Director John Hughes remembers interviewing one geek after another until Anthony Michael Hall walked into his life.
"Every single kid who came in to read for the part of the freshman in 'Sixteen Candles' did the whole stereotyped high school nerd thing," Hughes said. "You know - thick glasses, ball point pens in the pocket, white socks. But when Michael came in he played it straight, like a real human being. I knew right at that moment that I'd found my geek."
Hall is a scrawny blond 16-year-old dynamo, a distillation of nervous ticks and quick comebacks. "I just played the part as a real kid, and it was apparently the same way John saw it," Hall said a few weeks ago in the small cubicle at a suburban Des Plaines high school that's serving as his dressing room for the next Hughes teen comedy, "The Breakfast Club."
"The geek character in 'Sixteen Candles' is a smart, sensitive, hip kid. He's only a jerk because that's a phase he was going through. He's really not uncool. He's obnoxious, but he's a likeable character," Hall said. "You just gotta learn to like him."
"Sixteen Candles" has held strong on the box office since it opened early last month. It's the story of insecure, gawky Samantha Baker [Molly Ringwald], whose parents forget her 16th birthday. Her unrequited crush on a handsome senior is complicated by the fact that a creepy freshman, known as The Geek, pursues her through a high school that's half "Animal House" and half Dante's "Inferno."
Not only is Hall responsible for much of the praise for the movie, but both he and Ringwald are starring in "Breakfast Club" and Hall is set to star in the third Hughes-directed teen comedy, a big-budget sci-fi tale about high school computer whizzes. That movie, called "Weird Science," begins shooting in August.
"Me and John are more like friends," Hall said. "We just hit it off, we're so much alike. It's bizarre, but sometimes we know exactly what the other is thinking. We don't have to say a word, we just nod at each other."
"John really understands a group that many people don't understand - young people," Hall said. "All these teenage movies with the big emphasis on sex: It's, like, offensive to kids, girls especially. John understands that. He wants to make movies about real kids. People respond to films that are about people as opposed to the exploitation trash we've been seeing so much."
Hall is a New York City kid from a show-biz family [his mother, Mercedes Hall, is a singer] who was taken to meet his first agent at age 8.
"My parents took me to this agency and I read some copy for this agent and landed some commercial parts," Hall said. "I did one of those [ABC] 'After School Specials' and then got a small part in my first movie, 'Six Pack' [1982]. Remember, that Kenny Rogers movie? Things took off, though, when I got the part in 'National Lampoon's Vacation' [1983]."
The movie was released with little fanfare and went on to make a fortune. In fact, Hughes wrote - but did not direct - two of last year's top 10 moneymakers, "Vacation" and "Mr. Mom."
"Things were pretty controlled and straight on 'Six Pack' and, to a lesser extent, on 'Vacation,'" Hall said. "But with the movies I've made with John, a lot of the stuff was spontaneous. He's a wonderful writer, but he's also willing to let us do some things of our own on the set - as long as it fits, as long as it's done naturally."
In "Breakfast Club," Hall plays one of five students forced to spend their entire Saturday in the high school library working off a detention.
"My character in 'Breakfast Club' is really different from the geek," Hall said. "He's a smart kid, a brain, someone who's been told his whole life that he's supposed to be smarter than the other kids. But he's got a lot of problems, he's troubled."
In "Weird Science," Hall plays "a kid who's more in the jerk category." With a friend, he uses his home computer to inadvertently create, out of electronic megabits, their dream girl.
"It's a great story," Hall said.
But of all the things happening in Hall's life these days, the most important, by far, is the test he will take later this month for his California driver's license. "I can't wait," he said, drumming the table with palpable anticipation. "I've been studying with Molly [who's also 16] and we're ready. Believe me, we're ready
