Yup. Though technically, it wasn’t in the bathroom–it was outside a locker. The only thing that got injured was a girl’s soda. Brian Krakow was in the bathroom when it happened, though, and he came out and saw Ricky running away. Memories!
I also found Daria realistic. Well, not real exactly–my own fellow students weren’t even that (inadvertently) funny, and it’s obviously parody…but that whole feeling of being the only smart ones there and everyone else being so willfully dumb is very familiar. Esp. that episode where Daria and her friend Jane make that poster with the bulimia poem and the administration wants them to change it. It’s one of the only shows that really had truly cynical characters. The “cynical and smart” characters in 90210 and Dawson’s Creek were so boring and plastic and it was scary that they though themselves such edgy outsiders.
HS in a suburb of Chicago, circa 1976-1980. I’d say mine was a cross between Breakfast Club and Mean Girls(both films were set and filmed in Chicago suburbs). The social ostracizing was there, as were the rigid cliques (socialites, nerds, burnouts and complete nonentities like me), some fist fighting, but mostly fire alarm pulling and cherry bombs in stairwells. Plenty of verbal abuse from either gender, and lovely sexist crap from boys who thought they were men. I was once threatened by another girl (a “burnout”) after I told her to leave another girl alone. My only show of courage, however small.
Other than that, it was fairly non-eventful. IMO, movies take all the likely or possible happenings and throw them all together, which can make the show or film seem implausible.
My dad who was a doctor would say the same thing about E.R. You take all the things that happen in maybe a month or more and stuff them all in to make it more action packed and exciting.
Yeah, I was going to suggest this. Yuppie, undramatic, and kids mostly just going about their day (with two notable exceptions, of course). Social awkwardness, but not exaggerated, and mundane from the camera’s point of view (though probably not from the kid’s POV).
Columbine, yes, though I think it’s technically fiction, or at least vaguely fictionalized. It is pretty good. Van Zandt wisely avoids trying to ascribe any clear motives to the killers. he just kind of observes them.
If I recall correctly, he does make them gay, though.
I thought Elephant was pretentious, melodramatic, and boring crap, with one-dimensional (or zero-dimensional, actually) characters and awful pacing and plot. Gus Van Sant is truly a hack; I can’t stand anything he’s done.
Van Sant (not Van Zandt) bores the shit out of me. His films, if I can stay awake from them, provide me with nothing more than the desire to watch something else, preferably with Elias Koteas in it. But, of course, everyone’s taste in movies is different.
YES! Especially since the old ones cast ‘real’ kids from the area. They may not have been the greatest actors and they had some silly lines, but they did have bad hair, lisps, braces and acne and were believably awkward.
Not a movie, but a book–Prep, actually really focuses on those quiet, boring moments and makes a novel out of them. It’s the only truly “real” adolescent experience I’ve ever read.
Yes! That scene with Brian is why I love MSCL so much. Also the scene where he is determined to ask out a girl who works at a fast food place, go in, buys a burger from her, and then leaves.
Another great thing about the show is that it shows causal teen drinking and cutting class. Everyone accepted it and none of the kids thought it was anything special.
Just because Freaks and Geeks doesn’t measure up with the experience of the OP doesn’t mean it’s not realistic. It doesn’t depict my high school experience either but I can recognize that it’s a pretty accurate portrayal of what might happen in a suburban high school.
The school that I went to, my junior high school at least, was probably most fatefully depicted by The Wire. There are very few movies or TV shows about inner city schools so my experience doesn’t get shown a lot.
