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Original 'Breakfast Club' Script Unearthed At Suburban High School

By Jim Bochnowski in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 22, 2015 5:55PM

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(Photo: Meredith Frost's Twitter)

Last year, filmgoers celebrated the 30th anniversary of The Breakfast Club's legendary day of detention. Almost a year later, an original shooting script was found in the suburban school district that served as the backdrop of the film.

School district employees were packing up old files from the Main South High School building last month in order to move into a new administration building, when, according to District 207 Superintendent Ken Wallace, "one of the assistants was going through a filing cabinet and found a file that had a manuscript from The Breakfast Club dated Sept. 21, 1983." The script was found in a treasure trove of old documents including correspondence with Universal Studios' executives, and a contract that set a rental fee for the building that would become the movie set at $48,000.

The script was found in noticeably used conditioned, with the cover having been noted as being "Reviewed and approved by Dr. Murphy," who was the superintendent of schools at the time. Wallace also points out that "In the upper left, there is what appears to be pizza grease. I can imagine somebody taking this out over lunch and saying, 'I wonder what this is all about.'"

The film was shot at the former Maine North High School, which had been closed due to dwindling enrollment. Don Kenney, District 207's chief financial officer in the 1980s, noted that "We had a closed high school, it was empty and there was a lot of space. Hughes lived in the north suburbs and that's where he produced most of his flicks. I thought, 'Well, gee, it's a nice use of a great building and maybe we can make a buck and pay the heating bill.'" Unfortunately, although Kenney was on set in order to ensure the safety of the building, he never met the cast or John Hughes.

The district is currently determining what to do with the script, although Wallace hopes that the document can be preserved as a testament to the history of the school district. "The odds of having such an iconic movie filmed and associated with your district are astronomical," he said.