Rick Moranis Was Fired From One Of John Hughes' Signature Movies
John Hughes' 1985 teen drama "The Breakfast Club" has long since been canonized, praised as an honest depiction of the teen experience. The five main characters all seemingly represent a different high school archetype or clique members perfectly. Bender (Judd Nelson) is the wastoid. Claire (Molly Ringwald) is the prom queen. Andrew (Emilio Estevez) is the jock. Allison (Ally Sheedy) is the recluse. And Brian (Anthony Michael Hall) is the nerd. Trapped in Saturday detention together, however, the teens get to talking, and each one reveals more texture and depth — and inner pain — than the others initially assumed.
In one notable scene, a janitor named Carl (John Kapelos) passes through the detention hall, only for Bender to mock him for his profession. Carl smirks at Bender, explaining that he had been cleaning up after teenagers for the past eight years, and that he was generally ignored by the student body. This, however, allowed him to listen in on teen conversations. He also had keys to all their lockers and rifled through them on the regular. He had more insight into the students than Bender could have imagined. Carl used to be a student at that very school, and after graduation, he seeped in.
"The Breakfast Club" is a funny film, but it's only because the characters are funny. It's not a sitcom or a farce. The people merely joke around with one another, and the audience gets to laugh along. This was perhaps why famed Canadian comedian Rick Moranis was fired from the role of Carl after only two days of shooting. It seems that Moranis wanted to play the part really broadly, and John Hughes couldn't abide by it. This was all recalled by Kapelos in a 2013 oral history with Vulture.
Rick Moranis was too funny as Carl the Janitor
Rick Moranis, it should be noted, was a graduate of sketch comedy, having come to fame on the hit Canadian comedy series "SCTV." He was raised in an era of comedy when comedians were encouraged to invent broad, silly characters that were universally funny in any scenario. The theory would be that such a character would generate hilarity wherever they went. Moranis had already gained fame in the United States after his hilarious turns in films like "Strange Brew" and "Ghostbusters," and he figured that the janitor character in "The Breakfast Club" would present another opportunity for him to be broad and silly.
According to Kapelos, Moranis saw "The Breakfast Club" as a comedy, and his performance reflected that. Carl the Janitor was meant to be a thoughtful, human character. Moranis wanted to play him with a weird accent, an outlandish costume, and a distracting habit of playing with his keys. As Kapelos said:
"They did shoot for a week or so, maybe less. But Rick insisted on playing the part with a big set of gold teeth, a chain with a wad of keys hanging between his legs which he would play with provocatively, and a thick Russian accent. He wanted to do it as sort of a broad 'SCTV' type of character, that he was prone to playing. John went with it for a few days, but then he asked Rick if he had read the script because this guy was supposed to have gone to this high school."
Moranis was fired for not taking direction well, revealing that he wasn't going to play the part in the fashion John Hughes wanted. Kapelos stepped in and nailed the character.
The cast also remembered Moranis
In a 10-year anniversary retrospective on "The Breakfast Club" printed in Premiere Magazine in 1995, star Molly Ringwald also recalled the weird few days that Rick Moranis was on set. She said that:
"Rick Moranis was originally supposed to play the janitor, and then he decided that he wanted to be a Russian immigrant, with this big Russian hat and everything. We shot for, like, two days, and then John was like, "You know what? That's really not what I want to do."
Moranis is a very funny and very talented comedian, but a "silly" Russian janitor was not correct. Indeed, the script points out that Carl the Janitor was an attendee of the very high school that he now cleans, making his thick Russian accent a little out of place. There is also a scene later in "The Breakfast Club" where Carl discovers the anger-fueled Principal Vernon (Paul Gleason) poking through classified student files in the basement of the building. Vernon has the good sense to be embarrassed by his infraction, and Carl immediately blackmails him for $50. Later still, Carl and Vernon talk about their pasts as young hopefuls, and Vernon's present as a bitter adult. That kind of scene wouldn't have functioned if Carl were a "wacky" character. John Hughes was right to fire Moranis.
And Moranis' career wasn't set back. The following year, he played the lead role in Frank Oz's musical "Little Shop of Horrors," the evil Dark Helmet in Mel Brooks' "Spaceballs" in 1987, and reprised his role of Lewis Tully in "Ghostbusters II" in 1989. Moranis did just fine. And "The Breakfast Club" is still celebrated to this day.