#233: Breakfast Club, John Hughes, HS Stories

Podcasts Galactic Watercooler
#21

Ah…the Right Stuff. One of the movies that definied my career choice. Alas, I was about 30 years too late. Gotta love the Ivan-Gus quote, though, in tThe Right Stuff. Thanks for the little trip down memory lane Chuck, Sean, and Audra!

I think that would be a perfect time to do Armaggeddon, Deep Impact, Mission to Mars, Red Planet, Total Recall, Outland, Space Cowboys, SpaceCamp, and maybe a little Lifeforce in there too. Well, maybe not all those, but a within-the-solar system scifi space arc would be kind of cool.

~Shooter Out

#22

Thank you, sir! Glad you dug it. As an NPR listener, I know they call those driveway moments, and they’re the ultimate compliment. Again, big ups to Chuck & the Crew for invisible contributions and making it happen. This week, I am the weak link in the GWC chain of awesomeness.

#23

Oh, about the upcoming Mad Max movie… You could not remember the name of the actor playing Max, I believe it is TOONCES THE CAT!:smiley:

#24

This pretty much sums up my high school experience…

//youtu.be/HikjJOpUxeQ

and it doesn’t get any easier kid! (heavy sigh)

#25

Yay!

When Toonces gets mad, watch out!

#26

Ohhh, good suggestion! You could add Moon and Sunshine to that, too.

Ferris, you earned the compliment. That was great.

One of the few Hughes movies you didn’t mention that I think deserves a nod is Curly Sue. It’s actually not his best, but it sticks with me as a good encapsulation of his overall sense of humor.

The high school stories were awesome. I loved the discussion of everyone’s “other” favorite character, too.

#27

The faux mohawk, we’ve had that for a while in the UK, my nephew regularly has it. I believe the trend came in when a certain beckham styled it.

#28

I’m going to go for a combination mohawk soonish. Whenever I find time to go to the barbers

something like that, faux-ish hawk up front, low profile down the back

#29

I think the trend started when every seven year old washed their own hair.

#30

^ Good call

#31

I bow to your hard fact :)…

I did have a Mr T mohawk a cpl of months ago, but the only real picture, you can’t see it, but I’ll post it anyway.

#32

A beautiful and heartwarming tribute to Hughes by Ferris. Sir, I salute you.

#33

All, please be aware the “director’s cut” of Ferris’s John Hughes tribute article is now on the GWC blog

#34

Can we have more Tina Turner songs on the show that was great.

#35

Dave,

I’ve put She’s Having a Baby in the Netflix queue. I want to see it again before I feel comfortable comparing/contrasting with Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. I’m also starting to think Uncle Buck has some relationship with Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

On the Breakfast tip. You mentioned that Hughes somehow makes the teenager more important or somehow gives them credibility that they somehow weren’t given before. I have to disagree somewhat. The “being a teenager” themes in Hughes’s flicks are more about individual character studies in my opinion. In a larger sense, these characters all deal with angst, and yes, Hughes makes that a central trait, but I don’t think he implied any overarching message in the adult vs. youth realm. After all, let’s face it; in looking back, we were all idiots. After all, how many people have said, “If I knew back then what I know now . . .” Also, how many people want to relive some of those gut wrenching high school moments when we didn’t fit in? To me, Hughes delivered a moment in time that all kids experience, that moment when we become individuals, and stop identifying with cliques.

In this one day of detention, they are all placed under a microscope and given a 10-page essay topic of “Who you think you are.” Kids don’t even know who they are in high school. They are only known by who they associate with. At the end, do we know who they are? Do they know? Not yet. Brian Johnson (the nerd) states, when contemplating, “I am the walrus.”

Part of who they are is what brought them together, which makes the “Do you wanna know what I did to get here?” scene the most powerful of the movie.

In the end, Brian is assigned the task by the group because, he’s told, they would all say the same thing anyway. So who are they? In answering, Hughes shows his mastery of word choice. Hughes uses dialogue just as well as Hemingway. For example, Brian says, “In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions, we are . . .” To paraphrase, they are whatever someone wants to see in them. But no human being is simple and defined - let alone these kids. For his answer to make sense to Vernon, Brian has to use definitions and simple terms. Collectively, this breakfast club illustrates the pressure kids feel to fit someone else’s idea of who they should be. But ultimately, we find out who we are only through experiences and hardships. It’s later in life that we figure that out. So don’t sweat it.

At the end, I think there is a tendency for people to want to believe that they will see each other on Monday and be friends. That’s naïve. If they do, it’s really not the point. They will still associate with whomever they want and so will the members of their cliques. Humans tend to form herds, I guess, which makes self-discovery, a key development if adulthood, that much more difficult.

#36

Interesting post, Nate, and welcome aboard.

#37

I hate to sound like a broken record but…

Thanks Ferris, I was actually emotionally involved in your segment. Did you read that from your written pages or are you really that knowledgeable and mentally organized? The way you exposed John Hughes’ mind gave me even MORE respect for him, and makes me miss him even more than I already do.

There was a documentary about John Hughes, his work, and his work’s impact on modern culture on Instant Watch a few months ago, Don’t You Forget About Me. I know we all have an inordinate amount of media to partake in around here but if you’re as passionate about these movies as I am do yourself a favor and see this flick. The movie may seem sad at times but I found it very fulfilling. I told everyone I care about as much as I could remember of it for a solid week afterward.

Anyway, your segment beat the pants off that documentary and I’ll begin watching for your work.

To the GWC Three: To hear you discuss The Breakfast Club the way you did was one of the most insightful bits of banter I’ve ever been a part of. Not that I really was a part of it, but you guys always make me feel like I’m part of the podcast, and ESPECIALLY in this one… I’ve heard and been a part of a few anaysisisisisisis-eez of John Hughes and his movies, especially The Breakfast Club, and yours blows them all out of the water in my book.

Chuck’s insight into why Dick Vernon shouldn’t put John down the way he did was mind blowing to me, I NEVER would have considered that. Your additional explanation of why teachers have it so hard right now, having had their disciplinary options all but removed, is something I KNEW, but never really grasped the full impact of. Thanks for making me think.

Shawn’s honesty in sharing about himself in those years was profound. Kudos to you, dude, you’re a bigger man than I.

Was it really like this? I can answer unequivocally YES. And WORSE, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

We ABSOLUTELY drew social lines that were never crossed, (but for a very few exceptional individuals) we consiously took part in and furthered the stereotypes we thought we were supposed to be a part of. The closest thing I can liken it to is a prison yard. My graduating class was 200+, to give you an idea of where I’m coming from, and you knew who you were, you knew who your friends were, and you DIDN’T forget it. EVER.

The shameful thing is that these people that we didn’t like and that didn’t like us all also saw this movie and were just as touched by it, but that dialog never got started the way it should have. Powerful, POWERFUL movie, man. HUGE.

For me anyway.

My friends and I were John Bender. From the hair to the boots, from the crappy attitude to the thermal underwear shirt-under-tee shirt-under-flannel shirt-under-jacket-under-coat. One guy actually had Bender’s problems and we all stuck together with him like, like… like something that really sticks together a LOT! His problems were our problems, and vice versa.

Adults didn’t take us seriously, didn’t want to hear what we had to say unless it was “yes sir”, or “look, I got an A+” (yeah right, like THAT ever happened) so we were each other’s family for those four years. At the time I thought John Hughes was the only person that understood this adult-teenager dynamic, that he was the only person that understood it and was also the only person that truly believed that if the adults left us alone for a few years and stopped yelling, stopped trying to make us into them, stopped trying to manipulate us, and stopped being jealous of our youth, that we would get through these years fine. We could make good decisions (or at least not make the really horrible decisions), and become good, decent human beings. Not criminals, not degenerates, not drug dealers, not failures, not whatever they were so sure we were headed for that they needed to be the way they were.

Now, as a 35 year old with an AWESOME 16 year old at home who just started his junior year last week, I have the persective of this movie under my belt and it has been a golden tool in recent years. I’ve learned patience beyond anything I thought I was capable of, I’ve learned to let him be his own person. I TALK to him, I don’t dictate, and when we disagree about something I help him see the other MANY sides of a situation, and never say “this is how it’s going to be”, or “because I said so”.

I absolutely must stop now but will say yeah, this movie and John Hughes were and still are huge for me, and, whether he knows it or not, this movie and John Hughes are huge for my son.

Thanks again guys, I feel very fortunate to be a part of your little corner of the galaxy.

#38

I agree with the above post, especially feeling like young people didn’t count for much and were generally viewed as a pain in the ass to the world. That was the feeling I got, anyways.

On a somewhat lighter note, I remember Breakfast Club being quoted at school before I ever saw it. I have a particular memory of a guy quoting Bender’s famous “turkey pot pie” speech, and he was just enough of a hard case that I thought it was real and that those were things his father and mother had said. Then when he got to the end of that speech and his buddies laughed, I was really confused. When I finally saw the movie, at first I thought, “This sounds really familiar.”

#39

Thank you Ferris, for that great segment in the podcast. Being a Gen Xer myself, I remember quoting lines from Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off all through High School. My High School was really big (2000+ students), and there were all kinds of groups, just like in this movie. There was a little crossover between groups, but everyone still kind of did their own thing.

Watching this movie as an adult definitely provides a different perspective. Now when I watch this movie, I also wonder about these kid’s parents. Once you have kids, it makes you look at the world differently I guess. To me, this movie is a modern day folk tale, with almost stereotypical archetypes portrayed in the different students. When I first saw this movie as a teenager, I didn’t really “get it”. No one my age talked like that, or expressed themselves in that manner. But now as an adult, I can identify with where the kids are coming from. To me that’s the great irony about this movie- as a teenager, you may have those feelings, but no real means to express them. But then as a adult, you understand what they were trying to say, and you get it. You see how messed up their lives are. Working in a school, I see kids who come from really sad and tragic places. I also see kids who come from great wealth and privilege, and their parents utterly ignore them. So even today, this movie still resonates with me.

#40

Hello GWCers

Saw this in the paper on Sunday and though you would enjoy it too. The best part of this piece is at the end where the characters biographies over the past 25 years are told(or speculated). For example: “She(Claire) never stopped thinking about Bender and is almost ready to accept his friend request on Facebook.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/24/AR2010092402435.html