Silent Bob in the Breakfast Club
this was posted on www.popculturenetwork.com forums June 1 2010
Many of you here on the PCN forums know me as Rob Base, but what a lot of you may not know is that I have been active in the indie film scene now for the better part of ten years. I am currently working on my second feature film. What does that have to do with Silent Bob?
Maybe almost nothing, but Kevin Smith has been a huge influence on me as a writer/director.
Watching someone like Kevin make a film about losers and stoners at a convenience store makes me realize that there is an audience looking for more than gun shots and cheap humor.
All this time Kevin talks about how much John Hughes affected him as a filmmaker. I never saw it before until I re-watched the Breakfast Club with my wife this past Memorial Day.
I see all the archetype standards usually seen in a Hughes film. None more so than Allison (Ally Sheedy) as the basket case. The non-verbal-hiding-her-body outcast who follows the others just because she has nothing better to do on her Saturday.
But how is this like Silent Bob? Simple, the first time I notice the similarities was in the running around trying to get to Judd Nelson’s locker before the principal sees them. All of them doing this Scooby Doo inspired dash around the halls. If you have ever seen Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back, it’s in there as well as in Mallrats.
There is one scene in particular where they are running back and forth and Allison is just leaning against the lockers. If you put a hat on her it’s Silent Bob all the way
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As for the wisdom that Silent Bob inflicts every once in a while …i.e. Clerks and Chasing Amy, one has to simply look to the scene where the Club wants Claire (Molly Ringwald) to open up and she won’t or can’t. Then Allison tells her tales of sex and what can only be called abuse by a therapist until Claire confesses.
Granted, the basket case then tells everyone that she was a compulsive liar. But who’s to say Bob isn’t lying. His hetero life mate, Jay, never once seen anything that Bob claims to have done.
But looking back on a simple film like the Breakfast Club and what it represents as a movie and a culture, it is nothing short of amazing and if it’s good enough to inspire Kevin Smith, it’s good enough to be seen by anyone at any time.