the skulls

It wasn’t exactly a turning point in John Pogue’s life. But it’s something that has stuck with him in the years since he left Yale. And, now that Pogue is well established as a Hollywood screenwriter, it has finally provided the basis for the upcoming thriller, The Skulls. Whatever its name may imply, The Skulls has nothing to do with horror, at any rate not in the traditional Hollywood sense (although it is produced by Neal H Moritz, whose recent credits have included I Know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend).

Set against the backdrop of one of America’s top Ivy League universities, The Skulls is a thriller with a difference. For one thing, membership of the secret society that gives the film its name may open a lot of doors, but it also lifts the lid on some pretty dangerous secrets. For another, the film has a few things to say about what a man - even a gentleman - has got to do.

‘The Skulls’ is the name of one of those all-powerful secret societies that exist at the Ivy League colleges on the East Coast of the US. Or perhaps we should say ‘are rumoured to exist’, because they are so secret that no details of them are ever made public. They are, however, known to have counted at least three US Presidents among their members, so they clearly have some clout. Pogue came across the phenomenon of Ivy League secret societies in his freshman year at Yale, when he noticed that a senior counsellor was wearing a strange-looking pin on the inside of his jacket. “I asked him if he was a member of a secret society,” recalls the screenwriter, who had his first solo screen credit with US Marshals. “Without a word, he just turned on his heel and walked away. It was obvious to me that he took this organisation very seriously and was willing to put its interests ahead of his responsibilities as a counsellor.”

In The Skulls, the new thriller from director Rob Cohen.

A couple of years later, Pogue was himself ‘tapped’ for membership - a genuine honour, since only the top one per cent of each class gets asked. And yes, he did join up, as much out of curiosity as anything else. He remains tight-lipped about the exact details of his own secret organisation, but is ambivalent about the experience. “Having gone through the process,” he declares, “I can honestly say that there are good things about secret societies. I believe, however, that it is an anachronistic system which is more appropriate for the ‘robber barons’ of the 19th century than for today’s world.”

A secret college society provides a testing ground for Luke and his new friend, Caleb (Joshua Jackson and Paul Walker).

Pogue’s screenplay for The Skulls reflects both the pros and cons of the eponymous organisation, developing a thriller in which Luke McNamara, the film’s young hero-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks played by Joshua Jackson (Dawson’s Creek’s Pacey Witter), ends up having to fight for his life after being ‘tapped’. Sure, Luke enjoys the benefits and the new friendships that The Skulls provide. But he also sees his best friend and roommate, journalism major Will Beckford (played by rising young African American star Hill Harper, seen most recently in In Too Deep), die in a mysterious suicide in which The Skulls seem to be implicated.