Don't You (Forget About Me): Lou Rewatches The Breakfast Club and Rewrites Everyone's Future

Lou has said repeatedly, Matt at the Vogue knows what Lou likes.  So, Lou was excited when Matt said he had a classic 1980s movie soundtrack.  Then Lou saw it was to The Breakfast Club.  In short, this soundtrack is trash.  A bunch of filler including four instrumentals for Christ’s sake.  Do you remember The Breakfast Club?  “Right on Track”  That track ain’t on this.  Too bad.  That said, the LP opens with “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds.  This one song must bethe sole reason the soundtrack went to number 17 on the Billboard 200 chart in 1985.  The song was released as a single on February 23, 1985, in the United States and went to number one.  Lou must admit the song is a banger.  Lou must also admit that the ending of The Breakfast Club, which features the song,is also fire.  Simple mind you, it is not up to the level of the closing scenes of Sixteen Candles, with The Thompson Twins’ “Wish You Were Here”.  Everybody knows that Lou is team Sixteen Candles.  Lou runs hot and cold over The Breakfast Club.  It is not a Big Chill-type thing for Lou’s high school years.  As you know, Lou is a Risky Business guy, which was a much better movie and had a killer soundtrack.  The same goes for Fast Times at Ridgemont High.  Great movie and great soundtrack.  Lou is shocked that Cameron Crowe wrote the book Fast Times was based on.  Given how Crowe sanitizes up all his shit, one wonders how involved he was in Fast Times.  The movie is just too hard hitting in some respects.  Lou does not doubt that Crowe may have had some involvement with the soundtrack.  The dude knows soundtracks for sure.

Lou digresses.  All this is to say that The Breakfast Club is not really Lou’s jam.  Lou was not a Brat Pack guy.  They are just a bit too old for Lou.  The whole crew in St. Elmo’s Fire was out of Lou’s age range, which is funny in a way since Lou drank in his early twenties at The Tombs tons of times, which is the bar the movie is based on and filmed at.  Lou vibes with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Winona Ryder, and Matthew McConaughey era actors a bit more.  A movie like Reality Bitesor Good Will Hunting maybe.  That said Risky Business was made years before Lou grew into it and the same goes for Fast Times.  

That is not to say that Lou was not a member of The Breakfast Club.  He definitely was.  In high school, Lou was Brian Johnson, the Anthony Michael Hall character.  Over time, Lou has turned into John Bender, the Judd Nelson character.  Lou drinks and smokes and dresses like a homeless person.  Lou,once full of promise, has become something of a loser.  And that is what remains with Lou about The Breakfast Club.  The relationship between Brian Johnson and John Bender.  

Down the line, Lou is confident that John Bender became the most successful member of The Breakfast Club.  He probably pursued a trade, like electrician, plumber, or car mechanic.  Bender could fix anything in Lou’s mind.  He knew how to do stuff.  Claire Standish was a fling.  Nothing serious.  After high school, Bender met a good woman with a head on her shoulders(maybe at rehab) who knew her way around numbers and managed the day to day of Bender’s growing trade business.  The first few years were tough as Bender got his name out there and word of mouth spread that he did great, quick work for reasonable prices.  He showed up on time.  Soon, Bender would have several people working for him, and he would no doubt have a multi-million-dollar business that his wife could potentially franchise or some shit.  Bender is someone out of Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs.  Sure, he drinks beers and enjoys a smoke; he may even do a little reefer, but he gets shit done.  He knows his way around a grill or a smoker.  Makes a killer brisket.  He is always working on a vintage car that he can flip for cash if needed.  Home repair is a breeze.  John Bender is an American success story when the United States was the greatest nation on Earth.

Brian Johnson not so much.  As the movie makes clear, Brian can’t fix shit.  In essence, he can’t change a light bulb.  He is book smart with no practical abilities and no street smarts.  John Bender has both.  Brian no doubt went to college, some stupid liberal art college, like Williams or Amherst, and amassed a ton of debt with a worthless major like English or History.  You might not have noticed but John Hughes, the director, plays Brian Johnson’s father in the film, so you can assume that Brian is modeled in some way on a young John Hughes.  After all, Brian wrote the essay at the end, which sucks ass by the way.  In Lou’s opinion, Allison Reynolds should have written it, the loner played by Ally Sheedy.  Allison keeps to herself but when she is alone, she journals, constantly writing poems and lyrics that she then records on a tape deck in her bedroom.  She is the real writer of The Breakfast Club.  Eventually she will become a Kathleen Hanna type who is not only immensely talented but immensely important culturally.  

If we are on a tangent from Brian’s future, Lou will get ClaireStandish and Andrew Clark out of the way.  Andrew will become a high school coach, but not one of the good ones who are so important in shaping lives and making a difference.  No,he will be the high school coach who goes on and on about their glory days, while resenting the youth and promise of his charges.  On the outside he will seem to be a good time Charlie,but he is really a bitter guy with a beer gut who can no longer get on the court or field with his players since he is too out of shape.  Andrew cannot actually teach anything so besides being a coach he is a gym teacher who just lets the kids do whatever they want so long as they don’t bother him at all.

Lou would like to think that Claire would become Stifler’s Mom, but he doubts it.  She will go to college and meet some enterprising young man, a man who actually is what Brian is not, and marry him after graduation.  She will be a dutiful wife and a great mother until she is left with an empty nest and a husband with a wandering eye.  Discouraged and dissatisfied,she will ask for a divorce and be set for life financially, whereupon she discovers there is an entire world out there to explore.  Claire will never remarry but will travel, attend lectures, read books, and generally become like Diane Keaton.  

Sorry back to Brian.  So, it is suggested that Brian is some type of writer maybe, potentially a creative type, maybe a professor.  Worst case, a lawyer.  The problem is that with his college debt, Brian leaves those aspirations behind for a job that pays now and next thing you know he has been in a cubicle farm for thirty years wondering what went wrong.  Now let’s not get it twisted, he does all right for himself.  He can support his wife and his kids, even put them through college.  But Brian has regrets.  What if he worked on that novel or went to law school or whatever?  Brian pushes paper around because he can’t really do anything.  The movie makes that clear with the shop story, which reminds Lou of his experience in shop.  No shit, Lou made a metal ashtray for his mother; she was smoking Salem 100s at the time.  No fucking way kids are making ashtrays in school now, if there even is a shop class.  Lou wishes he had that ashtray now.  

Anyway, Brian can do nothing with his hands, nothing technical, or practical.  Brian will be calling John Bender for help for the rest of his life and John may give him a discount for old times’sake, but he will definitely charge him.  No freebies.  Which brings Lou to Brian’s friendship with Carl Reed, the Shermer High School janitor.  Brian is friendly with Carl, not because Brian is a good soul, but because Brian realizes he can’t do anything, and he needs to make friends with those who can.  That will be Brian’s MO for the rest of his life, making good with those who can actually do something.  Brian was management material even in high school.  Brian Johnson could be a character in Office Space.

This is a long way to say that The Breakfast Club is a thought-provoking movie even if little thought went into the soundtrack.  Lou would be remiss if he did not mention that The Breakfast Club spawned one of the greatest porn parodies of all-time, produced by New Sensations.  It might be better than the actual movie.  All Lou will say is that Faye Reagan as Claire Standish was inspired casting.  Faye has had a tough time of it, including going missing in 2025.  Lou could write five thousand words on this movie.  Maybe he has.  You’ll never see it.

Suggested Sites and Sounds:

Breakfast Club the Band:  The Breakfast Club - Right On Track

Closing Strong:  The Breakfast Club Movie Ending

Brian in Shop Class:  The Breakfast Club - Group Therapy - YouTube

Is That Your Claire?:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnDxOMhGbso

-- Lou Waxman