My teacher movie will star some fists

I have been trying for years to find a teacher story to tell. My second screenplay was about a Mafia hitman turned teacher who has to lead her students out of town as they're chased by mobsters, cops and gang bangers. It was terrible.

Then a few years ago a douchebag and I wrote a pilot about a school shooting. It never really worked.

Then last year I finished the first draft of a screenplay about a Mexican teenager who makes friends with this white chick. It wasn't about teaching per say, but it was heavily influenced by my teaching experiences. I printed out the draft and threw it in a chair, where it still sits untouched because it sucks. It's entirely too contrived.

When I tell people what I do for a living they usually say "Oh that must be filled with stories!"

Yep. Stories I am apparently incapable of telling. I want to write a movie about teaching, but I don't want to write a "teacher movie" because "teacher movies" all have the same plot: Dough-eyed new teacher enters classroom where black and Mexican students, and that one white kid, all sit on desks and listen to their boom box while throwing spit balls at each other. Teacher struggles to get through, then makes some miraculous discovery that changes the game. The kids change their minds and decide they love the teacher, but the principal is an asshole and just doesn't understand this newfangled method that works so very well. Cue inspirational music.

That's not the kind of story I write. I like explosions and flame throwers and gun fights. And despite the fact that I teach in South Central, there's really not much of that going on here. When I told my colleagues back in North Carolina where I was moving, they said I should wear a bullet-proof vest to school. Yeah that's just laughable. I feel safer at this school than I did back in rural NC where the kids fought daily and all had shotguns in their pickups.

But it's sort of been my goal to find a new way to tell the teacher story, a fantasy that I'd like to see, with explosions and fist fights and crazy action scenes, but still giving some kind of glimpse into the world of education. Sounds impossible.

And then the other night in the shower I began to put some pieces together. I told the Beefcake my idea. He shook his head because it was a straight to DVD idea - a Steven Seagal type deal.

So I thought and thought some more and kept changing details and thinking about what I really want to do and what I'm good at. I'm good at action stories, and quite frankly I don't think I should try to write anything else.

Anyway after all that thinking, this morning I started to realize what I have here. And I think I've got it. Of course, I always think I've got it until I don't, so this may be another exciting idea that crashes and burns when I try to put it on paper.

With Not Dead Yet in circulation and a new script humming along slowly but steadily - at the moment I'm rewriting scenes but I should be caught up and start adding new pages this week now that I've solved a major problem - I need to prepare for pitches. If somebody does read NDY and really likes it, I've got to be able to present ideas for what else I've got in my noggin.

So this morning I got out my yellow index cards that I use for new story ideas and I wrote this teacher thing down and stuck it on the board next to the other ideas, all screenplay ideas I am prepared to pitch and start writing today if I have to. Idea # 8 - Teacher is a badass.

As soon as I finish writing Burn Side and then the low budget scifi thing I have really enjoyed thinking about and the treatment of a novel adaptation I'm working on, well by then I'll probably know my teacher story cold. So one day, by the time I'm 45, I should get around to writing this thing.

Teacher movies

Yesterday Teacher Movies came up. There are a lot of teacher movies out there - heaven knows why - and 90% of them are so full of bullshit and sunshine it makes me want to yak.

You have no idea how many times someone has said to me "Oh you're just like Michelle Pfeifer in that movie!" It's the second-most annoying thing people say to me. The first most annoying thing is something new kids always say to me and I'm not going to give you that kind of ammunition.

Dangerous Minds is ridiculous. Ask any teacher. The book may have been okay; it was written by a teacher, but the movie is the glossiest piece of unrealistic garbage this side of a dumpster on Melrose. It takes her like one day to figure how to reach all the kids and once she magically knows what to say to them, they all worship her. Even these two poor black kids who can barely tie their shoes without the white lady's help, all they want to do is go to school but she just can't save them from their ignorant Negro parents.

It's insulting to both teachers and the black community.

Freedom Writers is a little better. The kids are more realistic and it does show how devoting yourself too much to the job can destroy your personal life. I do not go to my children's homes. I do not schedule controversial field trips. I will not bail them out of jail. I will call Social Services if someone is abusing them. I will listen to their problems and give them advice. But I ain't going bankrupt over construction paper and notebooks.

Most teachers don't kill themselves for their classes. But I guess if she was most teachers, it wouldn't be much of a movie.

People always seem to think my job is SO HARD. It is some days, but I do it, I enjoy it, then I go home to enjoy the rest of my day. I admire that Freedom Writers lady. I also think she's nuts.

There are tons of other teacher movies out there - some good, some not so good, but the best I've ever seen is James Clavell's 1967 classic To Sir, With Love. Sydney Poitier plays a first year teacher with an extensive formal education despite his childhood on the streets. He comes to work in a British school filled with societal rejects as he waits for a better job in engineering.

He doesn't walk in the second day of school and suddenly know what to do. He doesn't go to the kids' homes and explain why their parents need to be better. He doesn't do all those cliche things we supposedly do if we're good teachers. He simply tries. He tells the truth. He loves the kids. And in the end, they love him back, not because he did some big dramatic gesture, but because he made sure they learned what they needed to learn. And at no point was that job easy.

He does take them on a field trip and he does have to argue with administration, but those are minor parts of the film and at that point in film history they had yet to become cliche.

When I was a kid I used to love Lulu's theme song from that film, although I had no idea what it was about. Ever since I saw To Sir, With Love I can't even sing one line of that song without bursting into tears. That's how good that Goddamn movie is.

So really, from now on, if you want to compare me to a teacher you saw in the movies, compare me to Sydney Poitier please.