For 'Glee' creator Ian Brennan, it all goes back to third grade in Mount Prospect

To understand the scarred creative psyche of "Glee" creator Ian Brennan, we must flash back to his third grade at Mount Prospect's Fairview Elementary School.

His teacher, Emily Zak, more or less launched his showbiz career by casting him in the lead of the school production "Home For Christmas."

"That was a disaster!" Brennan screeched. "It's what I have been existentially trying to correct in my mind, over and over!"

So, what happened?

"I had a monologue and I blew a line," he explained. "I just forgot it."

A fellow student "could have saved me. He was waiting for his cue to ring the doorbell, then walk on as my long-lost father.

"But he just stood there, waiting for the line that wasn't coming. It felt like three to four minutes of total silence.

"It's the early theatrical trauma that I'm trying to undo."

The Prospect High School graduate has been doing a stellar job of undoing the trauma.

His phenomenal hit TV series "Glee" - based on his experiences in the show choir at Prospect High - finished up a six-season run that started in 2009.

This weekend, his new horror-comedy "Cooties" (co-written with "Saw" creator Leigh Whannell) gets unleashed on video on demand and in theaters outside Illinois.

On Sept. 22, Brennan's new Fox TV series "Scream Queens" (co-created with his "Glee" partners Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk) premieres.

First, we wanted to know how Brennan wound up involved with a movie about grade schoolers who eat contaminated chicken nuggets, transform into homicidal maniacs, then go after their terrified teachers, turning them into nibbles and bits.

"I was approached to do this by my friend Leigh Whannell, and I immediately said yes because I thought the idea was hilarious," Brennan said. "But then I thought, 'Wait a minute. Are people really going to want to watch a movie in which kids are killed?'

"Actually, that was one of the selling points for me, not because of the violence, but because I think every substitute teacher has totally wanted to punch a kid. I thought that was really funny and interesting. But then, the movie needed to live up to the promise of the premise."

During "Cooties," Rainn Wilson, who plays a teacher along with Elijah Wood, Alison Pill and Whannell, makes the observation, "We're raising people's kids!'

"I think that's what teachers do. I think they're that important," Brennan said. "Maybe it's because my mom and sister are teachers, I'm very sensitive to how unsung these heroes, the teachers, are for most of their lives. It's a difficult job."

In 2011, Brennan spoke out in support of America's teachers during an acceptance speech at the Golden Globe awards.

"I just want to say thank you to public schoolteachers," he said on TV. "You don't get paid like it, but you're doing the most important work in America."

Since then, political attacks against teachers unions have become more intense in some quarters.

"It's so unfair," Brennan said. "I personally think it's an easy way to go after women. It's sinister. This just annoys me. It's a hard enough job to begin with. So why are we blaming these people?"

With the release of "Cooties" this weekend, Brennan thought he might take a break from shows about public educators.

"Maybe I won't need to write about teachers anymore," he said. "But I was such a part of that world with 'Glee' and now 'Cooties.' Wow. I must really have a thing about teachers."

"Scream Queens" doesn't leave school behind; it just changes age brackets.

"Ryan Murphy approached me with it. He said, 'Serial killer in a sorority house! Thirteen episodes! We won't even have a writing staff! We'll do it ourselves! And it's sort of already sold.' Already sold?

"So we got cracking. I started writing and it quickly came together. Jamie Lee Curtis was crucial. Once she was cast (as Dean Cathy Munsch), everything fell into place. It's an extraordinary cast: Curtis. Emma Roberts, Abigail Breslin, Lea Michele. A rogues' gallery of the awesome and the hilarious."

Brennan said the scripts for all 13 "Scream Queens" episodes are almost written, a creative tactic that served him well on "Glee."

"I think part of the success of 'Glee' early on was that we had written all of them (episodes) before anyone had seen them," he explained. "There was no feedback loop. None of that 'Oh, people like this!' or 'They don't like that!' Same thing here. We'll have written and shot almost all the show before it actually airs. People will like it or they won't."

The best thing about being Ian Brennan?

"What gives me the most joy is the ability to find what's unusual and funny in most things," he answered. "That's my fuel. That's what's in my jet pack. A sense of humor that I've had my whole life. The same humor I had in fourth grade. I was mouthy and a bit of showoff. But that was me."

Then, he added, "I wake up with good relationships with people, doing a job I enjoy in a career that I can look to the future with hope. I think that's pretty good, too."

<span title="charref:8"></span> - Dann Gire

Jamie Sotonoff and Dann Gire are hunting for suburbanites with showbiz careers. If you know someone, contact jsotonoff@dailyherald.com and dgire@dailyherald.com.

Prospect High grad gleefully appreciative

Let's get something straight.

Will Schuster, the show choir director on the hit TV series “Glee,” is not modeled after Prospect High School theater director John Marquette, Ian Brennan's teacher and mentor.

“That's something that's not really true. But that's something that will be on Wikipedia forever,” Brennan said. “John Marquette was much more mature, much more cantankerous. He was not the sentimentalist that Will Schuster is. He's a much more sophisticated man.”

Brennan cited several more key mentors responsible for his interest in the performing arts:

• Greta Kettleson, of Lincoln Middle School in Mount Prospect, who cast Brennan as the Artful Dodger in “Oliver.”

• Prospect High English teacher/drama director Susan Levine-Kelley.

• Schaumburg resident Raoul Johnson, Loyola University theater instructor. (“He's one of the reasons why I decided to go to Loyola,” Brennan said.)

— Dann Gire