Rock enrolled

Inside a dim rehearsal studio off Sunset Boulevard, Jack Black is tuning the guitar that rests on his belly. Behind him, a spiky-haired drummer starts the beat. A mop-top guitar player does his imitation Pete Townsend windmill stroke. A button-nosed keyboardist curves his delicate fingers over the keys. And the bass player, cool and aloof, nods rhythmically as she picks at the strings.

All eyes turn to Black, waiting, expecting ... something ... as if anything could happen at any moment. As, of course, it could.

Black sings, “Baby, we were getting straight A’s.... “ then stops. “We’re not going to play ‘School of Rock.’ We’re going to play ... ‘Save the Animals,’ ” and with that he starts to improvise songs and lyrics. Bassist Rebecca Brown, 11, drops her jaw, shakes her head and laughs.

Reunited to practice for publicity gigs, the grade-school band members from “The School of Rock” (opening Oct. 3), a high-energy kids-against-the-odds comedy, take up where they left off, giggling at Black’s off-the-wall antics.

Mixing the frequently profane Black with kids seems an unusual project for the filmmakers. One of producer Scott Rudin’s latest projects was “The Hours.” Writer Mike White also wrote and acted in “The Good Girl” and “Chuck and Buck.” Director Richard Linklater is known for “Dazed and Confused,” “Slackers” and “Waking Life.”

White and Rudin, most recently worked together on “Orange County,” a comedy featuring Black, and afterward, they hatched the idea for a music-based comedy with kids. After White drafted a script tailored to Black’s strengths, Rudin contacted Linklater. “They didn’t want a traditional comedy,” Linklater says. “I was challenged to pull off a studio comedy....

“It totally couldn’t have worked,” he adds. “I was willing to take that risk.”

“The School of Rock” stars Black as Dewey Finn, a mangy, unemployed rocker posing as a substitute teacher in order to pay the rent. (White, once Black’s neighbor in real life, plays Black’s roommate, the unsuspecting teacher whose identity Black borrows.) Possessing more heart than brain, Dewey leads a class of sheltered prep-school fifth-graders to the Battle of the Bands by teaching them the only thing he knows -- hard rock and spirited irreverence.

While references to “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” and “The Bad News Bears” came up occasionally as the project took shape, Linklater says he aimed to work in a “parallel universe” to the kids comedy genre. He decided to take the outrageous situation and making it seem as real as possible, as in the classic Hollywood comedies of Preston Sturges and Ernst Lubitsch. “Even though it’s all one huge conceit, you treat the conceit as if it’s real. Play it straight.”

Linklater insisted that “everything in this movie feel real,” including a rock-based score, recalls Craig Wedren, who composed the score. “Otherwise people weren’t going to buy the undeniable spirit of rock ‘n’ roll. The joy of the chemistry between Jack and the kids would be lost if it didn’t ring true.”

Without the rude language that is his comic stock in trade, Black says he had to work harder for laughs in this film. “Cuss words are funny,” he says. “When you’re robbed of them, you have to dig a little deeper for some genuine funnies.”

Concern that Black’s humor might not work in a PG-13 world has given way to a positive buzz about the film’s cross-generational charms, stemming from the likable kids and Black’s infectious passion for rock. Off-screen, he sings, writes and plays guitar for his own band, Tenacious D.

“One of Jack’s strengths is that he’s a top-notch singer,” Linklater says. “His rock is very comedic, but very sophisticated actually. It takes in a lot of the history of rock.”

Mini rock stars: a talent search

To keep it real, Linklater wanted to find kids who were also musicians. “I didn’t want to fake it,” he says. “I wanted kids who could really play first, and act second.”

To find the film’s uniformed preppies who are studying classical music when Black takes over, filmmakers looked outside Hollywood and found fresh-faced and talented young musicians from sources such as an NPR program featuring young classical musicians and DayJams, a nationwide rock ‘n’ roll camp for kids.

Casting calls nationwide drew thousands. Those who made the final cut would need to quickly pick up pieces like AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top,” all the while absorbing Black’s lessons on “sticking it to the Man” (in this case, the school principal played by Joan Cusack.)

That would require a “school of rock” -- an immersion in rock and Jack Black-style rock mania much like the one they experience in the film. Their training period lasted 10 weeks.

Some of the kids already knew Black from his previous films (including “High Fidelity,” “Shallow Hal” and “Orange County”), but even after weeks of rehearsals they were still awe-struck. In the film, audiences will see their real shock and delight at Black’s uninhibited, unpredictable moves.

Miranda Cosgrove, 10, who plays the band’s manager, says, “We’d be laughing, and they’d say ‘Cut!’ and we’d think we did something wrong. And they put a lot of that in.”

“When he kicks down the desk, all that laughter was genuine. That was us going crazy,” says drummer Kevin Clark, 14.

The role is the closest to his own personality that he’s played so far, says Black, who grew up in Redondo Beach and won’t discuss the time he spent at Culver City Junior High or the alternative school he attended before finishing high school at Crossroads in Santa Monica.

The roles also were close to life for some of the more classically trained musicians, such as Rebecca and pianist Robert Tsai, 13. He hadn’t played rock at all until the training sessions, in which Sonic Youth member and producer Jim O’Rourke helped them get familiar and have fun with their instruments.

“By the time I came in, I was blown away by how together they were,” says composer Wedren, who filled in on set for O’Rourke, and also wrote “Heal Me, I’m Heartsick.” Each of the kids had had various experiences playing in a group, either orchestra, ensemble or rock. Kevin had started his own band with a friend from music camp.

Joey Gaydos, 12, who plays the lead guitarist, was a “dyed-in-the-wool” Detroit rocker, Wedren says. “He’s a rock star right now,” Linklater says. “In the show, when he dives on the stage, that’s really him. It was a matter of restraining him, rather than building him up to who he really is.....

“They’re all at prodigy level for their age,” Linklater says.

Learning to play rock together was a process of osmosis, Wedren says. “When you’re spending time with Jack Black, who’s pure energy, or Jim O’Rourke, a maestro of all types of underground music, it’s not such a great leap from wherever you are to more of a primitive, simplified, body-oriented music.”

The art-imitates-life feeling of their roles could help account for the natural on-screen chemistry between Black and his young co-stars. Black says another factor is that the lengthy rehearsal made them so relaxed with one another that they could improvise comfortably when shooting began.

For some of the kids, like Robert, the novelty of acting was funny in itself. “When you watch the film, and look at Robert in the background, you’ll notice a lot of times, he’s trying to stifle a laugh or suppress a smile,” Black says. “There’s something about Robert. Whenever the camera’s on him, he finds it incredibly difficult not to burst out in uproarious laughter.”

‘Omigod! Uncle Jack’s coming!’

By all accounts, the rapport Black created with the youngsters existed off camera as well. “He was like the cool uncle who comes over and everyone says, ‘Omigod! Uncle Jack’s coming!’ ” says Joe Gaydos from Belleville, Mich., whose son Joey plays Zack, a child who learns to break free from his father’s weighty expectations.

During breaks in the shooting, which took place in and around New York, Black played games with the kids. He let Kevin interview him for Kevin’s school paper and showed up at a New York club one night when Joey and Kevin, who wowed casting supervisors when they were thrown together during audition, had a one-night gig.

At the recent rehearsal, Black reveals to the kids that he had found out everyone’s birthday in advance when he pretended to be psychic. “How lame!” Miranda giggles.

As they practice, the parents watching on chairs in the back tap and swing their feet. The band progresses from “School of Rock,” written by the New York band Mooney Suzuki, to an old AC/DC tune. Black struts, poses, does the chicken walk and shouts into the microphone, “If you wanna be a star of stage and screen/Look out! It’s rough and mean ... “

Designed to accommodate improv, the song allows Black -- now dripping sweat -- to introduce the band members (“the most terrifying keyboardist,” “she’ll melt your face”) and give each a special handshake -- another spontaneous rehearsal bit that ended up in the film.

Hanging out with the kids afterward, Black entertains with stories of Hollywood and his first acting gig: a reenactment of his birth for his parents.

“I consider them friends,” Black says of the kids. “We haven’t hung out since the movie wrapped (“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” Kevin deadpans) but if one of them ever calls me and says, ‘Help! I’m drowning,’ I’d definitely save them.”

Rebecca looks skeptical. “Oh yeah, like I’d have a cellphone when I’m drowning!”

Miranda giggles.

Black is running on four hours of sleep because he has insomnia and stayed up until 6 in the morning watching a poker marathon on TV. The kids listen attentively when he tells them: “The sunrise makes me depressed. The nighttime is the right time to be creative. That’s when I do all my writing.” A debate ensues on whether he is a night owl or a vampire.

Joey asks: “How do you have time to rock? How do you do it?”

Black answers in mock seriousness, “I do it because it’s my duty.”

Suddenly Black perks up as if he has a new idea. “Hey, you guys. Maybe we should go do some shooooowz. We’ve got two songs. And we can play them four or five times each. And charge 4 or 5 cents per song. And split it five ways. I get 6 cents and you guys get 4 cents each.”

They shake their heads, groaning. But, seriously, they say they’d be up for a road tour.

Their enthusiasm has some parents concerned. When she first watched her daughter Rebecca, trained in classical guitar, play in the high-energy finale, Wendy Brown sighed to her husband, “I think we’ve lost our daughter to rock ‘n’ roll.”