Canadian actor who played Carl the Janitor shares 5 ‘Breakfast Club’ secrets

TORONTO – For anyone who grew up loving “The Breakfast Club,” take a look at the film today and see who you most identify with now, advises its Canadian co-star John Kapelos.

Thirty years after the teen drama introduced the world to a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal, John Hughes’s seminal coming-of-age film is marking its anniversary with a digitally remastered re-release hitting Canadian theatres on Saturday and March 25.

Fans revisiting the classic flick may find themselves looking differently at the film’s two world-weary adults — Paul Gleason’s bitter assistant principal Richard (Dick) Vernon and Kapelos’s straight-talking Carl, the janitor.

“These movies are like prisms, you can see them from different angles,” says Kapelos, who notes that friends now tell him they identify most with Dick.

“Obviously, when you see them from a younger angle you go, ‘Oh yeah, I’m totally Molly,’ or ‘I’m totally this.’”

Get the London, Ont.-native reminiscing and the stories flow easily — about forging a bond with Hughes that extended to roles on “16 Candles” and “Weird Science;” about spending eight years before that with Second City (where John Candy was his teacher); and going on to a diverse career in film and TV, with credits including “Transparent,” “Justified,” “The Republic of Doyle,” and “Forever Knight.”

For trivia fans, Kapelos offers up five little known facts about “The Breakfast Club”:

1. Carl had a broken heart

In tackling Carl, Kapelos says he devised a fairly detailed backstory, which he sketched out in a two-to-three page outline.

“The best characters and the best comedy is always rooted in something real,” says Kapelos.

In Carl’s case, “he went to the school, dated this fantastic girl and she went away, his heart was broken,” says Kapelos, adding that Carl was likely a university dropout. But “he’s not a dummy.”

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2. On the cutting room floor is a lengthy monologue from Carl predicting where each of the kids would end up decades later

“Basically I told Molly: ‘You’re going to be a suburban mom driving a Ford, you’re going to have stretch marks from here to Cleveland, five kids, unhappy, alcoholic.’ And then I go to Michael, he’s going to be a big lawyer, make big money. (I say), ‘You’re going to work on Wall Street, be a big jerk and you’re going to have a big heart attack. Dead at 42.’

“‘OK, Judd, you’re going to be a felon, you’re going to be in Chino (prison) for five years, then you’re going to go to (the) penitentiary…. Ally, you’re going to be a loft artist. You’re going to live off the kindness of others, you’re never going to be happy. Your art will never be recognized and actually it won’t be that good….’ (Hughes) would say, ‘Too tough.’”

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3. Rick Moranis was apparently cast as Carl the Janitor first.

Production had already begun on “The Breakfast Club” when Kapelos got a call asking him to be in the movie. The last-minute gig apparently followed a controversial take on Carl by “SCTV” comic Rick Moranis, who took a few too many liberties according to Kirk Honeycutt’s biography, “John Hughes: A Life in Film.”

“I’m not privy to exactly what happened but the story to me was that he wanted to play the guy like a Russian with a lot of keys between his legs and lots of gold teeth and a thick Russian accent, playing provocatively with the keys. Kind of being, for lack of a deeper description, more of an ‘SCTV’ type of character with it,” says Kapelos.

“No flaws on Rick, I just don’t think they had a meeting of the minds.”

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4. Emilio Estevez was no fan of Kapelos

Kapelos says he didn’t know who Estevez was, and that got him into hot water one day on set. He recalls that Estevez and Nelson would try to make him laugh while he shot his close up.

“So between takes I looked at them and I said, ‘You know, you guys would have been great when Martin Sheen was having his heart attack on ‘Apocalypse Now.’ You guys would have been standing there stuffing pencils up your nose like you are with me and laughing as the guy is probably writhing in pain,’” Kapelos says.

“And Emilio’s face went white…. John Hughes comes up to me and goes, ‘Martin Sheen is Emilio Estevez’s father.’ And I didn’t know that! I didn’t know that…. I apologized. (Estevez) never bought it. Never bought it.”

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5. Somewhere, there is a DVD full of “The Breakfast Club” outtakes

“Molly told me that Nancy Hughes, John’s wife, has a DVD copy of the movie with all the extras that will never see the light of day,” Kapelos says tantalizingly.

What is on it, exactly, could never be known. But given Hughes’s penchant to shoot multiple takes and encourage off-script improvisations, there’s a wealth of material to draw from, says Kapelos.

“When I see the movie, I just remember all those things that aren’t in there.”

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version had an incorrect date for screenings in theatres

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