Director John Hughes, center, with the cast of The Breakfast Club
In a fit of teenage obsession, Alison Byrne Fields wrote to John Hughes to tell him how much she loved The Breakfast Club. It was 1985, Byrne Fields was 15, and she watched the movie so many times that she lost count. So she told Hughes how accurately his film portrayed high school, how it said exactly what she was feeling, and how much she liked Judd Nelson. (She thought he was hot.) Byrne Fields was having problems of her own — not big problems, though they seemed big at the time — and she told Hughes how much it helped to know that someone out there understood her. John Hughes didn't write back.
Instead, she got an invitation to join the "official" Breakfast Club, and a form letter signed by the famous director. "I was like, 'Um, excuse me? A form letter?'" Byrne Fields had just confessed her secrets and he didn't have the decency to respond. So she wrote him again and complained.
The guilt trip worked. "This is not a form letter," Hughes wrote in response. Hughes went on to say he was sorry, that he received a lot of mail and couldn't respond to everything. He enjoyed her letter and would relay the compliment to Nelson. And with that, Alison Byrne Fields and John Hughes became pen pals.
The Hollywood director and the suburban-Connecticut teenager exchanged handwritten letters once a month for two years. Byrne Fields learned to drive; Hughes made Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Byrne Fields and her mother moved in with her stepfather; Hughes sent her the script for his new film, Pretty in Pink. When the movie came out, Byrne Fields reviewed it for her school newspaper. "I gave it a bad review," she says. "I told him that Andrew McCarthy was bland."
Hughes' original script had a different ending than the script he shot, one in which Molly Ringwald's character ended up with Duckie, her geeky best friend. Byrne Fields liked that ending better. She saw the movie with her dad, who was touched by the strong father-daughter relationship. Hughes liked that. He told her he was happy to have made a movie that brought people together. With teenagers, that's not an easy thing to do.
Eventually Byrne Fields grew up and John Hughes stopped making movies about high school. And then in 1994, he stopped making movies altogether. He bought a farm in Illinois and more or less quit Hollywood. Except for one surprise telephone call in 1997, the two pen pals never corresponded again.
Today, Byrne Fields is 39, lives in Washington, D.C., and works as the managing director for DDB Issues & Advocacy. She no longer looks or acts like the awkward teenager who penned those heartfelt letters, and she threw out her old Breakfast Club VHS tape years ago. And yet, when she heard of the director's sudden death last week at the age of 59, she felt like she had lost a family member. She wrote about her relationship with Hughes on her blog as a way to sort out her emotions. "I did it just for me, but I knew a few friends would see it too."
Those few friends became 350,000 visitors, thanks to Twitter and Facebook's ability to turn even the most obscure nugget into a trend. In just three days, thousands of people have left Byrne Fields messages, posted comments, and e-mailed their appreciation. Byrne Fields says she is grateful but overwhelmed by the response. "I wish I could reply to everyone individually, but there's no way I have time for it. I guess that's how John Hughes felt, actually."