School of Rock is a 2003 American comedy film from Paramount Pictures, starring Jack Black. The film was written specifically for Black by Mike White and directed by Richard Linklater. It was well-received by critics, gaining a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and was number 98 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".
Plot Summary - Dewey Finn (Black), a hard rock singer and guitarist, is unanimously kicked out from his band No Vacancy by the rest of his bandmates for his arrogance and frequent hyperactive stage antics. His submissive roommate and lifelong friend Ned Schneebly (writer Mike White), a substitute teacher, threatens Dewey with eviction under heavy pressure from his girlfriend Patty Di Marco (Sarah Silverman) unless Dewey "gets a real job" and pays off his growing rent debt. Dewey feels forced to give up his passion until he receives a phone call intended for Ned from Rosaline Mullins (Joan Cusack), principal of Horace Green, a prestigious prep school, asking Ned to fill in for a teacher who would be out for several weeks. Desperate for income to avoid getting evicted, Dewey impersonates Ned and takes the job as a substitute teacher for the fifth-grade class.
Dewey has no real idea how to carry out his role as a teacher, and instead simply gives his students constant free time. However, when he overhears his pupils playing in music class he realizes that some of the children in the class have musical talent. He decides to turn his temporary job into what he tells them is a special class project, but is actually a personal one: to turn a classroom full of kids into a rock band and crew, complete with a ten-year-old manager, a girl called Summer (Miranda Cosgrove), which will serve as a vehicle to stardom, ultimately to win the upcoming Battle of the Bands, where he is out to avenge his eviction from his old band and win the $20,000 prize.
After realizing that most of the kids are interested primarily in pop and contemporary music, Dewey turns the school days into lessons of rock history and music playing, exposing his students to those artists he regards as rock legends. Six rock stars are featured with classic footage in the movie: Jimi Hendrix, Iggy Pop, Pete Townshend, Angus Young, Keith Moon and Kurt Cobain, and bands such as the Ramones and Alice in Chains. In addition, during a montage, the drummer, Freddy, is seen watching footage of the famous drum battle between Buddy Rich and Ed Shaughnessy.
Dewey narrowly escapes detection when Ms Mullins decides to attend one of his class's lessons to check on their progress, forcing him to actually teach the official course material. Dewey attempts to revive any old love for rock he finds in her, having found out that she likes Stevie Nicks and playing her song "Edge of Seventeen" on a jukebox. The two develop a close friendship after this.
Meanwhile, the class audition for the Battle of the Bands, which Dewey told them was their "school project". They are turned back because they show up too late. With Summer's help, Dewey persuades the Battle's managers by lying that the students are all terminally ill with "stick-it-to-da-man-niosis", a fictional rare blood disease, and out of compassion, they allow the students to perform in the Battle of the Bands.
However, later that day, Dewey is exposed when Ned receives a pay cheque from Horace Green in the mail, knowing he has never worked there. During the parent-teacher night later on, Dewey meets the students' parents, who originally seem very suspicious of his ability to teach their children. Dewey succeeds in convincing them that he is a competent teacher, but Ned appears and confronts Dewey (due almost entirely to his girlfriend's persuasion). His real identity is revealed, and he is fired from the school. Considering himself a failure, he falls into depression, only recovering when the students, on their way to the Battle of the Bands via schoolbus, plead with him to join them.
At the competition, the class plays "Teacher's Pet", a song written by their lead guitarist Zack Mooneyham, instead of Dewey's "Legend of the Rent". Despite the strong reception from the audience (including Mullins and the students' parents, who thought Dewey abducted the kids), the class loses to Dewey's ex-band No Vacancy, but accept their defeat because the performance increased their self-esteem. The crowd becomes angered by No Vacancy's victory and call for the School of Rock to come back on stage. The band goes for an encore, playing "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)" by AC/DC, with some of the lyrics altered.
In the ending sequence, Summer is seen arguing a deal over the cell phone as she enters the School of Rock, a newly opened after-school program where Dewey continues to coach the band and Ned teaches the younger ones, and the credits roll as the band sings "The movie is over, but we're still on screen" breaking the fourth wall.
Guitars Featured in the Movie School of Rock
Gibson Les Paul - The Gibson Les Paul is a solid body electric guitar originally developed in the early 1950s. The Les Paul was designed by Ted McCarty in collaboration with popular guitarist Les Paul, who Gibson enlisted to endorse the new model. The Les Paul model was the result of a design collaboration between Gibson Guitar Corporation and pop star, electronics inventor, and accomplished jazz guitarist Les Paul. In 1950, with the introduction of the Fender Telecaster to the musical market, electric guitars became a public craze. In reaction, Gibson Guitar president James Verdon brought guitarist Les Paul into the company as a consultant. Les Paul was a respected innovator who had been experimenting with guitar design for years to benefit his own music. In fact, he had hand-built a solid-body prototype called "The Log", a design widely considered the first solid-body Spanish guitar ever built, as opposed to the "Hawaiian", or lap-steel guitar. This guitar is known as "The Log" because the solid core is a pine block whose width and depth are a little more than the width of the fretboard. Although numerous other prototypes and limited-production solid-body models by other makers have since surfaced, it is known that in 1945-1946, Les Paul had approached Gibson with "The Log" prototype, but his solid body design was rejected.
In 1951, this initial rejection became a design collaboration between the Gibson Guitar Corporation and Les Paul. It was agreed that the new Les Paul guitar was to be an expensive, well-made instrument in Gibson's tradition. Although recollections differ regarding who contributed what to the Les Paul design, it was far from a market replica of the competing Fender models. Since the 1930s, Gibson had offered electric hollow-body guitars, such as the ES-150; at minimum, these hollow-body electric models provided a set of basic design cues to the new Gibson solid-body, including a more traditionally curved body shape than offered by competitor Fender, and a glued-in ("set") neck, in contrast to Fender's bolt-on neck joint design.
The significance of Les Paul's contributions to his Gibson guitar design remains controversial. The book "50 Years of the Gibson Les Paul" limits Paul's contributions to two: advice on the trapeze tailpiece, and a preference for color (stating that Paul preferred gold as "it looks expensive", and a second choice of black because "it makes your fingers appear to move faster on the box", and "looks classy?like a tuxedo").
Additionally, Gibson's president Ted McCarty states that the Gibson Guitar Corporation merely approached Les Paul for the right to imprint the musician's name on the headstock to increase model sales, and that in 1951, Gibson showed Paul a nearly finished instrument. McCarty also claims that design discussions with Les Paul were limited to the tailpiece and the fitting of a maple cap over the mahogany body for increased density and sustain, which Les Paul had requested reversed. However, according to Gibson Guitar, this reversal would have caused the guitar to become too heavy, and Paul's request was refused. Another switch: the original Goldtop was to be all mahogany and the later Custom was to have the maple cap/mahogany body. Beyond these requests, Les Paul's contributions to the guitar line bearing his name were stated to be cosmetic. For example, ever the showman, Paul had specified that the guitar be offered in a gold finish, not only for flashiness, but to emphasize the high quality of the Les Paul instrument, as well. The later-issue Les Paul models included flame maple (tiger stripe) and "quilted" maple finishes, and once again contrasted the competing Fender line's range of car-like color finishes. Gibson was notably inconsistent with its wood choices, and some goldtops or customs have had their finish stripped to reveal beautifully-figured wood hidden underneath.
Gibson SG - The Gibson SG is a popular model of solid-bodied electric guitar that was introduced in the early 1960s. In 1960, Gibson Les Paul sales were significantly lower than they had been in previous years, so in 1961 the model was given a completely new body style that was thinner and had two sharp cutaway horns that made the upper frets more accessible. The neck was slightly heavy, which made it tilt downwards. The neck joint was also moved up about three frets. It was felt the new design could compete with the popular Fender Stratocaster, another benefit being lower production costs than that of the previous model due to the one piece body and flat top. The guitar was advertised as having the "fastest neck in the world", due to its slender neck profile and virtually non-existent heel. The new Les Paul was popular, but Les Paul himself did not care for it and asked to have his name removed from it. Gibson renamed the model the "SG" which was short for "solid guitar". Even though Les Paul's name was officially removed from the model in 1961, the plastic Les Paul nameplates (positioned between the rhythm pickup and fingerboard) were in abundance in the Gibson factory and SG models having these nameplates were built and sold by Gibson up to the end of 1963.
Physically, the SG has a shallower body than the Gibson Les Paul, and thus is much lighter; the neck profile is also typically shallower, although this varies from year to year and guitar to guitar. The body is usually made entirely of mahogany, and does not have the curved, maple top section of the earlier design; neither does it have the accompanying body binding. Perhaps the most striking visual difference is that the SG is a double-cutaway guitar. The standard SG shares the basic pickup and control layout (twin humbuckers with dedicated tone and volume controls, three position selector switch) with the standard Les Paul. The neck is joined on the 19th fret just like a Gibson ES 335 where as the Les Paul is joined at the 15th fret like an early Gibson ES 330 thus making the SG much easier to access the upper register of the fretboard. The SG has a tendency to be "top heavy" meaning that the head feels heavy compared to the relatively light body.
Gibson Flying V - The Gibson Flying V is an electric guitar model first released by Gibson in 1958. Gibson first manufactured prototypes of the guitar in 1957. Production guitars were made of korina wood, a trademarked name for limba, a wood similar to but lighter in color than mahogany. (Korina, originally spelled 'Korena', is the name that has been given to certain types of African Limba.) This Flying V, along with the Futura (Explorer) and, initially, the Moderne, made up a line of modernist guitars designed by Gibson's then-president Ted McCarty. These designs were meant to add a more futuristic aspect to Gibson's image, but they didn't sell well. After the initial launch in 1958, the line was discontinued by 1959. Some instruments were assembled from leftover parts and shipped in 1963, with nickel- rather than gold-plated hardware.
They started out with a mahogany guitar that was rounded in the back instead of being cut out. Gibson and Ted McCarty decided to change the back for weight reduction. The name supposedly has its origins in a comment that the guitar "looks like a flying letter V." Later they changed it to Korina for its then-fashionable blonde color.
Blues-rock guitarist Lonnie Mack and blues guitarist Albert King started using the guitar almost immediately. Later, in the mid-late 1960s, such guitarists as Dave Davies and Jimi Hendrix, in search of a distinctive looking guitar with a powerful sound, also started using Flying Vs. The renewed interest created a demand for Gibson to reissue the model.
Gibson reissued the guitar in mahogany in 1967, updating its design with a bigger, more stylish pickguard, and ditching the original bridge, which had the strings inserted through the back, in favor of the stopbar tail piece more commonly associated with Gibson models. Some models were shipped with a short Vibrola Maestro Tremolo. This 1967 model is now the standard for the Flying V or, as Gibson now calls it, "V Factor". Like other Gibson guitars the Flying V's headstock is angled at 17 degrees to tighten string tension to increase the amount of sustain.
Pignose Amplifier - Not a guitar, this is the small amp that Dewey is seen wearing in the movie. The Pignose amp, now known as the "Legendary 7-100", is a battery-powered, 5-watt portable guitar amplifier with one 5" speaker. It was invented by Richard Edlund and Wayne Kimbell in 1969. The Pignose weighs five pounds and includes buttons for a guitar strap; it is considered the first portable electric guitar amplifier. The 'legend' was established when the inventors gave 65 prototypes (with flexible rubber Pignose volume knobs) to some of the most famous musicians of the era, including Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Eagles, and The Who. Terry Kath (of Chicago), was given one which led to a partnership with the group and its management team in 1972. The first production Pignose amps debuted at the '73 NAMM Convention in Chicago. The original Pignose 7-100 is still in production and is used primarily as a practice amp and sometimes as a studio amp. In 1985, Pignose Industries was acquired by Howard Chatt and is now called Pignose-Gorilla.
The 7-100 has a few notable features, the first being the buttons to fit a guitar strap to it. This was to make an electric guitar playable while a person is traveling (as a way to hold the amp). The 7-100 is powered by six AA batteries or an optional AC adapter and weighs between five and six pounds. Another feature is the hinged case design, allowing the user not only to store objects like the cable and strap inside the amp, but also to open the case slightly to alter the sound to their preference. If a friend is around, they can also open and close the case for an improvised wah effect. A feature for the more serious musician is the preamp output jack on the rear, allowing it to be connected to a larger amp for use as a guitar distortion effect.
