Who Was High? Secrets Spilled at ‘Breakfast Club’ 40th Reunion Panel
Chicago’s C2E2 is to thank for gathering the primary cast members of The Breakfast Club together for the a 40th anniversary panel. Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez and Anthony Michael Hall took the stage altogether for the first time in 40 years, and answered if anyone really was high shooting The Breakfast Club along with many other lingering fan questions.
Judd Nelson was the chattiest and was quick to share the full story behind one of the film’s most memorable moments —when the students get high during their detention.
“What’s amazing is when Michael is in the scene where he’s stoned, this whole notion of ‘chicks cannot hold this smoke.’ We know what it is, and he’s doing all that stuff,” Nelson explains. “Molly and I are off camera, not on video. … [And all of sudden] you can hear when the film runs out, it clicks, clicks, clicks. Now an operator, the guy who runs the camera, he’s really not allowed ever to turn the camera off on his own. Even if it runs out of film, you keep it running until the director says, cut.”
Judd Nelson. Credit: Popverse/screengrab to live panel
“Michael’s in the middle of close-camera coverage of his routine. We love it. And we can’t laugh. If we laugh, we blow the take. So, it’s on Michael, but we’re all there trying to be quiet, and he’s killing it. And the camera has run out of film. Hughes knows it. He doesn’t say ‘Cut’ in the middle of a routine,” Judd explains. “So, we all sit there and we wait another two minutes until Michael takes a natural pause and Hughes goes ‘Cut.’ I mean, this does not, in my experience, it’s never happened since. And that is a reflection on his affection for the characters that he created.”
When the host asks Anthony Michael Hall, who was 16 at the time of filming, if he was truly stoned during filming. He jokes: “Was I stoned at 16? Yeah, maybe.”
Credit: Popverse/screengrab from live panel
Ringwald adds on her experience: “That whole sequence when we were getting high, that was all improvised Michael’s stuff, my stuff. None of that was in the script. And Hughes had, like Judd said, he just let the camera go on and on and on. And he loved this piece. He loved the work that I did there so much that he took my mom into the room where they have the dailies to show my mom, her daughter’s work. And my mom is sitting there watching her daughter pretend like she was high for 20 minutes.”
Hall interjects: “How about putting your lipstick on with your boobs? That was amazing.”
Ringwald laughs and sums it up as “movie magic.”