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The Breakfast Club
The Breakfast Club
Wed, 12 Nov 2008
As the John Hughes teen collection get a DVD box set release and we prepare for our imminent Genre Season this November, Trevor turns the focus on one of the seminal rites-of-passage movies. So, neo-maxi zoom dweebies, take another look at The Breakfast Club...
“Saturday, March 24, 1984. Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois. Dear Mr Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong, what we did was wrong. But we think you’re crazy to make us write this essay telling you who we think we are, what do you care? You see us as you want to see us…in the simplest terms and most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. That’s the way we saw each other at seven o’clock this morning. We were brainwashed…”
Molly Ringwald at her finest - The Breakfast ClubIt’s certainly a long way from Terrence Malick’s Badlands (the subject of last month’s column) to The Breakfast Club, writer-director John Hughes’ much-loved ’80s teen movie, yet both films set their stall out in their opening voiceover. Malick gives us a slightly off-kilter picture of ’50s domesticity alerting us to expect the unexpected, yet Hughes seems to lay out his entire game plan in these few lines. We learn that the as-yet-unidentified narrator has been in detention on a Saturday, along with a bunch of instantly familiar high school types. We notice that he’s questioning the teacher’s motives in getting them to write an essay about themselves during their punishment. We also realise that he’s speaking at a point much later in the day, and there’s a strong suggestion that the group’s perception of each other as distinct high school types has changed during their span of enforced time together. Since the voiceover has already sketched out context, characters, conflict and apparent resolution in those few moments, one wonders what the rest of the movie can deliver. Which is, of course, a prime reason to keep watching – that and discovering just what transformed these adolescent minds in the course of a single day…
The fact that it’s dealing with a transformative moment in the lives of young people allows us to mark down The Breakfast Club as a rites of passage story. What’s unusual about it however, is the way it uses an almost theatrical restriction in place and time-frame to help shape its action, in contrast to various other rites of passage tales which investigate the passage of time (Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy), work through a certain chain of events (Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up) or send their characters on a journey – the trip to see the dead body in Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me, for instance, to quote another classic ’80s example. In a genre which often involves eye-opening exposure to the adult world (as in Shane Meadows’ This Is England), what is there to learn about being shut in at school for a day with a group of your peers? Quite a bit, as it turns out, especially if you have John Hughes’ facility for crafting group dynamics, because, to make matters just a little more complex, this isn’t your solo rites of passage flick in the My Life as a Dog mode, but an ensemble rites of passage story, which comes with its own set of demands.
To start with, we accept the obvious contrivance of five representative teen types ending up in detention together, namely Bender the rule-breaking rebel (Judd Nelson), Claire the school princess (Molly Ringwald), Allison the black-clad weirdo (Ally Sheedy), Andrew the wrestling jock (Emilio Estevez) and Brian the swot (Anthony Michael Hall). Five key characters means five key dilemmas to work through however, which provides the script with ample scope for intrigue and conflict, and allows Hughes to begin differentiating between them right from the start by hinting at diverse social backgrounds and parental attitudes when they’re all dropped off at the school (or in Bender’s case, left to walk there himself) in the film’s first few minutes. It’s at this point we learn that Claire is being punished for skipping class to go shopping, and, almost like some junior prison movie, the question ‘what are you in for?’ is to become a key source of individual revelations and a helpful structuring device. Planting the seed early in this way, cunningly stimulates our curiosity about the others.
“Does Barry Manilow know that you raid his wardrobe’ Bender (Judd Nelson)
And of course, it also seems to nail Claire’s character as some spoiled, stuck-up bitch, leading into the initial antipathy the group express towards one another when they’re gathered in the school hall and delivered the assignment of writing an essay about themselves by Paul Gleason’s preening, patronising Mr Vernon. After all, these characters are as described – ‘a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal’ – and given the everyday tribalism of high school life, they normally wouldn’t talk to one another. Naturally, the story needs to move on from that position, in which case devil-may-care Judd Nelson’s white-trash rebel Bender comes to the fore. His verbal jousting with the teacher, and his removal of a screw from the door so it closes and isolates them from Mr Vernon’s office prompts the realisation that for all the attitudes which divide them, the kids have a common enemy – adult authority. This in turn establishes Bender’s narrative function as the guy who pushes other people’s buttons and sets the agenda for the storyline – he’s the one who leads the others in an illicit foray down the corridors (‘Being bad feels good’), the one who brings up otherwise avoided topics such as virginity, class tensions, and relationships with parents, and the one who sacrifices himself to distract Mr Vernon and allow the rest of the kids to get back to the central hall before teacher notices they’ve disobeyed orders and gone walkies.
“We’re all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it, that’s all.” Andrew (Emilio Estevez)
While the course of the action has admirable variation in terms of dividing the group up into different configurations, changing locations within the school, even working in a pop video and a bit of dope-smoking, it’s the sense of enclosure which raises the stakes. Once the ice is broken, the interaction acquires its own momentum, buffeted this way and that by alternating defensiveness and openness, simply because this window in time and space makes it possible to address the issues which really matter. If they want to talk and need to talk about abusive or distant parents, peer-group pressure, socio-economic divisions and so on, this is their time – it might be the only chance they ever get to do it. However stagy or contrived the set-up might seem it is effective in managing that difficult task of getting teenagers to open up. And, of course, in so doing, they realise that they’ve all got problems – Bender’s rebel stance may be a dead end, wrestler Andrew’s gung-ho dad has made him feel that he’s not a man unless he’s bullying some weakling, princess Claire has to cope with the stress of maintaining her popularity, black-clad Allison has retreated into herself since she’s given no support by her folks, while seemingly model student Brian is on the verge of cracking after failing woodwork class and jeopardising his grade-point average.
However Hollywood synthetic the parade of revelations might seem, Hughes’ ear for authentically felt, ever-zippy dialogue (which makes the movie in hindsight a treasury of ‘80s slanguage, including the deathless term ‘neo-maxi zoom dweebie’) means the movie never descends into mere glibness. Indeed, in an era when the legacy of National Lampoon’s Animal House and Porky’s rendered the teen movie an arena for high-jinks and titillation, the very fact that you had adolescents actually talking to one another about the real texture of their lives made the film incredibly fresh and powerful in its day, and helps it stand up even now (even if the characters seem almost squeaky clean by today’s standards). The ‘what are you in for?’ question to some extent shapes the flow of the confessions, with Andrew’s shock admission of self-disgust at becoming a bully coming mid-way through, and fraying geek Brian’s even more startling news that he had a gun in his locker (only a flare gun actually, but we take the film’s prescient point) providing the climactic moment which most exposes the gulf between superficial labelling and the underlying realities of these young lives. After which, Allison’s admission that she came to detention because she shad nothing better to do, is so patently absurd that it lets the steam out of the situation, and allows the film to make its transition towards resolution – pairing-off Claire/Bender and Allison/Andrew feels slightly formulaic in the circumstances, but it’s still a measure of how far the characters have come since 7am that morning that we’re prepared to countenance it.
“When you grow up, your heart dies” Allison (Ally Sheedy)
So, lessons learned, eyes opened, essay completed (thanks to Brian, whose voice we heard right at the very beginning), and a fresh start to come, but can the film really be considered a full-strength rites of passage tale without in some way confronting death (see David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, etc)? This is a perennial question about this particular kind of story, and it’s fascinating that after most of the secrets have been aired, the question of whether ‘The Breakfast Club’ are all going to grow up to be like their parents is thrown into the ring, prompting Allison’s response that growing up is a kind of death. What with Mr Vernon pointedly insisting that Bender have a think about where his rebel cool will get him in five years time, there is a sense that the characters are only now beginning to look forward, that their youth is coming to a close. Interestingly, Hughes directly follows ‘are we gonna be like our parents?’ with Brian’s follow-up ‘what is gonna happen to us on Monday?’. Now that they’ve all expanded their horizons, will they actually speak to one another in the corridors come next week’s classes? The answer’s convincingly equivocal, but the question itself highlights the notion of making the best of their time, following through on their new-formed friendships whether it’s acceptable to their respective social circles or not. Like any rites of passage tale worth its salt, there’s at least some suggestion that after the galvanising experiences they’ve just shared, change will ensue.
Hints and Tips
• Peopling a script with recognisable types might seem like it’s lacking originality, but it can provide a useful character shorthand, and if you can reveal what’s going on beneath seemingly over-familiar exteriors it can pay dividends in emotionally engaging the viewer.
• Don’t immediately jump to the conclusion that restricting location and time-frame is a theatrical conceit which will look overly constrained on film, since such restrictions can sometimes put the squeeze on characters and get them behaving in interesting ways which it might have been more tricky to engineer had they been given greater liberty.
• Using an opening voiceover to reveal the outline of what's about to happen can be a risky strategy, yet at the same time it’s also intriguing since the audience feels as though they know the ‘what’ and so they’re keen to have the ‘why’ which makes sense of it.
©Trevor Johnston/The Script Factory 2008
If you'd like to discuss this review with Trevor Johnston you can email him at info@scriptfactory.co.uk
Don't forget that if you're inspired to get going on a rites-of-passage screenplay to rival this one, we may be able to help with a new Genre Season training series starting in November.
Badlands Competition
Regular readers of this column will remember that, prompted by Trevor’s thoughts on Badlands, we set a competition last month for you to suggest the film which makes best use of voiceover. The suggestions were plentiful and ranged from Godard's Alphaville and Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest to Adaptation and True Romance – but Trevor was in no doubt about his two winners:
1. Forrest Gump (does that surprise you?) for creating a character through the voiceover who's obviously limited in his view of the world, allowing us to enjoy the comedy of his misadventures yet at the same time never losing compassion for him. As a movie overall, there seems to be a reactionary tone to it which is undoubtedly problematic, but you can't help but admire the execution of the voiceover.
2. And the much lesser known George Washington, an interesting choice, and as its entrant suggesed, quite daring for being narrated by a minor character who supplies a different perspective on the events we see on screen.
Our winners - Andrew Philip who suggested GW and Adaora Nwandu who went for Gump, were offered a night at the movies courtesy of the BFI Southbank to see the newly restored Badlands on the big screen.