Doyle: I wanted 'Beth Cooper' filmed at Buffalo Grove High

For the record, Larry Doyle really wanted the high school in the new movie he scripted, "I Love You, Beth Cooper," to be called Buffalo Grove High School.

After all, Buffalo Grove High School was what he called the school in his award-winning 2007 book (of the same title). He named it after the very same high school in Buffalo Grove where he graduated in 1976.

"It was not my choice," Doyle told me from his Baltimore home. "I wanted it (the movie) to be shot at Buffalo Grove High School. That became a budgetary issue."

Instead, 20th Century Fox made "I Love You, Beth Cooper" in Vancouver, where it's cheaper than in the Chicago suburbs. (The film cost a relative pittance of $20 million.)

"Plus," Doyle said, "if we had shot it at Buffalo Grove High School, we would have had to change the name, anyway."

Why?

"I don't agree with this legal thinking, but it was their legal thinking," Doyle said. "There are no other Buffalo Grove High Schools in the United States. So if we call this school Buffalo Grove and the town Buffalo Grove, then anyone in Buffalo Grove can say that it (the movie) is depicting them.

"The lawyers like it when there's nothing else by that name, or five others with that name. But if there's one, you can't use that name."

Fair enough.

So, Buffalo Grove High School in Illinois magically becomes Buffalo Glenn High School in Washington state for the movie, which opens today at midnight at local theaters (but, ironically, not at the Buffalo Grove Theater).

Students, however, can be comforted that it took four regular Vancouver high schools to stand in for the one and only Buffalo Grove High School.

"I Love You, Beth Cooper" is about Denis (Paul Rust), a valedictorian who has led a quiet, focused life up until his commencement speech, which he concludes by confessing his love for the fetching Beth Cooper, one of the most popular girls at Buffalo Grove, uh, Glenn.

That brave and thoughtless act propels him into a night of terror, fun and romance.

"If the movie followed the book precisely, it would be rated NC-38 or something," Doyle said. "There was a lot of stuff in the book that I thought would never make it into a commercial movie."

And it didn't. Doyle admitted he wished Fox hadn't whacked out a few things from his book.

"Beth Cooper doesn't smoke in the movie," he said. "Given that I used it (smoking) as a lesson in something that you're not supposed to do, it was very frustrating thing that as a policy, they wouldn't allow it. It's a general policy that teenagers can't smoke in Fox movies. They don't want to be accused of supporting teen smoking. But the book was anti-teen smoking."

In a recent newspaper article, a fellow student referred to Doyle as a "background character" at Buffalo Grove High.

"Background character? What are you talking about?" Doyle said in mock protest. "I was the star! Whatever. I guess I was out of that mainstream."

I asked the Doyle the question he gets a lot, and really doesn't like to keep answering again and again: How much of "Beth Cooper" is based on reality?

"Everything's 100 percent autobiographical, but nothing in the book actually happened," he said. "It sort of represents a nostalgic reminiscence of my entire high school experience without being correct in any specific way.

"It's set in weird conglomeration of Buffalo Grove as it is today, and the Buffalo Grove that existed when I was there from 1973 to 1976."

If Doyle had been a background character in high school, he has more than made up for it. He has won two Emmy Awards for writing and producing episodes of the iconic TV show "The Simpsons." He also wrote for the "Beavis and Butt-Head" show, plus served as a medical and science reporter for United Press International.

He has also worked as an editor at the National Lampoon magazine, producer of eight Looney Tunes cartoons, and freelancer for publications such as Time, Rolling Stone, Harpers, Esquire, GQ and The New Yorker.

Of course, all that came to Doyle after he started his professional career much like Gabe Kaplan in "Welcome Back, Kotter."

"I had left Buffalo Grove with all that kicking the dirt off my heels, determined to make something of myself," Doyle said. "Next thing I know, I'm substitute teaching at my old high school. That was an appropriate reminder of my own mortality.

"Then, I wound up teaching gym, which was kind of a humiliation for me. I did everything I could to a avoid gym while in school. Worse, on my first day as a sub, I had to teach gym and Coach (Grant) Blaney, who was there when I was there, came down to check me in. He looks at me and says, "Pretty ironic, huh, Doyle?'"

Doyle recently attended his 30th class reunion and made a not-so-startling discovery.

"I wound up hanging out with some of my friends from high school, and I realized, near the end of the night, that we were all sitting at our table, watching the jocks and cheerleaders have more fun than we were having.

"For some reason, their table was at the front of the room. Typical."