Daily Dialogue — August 2, 2014
DEWEY: Okay, who’s got food in here?
The kids look at each other.
DEWEY: You’re not gonna get in trouble. I’m hungry.
A kid raises her hand in the back.
DEWEY: You. Whataya got!
She opens her desk. Jack pilfers her sandwich with a bite already taken out of it.
DEWEY: That’s what I’m talking about!
He moves back to the front of the classroom, jamming half the sandwich into his mouth.
DEWEY (to himself): Teach, teach, teach… All right, look. Here’s the deal. I’ve got a hangover. Who knows what that means?
FAT KID IN BACK: Doesn’t that mean you’re drunk?
DEWEY: No. It means I was drunk yesterday.
FREDDY: It means you’re an alcoholic.
DEWEY: Wrong!
FREDDY: You wouldn’t come to work hungover unless you were an alcoholic. Dude, you got a disease.
DEWEY: Hmm. Hmm. What’s your name?
FREDDY: Freddy Jones.
DEWEY: Hmm. Freddy Jones. SHUT UP!
The kids laugh.
DEWEY: Point is, you all can just chill today. We’ll start on this crap-ola tomorrow.
Bright girl sitting front and center raises her hand.
DEWEY: Yes, Tinkerbell.
SUMMER: Summer. As class factotum, first I’d like to just say, welcome.
DEWEY: Thank you.
SUMMER: Do you have any questions about our schedule? Because usually now Ms. Dunham teaches vocabulary, then gives us a pop quiz. Then she’ll split us up into our reading groups. Track B’s —
DEWEY: Okay, hey, hey, hey. Miss Dumb Bum ain’t your teacher today. I am. And I gotta headache and the runs. So I say, time for recess.
Summer points to the wall.
SUMMER: But Mr. S, that poster charts everyone’s performance. We get gold stars when we master the materials covered in class. How do we get gold stars if we just have recess?
Jack moves to the chart, looks closer.
DEWEY: What are these black dots here?
YOUNG BOY: Demerits.
DEWEY: What kind of a sick school is this?
He rips the poster off the wall and demolishes it.
— School of Rock (2003), written by Mike White
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Teaching. Today’s suggestion by John Arends.
Trivia: The idea for the movie came when writer Mike White moved into an apartment next to Jack Black. White would often find Jack Black running naked through the halls or blasting much of the music featured in the movie at full volume.
When asked for his opinion about testing from the other teachers, Jack Black dodges the question with song lyrics including the line “Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be”. One of the teachers asks if it is from a song, but he denies it. They are in fact from the song, “Greatest Love of All”.
There was a part in the original script where Freddy Jones, played by Kevin Alexander Clark, would forget his drumsticks to class and having Jack Black say: “Would Keith Moon forget his sticks? No! He might get drunk and pass out on the floor, but he would never forget his sticks!”
Another nice touch: All the parents’ cars are Volvos.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary from John: “This is the “cute meet” between Jack Black’s teacher character, Dewey Finn, and the class. Several key character traits among the kids are set up in just a few lines, and Dewey’s improvisational style of teaching is introduced with his first lesson: the meaning of a hangover. Perhaps most important, the button on the scene — Jack’s line “What kind of a sick school is this?” and the way he demolishing the “performance chart” — both states the theme and sets the core conflict of the story firmly on rails, ready to rock ‘n roll. What a gem of a movie, that makes an authentic, entertaining case for the vital role music and the arts should play in the education and shaping of young lives.”
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