29-12-2015, 07:48 PM
(This post was last modified: 29-12-2015, 11:04 PM by Joseph McBride.)
Thanks, folks, for the good comments about the Ramones and ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL. Gabba Gabba Hey!
It's a truly anarchic movie. Some of my students have told me it's their favorite movie
ever, and I hope I can believe them. When I was writing the script in 1978, I originally called the high school Ronald Reagan
High School, but Roger Corman was a neighbor of Reagan in Pacific Palisades, and didn't
want us to blow up a school with Reagan's name (I also wrote that the students blow
up a statue of Reagan). So I changed it to Vince Lombardi High School, with its motto
"Winning Isn't Everything; It's the Only Thing" (which Vince took from a John Wayne
movie, TROUBLE ALONG THE WAY). I used to sell hot dogs at Green Bay Packers
football games in Milwaukee when Vince was coach to help put myself through high school. My mother made me go to work at County Stadium on November 24, 1963, when I wanted to stay home and watch the assassination news on TV. So I missed seeing Oswald shot on live TV, but I literally saw the news ripple through the crowd of people waiting for the game to start and listening to their portable radios. It was a dismal experience to be at that game; one of the players later told me they didn't want to be there either. The NFL shamed itself by playing games that Sunday, partly at the urging of conservative team owners who didn't like JFK. In ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL, there are portraits of JFK and Ike in the principal's office, and portraits of Vince everywhere you look in the school. When Corman's company did the execrable sequel ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL FOREVER (1991), Reagan was no longer president, and thus was safe to satirize, so they called the school Ronald Reagan High School.
It's a truly anarchic movie. Some of my students have told me it's their favorite movie
ever, and I hope I can believe them. When I was writing the script in 1978, I originally called the high school Ronald Reagan
High School, but Roger Corman was a neighbor of Reagan in Pacific Palisades, and didn't
want us to blow up a school with Reagan's name (I also wrote that the students blow
up a statue of Reagan). So I changed it to Vince Lombardi High School, with its motto
"Winning Isn't Everything; It's the Only Thing" (which Vince took from a John Wayne
movie, TROUBLE ALONG THE WAY). I used to sell hot dogs at Green Bay Packers
football games in Milwaukee when Vince was coach to help put myself through high school. My mother made me go to work at County Stadium on November 24, 1963, when I wanted to stay home and watch the assassination news on TV. So I missed seeing Oswald shot on live TV, but I literally saw the news ripple through the crowd of people waiting for the game to start and listening to their portable radios. It was a dismal experience to be at that game; one of the players later told me they didn't want to be there either. The NFL shamed itself by playing games that Sunday, partly at the urging of conservative team owners who didn't like JFK. In ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL, there are portraits of JFK and Ike in the principal's office, and portraits of Vince everywhere you look in the school. When Corman's company did the execrable sequel ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL FOREVER (1991), Reagan was no longer president, and thus was safe to satirize, so they called the school Ronald Reagan High School.