There are a lot of things about filmmaking that I don’t know. I can’t tell you what a “grip” or a “best boy” or “best boy grip” does, for example. I do, however, know an “establishing shot” is something at the beginning of a movie that sets the tone and lets the viewer know, at the very least, the time and place.
In the GenX touchstone 1985 film The Breakfast Club (TBC from here on), director John Hughes seems to understand what most Autopians already know: cars are windows into the soul. As such, Hughes uses vehicles to pretty much help tell you everything you need to know about the characters of the film in its first four minutes.
For those that haven’t seen it, the movie centers around a diverse (by 1985 standards) group of teens all assigned to Saturday detention at the fictional Shermer High School in the suburbs of Chicago’s North Shore (TBC was filmed in the then-abandoned Maine North High School in Des Plaines, and the make-believe town of Shermer, Illinois is in the very real 60062 zip code for Northbrook – I should know, I live there). As the kids are dropped off one by one in front of Shermer High, the cars play a very prominent role in quickly establishing the characters’ identities. Let’s revisit them:
The Jock
Parent’s Car: 1984 Ford Bronco II
Implied Stereotype: This was back before everyone drove an SUV; if a parent owned one, they likely really did take it off road to do outdoorsy things. Such an owner would be seen as a pocket-knife-and-clean-hanky kind of man’s man who likely hasn’t shown emotion since he was about four years old.
The Freak
Parent’s Car: 1984 Cadillac Bustleback Seville
Implied Stereotype: Here we have a kid that is totally rejecting the parent’s beliefs (and they are likely rejecting the kid, as proved by the fact that they peel away immediately after the kid has shut the car door). The Seville is to basically show that those beliefs are the importance of superficial appearances, just like the tinsel on this rather poorly built (and often diesel-powered) piece of crap she is dropped off in. You are left to imagine that the parent will drive back to a rather mid-sized house that nonetheless has an electric fountain in the center of the circular driveway, complete with concrete stone lions on each end.
The Brain
Parent’s Car: 1984 Dodge Aries K
Implied Stereotype: This choice I have to take a bit of issue with. The parents here are the kind that put academics above all else, raising kids with perfect grades to get jobs with the government, academia, or at a corporation making some former D-student boss quite rich. While this type of parent doesn’t usually give a shit about material things, they’re so painfully research-focused that they’d know from Consumer Reports that the K-Car was garbage. No, they’d drive a metallic feces-brown 1982 Toyota Corona automatic station wagon like the one below:
Of course, theirs will have a Nature Conservancy and local public radio station sticker on the back, seven college faculty parking stickers in the windshield (they won’t remove the old ones) and it hasn’t been washed since it left the dealer’s lot. It’s still running somewhere today, and the A/C works.
The Princess
Parent’s Car: 1983 Polaris Silver BMW e24 633csi (reportedly John Hughes’s actual car)
Implied Stereotype: Like the Seville parents, this Dad believes the best things in life are very, very expensive, and his daughter follows suit. In Princess’s parents’ case, they likely spent some real bucks on admittedly rather tasteful and desirable things like Burberry scarfs and Nakamichi home stereos. BMWs were not a dime a dozen back then: that e24 was $39,000 new; adjusted for inflation is … who cares? [Ed Note: click here] That’s STILL a lot of cash – and they had to finance at like 14 percent in 1983). As a kid, they wouldn’t let me darken the door of the BMW showroom, which unfortunately resulted in me vowing that I needed to always have an expensive-to-fix German car in the future to “really show them.” Right.
That’s pretty much the entire movie right there. The rest is an hour and a half of we’re-all-OK that we 80s kids thought was a deep, introspective masterpiece as young teens. We were wrong about that, but using cars as a characterization tool is still a brilliant concept. In retrospect, even the “serious” films from Mr. Hughes were pretty silly, but he definitely got that part right.
Need I mention Uncle Buck’s Grand Marquis coupe?
Universal Pictures screenshots
I’m Audi 5000! Cold Start – The Autopian
The Kid, And The Car, Stays In The Picture: Cold Start – The Autopian
Why Did ’80s Rockers love Mercedes So Much?: Cold Start – The Autopian
“Need I mention Uncle Buck’s Grand Marquis coupe?”
Speaking of Bronco II’s, Buck’s way too good for him girlfriend Chanice also drove a Bronco II.
2-door sharknose. Mmmm-hmmmm, yessssssssss.
“you ever hear of a tune up?”
“you ever hear of a ritual killing?”
“I don’t get it.”
“knaw on her face in public like that again and you’ll be one.”
There’s a well known (locally) house in Akron that 100% meets this description.
“Need I mention Uncle Buck’s Grand Marquis coupe?”
Easily the coolest car of the bunch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0wqgDOAmlA
(Likes post; briefly ponders changing screen name to ‘Mary Russell’s Wart.’)
His Wagoneer in the Great Outdoors was my favorite.
Breaking Bad. It was obvious that every car in that series was carefully chosen for each character by someone who has a keen sense of car character and also a keen sense of humor. Creator Vince Gilligan. Best show ever, for lots and lots of reason, but the cars were one of the sneaky touches of genius that probably not everyone noticed.
I did not care for Breaking Bad. I acknowledge that is was VERY well made, it was just too depressing for my tastes. That said, I agree the cars were all exceptionally well chosen.
I’m increasingly out of love with prestige TV these days. So much of it is unrelentingly dark (Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, etc.) and I’m just not into that.
None of those shows did anything for me.
I think they did a take on this at the old site.
That’s the greatest analysis of movie cars I have ever read.
All I know is they absolutely ruined Ally Sheedy’s character with that makeover.
No mention of the personalized license plates?
I was curious to know what the BMW would have on the plate.
“I was curious to know what the BMW would have on the plate”
CavgMBA
An Ohio State plate in Illinois. Hmmmm…
Perfect way to show that dad is a jock, too.
Actually an abusive dumb jock. No characterizations of The Ohio State implied.
I’ll buy the K-car for Brian’s parents. I grew up not far from there, just a little ways further out in Aurora, and domestics were still king. You had to be pretty bold to show up in a Toyota. Also, I’ll point out that my dad, an engineer and community college professor, chose a 1983 Dodge 600 ES for our family-car duties, and that man swore by Consumer Reports.
Yeah but how many red circles did it get in the reliability chart in the back of the auto issue?
A lot of empty “average” circles, if I recall. I remember it was between the Dodge and a Pontiac 6000, and the Dodge won out because it had more headroom (Dad was 6’3″).
I buy the K-car as well. A lot of really intelligent people care so little about cars, they just go buy whatever.
I’m with you Mark, there were a lot of domestic and brand die hards back then compared to today.
Bingo. This movie took place during a time in American history where people said out loud, “Buy American!” and often quietly muttered “…even though it’s a piece of crap.” I had a wealthy farmer great-uncle who bought my aunt a new Cadillac about every 2 years for most of my life, including about three or four real dogs in a row in the ’80s. He could have afforded to buy her a Mercedes instead and never worry about it, but neither of them would be caught dead in rural south Georgia in the 1980s in an automobile made by one of the former Axis powers. My uncle probably would have thoroughly enjoyed a Toyota or Nissan truck, but when he needed a new truck, he went straight back to the Ford dealership and bought another Ford truck.
If Brian’s dad lives in suburban Chicago and is union, then of course they’re driving a K-Car instead of a Toyota in 1984.
My dad is a retired engineer, did well enough to make a published list of government employees who earn beyond a certain threshold. The first year he made that list, he was driving a Plymouth Sundance, and shortly after had a couple of smaller Hyundais, from the days when you only bought them on price. By the time he made VP, he had a base late-model Sonata. I’m not sure he’s ever read Consumer Reports, but never really had any issues with any of those cars, they were just cheap, sensible, and got him to work.
Uncle Buck for the win!!!
When I was taken to detention in my last year of HS in 1983, it was in my Dad’s 1978 Ford Courier XLT.
Make of that what you will.
So what you’re saying is you had detention from the moment you left home and then got home? Ha ha
Almost the entirety of HS felt like detention – but that had nothing to do with Dad’s little truck.
so these are all 1983 and 84 model vehicles… I want to see they’re all fuel injected but I can’t remember if an old bronco like that still had a carburetor.
84/85 Bronco II’s and Rangers were the carb’d german Cologne V6.
An Aries would have still been carbureted. They got fuel injection in ’86.
Caddy has fuel injection, and obviously BMW had Bosch injection
As current owner of a regatta (baby) blue/white two tone Bronco II, it’s carbureted, went FI in ’86. As I bought the rig in 1999 for $50 and a can of Spam just because it had working heat, I took it. I just wish my buddy had bought an ’86. I still love it.
Nice! I was in high school when they came out, and had a friend whose parents bought him one, in classic metallic brown with tan. A cool vehicle for sure…though looking back, I’m still surprised it never rolled, given both what I know now about its dynamics and also how teenagers drive.
Love it
The Brain’s mom driving the K-car makes sense. The real money and research went into the dad’s Volvo 240 DL wagon, with the license plate F MA.
Perfectly stated, however, I think the Aires K was meant to imply the dorkiness of the character. Kind of like Mr. Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Agreed! It implies that they are kind of dorks in that they didn’t care about appearances, and they were being thrifty/frugal. Plus, was the K-car already regarded as crap by 1984? I’m not so sure…
“was the K-car already regarded as crap by 1984?”
Everyone I knew thought so.
Yeah, back then, people still remembered the Chryslers of the ’70s, which even at their most baroque, at least seemed solid. I remember a lot of people calling the K-cars “chintzy”.
I was just a kid, but I thought K-cars and the variants still sold pretty well at that time, seemed like everyone had one. But, I was in metro Detroit so of course everyone did. *shrug*
They sold like crazy, they were everywhere, and saved Chryslers bacon. My friends and I were rocking pre-smog cars at the time.
My friend was thrifty back in the day, and rocked the K-car and was damn proud of owning one. That thing managed to survive through his and my college years as well, somehow outlasting not just one, but two Civics I owned in that span. Though to be fair, my sister wrecked one of them.
Are there other forms of powering a driveway fountain besides electricity that I am unaware of?
Build on a natural spring?
Squirrels on speed running in a hamster wheel?
Gravity fed, if there is a source of water higher than the fountain.
Instead of the usual ones you find at Lowes or Home Depot, if you’re wealthy you can have them installed and connected directly to your plumbing.
Yes, but they still require a pump. The tie in to the plumbing is only there to add water and keep them at the correct level.
Hand pumped by “the help.”
Insert “that escalated quickly” gif here
An RBMK nuclear reactor running on the ragged edge at low power output, with the turbines directly responsible for pumping water?
Live dangerously or not at all! Besides, Jared Harris is just as good in Chernobyl as he was in the Expanse.
Diesel Cummins.
V12
SBC FTW.
But..but.. I want a FANCY fountain!
I believe the author means the difference between a self contained fountain that recirculates its water and is powered by the home’s electricity and one that is plumbed directly into the water system, works by pressure alone and drains back into the pipes. It says “I’m rich but not so rich I want to turn my yard into a construction site just for a touch of class”. ‘Class’ being used sarcastically in this instance.
That’s exactly what I meant, but the comment stream was good so there was no point in stopping it.
LET MY TOTAL WILL BE DONE !
*traces the Eight Rayed Star of Chaos upon the ground with a wand*
*delivers the incantation of Kia below holding a wand with both hands above the head*
ZIRDO IADNAMAD ELILA
I am the undefiled knowledge of the 1st aether
MICALZODO SAANIR MADRIAAX
mighty in the parts of the heavens
FINIS BALZIZIRAS IADA
executing the judgement of the highest
IO KIA !
*sits with feet together, wand held with both hands upright against body, in meditation for a few moments*
*issues the invocation below with wand held crosswise above the head*
ANETAB OTHILL UDSI CAOSAGI
in government I have set my feet in the earth
ZIRDO LONSMI DEPEDE ZARZAX
I am the power 333 of the 10th aether
SOBA DOOAIN MAD ZILODARPE
whose name amongst you is the god of conquest
TOOAT GMICA LZOMALARSAD TOLGLO
furnishing a power of to dispose of all things understanding
YRPOIL LATOK OVCHO ASYMP
division, one thing let it confound with another
UNCHI OMORS ZODACARE GOHUS
confound understanding move! I say with darkness
OADRIAX OROCHA DODPAL CAOSAGI
the lower beneath let them vex upon the earth heavens
ABRAMAG NETAAIB CAOSAGI IO CHORONZON !
I prepare for the of the earth government
*Visualises Lightening Flash*
KIAI!
*Strikes wand to ground*
That escalated quickly x2. Lol
Do you WANT Cthulu? Because this is how you get Cthulu.
Choronzon, not Cthulu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfJXZbz5-dA
Oh great, this just put our Dark Lord on ALL the scammy telemarketer call lists! Now anyone can summon him/her/them/it/????
What part of SECRET incantation didn’t you understand?
Or would putting the Dark Lord on all the scammy telemarketer lists be exactly the kind of eternal punishment he deserves?
Those telemarketers work FOR him dammit!!!
Oh fudge, now look what you made me do! I used the wrong preferred pronoun! him/her/them/it/???? is particularly proud of being the one to have inflicted those on the world.
Let’s assume that statement as fact and see where it goes:
1) If they work for him then he would have the ability to give them the secret incantation himself. Therefore, he clearly doesn’t want them to have it.
2) If they work for him he would be on the Do Not Call list. But when has a telemarketer EVER obeyed it?
Which is why it was a SECRET! Telemarketers are so slimy and evil even the Dark Lord wants an infinite chain of command between him/her/them/it/???? and those…THINGS.
Now we all gotta learn a whole new incantation, probably with -ugh – math.
Thanks a lot Toecutter!
Have you been introduced to the dark wizardry of multivariable differential calculus yet?
https://i.imgur.com/gURAKUN.jpg
I’ve taken coursework in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. Pretty sure that was invented solely to torment graduate students.
Gotta’ love Brownian motion, Beavis. Huh-huh huh.
thermonuclear hydraulic pump. you can sometimes score them at army navy surplus.
His films are a big reason I started noticing cars, and pretty much all of them feature perfect human-car pairings.
Ferris Bueller’s dad’s Audi 5000 sedan is just so natural, and what more perfect car for Jeanie than a Fiero? And do I even have to point out that what other car would Ed Rooney possibly drive other than a K-car?
“I wanted a car, I got a computer. Talk about being born under a bad sign.”
Don’t forget Cameron’s beat-up (likely hand-me-down) 1979 Alfetta sedan.
IIRC Ferris’ mom drives a wagon K-car with the “wood” paneling. Frankly, even back then when I was but a wee lad, I expected more of her. Her husband drives an Audi FFS!
It was the LeBaron Town and Country (before the name transferred to the minivan). Yes, she should have driven a Volvo 740 wagon.
Yes. A beige one.
If not a Benz 300TD wagon.
In real life… mad Dad had that same red 1985 Audi 5000, and he also fit the mold. My Mom, tan 1980 Chevy Malibu to schlep us around in, so the movie nailed it.
Heh. My parents seemed to one-up each other a lot. My pop was still driving the 1969 Buick Skylark he bought new for their honeymoon when my mom got a swanky 1974 LeSabre hardtop sedan. Then he got a 1977 Thunderbird, then my mom traded for a 1979 Grand Marquis.
Current standings: my mom’s 2015 Buick Enclave is much nicer than my dad’s tired early-aughts Tahoe. He needs to go ahead and buy himself that Boss Hogg/Big Enos Burdette Eldorado convertible he’s been pining for literally all my life, steer horns and all.
Yeah, the K-car wagon was the one vehicular miss-casting in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. She would have been driving a Volvo wagon for sure.
Although in real life, cars are often spectacularly miscast. The occasional outlier avoids being too on-the-nose, perhaps.
I’m told the McCallister family’s Buicks in Home Alone were pretty accurate for that time and place, also – being from the East Coast, I doubted that, folks like Kevin’s parents (reasonably well off financially, professional sorts, in their mid 30s to mid 40s) would not have been caught dead in a domestic brand by 1990, but, apparently, the Buy American mantra held on a lot longer in Illinois, even among yuppies, and John Hughes knew what he was doing giving Mrs. McCallister an Electra Estate and Mr. McCallister a LeSabre.
Totally true. I grew up in the midwest, and it was only in the late ’80s that the Japanese brands really became common as everyday cars. I remember the first time I went to the coast as a kid, and being amazed at all the foreign makes!
Also, with that many kids they need something big, and a well-to-do North Shore family would likely choose a B-body wagon (or Country Squire/Colony Park Panther) over a minivan. House is worth $2.4 mil today, though I know that gets a port-a-potty sized house in LA.
The Brain’s parents probably teach at a public university or community college (ie modest income) and their own parents worked for the Big Three, therefore they have misplaced domestic loyalty.
The Freak’s mom is probably Hyacinth Bucket.
My great grandfather worked a Chrysler plant. So my Mom thought Chryslers were good to buy. My grandfather thought Chryslers were good for some reason as well, maybe because he also grew up with that plant in town that my great grandfather worked at. So my Dad thought Chryslers were good. Reading about Chryslers in the 70’s, it makes me wonder how that idea persisted into the 80’s, but it did.
All in all, the 2 Plymouth Reliants and 2 Grand Caravans I grew up with were pretty good to us. A couple service issues, but never stranded. Eventually my parents branched out and it has been “imports” ever since that 1998 Grand Caravan.
Nah, she’d be Edie McClurg.
Playing Hyacinth Bucket.
The Rover 200 was definitely the British equivalent of a bustle-back Seville. That car was 100% perfectly cast, as well, as are all of Onslow’s Fords.
Decent analysis. A minor quibble: a true man’s man would’ve driven a full-size Bronco and not the Cherokee wannabe II.
The “lesser” Bronco seems to fit a man that projects their own failed dreams onto their star athlete son.
Right, and they’re suburbanites as well, so they’d have the softroader version.
B/c thanks to the Bishop, I now have John Hughes on the brain, so…Chet in Weird Science drove the regular Bronco’s counterpart, a Chevy Blazer, which would fit Canopysaurus’ point I think.
Weird Science! Gotta rewatch that one!
Considering that in the scene where Chet arrives home in it, he gets out in camouflage pants and a hunting vest, carrying a shotgun and a handful of dead ducks, absolutely.
Chet was a toxic asshole, but he certainly was no poser. Andrew’s dad was probably much more of a suburban “tough guy.” Chet could have kicked his ass.
Excellent analysis. This is yet another example of what makes the Autopian great.
From personal experience I’d say they nailed the K-car. I dated a girl in high school who was basically a genius (35 on the ACT) and her first car was a hand-me-down Reliant-K that looked exactly like that only in silver. Her dad was one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, researched everything to death and back again, and was the one who introduced me to NPR.
After the Reliant’s block cracked he purchased a Honda Civic with radio-delete to replace it.
If you can find a better car, buy it.
**Challenge accepted**
That was a cheeky phrase he didn’t fully think through. Because people did. 😀
It was genius. The type of people who never thought beyond the slogan were perfect Chrysler customers.
Lol, I hadn’t thought of that angle!
The Dodge for the Brain’s parents make sense if they see his academic success as aspirational and they are not the brains themselves. You definitely nailed my friends parents with the Toyota though!
I thought this as well, but the license plate seems to indicate the parents are nerds as well.
Academic/Government (Defense Department) parents blindly try to raise their kids to do the same as they did. Ask me how I know
I was thinking this as well. I knew plenty of very smart kids with well meaning but somehow dysfunctional blue collar parents. They had been told from childhood that academics was the key to the American dream their parents never quite had.
Also, being extraordinary smart in one area does not mean you are necessarily a good consumer. My father had a doctorate in math and worked on nuclear weapons programs, but he was almost indifferent to more normal issues. He made many questionable choices with cars, tools and other consumer items…
Can relate. My father was a professional mechanical engineer who could design anything from a super secret Mach 15+ spyplane to a teraton carrying ICBM to a nuclear spy submarine that could safely go ALL the way to the bottom and back but never could quite figure out the mysteries of the VCR clock.
I never before noticed the license plates of OHIOST and EMC 2
One thing that stands out is that they were all the current model year when filming occurred other than Hughes’ personal car that would have been sitting around on the set during production anyway. Like, none one thought a parent might have a 1982 or 1981 model, or even a 1983 that they still bought new in 1984 as leftover inventory?
More than likely it was easier to get new cars for filming (dealer, rentals) than older ones. Of course, Chicago around this time almost anything five years old was already rusted, which they didn’t want (except in the case of the later Uncle Buck with John Candy’s car…God, I miss that guy!)
Dude flipped a pancake with a snow shovel in that movie. That’s hero level stuff right there.
“A lot of people hate this hat.”
Of all Hughes’ movies, it’s one of my favorites.
Don’t forget Uncle Bucks’s special lady friend also drove a Bronco II, later year though as it had the newer Explorer style headlights, likely a 1988 model year as UB was filmed in ’89. The BII also fit her personality.
You mean Chanise, of the muffler shop? 🙂
“What’s a ‘Chanise’?”
And Bender walked there by himself, foreshadowing the profound familial disconnect we would learn about later in detail.
That’s what I was just about to mention. Unsaid in the article, but fits the thesis completely. Smoke up, Johnny!
What about you, Dad?