Director Allan Arkush arrives at the Roxy wearing an appropriate article of clothing: a T-shirt emblazoned with a with a black-and-white illustration of Johnny Ramone posed in his iconic bent-knee, split-leg guitar stance. In 1978, during a 20-hour marathon shoot in this very venue, Arkush captured punk rock vanguards, the Ramones, in some of the most wildly electric concert footage ever filmed. Rock'n'Roll High School, Arkush's 1979, fan-favorite about a rock'n'roll band taking over oppressive Vince Lombardi High School, is clearly a Los Angeles film. However, the director didn’t specifically set out to make an L.A. movie. Produced by indie movie king Roger Corman, Rock'n'Roll High School, was shot entirely at practical L.A. locations.
Though resources were limited, aesthetic and character-driven choices clearly place the film in L.A. during the uprising of L.A. punk culture. The filmmakers went to schools armed with an innocuous version of the script that was also penned by Rock'n'Roll High School screenwriters Richard Whitley and Russ Dvonch. The pseudo-script tactic is one Corman used a number of times, including once on a film he directed in Sikestown, Missouri, about racial integration. For the school location that was going to be set ablaze by its students and the Ramones, Finnell found a deserted Catholic school in South L.A. to which the production could have unfettered access. Mount Carmel High School became a Historic Cultural Monument in 1979 before eventually falling into complete disrepair. It was demolished in 1982. The gym was used as a community center until 1983 until, ironically, it burnt down. Today, the Mount Carmel Recreation Center stands in its place.
The location budget was called into question when it came to the concert venue, which is a seamless combination of three locations. The grandeur and Mesoamerican motifs adorning the 1927 Mayan Theatre in downtown L.A. made the location attractive as the venue exterior. For the concert interiors, Arkush, without knowing it, pulled off a trick that was executed a year earlier in Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke. He filmed the Ramones' concert inside the Roxy and then moved to the backstage area and larger dressing rooms of the Whisky a Go Go. The Roxy-Whisky combo was an expensive proposition, however. To offset the location cost and fill the audience, too, the filmmakers charged three groups of extras - morning, afternoon and night with ascending ticket prices through the day - to see the Ramones perform. Each set included six songs and every tune was played multiple times to capture various angles. The audiences eventually got restless hearing the songs performed repeatedly.
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Rock'n'Roll High School opened on August 3, 1979 at New York's 8th Street Playhouse.
The Ramones "Rock'n'Roll High School"
(End of the Century, 1979)
