Dead or Alive

I walk these streets, a loaded six string on my back
I play for keeps, 'cause I might not make it back
I been everywhere, still I'm standing tall
I've seen a million faces an I've rocked them all

I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride
I'm wanted dead or alive
I'm a cowboy, I got the night on my side
I'm wanted dead or alive
Wanted dead or alive

Jon Bon-Jovi's pretentious lyrics equating life on the road with being a cowboy hints at the reason people want to be musicians, and more precisely rock stars. As much work as it is, you rock them all.

Is that the reason kids enroll in the School of Rock which is features in the Don Argott documentary, Rock School (the Richard Linklater film School of Rock was apparently named the same by coincidence, though similarities between the two abound).

I went to watch Rock School last night, and for the first time ever, I was in the theater all by myself. Landmark Theaters picks up independent and foreign flicks. It's a godsend for those who want to watch movies out of the mainstream, but because they are out of the mainstream, not everyone cares to watch it. In particular, Rock School had eight showings in one day, in two theaters.

If I hadn't seen School of Rock, I'm not sure I would have watched Rock School. Ironically, had School of Rock not been made than Rock School would likely have been called School of Rock.

Rock School joins a large number of documentaries that Americans can now see. Once upon a time, it was exceedingly rare to go to a theater to see a documentary. Production values were low. Topics were obscure. It was said that no one watched the documentaries, but then no one really could.

Perhaps the one hundred million dollars that Michael Moore made from Fahrenheit 9/11 helped, or in fact, the entire of Moore's oeuvre, but in the last few years, documentaries have flourished from Spellbound, about kids trying to succeed at the National Spelling Bee, to Control Room, about the operations of Al Jazeera, the Arabic CNN, to Supersize Me! about a man who nearly kills himself by subsisting on a McDonalds-only diet for a month. Documentaries have become successful enough for places like Landmark Theaters to show, and enough of a non-trivial audience to keep more documentaries coming.

The paucity of other members in the audience (read: zero) would suggest otherwise, but Rock School is a fun film to watch. As critics have pointed out, Paul Green, founder of School of Rock is a lot like the character played by Jack Black. In particular, Green likes certain kinds of music, and hates others. He likes Frank Zappa and Black Sabbath, but doesn't care at all for Sheryl Crow (although Lance Armstrong would disagree).

As with any film where there are many people to focus on, this one has to decide which of the forty or so students they must focus on. They pick Asa and Tucker Collins, brother and sister, who are maybe 7 years old. It's not so much that they're interesting, it's that their mother always wanted to be a rock star, but finds that she finds satisfaction that her kids are rock stars. She gets her kids ready for concerts, despite the Satanic overtones from the music the kids perform. She wants the look to be right, without fully encouraging satanism, an attitude also shared by Paul Green himself.

Paul is a narcissist. He likes himself a lot. He likes to yell at students, believing, as Will O'Connor, one of the lesser talented students in the school, but one of its more keen observers, believes, that berating students is the way to get them to work harder. He threatens to kick them out of the school if they don't get their pieces right, demands that they practice, practice, practice.

When you see the kids, they don't seem to share the same love of the music that, say, Napoleon Murphy-Brock, flutist in Frank Zappa's band does when they show up, nor do they have the same kind of enthusiasm as Paul Green himself. Frankly, the kids seem a bit scared. The two kids Asa and Tucker seem congested throughout, though that has (I'm sure) little to do with Paul Green himself.

Will O'Connor is perhaps the most interesting of the bunch. A self-described misfit, he finds the school a salvation of sorts, even as Paul finds him untalented, and frequently makes fun of him ("will you learn any of the pieces?"). He sees the stratification of the school, where the most talented are seen in the best light, and makes people like him feel unworthy. While he considers Paul cool, he questions whether Paul's one-rant-fits-all approach is really the right way for everyone.

This is reinforced by Madi Diaz-Svalgard, who's a Quaker that came in playing Sheryl Crow and hangs out with the Friendly Gangstaz Committee who do hip-hop renditions of Quaker hymnals. Members of the band feel that Paul has turned her off on the kind of music they like.

The culmination of the school's efforts is Zappanale 2003, a festival devoted to Frank Zappa enthusiasts held in Germany. The Zappa All-Stars are the cream of the school's crop. Paul wants them to be the best group in the festival. He doesn't want the band to be a novelty of young children playing rock. He wants them to be a good band.

Perhaps the most stunning of the performers is C.J. Twoniak, who seems all of 9 years old. A shy kid, he wants to be a rock star. You don't get a full sense of his talent until he plays an extended solo piece which has to be seen and heard to be believed. Audience members have their mouths agape, unable to believe a kid this young can be this good. In a surprise move, Napoleon will perform Inca Roads with the band. After the solo, Napoleon bows before C.J., and then gets the crowd to join in with him.

Before this film, I knew very little about Frank Zappa. He seemed like some weird fellow with a Groucho Marx moustache. I knew his look more than I knew his music. Apparently, his band produced some of the most complex music in all of rock, and these kids were up to the task.

Rock School is typical of the unexpected surprises you get in a documentary. Why on earth would parents send their kids to this man? Yet, they do. The reality is that parents want their kids to excel, and sometimes the teachers who are best able to do this are not pleasant people. They aren't always quirky insprirational teachers like the one Robin Williams plays in Dead Poets Society. And parents don't always expect their kids to have squeaky clean role models.

Weirdly enough, Madi was once a good Quaker, giving help to others in the community, but since joining School of Rock, she finds that she much prefers to be there, than with her Quaker friends. Yet, somehow, she is still given permission to attend the school. I assume someone is paying for it, and that it isn't her (could be wrong).

Linklater's School of Rock doesn't even begin to resemble the kind of lives both the kids and Paul Green live. If anything, I'm surprised that Paul Green allowed himself to be filmed this way. He shows he cares, but this is almost always in contention with his inability to control himself. At times, he's shown to be riotously funny (picking a particularly odd scene from Silence of the Lambs to imitate), and he tries to show his love for music, even as he finds that maybe, the kids that play at his school may one day do better than him.

In many ways, the lives of the children in Rock School may differ little from any endeavor where kids want more out of life or where parents want their kids to be great. Tennis parents, parents of classical musicians, sports moms and dads, I'm sure, share many of these ambitions for their own children, and often have their kids taught and yelled at for the sake of making them better. And despite the misery the seem to endure at such a formative age, they can reflect on the fact that they were, indeed, very good at what they did.

Rock on!