English Breakfast

Image coutesy of FilmMagic

Thirty years after “The Breakfast Club” premiered in theaters, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy are back in detention. Both actresses attended a SXSW screening of a restored version of their high school classic with 1, 300 fans on Monday.

The John Hughes comedy follows five teenagers (among those would later be known as “the Brat Pack”) stuck in school on a Saturday, as they slowly reflect on their secrets and personal struggles. “William Saroyan and Eugene O’Neill have been here before, but they used saloons and drunks, ” wrote Roger Ebert in his three-star review at the time.

Ringwald plays Claire, the popular girl, and Allison (Sheedy) is her polar opposite, the outcast dressed in black. Ringwald and Sheedy sat down with Variety at SXSW this year to talk about “The Breakfast Club, ” working with Hughes and how the film helped — and hurt — their careers.

Why did the “Breakfast Club” become such a classic?

Sheedy: There hadn’t been a movie like it before. It’s a very particular movie that hasn’t been repeated. I don’t know if you could get away with doing that movie today.

Ringwald: Because there are no vampires in it. Any movie with teenagers now has to have a vampire, a zombie or a werewolf. I think that’s one of the reasons it has this lasting quality, because they haven’t been able to replicate it. It’s not for lack of trying. [The studio] gave John an awful lot of freedom for a relatively untested director. He had done “Sixteen Candles, ” but it hadn’t come out yet.

What was John like as a director?

Sheedy: Sometimes when you work with a director, they are up high. He was right with us the whole time. I loved that he’d sit by the camera on an apple box, just sit there happily watching away.

Ringwald: He would get so involved, he’d forget to say cut. We’d keep going, and he’d let us.

Did you choose your own costumes?

Ringwald: I picked my costume. The original concept that we talked about in L.A. showed up in Chicago and just didn’t work. It was a big sweater, but it was a Pepto-Bismol pink, and there wasn’t enough time to have it redone. John took me shopping to the Ralph Lauren store in downtown Chicago.

Ally, did goth exist?

Sheedy: There was no goth.

Ringwald: Yes, there was — the Cure.

Sheedy: That was afterwards.

Ringwald: The Cure was around. They totally were. “The Love Cats” was a big song, because John and I were going to do it in the library. He was going to turn the library into a club.

Sheedy: I didn’t really know about it. I loved that beat poet look. I wanted a long black sweater and for everything to be dark.

Did you keep your costumes?

Sheedy: No, I wish I did.

Ringwald: This was after three months of wearing the same thing every day. I never wanted to look at it again. But I would love to have those boots now.

Did you see the “Dawson’s Creek” episode that re-creates “The Breakfast Club?”

Ringwald: No. Did Michelle Williams play Ally and Katie Holmes play my character? My daughter saw an episode on that show “Victorious” that had a lot of the jokes. It kind of bummed me out. She knew a lot of the jokes, but she didn’t know it from seeing the movie.