More than four decades ago, Andrew Meyer had taken over a new film company and read a piece in the satirical magazine National Lampoon written by a fellow named John Hughes. Intrigued, Meyer contacted Hughes and asked if he had any film scripts. Hughes offered up a story about five very different teens spending a day in weekend detention.
This script would become “The Breakfast Club” starring Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall and other rising actors. It became an instant Gen X classic that is still revered four decades later.
Meyer, a professor at SCAD in Savannah for two decades, is coming to Atlanta Friday for a screening event open to the public to celebrate the movie’s 40th anniversary along with his new memoir “Walking in the Fast Lane.”
“‘The Breakfast Club’ is a universal story,” Meyer said in a Zoom interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “That’s why it lasted generations. Everyone has anxieties and insecurities in high school. The movie in a very economical way represents all kinds of people.”
He noted how his employer A&M Films in 1984 quickly committed $1 million to “The Breakfast Club” after Meyer met with Hughes. When the much larger Universal Pictures heard about the movie, they wanted in and offered $12 million to coproduce it, Meyer said.
That bigger budget, he said, enabled them to build the set to the specifications of the script, rather than the other way around. They took an empty gym of a former school in suburban Chicago and converted it into a massive two-story library.
“We knew we had to have a balcony for Ally [Sheedy] and Molly to dance on,” Meyer said. “We needed a hole in the ceiling for Judd [Nelson] to fall through. It was the easiest movie I ever made.”
Meyer wasn’t on set every day because he was juggling two other films at the same time that featured future major stars but turned out to be not nearly as successful: “Birdy” starring Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage and “Better Off Ted” featuring John Cusack.
He also didn’t have any expectations that “The Breakfast Club” would become a hit. He just hoped it would land in enough theaters that people would have an opportunity to see it. And Universal suits, he said, were nervous about the 20-minute talking head scene where the five teens spill their guts. “They thought it was too serious,” he said. “They wanted us to find a way to make the scene funnier.”
Instead, he and Hughes convinced Universal to screen the film in San Diego in front of a general audience. “We tested the picture and [the audience] loved it,” he said. “What did they like the most? The 20-minute talking head scene.”
SCAD over the years has sent him all over the world to screen “The Breakfast Club,” including Beijing, China and Medellin, Colombia. “It’s extraordinary how they react to jokes in different cultures,” he said.
Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Meyer was honored to work with Hughes, who went on to produce other classic films such as “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “Pretty in Pink” and “Home Alone” Hughes died in 2009.
“He was such a family man,” Meyer said. “The first thing he asked me was if he could shoot ‘The Breakfast Club’ in Chicago. I thought it was a good idea. He’d finish shooting and go home and have dinner with his wife and kids. I knew so many in Hollywood who got divorced and had family problems.”
He noticed that most of the movies he did, including 1992′s “Fried Green Tomatoes,” featured young directors like Hughes.
“I realized that I’ve been mentoring all my life,” he said. “I only recently connected what I do at SCAD with what I did in Hollywood.”
IF YOU GO
Andrew Meyer screens “The Breakfast Club”
7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 24. $10 (free for SCAD students), SCAD Show, 470 Spring St NW, Atlanta, www.scadboxoffice.com
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