Madonna and the Breakfast Club

In 1979 Madonna Ciccone walked away from her Michigan University college scholarship to pursue a dance career in New York City. She struggled to find her footing, dabbling in odd jobs and auditioning for acting gigs, before finally meeting a musician named Dan Gilroy. Dan taught Madonna to play drums and then guitar. Madonna, Dan, and his brother Ed then started a band called Breakfast Club. Bands broke up, managers came and went... but once Madonna realized that the only person who could take her where she wanted was herself, she pounded the pavement with a cassette tape demo and landed her first record deal as a solo artist with a song called Everybody. Interviews with Dan Gilroy, Ed Gilroy, Gary Burke and other friends from these days, give us a first-hand account of this magical time, and Jamie Auld plays the star in re-enacted dramatizations of some of the most pivotal moments of the story. These scenes are filmed at the same exact locations where they occurred in real life, which gives the viewer an almost eerily precise experience of the actual life and times of Madonna and the Breakfast Club.

• biography
• documentary
• independent
• musical