Author interview: Utah Tech University professor Stephen Armstrong on the making of Rock 'n' Roll High School 

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The 1979 comedy Rock 'n' Roll High School—about a rebellious student fighting the power with the help of punk icons the Ramones—has become a cult classic. Utah Tech University professor Stephen Armstrong explored the making of the movie in his new book I Want You Around (Backbeat Books). Armstrong visits The King's English Bookshop (1511 S. 1500 East) on Saturday, July 20 at 2 p.m. to discuss the book.

City Weekly: How did you first encounter Rock 'n' Roll High School?
Stephen Armstrong: In the '80s, I was a skateboard kid in the neighborhood. ... A friend who was in that little clique of skaters was the first to really like the Ramones. I really liked the music and developed an ear for it. That friend lent me his copy of the Rock 'n' Roll High School soundtrack, and said "you've got to see this movie." MTV was using Sunday nights to show cult films like Reefer Madness, Phantom of the Paradise and Rock 'n' Roll High School. Punk rock was really not welcome in my house, so I snuck down to the basement on a Sunday night. I was worried that the Ramones were going to look like tools and dorks in the movie. And they sort of do, but the music and the performances were so great.

CW: You also wrote a book about [independent filmmaker] Paul Bartel's movies, so you obviously have an interest in low-budget cinema. What appeals to you about the indie films of this era?
SA: [Producer Roger] Corman had a good eye for talent. You had these people with enormous talent—Ron Howard, James Cameron, Jonathan Demme, Joe Dante—who were willing to work for nothing to get experience and get credits. And Roger was the ultimate capitalist, but he's also giving them enormous freedom. If you included enough sex and violence to keep the drive-in crowd happy, you could do what you want. So these movies were from a guy tight with money but loose with allowing people to do their jobs; you have a series of movies that are very much artistic and grossly commercial at the same time. And there's something about that contradiction that appeals to me. I think Rock 'n' Roll High School has one foot in the gutter and one foot in ... not necessarily the Louvre, but let's say the Art Institute of Chicago.

CW: What was one of the most interesting or surprising things that stands out to you that you learned through your research?
SA: I think it was the extent to which [bassist] Dee Dee Ramone was drugged out while making it. I was taken aback by the story of how when the band was filming at Mount Carmel [High School], fans were coming up to the perimeter of the school, throwing bags of heroin and pills. And that kind of spilled over into a real binge for Dee Dee right into the shoot. He started to have an overdose and was hospitalized—then still had to come to the shoot the next day. You can see that he's just completely addled.

CW: What is it, in the case of Rock 'n' Roll High School, that makes it a "cult movie?"
SA: Siskel & Ebert in Sneak Previews in summer of 1979 did a show [on cult films], and they speculated that in the future, Rock 'n' Roll High School might fit in that category. ... It's often been written that Rock 'n' Roll High School was cult by design, and it wasn't. Roger [Corman] wanted the movie to be Disco High, to chase after the success of the disco movies of the period. It was always, "what's the way to make money." [Director Allan Arkush's] taste for the Ramones—which he thought would be funny visually, having a very pretty star falling in love with Joey Ramone, who looks like a praying mantis-meets-telephone pole—created this movie that is so freaky and strange that it became cult.

CW: Why does the film hold up nearly 40 years later?
SA: I think it's three points. One is the Ramones, because the Ramones are weird. But they wrote such great songs and had such great stage presence.

The second reason is, from the founding of the U.S. and earlier, it's a culture that defied authoritarian impulses—that's very punk and very American. That's the theme of the movie: standing up to authority and winning.

Third, the writers who took over the script after Joe McBride was let go, [Russ] Dvonch and [Richard] Whitley, loved the whackadoo humor of ... the Jerry Lewis movies that Frank Tashlin directed. Jerry Zucker and Jon Davison [co-writer/co-director and producer of Airplane!, respectively] worked on it. The humor is transgressive and goofy, and filled with slapstick. There were big brains working on this kind of trashy, slumming project.