Anthony Michael Hall may have started his career by starring in John Hughes' Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club, but the best may be yet to come. He is revamping a project with Robert Downey Jr., Singularity, and just starred in Trigger Warning with Jessica Alba.
Plus, he just celebrated his first Father's Day as a dad.
“We got a lot to celebrate, all of us, huh?” he said as we ended our phone chat.
Throughout our phone conversation, Hall reflected on his career of more than four decades. He is currently promoting his newest movie, Trigger Warning. Netflix's movie stars Jessica Alba, who seeks revenge for her father's death.
Directed by Mouly Surya (Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts), Trigger Warning is headed by several strong women. This inspired Hall, who said the movie took the action to “a new level in terms of the intensity of the action and the amount of it.”
As for his co-star, Alba, Hall called her “serious.” She wanted to get into the nitty-gritty of doing the action. So much so that Hall likened having a second fight coordinator.
“She was impressive as an actress, a leading lady, and a producer,” Hall praised. “I have a lot of respect for her.”
Women leading the charge
Having so many women in charge of Trigger Warning proved Hollywood has to evolve.
“Your generation gets it more than ever, more than mine did, which is inclusivity,” Hall said. “You gotta wish everybody success in life, and people from all walks of life should have the opportunity to create that for themselves, particularly in our business. So I champion it, and I think it's great.”
Anthony Michael Hall's work with female directors has increased in recent years. Projects like The Goldbergs and Bosch: Legacy for Amazon had female directors at the helm.
“I happened to work with a bunch of female directors on The Goldbergs in recent years and other shows, too,” Hall recalled. “When I worked on Bosch: Legacy for Amazon, [there were] a bunch of really talented female directors and it's great. It's a different thing.”
As for Trigger Warning's Surya in particular, Anthony Michael Hall broke down her calculated approach to tense scenes.
“There is a scene in my office where my two songs almost come to blows. And that was where I was impressed with Mouly because we were rehearsing that scene and trying to figure out the dynamics. And she was trying to calibrate the level of violence,” he explained. “It was interesting in the confines of that office to see her direct that scene. We kept rehearsing it, and she kept pulling back.
“It was an interesting lesson in less is more — it didn't need to get too violent, but at the same time, the way she wanted to shoot it, she wanted to shoot through them. We came to a place where it felt real and visceral and a little intense and scary, but it didn't get cheesy or anything,” he added.
On John Hughes
Anthony Michael Hall is arguably known for his collaborations with John Hughes. He first starred in Sixteen Candles, which recently turned 40, and followed that up by starring in The Breakfast Club and Weird Science.
The two shared a close bond. Hall even claimed he was like Hughes' third kid.
“I was older than their two young boys, so I would often be at their house hanging out on the weekends,” Hall recalled. “And you'd go into his writing room, and I swear to you, it was amazing. From floor to ceiling [there were] 12-inch records, and in the corner by the window was a desktop.”
This may have influenced John Hughes' innate ability to write music cues. “He had a great ear for all that kind of early synth, '80s music,” he said. “And he would write the music cues into his script, as we know.”
But obviously, there was only one John Hughes. For years, movies have paid homage to his work — Spider-Man: Homecoming is a great example of this. But his magic touch in the coming-of-age genre cannot be matched. For Hall, he credits Hughes' central themes for this.
Redemption films
“Everybody starts at one place and is exposed in their vulnerability and they are trying in their awkwardness and everything else that we feel as kids,” Hall explained. “But then there's an arc. Because ultimately everybody winds up a little better off and some will find love and some won't.
“In the case of The Breakfast Club, I write the letter and that's my form of love. I think movies are about redemption and love, and you have to take an audience on that journey. I think John really understood that,” he continued.
Characters go on journeys throughout John Hughes' movies. They also have comedy which Hughes understood.
“That would be my pitch as to why those films endure because he did that through comedy. And he got to those places by using humor, but at the same time people were vulnerable, and they were awkward, and they could be real and expose themselves,” he said. “Ultimately, there's that third-act turn where everybody winds up in a better place. And so using humor to get to all those places was really brilliant.
“I think back now, and I was just a kid working with him — I'm 15 and he was 35. But how brilliant that was, even for a guy in his mid-30s, to have the awareness and the wherewithal to be approaching his work with those kinds of themes. Incredible,” Hall added.
Who has come close to the John Hughes magic?
As for filmmakers who have come close to capturing John Hughes' magic, Greta Gerwig immediately came to mind for Anthony Michael Hall. He liked Barbie and her directorial debut, Lady Bird, as well.
“I love the woman who directed Barbie. I thought that was excellent,” he raved.
He also named Judd Apatow, calling his movies “fun,” before turning the question to me. I named Booksmart as the only recent movie that captured the Breakfast Club-like magic.
“I love that. That was Olivia Wilde, right? She did a great job,” Hall quickly exclaimed. “I love that one too, man. And [it has] a great use of music. She got the John Hughes lesson there, too. ‘Cause look, he was so talented with writing music in[to scenes].”
Sixteen Candles at 40
40 years ago, Hall's first collaboration with Hughes, Sixteen Candles, was released. Hall recalled the “fun” set experience the movie had but also acknowledged it has not aged well in some aspects.
“That movie was even more fun to make than it turned out,” he confessed. “I mean, some things don't age well, right? No one intended any kind of racist humor and there is some sexually-based stuff that wouldn't fly today. I think that's important to acknowledge.
“But, overall, John wanted everybody to win. And he wanted everybody to meet that end, get to a good place, and I think that's a consistency in his work.”
He then recalled the Rolls-Royce scene where his on-screen date puts a birth control pill in his mouth. The pill itself was a Tic-Tac, but it was shoved in his face while driving. This almost resulted in a car crash.
“It's funny because I was actually free driving and she did pull me and there was someone either on the sidewalk or it was another car, [and] it was a near miss,” Hall revealed. “I almost collided with another car when I was making that [scene] and it was right at the point where she stuck the pill in my mouth.”
The unique one-time role John Hughes gave him
Another fun memory was Hughes allowing Hall to cast his on-screen friends. This was the first and only time he had been afforded that luxury.
“I cast John Cusack when I was a kid,” Hall reflected. “I couldn't believe it — I still can't believe he did that.”
To this day, John Hughes is the only director who allowed Hall such creative control. He was like a big brother to him.
“He was just an angel. He was awesome [and] such a great friend,” he said.
The two would laugh all the time and even go to record stores. Additionally, Hughes would make mixtapes for Hall and others.
“He would give us mixtapes back in the day with cassettes,” Hall recalled with a laugh. “Long before you had arrived on Earth.”
In his bad-guy era
Anthony Michael Hall is currently enjoying a bad-guy era. While he is known for the plucky, adorable characters he played in Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club, Hall has been on a hot streak of villains. He even mentioned his upcoming character on Prime Video's Reacher, Zachary Beck, as well as his character in Trigger Warning.
“I'm on a bit of a tear with these bad guys, and the one I did on Reach is an interesting character,” he teased. “He's not so outright villainous, but he's also kind of a bad guy.”
While Hall is enjoying playing the bad guy, he also has aspirations to play “more heroic parts.” He also wants to lean into comedy more before his career is all said and done.
The reason he enjoys playing bad guys is he can “pull out all the stops and just let it hang loose and go to those places.” He named a line from Trigger Warning where his character goes on a tangent about Latinx as an example.
“When I was doing it, it didn't seem funny to me at all. I was trying to play it straight,” Hall explained. “But it says a lot about the character in that moment. That's why it's always up to the audience. They decide [when] something is [funny].”
Luckily, the joke was met with laughs and applause from the cast and crew at a private screening.
Comparing his Reacher and Trigger Warning characters, Hall concluded that they are both “outlaws.” They use “underhanded” tactics to get their way. As for Reacher star Alan Ritchson, Hall called him a “stand-up guy.”
Not getting “too heady” about movies
What separates Trigger Warning from the countless streaming movies and series is the action and execution. Hall praised the movie's “brilliant” sequences and the forces behind it. He compared it to the John Wick movies thanks to Thunder Road's backing of the movie and thinks it follows in line with other Netflix movies such as Extraction and The Old Guard.
“Those were solid, right?” Hall asked of The Old Guard. “I think it's great for men and women to see women in those roles where a movie has pace and momentum. It's a fun ride of a film.
“[Some people get] too heady about movies, they forget to have fun,” he concluded on the matter.
As for other action franchises he would like to be a part of, Hall again repeats the John Wick name. He is an avid fan of the movies and would love to be in one. Another potential pitch from Hall is to have a Liam Neeson-like moment and star in a movie like Taken.
SNL reunited Hall with Francis Ford Coppola
In a different interview, Hall reflected on turning down Full Metal Jacket. Another movie he read for and did not ultimately land was Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders.
“I remember getting the audition and the call to go read for Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders, so that was a big one,” he remembered. “This is an interesting turn of events. I got to work with Francis on Saturday Night Live [in] 1985. I was a part of the cast, I was only 17 — it was not a great season of the show, but just a thrill to be a part of it. And I got [Robert] Downey [Jr.] hired. I brought him to Lorne Michaels.
“It was a fun season to be a part of. I mean, it wasn't a great show that year, but it was the 11th season, this is many years ago now,” he added.
When Coppola came to Studio 8H, Hall must have made an impression. While Hall never got to properly work with Coppola on one of his movies, four decades after SNL, Coppola invited Hall to a private screening of Megalopolis for friends, family, and distributors a few months ago.
“It's a very interesting film,” Hall teased about Megalopolis. “There's a lot of artistry and beauty in it. And Adam Driver stars in it. I like his work a lot.”
Robert Downey Jr. and the TV series they are working on
For those who don't know, Anthony Michael Hall is the godfather of Robert Downey. Jr.'s son, Indio. Their relationship dates back years and Hall is so proud of him for winning his first Oscar for his performance in Oppenheimer.
“When I saw him on the cover of People Magazine and it said, ‘It only took 50 years,' or something, and he was with his Oscar, I was so happy for him. So proud of him,” Hall confessed.
They remain good friends and are knee-deep in developing a TV series, Singularity. It has been discussed for seven years, but the two have regrouped after it bared too much similarity to Succession which Hall claims was a “complete accident.”
“We've regrouped and I'm developing it with Robert and Susan [Downey]. And Robert's a great guy — he's actually in New York right now, he and Susan,” he said. “We brought in a big produce — I can't mention his name — but it's a top producer that they [the Downeys] know. So we're hoping to get it set up and we're still working on that.”
In case Downey is reading this, Hall joking made a bid to stay at their Long Island beach house.
“Robert's been true blue, man. He's the guy that you see, he's hands-down the greatest comeback story ever, not just in Hollywood,” he praised. “And his wife was instrumental in that. As you saw in a lot of his awards speeches, they're a great team and they're incredible how they can compartmentalize. They run Team Downey and have two kids together.”
What's on the horizon for Anthony Michael Hall?
In the meantime, Hall is just enjoying life. He is a new father and is producing projects through his Manhattan Films banner.
“We've produced two films in the last three years,” Hall said. “One's called Roswell Delirium and the other one we did is called The Class, [and it was] inspired by The Break Club. [It's] a modern-day spin on that.”
But again, life is good. Hall seems happy and left me with some words of advice as I get prepared to get married next year.
“I'm at a great place — I now have a family. I've been married for a couple [of] years now, but we just had a son who's a year old and enjoying life. I think it's important to get just a couple [of] things right in life. You want to get your work life right and your love life right.”
Trigger Warning is streaming on Netflix.
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