The Breakfast Club at the Tivoli

The Tivoli Theater opened in Downers Grove, Illinois in 1928, three days before my grandmother was born. Downers Grove would later give the world the band Styx and Denise Richards, but I always think of the Tivoli as being the real treasure of the city (close on its heels are a certain used bookstore and a record store where I bought quite a few Beatles albums).

We started going to the Tivoli in the early 80s, after moving north to Naperville. There were plenty of closer places to see a movie, but I tend to think that the classic atmosphere and decor were why my mother drove the extra miles to sometimes catch a flick at the Tivoli. It seemed like more of an event than just popping into the nearest darkened room to watch the releases of the day.

Which is not to say that the films were always worthy of the architecture. I can recall seeing Splash there, and Footloose, among others. I also saw The Return of the Jedi there.

Later, we moved to Woodridge, much closer to the Tivoli, and it became our primary film venue. During this time, it was the second Indiana Jones flick, Beverly Hills Cop and The Breakfast Club that I watched here for the first time.

It was The Breakfast Club that got me thinking about the Tivoli this morning. I woke up with David Bowie's "Changes" stuck in my head for some reason, and somehow followed the song into its usage in that movie, where they display the quote about how the children are quite aware of what they're going through.

Watching it in the theater, it struck me as the first time a film seemed to be speaking directly to me, to people my age who were not necessarily cool or popular. And the quotation burned itself into me.

At the time, as a sixth-grader, the lyrics and the song were much the same as the Tivoli to me: something from before I had consciousness. Things of any vintage at all were somehow either timeless (if they had any relevance to me) or merely old (if they did not). The Tivoli and the song were timeless to me. David Bowie, in that moment, may as well have been Shakespeare or Poe.

Now that I am older I can place things in context. The theater, with its art deco stylings and its 1400 fairly comfortable seats, truly was timeless. The song was, at the time the film came out, less than 15 years old. While it would perhaps prove itself timeless in due course, in 1985 it was merely a hit from the previous decade.

I imagine that somewhere in a darkened theater right now, and 11-year-old is watching a film which uses some song from the mid-90s and having the same response. And then I realize that there really aren't any movies out there which are trying to speak to this younger generation in the way that The Breakfast Club tried to speak to mine. Certainly, no one seems to be making any money doing so. All the 11-year-olds are undoubtedly out seeing Transformers, if they're in a cinema at all.