When John Hughes wrote “The Breakfast Club” in 1982, he could’ve made himself the rebel group’s sixth member: The Nobody.
The beloved teen comedy, which just celebrated its 40th anniversary on Feb. 15, was one of the earliest efforts of the brilliant writer-director of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “Sixteen Candles” and “Weird Science,” before much of anyone knew who he was.
“‘The Breakfast Club’ started out as a little independent movie in Chicago,” executive producer Andrew Meyer told The Post. “With little-known actors and a little-known director.”
Despite its modest beginnings, the tiny film — thrusting together the Athlete, Brain, Criminal, Princess and Basket Case at a fateful Saturday high-school detention — went on to gross $50 million off a $1 million budget.
Today, “The Breakfast Club” is considered an all-time teen cinema classic. No one’s forgotten about it.
“I was there at the beginning,” Meyer, author of “Walking in the Fast Lane: Stories of a Lifetime,” said.
Although “Sixteen Candles” was released several months prior, in May 1984, Hughes penned “Breakfast Club” first. He’d never directed any feature before.
Hughes had just come off the release of “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” the comedy he wrote starring Chevy Chase, just as Meyer founded a company called A&M Films (part of A&M Records) in 1983. The producer liked what he saw and wanted to read more.
“I was at John’s house the next day, and I said to John, ‘Do you have anything else?,’” Meyer, who also worked on “Better Off Dead” and “Fried Green Tomatoes,” recalled.
“He said, ‘I do, but there’s a problem.’ I said, ‘What’s the problem?’ He said, ‘I have to direct it.’
“I think he had done a commercial.”
He handed Meyer “The Breakfast Club,” and his mouth watered.
Hughes stressed that he wrote the film to take place in a single room and knew exactly what his vision required. He needed to direct it. That was enough for the producer.
“I called Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, [the heads of A&M Records], and I said I was one of the first people to read it. ‘We have to buy it right now, because anybody else who reads it is going to buy it.’”
Fresh-faced Meyer then told his powerful bosses that “The Breakfast Club” could be produced for $1 million.
“I made that number up, actually,” he said. “Because that sounds like what an independent movie could cost.”
They were game.
A&M was taking a big swing. Hughes was only in his early 30s and Meyer was about 28.
“He had never directed a movie; I’d never produced a movie,” Meyer said. “And I agreed to give him $1 million to direct this movie. It was sort of like ‘The Producers.’”
Universal came on-board during the casting process to help fund the project — on the condition that Hughes would do “Sixteen Candles” first.
“[‘Breakfast Club’ was] a slightly more difficult movie, they thought,” Meyer recalled.
But the major studio’s involvement allowed the crew to build a library set in the closed Maine North High School in Des Plaines, IL. They shot there over 35 days.
Hughes brought in Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall from “Sixteen Candles,” and the pair was joined by Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy.
Anybody who watches “The Breakfast Club” marvels at how easily the perfect cast clicks. Chemistry, for Hughes, was vital.
“[John] had the cast arrive several weeks early [to] stay together in a hotel, maybe a week or so, and hang out together,” Meyer said. “So, by the time they walked on the set, they knew each other so well, like they were in high school.”
Reflecting on the movie in 2019, Nelson, now 65, told The Post how much he admired the care that Hughes, who died in 2009, had for real teen issues when few were giving them much thought.
“If we can remember, high school was a pretty serious time,” he said. “People get sad, anxious, they have pressure on them. Social division is huge. And to ignore the reality and tribulations of young people is a huge mistake. John Hughes was able to treat younger kids with enormous respect, and he didn’t forget that, you know, young people become older people.”
Sheedy, who played Allison, “The Basket Case,” was more wary of her character’s makeover.
“It was uncomfortable even when we were filming it,” Sheedy, now 62, told Page Six in 2022. “It was one of those things, though. It was the ’80s, and we got to take this young woman who seems like a crazy person and make her into, you know, somebody pretty or whatever it was.”
Still, she said, “The Breakfast Club” has been “nothing but a gift.”
When a film is finished, studios show it to small groups at test screenings to see how ticket-buyers respond. Then they do new edits and reshoots.
Before that, Meyer and Hughes weren’t quite sure what they had.
“Until we put it in front of an audience, we had no idea,” he said.
“It was still a little movie… and there were a lot of big movies coming out. And, you know, we were all hoping we’d be in a few theaters.”
The “nervous” producer stood at the back of the theater in Westwood, Los Angeles, and listened as the crowd began to laugh, laugh and laugh some more. Phew. “The Breakfast Club” was going to be a success.
“There were no major changes made based on the tests,” he said.
Even with that raucous response, did Meyer think he’d still be talking about “The Breakfast Club” four decades later?
“No, we didn’t have meetings about who’s doing the catering for the 40th anniversary,” he said.
