Saturday morning opened up with a very special reunion from the cast of the iconic John Hughes movie, The Breakfast Club, celebrating the 40th year since its release.
“This is like having your high school reunion filmed on camera in real time,” Josh Horowitz, host of the Happy Sad Confused podcast and moderator, joked to Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez, and Anthony Michael Hall as they took their seats onstage.
For the first time in 40 years, the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess, and the criminal shared a stage together in what really did feel like a high school reunion.
“I feel really very emotional and moved to have us all together,” said Ringwald. “This is the first time Emilio has joined us. We don’t have to use the cardboard cutout anymore. I feel really moved that we’re all together.”
Estevez joked that while he skipped all his high school reunions, “this was something I finally felt I needed to do for myself.”
“This one felt special, it’s here in Chicago where we made the film, obviously the 40th anniversary,” said Estevez. “And it just felt like it was time. Somebody told me ‘does Emilio just not like us’ and that broke my heart. Of course, I love all of them. And it just made sense, so here I am.”
Nelson said that while The Breakfast Club doesn’t come up every day with people, it holds a special place in a lot of hearts.
“Certain people, you can see it in their eyes, that they have a memory of you and it’s from that film. And it’s very specific, it’s very recognizable to me, and I’m very flattered by it,” said Nelson. “I consider The Breakfast Club to be an incredibly fast horse. You don’t need to use a crop, you don’t need to use your spurs, you just gotta try and stay on till the end of the race.”
The cast spent some time reminiscing about shooting in Chicago at a young age.
“I remember John taking us to all these great places like Kingston Mines and all these great blues clubs. He would take us to record stores and all this fun stuff,” said Hall.
“We saw Prince here. And James Brown,” added Ringwald.
“We work six days a week so you have one night off, Saturday night. Emilo and I and Ally are old enough to legally drink. Molly and Michael are not," noted Judd.
"They also have to log hours in school with a tutor during the day while making the movie. Ally stays in her room mostly. I have no idea what goes on in there. So Saturday night, Emilio and I would drive into Chicago from Des Plaines. It’s 1983/84. We cannot find a single place on Division or Rush streets that will let in a guy wearing sneakers and a guy wearing motorcycle boots. We find one place called the Jazz Bulls which no longer exists anymore. They let us in and didn’t care, so we enjoyed Chicago - the city - for three hours once a week.”
Ally Sheedy said she didn’t see a script for the film until after she was cast.
“John just called up and said I want you to come in,” said Sheedy. “He didn’t give me a script. He was just talking to me about Allison, just a little bit. What do you think about this, what do you think about that? I don’t think I saw a script until after I was cast. I had an idea of who Allison was.”
Estevez had his own memories of the script and the original readthrough to share.
“The first time we all got together, John had organized a readthrough of the script at a hotel in Century City. The night before, I had all my wisdom teeth pulled and I was on pain pills."
My agent called and said, "You have to do the readthrough."
I said, "Look my face is swollen, I’m on pain pills, I’m bleeding out. "
"They said 'No, it’s really important. You have to be there.'
"They sent a car for me. Got to the hotel, we did the readthrough and at the end John says, 'I brought the first cut of my movie Sixteen Candles and I want to show it to you.' "
He puts the film on and we’re sitting there and I didn’t think I made it through the opening credits and I passed out from the ordeal. I woke up at the end credits and looked at Judd and Judd says ‘I think you’re getting fired.’"
Estevez said The Breakfast Club is a movie that stands the test of time.
“The fact we’ve all ended up in this film and have this on our resume is…this is one of those movies that stands the test of time,” he said. “Generationally, it’s a crossover film and how lucky we are to have at least one. Many of us have more than just one on our resumes…it’s an extraordinary thing. I think that’s something that people miss out on. That director chose us, we were lucky to be in the right place at the right time to be involved in something like that."