Too Cool for School

Dear Reader,

While writing my current script, I have discovered my favourite setting for a movie. High school. The high school movie. Maybe it’s an age thing, as I only graduated from university last year. Perhaps I like being reminded of something which I’ve only relatively recently left behind. The whole school system.

Never Been Kissed, 10 Things I Hate About You, Sky High… the list is pretty much endless. Even Cry Wolf got me interested because it was set in a school. There’s always something to relate to in a school movie; the bitches, the weirdos, the sports jocks etc. Mind, these characters typically tend to be outrageously stereotyped and OTT, but I love the way each of these stereotypes represent a group of people that I’m sure everyone remembers from back at high school.

High school movies even typically contain the exact same events. You’ll usually have a big dance somewhere in there, a physical makeover for at least one character and someone who needs to change their perspective on life. However cliched these events are, I love the way that you know they are going to enter the story somewhere and I even look forward to it.

As a viewer, you get the opportunity to witness bullying, romance and academic achievement through different eyes, while it may never have happened to you. The High school movie allows you to do that. To give you an alternative perspective to the lives of kids at school, that when you were a student yourself you would never have had opportunity to witness.  It may even help you to understand why people were the way they were.

You can be the weirdo you always wanted to be and take joy in their almighty nerdiness. You can laugh hysterically when the pretty, popular bitches get their comeuppance, which they usually thoroughly deserve. Most of all, you can support the one who is most true to themselves, who will suffer the bullying and the abuse, but only because at they end of the day, they refused to blend in. Also, they always somehow manage to get the guy that everyone else wanted to get too. Bonus.

xxx