of Nicholson's memorable restaurant
scene in Five Easy Pieces in which he
orders a chicken salad sandwich: "Hold
the chicken salad."
Of School of Rock, Black said, "This is
my crowning achievement, my run for
the border. This is my chance for the
time capsule. You want to make a
mark. You always think they'll move on
to the next funny guy. For this movie,
the planets lined up."
Black wrote a lot of the music,
including tunes he introduces in the
classroom. He spent weeks with the
cast of hyper-talented, young musicians
in rehearsal, then filmed with them in
New York for four months. He earned
their respect.
Said Robert Tsai, 12, a classically
trained pianist from New Jersey, "I had to
try not to laugh because Jack is so funny."
Said bass player Rebecca Brown, 11,
of Chicago, "Jack? So cool."
Said drummer Kevin Clark, 13,
from Highland Park, Ill., "He's a riot.
First time my mom saw him, she said,
`My son loves your CD.' Said Jack, 'I
am so sorry.'"
It took time, Black said, to bond
with the kids, all of who were accom-
plished musicians, most of who had
never before acted.
"We got to know each other," said
Black. "They were scared of me at first
because I was coming at them real
hard. They got used to it. Off the set,
we'd just be hangin' out, you know, like
rockers hangin' out."
Director Richard Linklater made his
reputation with such independent
films as Slacker, Waking Life and Dazed
and Confused. He was an unusual
choice for a more mainstream studio
picture like School of Rock. But the
Austin, Texas-based filmmaker got the
Jack Black thing.
"You have a bull in a china shop," he
said, "That was the metaphor. This is a
performance piece for him, so specific
to his skills; he's an actor who's really
funny. "\X/hat Jack did was treat the kids
like peers, pulling them into his world."
Added co-star Sarah Silverman, an
edgy Jewish comedian in her own right,
who spent a season a decade ago on
Saturday Night Live: "He's like a
Dungeons and Dragons nerd who's a
rock star and a comic. There's an
Everyman quality about him and a no-
other-man's quality about him."
A Major Voice
It was with the irreverent tone of
Tenacious D (named for a basketball
term used by New York sportscaster
Mary Albert: "The Knido are playing
tenacious d") that Black found his rock
'n' roll voice, which he brings to the
movie. His interest in music was
inspired in part by his older half-broth-
er, Howard Siegel, who has engineered
albums for many leading bands.)
"When I was in high school, I tried
with a band to take rock serious," he
said. "We did a party one night and
were ignored. We just left. It devastated
me. Then, when I met (his Tenacious
D partner) Kyle Gass (in Tim Robbins'
the Actors Gang theater company at
UCLA), we thought, 'Let's approach
this tongue-in-cheek.'"
Now there'll be a movie "in which we
chronicle Tenacious D's rise to power,"
said Black. "Got Meat Loaf to play my
father; he doesn't understand me. We
hope it'll be out by the end of next
year." (In real life, Black's father came
to all his plays, and "my mother has
always supported me in the hard
times," he has said.)
Amid the raucous humor, Black is a
guy with a major voice, an instrument
that sneaks through on the Tenacious
D tunes "Tribute" and "Wonderboy." It
gets showcased in High Fidelity, with a
version of Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It
On" (said his director, Stephen Frears,
"I've never met anyone like Jack Black;
its as if he came from the moon") and
flourishes in the heavy-metal songs
from School of Rock.
The voice soars through the octaves,
soulful one moment, hitting falsetto
screams the next.
"I think about maybe doing a [stage]
musical," he says. "There's talk of a
Rocky Horror Picture Show remake. I'd
play one of those roles."
But what he really adores, still pines
for, is heavy-metal success.
"It's the passion of the music," he
said. "There's something primal about
it: the screaming; something that seems
right. The drama is what's exciting; the
sinister aspect is cool, particularly when
you're a kid."
These days, Black is listening to the
White Stripes: "Jack White's a great live
performer, connected to blues roots and
rough parts of Detroit, great style"; the
Strokes; Queens of the Stone Age; and
a band called The Darkness, "a frenzied
heavy metal mind, from England."
He is Jack Black, School of Rock star,
schooling in rock. ❑
Arts er Entertainment Editor Gail
Zimmerman and jewhoo.com Editor
Nate Bloom contributed to this article.
School of Rock," a drug and sex-
free comedy rated PG-13, is cur-
rently in area theaters.
10/17
2003
73