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Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy reunite for 'Breakfast Club' anniversary screening at SXSW

AUSTIN -- A children's choir took the stage before Monday afternoon's 30th anniversary screening on The Breakfast Club at the Paramount and belted out "Don't You (Forget About Me), a song that conjures all manner of memories for anyone who was a teen in the '80s. Then the Hughes girls came out and the place went nuts.

Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy have done plenty since 1985, in acting and out (Ringwald has become a jazz singer; Sheedy teaches high school in Manhattan). But they both know the place The Breakfast Club holds in the moviegoing imagination. John Hughes' chamber piece captured a strain of American teen angst that speaks for multiple generations, yet somehow still embodies the film's '80s milieu.  (When was the last time you heard someone say, "Eat my shorts")?

What struck me the most on this viewing? These kids' parents, at least according to the youngsters onscreen, are abominable. Before the movie Ringwald talked about showing the film to her daughter, and she joked about a version told from the parents' perspective. But she also spoke of the sadness within Hughes, who also directed her in Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink. The filmmaker died in 2009.

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"His heart was heavy," Ringwald said. "He remembered all of his teen angst. It was still there for him."

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A restored 30th-anniversary edition of The Breakfast Club is now available on Blu-ray.

The original trailer:

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