My Old School teaches new lessons from a ’90s hoax
Alan Cumming stars in Jono McLeod's documentary, which uses Daria-style animation to recreate an infamous deception
Film Reviews My Old School
Fact is indeed sometimes stranger than fiction, and such is the case with My Old School. Despite actor Alan Cumming’s top billing, this is really a documentary—and not one about him. The actual subject agreed to be profiled, but declines to appear on camera, so Cumming stands in for him, lip-syncing the testimonial.
Around 1993, a pupil known as Brandon Lee pulled an elaborate hoax at the Bearsden Academy in posh suburban Glasgow, Scotland, and created a media circus when he got busted for it two years later. Filmmaker Jono McLeod, who attended Bearsden Academy with Brandon, assembles 30 former classmates and teachers to recount the events of the hoax.
Spoilers are easily Google-able for the curious, but this review won’t go into details beyond what was disclosed in the pre-release press materials. On the first day Brandon showed up for junior year, classmates noticed that he appeared much older than everybody else. He claimed to have been privately tutored abroad in Canada, after his opera-singer mother brought him along on her world tour. But after a car accident ostensibly killed her and disfigured him, Brandon returned to Bearsden to live with relatives. Although he initially kept to himself, he excelled academically, defending classmates from bullies, introducing peers to ’80s punk bands like Hüsker Dü, and playing Lt. Cable in the school production of South Pacific.
He further burnished his cool-kid bonafides by obtaining a Canadian driver’s license and a car while his mates were still underage. But after entering the University of Dundee School of Medicine, Brandon soon dropped out, eventually getting arrested during a holiday with three former Bearsden classmates—and setting off a media firestorm around him.
Clio Barnard’s documentary The Arbor (2010), about Andrea Dunbar, and Sonia Kennebeck’s film Enemies Of The State (2020) both precede this film’s use of actors to lip sync subjects who are unwilling to appear on camera, but My Old School seems to be the first to commission an actor of Cumming’s stature. He was originally set to play Brandon in a dramatized treatment in 1996, until the real-life Brandon cut off contact with that production. Cumming is magnificent in this role, mastering the exact rhythm of Brandon’s speech while also interpreting his emotions with a naturalism that blends seamlessly with testimonials from former students and instructors.
The film incorporates some archival footage, so we do get glimpses of what Brandon actually looked like. But for the most part, it relies on animation to illustrate flashbacks. Appropriate for the era it depicts, the animation is done in the same style as MTV’s 1990s series Daria, with thick outlines and flat, two-dimensional shapes filled by acid-hued palettes. There are sporadic sight gags, like a Nosy- (as opposed to Sony-) branded camcorder and Brandon flipping through the “Yolo Pages.” These nice, artful touches might seem slightly excessive on top of the lip-sync gimmick, but they provide a satisfying method of recreating the testimonials.
It’s safe to say the hoax at the center of the documentary doesn’t seem altogether that outrageous in the context of soapy ’90s teen TV shows like Beverly Hills, 90210, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Dawson’s Creek. In fact, Brandon actually cites Jason Priestley’s character on 90210, Brandon Walsh, as an inspiration. But many interviewees still exude a sense of betrayal years after the fact, and think Brandon deserves some form of punishment. And in fact, McLeod himself suggests in one conversation with an interviewee that he has not taken a neutral perspective in relitigating his subject’s behavior. Nevertheless, the film as a whole leaves us with a different impression, one more sympathetic toward Brandon, despite individual attitudes about him.
As Lulu’s cover of Steely Dan’s eponymous song wraps the film, McLeod superimposes yearbook portraits over snapshots of their family or professional lives. It’s a sweet and heartwarming moment that brings to mind Michael Apted’s Up series, showing viewers how all of these people fulfilled their destinies—well, all except for Brandon, who seems stuck in time and in his obsession. Even without formal legal repercussions, maybe he was punished after all.
39 Comments
Well now I’m gonna be listening to Steely Dan…
That makes one of us!
Gaucho or Alive in America?
Countdown to Ecstasy since that’s the one with My Old School on it.The only one I really like all the way through is Aja, tbqh.
Funny enough my boss named his daughter Steely after Steely Dan LOL. She worked with us for a while smoking hot but kind of a bitch. Her goal in life was basically to marry a rich athlete.
Man Steely Dan is ok but I wouldn’t be naming my kid after them or anything…
LOL especially a daughter. And she had an EPIC level of RBF right up there with Lena Headey. She’s stunning and might be an absolute delight but her RBF is enough for me to nope the fuck out.
Ouch!
Steely is a dumb Steely Dan associated name. Far better options available.
I would definitely rather be Josie, Katy, or Peg than Steely. Even Aja or Rikki would be better.
Like ‘Dan’. Now that’s a first name you can count on, but maybe not for a daughter. (Unless it’s short for ‘Danielle’ or ‘Daniella’.)
Deacon Blues!
He essentially named his daughter a dildo. Don’t blame her.
Ha I don’t blame her, it’s just a funny name for a woman.
…and Steely Dan was named after a fictional steam-powered dildo. Which is a really odd thing to name your child.
You ever tell her she was named after a steam-powered dildo?
I didn’t but she hasn’t worked with me for a very long time. Which is to bad she was VERY easy on the eyes lol.
Knowing nothing about the event, I am guessing that I know the event. There are a lot of context clues. It doesn’t sound like the doc is about the “what” so much as the “how” and people’s reactions. So I’m not entirely sure why we’re dancing around it. I’ll respect the spoiler-sensitive but… c’mon. You know what this is about.
The reference to Jason Priestley kinda gives it away. Under the circumstances, it’s heartwarming that the other kids in the school were simply irritated by the dishonesty rather than, you know, assaulted.
I actually did a little google search and the story, as I could find it, is just kinda boring. Unless the movie has some revelations about his mental health or other factors there is no much more there then what on the surface.
What I’ve found that is a bit interesting, is the motivation aside from the hoax. He did it in part as a joke, but you also look at his place in life – he had graduated high school but struggled with several false starts at college and by 30 had flunked out and felt like his life had hit a dead end, and he says he’d do anything to just get his life back on track. So he did this prank – he re-enrolled in high school, became an all-A student, got accepted to college, and was actually only found out when he was in medical school. He says the whole thing actually helped him kind of figure his life out. I can actually kinda understand that, tbh.
I have this horrible recurring dream where I’ve gone back to high school again and done the entire four years over- at my age now, which is 39. And I am SO MAD in the dream, like, why did I put myself through this again? I was done! I just wasted four years when I could have been doing anything else.
So this movie is basically the real life version of my awful dream. heh
I have a vague understanding of high school in the UK but I assume this would be more legally shaky there than in the US where the federal gov has little to no involvement in university acceptance rates. Harvard can accept anyone they want while applicants to the Sorbonne or Oxford have to pass national qualifying exams. A-levels, O-levels, or Baccalaureate or what have you. The SATs in tne US are not government exams. Again, a vague understanding.
I don’t think you need to be mindful of spoilers if you’re making speculations, but I’m making the same ones. We all are. Mysterious kid shows up and is into music from several years ago and has a driver’s license? It doesn’t take Poirot to piece together that puzzle.
I also did some research and the most controversial thing he seems to have done is lie and hang out with teenagers
this guy seems only about 30% as crazy as Rick Rosner who did this “hoax” several times, then went on to become “famous” for getting on WWTBAM twice (claims he was frauded), and then went on to write for Kimmel. Errol Morris’ First Person episode One in a Million Trillion covers it all.
Never Been Kissed, a film ripped from the headlines!
The thing is, people really did this. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) is based on Cameron Crowe’s actual undercover reporting as a twenty-something impersonating a high schooler at Clairemont High School in San Diego (with the permission of the school’s administration, granted).
21 Jump Street is also based on real undercover work by cops too. I fully recommend the original show for people who have only seen the movies
Harsh realm, I thought this was going to be about the “grunge speak” hoax.
Rock on, cob-nobblers.
Harsh realm indeed.
This isn’t a biopic about the guys from Steely Dan and their hijinks at Bard with Chevy Chase?
Reminds me of a book I read years ago, High School Confidential. Granted, that was closer to Never Been Kissed, but the way the classmates reacted to his “deception” makes it very similar.
I thought that (tiny thumbnail) pic was Stallone. I don’t expect that comes up with Alan Cumming pictures very often.
Wouldn’t Steely Dan’s eponymous song be called “Steely Dan”?
I just looked up the hoax and I still don’t understand why the FBI was involved.
this looks really good!
posh suburban Glasgow, ScotlandI like that you’ve started putting jokes in your articles.
I went to school about 15 miles away from Bearsden in the 90’s and we must have had a different person come from either the USA or Canada to our school to learn every single year. And not one of them looked anywhere near the same age as us.
And as a side note Dawn Steele also went to the same school just a year above me.