At Its 40th Anniversary, "The Breakfast Club" Cast Says Pot-Smoking Scene Was Improvised

The reunion of all five "The Breakfast Club" cast members on the 40th anniversary of the film is kind of hilarious, because they were still the characters they played.

In the iconic 1985 film that was said to define Generation X, Molly Ringwald played Claire The Good Girl against Judd Nelson as Bender The Rebel. Ally Sheedy played The Freak, Emilio Estevez The Jock and Anthony Michael Hall The Brain. Forced to serve high school detention together, the disparate characters bond after they smoke a joint together. 

Speaking of the film's writer/director John Hughes, Nelson said, "He was the first writer who could ever write someone who was young, without them being less," Nelson said. "Except less old." 

Telling the story of watching Hall perform his hilarious, stoned, "chicks can't hold deir smoke" routine, Nelson said that, "In the middle of close-camera coverage of the routine, the camera runs out of film but Hughes doesn't say, 'Cut.'... It's something I've never seen since. It's a reflection of his affection for the characters that he created."   

When the interviewer asked Hall how he managed to play being stoned because, "Surely, you'd never been stoned at 16 years old," the actor was quick to quip, "If I may, don't call me Shirley," an Airplane reference the crowd appreciated. Then in true Brainy fashion, looking down, he said, "Uh, was I stoned at 16, yeah maybe." Bender chimed in, "Some people start late." 

"The whole sequence when we were getting high, that was all improvised," Ringwald said. Hughes was so impressed with her performance that he took her mom to watch the dailies. "So she was sitting there watching her 16-year-old daughter pretend that she was high for 20 minutes." Yeah, that's a story Claire would tell.

There was much interesting talk about the filmmaking process, such as it being shot in sequence, since it was all on one set. Ringwald noted that the volume of film that Hughes used was "a little bit daunting" for the film's editor Dede Allen, who all agreed did an incredible job. Reds, Dog Day Afternoon, and Serpico were mentioned as her other credits. Also mentioned was Annie Lebowitz, who shot the film's iconic poster (shown). Several in the audience who asked questions said the poster was displayed in own their dorm room or their mother's. 

Asked if hearing songs from the soundtrack brought back memories of the film to them, Hall said that the Simple Minds song from the movie "seems to follow me around....The takeaway from the film for me is this idea of commonality, that we're more alike than different. And that that's really powerful," he said, with Estevez thoughtfully nodding along. "And I think as time has progressed, it resonates as an anti-bullying message" and more, for successive generations, the audience confirmed. Ringwald agreed that the message was, "Someone who you think is your enemy isn't; people are the same and feel the same emotions and heartaches and fears. Maybe if we understood this we could all get along better." 

Asked if the cast watched the movie lately, Ringwald said she did a piece about watching it with her 10-year-old daughter for "This American Life." "It changed my parenting, watching it with her," she said. "How it spoke to her, which characters she identified with any why, it opened up this incredible conversation." Later she watched it with her 15-year old daughter and her friends and, "They didn't pick pick up their phones once." 

Cell phones was the consensus response when an audience member asked, "What would you change back to the way it was in the '80s today?" "There's no putting that genie back into the bottle," said Ringwald, "but it's kind of sad our kids are missing out on a world without cell phones. You saw a lot more, and learned a lot more." 

"We spent more of the time looking up, rather than down," Estevez added in agreement.   

Nelson lamented that Hughes wasn't around to direct more films, to complete the arc and help his actors navigate their age today. "But what he taught us is, "'Think for yourself,'" he said. 

Easter/Ishtar Falls on 4/20 Once More

Once again, as in 2014, Easter Sunday falls on 4/20. This time, cannabis retailers seem to be co-celebrating the dual holiday, with Easter-themed decorations and events. 

Easter, the celebration of Jesus's resurrection, is the most sacred day of the Christian year. In ancient Babylon, around the spring equinox, people celebrated the resurrection of their god Tammuz, who was brought back from the underworld by his mother the fertility goddess Innana, known in Akkadia as Ishtar, pronounced “Easter” in most Semitic dialects. Flowers, eggs, goats and rabbits, among other agricultural products and animals, were the symbols of the holiday then, as now.

Ostara (1884) by Johannes Gehrts

Ishtar/Ostara and Her Connection to Easter

"In ancient Sumeria, Ishtar was held in high esteem as a heavenly monarch," writes Jeanne Achterberg in Woman as Healer. "Her temples have been found at virtually every level of excavation." The Ishtar Gate to the inner city of Babylon was considered one of the ancient wonders of the world.

Also called the Queen of Heaven, Ishtar was a compassionate, healing deity. Her medicine kit likely included plant allies, and one of them, known as the "aromatic of the Goddess Ishtar," was likely cannabis. 

As the land of Sumer became a perpetual battlefield, Ishtar
became the goddess of war and destiny, and became more
sexualized, even as women were restricted from education
and the healing arts.

In mankind’s first written story The Epic of Gilgamesh
(circa 2000 BC), the cruel king Gilgamesh calls Ishtar
a predatory and promiscuous woman, and rebukes her
advances, just before taking off with his buddy Enki-
du to chop down the great cedar forest. Gilgamesh’s
repudiation of Ishtar, some scholars say, signifies a rejection
of goddess worship in favor of patriarchy in ancient times.

One of the interpreters of the Epic of Gilgamesh, discovered in tablets at the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh in the 1850s, was Leonidas Hamilton, who published a translation in 1884 that gives Ishtar top billing over Izdubar (Gigamesh), subtitled "The Babylonian Goddess of Love and the Hero and Warrior King." Hamilton writes, "Ishtar... may be identified with Eostre of the Germans, or Easter. To this goddess our Saxon or German ancestors sacrificed in April...from thence arose our word Easter, which the Saxons retained after their conversion to Christianity, so that our Easter-day is nothing more nor less than Ishtar's day." Hamilton cites the Hebrew and English lexicon from John Parkhurst. 

Some have tried to debunk the Ishtar/Easter connection, saying the holiday is named only after the German goddess Ostara (pictured), "the divinity of the radiant dawn" (Grimm), doubtlessly a reincarnation of Ishtar, who the Babylonians called "the morning star" and "the perfect light." 

 

Scottish author Steff V. Scott, in From Ishtar to Eostre: Reframing the Near Eastern Origins of an Anglo Saxon Goddess, finds such debunking racist and ill-informed. He writes, "A rigid academic investigation into the subject shows that Ishtar-Astarte’s worship was prevalent not just in Mesopotamia but down the Levantine Corridor, into Egypt, across Northern Africa, into ancient Greece and Rome, across Europe, and even into the British Isles." Scott presents as evidence writings of Virgil, the Venerable Bede, and Germanic academic sources linking Ishtar/Astarte with Ostara, as well as archeological evidence found on Hadrian’s Wall and "seven altars and inscriptions to Ishtar-Astarte found in Britain under various forms, titles and epithets, all dating to the Roman Period."

Ishtar's Connection to Cannabis

Babylonian period Queen of Night relief,
often considered to represent Ishtar

In the bible, Ishtar or her (sometimes) mother Asherah are called Ashtoreth, the supreme goddess of Caanan and the female counterpart of the gods called Baal or Bel.

Among those pagan, idolatrous practices was the burning of incense. Polish anthropologist Sula Benet, whose 1936 doctoral thesis ''Hashish in Folk Customs and Beliefs'' won her a Warsaw Society of Sciences scholarship for graduate study at Columbia University, theorized that the biblical incense kaneh bosm, meaning "sweet or good cane" was cannabis, mistranslated as "calamus" in the modern bibles.

Throughout the Old Testament, prophet after prophet warns the children of Israel that God will bring misery upon them unless they cease to worship Baal/Bel and Ashtoreth, to whom “burnt offerings” were made. In Jeremiah 44, the women tell him they will continue to secretly burn incense to the Queen of Heaven. One who did so was King Ahab's wife Jezebel (whose name meant "worshipper of Bel" but still means "harlot" to many today).

Author Chris Bennett and others connect Ishtar with Ishara, the prototypical Semitic goddess of love and medicine dating back to the third millennium BC. “Ishara” is the Hittite word for “treaty, binding promise” and so could connect with hempen rope, as other ancient goddesses do. “Ishtar was often depicted as a bundle of reeds, known as the ‘knot of Ishtar,’” writes Bennett in Cannabis and the Soma Solution.

Assyriologist Erica Reiner writes in Astral Magic in Babylonia, "the herb called Sim.Ishara 'aromatic of the Goddess Ishtar,' which is equated with the Akkadian qunnabu, 'cannabis,' may indeed conjure up an aphrodisiac through the association with Ishara, goddess of love."

This Easter, it's time to resurrect Ishtar, and all that our healing goddess stood for, including cannabis. 

ADDENDUM: I was remiss in not pointing out that 4/20/25 is also the final day of Passover. According to NBC News, in New York City, the cannabis brand Tokin’ Jew is advertising a kosher-style THC gummy line, “Tokin’ Chews,” designed to meet dietary restrictions for Passover.

I don't know a goddess connection to Passover, but the biblical heroine Esther, whose holiday is Purim, takes her name from Ishtar. 

Art Show Kicks off San Francisco's 4/20 Week "Space Walk"

The “Higher Visions: Art of the Plant” and “Keep Glowing” blacklight poster exhibition at the Haight Street Art Center in San Francisco served as a fine and fitting opening party for this year's SF Space Walk today. 

A High-light is the brilliant “Stoned Wars” poster series from Emek, who I am told designed the poster for the concurrent Coachella Music Festival this year. Emek’s work includes take-offs on Star Wars characters and the Peter Tosh “Legalize It” album cover. I also liked the clever, feminist-minded digital collages from Alexe Reyes.

Female-run Moon Made Farms and Sonoma Hills Farm were collaborators on the exhibit. Plants grown by Moon Made are presented as in a herbarium, beautifully pressed and framed. In the blacklight poster exhibit, my favorite was the irreverent “Pink Jesus” poster designed for Sonoma Hills, featuring a female figure and the banner, “SHE HAS RESIN.”

Outdoors on the patio, stunning portraits of female growers from the Emerald Triangle are presented as part of “The Farm and Feminine” project from GrupoGreenlit. 

Inside, the wonderful documentary Tending the Garden was shown. It interviews couples practicing regenerative agriculture to grow cannabis and other crops in Humboldt and Mendocino counties, bucking the trend of corporatization that is squeezing out craft cultivators in California and elsewhere.

The exhibit, I am told, will be up through mid-May. The Center is open Thursday–Sunday, 12-6 PM.

The party kicked off a week's worth of daily events in San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area. On Wednesday 4/16 Snowtill will drop their living soil indoor "Mirage" strain drop at 7 Stars in Richmond. And on Thursday 4/17 is a hand-picked sun-grown flower showcase at Solful in Irving St. in SF.  

The event will culminate in a 4/20 (Easter Sunday) reception at Mirus Gallery in SOMA featuring 10 brands. While you're in the city, you might want to check out the annual "Hunky Jesus" contest from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.  

The Great Gatsby at 100

Let's raise a glass--and a J--to the 100th anniversary of The Great Gatsby, the jazz-age classic from F. Scott Fitzgerald that may be the first novel about a drug dealer. 

Fitzgerald had a distant cousin, Mary Surratt, who was hanged in 1865 for conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. But he was named for his ancestor Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to “The Star Spangled Banner.” 

Raised in a middle-class family with an alcoholic father in Rochester, NY and St. Paul, MN, he excelled in the Catholic schools he attended and became one of the first Catholics to attend Princeton University.

Apparently, he was a bit of a rebel. The protagonist of his second novel The Beautiful and Damned (1922) has this exchange with a friend:

“Did they ban cigarettes? I see the hand of my holy grandfather.”
“He’s a reformer or something, isn’t he?”
“I blush for him.”

Anthony Patch, who stands in for Fitzgerald in the story, is the grandson of Adam J. Patch, a reformer in the mold of Anthony Comstock (for whom Patch is named). In 1873 Comstock created the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, an institution dedicated to supervising the morality of the public Patch speaks disdainfully of the “shocked and alarmful eyes” of “chroniclers of the mad pace of America.” 

Fitzgerald wrote his third novel,  The Great Gatsby, published on April 10, 1925, while living in Europe and friendly with fellow Lost Generation authors Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and others.  Known to be a serious drinker, in 1929, he contributed to the New Yorker an autobiography of a life spent drinking. Since while he was partying and writing marijuana "reefers" will still legal and available, I wonder if he did more than drink, and if The Great Gatsby reflects this.