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1. Who wrote and directed The Breakfast Club?
John Hughes
It was Hughes's second film as director, after Sixteen Candles, and he shot it largely in story order so the cast's wariness could thaw on camera as the day wore on. Amy Heckerling directed Fast Times at Ridgemont High, from Cameron Crowe's script.
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2. On what day are the students serving detention?
Saturday
Saturday, March 24, 1984, the date Brian puts at the top of the essay. Vernon tells them it is 7:06 when they arrive and they are let out at four, so nearly the whole film plays out inside those nine hours.
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3. Where are they mainly confined?
The school library
The real library of the closed school in Des Plaines, Illinois, where Hughes filmed was too small, so the production built a bigger one on the floor of the gymnasium. The abstract sculpture Allison decorates with bologna came with it.
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4. Who plays John Bender?
Judd Nelson
John Cusack had the part first; Hughes recast it wanting someone more threatening. Nelson stayed in character between takes and needled Ringwald so persistently that Hughes nearly fired him, until Paul Gleason, who plays Vernon, talked him out of it.
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5. Who plays Claire Standish?
Molly Ringwald
Ringwald, fresh from Sixteen Candles, asked to play Allison instead and Hughes refused, since Claire had been written for her. Claire is the one honest enough to admit that she probably would not speak to the others on Monday.
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6. Whose lyric appears on screen before the story begins?
David Bowie
The lines come from the Bowie song Changes, the verse about children who are spat on as they try to change their worlds. Ally Sheedy, who plays Allison, brought the quote to Hughes, and the title card shatters like glass to reveal the school.
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7. Who plays Brian Johnson?
Anthony Michael Hall
It was Hall's third Hughes script in a row, after Rusty Griswold in National Lampoon's Vacation and the Geek in Sixteen Candles. Brian is failing shop because his ceramic elephant lamp would not light, and his fake ID makes him old enough to vote.
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8. Why is Brian in detention?
A flare gun went off in his locker
The gun was meant for himself, he admits late in the day, after the failing grade in shop. The other reasons belong to the others: Bender set off the fire alarm, Andrew taped up Larry Lester in the locker room, and Claire cut class to go shopping.
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9. What is the supervising teacher's name?
Richard Vernon
Richard Vernon, played by Paul Gleason, who sent the character up years later as the principal in Not Another Teen Movie. Ed Rooney is the dean chasing Ferris Bueller, Mr Strickland the principal in Back to the Future, and Mr Keating teaches poetry at Welton.
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10. What assignment does Vernon give the students?
An essay about who they think they are
At least a thousand words from each of them, along with a ban on talking, moving and sleeping. The group hands in a few lines between the five of them instead, which answer the question better than Vernon would like.
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11. Which band performs Don't You (Forget About Me)?
Simple Minds
Keith Forsey and Steve Schiff wrote it for the film, and the band only recorded it reluctantly after Bryan Ferry and Billy Idol had both passed. It became Simple Minds' only American number one, and they left it off their next album anyway.
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12. What sport does Andrew compete in?
Wrestling
The scholarship his father expects depends on it, and Andrew spends the day wondering whether he likes the sport or only the approval. Emilio Estevez plays him, having first read for Bender before Hughes moved him over when nobody else fit the athlete.
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13. What unusual lunch does Claire bring?
Sushi
Rice, raw fish and seaweed, laid out with chopsticks, which Bender finds baffling and says so. Andrew unpacks enough for a team, Brian has soup and a sandwich with the crusts cut off, Allison builds hers from sugar cereal and Pixy Stix, and Bender has nothing.
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14. Who ends up writing the group's response to Vernon?
Brian
Brian reads it in voiceover over the final scene and signs it 'Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.' It is the only essay Vernon gets, when he had asked for five, and it is left on the library table for him to find.
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15. What gesture closes the film as Bender walks away?
He raises a fist
The freeze-frame on the football field, with Simple Minds back on the soundtrack, was Nelson's addition; the script had him simply walk off. He is wearing one of Claire's diamond earrings by then, and Allison has a patch torn from Andrew's letterman jacket.
