The School of Rock

The idea did not start as fiction but as a real record: the Langley Schools Music Project, taped by Canadian teacher Hans Fenger with primary school pupils in 1976 and 1977, reissued in 2001. Mike White then wrote the part for Jack Black, his neighbour of three years, calling him the perfect antihero and saying he kept picturing Black jamming with a bunch of kids. The children were cast as musicians, not actors. The production notes describe a five month search through New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco and Seattle, several thousand children seen, and a rule that they had to play. You can see the payoff: the band scenes are not rescued in the cutting room, and the camera can hold on a player’s hands. Clearance for Led Zeppelin was won with the film itself: Richard Linklater had a video shot on the finale stage, Black begging the band while the extras chant behind him, and sent it straight to Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones, who agreed. Shooting began on 2 December 2002, with Wagner College on Staten Island among the locations. A good fit if you want cutting that trusts those hands instead of covering for them. Not for anyone after the documentary texture of Fenger’s classroom tapes.