Career Assessment is a weekly look back at the hot, young things of yore. A tribute to both those who survived and enjoyed a fruitful career and to the others that flamed out just too soon.
Emilio Estevez
Character: Andrew Clark is the requisite sleeve-adverse jock of the group who clashes with Judd Nelson's Bender a lot and realizes that, hey, weird chicks are hot when you put them in makeup. Has a soliloquy about how he hates his father for drilling athletic superiority into his brain -- a speech that itself was adapted into the movie Varsity Blues (probably). Because jocks have feelings, too.
Before: Estevez played Two-Bit in the pillar Brat Pack film The Outsiders with just about every other twentysomething actor in Hollywood and starred in the Alex Cox punk rock cult flick Repo Man.
After: After acting in the other big Brat Pack ensemble movie, St. Elmo's Fire, Estevez had a decent run in the '80s: he wrote That Was Then... This Is Now (another S.E. Hinton adaptation), starred in the totally awesome Stephen King-directed Maximum Overdrive, the action-comedy Stakeout and joined another ensemble period piece, Young Guns. The '90s were a mixed bag, with questionable sequels to his '80s accomplishments and writing/directing Men at Work coupled with a brief resurgence thanks to, like, seven Mighty Ducks movies.
Career High: One generation knows him as a jock while the next knows him as the coach of a rag-tag hockey team. However, directing the pseudo-fictionalized biopic Bobby might be his high point. You know you've made it when they let you direct a big prestige picture with a huge cast of names like Sharon Stone, Anthony Hopkins, William H. Macy and Nick Cannon. Getting crushed by an elevator in Mission: Impossible ain't too shabby, either.
Career Low: You're asking me to choose among Freejack, Another Stakeout and Young Guns II? We're going to be here all day.
Where Are They Now? Nowadays Estevez seems to appear on family TV shows like "The West Wing" and "Two and a Half Men" while doing easy TV director work for CBS shows like "Numb3rs," "Cold Case" and "CSI: New York." He continues to do motion picture directing, too, but nobody seems to notice. We can assume he's gearing up to cameo in a reboot of The Mighty Ducks.
Grade: C
Anthony Michael Hall
Character: Brian Johnson is the quintessential nerd. Hall's character is such a brain that not only does he end up being the guy who actually writes the paper that they're all assigned, but he's also the only one who leaves detention without hooking up with a girl. Also, in the pre-Columbine days of yore, he somehow thought he could commit suicide with a flare gun.
Before: Hall began his career with television commercials at a young age, including a spot as a breakfast cereal spokeskid. No doubt aided by his waifish, blond, good looks, he portrayed Rusty Griswold in director John Hughes' National Lampoon's Vacation, the first of (so far) five actors to do so. However, it was his turn as the Geek (aka Farmer Ted) in the '80s classic Sixteen Candles, an improbably self-confident "king of the dipshits" that turned him to the public spotlight.
After: Lorne Michaels returned to the Saturday Night Live fold in 1985, bringing in an almost entirely new cast of players, including Hall. The youngest (at 17) featured player in SNL history, he remained for only a season and after several critical and commercial failures, resurfaced as the antagonist of Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands and four years later, as Bill Gates in The Pirates of Silicon Valley. Cast as the lead in a television adaptation of Stephen King's "The Dead Zone," Hall caught public imagination (or at least cable television's) for six full seasons.
Career High: When it comes to modern archetypes, it's difficult to discount The Breakfast Club. Call it typecasting, but Hall will probably live forever in a generation's mind as a sheepish, browbeaten nerd, forever warring with his own self-loathing and sense of intellectual superiority. As Brian, he may have been the most responsible person in detention, but dammit, he's still one of them.
Career Low: While losing the lead role in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket has to be a continuing sting, Hall's lowest point may well be 1988's Johnny Be Goode, a painfully dull comedy costarring SNL compatriot Robert Downey Jr. As if the Judas Priest cover of Chuck Berry's rock 'n' roll manifesto wasn't bad enough, some madman decided to cast the most recognizable nerd in cinema as a football jock being desperately wooed by colleges.
Where Are They Now? Hall turned in a brief but memorable turn in Christopher Nolan's titanic The Dark Knight as a television reporter who meets a very unfortunate end. Currently, he will star in Aftermath, a crime drama delayed in post-production until 2010 (rarely a good sign).
Grade: C+
Judd Nelson
Character: John Bender is the rebel of The Breakfast Club, the down and out kid who's so ignored and abused at home he doesn't even have a lunch to bring to detention. While the cigar burns and snotty remarks tell one story, his eventual affection for rich girl Claire (Molly Ringwald) hint at a character with a lot more going on than just the denim jacket. Also, he's kind of an asshole.
Before: Prior to Hughes' teenage wildlife classic, Nelson had only one credit to his name: Making the Grade, also featuring Andrew Dice Clay. After playing a teenage grifter hired to take the place of a rich kid who wants to skip prep school, a misfit with a penchant for skipping school and mouthing off would seem like a natural fit.
After: Nelson's career has been long and uneven. After the equally memorable '80s angst vehicle, St. Elmo's Fire, he featured as the voice of Hot Rod in Transformers: The Movie (the Orson Welles one, not the Michael Bay one) and a peculiar string of fare such as Airheads, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day. Also, a few good movies too, like New Jack City.
Career High: A four-season stint on the NBC sitcom "Suddenly Susan" aside, Nelson's Brat Pack days resound as his strongest and most sincere. After all, who can dismiss his fist pump to "Don't You Forget About Me?" We won't, Simple Minds. We won't.
Career Low: Cruel as it is to say, a filmography studded with as many TV movies as Nelson's has a lot to pick from. Blindfold: Acts of Obsession, an erotic TV thriller which also spurred a brief romance with lead/noted bitch Shannon Doherty, stands tall (or low, as it is), as does Sci-Fi channel also-ran, Black Hole. Guess what it's about.
Where Are They Now? Most recently, Nelson filmed a yet to be picked up HBO pilot, "Brookwood Sleazebags," and reprised his Transformers voice acting. Rodimus Prime lives.
Grade: D
Ally Sheedy
Character: Allison Reynolds is the most socially awkward of the collection of students in detention. She spends most of the film hiding behind her hair, silent except the occasional emotional outburst. This is the type of girl who shakes dandruff onto a drawing so it looks like it's snowing. However, once Molly Ringwald puts her make-up on Allison, her newfound hotness is so amazing that jock Emilio Estevez can't help himself and the two start to date.
Before: Although Sheedy began her career in television, she had already grabbed leading roles in two high profile films before her turn in The Breakfast Club. She starred along with Matthew Broderick in the 1983 thriller WarGames and opposite her future St. Elmo's co-star Rob Lowe in Oxford Blues.
After: Following The Breakfast Club, Sheedy starred in the Joel Schumacher Brat Pack vehicle St. Elmo's Fire (1983) as the yuppie Leslie Hunter, played second fiddle to a robot along with '80s castaway Steve Guttenberg in Short Circuit (1987) and even had her own starring vehicle Maid to Order (1987) where she plays spoiled brat Jessie Montgomery whose fortunes are reversed by a "fairy godmother" and must become a maid. While Sheedy kept busy in the '90s (highlights include a turn as John Candy's love interest in Only the Lonely and as lesbian photographer Lucy Berliner in High Art for which she won acting awards from the Independent Spirit Awards and Los Angeles Film Critics Association), the '00s found Sheedy turning up in low-budget films and television movies.
Career High: Though Sheedy received critical raves for her turn in High Art and top-billing for Maid to Order, Allison Reynolds remains her defining role. Not many knew how to capture the secret lives of teens like John Hughes and Sheedy was perfect as that damaged loner girl swathed in black that intrigued us but frightened us at the same time. She was also wise enough to jump off the Short Circuit train wreck at the right time, lending only her voice to one scene in the sequel.
Career Low: Sheedy played the lead in a 1999 production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch in an off-Broadway production. Although she was the first female to tackle the part, Sheedy backed out of the production after reports of erratic and bizarre behavior.
Where Are They Now? Sheedy last appeared in 2009 Hallmark Channel movie Citizen Jane, a crime film also starring '80s luminaries Meat Loaf and Nia Peeples. She is also set to star in 2010's family drama Ten Stories Tall, also starring Jim Gaffigan.
Grade: C-
Molly Ringwald
Character: Claire Standish is the gorgeous, rich, popular girl of the group, put in Saturday detention for skipping school to go to the mall and getting caught (probably) when the local news reported on it, mistaking her for Tiffany. Over the course of the day she expresses frustration with having to conform to the life of a popular teenaged girl. Unsurprisingly, she falls for bad boy Bender.
Before: Molly Ringwald first appeared on a 1979 episode of the sitcom "Diff'rent Strokes" as part of the group of ridiculously-named schoolgirls who would later spin off into their own show, "The Facts of Life." Ringwald, too, joined them for Facts but was written out of the show after a single season. In 1984 she won America's heart in Sixteen Candles, so Ringwaldmania was pretty much in full swing before The Breakfast Club.
After: Ringwald became the teen idol of the '80s, but things weren't so pretty once the zeitgeist was over. After turning down roles for both Pretty Woman and Ghost, Ringwald did some stage work, starred in Stephen King'sTV miniseries "The Stand," and moved to France for a few years. Her biggest film acting gig in the post-Brat Pack years was playing a teacher in the 1999 black comedy Teaching Mrs. Tingle.
Career High: Molly Ringwald was on top between 1984 and 1986 thanks to Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink. Three movies came out, a history was made and we've been imitating them ever since.
Career Low: Not Another Teen Movie (2001). It's admirable to keep working regardless of things like caliber and prestige. Novelty cameos, however, demean everyone involved.
Where Are They Now? Ringwald plays the mother on the ABC Family TV series "The Secret Life of the American Teenager." There's no shame in being cast in a TV series -- it's full-time employment compared to these big Hollywood stars, who amount to freelancers when you think about it. In the years since The Breakfast Club, Molly Ringwald has gone from TILF to MILF to GILF, assuming that American Teenager hasn't been pregnant for two seasons.
Grade: D
by Danny Djeljosevic, David Harris, Nathan Kamal
