BREAKFAST WITH JOHN HUGHES

To understand how I first met John Hughes, it is helpful to know the history of A&M Films. In the late Seventies, I was flying to Los Angeles after traveling around the world for a year (another Post). I had taken a one-year sabbatical after working at A&M Records for five years.

During my year away from Hollywood, I had time to think about the state of the Entertainment business. The seventies was a decade filled with mega-hit Soundtracks: Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Star Wars, American Graffiti, and many more. A&M Records was not getting any Soundtracks because it wasn’t part of a larger corporation that had a film division. It was a private, independent company. I thought the only way A&M could compete in the soundtrack market would be if they had their own film company. I called it A&M Films.

I presented this idea to Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, the “A” and “M” of A&M Records. They liked it. It wasn’t an expensive proposition for them. I wasn’t suggesting that A&M finance films, just develop scripts, and own the rights to the films. That way they could be in more control of who got the soundtrack. Jerry asked me to set up some meetings with potential candidates to run the new film company. That process went on for a while. Jerry was getting frustrated. He said to me “Look, I don’t know any of these guys. I know we are going to get screwed in the movie business. If I hire one of these guys, I’ll never know how we got screwed. Why don’t you run it? Then when we get screwed, you’ll be able to tell me how we got screwed.”

That’s how I became the head of A&M Films.

I started to read some scripts (for the first time, I might add). I read a script called National Lampoon’s Vacation. Warner Bros. had just bought the script.

I called the agent and said “Who wrote this? It’s really funny.” The agent said “ his name is John Hughes. He lives in Chicago. We just signed him. We don’t know much about him.”

I was in John’s living room the next day.

Over the years, John Hughes has become an iconic figure. When I met him in the early eighties, he was a rather quiet, serious person who was writing satiric articles for the National Lampoon magazine and working at an Ad Agency.

I told John how much I liked the Vacation script. Did he have anything else? He said “Yes, but there’s a problem”. I said “What's the problem?” He said “ I have to direct the film.” Now, I didn’t know much about the movie business, but I knew that to be hired to direct a feature film, you should have directed something before to show as an example of your work.

I said, “Let me read the script, and then we can talk.” I went back to my hotel and read what was very close to the shooting script of the Breakfast Club movie. I called Jerry Moss and said we have to buy this script right now before anyone else reads it.

Here is the crazy part of this story.

John and I were about the same age, in our late twenties. John had never directed a featurefilm before. I had never produced a film before. I had no idea what a film budget was, or how much people got paid to work on a movie.

We were the blind leading the blind.

To make sure we controlled the Breakfast Club script, I convinced A&M to spend a million dollars to buy the script, commit to John as a director, and finance the Breakfast Club as a movie.

Where did the million-dollar number come from? I have no idea. At the time, a million dollars SOUNDED to me like that is what an independent movie should cost. There was no research done, or a budget to back up the estimate. John was now going to direct a one-million-dollar feature. I had no idea if he owned a camera.

John wanted to shoot the film in Chicago so he could stay with his family. I thought that was a good idea. After we started casting in Chicago I got a phone call. The call was from Universal Studios “ We know you are in preproduction on your independent film, but Universal would like to know if you would like to make the film with us. We will agree to a budget of twelve million dollars.

Twelve million dollars! Our one million-dollar little Indie film with a guy who never directed before, could now be a twelve million-dollar film with a major studio? Again, I didn’t know much about the movie business, but it seemed to me twelve million was a better number than one million.

I took the deal.

My concern about John directing ended up not being an issue. Universal bought Sixteen Candles from John around the same time, and they decided to produce that film before John directed The Breakfast Club. Without saying it publicly, Universal felt that The Breakfast Club would be a more difficult film for John to direct. They wanted him to be more experienced by the time he started directing the Breakfast Club.

Me too!

If you were wondering how we spent twelve million dollars on this small film, Universal built the entire library in the movie from scratch. They found an abandoned school and built the library in the gymnasium. There are a lot of advantages to building a movie set after you have the shooting script. You already knew that you needed a balcony for the actors to dance on, and a music room to spin records, etc. With most movies, you had the script first and then had to make adjustments to the scenes once you knew the location where you were going to shoot your film. The way we did was much better.

Speaking of music, John had complete access to all of the acts on A&M Records, since we were the producers of the film. John was a total music geek. After going through our extensive catalog with artists like Peter Frampton, Cat Stevens, Humble Pie, Joe Cocker, etc., he found an obscure band we had just signed in London called Simple Minds. They created the classic songs in the movie that are still popular today.

After the Breakfast Club became a hit John asked me if A&M would give him his own record label. He wanted to sign new acts that he discovered, and A&M would promote and distribute their records for him.

I said no, which looking back, was probably a mistake!

When we finished production I had no idea if there would be any interest in the film. The first clue I had that we were watching something special was when we held a pre-release screening in Westwood, the home of UCLA. I stood in the back and watched the audience the entire time. They were into it. We were going to be okay.

I have hosted screenings of the Breakfast Club for many years. For the 30th Anniversary, Universal released a 4K version of the film which we premiered at SXSW. Universal also released the new version of the movie in 500 theaters to celebrate the 30th Anniversary.

One question I always get at these screenings is “Did you know at the time you made the movie, that it would become such a big hit?”

My answer is always the same because when we made The Breakfast Club it was a little movie made by a major studio. We had no idea if it would even play in more than a few theaters. We were surprised, like everyone else, that it would become such an important movie for generations of movie fans.

We are now nearing the 40th anniversary of the Breakfast Club. It is a movie that has been loved for several generations.

I am honored to have been a small part of the Breakfast Club.

FUN BREAKFAST CLUB STORY:

The Breakfast Club has been, and will always be, John’s original story and screenplay. However, I did make one small contribution to his story. When John first gave me his script, the only dialog not written, was Anthony Michael Hall’s reason for trying to kill himself.

After we made the deal to make the movie I was hanging out with John, and we were exchanging stories about High School. I told him that I had failed Shop because I couldn’t turn on the light in the lamp that I made in the class.

A few weeks after that conversation, I got the newly revised draft of the script with Anthony Michael Hall’s tortured speech about how he tried to kill himself because was failing shop, he couldn’t get the light to work in the lamp, etc.