Have Yourself a Scary Little
Christmas
(Entertainment Weekly-
November 20, 1998)
Except for the cameras, cables, crew, and lights, the
high school that's been re-created on an Austin, Tex., soundstage for The
Faculty is so average, even the teen extras seem at home leaning against
graffitied lockers. Cast members gossip, grips fill out paperwork
at undersize desks, and director Robert Rodriguez holds court while playing
his fresh-out-of-the-box Nintendo. It's so comfortably average, it's
almost scary - hardly the sort of place you'd expect to be ground zero
for an invasion of ovegrown, water-dependent, mind-controlling space leeches.
Yet come Christmas, that's exactly what it will
be. In the most devilish pairing this side of Mysterio and Dr. Octopus,
the sultan of splatter (Rodriguez) and the duke of dismemberment (Scream
scribe Kevin Williamson) are about to unveil their dual take on the horrors
of high school. And if you thought detention was bad, you ain't seen
nothin' yet. Williamson's script calls for a battle royal between
alien teachers and a plucky band of whip-smart, Scooby Doo-style
high school sleuths. A dream team made in Miramax marketing heaven
(or is it hell?), Rodriguez and Williamson are delivering the studio's
most promising gift. In an atypically anemic season for the studio,
The Faculty is getting a $30 million promotional push - nearly twice
the budget for the movie itself.
Sitting in his mercifully air-conditioned Austin
offices, however, Rodriguez reflects on how the whole thing almost didn't
happen. The helmer of the well-received low-budget shoot-'em-ups
El Mariachi and Desperado, Rodriguez was busy promoting his
last ultra-gory effort - the George Clooney-Quentin Tarantino vampire pic
From Dusk Till Dawn - in 1996 when The Faculty was first
brought to Bob Weinstein, head of Miramax's genre house Dimension Films.
Weinstein gave the original Faculty script to the then-unknown Williamson
to rewrite and ultimately direct. Then, of course, Scream
went through the roof and everything changed. Williamson's pet project
Killing Mrs. Tingle was suddenly a go, with him attached to direct,
and Dimension turned to Rodriguez. "I really wanted to do a family
comedy next," Rodriguez remembers, "but I was trying to start Alienated
Productions [his Austin-area production company] and I thought doing familiar
subject matter would be a good way to get rolling."
Williamson wasn't exactly heartbroken to give up
the director's chair. "I wasn't the guy who watched all those alien
movies growing up, so it wasn't totally my thing, " he says. "But
it was okay. I love movies like the original Invasion of the Body
Snatchers, and that whole theme of conformity versus individuality
fits perfectly into the high school metaphor. I got into that and
tried to create characters that interweave in a Breakfast Club way
and then left all the cool alien s--- to Robert."
That cool alien, uh, stuff includes rapidly reproducing
space worms that set out for global domination by manipulating the world-weary,
underpaid high school faculty of Herrington, Ohio (staffers include Robert
Patrick, Bebe Neuwirth, Salma Hayek, and Jon Stewart), as well as a few
unlucky student bodies, most notably that of on-screen quarterback and
off-screen R&B superstar Usher Raymond. Saving the world is left
to a ragtag band of misfit students, who include photographer/geek Elijah
Wood (Deep Impact), sci-fi slacker outcast Clea Duvall (How to
Make the Cruelest Month), brilliant rebel outsider Josh Hartnett (H20),
dimwitted jock Shawn Hatosy (In & Out), mysterious new girl
in town Laura Harris (Suicide Kings), and bitchy newpaper-editor
Jordana Brewster (As the World Turns) - all of whom resemble real
teens; there's nary an Ian Ziering hairline among them. Realizing
that high school isn't all about battling slime-dripping alien enemies,
Rodriguez also worked hard to evoke some of the more run-of-the-mill horrors
of the teen years.
(cont...)
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