Original 'Breakfast Club' Script Found in a High School Filing Cabinet

The awesome ’80s relic was apparently unearthed a few weeks ago when an assistant was packing boxes for a move and came across a file dated September 21, 1983, and labeled, simply, “The Breakfast Club.”

“It’s a first draft of the screenplay by John Hughes,” Superintendent Ken Wallace told the Chicago Tribune. “[It was] like finding a treasured heirloom that you forgot about.”

The Breakfast Club, if you didn’t know, is like, the best high school movie ever. It was released in 1985 and starred Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez and Anthony Michael Hall as the princess, the criminal, the basket case, the athlete and the brain, who were stuck in school on a Saturday after being sentenced to all-day detention.

At the beginning of the movie, the characters see themselves as totally different from one another. Because stereotypes! But after they all partake in a little herbal therapy they come to realize that they are all, in fact, very much the same.

So basic…yet so brilliant!

Here’s something that just blew my mind, though: The found manuscript apparently reveals that Ringwald’s character was originally named Cathy, not Claire—which is SO not the same thing! Because even though Judd Nelson’s character dismisses Claire as “a fat girl’s name,” we have always disagreed. Cathy is a fat girl’s name. Or like, the name of a really annoying Patty Simcox type. But Claire? Claire is Queen Bee. The type of girl who brings sushi to lunch. In 1985.

And Answer the question, Cathy? Just…no.

Anyway, I thought it might be fun to see what other little-known facts about the movie I could uncover. Here’s what I got from Story Notes on AMC: The Judd Nelson part almost went to John Cusack. John Hughes played Anthony Michael Hall’s father. And Rick Moranis was originally cast as Janitor Carl, who he wanted to play with an over-the-top Russian accent. So yeah. Pretty glad that never happened.

Still, nothing pisses me off more than finding out that the awesome lipstick stunt Claire shows off near the end of the movie was faked with camera angles because Molly Ringwald couldn’t actually do it. Seriously? This just seems lazy to me. I may or may not have spent most of 11th grade perfecting that trick. By which I mean I totally did. And I wasn’t the one getting paid to star in an iconic 80s movie.

But 30 years after The Breakfast Club‘s debut, my teen angst long since dissipated, I can still do it—so y’all can just go ahead and eat my shorts.