How to Write The Breakfast Club

by L.A. Zvirbulis

1 – The Inspiration. Assume that Hollywood won’t give a new director a huge budget, so come up with some story that uses only five main actors and one affordable location.   

2 – The Genre. Teenage Angst makes a lot of money because teenagers don’t know that adults  were once teenagers that can now write about that experience with a college education. It is best said by the brain named Brian – “You see us in the simplest of terms, and the most convenient definitions.” Seriously, make your main characters broad strokes of things you remembered from high school, just tell us that’s what you’re doing at the beginning.

3 – The Complications. What’s the worst that could happen? The characters are already in trouble, so getting more punishment is worse. Also not being friends after this is a huge threat. And also maybe not being able to define yourself as something more than just a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, or a criminal. You can be everything, but only after making friends with the things you’re not.

4 – The Fun Stuff. Detention, am I right? Detention is so much fun. Well, misbehaving in Detention can be fun. Let’s stick it to the man. Let’s rebel. Let’s play by our own rules but still kind of play by the Principal’s and our parents’ rules because we aren’t considered adults yet and the budget doesn’t let us leave the interior of the High School. Let’s just run around this school. Add music and marijuana and some iconic poses.

5 – The Device. Bender is the device. His “Criminal” antics drive the plot, from unhinging the door to the Principal’s office to making Molly Ringwald feel uncomfortable to providing the marijuana. This would be a boring morning in detention if it weren’t for John Bender.

6 – The Principal. He’s the bad guy. “The Establishment”. The adult who hates his job but is stuck in adulthood with bills and alimony and an ill-fitting suit he bought at an outlet mall. Counterbalance him with a cool adult – the Janitor who has a shitty job but knows everything about the school and seems totally fine with going through teenage garbage.

7 – The Jokes. The Criminal isn’t the only funny person. We really do laugh when the Principal looks foolish. It’s the teenagers in all of us.

8 – The Title. The Breakfast Club sounds great. No one will notice or be bothered by the fact that the only meal that is consumed on screen is lunch. No one eats breakfast in this movie, but The Lunch Club doesn’t look good on a poster. 

9 – The Ending. These five strange teenagers learn that their differences aren’t so different. But will they be friends on Monday? Will Claire ask for her diamond earring back? Will Bender be stuck forever, frozen in time on a football field with a fist in the air?

10 – The Heart. Just read Brian’s essay. He’s the only character that writes one.

*L.A. Zvirbulis did not write The Breakfast Club. John Hughes did.