Don’t you forget about them – a SCAD professor’s 40 years with ‘The Breakfast Club’

Long before he became a professor at SCAD, Andrew Meyer was sniffing out a great script — one that would become the 40-year-old cult classic known as The Breakfast Club.

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A brain. An athlete. A basket case. A princess. A criminal.

Anthony Michael Hall, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson brought dimensions to what could have been stock characters in the iconic 1985 John Hughes film The Breakfast Club. Andrew Meyer, its executive producer, is now a Savannah College of Art and Design professor and will be in Atlanta January 24 to celebrate his just-released book, Walking in the Fast Lane: Stories of A Lifetime, as well as for a 40th anniversary screening of the film at SCAD Atlanta. While he has worked on other projects, The Breakfast Club is one everyone wants to ask him about. 

Ironically, Meyer didn’t start off in the film industry, but in the record business. In 1971, he was working with recognizable names such as Peter Frampton and Joe Cocker at A&M Records. When he suggested to his team that the label should be in the motion picture business, they agreed — and his film career began. He had read the 1978 book Birdy and told his team they should buy it and adapt it. A&M Films developed a script that caught the attention of director Alan Parker (whom Meyer shared an agent with), and their film won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival. 

Shortly after, Meyer met Hughes, then just a writer. “I had read National Lampoon’s Vacation and thought it was the funniest script I had ever read,” Meyer says. At Hughes’ house in Chicago the next day, Meyer realized the writer had a new script — but he was only willing to collaborate if he could direct.

Sensing the script’s potential, Meyer moved quickly, telling his bosses they had to buy Hughes’ script — about five school students in detention together one Saturday — right away.  “I read it first because he had just finished it,” Meyer said. When his bosses asked what it would cost to make the movie, Meyer didn’t know. Only 27 at the time and relatively new to the industry, he suggested a million dollars, which, to him, sounded like what an independent movie should cost. 

However, what started off as an independent film with an unknown director turned into a $12-million project when Universal Pictures partnered with A&M on the project. The shoot was relatively straightforward, and The Breakfast Club went on to be a critical and commercial success — a film that generations would continue to discover. 

When the cast and crew were making the film, no one had any idea what it would become. “It was a little movie with unknown actors,” Meyer said. “John had only done Sixteen Candles before, and, when we made it, we did not know if it was going to be in more than a few theaters. There was no streaming then, and it was a completely different culture.”

Meyer calls it impossible to gauge a film’s success by what is happening during a shoot. “I’ve been on movies where the dailies are great, and everyone loves each other — and the film is terrible,” he says. “And I’ve been on movies where everyone hates each other, and we were over budget and it’s an award-winning production.” 

The true test, he says, is getting it in front of an audience, and when he and a colleague attended the first test Breakfast Club screening, Meyer knew it was going to click.

The producer likes to think that all of his movies have some sort of timeless appeal, but especially this one. “The message about kids in high school is never going to change — their insecurities and complicated youth. Their feelings are not limited to the ’80s; everyone can relate to it.” 

Meyer also worked on the John Cusack comedy Better Off Dead; Bring on the Night with Sting; and the made-in-Georgia Fried Green Tomatoes, based on Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café. 

In 2004, lecturing at SCAD Savannah was such a positive experience that Meyer later became part of the staff. He teaches writing and producing and supervises some student work. “I have seen SCAD grow, and it’s been an extraordinary opportunity. One reason I stayed at SCAD is that it’s very entrepreneurial and innovative. They let me teach three classes, and if I were teaching at Yale that would never have happened. It’s the same go-get-em attitude as people in Hollywood.” 

A synchronicity exists between the tax credit deal in Georgia and SCAD’s growth, he feels. “It enables SCAD to get more students on lots and on production schedules. Studios want young, smart people on their sets, and SCAD wants to give them their experience.” 

Meyer started writing Walking in the Fast Lane: Stories of A Lifetime — about his life experiences in the industry and traveling — when he was 26 and on a trip around the world. When he left A&M, he felt guilty that he was taking time off, so he told his bosses he was writing a book. 

“I realized that when I started to write a book (then) I had nothing to say — and now I have learned a few things. I feel elders have an obligation to pass along what we know to the next generation. Sometimes it’s the right time to do something — and, at 75, it was the right time for me.” 

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Jim Farmer is the recipient of the 2022 National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award for Best Theatre Feature and a nominee for Online Journalist of the Year. A member of five national critics’ organizations, he covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival, and lives in Avondale Estates with his husband, Craig, and dog, Douglas