Tagline: Reject rejection.
High school senior Bartleby “B” Gaines (Justin Long) is on his way to scoring eight out of eight rejection letters from colleges-which isn’t going to go over big with Mom and Dad. At least he’s not alone in the exclusion. Several of his crew of outcast friends are in the same, college-less boat. So…how does a guy facing a bleak career please his parents and get noticed by dream girl Monica (Blake Lively)? Simple. Open his own university.
B and his band of misfit freshmen take “liberal” arts literally when they fool their parents and peers and create the esteemed South Harmon Institute of Technology. They clean up an abandoned psychiatric facility, employ a buddy’s brilliant-but subversive-uncle (Lewis Black) as the dean and create a fake web site as their campus calling card. Bam! South Harmon, the alternative school of higher learning, is born.
Just as they are settling in, B and company realize they’ve done their jobs too well. Dozens of other college rejects show up for classes at this less-than-lofty institute. Under the scornful eyes of the privileged students from the neighboring college, B and his friends forge ahead with maintaining a fake, functioning university. Their efforts to explore alternative education result in a battle between the South Harmon co-eds and the “sister” school snobs. With his future in the balance, it’s going to take more than just sleight of hand to keep B out of jail as he strives to get the girl, impress his parents and just become… Accepted.
Production Information
Over the past 25 years, there have been many cinematic heroes who have bucked the system…refusing to play by anyone else’s rules. Our favorites just happened to be the ones who were graduating high school. Sean Penn started off the pack as the philosophical king of “tasty waves” and “a cool buzz,” Jeff Spicoli of Fast Times at Ridgemont High; Tom Cruise introduced us to the hormonal entrepreneur Joel Goodsen of Risky Business; Alex Winter as Bill S. Preston and Keanu Reeves as Ted “Theodore” Logan rewrote history in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
And, perhaps the master of all cons, Matthew Broderick will forever be synonymous with his title role in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Though from different backgrounds (and IQ scores), these brave young men had one thing in common-they took society’s standards and expectations of how they were supposed to act and fit in and resoundingly chucked them out the window.
In 2006, we proudly introduce the most ingenious slacker-turned-entrepreneur to date, Bartleby “B” Gaines (Justin Long, Dodgeball, The Break-Up), in a socially subversive comedy for anyone who has ever felt the sting of rejection-Accepted. Blockbuster producers Tom Shadyac (Bruce Almighty, The Nutty Professor) and Michael Bostick (Bruce Almighty, Liar Liar) join first-time director Steve Pink (writer of Grosse Pointe Blank, High Fidelity) in a comedy that discards norms, dismisses the status quo and challenges us to take the road less traveled…even if we have to make it up as we go along.
The filmmakers have culled a talented young cast in Accepted to give a wake-up call to a generation trapped within America’s stagnant school system, those Gen Y-ers deeply entrenched in unquestioning social standards of excellence. Speaking to the human need to fit in and find our niche, the film begs we ask ourselves one simple question: “What does it mean to become Accepted?”
After a lifetime of smooth-talking his way through the system and questioning societal restrictions, one graduating high school senior has found a quandary he can’t charm his way out of: college admission. All eight universities to which B applied have rejected him, and dire consequences unfold for an 18-year-old with no foreseeable future. So what can a matriculating hopeful do when the admissions gods just don’t have faith in him? Simple. Open his own university.
B decides the best way into college is to create his own, or at least produce enough of a façade to fool his parents. With the help of his nerve-wracked best pal Schrader (Jonah Hill, The 40-Year-Old Virgin) and a collection of his college-exempt friends-including bookworm Rory (Maria Thayer, Strangers With Candy), spaced-out foodie Glen (newcomer Adam Herschman) and jock Hands (Columbus Short, Save the Last Dance 2)-B and his pals found the “illustrious” South Harmon Institute of Technology out of an abandoned psychiatric facility.
Under their care, S.H.I.T. becomes a place where they can make their own rules, design curriculum and maintain complete control over their education. And they are not the only new students. The off-the-grid school appeals to scores of college cast-offs who gratefully (and unexpectedly) show up once they learn of the “we accept anyone” mentality of this new university.
To help manage the responsibilities of both running a university and keeping his parents in the dark, B hires Schrader’s outspoken and politically disenchanted Uncle Ben (Lewis Black) to pose as the dean. To add to his stress, however, B must balance academia while trying to woo the girl next door, Monica (Blake Lively, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants), who barely knows he’s alive.
Slowly, incredibly, the experiment begins to work. Kids freed from the shackles of locked curriculum blossom under S.H.I.T’s “design your destiny” tutelage. Unfortunately, they are quickly gaining unwanted attention and threats from “sister school” Harmon University, led by Dean Van Horne (Anthony Heald, The Silence of the Lambs) and the state school board. Now, B and his fellow freshmen must overturn the classical notion of what a college experience consists of and reassert that it is their right to pursue their own dreams…all while trying to stay out of jail.
The Pursuit of Acceptance: Getting Into a Fake School
“Let’s start this fake college. Then, we’ll go start a meth lab somewhere. It’s a gateway crime. That’s how these things start.” – Schrader
Accepted’s life began at Shady Acres, the Universal Pictures-based production company formed by producer Tom Shadyac and home to producer Michael Bostick. The partners-who have collaborated on such films as Liar Liar, Bruce Almighty and the upcoming Evan Almighty-were given the script by their representatives at United Talent Agency, who also introduced them to the spec screenwriter, Mark Perez. Shadyac and Bostick loved that Accepted was a comedy that has so much heart.
Shadyac relates that what spoke to him about the concept was that “the story is all about the flaws in the educational system and how they stifle creativity and, ultimately, learning.”
“I think what Tom and I do best is concept comedy, specifically concept comedy that can speak to the human condition. We responded immediately to the script,” notes Bostick. “We thought it was a great premise. Accepted has this sense of optimism, and it’s a comedy with a heart.”
Several well-known filmmakers familiar with the script sought out Team Shady Acres for the chance to direct Accepted. The producers interviewed over 30 directors who had expressed interest in the material, but it soon became clear that well-regarded writer / producer Steve Pink was the ideal choice. Pink had served as the screenwriter on two successful John Cusack comedies, 1997’s Grosse Pointe Blank and 2000’s High Fidelity.
For Shadyac, Pink’s grasp of the story’s underlying message about questioning the status quo and carving your own path assured him he had found the right director for the job. “Steve took us to the roots of why he wanted to do this, believing that you are your best teacher,” the producer commends.
Though this would be Pink’s first time in the director’s chair, the filmmaker had proved his comedic sensibilities as both a writer and producer. “We uniformly felt-the studio and the producers-that Steve was the right guy,” continues Shadyac. “We were huge fans of his writing. Both Grosse Point Blank and High Fidelity are two of our favorites, and we knew he would bring an intelligence and an integrity to it…as well as thematic resonance.”
“Although Pink had not directed a movie, he had previously acted and directed theater,” Shadyac adds. “We knew he could speak the actors’ language and would have confidence directing them, which was key since the cast is largely composed of newcomers.” He laughs, “All those aspects were more important than someone sitting on my couch telling me how they were going to shoot a scene.”
Pink recalls that in his initial meetings with Shadyac and Bostick, he passionately connected to the script’s themes and the characters’ various struggles to deal with acceptance and rejection…and the comedy that arose from that, rather than just blatant puerile humor.
The director shares the producers’ “questioning a system that wrongly insists that the surest way to guarantee success as an individual in society is to adhere to an obligatory college experience-a college experience that, in many ways, has itself become more of an industry than a value, churning out college graduates rather than inspired and imaginative people.” He chose the project because he feels “there’s always a great deal of comedy to mine in an idea that champions outcasts and misfits-and anyone trying to do something different-while having a bit more fun doing it.”
Pink loved that the script told a story of “students who determine their path, their major and their goals. There’s no required reading or classes. It’s all self-motivating and self-generating.”
Already familiar with writing to capture edgy and generation-defining themes in films, Pink comfortably slid into the director’s role. With the help of an experienced crew, he looked to resources around him as he transitioned into the role of film director.
His humility was very welcome on set. “Even though he wasn’t an experienced director, he had the respect of all the crew immediately,” Bostick shares. “The crew was quick to recognize that Steve wasn’t afraid to ask for help.”
“I’m a first-time director, and I had a very particular vision about how I wanted to do certain things,” Pink relates. “Sometimes I was wrong, and the crew would help me out. And sometimes I was right, and they would still help me.”
Specifically, he found a welcome tutor in producer Shadyac, noting, “Tom’s patience, wisdom and advice were key to my success as a director, on virtually every level. He’s a brilliant director, and I’m incredibly lucky that he had my back for my first directing gig. Whenever I got knocked off the proverbial bow, Tom-along with Michael Bostick and Amanda Palmer-were always there to haul me back into the boat.”
Producers, director and working script at the ready, it was time to enroll a number of freshmen into their first year of a fake college.
Misfits, Outcasts and Trendsetters
“There are plenty of successful people who didn’t go to college. Albert Einstein, Pocahontas never went to college. Harriet Beecher Stowe… Both Lewis and Clark, Suzanne Somers, Bono…” – B
The majority of the film’s cast members were fresh faces to the screen. But what they lacked in acting experience, they made up for in energy and enthusiasm for the project. According to Shadyac, the cast “would have gone through a blizzard, the Arctic, the polar caps. They would have done whatever it took to hit this one. And they did.”
First cast as the ne’er-do-well who is just about to turn a pivotal corner, Justin Long stars as Bartleby `”B” Gaines, the smooth-talking high school senior who has found himself stuck between a rock and a hard place. The young actor had proven himself a scene stealer in comedies from Galaxy Quest and Dodgeball to Herbie Fully Loaded and this summer’s comedy, The Break-Up. For Pink, Shadyac and Bostick, Long was an obvious choice.
Director Pink offers, “Justin is a genius improvisational actor who first gets into his character, and then has the ability to stay open to whatever comes at him at any given moment. He has a lot of integrity and is a great physical comic-an actor with a ton of dimensions.”
Long accepted the project based on the fact it reminded him “of the movies that he loved growing up-early John Hughes, Matthew Broderick, John Cusack and Michael J. Fox films-where the protagonist was someone who could get things done.” For Long, the script created the right balance of comedy that “wasn’t too full of shtick. I’m wary of when the jokes are too set up.”
When discussing how he mined experiences from his own childhood for the character of B Gaines, the actor teases, “I knew a guy like that growing up. His name rhymed with `Lustin Jong.’ He was very much the provocateur himself, but he didn’t get as many women as Bartleby gets.”
Every man heading into trouble needs a best friend to bail him out, and B finds that in Sherman Schrader, played by his real-life pal JONAH HILL. Winning over audiences in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and I Heart Huckabees, Hill welcomed the chance to play the straight man to Long’s comic B. The actor notes of his character, “He’s a little by-the-book. He’s very anxious and the only person that looks at the full consequences of starting your own school or doing insane things.”
Long commends, “This is Jonah’s movie. I think Schrader is the funniest character in Accepted-and the most important-because he is the audience’s perspective on the absurdity of what’s happening with this fake college…and the absurdity of going through a fraternity hazing ritual. He gets the worst of both worlds.”
Blake Lively, who plays B’s dream girl, Monica, could easily draw on her girl-next-door, recent high school graduate status. She finished high school in southern California last year, ironically as both cheerleader and class president. The actor made a mark of her own on the cast and crew. Pink offers, “Blake has a very natural presence and brings great energy and focus into her work.”
Bostick also liked that Lively could so closely identify with the role of Bartleby’s crush. “Blake was turning 18 when we cast her, and she was able connect to who this character was.” Her standout performance in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants made quite an impression on the producer. “We were taken by her work in that film. She was just a fresh, new talent to watch.”
True to Accepted form, Lively began bucking the educational system at a young age. Her parents took her to kindergarten when she was three because her older brother was scared to go by himself. “But I wanted to just sleep and not learn,” she laughs.
When Adam Herschman walked into the Shady Acres casting room, he had only done a few commercials. The production team wasn’t even casting for a character that matched his physical description. By the time he left, however, they were combining two characters to write this newcomer into the script. Bostick reflects, “We saw him in a FedEx commercial, and he just had us on the floor. We obviously fell in love with him, completely axed out those two roles and created a wholly unique character named Glen, based on Adam’s unique sensibility.”
“The second I saw Adam’s face,” laughs Shadyac, “I said, `He’s in the movie.’ You look at his face and you start laughing. It’s a great gift.”
Surrounded by comical upheaval, actor Columbus Short plays the stalwart football-star-turned-sculptor, Hands. A hardcore athlete who recently lost his college scholarship due to a knee injury, Hands has the soul of a poet. Similar to the character he plays, Short was also a high school athlete who turned his talents to another medium because of an injury.
“My stepdad encouraged me to play football, and I did in high school until I got injured. I had always been interested in performing arts. After I got hurt, it gave me the excuse to really delve into that.”
Pink feels Short successfully executed the role as a strong anchor to the craziness that surrounds him. “Where Jonah Hill’s character is the naysayer, Columbus played the
part of Hands as the one guy who completely backs B at all times, lending hope to the whole crazy idea. He’s a smart, very talented actor.”
Maria Thayer was cast as the one traditional overachiever who balances out B’s crew of misfits. Thayer plays Rory, a motivated, extracurricularly decorated student whose life is in shambles after she doesn’t gain acceptance to Yale. Shadyac explains, “She was programmed since she was a kid. Everything was toward getting into Yale, and now she has nothing. Consequently, Rory takes that experience and says, `I’m gonna do nothing. I’ve been doing stuff my whole life.’”
The subversive dean for this idiosyncratic cast of characters is Schrader’s Uncle Ben-a former academic soured on the politics and policies of education-played with ferocity by Lewis Black. Uncle Ben’s rants about the sorry state of higher education read almost as something out of Black’s signature comedic diatribes on all aspects of society. That did not escape producer Bostick when he read the script and debated actors to fill the role.
“Lewis plays the unconventional Uncle Ben in a way only Lewis is capable of. We had writers on set all day, but you can’t write Uncle Ben for Lewis. He is Uncle Ben,” Bostick says.
The often irascible Black loved the idea that his character would be a brilliant, freethinker who refuses to play by the rules. The actor notes, “Uncle Ben hates university education, thinks it’s a waste of time. He is one of those guys who probably sees conspiracies everywhere. He’s deeply paranoid on certain levels, and he doesn’t trust the culture at large. Therefore, he doesn’t trust the institution of college, which he sees as a factory pumping out brainless nitwits who will join the army of people who are buying and selling crap through the world.”
Defining Accepted: Filmmakers and Cast Ponder the Meaning
“Rejection. That’s what makes a college great. The exclusivity of any university is judged primarily by the amount of students it rejects.” – Dean Van Horne
When beginning the production, cast and crew alike reflected on the concept of the programming they’d all been subjected to that forced them into one box or another. For producer Tom Shadyac, it is blatantly obvious that institutes of higher learning have it all backwards. “College is a service industry. You’re not there to serve the teacher. You’re not there to fit into their mold. The system should be working for you. Today’s youth are raised to conform to one blueprint for success: do well in high school, get into a good college and land a lucrative job-cut and dry.”
Shadyac knows as well as anyone what it feels like to be locked into the confines of the system. “Skip a step or miss a beat and you should call it quits,” he continues. “Because your life is destined for failure. This clearly is not true and time has shown us that there are many roads to success. I was a government major in college because that’s what was given to me. Nobody said, `what do you wanna do?’” Accepted and B’s South Harmon Institute of Technology asks just that.
Director Pink reflects of the definition, “Clearly, acceptance must be, first and foremost, acceptance of one’s self. After that, it shouldn’t matter if who you are-or what you want to be-doesn’t conform to the expectations of society or the institutions that govern college education.”
He recognizes that this definition of acceptance conflicts with everything mainstream youth are taught about traditional education. “I hope that people will identify most with the idea in this film that you can actually be successful by making college fit your needs rather than the other way around.”
In Bostick’s eyes, Accepted is not another fantasy teen comedy padded by simply bacchanalia and impossible schemes. “Acceptance is really about the triumph of underdogs. This story has that optimism. It’s a concept comedy that speaks to the human condition.”
Long feels, “The very simple message of acceptance is addressing what it means to accept others and accept yourself. This is not just another teen comedy. It has a heart, and it’s got something to say.”
Once a student at The Juilliard School studying musical theater, Thayer veered from her mapped-out course and joined Comedy Central’s show Strangers With Candy. Like her character, Rory-the academically smartest character in B’s brigade of college rejects in Accepted-Thayer has found her niche and is thriving on her altered course to success. She does, however, relate to her character’s predicament. “Nothing in my life has ever worked out the way I thought it would. I am like Rory that way. I thought I knew what I wanted to do.”
Life imitating art, Uncle Ben himself, Lewis Black, applied to seven universities during his senior year of high school and was rejected by all but one. Though self-professing that he did, “stupidly well” throughout high school, he was sunk by average SAT scores and bad advice from a well-meaning guidance counselor. Eventually transferring to UNC Chapel Hill, Black found a home at the then party school, where he would eventually begin to hone his craft.
Building S.H.I.T: Designing a College of Their Own
“What is learning? It’s paying attention. It’s opening yourself up to this great big ball of &$%^ that we call life.” – Uncle Ben
While cast and filmmakers pondered what it’s all about, Pink’s team would need to create an abandoned mental facility to host the misfits. As B and Schrader knew after their discovery that creating a fake web site would attract them new students, there was much reparations and scouring to be done to get a school in working order. Like its sister school to the north, S.H.I.T. was not built in a day.
The production design for Accepted called for three principal locations: a high school where B and his gang graduate, a psychiatric ward-turned-university to host the free thinkers and/or rabble-rousers who visit the campus and a classic-looking Ivy League private university to serve as the pretentious Harmon University. Fortunately, all of the above were found within Southern California’s San Fernando Valley and Orange County.
While exterior shots for snobby sister school Harmon were shot at Chapman University in Orange County, S.H.I.T. would need a much bigger space for a much longer location shoot. Production designer Rusty Smith explains one of the major challenges in the design for this film was “coming up with a place that would be big enough that we could control for the length of time that we needed it for the film.” He knew that his team had to take South Harmon through many stages. He found the perfect location for the school at the VA hospital in Northridge, California. Of particular interest to the designer was “the evolution of the architecture of the building that the kids choose.”
“Much like the students in the movie, we transformed a veteran’s hospital in Northridge into South Harmon. The location was perfect,” notes Bostick. “We just had to let the weeds grow a little longer, put in a pool and then add an insane half pipe to skate in the backyard.”
“This is why where we shot South Harmon was such a great location,” Smith continues. “It’s hard to find a facility like this where they let you take over the entire building…and pretty much destroy it.” The production team loved the fact that the building had a grand façade. Smith and his crew had to add “a lobby, all of the doors and…basically create this exterior courtyard and transform it into an interior space.”
Some of the film’s most humorous moments come as B, Rory, Hands, Schrader and Glen attempt to clean up their new school. Fortunately, the VA hospital-with additions from the Universal Props Department-allowed the director use of medical exam tables, outfitted with stirrups, as well as a plethora of medical devices (read skeletons) necessary to a comedy that takes place in a loony bin.
Inside S.H.I.T. was only half the story. “What college would be complete without a half pipe?” the team wondered. Fortunately for Pink, some of the crewmembers on Accepted also worked on the Heath Ledger skateboarding film Lords of Dogtown. They knew that half-pipe design was a very calculated endeavor and opted to rent one rather than construct it for the skate boarders who did the skating and the stunts.
On location, Pink was less than excited with climatic conditions of his “Home for the Mentally Challenged” setting that became S.H.I.T. “It was a blazing hot hell,” he laughs. “And you could put this in the Dictionary of Comedy: `Nothing is funny after a certain temperature.’ These kids were the exception. I couldn’t look at the monitor it was so hot, but they were still funny.”
With the building of their new school complete, it was time to decide what music would be ringing through its hallways and blasting in its dorm rooms. “We wanted to find the right balance between what could potentially be Steve’s extremely eclectic tastes in music, and music that will successfully reach the demographic the movie is aiming for,” offers executive music producer Kathy Nelson. “For the filmmakers, that balance was `Holiday’ by Green Day. The song embodied the film’s message with a youthful energy. We all fell in love with it,” says Nelson.
Seasoned musician and music producer David Schommer created the score for the film. “David knew how to bridge the gap and make the score and the songs sound organic to each other,” Nelson compliments.
Pink also wanted to include such artists as The Chemical Brothers, Modest Mouse, The Pixies and Citizen Cope as the soundtrack for South Harmon. As homage to John Hughes, the comedy screenwriter and director who inspired much of his work in Accepted, Pink opted for a David Schommer club remix of the Simple Minds classic “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” with vocals by recording artist Lucy Woodward.
Production wrapped on the set of Accepted, the filmmakers knew they had a film that not only provided satire of the expected, but could speak to a new generation of filmgoers who might be struggling with where to go with questions including “What should I be?” and “Who should I listen to?”
Lewis Black summarizes the instincts of the cast and crew as he notes, “My feeling is that once you get to college, you can listen to your parents as advisors-to a point-but what you hear is much like the Charlie Brown `wa-wa-wa-wa-wa’ sound. This is the time that parents should be a background. It’s your time of self-discovery. By the way, I’m saying this in my underwear. Okay?”
Accepted (3006)
irected by: Steve Pink
Starring: Justin Long, Jonah Hill, Blake Lively, Adam Herschman, Maria Thayer, Anthony Heald, Lewis Black, Ann Cusack, Hannah Marks, Robin Lord Taylor, Sam Horrigan
Screenplay by: Bill Collage, Adam Cooper, Mark Perez
Production Design by: Rusty Smith
Cinematography by: Matthew F. Leonetti
Film Editing by: Scott Hill
Costume Design by: Genevieve Tyrrell
Set Decoration by: Sara Andrews, Kieran Brown
Art Direction by: Denise Hudson
Music by: David Schommer
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for language, sexual material and drug content.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: August 18, 2006
Visits: 129
