So I stated in my last post that I found the end of The Breakfast Club to be horseshit. Let me first emphatically state that I love the ending, I just don’t see it happening. As The Simple Minds crooned their mega-hit “Don’t you forget about me”, the credits rolled and the screen faded to darkness I couldn’t help but ask myself “But what happened the next day?!”

If only I had been fortunate enough to be locked in a room with a “burnout”, a “Jock”, a “Cheerleader/Princess", a “Outcast” and a “Nerd” (I was a member of one of the lower strata of high school relevance, I was a "Band Fag"). After I had discovered that the jock had an overbearing father that failed at his own attempt at sports; that the Nerd was so distraught by an “F” that he would attempt suicide; that the Cheerleader/Princess hated herself for not being able to stand up to her snooty friends; that the Freak was so shy that she acted weird just to repel people and that the burnout was actually a victim of an abusive father would I have the guts to stand up and say “Hey guys, now that we have bonded I’ll see you in the halls tomorrow and you won’t at the least ignore me and at the most beat the shit out of me!” It simply wouldn’t happen.

OK, so I’m jaded. I hated High School. I was bullied and tormented because I was a skinny kid who loved Art and played Trumpet in the school Marching band. As Eric Stoltz remarked in Some Kind of Wonderful these are not the type of things that win popularity contests in the American High School. I got beat up by football players in Gym Class despite the fact that I spent every Saturday Morning on the same field, in the same adverse weather conditions and blew my trumpet in support of those same assholes as a member of the Marching Band. The best part, some of the players that were snapping my ass with a wet towel were actually friendly with me…when their real friends weren’t around of course. So perhaps you can see where my cynicism originates. As much as john Hughes led us to believe that all was well the next day I instead liken it to the scene in Remember the Titans when the black and white football players in an integrated school were reunited after football camp…at their school. Despite the fact that they came together in an isolated, artificial environment they became oil and water again once the real world hit them.

If I was given the task of writing the screenplay to The Breakfast Club 2 (fortunately no one has, it would be a travesty) it would be short and to the point…one scene in fact. Five groups of friends walking down a hallway and meeting up all at the same time. Would there be a “warm and fuzzy” moment? Probably not because I wouldn’t be writing to appease a mass audience in search of critical acclaim. I would be writing from my own experience in High School. I hope yours was better than mine. Want an example of just how bad mine was? Last year my 11 year old son proudly approached me and informed me that he was going to be just like me. He was taking up the trumpet and joining the school band. My second reaction was pride. My first? A full-blown flashback and a panic attack.

But I’m not bitter.