Breakfast Club Script Found in School Cabinet

1985 flick was filmed in a sister school in Illinois
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 21, 2015 11:44 AM CDT
Breakfast Club Script Found in School Cabinet
This image from a trailer shows the cast of 1985's "The Breakfast Club."   (YouTube)

Officials clearing out filing cabinets at Illinois' Maine South High School ahead of a move to a neighboring building last month uncovered a piece of movie history: a first draft of John Hughes' screenplay for the 1985 classic The Breakfast Club, dated Sept. 21, 1983. If you're wondering how it got into a school cabinet, well, much of the movie was filmed in the closed Maine North High School in 1984. The copy likely belonged to the school district's then-superintendent John Murphy, who "reviewed and approved" it, according to scrawled notes on the cover, the Chicago Tribune reports. But that's not all on the front of the old script. "In the upper left, there is what appears to be pizza grease" for added "authenticity," the school's current superintendent says.

"I can imagine somebody taking this out over lunch and saying, 'I wonder what this is all about,'" he adds, calling the script "an iconic piece of history." He says he plans to display the script for the public. It isn't clear how much the first draft differs from the final film, but there was at least one major edit. The draft refers to Molly Ringwald's character as Cathy Douglas, rather than Claire Standish. Letters between studio executives and school district officials, discovered along with other film documents and correspondence, also note the film's early title: Saturday Breakfast Club. A Universal Studios contract, describing the $48,000 rental fee it paid for the school, which housed the film's library set in its gym, was also found. (A dress from Gone With the Wind, found on a costume company's floor, just sold for $137,000.)

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