Movies - School Daze

Home > Listing Index > Movies > School Daze

	Movies - School Daze

School Daze is a 1988 musical-drama film, written and directed by Spike Lee. This movie stars Laurence Fishburne, Giancarlo Esposito, and Tisha Campbell. Based in part on Spike Lee's experiences at Atlanta's Morehouse College, it is a story about fraternity and sorority members clashing with other students at a Historically Black College. School Daze was the second feature film directed by Spike Lee.

Plot summary

Dap Dunlap (portrayed by Laurence Fishburne) is a politically conscious African American student who leads anti-apartheid demonstrations encouraging students and school administrators to completely divest from South Africa. He also eschews the buffoonery and social climbing of the Greek fraternal system. Dap's craven younger cousin, Half-Pint (portrayed by Spike Lee), is pledging the "Gamma Phi Gamma" fraternity and is willing to endure any humiliation to join the "G-Phi-G" fraternity. While Half-Pint tries unsuccessfully to impress the "Gammas" with his inept womanizing, Dap engages in philosophical debates with Rachel (Kyme), his girlfriend.

Half-Pint eventually survives the pledge initiation and joins the Gamma Phi Gamma fraternity. Shortly afterwards, his house president Julian (portrayed by Giancarlo Esposito) manipulated his girlfriend Jane (portrayed by Tisha Campbell) to prove her love to him. He brings Jane to Half-Pint (whom he discovered was a virgin during pledge) and tells him, in order to become an official "Gamma-man", he must lose his virginity by having sex with Jane. After Half-Pint's last test, Julian ruthlessly breaks-up with Jane, claiming she loved Gamma Phi Gamma and not him. After Dap finds out about Half-Pint's degrading episode with Jane, he looses all respect for him, prompting him to go outside to the middle of the school courtyard and yell to the entire campus "Wake up!"

Throughout the film, the "light-skinned-straight-haired" African American women of the "Gamma Ray" sorority battle it out with their "darker-skinned-Afro-headed" fellow co-eds. The students at "Mission College" also battle with the local unemployed-uneducated people living around the campus who're upset about them taking all of the good jobs. Musical performances are throughout, including the production "Straight and Nappy", "Be Alone Tonight" performed by "Jane Toussaint and her Court", and a dis-fest between the "wannabes" and "jigaboos" on campus. The go-go anthem "Da Butt" is performed by the group E.U. during the after-party for the Gammites.

Cast

Trivia

Supporting cast members Kadeem Hardison
, Jasmine Guy
, and Darryl M. Bell
also co-starred on the television sitcom comedy A Different World, another look at college life on a primarily African-American campus.

The fight scene at the end of the fraternity step show was not scripted.

Vanessa Williams
was originally considered for the role of "Jane Toussaint." However, Spike Lee was impressed by Tisha Campbell's singing performance in Little Shop of Horrors (1986
) that she got the part.

Spike Lee had the actors stay in separate hotels during filming. The actors playing the "wannabes" had better accommodation than the ones playing the "jigaboos", which contributed to the on-camera animosity between the two camps.

Branford Marsalis, who plays "Jordam", performed many of the saxophone solos in the film's score.

Spike Lee was kicked off the campuses of Morehouse, Spelman, and Clark Atlanta University during filming because the colleges' Boards of Directors had concerns on how Historically Black Colleges were being portrayed in the film. Lee had to finish filming at the neighboring Morris Brown College.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for School Daze ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article School Daze; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay