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Apr 15

Rewatching ‘The Breakfast Club’: Some Takeaways

MSDBRCL EC016I recently rewatched The Breakfast Club (purely for research, I swear).

While it’ll always be my favorite John Hughes movie (Sixteen Candles has a bit too much broad humor for me and Pretty in Pink just doesn’t hold up well), I couldn’t help but be bothered, and also surprised, by some things.

Bender’s verbal assault and sexual harassment of Claire. Or perhaps verbal and sexual assault?

It’s well-known that Judd Nelson stayed in character and continued to abuse Molly Ringwald when the cameras stopped rolling. While Ringwald “knew what he was doing” and so wasn’t bothered by the terrorizing, John Hughes was “fiercely protective” of her and almost had Nelson fired.

What’s extra disturbing is that Claire ends up with Bender, which is what we all wanted as teenagers, but now I worry that the abuse wouldn’t have ended, and might have gotten worse.

Ah adulthood, ruining everything.

I forgot how cute Emilio Estevez was. He was truly the nice guy in the movie, and for the billionth time, I was glad when Ally Sheedy’s Allison ended up with his Andrew Clark.

Ally Sheedy and Anthony Michael Hall are really good in this. So are the others but those two especially. And Hall was only 15 when shooting started!

I identify much more with Allison now than before. When I was younger, I probably wanted to distance myself from someone like her, but now that I’m older, I really admire her, dandruff, purse full of tampons, and all.

How did the library not reek of pot smoke? And while we’re at it, wouldn’t have the principal noticed the broken glass of the language lab?

I’m now obsessed with imagining John Cusack as Bender. Apparently John Cusack was close to getting the role of Bender. Ringwald said Cusack was great but different, “funnier and more sly and cute,” and, it seems, “not enough of a dick.”

Now I can’t stop imagining an alternate Breakfast Club universe with a cute, funny, sly Cusack version of Bender, rather than the scary and dangerous Nelson. I guess I’ll have to make do with One Crazy Summer, Better Off Dead, The Sure Thing, and Say Anything, all of which I guess I’ll have to rewatch as well.