The Breakfast Club, John Bender and Problem Solving
What to do when those proverbial screws fall out in our life or work
The Breakfast Club (A Plot Synopsis)
On February 15, 1985, The Breakfast Club hit theaters. It was a movie that the studio was not interested in making. John Hughes ultimately scared up a $1,000,000 budget for the film and shot it concurrently with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.1 The Breakfast Club tells the story of five students at Shermer High School — Brian (the brain played by Anthony Michael Hall), Andrew (the athlete played by Emilio Estevez), Allison (the basket case played by Ally Sheedy), Claire (the princess played by Molly Ringwald), and John Bender (the criminal played by Judd Nelson) — all from very different walks of life and all in detention together in the school library on Saturday morning, March 24, 1984.
The detention monitor is Principal Vernon, who immediately makes himself known at exactly 7:06 a.m. and informs this “demented and sad but social” party of five that they will each write an essay of no less than 1,000 words describing to him who they think they are. He tells them they will not talk, move from their seats, or sleep. Of course, they ignore all three rules, most importantly the first one because talking is exactly how they truly get to know each other and ultimately understand and appreciate each other’s differences.
One thing that is really cool and unique about the movie is that it is shot in one location — Shermer High School — and 90% of the movie is shot in one room, the library. It’s for this reason that I think it would make a fantastic Broadway show. Anyone who knows me also knows that I loathe remakes and I’ve probably mentioned that in this book a few times, but I do think a theatre production would be really awesome.
So what can one of our teenagers in detention - John Bender (aka the criminal) - teach us for life and work?
Those proverbial screws are going to fall out. The why is important but it’s how you put them back in that really matters.
Have you ever felt like your screws were just falling out? That your life or your career or your body was falling apart? Yeah, me too. In fact, the reason that I am doing what I do today as a speaker and author is directly related to my career screws falling out all over the place. And for a lot of us, our careers are a major part of our life; so, I suppose you could say that my life screws were falling out as well.
I was 47 years old and in a job that just wasn’t working out for me and as I really looked around, I realized that the career path I had chosen for the better part of 22 years wasn’t working out for me either. Yes, I’d had the chance to work for some great companies and I’d climbed that very unstable corporate ladder — so, from the outside, I’d imagine people had a very different perspective. But I wasn’t fulfilled at all, and I hadn’t been for a very long time. I was happy in my personal life but downright miserable in my career and I’m sure my co-workers could see it. I was, like a lot of people, caught up in the cycle of career advancement and a singular focus on a bigger title, more compensation, and that extra week of vacation (which so few of us took anyway) — the coveted extra “days off” that came after five years on the job or with a new position at a new company with a better “workplace culture.”
Siouxise and The Banshees
I felt like Siouxise (of Siouxise and The Banshees) was singing to me in their 1985 song “Cities of Dust” when she sang, “Your city lies in dust, my friend.” City being my career and my life in a sense. So, there I was lying on my couch and having a self-pity party of one while watching The Breakfast Club for the 121st time. With all the amazing dialogue and interaction throughout the movie, it was easy to miss some of the lines and their potential impact in the first 120 viewings. What’s really cool about ’80s movies for me besides, well, everything, is that as I grow, have new experiences, and add to my life journey, there are lines of dialogue that I didn’t hear before. I mean really hear. They resonate in a way now that they never did before, and they mean something new to me now.
When Bender said, “Screws fall out all the time. The world’s an imperfect place,” he was answering Principal Vernon’s question of “Who took the screws out of the door?” after he found the library door slammed shut. It, of course, bought him another week in detention but in all the times that I’d watched the movie, that line never really jumped out at me until that day. I sat straight up and rewound back to that line and listened again. My proverbial screws had most definitely fallen out and were all over the floor. What was I going to do to put them back in? I knew that it required finding something new to do with my life, but what exactly?
Three Choices
The only way those screws were going back in is if I left the career path I’d been in for over 20 years and started fresh. Ironically enough, I had just recently rewatched The Outsiders and one of the characters named Johnny Cade (played by Ralph Macchio) said, “You still have a lot of time to make yourself be what you want.” This crazy-ass universe of ours was trying to tell me something. At this point I had three choices:
Put the screws back in just as they were and continue living my “life of quiet desperation,” as Thoreau said.
Get a new set of screws — meaning get a new job, essentially putting a fresh coat of paint on my current career that would eventually weather and peel ... putting me right back in that area of “quiet desperation.”
Get a new set of screws, a whole new door and doorframe, and use it as an entranceway to an entirely new path.
I chose #3 and transformed my life and my career starting with an article on LinkedIn entitled “What The Breakfast Club Can Teach Us About Problem Solving.” From there, I built a keynote speaking series and a book series around the workplace and life lessons we can learn from ’80s pop culture. Five years later, my 3rd book in my series has been released and I’m bringing lessons from ’80s pop culture to organizations around the country, including DHL, VISA, University of Florida, UPenn Medicine, and more.
The Truth
Look, here’s the truth:
Those proverbial screws are going to fall out. The why is important but it’s how you put them back in that really matters.
The why is the past and it’s always important to understand why something happened so you can avoid it moving forward or solve for it in the present. Maybe the screws fell out by no fault of your own. Maybe they had some assistance from you and choices that you made. Maybe you let them stay in there so long in the same place with no maintenance that they just rusted and fell out. Maybe the universe just decided to let you know that it was time for you to have a little test or challenge and they fell out in a way that felt completely random (but wasn’t really random at all). Or maybe it was a combination of factors.
But the why or the past is not where you want to live. It’s not where you want to dwell. Understand it and then move forward. The how is the future. How you put those screws back in is what really matters. That will dictate the rest of your life or at least
the next stage in it.
Robert Frost said, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” Most people will choose the path most traveled — the comfortable one. The popular one. The safe one. The one that just puts the screws back in exactly as they were. The non-disruptive or non-John-Bender path. Bender defied the rules in an instructive way. I mean, he was also pretty disruptive and at one point when Andrew was given permission to get up to go to the bathroom, Bender said, “If he gets up, we’ll all get up. It’ll be anarchy.”
Carlton, The Pointer Sisters and David Lee Roth
Now, if you do choose that whole new set of screws, new door, and new doorframe, you may find yourself doing the Carlton dance from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air to the Pointer Sisters 1982 smash hit, “I’m So Excited.” Trust me, this comes from a place of experience and no, I won’t put it up on YouTube but I may just do it for the right price. The right price being a sizable donation to an animal rescue. I’ll dance for dogs.
A life well-lived is going to have some screws fall out. It’s inevitable. I can’t imagine anyone’s entire life is just a straight line from point A to point B. If so, well what a mundane, boring, and unentertaining life that would be. A well-lived life is going to have ups, downs, peaks, and valleys. That’s what makes it worth living. As David Lee Roth sang in his 1986 cover of, “That’s Life”:
“That’s life.
That’s what all the people say.
You’re riding high on Monday,
Shot down in May.
But I ain’t never gonna change my tune, When I’m back on top in the month of June.”
That is definitely life. Remember to focus on “how you put those screws back in.” That’s your future and as Timbuk 3 told us in 1986, “The future’s so bright I gotta wear shades.” Get a new set a screws, a whole new door and doorframe, and grab those shades. Your future is bright, indeed.
https://screenrant.com/breakfast-club-details-behind-scenes-making-trivia/.
My favorite movie of all time, Keep TBC posts coming. Thanks Chris