Some not-so-obvious great teachers in movie history
Summer has already ended for some students in the suburbs, giving way to that exciting first week of school when you meet your new teachers, get reacquainted with that delicious cafeteria pizza and see your friends IRL instead of in your DMs.
That last one is a new concept for me. My wife and I don't have kids and it's been a few years (um, decades) since I last roamed the halls of Wheeling High School, so the thought of being a freshman with a Facebook page is somewhat terrifying. I don't know if anyone's making movies and shows that accurately reflect the 2017 high school experience, though I feel safe in assuming that your typical suburban kids aren't teaming up to solve murders a la Archie and the gang on “Riverdale.”
What I can assume is that there are still great teachers making a difference in children's lives - teachers like Susan and Don Tantillo, who nurtured my love of film and introduced me to the possibility of working for a newspaper back at WHS.
Movies are full of memorable teachers: Robin Williams as John Keating in “Dead Poets Society.” Edward James Olmos as Jaime Escalante in “Stand and Deliver.” Richard Dreyfuss in “Mr. Holland's Opus.” But you know all about them; here are some of my favorite unsung movie teachers, both in and out of the classroom:
<b>Mr. Hand, “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”</b> - I was never a fan of Amy Heckerling's landmark high-school sex comedy, but I've always been a fan of Mr. Hand, played by Ray Walston as an unbreakable history teacher who is unfazed even when stoner surfer Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) has a pizza delivered to class. Mr. Hand endures as a lovable character because, like so many teachers, a caring heart lies underneath a stern facade - he barges in on Spicoli at home to deliver a final lesson and make sure his most disruptive student learns something.
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Jean Rasczak, “Starship Troopers”</b> - Character actor Michael Ironside is a blast in Paul Verhoeven's subversive take on Robert Heinlein's novel. We first meet Rasczak, a veteran who lost most of his left arm, in a Buenos Aires classroom, teaching the philosophy of warfare to impossibly beautiful heroes such as Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) and Carmen Ibanez (Downers Grove's Denise Richards). Later, when giant bugs attack earth, he gains a robotic arm and the respect of his recruits as a scenery-chewing military commander. Ironside gets big laughs throughout this R-rated gorefest, especially with his reaction to finding two young recruits sharing a tent.
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Morpheus, “The Matrix”</b> - Morpheus is a freedom fighter, and his classroom is a computer simulation. His student is Neo (Keanu Reeves), a hacker who learns the world he knows isn't real, and that sentient machines have enslaved the human race. Laurence Fishburne was assigned a nearly impossible task by Chicago filmmakers Lilly and Lana Wachowski - speak dialogue made up entirely of exposition and far-out philosophy, perform in groundbreaking martial arts sequences and somehow be a lovable father figure - and stuck the landing. Sequels aside, “The Matrix” endures as a classic partly because we believe in Morpheus as much as Neo does.
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Ace Rothstein and Nicky Santoro, “Casino"</b> - How's this for an unorthodox pick? Before Martin Scorsese's three-hour epic settles into its main conflict between Rothstein (Robert De Niro) and wife Ginger (Sharon Stone), the casino boss and his muscle (Joe Pesci) teach us, with direct voice-overs, how Las Vegas and its organized-crime overlords worked in the 1970s. The first hour is a dizzying delight, perhaps the most entertaining (and informative) stretch of any movie in Scorsese's illustrious career. Curiously, though based on the real story of the Chicago Outfit, the film never mentions the city; when Nicky talks about Ace's gambling days back home years ago, the on-screen titles actually say “Back Home Years Ago.”
<i>Sean Stangland is a Daily Herald multiplatform editor. You can follow him on Twitter at @SeanStanglandDH.</i>