The privately pressed records would collect dust and remain undiscovered until they were unearthed in a Victoria thrift store in 2000. Among the songs in their repertoire were Paul McCartney's "Band on the Run" and David Bowie's "Space Oddity"-the Thin White Duke himself would later refer to their rendition as a "piece of art that couldn't have conceived of." The Langley Schools Music Project was conceived by Canadian music teacher Hans Fenger with students from four separate elementary schools in British Columbia. When writing the screenplay, one of White's guiding lights came in the form of a compilation of recently released recordings from the late 1970s of children's choruses singing AM pop hits of the era in a school gymnasium. "Space Oddity" as performed by The Langley Schools Music Project. Fields a little bit, like a guy who isn't really someone you'd want around kids, but that's part of the fun with it." Then I got the idea that it would be fun to have him be more of a W.C. "I had the idea of him leading a band of little kids-somehow, it just seemed like a funny visual. "I'm reading these scripts and I was like, 'I could do better than this,'" he said in 2018. As the actor told The New York Times in a 2003 profile, most if not all of the prospective roles had him typecast as "boring frat-guy garbage." Jack Black was a few years out from his breakout role as another amateur musical expert, the smart-assed record store employee Barry in the 2000 romcom High Fidelity, while White had a few writing credits on Dawson's Creek and Freaks and Geeks under his belt.Īfter working together on the coming-of-age comedy Orange County and crossing paths at a few parties, Black began sending White the scripts he had been asked to star in. Twenty years before striking gold with The White Lotus, his pastiche of privilege for HBO, Mike White's next-door neighbor had already established himself as one of Hollywood's turn-of-the-millennium rising stars. Jack Black, Joey Gaydos Jr., Rivkah Reyes, and the cast of School of Rock rehearse in class. The 20th Anniversary Blu-Ray SteelBook, which features nearly an hour of legacy bonus content, is available now from Paramount Home Entertainment. To celebrate 20 years of School of Rock, here is the story of the film's conception and production, a look back at its legacy, and a survey of the motley crew of musical minds that made it happen. It should frankly be filed alongside other cultural texts about teamwork, early adolescence, a subversive strength of will, and what it means to go against the grain of the mundane-or as Dewey phrases it, "sticking it to the man". Marshall half-stacks, rapid-fire drum fills, and Dewey's delusions of grandeur apart, a rewatch as an adult can only prove the film has aged like a fine wine. Like Brian Eno once famously said of The Velvet Underground's first album, it was as if everyone our age who saw it went on to form a band. I can't remember which of my fifth-grade friends I watched the movie with the weekend that it opened 20 years ago, but we were almost certainly the same age as the kids that Dewey taught, and we might as well have been his students.Īs the plotline played out, we were effectively introduced to the classic rock canon in one fell swoop with all its power moves and mechanics, and in the months to follow that first viewing, you could hardly enter a guitar store in the suburbs without witnessing a fellow 10-year-old struggle through "Smoke on the Water."įor many millennials in music, School of Rock served as the gateway to a seemingly limitless world of unabashed creative expression. The culprit in question is Dewey Finn, the quixotic, persuasive protagonist of the 2003 Richard Linklater film School of Rock, played by an instantly lively and lovable Jack Black. If only the parents of her students knew that he has indoctrinated their children into an ideology most threatening: the art of forming a band and rocking out. If only she knew that he isn't sticking to the school's curriculum. If only she knew he was just kicked out of the hard rock band he helped form after attempting to stage dive at a small capacity nightclub. He is 30 years old, behind on his rent, and contrary to what he tells the principal who just hired him to substitute teach, he is not who he says he is. He has a faded cherry SG in one hand and an Olympic White Flying V in the other. The 20th Anniversary Blu-Ray SteelBook of School of Rock is available now from Paramount Home Entertainment.Ī spectre is haunting the hallways of Horace Green Preparatory School.
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