The Internet’s gripping love of nostalgia wouldn’t have allowed most of us to miss out on the fact that the John Hughes classic The Breakfast Club turned 30 years old today. That’s three whole decades since a band of high school misfits learned to put their differences aside to help us all believe that it was possible for the jocks, dweebs, loners, daddy’s girls and junkies to get along, even though we all knew that it was just another Hughes-ian high school utopia. Hell, I still strap a bra to my head at least once a week and hook my landline phone up to my dial-up modem with the hopes of hacking into some government websites so I can make my own 80s heyday version of Kelly LeBrock, all thanks to Hughes. One of these days it’s going to work.
But before I break off into a 10,000-word rant about how Weird Science was the greatest Hughes movie, I’ll pay my respect to The Breakfast Club by admitting my lifelong appreciation for the detention dance scene. It was goofy, unrealistic and the epitome of the 80s movie cliché that high schoolers not only looked like grown adults, but that everyone could also just start rocking out if someone put the right song on. This would be a lot better world if we all just started dancing like a-holes to cheesy 80s rock.
Also, here’s an interview with the cast of The Breakfast Club (sans the apparently busy Emilio Estevez) from the movie’s 25th anniversary, in which they talk about the making of the dance scene.