-next Norm & Cory
-Untitled issue
-RPG designs for 's Tandem website

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Black and White make a good team. Screenwriter Eric White’s credits include Orange County and The Good Girl, and when writing and appearing in the former, he must’ve found a good partnership with Jack Black, who appeared as a lazy slob. Now, they share writing and screen time in The School of Rock, and once again, the preview succeeds in making it sound dumber than it actually is.

The plot does sound like the standard comedy-of-errors that many comedies try to emulate these days, usually with bad results. A screenplay that thrives on incongruity is always on the edge of nonsense, and the audience will dismiss it no matter how outrageous a comedy it is, because we don’t believe it would happen in the first place. I’m not saying that a guy like Dewey (Black) who fakes his own identity for money to substitute a fifth-grade class in an expensive, conservative private school to teach them rock n’ roll CAN happen, but the film manages to be believable! While remaining to be light-hearted and exciting, the film stops at nothing to express serious matters on what you should expose your kids to. It takes the comedy “seriously”. In one scene, one of the students strays away from the group on a field trip to a theater, winds up hanging out with smoking rock musicians, to which Dewey instantly retrieves him and… says the RIGHT thing to get the kid to listen! This is surprising, since earlier, we see him getting yelled at by his roommate (White) about overdue rent, and replying, “But I’ve been mooching off you for months!”

Thus, what results is what is debatably Black’s best role yet. Black is one of the best reasons this film succeeds, because he IS Dewey, and Dewey IS Black! Rock n’ roll is his life, so much that he’s grown up to become almost a personification of the comic wildness of it, and so it is Dewey’s. I could tell a lot of the longer shots of him in front of the classroom were improvised! And those that weren’t improvised were acted so well that I was convinced enough. Even the child stars, who all have their own personalities, and aren’t bread-and-butter cutsies, all play their roles naturally. Dewey, who vows to his former rock partners that he’ll form his own group, expresses it as a “school project” to the kids, and once he discovers they can play, and play WELL, he shifts into teacher mode like a bolt of lightning and soon spends so much time with them that you begin to wonder where their REAL teacher is all this time! He manages to assign all of them roles, not only as musicians, but also as a manager, back-up girls, lighting effect supervisors, researchers and designers. He even goes so far as to put aside a time slot in the day to give them a course on the history of rock, and THAT’S the point when I think, God! This guy really MEANS it!

Of course, there is also Joan Cusack, who plays the principal of the school, and she’s an inspired, and unexpected, choice for the role of the serious disciplinarian who would cause Dewey’s end doing if she ever discovers he’s not doing his job right! A lot of plot holes would’ve arose in scenes relating to her character (wouldn’t she have overheard the ruckus coming from behind the classroom walls EARLIER in the film?!), but we get the point that she’s a person who is not always on her toes, and we empathize completely with her devotion to the school and the kids.

The ending IS predictable, but a lot of factors play so well that we just dismiss it. The kids’ song that they’ve been rehearsing all this time for is performed and lo and behold, it really IS good, and so, we don’t just watch as the other groups compliment them on their song- we understand them. This plot would only make this film a hit if it were under control by Black and White, and like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, or Bend it Like Beckham, this is a family film that reaches to the adults as well as the kids.

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***UPDATE***
The computer having problems WOULD’VE been used until Jake takes it IF something never happened to the computer coding- the computer won’t even let me reach the desktop, and so, it might as well not be on at all! The software I use to update my website is on that computer and that one ONLY. So the news about the strips, and anything else, will have to wait to be written there until the computer is fixed as well.

-“I will try to get the word out as much as possible when it's out, but I know there are those of you who are not able to buy it for your own reasons. As such, I was thinking of doing a series of daily strip formats (though, they won't be daily, because I am not that skilled yet), of the same Untitled characters! THis will give you a feeling for the different personalities, themes and situations in the story, allow for some jokes that did not make it in the book, get people excited about buying the book in a different way, and lastly, so those less fortunate don't feel left out.”

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UNTITLED COMIC UPDATE! 7/12/04

-30/40 pages done!
-3/5 extra pages (ads for other people)
-0/1 Cover art

Pretty much all of the story is written now.

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RAYFIC UPDATE! 6/3/04

Should continue to work on Chapter 7. This is starting to be the hardest chapter in the story to write yet!

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