"At that age, it feels as good to feel bad as it does to feel good." -- John Hughes

"The clothing is all very layered, [and as the film progesses] they shed these layers; each layer is a little piece of the person." -- Marilyn Vance, costume designer


• Hughes actually wanted to make The Breakast Club before Sixteen Candles, but the studios insisted it be done the other way around. Fortunately through the first film he became acquainted with Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall, who he immediately cast in the second film. Sixteen Candles was released in the theaters toward the end of TBC filming.
• Hughes wrote the script in two days: July 4th and 5th of 1982. He got the title from Bobby Richter (the son of a friend); Hughes asked him what detention was called at his school in Winnetka, IL -- "The Breakfast Club," referring to Saturday morning.
• He felt pressured by studios to write in a scene featuring sex in some way, so he filmed one of Vernon spying on a teacher swimming nude. Obviously, this scene was later cut.
• You'd never guess it, but the library set was constructed on three basketball courts of an abandoned school (Maine North High School - it is now a police station). The books were donations of discarded items from the Chicago Public Library.
• Molly Ringwald originally wanted the role of Allison, and thought she was going to get it. Hughes considered switching her role with Ally Sheedy's, but stuck with his original plan. Molly later told Ally she had wanted her part, to which Ally replied, "I'm glad you didn't [get it] because I could never have played your part."
• Bender was the last role to be cast, and it was between John Cusack and Judd Nelson. Cusack didn't look threatening enough for Bender (though he became pretty angry when he didn't get the role). Nicolas Cage also read for the role at one point. Rick Moranis was originally cast as Carl, the janitor.
• "I didn't play him with 100 pens sticking out of his pocket," Anthony Michael Hall says of his brainy character Brian. "I just went in there and played it like a real kid...The geek is just a typical freshman."
• Hughes had the actors mingle with students in a real Chicago high school for a while before filming.
• Hughes insisted that the entire cast and crew eat their meals on location in the high school cafeteria.
• Claire's father, who we see drop her off in the beginning, was played by Chicago actor Tim Gamble. His son, Mason Gamble, later played Dennis in Hughes' script of Dennis the Menace.
• The guidance counselor's name plaque reads "R. Hashimoto". Richard Hashimoto was the production supervisor.
• The school's "Man of the Year" is none other than Carl Reed, the janitor who talks to the kids in the library.
• A prom queen election poster contains the name of "Michelle Manning," the co-producer of the film.
• Ringwald and Hall were only 16 and 15 at the time, so child labor laws kept them from filming more than four hours a day.
• Claire's entire outfit was purchased from the only Ralph Lauren store located in Chicago at the time.
• Every line of dialogue was shot from more than one angle. Hughes made sure most shots included the group as a whole, since the movie focused on a group going through this growing up, rather than one individual.
• Judd Nelson was nearly fired for getting too much into his character. Hughes and the others would also keep reminding Nelson to tone down the meanness of his character so he would still stay likable to the audience.
• "The Breakfast Club was an intense environment. When you walked into that library, you weren't just on a film set. John had this sort of cocoon around these guys." -- John Kapelos (Carl, the janitor)
• The pot-smoking scene was completely ad-libbed.
• The confession scene took a whole three days to film.
• A little goof: After performing her trick, Claire puts her lipstick away twice. (Interestingly, we see Molly in this same repeat in Pretty in Pink.)
• Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall dated toward the end of filming.
• Hughes gave each actor a piece of banister from the set at the end.
• The movie was filmed completely in chronological order. The last scene was filmed on the last day, the last shot filmed was of Bender walking away. The actors, naturally, were pretty emotional by the end.
• Bender's Joke: I get asked this one a lot: What is the punchline to the joke Bender is telling himself as he crawls in the ceiling? Sorry folks, there isn't one. He was making it up as he went along.
• Anthony Michael Hall's mother Mercedes played his on-screen mother at the start of the film (and the girl in the backseat was Hall's sister Mary), and John Hughes himself appeared as his father picking him up at the end of the day.
• Why did Brian end up by himself at the end? Hughes tells Lollipop.com, "Other than the obvious technical matter, which is that there were five people in the film so somebody had to get left alone at the end, [Michael and I] decided that Brian was smart enough to know that wasn't on his agenda. He was the intellectual superior of the others, and it was enough for him to be accepted by them, that they'd think enough of him to let him represent the group on paper. I think Brian was intellectually mature enough to realize that he wasn't socially mature enough to handle a relationship anyway."
• Hughes: "The most common question I'm asked is, 'What happened on Monday?' I used to say, 'Nothing.' But I think it's more complex than that. So complex that I can't do it in film. If I can finish it in prose, in a book, then the characters transcend the film."
• In its short theatrical run The Breakfast Club took in $46 million, thrusting it into the top 20 highest-grossing films of 1985.
• Sorry, Hughes does not allow TBC to be adapted for the stage. (An inquirer has written to Hughes for permission, but received a No reply from his lawyers.)
• Anthony Michael Hall says, "MTV wanted to reunite us all and bestow this special award on us at the Movie Awards last year [1997] but Judd had a family illness and had to go back to the east coast."
• Co-producer Michelle Manning later worked with Alley Sheedy and Judd Nelson for the 1986 film Blue City.
• Ally Sheedy amd John Kapelos appeared with Anthony Michael Hall on his show "The Dead Zone" on the USA Network on Sunday, March 30, 2003.
• The Breakfast Club aired on AMC's "Backstory" on April 18, 2004, in which "pop-ups" of trivia appeared on screen throughout the film. Afterward a making-of documentary appeared.
• John Hughes regarding a sequel for The Breakfast Club (as of 1999): "I know everybody would love to watch it. But I'm too fond of those characters," Hughes said. "I thought about it. I could do it in prose. I know what will happen to them. I know them. But to do it with real actors - with Molly and Judd and Ally - they'd never come back together again. There's no excuse that could ever put them in the same room ever again. There isn't anything in their lives after high school relevant to that day...It's like Ferris Bueller. You don't want to see him today. You'd hate him. He'd either be a bum or a politician." Read more at MollyRingwald.net! (And be sure to check out the rest of the excellent site, too!)

"I think I was able to get at something immutable, and I'm proud that it has lasted. I was desperately afraid of getting it wrong. It's really about characters and what they have to say. I've spent 15 years looking for that again." -- John Hughes

"With the possible exception of Molly Ringwald's boots,
that movie is pretty timeless." -- My college colleague Seth : )

Pretty in Pink

• Molly Ringwald first told Hughes about the song "Pretty in Pink" by Psychedlic Furs, and it stuck with him. That, and Molly's "predisposition toward pink" were the first sparks of inspiration for the script. (See Molly's interview with Hughes in Seventeen magazine for more.)
• Aside from the leading cast of Molly Ringwald, Jon Cryer, Andrew McCarthy and James Spader, you will also see appearances by Andrew "Dice" Clay (Bouncer at the club) and Gina Gershon (the snotty girl's friend from gym class).
• Ringwald was the only leading actor of high school age at the time of filming (18); Cryer was 21, McCarthy was 23 and Spader topped them all at 26.
• Pretty in Pink was filmed at Hancock Park High School in Los Angeles. It was also shot at Marshall High School, where Grease was filmed in 1978.
• Ringwald was dating Dweezil Zappa ("Simon," the guy from the club) during and after filming. More info on them in the Life magazine article and the People magazine article.
• The Rave-Ups are the band playing in the club scene. Molly Ringwald was a fan of their music, and her sister had a child with one of the band members. Also, in Sixteen Candles, "The Rave-Ups" is scrawled on the notebook Molly's character is carrying while walking down a corridor after study hall.
• Andie uses the word "richie" when describing Blaine to her father. "Richie" was also a term Bender used in The Breakfast Club when speaking to popular Claire and Andrew.
• Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark (OMD) originally composed "Goddess of Love" for the end of the film. Once it was shot, however, it didn't seem to fit. "If You Leave" was used instead.
• The original ending had Andie ending up with Duckie, but the film was changed after test audiences (and Ringwald herself) would have preferred to see her with Blaine. Plus Hughes didn't want to convey the idea that rich people and poor people can't be together. (Not to mention Molly was a little out of it in the original filming due to the flu.)
• When all the principal actors were requested back to the set to reshoot the ending, Andrew McCarthy had already shaved his head and lost a substantial amount of weight for his role in a New York play ("The Boys of Winter"). He wore an auburn wig for the shoot, but still appears much thinner.
• Alexa Kenin (Jena, Andie's friend) died in New York soon after filming. At the time the Pretty in Pink cast was told that she died from asthma complications, but she was actually murdered by an ex-boyfriend. Pretty in Pink is dedicated to her.
• The film is also dedicated to the film's set decorator Bruce Weintraub, who died three months after Alexa.
• Ringwald and McCarthy joined forces again in Fresh Horses, another film about a couple from opposite sides of the tracks (again, she's the poor one, he's the rich one).
• McCarthy also worked with Spader in Mannequin and Less Than Zero.