The Breakfast Club Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I was a wee lass when my mom and I caught The Breakfast Club on late-night TV. I remember a distinct uneasiness mixed with giggles during the one scene where John Bender (Judd Nelson looking very foxy) snuck a peek at Claire's underwear while he was hiding under the desk. (Claire, in case you live under a rock, is played with ice-queen perfection by Molly Ringwald.) I teared up when Brian (Anthony Michael Hall) described his desire to commit suicide. And I admired how awesome, cool, and crazy Allison (Ally Sheedy) was in her black clothing, purse full of crap, and lies about sex with her shrink. (I was also disappointed by her makeover, but such is life. Duckie was supposed to end up with Andie, and Iona traded in her punk rocking-ness for a more normal dude in Pretty in Pink, after all.) And every time I hear "Don't You (Forget About Me)" by Simple Minds all I want to do is dance in my living room and trade earrings with a cute boy. I was never in detention, but The Breakfast Club makes me wish I was. At least once.

What's your favorite memory of watching a John Hughes movie? What scene do you wish you could have lived in, just for a minute?

I began writing this article within minutes of hearing the news that John Hughes passed away unexpectedly this afternoon, and I'm still reeling a bit, more than I had anticipated. Like most movie fans of my generation, I first heard of him in the summer of 1983, when two movies he'd written, Mr. Mom and National Lampoon's Vacation, were released within a week of each other. I saw both, smiling at Mr. Mom and laughing hard throughout Vacation. The following year, Sixteen Candles, his directorial debut, hit theaters, and he was off to the races.

Hughes was a prolific writer and a busy producer throughout the 80s and 90s, leaving his personal stamp on dozens of projects, not to mention the eight films that he personally directed. He mined his suburban Midwestern teenage territory thoroughly, leaving no awkward, class-conscious, embarrassing, financially slighted, pretty in pink, uncomfortable stone unturned. He left behind so many memorable movie moments that it would be a foolhardy project for me to try and list them all, but here are seven of his greatest, listed chronologically.

1. National Lampoon's Vacation
Hughes expanded his own short story into an epic road trip, as the Griswold family heads west from Chicago on a "quest for fun" to Walley World. Along the way, they endure annoying relatives, smelly Aunt Edna, and a dog that becomes a drag. Oh, and Dad tries skinny dipping with a supermodel. The clip that seems most emblematic of their travails comes late in the picture, as Mom and the kids start complaining again, until Dad finally loses it. Hughes was an expert at using the "f-word" (and other profanity) to great comedic effect. [Watch clip after the jump.]

It wasn't that long ago that documentaries carried the stigma of being educational first and entertaining second. As with foreign-language fare, an audience for them lingered on the fringe, and an industry was willing to offer them their very own awards, but they really weren't terribly high-profile box-office prospects... that is, until the '04-'05 summer successes of Fahrenheit 9/11 and March of the Penguins made it seem perfectly okay for audiences to see, and for studios to market, a film without so much as one measly explosion in it.

But then along comes American Teen: a film openly marketed as - and arugably assembled to be - anything but a documentary that finds itself underperforming in its current limited runs (it goes wide this Friday). Last May, I witnessed a group of young women leaving whatever indie they caught at Washington D.C's Landmark E Street Cinema as they approached the film's poster and wondered aloud if someone was remaking The Breakfast Club, with a tone that suggested neither horror nor concern, nor any great interest in the big, fat what-if scenario placed before them.

What I wonder now is, at what point did we begin to craft documentary filmmaking specifically to the masses, and then what happens when the masses simply don't show?

By: James Rocchi

(With American Teen opening nationwide this week, we at Cinematical are re-running our Sundance 2008 interview with director Nanette Burstein.)

One of the biggest word-of-mouth buzz hits of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, Nanette Burstein's American Teen follows a handful of high school students in Indiana for 10 months; the resulting documentary somehow has the look and feel of a Hollywood-manufactured piece of teen fiction, with stylish and surreal animated sequences -- and still offers a touching, bold, you-are-there window into the state of adolescence in America. Paramount Vantage purchased the documentary's rights only a few days ago, but when the director met Cinematical, it looked as if her schedule hadn't gotten any less harried. Asked if she has a future project in mind, Burstein laughs ruefully: "The next thing I'd like to do is sleep for a really long time." Burstein spoke with Cinematical about how she came to be in Indiana, the media-savvy minds of today's kids, the sequences she had to lose from her original "8 hour cut," and much more.


This interview, like all of Cinematical's podcast offerings, is now available through iTunes; if you'd like, you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:

When American Teen first premiered back in January at the Sundance Film Festival, audience reaction was very very positive. But then came the big, elephant-in-the-corner question: How do you sell a real-life, big-screen documentary about teenagers to teenagers? Would they look at it and think, "Um, okay, so it's like a longer episode of MTV's True Life?"

Early buzz (including some from our own James Rocchi) was touting American Teen as the next Breakfast Club, with one clear difference: This one was real. The first poster for the film took those early festival reviews to heart and offered up a remake of The Breakfast Club poster, but with these new kids in the old poses. Now comes the first trailer, which definitely keeps the same Breakfast Club tone only we don't hear any "Don't you ... forget about me" in the background. Check it out above and let us know what you think.

Teenagers: Will you go see this in theaters?

I bet you'll look at this for a second and go, "Um, did they remake The Breakfast Club, or .... what?" No, they did not remake the John Hughes cult classic, but they did remake the poster for the new documentary American Teen. One of the more popular films from the Sundance Film Festival, American Teen was quite often the subject of debate. People loved it, but couldn't understand how someone would market it. After all, how do you sell a documentary about teenagers to teenagers? Sure, it works on MTV ... but would it work on the big screen?

Obviously, Paramount Vantage is running with the quote most often heard amongst critics in Park City: "It's like The Breakfast Club, but a documentary." Even our own James Rocchi was in agreement when he opened up his Sundance review with, "Nanette Burstein's documentary American Teen opens not far from John Hughes country, both geographically and artistically: we're introduced, in quick order, to four students at the high school in Warsaw, Indiana, on the first day of class."

Is American Teen the next Breakfast Club? I guess we'll find out when it arrives in theaters on July 25. (Oh, and for fun we've included the original Breakfast Club poster after the jump.)

[via Film School Rejects]

In Drillbit Taylor (which opens tomorrow), three kids hire a low-budget bodyguard (Owen Wilson) to help protect them from the school's bully. This got us thinking: What are some of the great on-screen bullies? Those kids you just love to root against because they're written extremely well, offer up top-notch performances and/or remind you of someone from your past. A bully is different from your average movie villain -- they don't tend to carry lethal weapons, or run with a group of deadly terrorists. These are just regular kids with a little too much power thrown their way. Your run-of-the-mill Hollywood bully usually hangs with a group of about two of three of the same sex; guys or girls who don't have many lines, and serve only to make the main bully appear tougher.

Ideally, a great movie bully should have one or more of the following: 1) At least three classic lines. 2) A memorable downfall. 3) Hottie girlfriend or boyfriend. 4.) A name that just says it all.

We put our heads together and came up with seven of the greatest bullies on film. Check them out after the jump ...

This really seems like something that should end up in a rejected screenplay collection ...

The Hollywood Reporter has the scoop on an indie film called Bumped, a story described as a modern day version of The Breakfast Club. The twist is that five twenty-somethings will be stranded in Chicago O'Hare Airport after being bumped from a flight. One is a corporate go-getter, one a flirt, another a musician, and so on. They wouldn't normally be friends for reasons that aren't really apparent from the vantage of adulthood ... but would probably be apparent within the social structure of high school.

The movie will be the directorial debut by McG protege Anna Mastro, and will be produced by veteran producer Bridget Johnson. The script is by Lizzy Weiss. It will be financed independently, so we can't really complain that studios are ignoring originality.

Maybe I'm just jealous because I never make any friends in airports when I'm stuck in one. I just end up eating terrible fast food and flipping through the sleazier bestsellers, which I hurriedly put back when someone in the shop seems to be judging me.

I just hope the corporate go-getter or musician punches the air at the end, a'la Judd Nelson.

If the '80s left us anything, it was a melange of bad fashion that made us all wonder what we were thinking. Crimped hair. Lace gloves. Blue eye makeup. I wish I could say that we've never revisited the clothing atrocities of that era, but lately, some nuts have put on the leggings, leg warmers, and off-the-shoulder tops. Crazy kids! Many of us, however, still consider the '80s to be a decade of bad taste and temporary, wide-spread insanity.

That being said, the mistakes of the '80s also hold a heck of a lot of nostalgia. We love replicating those times at Halloween, and we talk fondly, if not embarrassingly, about our fashion forays. Many of the decade's disasters came from music and videos, but cinema also added its two cents (especially in 1985), whipping up its own fashion frenzies and regrettable outfits. With the Flashdance Collector's Edition DVD out today, here's a list of cinematic trendsetters that helped feed the fires of bad fashion.

Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985)

One of the big trendsetting characters of the eighties was, believe it or not, Helen Hunt. As Lynne Stone, she taught young girls everywhere about the splendor of hair spray, and even more importantly -- Velcro. By day, she was the rabble-rousing student at the local Catholic girls' school. But once the bell rang, the rip of Velcro would echo, and Lynne would turn her uniform inside-out to reveal sleeveless shirts, vests, and black leather miniskirts. Man, I was so jealous of her. She might have been an absolute fashion train wreck, but she was oh, so cool.

To me, nothing defines my awkward childhood better than those irresistible 80's movie tunes. Back in the day, before I saved up my hard-earned cash to purchase the Ghostbusters 2 soundtrack on a cassette tape (true story), I would take my boom box, hold it up to the TV and record the songs like that. Some of the time you'd even hear the actors' dialogue pop in -- but I didn't care; if that was the only way to get The Power of Love by Huey Lewis and the News right that second, so be it. There were loads of songs to choose from while writing this list, and I was tempted to include two from the same movie on several occasions (Footloose, to give one example), but in the end I decided to go with the songs that meant the most to me. The songs I would sing in the shower when I knew my parents weren't home. The songs that showed up at a certain point, kicked tons of ass, and defined a movie. So, without dragging this on any further, I present to you Seven Great 80s Soundtrack Songs ...

Don't You Forget About Me (Simple Minds), The Breakfast Club -- Perhaps the most memorable for any angst-ridden teenager trying to sort out their feelings about high school and the opposite sex, this song and this movie helped define a generation. When the time finally comes in the film for this song to be played, you feel like you've gone through such an emotional journey with the characters -- all of whom found their lives change forever over the course of one, long weekend detention session. Who knows if they ever remained friends after that; if their brief chats in the hallway progressively got shorter and eventually became friendly nods until, finally, they graduated, moved on with their lives, raised families and that whole experience became a distant memory. If it wasn't for that song, The Breakfast Club might have gone the same route -- and instead of becoming a classic, it may have gotten lost amidst a long list of films you remember from time to time, but quite often forget. -- Most Quotable Line: Don't you forget about me.