If this image looks eerily similar to a movie poster from a simpler, neo-maxi-zoom-dweebier time, it’s not by accident. Paramount Vantage has co-opted the iconic image from John Hughes’ 1985 classic The Breakfast Club to create the teaser poster for its upcoming summer documentary American Teen. Drawing a connection between the two films isn’t just clever marketing. Set at Warsaw Community High School in Warsaw, Indiana, American Teen chronicles a year in the lives of five very distinct high-school seniors. And just like The Breakfast Club, the doc, which caused a sensation this year at the Sundance Film Festival, examines a brain, a beauty, a jock, a rebel and a recluse, but then delves deeper, revealing these real kids to be far more than superficial stereotypes.
It may seem odd to compare a documentary to a feature film, but American Teen writer-director Nanette Burstein (The Kid Stays in the Picture) saw the connection long before Vantage whipped up this poster. “Breakfast Club is one of the few teen fiction films that actually address all those teen storylines: popular girls ruling the school, the Romeo and Juliet love-story, the nerdy kid looking for acceptance,” Burstein says. “I didn’t consciously think about that when I was shooting the movie but afterwards, I realized the similarities.”
Vantage is hoping viewers will, too, and that this poster will help generate buzz that will continue to build before the film is released July 25. “I think it’s really tough for people to look at a documentary and think of it as a film,” says Guy Endore-Kaiser, co-president of marketing for Vantage, which bought the doc for $1 million. “This poster instantly puts it into the space of a movie, not just a documentary. The dream is for people to start referring to American Teen as the real-life version of The Breakfast Club.”
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I always find things like this problematic especially since this country is diverse. Do these kids represent the average American teenager? What is American teenager? I feel like this story has been told over and over again.
Anon, I agree with you. The film doesn’t address diversity at all. I can only hope that someone takes more time with this subject next time. Something I find disturbing is that there seems to be hatred toward overweight kids and people than ever. This is getting a little off topic but if you watch G4TV’s Attack of the Show they are constantly making hateful statements about overweight people. This documentary doesn’t appear address complexity of race, ethnicity, body type, etc. I wonder if it even touches on classism, something that nobody is willing to really explore.
I have seen this film – don’t be fooled by a story that seems repetitive because oddly enough, it’s one that has never been told – at least not on a level like this.
Wow Lynn, maybe you should see the film before you start blindly spewing nonsense.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of diversity in some midwestern high schools. Maybe this documentary is reflective of what is true for this town (and many midwestern towns like it), and wasn’t meant to be reflective of America as a whole.
Didn’t “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” already accomplish this?
If I remember correctly, all the John Hughes teen flicks had nary a minority face in them [with the exception of slamdunk stereotypes like Long Duc Dong]. I went to a public high school where there was plenty of “diversity” as well as surprise pot locker checks, actual fist fights and hair pulling done by girls with names like Aisha, September and Syleesha. There were the Asian math clubs, the Latino clubs…but this was after I moved out of a predominately white area and I would go to school with two or three black kids out of 500…so the poster seems like a misrepresentation of American adolescence [or the very least wishful thinking] but in some areas it is probably not.
It’s not just Midwestern towns where there isn’t any diversity. I went to high school in upstate NY (near Syracuse), and my graduating class had 1 black kid, 0 latinos, and as far as I know, 0 Jews. Honestly. When my friends and I went to college, we all came back with the same comment: “So…Jewish people actually exist, huh?”
This is what I remember my suburban high school to look like back in the 80’s… Maybe my youth was not the norm?
Small-town Virginia did not look like this in the 1980s — we had two races. Suburban Atlanta pretty much did look like this in 1984.
You all should read Jonathan Kozol’s book The Shame of the Nation The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. American schools are not diverse and actually may even be more segregated now than 40 years ago.
Wow. They’re all white. How diverse (exaggerated eye roll.
Sorry, but to make this the poster for this docu is an INSULT to John Hughes and the Original movie. I was 17 when the film came out and it made a huge impact on a lot of us. Exploiting this classic film to generate intrerst into a docu about some spoiled kids is a travesty. Shame!
A bunch of white teenage with problems. I’ll just watch the Iconic movie instead, at least then i can pretend that the lack of diversity was due to the 80’s.
PNT, regarding Jonathan Kozol’s book, you should really check out this clip:
I went to high school in the Midwest in the 80’s. Although my school was much smaller than the Breakfast Club school, we had very similar people to the movie there. The only minority in our school were Hispanics. Unless you go to a school in the Midwest that’s in a large city like Chicago or Cleveland, you just aren’t going to get a lot of diversity.
An insult? Have you seen the film? One viewing will make you fall in love with these kids – the jock, the geek, the prom queen, the outcast and the criminal – they exist at every high school (and we all remember what roles we played when we were 17). You’ll love this film BECAUSE it will take you back to the first time you saw The Breakfast Club and every great John Hughes movie you worshiped in the 80’s.
saw this at sundance and its really terrific.
the amazing thing is that the kids today are dealing with MANY of the same things i did in high school in the ’80s…just with better technology.
i grew up on Long Island (big hair and all) and i promise you that was NOT a rambow of ethnicity there either.
Yes, this might not be representative of the united nations but many towns around the US, and frankly the world, lack diversity as well.
This IS the midwest…
p.s. at the end of the day, this is really neither here nor there and AMERICAN TEEN is still a GREAT film.
In her own messy way, Dawn is right on, diversity be damned, this movie has a target audiences, white teens, which is not at all bad. So it’s not a movie I would want to watch, i’m not screaming un-diversified, I was the only minority in my college program and that was only a few years ago. Yes, it would have been interesting to have found a minority in an all white school and explored that side of being a teenager stranger in a strange land, but that was not the directors vision. Someone else will make that movie; let this movie appeal to who it’s going to appeal and that’s the end of that.
You know what Eli, you are totally right now. It’s just that the title is sort of misleading. Had it been All-American Teens, because the term all-American paints such a picture of white america, or if it had been Small Town Teens, i would have thought about diversity, but by calling it American Teen, it just lookes like they ignored all other teen demographics. No big deal, you are right, it’s got its own demographic, i don’t find the poster or the description appealing. not my demographic… i’m letting it go.
Mozz- You have nothing to apologize for. I am a white female in the state of Texas, early twenties. In my high school we had just about every ethnicity and race you can imagine. This country is constantly changing, and minority populations are getting bigger. It’s about time certain groups realized this. I’m sick of the “average American” always being the white kid.
I think everyone is missing the point. The more we focus on the outward appearance (black-white, rich-poor, fat-thin) the longer it takes us to recognize the real lack of differences between all humans, no matter age, class, race, or religion. The differences only exist because we choose to focus on them, or in this case, the lack of more diverse skin tones. That only changes the message of the film for those who can’t or won’t see past it.
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This movie is about THESE 5 kids, THEIR high school experience, during THEIR senior year. Are you all telling me that a black jock in L.A. wont be able to relate to the white jock in warsaw indiana? Is it the fault of these kids that there isn’t much diversity in our little town? NO! and the only reason that race would be an issue is because people like most of you make it an issue. how about just letting these kids tell their story, just try and relate to them and you’ll fall in love with them! Each of them are amazing people. They deserve a chance. Maybe you should all see the film before you start making ignorant comments about one of the best upcoming movies this year. Ask anyone who’s seen it. We’ll tell you!
well I have not seen the movie, but it seems like the movie is controversial and dynamic considering all the attention it has pullled, on the topic of diversity we all must come to the realistic view that diversity plays a big part in the average american’s teen’s life no matter where you live because eventually you have to travel or go outside of the comfort zone of your hometown and diversity is practically universal in America, so on a positive note whether the movie addressess the topic of diversity is a shame because when you are telling a story of this nature it should be told this is a time and era that is to diverse not to acknowledge that fact.
if its based on original there were no other races in movie but times have changed update it should be about good actors not the color of their skin
btw i live in indy and we do have more than white people here
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