How Molly Ringwald feels about The Breakfast Club in the age of #MeToo
Molly Ringwald is taking a closer look at the '80s teen movies that made her famous.
The Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles star tackled the Harvey Weinsteins of the film industry in a New Yorker article last year. In a new piece published by the magazine Friday, Ringwald revisits her starring roles in John Hughes' iconic films through a post-#MeToo lens.
Hughes' films are known for redefining teen movies, and Ringwald says that she is proud of her work on them. But after rewatching the films today — in some cases with her young daughter — she realizes their legacies are complicated, she writes.
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Ringwald tells how she objected to some lines or scenes even as they were being shot, including the famous Breakfast Club scene where Judd Nelson's John Bender looks up the skirt of Ringwald's Claire Standish. Although another actress sat in for the scene, "even having another person pretend to be me was embarrassing to me," Ringwald writes. She told Hughes her concerns, but the scene stayed, she says.
Then there's a troubling scene in Sixteen Candles, which Ringwald describes below:
You can read the rest of Ringwald's thought-provoking piece — including how the actress who played Caroline feels about that scene — at The New Yorker.
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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.
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