Pixie Sticks and Cap'n Crunch. Holla.
Thursday, September 5, 2013 at 4:00PM
Beau McCoy in Ally Sheedy, High School Movies, John Hughes, The Breakfast Club

It's Back to School Month at TFE

Hello, lovelies. Beau here, fixating on a tiny moment from one of my favorite films.

John Hughes was a Godsend to me growing up. From the ages of 14 through 17, hardly a weekend went by where I wasn't revisiting one of his key entries over the span of a twenty year career. These viewings alternated between Weird Science, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sixteen Candles, and The Breakfast Club. It's remarkable to me that we've managed to survive over ten years of remakes and rehashes, and no one has dared  touch any of his material.

Whether that's a nod to his particular and unique sympathies (hard to imitate or replicate), or just blind dumb luck, I'm grateful for the Pubescent Passover.

My first encounter with John Hughes happened in my own puerile period; I rented The Breakfast Club at a mere nine years old, and afterwards, I immediately declared it:

the strangest fucking film I've ever seen.

Foreign to me in every way I could possibly conceive, I had no idea why these characters were so aggrieved. I mean, Jesus, life can't be that awful at 16. Consider all the perks!

Of course, it's not until you actually begin to suffer through this hormonal instability that you're finally able to empathize with these oddballs, consider them soundly and take away some comfort from their journey. But at the beginning, there was one bizarre, lovely moment that I squealed over, something that made me just roll with joy and laughter, even at nine years old:

Allison's Sandwich.

Some scenes serve no purpose, need no explanation or later reference. Some scenes just rock.
 

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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