The Breakfast Club: Film Sheet

COULSDON COLLEGE: MEDIA TEXT INFORMATION SHEET

TITLE:

The Breakfast Club

YEAR OF PROD:

1985

TYPE:

FILM X

TELEVISION

DOC.

MUSIC

ADVERT

MUSIC VID.

OTHER:

DIRECTOR

John Hughes

PRODUCER

John Hughes Ned Tanen Michelle Manning

WRITER

John Hughes

PRODUCTION COMPANY

A&M Films Channel Productions Universal Pictures

KEY CAST /ARTIST

Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Paul Gleason and Anthony Michael Hall

KEY CREW

GENRE

Comedy Sub-genres: Romance

BUDGET

$1,000,000

BOX OFFICE

$38,100,000

THEMES

Love, happiness and sadnesss.

AWARDS

MTV Movie Silver Bucket of Excellence Award  - Judd Nelson and Anthony Michael Hall.

NARRATIVE: The narrative for this film is a linear narrative structure. The narrative follows five high school students from Shermer High School in Illinois, USA, who have been sentenced to detention on a Saturday weekend for nine hours. All five students have nothing in common with different personalities that one would find extraordinary to see them associate themselves with each other.  As stated by Andrew Clark at the end of the film before the credits, “each one of us is an athlete (Andrew), a basket case (Allison), a princess (Claire),  a criminal (John) and a brain (which is Brian). During the detention they are tasked with writing a one thousand word essay issued from Mr. Vernon who is the school principal. However the delinquent John forces all four of the teenagers to communicate with each other by initiating conversations through arguments which strings them together and leads to laughing about it and getting along with each other while causing havoc in the school.

KEY SCENES: The key scenes to this film are when the delinquent tries to trigger the Mr. Vernon’s anger due to how he removes the locket from his heavy wooden door next to the detention room which prevents the principal from keeping a good eye on the five teenagers. This action provides the audience with great insight into the principals personality as by viewing how the principal treats the students after this incident in turn suggests that the principal is no better than the delinquent John, because of how the principal bullies the students and shows hostility within the character and how he thinks about himself with such greed. From this first scene we can deduct that Mr. Vernon is the antagonist of the film; not the delinquent John. Other key scenes are when each individual protagonist explains their backstory to the other characters; this creates an emotional attachment to the characters so the audience can inhabit a better understanding of them. Ending scenes when each protagonist leaves the detention/school we get to see how they live their lives from then on. Each of them all seem different to when they first came into detention which leaves a positive impact on the audience as we know what they’re all enjoying themselves more from when they started and generates an idea that the students had learnt their lesson from being in detention, however not through the teachers guidance, but from their own. David Bowie’s quote at the beginning of the film in the credits further emphasises this to quote “And these children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds; are immune to your consultations, they are quite aware of what they are going through."

COMPARABLES:

PROGRESSION OF KEY CONTRIBUTORS: Universal Productions has gone on to producing thousands of award winning films since 1985 and has since become a distributor and a special effects company. A&M Films had only produced films up until 1996.

ANY OTHER BUSINESS?