメント