Where are they now What has become of The Breakfast Club, now that we’re halfway through lunch, and already thinking about dinner
Written and directed by John Hughes, this 1985 movie remains one of the defining pop culture artefacts of its era. It shot five young leads to global fame, but what befalls a teen heartthrob once they hit middle age Whatever happened to sports jock Emilio Estevez, class nerd Anthony Michael Hall, bad boy Judd Nelson, freaky goth chick Ally Sheedy and prom queen Molly Ringwald
You are dying to know, I’m sure, and I’m just the man to tell you. Why Because I love The Breakfast Club like a fat kid loves cake. If you were to ask me when I was a little emotional after my third beer, I would insist that it’s one of the greatest ever coming-of-age flicks, right up there with Dazed And Confused, Fast Times At Ridgemont High and American Graffiti.
After my fourth beer, I might even add Rebel Without a Cause. Consider this: just last year, Entertainment Weekly listed The Breakfast Club as the best high school movie ever made, stating: “If hell is other people – and high school is hell – then John Hughes is the genre’s Sartre, and this is his No Exit.”
The plot Five teenage students are forced to bond after being shut in detention together all day. The End. Like a low-budget stage play, the main characters are mostly confined to just one room, with a teensy cast of dramatic foils (their problematic parents, a bullying teacher, a sympathetic janitor) given brief walk-on roles. Shut in the school library and bored shitless, the famous five wonder, like, ‘Who am I’ ‘Why do I feel the way I do’ And, ‘What do you think of my fingerless gloves’
As a teenager, awash with hormones, plagued by acne, given to dramatic outbursts and suspiciously long showers, you’d watch this stuff and be amazed someone had taken your pain and bewilderment seriously, and turned it into something you could nod in agreement with while eating popcorn. It’s overly sentimental, admittedly. There are a couple of excruciating dance sequences, and a Hollywood happy ending that undercuts the more nuanced stuff that precedes it.
The bad boy character’s way too old, and the makeover inflicted upon Sheedy’s proto-goth chick in the final reel is an inexcusable cop-out. But as a sympathetic distillation of the American teen experience, it beats the hell outta Catcher In The Rye.
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My favourite scene A bored Ally Sheedy doodles a dark forest on scrap paper, then scratches her own dandruff over it as snow. My favourite line A toss-up between, “Did you slip her the hot beef injection” and “Hey, why don’t you close that door and we’ll get the prom queen impregnated” Best actor Either Ringwald or Hall. Best ever cinematic deployment of a Scottish synth-pop ballad Simple Minds’ “Don’t You Forget About Me” theme tune.
Like a classic boy band, each Breakfast Club character represents a different teen clique. You thought you had problems ‘Criminal’ John Bender (Nelson) comes from a violent household. ‘Athlete’ Andrew Clark (Estevez) hates his overbearing father. ‘Brain’ Brian Johnson (Hall) contemplates suicide. ‘Basket case’ Allison Reynolds (Sheedy) is a compulsive liar. And ‘princess’ Claire Standish (Ringwald) is ashamed she’s still a virgin.
Hall and Ringwald were both just 16 when the movie was made, while Estevez and Sheedy were 22, and Nelson a positively geriatric 25. Their fame peaked around this time, with Estevez, Sheedy and Nelson also appearing in Joel Schumacher’s hit teen flick St. Elmo’s Fire the same year. But then, disaster, in the form of a New York Magazine story called “Hollywood’s Brat Pack”, in which writer David Blum tagged along for a night out with Estevez, Nelson and Rob Lowe.
Comparing them to Sinatra’s ’60s ‘Rat Pack’, Blum portrayed the young stars as insufferable egotists, shamelessly flirting with groupies, jumping queues, ditching friends who bored them, complaining that various clubs they visited had no VIP areas, and disparaging less successful actors. By night’s end, Estevez had driven off into the night with a Playboy model.The story made laughing stocks of the trio and their wider clique, which also included Sheedy, Ringwald, Hall, James Spader, Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon, Matthew Broderick and Sean Penn.
Subsequent media stories gleefully compounded the mythology, conjuring images of wealthy young Brat Packers ricocheting around LA in vain little clumps, partying their arses off, pausing only to fall in love with one another – Hall and Ringwald dated, Estevez and Moore were engaged – though their first love was always themselves.
By the late ’80s, many of the Brat Packers were on the skids, their careers derailed by drugs, booze, public indifference or, in Lowe’s case, a sex tape. Some blamed Blum’s story. “Many believe they could have gone on to more serious roles if not for that article,” writes Brat Pack biographer Susannah Gora in her 2010 book, You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried. “They were talented, but they had professional and personal difficulties after that.”
Whatever the reason, the core cast of The Breakfast Club failed to set the world on fire in the decades that followed. Now 51, the son of actor Martin Sheen and brother of “tiger blood”-fuelled Charlie, Emilio Estevez was once tipped to become his generation’s Robert De Niro, but somehow settled for Rob Schneider. His best role outside The Breakfast Club was that of the young punk Otto in Repo Man, made the previous year.
