TIL The David Bowie Quote At The Beginning Of The Breakfast Club Wasn’t John Hughes’ Idea

The late John Hughes made some of the most important films of the 1980s for almost everyone who grew up in that decade, including me. There was a time when I was a teenager that I must have watched The Breakfast Club every weekend for a year, and while David Bowie’s music doesn’t appear in The Breakfast Club, a quote from his song “Changes” introduces the film. I always assumed it was Hughes, who wrote and directed the film, who was responsible for including it. I was wrong. It was actor Ally Sheedy who gave him the idea to use it.

There are a lot of reasons why Hughes’ movies resonated with me and continue to resonate with Gen Xers all these years later, and one big one is the music he used in his movies. Not only did he pick great songs from current artists, like Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” in The Breakfast Club, but he also had a knack for great needle drops from older artists, like “Young Americans” by Bowie in Sixteen Candles. I just always assumed it was Hughes who was inspired by the quote from another Bowie song and included it on a title card in the beginning.