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school of rock
THE TWO R’S
Dewey provides instructions in the basics. |
Sharing an apartment with his much better organised friend, Ned Schneebly (played by the film’s writer, Mike White), and the latter’s uptight girlfriend, Patty (Sarah Silverman), Dewey plays lead guitar in a band called No Vacancy. His one dream is to lead them to victory in a Battle of the Bands, a knockout competition which has become a rite of passage for most aspirant American rockers. But No Vacancy belie their name by dumping Dewey (he is too much of a dinosaur even for them), leaving him jobless and mission-less in a sea of not-quite-empty takeaway food containers.
One day, however, Dewey takes a phone call intended for Ned and, on the kind of whim that devotees like to think of as being the essence of rock ‘n’ roll, accepts a job intended for his roommate as a supply teacher at Horace Green Elementary School, a private establishment charging the kind of fees that would keep Dewey in dial-a-pizza for the rest of his life.
After a period of understandable confusion during which he barely manages to convince the disciplinarian school principal, Miss Mullins (Joan Cusack, who played opposite Black in High Fidelity), while instilling in his impressionable charges a distrust of rock ‘n’ roll’s No 1 enemy, ‘The Man’, Dewey spots something in his neatly dressed, well-behaved young students which no one else could have seen: he spots a potential rock ‘n’ roll band.
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“JACK IS A GREAT PERFORMER,
A TERRIFIC MUSICIAN AND THE
PERFECT ANTIHERO. HE’S KIND
OF UNHINGED IN THAT FUN WAY
THAT WILLIE WONKA IS”
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Despite the fact that most of them are studying classical music, Dewey brings out their inner bad boy (and girl), eventually taking them to the same Battle of the Bands he was going to fight with No Vacancy. And guess what happens? Actually, what you mightn’t guess is that Miss Mullins turns out to be a closet Stevie Nicks fan, finally showing herself to be closer to Dewey’s view of the world than you might have expected.
Mike White, who wrote and co-starred in the taboo-busting indie hit, Chuck and Buck, lived next door to Black for three years and had always wanted to write a film for him. “Jack is a great performer, a terrific musician and the perfect antihero,” he says. “He’s kind of unhinged in that fun way that Willie Wonka is, and I kept having this idea about him jamming around with a bunch of kids.” Black repays the compliment. “I just love the way Mike writes,” he says. “Not only does he have that funny edge that suits me, but also he knows how to get into my voice.”
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