Featured CED VideoDisc No. 35 - Winter 2005

The Breakfast Club

The Breakfast Club CED It was twenty years ago on February 15, 1985 that this movie was released, and I can still remember the gradually increasing buzz that surrounded it. I initially thought a movie about five kids in Saturday detention sounded boring, but that opinion changed when I got around to seeing the film. It's the conversation that makes this movie, which doesn't really jive with the real world, as detentions usually have an authority figure present at all times to keep things quiet. This movie uses the plot device of a broken door to separate the authority figure from the students.

The day of Saturday detention takes place on March 24, 1984, making this one of the few non-historical movies I've seen that can be dated to the exact day. To put that date in a CED perspective, it was three years earlier on March 22, 1981 that the RCA VideoDisc system was introduced, and only about a week later on April 4, 1984 that its discontinuation was announced. So CED was still going strong the day the Breakfast Club took place.

Here's the text of the "1000 word" essay the students leave for Principal Vernon, which is a combination of the slightly different versions from the start and end of the movie. In the pictures below, see if you can identify each Breakfast Club member represented. If you have any difficulty, watch the narration of the letter at the beginning of Side 1 on the CED.

Saturday, March 24, 1984, Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois, 60062

Dear Mr. Vernon:

We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong.

What we did was wrong.

But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are.

What do you care?

You see us as you want to see us.

In the simplest terms, the most convenient definitions.

But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal.

Does that answer your question?

Sincerely Yours,

The Breakfast Club

The Breakfast Club

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