Anthony Michael Hall: Frozen in time

Anthony Michael Hall in "The Breakfast Club" in 1985.

Source: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001309/mediaviewer/rm4119185409/

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One minute he was Clark Griswold’s son, the next a horny teenager, the minute after that a geek who somehow found himself in detention, then he combined horny and nerd to create the perfect woman.

There was a moment in time when Anthony Michael Hall was a poster child for teen angst and the genre of movies it spawned.

It was his birthday yesterday. It reminded me of those John Hughes movies, how much more he was in back in the 1980s, and what happens to a teen star who grows up.

In the beginning
Anthony Michael Hall will forever be linked to John Hughes and his movies, but he actually got his start a couple years before that at the dawn of the 1980s

Wikipedia reveals Hall played a young Edgar Allan Poe in the 1980 TV movie “The Gold Bug” and Huckleberry Finn in the 1982 TV movie “Rascals and Robbers: The Secret Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn”.

Later in 1982, Hall attracted attention when he was one of the six children encountered by race car driver Brewster Baker, played by Kenny Rogers, in the movie “Six Pack”.

The following year, Anthony Michael Hall’s life, and the trajectory of his career, would change dramatically.

Taking “Vacation”
In 1983, Anthony Michael Hall landed the role of Rusty Griswold in the comedy “National Lampoon’s Vacation”. He played the son of Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo, who have nothing but complications when they go on vacation.

Hall decided not to reprise the role of Rusty Griswold in the sequels

John Hughes was the screenwriter for “National Lampoon’s Vacation”, and had decided he was going to move into directing.

That was a gift to the world.

“Sixteen Candles”
Hughes was impressed by Hall’s work and cast him in the role of Ted, but simply referred to as “The Geek”, in “Sixteen Candles” in 1984.

It was the first of Hughes’ teen angst movies, and it left an impression on me. The premise is that Sam, played by Molly Ringwald, is upset when, in the madness surrounding her sister’s wedding, her family forgets her birthday – her 16th birthday. Sam leads a complex life, as teenagers do. She likes a senior named Jake, but Jake has a wild girlfriend named Caroline. At the same time, Sam is also being pursued by a freshman, the aforementioned Ted.

In the end, Caroline and her friends have a wild party at Jake’s house. He ends up realizing he likes Sam as much as she likes him, and they go from there. Meanwhile, the morning after, Ted wakes up in a parked car beside Caroline who passed out the night before.

She has no memory of the night before. She asks Ted if they got together, and he plays along. She is not repulsed, given he is a geeky freshman and she is the cool senior. Instead, she tells Ted she thinks he was kind and gentle, and they actually look like they are about to kiss for real. Then Ted’s buddies show up.

I saw “Sixteen Candles” in the Green Acres Drive-in with my friend Mat, his mom and siblings in the summer of 1984. I was beginning to like girls, and experience all these new emotions. I was going into high school, so I was a “freshman” myself. That scene where a geeky freshman, as I kind of viewed myself, getting the cool senior, really got to me. I could not stop thinking about it the next day.

Then, a few weeks later, I actually met a senior and spent a week hanging out with her in Brooks. Unfortunately, she lived in Red Deer, so I never saw her again.

Yet, “Sixteen Candles” left an indelible mark on me, and it was all due to Anthony Michael Hall.

The Breakfast Club
Anthony Michael Hall was back in 1985 with “The Breakfast Club”. He played Brian Johnson, a brain, who is stuck in Saturday detention with a skid played by Judd Nelson; jock played by Emilio Estevez: princess or prep played by Molly Ringwald: and outsider played by Ally Sheedy.

It is an amazing movie that I have seen many times. It cemented my love for John Hughes and the fact he is a spokesman for my generation.

Weird Science
Later in 1985, Anthony Michael Hall was back with “Weird Science” where he and Ilan Mitchell-Smith, play two high school nerds, who create the perfect woman, played by Kelly LeBrock.

The road not taken
Wikipedia revealed to me that Anthony Michael Hall turned down the roles of the Duckman played by Jon Cryer in “Pretty in Pink” and Cameron Frye, played by Alan Ruck, in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”. These roles were written by John Hughes specifically for Anthony Michael Hall.

However, Hall did not wish to be typecast, so he took the role in the dramatic movie “Out of Bounds” in 1986. It tells the story of an Iowa farm boy whose luggage is switched with a heroin dealer’s, leading to a flight from criminals and the law.

I never saw “Out of Bounds” and it looked like no one else did either.

Live
Hall became the youngest performer ever, at age 17, to join the cast of “Saturday Night Live” for the 1985-1986 season. The ratings were not very good and Hall was dismissed at the end of the season.

Role reversal
Hall’s next movie was “Johnny Be Good” in 1988, where instead of a nerd, he plays a jock – the star of the high school football team. Wikipedia reveals some of the reviewers said he was miscast, having set himself up as the typical geek.

The years after
Anthony Michael Hall keeps on acting to this day. He has had roles in movies such as “Edward Scissorhands”; “Six Degrees of Separation”; “Freddy Got Fingered”; “Hysteria – The Def Leppard Story”; “The Dark Knight”; “Foxcatcher” and much more.

He has had roles on TV in “NYPD Blue”; “Murder, She Wrote”; “Touched by an Angel”; “Diagnosis: Murder”; the TV movie “*61”; “The Dead Zone”, where he was in 81 episodes; “Entourage”; “Community”; “CSI: Miami”; “Psych”; “”Murder in the First” for five episodes; “Riverdale”; “The Blacklist”; and nine episodes of “The Goldbergs”.

Parting thoughts
It is hard to see pictures of Anthony Michael Hall as he looks today, because that youthful boyish look is forever frozen in time.

It was a time when I was a teenager, and found John Hughes, who was writing movies and characters I could relate to. He was such an influence on me, I not only wanted to be like him, but I wrote my own teen angst play.

At the heart of some of John Hughes’ best movies was Anthony Michael Hall.

He was just the perfect actor for the perfect roles.