In “The Musical,” directed by Giselle Bonilla and Alexander Heller, a disgruntled middle school drama teacher (Will Brill) stages an inappropriate production for his students to get back at his principal (Rob Lowe) for dating his ex (Gillian Jacobs).
Actually, inappropriate may be a bit of an understatement.
“I didn’t read it for like a month, because I was like, “‘The Musical?’ Oh god, is this like a low-budget ‘Mamma Mia,’ and I’m the f–king cut rate Pierce Brosnan?’” Lowe told TheWrap at the Sundance Film Festival. “Then I read it and was like, ‘What the f–k?’ and was just smitten with the audaciousness of it. It’s such a big swing, and it’s so smart and so funny, and I loved it from the jump.”
If you want to go into “The Musical” completely blind like Lowe and Sundance audiences, now would be a good time to click away.
The film started as a feature idea that turned into a short Heller wrote and Bonilla directed while they attended AFI together (“This guy’s a psychopath, and I’m glad we ended up working together,” Bonilla said). While Lowe’s Principal Brady believes that drama teacher Doug (Brill) is directing his middle school students in a production of “West Side Story,” the truth is that Doug has actually written a different New York-set musical for his students.
A production titled “The Heroes” about the events of 9/11.
“There was a moment where Vikram, my manager, read it and was like, ‘I don’t get it,’” Brill said. “I was like, “Have you watched the short?’ and he was like, ‘No,’ and I said, ‘Watch the short,’ and he was like, ‘I get it. Please do this.’”
“They did a tremendous job with the short,” Jacobs added. “This is sort of what you want to do as an actor: meet someone at the beginning of their career and get to be a part of their first thing.”
“The Musical” received mostly positive reviews following its Sundance premiere, with TheWrap’s Chase Hutchinson describing it as “consistently funny before going out with a bang.”
The group behind the film thought back to how they all felt after the actual tragedy being weaponized by Brill’s petty, malicious drama teacher in “The Musical.” Bonilla recalled her parents fearing that Dodger Stadium would be the target of an attack, while Lowe added that he avoided eating at the Golden Globes for fear that the wait staff had been infiltrated — a sentiment shared by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“People were super pissed at my table halfway through the meal when they realized why I didn’t eat,” he said.
The cast and filmmakers were amused by the idea that all of the children portraying the middle schoolers in “The Musical” were themselves born after 9/11 — though none of them needed the joke explained to them.
“They all knew what it was,” Bonilla said. “They’re like, ‘Haha, you’re playing Osama!’ Like, they really knew.”
Bonilla then revealed that the idea at the center of the film isn’t quite as novel as everyone else had believed.
“One of them had already put up a play,” she continued. “That’s kind of a thing that they’re doing now. It’s like a history lesson. They reenact things, and they did a whole scene where they were like, ‘Pretzels! Peanuts!’ They start from the beginning, like inside the airplane.” This aside stopped Bonilla’s cast dead in their tracks.
“Wait, what?” Brill asked.
“Wait wait wait,” Lowe interjected. “You’re telling me—”
“I got scared because I was like, ‘OK, so then this is not going to be a big enough thing to get Principal Brady fired if they’re already doing this in school,” Bonilla added.
“Well, I mean, they’re probably not being taught that Rudy Giuliani was the instigator,” Brill said.
