My major motion picture (okay, B movie) debut has finally arrived on Youtube. The Young Graduates (1971) was filmed at my high school and I appeared in it as an extra. I am in the background (way in the background to the right) in the school dance scene in the beginning. I can be glimpsed behind the teacher who broke up the scuffle between costar Bruno Kirby and another kid (actor). But my big scene comes about 30 minutes into the film during the sex education class scene. I'm seated in the front row, wearing a brown shirt and brushing the hair out of my eyes once I realized the camera was coming around to my right and my face wasn't showing due to my (surprisingly) long hair. I'm playing cards with my friend the late Phil Chateau who died in a rock climbing accident a year later.
What can't really be seen is the cartoon sperm cell I drew on the blackboard in the background. The camera shot a close up on it which I thought at the time would open the scene but seems to have ended up on the cutting room floor.
The funniest part of that scene to me is that the actress who played the frustrated sex education teacher looked just like my real English teacher and being shot in my actual high school classroom she seemed very authentic. However, whenever the director yelled "cut" she would lean over to me and Phil and tell us the most obscene jokes I'd ever heard. I was shocked as she seemed like a real teacher to me and my discomfort at her foul language and dirty jokes seemed to amuse her to no end.
This was Bruno Kirby's first movie and because of him I am two degrees from Kevin Bacon, two degrees from Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, James Caan, Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Jack Palance, Rob Reiner and Spinal Tap and only three degrees from Marlon Brando!
Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 67%. Shockingly good for this exploitation film of an exploitation film. I always thought it more of a really bad porno (not enough sex). Youtube labels it a "Hippie 60s Counterculture Exploitation Film" but it was about high school students living in the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley and driving dune buggies in the Seventies, not unemployed hippies living in San Francisco in the Sixties. I can't recommend it highly enough in that I can't recommend it. On a bright note, my son says I looked just like him when he was in high school. I'm flattered.
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