Staff of Maine Township High School District 207, in a northwest suburb of Chicago, were moving to a building next door when they made an unexpected discovery:
"One day a few weeks ago, 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," District 207 Superintendent Ken Wallace tells the Chicago Tribune. "It's a first draft of the screenplay by John Hughes." He said the plan is to preserve and display the piece of cinematic history, noting that "the odds of having such an iconic movie filmed and associated with your district are astronomical."
As to how Maine South High School came to have an original first draft, that's no mystery: Much of the iconic film was shot during the spring of 1984 inside Maine North High School, closed in 1981. The movie's library set was built inside the North Maine gym. Scribbled on the manuscript is "Reviewed and approved by Dr. Murphy," referring to then-Superintendent John Murphy; school district officials typically looked over scripts before allowing movies to be filmed on school property.
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Among changes between the script and the final movie: The original name was "Saturday Breakfast Club," and Molly Ringwald's character had a different name. Read more about the discovery, just in time for the film's 30th anniversary, at the Chicago Tribune.
