Stand and Deliver

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

Amy & Paul stand for 1988’s rousing math class drama Stand And Deliver! They ask if this is the first major ‘indie’ film, learn how Edward James Olmos crafted his commanding performance as Jaime Escalante, and investigate whether the real students depicted cheated on their exam. Plus: Lou Diamond Phillips explains how he got cast as Angel, and why poker requires top-notch math skills.

This is the second episode of our “Back To School” miniseries; next week’s film is The 400 Blows! Learn more about the show at unspooledpod.com, follow us on Twitter @unspooled and Instagram @unspooledpod, and don’t forget to rate, review & subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Spotify. Also check out our live Spool Party episodes on youtube.com/earwolf!

[FictionIsntReal 79]

I remember hearing that even while Stand And Deliver remained popular, the real Escalante was unpopular with the school system. And looking him up, he lost his chairmanship of the math department just a couple years after the film was released, and he left Garfield the next year.

Shortly before listening to this podcast I was reading the thoughts of a former teacher who joined Teach for America because of stories like Escalante's and more specifically movies like this. And perhaps because he taught some needier kids he retains more of the idealistic attitude toward public education than me (my own experience as a student was just of an enormous amount of wasted time), but I know he'd also agree with Freddie de Boer's new book The Cult of Smart against the idea that any student can do anything as long as teachers try hard enough.

I agree with Amy that there are too many coming-of-age films, and that the personal stories of these people are not interesting. I do seem to be on the somewhat extreme end in being uninterested in the vast majority of stories about young people without real responsibilities. The next film we're to discuss has been widely recognized as a classic, but the rest of these "Back to School" films really seem like a waste of time if we're making some top 100 films ever list.

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

I always thought of this as a mainstream movie, but Paul & Amy talking about it as an indie really made me appreciate it a lot more. 

I don't think it's quite great enough for the list, but it's definitely closer than I initially thought. (Kind of an inverse Mean Girls, which I kind of anticipated possibly making the list, but I also think falls just short.)

But I think Stand has definitely had the influence and sort of become iconic in the way of some old classics have that I might say yes in the end. Like, I was shown To Kill A Mockingbird in school. I was also shown Stand and Deliver. That must mean something.

[hahmstrung 12]

I remember seeing this in school and being surprised then that it was actually a pretty good film. I haven't seen it since but I thought it held up very well. I agree that the personal stories weren't especially interesting. They're just there for the sake of showing us that they all have their own problems, but it's all pretty surface level.

I voted no to sending it to space but now I'm having second thoughts on what the space pod should represent. If it's meant to be a reflection of humanity then maybe most or all of these films should be included. If it's a list of personal favorites, then this film falls short though I'd still recommend anyone to see it.

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

As with Mean Girls: it's a good film, not good enough to put in the space capsule. Olmos is great, but the rest of the movie is a fairly surface-level treatment of the subject. Not badly done or anything, and it does avoid over-dramatizing for the most part, but I'm not sure it's bringing anything extra except for the central performance.

As with many here, I remember being shown this in school. My incomplete childhood memory was that we had watched a movie about a Japanese guy who taught a bunch of teens in L.A. to do math. I guess I assumed the lead character was Japanese because they called him "Kemo?"