Jono McLeod’s new documentary My Old School reunites his former Bearsden Academy classmates to share their memories of the Glasgow high school’s most famous pupil: Brandon Lee, a man in his early 30s who posed as a teenager when he re-enrolled at his alma mater in 1993 in the hopes of getting a second chance at applying to medical school.
McLeod calls My Old School — out in select theaters today from Magnolia Pictures — a sort of “high school reunion” for him and his school pals, many of whom share their memories of Lee back when he was just another 16-year-old auditioning for the school play.
But not only is My Old School not your typical high school reunion — it’s also not your typical documentary. While Lee agreed to do an interview, he refused to appear on camera. So, McLeod had to get creative. For high school reenactments, he incorporated an animated cartoon. He also hired Scottish actor Alan Cumming to lip-synch Lee’s audio as if he were the man himself.
But why Cumming? Well, to answer that question, we have to go return to a simpler time: the ’90s.
“Back in the 1990s, a certain Alan Cumming was meant to star and direct a movie about this story, and it never happened. We were always a bit kind of befuddled as to why that was the case,” McLeod told MovieMaker.
When McLeod saw Never Been Kissed in 1999 starring Drew Barrymore as a journalist who poses as a student at her former high school in order to research contemporary teenage culture, he started to put two and two together.
“We were a bit suspicious when Drew Barrymore’s Never Been Kissed appeared a couple of years later, and we were like, is this the Brandon story that Drew’s made away with?” he laughed.
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The irony of McLeod growing up to become the documentarian who would tell Lee’s story is not lost on him.
“Over the years, the fact that it’s never really properly been told for whatever reason made us think that if nobody’s going to do it, we should,” he said. “Now, I’m the only one of [my classmates] that grew up to be a filmmaker, so it kind of fell to me to helm it, but very much the film was a kind of ensemble piece, and it’s really my high school reunion where I’ve gathered us together.”
Though Cumming — a very accomplished actor known for The Anniversary Party, Golden Eye, Son of the Mask, Eyes Wide Shut, The Good Wife — has never met Brandon Lee, he feels like a “mythological figure” in his life.
“I’ve never met him. And I sort of see him as this kind of mythical mythological figure now, because every 25 years, he kind of comes into my life quite in a big way,” he said. “I don’t really want to, actually, but I was excited. I mean, it’s just an interesting thing, getting older, that this sort of cyclical effect — that things come back into your life.”
Then Cumming told an incredible story that doesn’t have a lot to do with Brandon Lee, but it does put the concept of that “cyclical effect” into context.
“A couple of weeks ago, I was in London and I was outside Buckingham Palace, and [there were] loads people and you couldn’t get down the mall. I thought, What the hell? And I said to a policeman, ‘What’s going on here? I’ve got to get through to the mall.’ And he went, ‘Oh, my God! I know you! What do I know you from? What film?'” Cumming said. “Normally it would be like, Google me,” he said. “I went, ‘How old are you?’ And he went, ’25.’ And I went, ‘Spy Kids!'”
Sure enough, that’s where the 25-year-old police officer knew Cummings from. And reader, I’m somewhat sheepish to admit that I, a 25-year-old reporter, am also a fan of Spy Kids.
“People say, ‘You know you feel old when you see policemen are getting younger.’ You know you’re really old when a policemen notices you from a kid’s film you made 20 years ago,” Cummings joked.
In one way or another, things come back around. Just like how a song from Steely Dan’s 1973 album “Countdown to Ecstasy” lent its name to the title: My Old School.
Having cast the British pop singer Lulu to voice the deputy headmistress, McLeod knew that he wanted her to sing a song for the film.
“When I knew that we had Lulu, I wanted her to sing a title song, and I went through a whole bunch of songs and when I heard that Steely Dan one, I was like, ‘That’s the song,'” McLeod said.
My Old School hits select theaters on July 22 and expands to more theaters on July 29.
Main Image: Alam Cumming as Brandon Lee in My Old School courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
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