Junior High School W - Kritzerland · juana Brass), Lou McCreary, Tommy Tedesco, Dave Frishberg...

What becomes a musical most? Well, I’lltell you what becomes a musical most:When it has the courage to be a musi-

cal – you know, having characters actuallybreak into song because speaking no longerdoes it. No disguising the fact that it’s really amusical, none of this junk about musical num-bers taking place in the character’s imaginationor as a performance number. This change inmusicals happened because producers and di-rectors don’t think audiences will sit still for peo-ple just breaking into song. Well, guess what?They will – not if you do it poorly, but if you do itwell, if you have the courage of your convictionsand if you embrace that you’re a real musical.Sit a teen down and show them The MusicMan. They buy into it immediately – they don’trun from the room screaming in horror. Samewith The Sound of Music.

Junior High School was born out of a love ofmusicals. Its creators loved the form, embracedthe form, and raised enough money to make ashort musical film that is utterly charming anda complete delight from start to finish. DavidWechter and Michael Nankin had already di-rected a critically acclaimed short film calledGravity, which had gotten them noticed. Twoyears later, just out of college, they joined someother friends, Steve Jacobson and HelynSpears, to make another audacious short film– a real musical about a fictional junior highschool. This was, of course, long before HighSchool Musical and Glee. In 1978 there was nomiddle school; there was elementary school,junior high, and high school. The times theywere a’changing – the late 1970s and early1980s were the end of a certain kind of era, andJunior High School reflects that beautifully.There is a sweetness and innocence to the filmthat’s palpable, even if it includes the classicsong, “The Itty Bitty Titty Committee.”

Made for under $35,000 (the filmmakers raisedthe money and received a grant from the Amer-ican Film Institute), the film was shot in onemonth at John Muir Junior High School in Bur-bank, California. It was a family affair, with manyrelatives and friends appearing in the film andworking behind the scenes. Kids from all overLA auditioned, and the chosen cast is just soreal and perfect, you can’t imagine it being bet-ter, although only one of the actors went on tohave a significant career – Paula Abdul.

The film is beautifully directed and shot (in16mm), and David Wechter’s songs are delight-ful, as is the script by Nankin, Wechter, Jacob-son, and Spears. David’s father, the great JuliusWechter, arranged the songs and wrote an orig-inal score. Julius, of course, was the leader ofthe popular Baja Marimba Band. He assembledsome amazing players for the soundtrackrecording, including several of the infamousWrecking Crew. They include such luminariesas Bernie Fleischer, Bobby Findley (of the Ti-

juana Brass), Lou McCreary, Tommy Tedesco,Dave Frishberg (who also appears and sings inthe film), Steve Schaefer, and the engineer wasthe great Larry Levine (pioneer of Phil Spector’s“Wall of Sound”). The score and songs wererecorded at Gold Star and A&M Records.

Junior High School won awards in dozens offilm festivals and was an immediate sensation,so much so that critic Roger Ebert said, “I thinkit’s probably impossible not to be charmed outof your socks by Junior High School.” As a directresult of the audience and critical response tothe film, Wechter and Nankin were hired by WaltDisney Studios to make a feature – at the ripeold age of twenty-three. That film, MidnightMadness, while not a hit, developed a majorcult following that continues to this day. The fol-lowing year, United Artists commissioned theteam to expand Junior High School into a fea-ture film. Executives on the project were CraigZadan and, later, Barry Krost. But alas, the filmnever happened. Wechter and Nankin went onto pursue separate careers. Nankin wrote andproduced (and occasionally directed) for the TVseries Life Goes On and Picket Fences. He alsowrote the cult horror hit The Gate and has di-rected episodes of TV’s Battlestar Galactica,Heroes, CSI, and many other shows. Wechter

co-created the original script and story that be-came the hit film, The Faculty, wrote and di-rected the film, Malibu Bikini Shop, and hasbeen a major player in the world of reality tele-vision for the past twenty years, including win-ning the Writers Guild of America award forPenn and Teller: Bullshit! (he also received anEmmy nomination for the same show). He co-wrote the book for the musical, The Brain fromPlanet X, which has had productions all overthe world, and did the same for the stage adap-tation of the cult film, The First Nudie Musical.

We’ve added some very interesting material tothe original soundtrack to Junior High School,including demos from the never-made featureversion, the song and theme from Gravity, andsome demo recordings from Midnight Madnessand Malibu Bikini Shop. It’s a pleasure to bringthe soundtrack to Junior High School to CD,both score and songs. We’ve also just broughtit to Blu-ray and it’s well worth checking out, asthey don’t make ‘em like that anymore. Themusic is all taken from the original mono ses-sion mixes done for the film, which sound su-perb.

— Bruce Kimmel

From the desk of

Herb Alpert

Junior High School