The moment John Stalhberg, Jr, director and co-writer of the dramedy film ‘High School’, finished his script for the movie, he sent it off to his producing partner, Stephen Susco, who was in Mexico at the time. Susco sat at the bar with his laptop and a pitcher of margarita and reworked the script, then punted it back to Stalhberg and Stalhberg reworked Susco’s pass of the script. They repeated this a few times until the script felt right. Two weeks later, they had a finished script that their agents sent around town.

They heard that Warren Zide liked their script, so we they with him to discuss the project. A couple of months later they were in production an hour north of Detroit on an abandoned, seventy-five million dollar, state-of-the-art high school campus.

Stalhberg and his team turned that abandoned school into their own, fully functioning movie studio. Stalhberg rewrote scenes while they were shooting to take advantage of the entire space…it truly was an amazing building to capture on film.

Before the cameras started rolling, he took a moment and looked around at his camera crew, helmed by Mitchell Amundsen, and some of the faces of his cast—Adrien Brody, Michael Chiklis, Colin Hanks, and the others. Stalhberg realized just how lucky he was to be surrounded by all this talent and there was no way he was going to waste this opportunity.

He knew that the only thing that could prevent them from making something special with this movie was the insecurity to admit to each other that, as a team, they were going to try to make something great and if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be embarrassed to admit to one another that they’d gone for it.

Once Stalhberg put it all out on the table, everyone jumped on board and they rolled the cameras and tried to make the best movie they could together. The honest effort seemed to bring out the best in everyone and he was very happy from beginning to end.

Image Courtesy of    HIGH school

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How does someone get inspired to make a movie like ‘High School’? It certainly doesn’t hurt to go to high school in Los Angeles, California followed up by college in Boulder, Colorado – both bright stars in the universe of marijuana. Of all the characters director John Stalhberg, Jr. encountered attending school in Boulder; one became the inspiration for the movie’s Psycho Ed character, unforgettably played by Adrien Brody.

The inspiration for the character of Psycho Ed showed up at a friend of a friend’s barbecue one day, holding a glass jar of crystalline powder protectively in his hands. Lit by the overhead red bulb, he announced to all the shady characters present that the jar contained the pure THC crystals reaped from an entire harvest of his scientifically home-grown chronic.

He proceeded to pour it into the host’s hookah pipe for everyone to try. Somehow Stalhberg was expected to go first. He had an intramural basketball league game later that evening, but there this wiry dude was, staring at him with his red beady eyes, sadistically egging me on. There was no escape.

The next thing Stalhberg knew, people’s faces were turning green. What time was it? Where was he? Who were all these long-haired guys wearing burlap sacks and Moroccan caftans staring at him? He checked my watch and then it hit him, “Wait. Today is Thursday, right?” he asked. The shady characters shrugged. They were oblivious to those sorts of details.

Then the realization hit Stalhberg with both barrels— he had fifteen minutes before he and his friends were due on the basketball court for their intramural league game. They’d never make it. And Stalhberg had to round up the team… where were they? Who were they? And why was he sitting on Tupperware containers filled with freshly harvested marijuana?

The power forward, Wysong, sounded drunk when Stalhberg called him, but he agreed to meet the team at the court. Doug and Ziegler were at the barbecue with Stalhberg. Catatonic on a nearby Salvation Army couch, but alive. They had also been victims of Psycho Ed.

That made four players including Stalhberg, but he was still one man shy of the minimum required to properly play the sport of basketball. He caught the eye of a kid he didn’t know who was visiting from New York. The kid was in bad shape. “Can you play basketball?” Stalhberg asked him. The kid stared for what seemed like an hour. Finally, through parched lips and dried mouth he crackled out, “Basketball? No dude… I can play lacrosse though.” Stahlberg started tripping out on how swollen and bloodshot the kid’s eyes were, but there was just no time for that kind of analysis now. The team was due on the hardwood.

Doug and Ziegler shuffled out after Stalhberg and the New Yorker. As they split, Stalhber muttered some excuse why they were leaving to the beady-eyed weed-sadist who had done this to them. The junkie smiled goodbye, revealing a prominent gold tooth.

They arrived at the basketball court with no time to spare. Stalhberg somehow managed to check in his team, and then he saw their opponents. Old guys. Then the recognition flooded into his brain during warm-ups, just as Stalhberg’s bug-eyed Humanities professor, Jim Tasse, pump-faked his teammate (Stalhberg’s albino Archaeology professor Mr. Gould) out of his tight shorts and buried a crazed, three-point jumper in the back of the net… They were about to play the faculty. Apparently the faculty had assembled an intramural squad to compete this year. What on Earth was going to happen? Disaster was averted as Stalhberg’s team proceeded to get their asses handed to them by the duck-tailed baby boomers.

The story of this game, including all the cheap elbows, dirty play and the green New Yorker’s half-court, buzzer-beating miracle shot were the seeds of the story “Intramural,” which ultimately became the essence of the movie ‘High School’.

Stahlberg developed the prototypic “Intramural” into a script for ‘High School’, spinning off the central character of Psycho Ed into his own story, but Stalhberg was never satisfied with it until he met a surfer named Travis Breaux from San Diego. Stalhberg pictured a high school character with that name… and he instantly saw the whole movie. After that, he sat down and banged out the new script in a month.

The lead character would be a skateboarder named Travis Breaux. The other lead would be the polar opposite… the valedictorian Henry Burke. They would be childhood friends who grew apart as they entered high school. The awkward tension of fading childhood relationships passing by the same high school hallways day after day intrigued Stalhberg and he was familiar with it. It felt like an interesting dynamic between the two leads of the film.

Image Courtesy of   http://www.highschool-themovie.com

Photo Credit : NEIL JACOBS

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Director Tony Kaye’s long-awaited film ‘Detachment’ stars Academy Award winner Adrien Brody as Henry Barthes, a substitute teacher who conveniently avoids any emotional connections by never staying anywhere long enough to form a bond with either his students or colleagues.

A lost soul grappling with a troubled past, Henry finds himself at a public school where an apathetic student body has created a frustrated, burned-out administration. Inadvertently becoming a role model to his students, while also bonding with a runaway teen who is just as lost as he is, Henry finds that he’s not alone in a life and death struggle to find beauty in a seemingly vicious and loveless world.

How would you describe this film in a snapshot for someone who may not know anything about it?

Tony Kaye: To me, Detachment is a story about a man who is lost and in pain and tries to hide from the real problems of his existence by losing himself in the morals of the voices in his head, the real ones, the voices of god and the voices of the devil. He is constantly running away from facing the truth. He is covered by a huge black curtain that he cannot see. This curtain is his ego.

What about the material and screenplay made you want to direct this film? 

Tony Kaye: I am interested in social issues. Detachment stands against and explores education. ‘American History X’ is a movie about the issue of racism. ‘Lake of Fire’ deals with abortion. I like big moral and social issues. I have a fourth movie called ‘Black Water Transit’ which is still unfinished; however, that movie is about environment, environment being everything.

I want to make movies that do more than entertain. Detachment is about family also, the importance of family, that family is everything. Detachment is about being a parent; Henry Barthes begins to find his way when he decides to embrace a future that involves the caring of a young lost soul, Erica.

Elaborate a bit on your approach to making the film as it has a very distinctive and stylized look. 

Tony Kaye: I don’t consider my work to be stylized, however most people do think my moviemaking does have a distinct look. I try to just make things look real. I try to make situations have spectacle and truth. I try to capture emotions that are real. I hate acting. I hate things that don’t seem authentic.

People cry, people get angry, people whisper, people love and people hate. I simply try to put a microscope and a telescope and a radar logic scope to explore the mental and moral qualities distinctive to the individuals that stand before the camera and microphone.

The film features an ensemble cast comprised of both household names and newcomers. How did you cast the film? 

Tony Kaye: The casting of the movie began with the casting of Erica. The runaway teenage hooker was the central pin for me in the story, she was the first brick in the wall, although my own daughter Betty had always been in my mind [for 3 years actually] to play Meredith. Betty is nothing like Meredith in real life, she is very confident and very strong and ultra-determined to succeed in life, but she has had a tough life, I walked out on my family when she was very young.

I was very selfish and filled with much ego, Betty was 5 years old and took it very badly, Ruby her sister was 2 and did not really get affected by my actions. Betty suffered much pain and I believe really brings that to the surface in her performance as Meredith.

I never really knew if I would be allowed to cast my daughter as one of the leads because I would be accused of nepotism or such, and I was quite prepared not cast her if I found somebody better [and would have risked her not talking to me for years], but the truth is she absolutely smoked the audition and she was way, way, way the best for the role, her acting was so damn real, I cry almost every time see the movie through.

However, as I said, Erica was the cornerstone of the picture because she was a character who connected with Henry, was a part of Henry. Meredith was not, Henry did not connect with Meredith, in a way Henry did not really care about Meredith.

I also have this notion of types, contrasting types, dark against light, controlled neurons against out of control neurons, black hair against brown hair or blonde hair. Sami Gayle [who plays Erica] had brown hair which to me implies an outward going nature, an out-of-control zone [or that's what I thought she could easily play], so I looked for a Henry Barthes with black hair, an in-control, a calm, contained person. I found that perfectly in Adrien Brody.

So I got him to run away from that. I got him to shout and scream and throw chairs around, I got him to break down and come back to being calm in the end, to be centered and in control, to becoming a parent. That was the arc of the character, the story of Detachment, Meredith took him to hell and back, that was my paradigm

Detachment will be release to limited theaters on March 16.

Image Courtesy of   https://www.facebook.com/tonykayedirector

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