The View From Here – It’s Detention Day
It’s “Detention Day”. It was this day that a group of teens were sent to spend a whole Saturday in detention. Each a different high school stereotype. The princess, the jock, the nerd, the burnout, the loner.
Saturday, March 24, 1984. The Breakfast Club was born. Today is the fictional day that a group of high school kids reported to detention at a fictional high school.
The Breakfast Club (almost called The Lunch Bunch) is a movie I grew up watching and loving, and now my 17 year old has watched it more than me and has the poster on her bedroom wall.
One of those 80’s movies with all the feels. Such an easy movie to relate to. Each of the characters someone you feel you can identify with in some way, even if you were never that “type” in high school. I think Ally Sheedy’s character is my character. The one I can relate to the most. The “loner”. The one nobody knows. Nobody understands. Nobody really “sees”.
And it’s a lesson in so many ways. You never really know someone like you might think. You have no idea the person who seems to have it all together really doesn’t. I love this movie for so many reasons. John Bender – played by Judd Nelson. Comes across as this smart-ass kid, pushing boundaries and testing limits with authority. Through the movie you see him as someone who is really troubled and hurting.
A group of individuals so completely different, but when you look beneath the surface – somehow very much the same.
Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy. An incredibly talented cast. Another classic film written and directed by John Hughes. A storyline still relevant today.
“Dear Mr. Vernon,
We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong, but we think you’re crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us — in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal.
Does that answer your question?
Sincerely yours,
The Breakfast Club”