What kind of a show you guys.
Putting on here today?
You're not interested in armed now? No, look, we're going to do this thing. We're going to have a conversation.
Hey, film spotters, Josh here with Adam this weekend, the definitive eighties high school comedy The Breakfast Club is back in theaters for its fortieth anniversary. Fortieth anniversary, still influential, Adam, I think we both got news about a new release, an India release called Pools that I believe is playing right about now at Music Box Theater. Check that for sure.
I know they had their premiere there not too long ago, and they described it as being influenced at Chicago made and set and being influenced by John Hughes comedies of the eighties like The Breakfast Club.
So yeah, definitely a movie that.
Is still affecting films and filmmakers many few decades on here, and we wanted to share with you.
Are safe could cow review? Now?
We did this back for The Breakfast Club's thirtieth anniverse, which was in twenty fifteen.
That's right, and we're not just busting it out for its fortieth. It's also timely because this weekend September seventh, and on Wednesday, September tenth, commemorating its fortieth anniversary. There are going to be special theatrical screenings around the country. If I can find a link with more details about that, we'll post it in the show notes. Wherever you're listening to the podcast, you can try to find it there. Otherwise,
just google it, look for it around you. Hopefully it will be playing near you, especially if you haven't seen it in maybe thirty years or so, or maybe somehow you've never seen The Breakfast Club at all, or maybe you're now you're our age and you have kids who are the age that maybe we were when you saw the film, when we saw the film for the first time, and they can actually experienced it for the first time on the big screen. This is your opportunity to see it.
September seventh, September tenth.
Now we're pulling this review, as I said, from the Film Spotting Archives, Adam, And if you want access to these archives all the time, all you have to do is join the Film Spotting Family. That's where you'll get those reviews. You'll get top fives and more going back to two thousand and five. So archive access just one of the benefits you get as a member of the family, and you can learn more about all of that at
film spottingfamily dot com. For now here, enjoy our Sacred Cow review of The Breakfast Club.
What do you say we closed that door?
We can't have any kind of part of the burning checking us out every few seconds. You know, the doors is supposed to stay open, So why don't you just shut up? As for other people in here, you know you can come see.
I knew you had to be smart to be a wrestler.
The hell you do to judge anybody anyway? Really, you know, Benda, you don't even count. I mean, if you disappear forever, it wouldn't make any differences. Well, not even exist at this school.
Well I'll just run right out and join the wrestling team.
Maybe the prep club too, student council.
They wouldn't take you.
I'm hurt.
Our Sacred Cow selection this time Adam is a movie that's maybe not sacred to cinophiles in general, but it certainly is to those of our generation. The Breakfast Club John Hughes chamber piece about five high schoolers stuck together for a Saturday of detention came out in nineteen eighty five, Yes, thirty years ago. You and I were not quite yet in our teens then, but I know I at least
was already fascinated by all things teenager. I'm guessing I didn't actually see the movie until it came out on video most likely, but at that point I did watch it enough times that I could predict most of the lines of dialogue during this revisit. Judging by your brief review on Letterbox, your revisit was a blissful trip down memory lane.
Five stars.
That's as high as it goes on letters Are you aware of that were five stars?
Okay?
I'm guessing one reason for this lavish rating is because you picked up on a secondary level of wisdom to the movie when watching it now as an adult.
Oh, one of the things.
You noted in your review was the truthfulness of an observation made by Allison the basket Case, played by Ali Sheety, who contends that we all become our parents. So what was it like to watch The Breakfast Club now, not as a kid, but as a parent, And how do you feel about Allison's other observation When you grow up your heart dies, is your heart Dead, Adam, is that five star rating just a shameless attempt to prove otherwise.
It might be you might be onto something that is a little bit melodramatic. But I love that line, and I'll get to why in a moment. First, though, I do hope there's a little bit of magic in the air. Did you catch that when this film opens and you get that opening voiceover that the date is the exact same date we are sitting here to record tonight.
By Mark hitting twenty fourth.
Wow, it's March twenty fourth, nineteen eighty four, that Saturday, thirty one years ago. They shot it before it came out, clearly eighty five, but it's exactly the night. So, like I said, hopefully that'll bring something to this discussion, and it is for me. Forget being able to predict certain lines. This was a unique Sacred Cow experience. We've always seen
the movies first, that's what makes them Sacred Cows. We're revisiting them, But in this case I could quote, and to the annoyance of my wife, did quote eighty percent of the movie as it was going on. I don't know to get to your question that watching it as a parent really came into play for me. My son Holden just turned thirteen. He's a huge nerd. He would be the Brian here and he would use that term
to describe himself and do it with pride. High school is hard, but I'm fairly constantly worried about my kids already. I'm a high dread kind of guy. More significant to me was seeing it as an adult. When I'm not the same age, or, as you noted, a little bit younger than these kids. Maybe I can't directly relate to their day to day problems. Besides having a different perspective, I was also just more aware of it as a movie, how it's constructed, and hopefully we'll get to that a
little bit as well. I think that line from Alison Ali Sheety, though, is one of the keys to the Breakfast Club in terms of why it holds up so well thirty years later. It's not just that it was. I think that I can recall anyway the first movie to simultaneously establish these high school archetypes while deconstructing them.
It's how seriously John Hughes takes these kids' concerns and how thoroughly he explores them amidst all of this comedy, sometimes broad silly comedy, he goes to some really dark, serious places and he does it as well. In Ferris Buehler's Day Off. If you think about Cameron his daddy issues, destroying the beloved Ferrari at the end of that movie. I always found that tonal shift in Ferris Bueller a little bit cumbersome, a little bit hard to overcome because
it's such a heavy moment. And then it's sort of like, Oh, we're back to Ferris Bueller running around backyards, and we're just supposed to forget everything Cameron's going to face and everything he's been through. But Emilio Estevez's monologue here about three quarters the way through this movie about what he did to get intolration, Yeah, and why good, that's even darker than anything with Cameron, that unbroken take that underscores
the weight of it. That character isn't just telling a story. He seems to be channeling something deep from within Anthony Michael Hall's breakdown as well. Hughes is trying, i think, in succeeding at making us laugh, but he's clearly using these characters and this setting to really wrestle with something wrestling with whether you can overcome your nature, your upbringing, or if you're doomed to become your parents, can you
stop your heart from dying? I think that for me, Josh is what makes this movie so timeless and universal. Almost everyone, but especially any junior high kid or high school kid, no matter what generation, can relate to. That fear, along with everything else in the movie, is dealing with as far as establishing your identity, retaining your individuality while being part of a group, trying to be accepted within
that group or culture. So yeah, this movie really did hit me about the same way it hit me thirty years ago, which is something I wasn't expecting because I hadn't seen it since then. Maybe actually in high school, I remember showing it to my now wife because she had never seen it, but I was still of that age I was in high school. It really did resonate with me.
Was it just recently last week? I think with Cinderella probably we talked about children's films for a younger age group, how it's important to respect that audience's intelligence, and the same thing happens for teen audiences, where the filmmakers will often consider let's just give them the lowest common denominator. The Breakfast Club does not do that. It's very interested in these kids, not as archetypes, as stereotypes as ways to get some funny jokes out. It's interested in their
stories and the universality of their experiences. The bullying thing that you mentioned Andrew's monologue is an amazing sustained sequence, especially when you think about in nineteen eighty five. Clearly that was something that educators were aware of, but it was nowhere near to the degree of attention it gets today in terms of experts coming into our schools and having sessions with kids about being proactive about keeping.
This at bay.
But the complexity of it too, why he does That's why.
I'm talking to emotional awareness of understanding here. Well before this was a common thing that people were digging into of what led to it and how this is an The act was an expression of Andrew responding to how his father treated him, and just the really haunting line that Andrew says, how do you apologize for something like that?
There's no way. It's all because of me, my own man. I fucking hate him. He's like this, It's like this mindless machine that I can't even relate to anymore. Andrew, You've got to be number one. I won't tolerate any lousures in this family. Your intensity is for shit?
When when when.
Your son?
I mean, what movie would not only acknowledge that the kid is thinking about his action, just move beyond the action. Most teen movies that deal with bullying are centered around the act of bullying itself. And here's something considering the aftermath and considering the sorrow on the part of the offender. And we could talk about the way that the movie gives almost every character in this film a chance to consider who they are in that deep of a manner.
So I think this absolutely stands up. It did for me as well. I didn't go quite as crazy for it as you did. And maybe we can talk about.
Why I probably did. I backed off a little bit or younger either, did you?
Oh all, I remember when I watched it is just thinking, yeah, I loved it, and just thinking like, is this what high school's like?
Wow?
You know it was kind of this because we were both younger than the people in the story. You're kind of looking at it as a primer with it. And so that's why the dialogue would stick in my head. It was almost like you're packing these things so that you'll be ready when you get to high school. That's what I remember taking it in as at that point. But here, you know, it does just speak across generations and across decades.
I would put it up there.
A couple of titles that work similarly in the teen genre would be Splendor in the Grass decades earlier in terms of just getting at that idea of you know, puppy love much more focusing on sexuality, Yeah.
For sure, sexuality and sexual attention and.
That aspect of being a teenager. And then something more recent Scott Pilgrim Versus the World. There is another movie that I came out of and just thinking, man that gets it, that manages to get at the heart of what it was like to be a teenager. And these movies, all three of those movies, they don't just get the look right. They don't just get the dialogue right. I might argue that The Breakfast Club does not get the dialogue right, and a lot of situations in terms of
the phrases they use. But what these movies I'll do is they embody the experience in such a way and this film. Hughes does it primarily for the attention that he gives to the characters and also the cast. I mean, this thing would not work as well as it does without this phenomenal cast, and we can maybe talk about who we think rises to the top. I finally came up with an answer after wrestling with that a little bit.
My son wrestling. Is that a Q maybe a big Estavez fan?
No, I went another direction.
Well, I didn't really think about it in those terms, but I did discover that I did appreciate these performances beyond what I remember as a kid liking the movie overall and not really judging those performances. Here, being a little more objective or distance from it, I was able to see them as what they are. I think they
are all really good, really strong performances. But I want to go back to the opening of the film, because all of these kids, this is the first thing I said out loud as Sarah and I were watching the movie. I'm like, all these kids are being driven to school by their parents, and yet they seem to me like maybe juniors or seniors. Maybe Brian is the youngest. He might be fifteen, a sophomore but otherwise they all seem like they're of driving age, but they're being dropped off by their parents.
That seems so weird.
And of course then I thought about it for a minute as that sequence played out, and I realized, it's.
All about that parent, it really is.
And you see what he is doing, what he accomplishes there is he immediately gives us a window into their psyches. We see where they're coming from, and for example, we understand the disconnect between Claire and her dad, the academic pressure and demands of Brian's mom, the athletic pressure and demands of Andrew's dad, that blatant disregard of Allison's parent. I don't even think we know who it is. They
just don't even acknowledge her and drive away. And of course the loner bender who hilariously walks right in front of the car without stopping. He's the one who comes in by himself, no parent who cares about him. So the whole movie set up right there, all those dynamics that we need to see, and before we discover them to be a certain type, we get to see them as people and see that baggage that they're carrying with them. Before they begin any of these interactions or these confrontations
with each other. It of course sets up the whole trajectory of the story, as I said, but it also gives us some insight that the other characters don't have. I think it actually establishes a neat layer of subtext to a lot of those interactions and confrontations that we wouldn't otherwise be aware of. A perfect example is when Bender does his impersonation of what it's like at the Johnson resident the cuts to Anthony Michael Hall and his reaction.
You can read it as he's hurt because he's being made fun of, But because we know what the dynamic really is like at home, we as a viewer appreciate that on a different level. We see through it a little bit and we recognize that he's not just hurt it being made fun of. He's actually hurt because he wishes his home life was probably that way, and it's not that way at all. So there are double layers to a lot of what's going on in this film.
And we were talking about how quotable this is. And for me in fifth grade when I saw this movie, we watched it hundreds of times I mean probably not hundreds, but it felt like it and we did know every single line. So one of the questions I was really wondering as I sat down to watch it now, like I said, at least twenty years since I last saw it, it was could it make me laugh? Could I actually laugh out loud when I know all the lines, I know all the jokes and what's coming. I laughed a lot.
I laughed out loud a lot of this movie. And it wasn't at the big, broader jokes. The things that did make me laugh a lot as a nine or ten year old. It was the reactions, the expressions on their faces, the overall absurdity of some of those moments, like Bender and Brian Judd Nelson and Anthony Michael Hall taking their coats off at the same time, and Ryan acquiesces when Bender kind of shoots him a dirty look,
like are you copying me or something? And it's not just that he decides to stop and put his coat back on, that's funny enough, it's that he then rubs his hands together like he's cold and he really wants to put his jacket back on, but he feels the need to put on that show is really funny. The look Bender gives him when he does the I'm a Walrus bit and he puts the pen on his lip.
Those bits for me that I maybe didn't laugh so hard at, like I said, however many years ago, were really funny to me this time.
A lot of those are the social cues that the film just nails in how teens walk into a room and it's immediately perhaps you know, it still happens when you're adult, of course, but never more so as heightened as when you're a teen. You're immediately staking your place, and it captures how that's done through gestures and through looks and those sorts of things. So life at Bry's
that scene is perhaps the standout to me. I had three scenes that I want to make sure we talked okay, and we got to the first one already, Estevez's confession of bowling. I think that's crucial, and I think he's fantastic in it, and I like how Hughes uses the camera there too, as you said, unbroken, but also moving around to include all of them in this conversation. This was much more visually sophisticated than I would have expected
in revisiting it. But the other two scenes I wanted to talk about are who I do give my MVP award again, not that we need to, but to Judd Nelson, Yeah, and life at Bryce the way that goes from this comic impersonation that's.
Also so bitter.
I mean, it's just so clear that the reason this really bothers him is because his home life is not like that too, And as much fun as he's making of Brian, that he's also just furious because of this other element going on. And then how it transitioned to the impression of life at his house, which is really scary. I mean, Nelson and we got to talk about this as well, how he treats Claire, because I think we look at that differently, people in general would look at
that differently than they did in nineteen eighty five. And he's scary with her too. But I think that's a very good element of the performance. I love the different levels that Nelson brings to this. Even when he has that early standoff with Vernon and he gets the four or eight extra weeks of detention, there's that.
Moment got Chay, Yeah, there's that.
Moment where he turns away and you can see that. Okay, most high school comedies would play that up.
Purely for Trump the rebel.
He's the rebel, but they hold it that one extra beat so that he shows he's pissed at himself.
Yeah, for him leeing self control.
He can't believe he did it.
So those are two things.
The other one goes to Nelson too, and it is that early one where it's it's a sexual harassment slash seduction of Claire and watching that very early on where he's trying to find out, you know what, how sexually experienced she is. He's flirting with her at the same time she's acting repulse but also pulling back enough here and there to I don't want to say toy with him, but to give him the hint that she's still listening.
Let's just put it that way for sure, all right.
So in nineteen eighty five, and as a kid, you know, I'm taking.
That as Wow, is this guy cool?
You know?
And you'll hear from women too, or I think I saw it on It might have been the film's finding Facebook feed. That's where girls fell in love with John Bender, that bad boy.
What's yours?
Claire? Claire Claire.
It's a family name.
Oh it's a fat girl's name. Oh, thank you, you're welcome. Not fat, well, not a present, but I could see you really pushing maximum density.
You see.
I'm not sure if you know this, but there are two kinds of fat people.
There's fat people that were born to be fat, and there's fat.
People that were once thin but they became fat. So when you look at them, you can sort of see that thin person inside.
You see you're gonna get married, You're gonna squeeze out a few puppies. And then, oh, I've.
Seen finger gestures from such a pristine girl.
Not that pristine.
Are you a virgin? I'll bet you a million dollars that you are.
You read that scene today where we're much more attuned to things like sexual harassment, and it reads very creepily. But I think that's good as well, because it speaks to the authenticity. So we could say we could put a politically correct label on this and say, oh, breakfast Club is so dated because of scenes like that, but I think it speaks to an authenticity again of the social cues of how girls and guys, whether it's right or wrong, do interact and how they handle those sorts
of interactions. Now, the one place where we might want to talk about does the movie make a misstep is in following through on where does that relationship go by the end of the film. A Is that believable? And B is that maybe getting us to root for something that really is unhealthy. I'm still trying to work my way through that because people read the ending differently as well. Whether or not Bender and Claire do end up together or was this kind of a one off flirtation thing.
Well, let's just go ahead and get to it, because I don't want to sidetrack the whole review with it. But for me, it's not as problematic because I do see it as more of a one off type of thing. I don't think come Monday, Bender and Claire are holding hands with each other walking down the hall, or he's showing up at her house and angering her father. I see this as a one time act of kindness and compassion and deciding to call a truce.
But that's it.
I don't see them embarking on any kind of a relationship with each other.
Okay, I wouldn't go quite that far.
I don't think they're holding hands on Monday either. But I think the movie wants you to believe there is a relationship that will continue there, and I think in having us root for that is where we might want to say, uh, okay, I don't know if that's that's quite so healthy. But that also brings to mind somebody I thought of after watching this, how did they not make the sequel The Breakfast Club Monday Morning and let us know, you know, what really happened to these kids
when they showed up that day. I'm totally with you. Nobody even gave each other a second glance. Yeah, I mean, as hopeful as this movie wants to be, if it really stayed true and was as authentic as it is to these kids that Monday morning would be they don't know each other.
Well, maybe we'll come back to this. It is sort of like Before Sunrise in a little bit where you win. Six months later, what's going to happen? And the key question uestion for thirty years And that's one of the beauties of this film as well, is that we still have that question to ask and ponder in debate because we don't know the answer. But I'm with you, except I would say Josh. A second glance is exactly what they do and no more. I think we get the
second glance. I think there's a little bit social queue.
Where they try to let each other know that they remember said right. Anyone else sees.
That's exactly right. But that's what bender.
I appreciated him as a young man, as a young kid because I respected his verbal dexterity and his sort of just rebellious spirit.
It probably was look.
I wasn't growing up watching scooball comedy, So watching someone who is that quick and that witty and able to disarm people the way he was that was attractive to me at that age. I didn't really see it as a performance in anything deeper than that until watching it this time. I do love his costuming as well. I picked him as one of the top five Halloween costumes I'd wear fast this past October. But you watch it,
it's such a hodgepodge of looks. He's grabbing an all these different places to try to form some kind of identity. You've got the flannel before flannel was a look, the boots, those hand glove things he's wearing a little bit, there's some of that kind of biker, rebel, criminal thing. But there's also a guy wearing that overcoat like he's a prep. You know, he really is just grasping at anything, and I think that applies to a lot of the characters here.
But you're right in terms of the performance, that sense of anger and resentment but also pain that underlies everything here. You realize watching it this time that he's overcompensating for everything. That confident routine really is just completely enact with him. And what is underlying everything is that fear that everything Andrew says to him at one point is accurate. Oh, just that he really doesn't matter, and that comes through in Nelson's performance.
And Claire calls him out on it too, And that's where I like the ring Wall performance where she definitely has those strong moments where she gives it back to him and lay great bear. She sees through all of that because she's doing similar things. They're all doing similar things, so they all know what they're doing, but who's going to admit to it. Well, first of all, they're going to call each other out on it.
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Yeah.
No, that's exactly right.
And I think that as we talk about the look of this film, you mentioned that it was more visually sophisticated than you.
Remember it or would have even noticed it. That's right.
I think that shot, though, that unbroken take that rotates around the group, is probably the only shot that really calls attention to itself in the film. But what I noticed this time, and this is one of those bits on the show here where audio certainly doesn't help us. A video essay would be much more instructive, because what I loved is is the editing. I really noticed this time how much of the movie is made by the cutting, because it's not visually audacious, and it has so many
memorable lines of dialogue in it. I think everybody focuses on the writing, and they give Hughes All this credit as a screenwriter but all of the relationships, the character dynamics, it's all revealed in the silences, in the looks on their faces, in their reactions, because it really is all about their perceptions of each other, and not only that,
how we perceive their perceptions. So, as I said before, everything is loaded, So when you cut to a reaction shot, you're really focused on how they're taking that in and what that tells you about how they see themselves, how they see the person who's talking. That is something certainly at age nine or ten I didn't catch on too, but it's there. It really is in those decisions and
think about that. That has to be pretty formally rigorous because you've got pretty much the whole film, five people sitting around each other, and depending on how they shot it, and depending on how he was visualized it and maybe storyboarded it or not, there was probably a lot of coverage options to cut to, so the editor could have gone in a lot of different directions, but it's very precise. Every cut is done for a reason, and every cut
does have some meaning. And that was something, as I said, that caught me by surprise this.
Time for a movie that primarily takes place within that library, it does not feel static at all.
And when they get out.
Of the library, I noticed too that there's some nice framing of individuals or even them as a group within these long institutional halls, and you could just tell that care has been taken in trying to place them within this landscape and alienate them a little bit. I mean, we don only get too carried away and that you're going to put this in and it's going to wow
you with its cinematography. Now, but compared to most team comedies where the cameras just PLoP down and they go for the gags, it really does have another level going on. In the soundtrack too, a little bit with there's the
moment in particular. I think the same thing happens later on, but the one I'm thinking of is very early on when Vernon slams the door shut and Bender screams the FU and it echoes in a way, and we cut to Vernon and we were not quite sure whether Bender even said it or if this is something that you know, this is just how Vernon.
Sees these kids.
It's interesting and.
It's amplified and there's just a little some nicely clever bits going on.
Like that for sure, Carl, What can I ask you a question?
Sure? How does one become a janitor? Do you want to be a janitor?
No?
I just want to know how one becomes a janitor because Andrew here is very interested in pursuing a career in the custodia arts.
Oh really, do you guys think I'm just someth untouchable peasant, sir pon?
You know, maybe so.
Falling a broom around after shitheads like you. For the last eight years, I've learned a couple of things. I look through your letters, look through your lockers. I listened to your conversations. You don't know that, but I do. I am the eye and ears of this institution, my friends.
Now, I thought it'd be interesting to hear from one of the key figures in the movie, Carl, the janitor, John Capelos, was available for us to talk to and do an interview with, and obviously it seemed like a perfect fit for this thirtieth anniversary review of The Breakfast Club. And even though we couldn't do it, Golden Joe Tosso, our amazing co producer, was available to conduct the interview.
He took some of my questions worked in a few of his own, and Joe got John Capelos's take on why he thinks the movie resonated so strongly with audiences in nineteen eighty five and why it continues to.
I think because it hits on universal truths that are always going to be there. In adolescence. There's fear, there's a fear of failure, there's sort of dealing with your parents and all the sort of the incumbent issues that you know, and you walk away from the film going, wait a minute, what just happened? Here was a sort of a Catharsis for these people. And I think that kids continually relate to this movie because it addresses teenage acts and it doesn't talk down to them period.
I really responded to the fact that all of their problems don't get solved, and I don't know that I expected that, knowing the movie as well as I did, but I think a lot of teen movies might have gone there. They overcome their differences temporarily, they don't correct themselves or each other. Nobody gets fixed. I think here watching this movie, they don't absolve each other for their deficiencies and their foibles because of course they can't. That's
not reality. And I think that gets back to what you were saying in terms of authenticity. This is a reprieve from those lives, but they're going to get back to those lives. And to use the word that I think is so appropriate. We heard from Carl the janitor
John Kapolos, it's catharsis. There is a sense of Catharsis at the end of this film, and I was thinking about why that final shot, that final frame of Bender with his fist up in the air, why that gives you this sense of triumph when at the end the day you think nothing much has really changed here. And actually Diablo Cody, the screenwriter, is on the DVD and she talks about it as it's of course playing very memorably to the Simple Mind song Don't You Forget About Me.
She says, it's just about a saturday in detention, but you feel like a battle has been won, And she's right, you do somehow feel like a battle has been won, or at least some kind of blow has been struck, right, something decisive has happened, even if it's not going to change everything forever, some kind of blow has been struck against conformity, against complacency, falling into those roles and those
prior beliefs about each other and ultimately about compassion. And that's what I was hinting at when I said they'll at least give each other that second look. I think that second look is that bit of compassion. So lots of C words there, but catharsis is a big one as well as compassion.
I think the right word is reprieve. I think that's dead on.
And the difference is that this is a reprieve that you feel is formative. So if it does not have a practical effect on Monday morning, the hope is it will gradually as they move on with their lives. All right, So let me pump the brakes a little bit on this saw, this enthusiasm, and.
Just ask.
I can ruin that they just have to, you know, one of us has to be a little bit reasonable about the breakfast club. Some of the dialogue, it seems like I feel like Hughes understands kids much better than maybe he understood how they talked things like eat my shorts. And you know, no one in whatever grade I was, sixth or fifth would say that, no there's a lot of lines like that, the dance montage to I mean, I know, are they high at that point?
Is that the excuse we give them.
Right, which I don't think anybody really reacts to being high that way.
Everyone gets menik like they're on PCP or something.
And then they're doing these routines together. I mean, you know, he had fun with it, but as a kid, I thought that was pretty corny.
So I don't know.
I think those lines, Josh, it did occur to me when he says eat my shorts, and there were maybe one or two other bendor lines where I thought I don't think he would say it that way. But those are so compensated for by all of the other really insightful lines and those pieces of dialogue like you already touched on where you get the end of a scene with a line like Andrew recognizing, how do you apologize for that? There are too many good lines like that where you just.
Think that's why the clunkers stand down. Yeah, maybe.
At all.
No, that really isn't, especially when as I was saying a couple of other things, I like Paul Gleeson as he's phenomenal, and this is sort of like when Roger Ebert revisited the Graduate after I think thirty years of thirty five years, and he was kind of negative on the movie, and he told that story about how when he was a kid, he saw the guy at the pool party giving Benjamin Braddick advice about plastics and he laughed at him like everybody else did in the audience.
And now thirty years later he thinks.
Plastics not a bad idea, right, he has that different perspective being an older man. Well, Paul Gleeson as Vernon at that time was nothing but an adversary and antagon who didn't understand these kids. He was purely the enemy. But it's not a surprise that Hughes gives him that scene with Carl in the basement of the school, and you get a sense of his own disillusionment with his
role and what he's doing there at the school. Why he's even there at the school on a Saturday at all for someone who should be in a loftier position. I mean thirty one, I think he said thirty one thousand dollars a year.
Yeah, it's not about redeeming him.
It's not about us ever sighting with him against the kids, but it is at least a little bit about getting his perspective, and I think that's enough having a little bit of empathy for where he's coming from as well. It makes him a more interesting figure when you have that bit of empathy for him. And I do think that Carl's line to Vernon underscores another key moment in the movie for me, along with Allison's line, which is listen, vern if you were sixteen, what would you think of you?
That's something that he probably hadn't thought of until Carl said that to him, really forced himself to look at it that way and wondered how far he's come and how much he has changed in this process. And watching this movie again, when they cut to him in his office and he's isolated in there while they're isolated in that library setting, you are keenly aware of his isolation and his loneliness and a sense that he's being punished
as well. He has to sit there, as we said on this Saturday, that's what his life has amounted to. That probably isn't what he envisioned when he started out, as Karl alludes to in that conversation, all he has really going for him is power or some sense of respect, and the kids don't even give him that, so of
course imagine how he's then going to behave. But again, I never felt any empathy for Vernon before, or recognized any of myself in Vernon, and now as I watch it, I realize that there is a lot more tunem than that.
Well.
Gleason makes him more than the butt of the joke for sure, I mean he is the literal butt of the joke in many instances, but because of that scene you mentioned, and he's also not just a cardboard villain, because his villainy, if you can even and use that word, ties into what I think really this movie is spending
a lot of time considering and it's parental failure. He is treating these kids, or relating to them power the word you use, the same way that it appears most of their parents relate to them, this authoritarian power dynamic. He just puts that into place at school, that's what they're experiencing at home, And if anything, the movie is this argument that there are more to your kids or the teenage experience than just keeping them in line and making sure they do what they're supposed.
To do right there is at least one more topic I want to get into before we finalize this review, but I thought it would make sense to hear a little bit more from John Kapolos. Of course, Carl the
janitor here in this movie. As I was talking about that conversation in the basement and the relationship between Carl and Vernon, I wanted Joe to ask him about the fact that he seems to be articulating one of the key l of the movie, almost given the theme of the movie to bestow on Vernon and the audience, and I wanted his sense of his function as a character in the movie to me.
A lot of what Carl does is kind of underlines, as one would say, the theme of the film, but also underlines the notion that you you have dreams, you have aspirations, you have things you want to be, but be prepared because they are going to be crushed. And you think the detention is difficult, and you think that this world that you're in right now is difficult, you know, stay tuned. And there was a monologue that I delivered that told them world, they're all going to be like
twenty five thirty years like today, right. I told Mollie that she's going to have stretch marks from here to Zion. She's going to have five kids, a Ford suburban. She's going to be drinking too much, and her husband's not going to pay attention to her. You know, have fun with that. And I told Michael he's going to be a big lawyer, is going to work in a big loop law firm. He's going to be big money and he's going to have a big heart attack and a
big funeral at forty two. I told Emilio that he's going to be a failed athlete and he's going to be a gym teacher for the rest of his life and living vicariously through his son, like his father is living through him, and on and on it goes Judd Nelson. I said, well, you're going to spend five years at Attica, four years in Chino, you know, for armed robbery, and I sort of enumerated this long list of crimes that
he's going to commit. And Ali Sheedy failed loft artist in New York, living off the kindness of strangers, etc.
So it was a.
Really great thing because in a way that expressed like, hey, you know, you think you got it tough now stay tuned, and in a way he was sort of senior buzzkill.
So John goes on to explain that DeeDee Allen the editor, and John he was ultimately decided to leave that monologue out of the film. Obviously it's not there, and boy are we grateful, right? I mean, can you imagine if all of that was unloaded on those kids and us as an audience, it have been totally heavy handed, and it would have been unnecessary. And now that I'm thinking about that smart choice by d d Allen, and I'm thinking of my comments earlier about how sophisticated the editing
is in this film. Just before I sat down here, I thought D d Allen he mentioned her by name, otherwise I probably would have failed to That sounds really familiar. I'm gonna look her up on IMDb and see what else she has done, And of course what we see is just a few movies like The Hustler, Bonnie and Clyde, Surproco, Dog Day Afternoon Reds.
Nice.
She's done, She's done some work, and it certainly was a case where she had the right instinct to lose that monologue. Though it does explain Josh why when he says that line about the clock, by the way, is twenty minutes fast. They really react to that, and I noticed watching it this time, they seemed almost overreact to it, like it was a better little closing jab than it is. Well, it's because that was the kicker to that monologue, which would have been much funnier.
And they also keep a slight variation on that. Bender delivers a little bit of that that's true to Claire, so we get a tap that's funny. He describes Carl as a buzzkill because he struck me on this watch as being pretty zen actually.
And this model of a guy who.
Maybe didn't end up where you know he envisioned, but few people do and take it as.
It comes, and it is.
It's a really good performance. Yeah, it does, sir, for as little screen time as he got, serves a crucial function for the film.
Okay, well, I told you I had one more area I wanted to get into. I just would be remiss. I think we'd be remiss if we didn't go down this path. You talked about Claire and Bender and that
relationship maybe being more problematic. But I'm going to get to another clip here that I want to prompt you with Josh a little bit, because back in two thousand and seven, I interviewed Ellen Page and Diablo Cody for the movie Juno, and I asked Cody about an Entertainment Weekly article I had read that she was interviewed for where she referenced angela chase from My so called Life as a bit of a template for Juno similar sensibilities, and I asked her if she had any others, and
she mentioned ghost a World, but basically said, it's kind of sad that I can only think of a couple of examples of these kind of strong female characters on screen. And so then I asked Ellen Page if she could think of any others, and that led her to Ali.
Shety that Ali Sheedy gets all pretty in the end for the boy. I can't believe that this is like an iconic breaking barriers movie. I am sorry for all the lovers at the breakfast club, but when I first saw that, I was like traumatized. Really, the unique girl totally changes herself.
It's so strange that you brought that up, because I had discussed that with somebody earlier today.
Actually, the whole Ali Shady thing at the end is deeply distressing, and for what Emilia asked OFVZ.
You know, but he's a wrestler.
Yeah, so I want to know, Josh, did you find it deeply distressing that transformation that Alison makes at the end of the film. Cody is all over the Breakfast Club thirtieth Anniversary Blu Ray. She's in documentary. She does love this movie and praises it considerably. But they ask her about this and she doesn't back down from saying that she sees it as a little bit of a betrayal of that character, Allison selling out.
What do you think totally with her?
Really the point, oh, come on to the point that even my self, my eleven year old self recognized, I can distinctly remember that being a let down for me as a boy because one of the characters that I probably I mean, I wasn't like I would say, being an introvert as a kid. I remember being feeling connected to the Ali Sheety character to that degree that there's really no type in that film that I identified with when I was in high school. They're probably just too broad,
nobody really does. But I very much liked her character. Let me put it that way.
I thought I thought she would in the performance, just.
You know, someone who was really cool in that sort of in the background watching what's going on, probably smarter than maybe even Brian and dolling it out only when it was necessary. So I really liked Allison, and I remember being like, what is this now? No, this is no good beyond not even just not buying the romantic element of it, but this sort of what they're getting at more is like, this is not her, this is not you know, doesn't need to happen.
So yeah, I'm with them on that.
Okay, Well, I definitely see the argument for sure, but I didn't see it that way as a kid, and I still don't completely see it that way now. And I think it is worth noting the specific words that Ellen Page used there where she talks about how she can't believe people regard it as some kind of big breaking barriers movie and that Allison's some kind of feminist icon or something. I don't think that's something I would argue,
and I've never heard anyone else argue it. So if she was coming to the movie with that weight, expecting it to live up to that, I think the movie probably really would disappoint I suppose too, I would ask, and I'm legitimately asking. I don't have this answer. Maybe other people will share their opinion. Is something that is not feminist then anti feminist? Because I don't know that it's exactly.
It's beyond that. I mean, it's the makeover.
The makeover is never no, I agree to an extent.
It's just a bad trope.
I agree to an extent. But here's here is my one counter.
And this is my genuine response to it, and it was the response when I was a kid. Does Alison really change herself for Andy? Is there a transformation or more of a reveal of who she really might be? Because that's how I see it. I think his comment
to her is important. The first thing he says to her, actually, the first thing he verbalizes is I can see your face he finally sees her at the end of the film, rather than who she's been up to this point, a girl, as I saw it, and as I see it, literally hiding behind the unkempt hair and bangs and the black eyeliner. So I'd be distressed by it more if that character I ever felt was really comfortable in her own skin and she compromised her identity to win the affection of
a boy. But I don't think she compromises her identity because she's still trying to discover it, just like everyone else. And so, yes, in hindsight, would be better if she didn't put the blush on her cheeks? Would it be better if maybe she didn't strip down to that pink shirt?
Yeah?
Okay, maybe so.
But for me, it's more about stripping away than adding. And I think that's exactly what suggested, is that a mask has been removed, not added, by the makeup.
That could very well be what they were going for, but the method they took is hack made and problematic.
There's no way around that.
Well, I don't know that I completely buy that, but I see the argument I think too. To bolster my argument, I'll just say, how great is it that her final moment with Andrew is her stealing the patch off his jacket, Just in case we thought, well, she's no longer the basket case she prettied herself all up. All of her problems have been solved by this little makeover, and now she's like everyone else, just conforming to the way high
school is. Nope, she rips off that patch, and I just think that's one of those great little touches that shows how in sync Hughes was with these characters, even after a little bit of misstepping with how that reveal goes down.
Unless she's going to put it on her own letterman jacket, you know, then the transformation's completely Maybe.
That was going to happen. That would be fine, That would be fine.
Okay, there is a lot more I think we could talk about with The Breakfast Club, But wow, I think we've talked enough, so we cover to go ahead and close out there. Oh je up, I'll be.
I've done so.
You know, maybe I'm gonna recommend Josh that ten years from now we give The Breakfast Club another look, see how we come at that movie for its fiftieth anniversary, because you know, I'm sure it came up in that conversation.
I didn't re listen to it. I don't want to re listen to it.
Maybe I will ten years from now and see how I wrestled with it upon that revisit. But that movie, for me was one of the first movies I remember incessantly quoting and thinking was not only hilarious but also profound, you know, and I was I was like ten, you know, so whatever profound meant at ten, I thought that movie.
Was it was a peek into the high schooler's life, right, that's what you were giving.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
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