Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Peotone High School Archives, Volume 2

II. The Reeve’s Tale

This video was shot during senior year (circa 2001) for Mr. Preuss’ British Literature class.  The different groups in class were tasked with acting out a different story from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.  My pals Josh Bult and Clayton Thompson were in my group, which meant that Chaucer was likely going to be rolling over in his grave at our interpretation of his masterpiece.  Leanne Rekau and Dana Borchardt were also in our group.  We lured out Jon Solita to do the filming.  Our particular story was The Reeve’s Tale.

There was a bunch of setup for the story but it didn’t seem very worthwhile to act out.  Therefore, we blatantly ripped off the Star Wars intro, and just piped in the words from the story, with some minor revisions.  People said I should have tinkered with the words because the daughter is referred to as being fat.  We were seemingly implying that the one of the girls in our group (Dana in this case) was fat.  Hey, don’t blame me, blame Chaucer.

The story has a mill in it, which was kind of perfect because Peotone is sort of noted for its “Old Mill”.  We had all intentions of filming the opening scenes at the mill, which you see after the intro.  However, this was in January or February.  The wind was whipping and we were freezing our asses off.  After it became apparent that we couldn’t pick up audio at the mill, we relocated back to my house.

As you see me for the first time, I’m rocking the Michigan jacket that I still have today.  I guess some things never change.  I’m playing the role of Alan and that’s Clayton with me portraying John.  God, I hate listening to myself talk, especially the 17 year-old version of myself.  There were definite parts of the script and acting that could have used more thought, but I think that adds to the charm.  For example, as Clayton and I run off the first time, you hear me question that move because we’re supposed to have a horse. 

Josh is Simpkin the miller who I decided to make murderous for no apparent reason.  I’m pretty sure it was a weak attempt at a Simpsons reference.  Clayton screws up his line (he’s watching the trough come through the corn?) but it was so cold that we didn’t give a damn.  Truthfully, there is a lot we probably would have left in regardless of the weather.  I also chuckle every time I see the inserted clip of the woman we feed the horse to.  To this day, I have no idea who that woman actually is.

As we transition to Josh’s house, we’re seen drinking IBC root beer.  I think every high school video depicting drinking uses that product.  We filmed the final scenes in Josh’s attic.  I decided that “performing my magic” was the way I wanted to describe sleeping with the miller’s daughter (Dana).  I couldn’t help but turn a little red at this part when the class was watching the video.

Perhaps my favorite moment is when Clayton takes the baby’s bed and flings it to the floor with complete disregard for what it’s supposed to be holding.  I always felt a little bad for Dana because she had to call me “her love” and make it sound like she meant it.  Few things could drop you faster on the PHS social ladder than showing affection for Dave Younker, even in a scripted production. 

As tempting as it may be to laugh at my “sly devil” comment and wink to the camera, be sure not to miss Clayton’s response while doing so.  As I rolled around on the floor grappling with Josh, it occurred to me that I had little idea of how such a fight should look.  Josh gets a few slaps in but I make sure to deliver the “People’s Elbow” into Josh’s spine. 

I remember doing several takes of the part where the wife (Leanne) hits Josh over the head with the spade because she didn’t make it look believable enough.  Finally, we convinced her to really hit him and boy did she take a good whack.  I’ve watched it a few times now and I can’t for the life of me make out what Clayton says after he throws the pillow in my face.  If you can decipher that, I’d love to hear it.

It just wouldn’t have been our style to end the story with a legitimate lesson learned so we created a setup where Solita got to say “in my ass”.  As an added bonus, enjoy the few outtakes at the end.  The outtakes end with the car ride back to my house from the mill.  With some Led Zeppelin jamming in the background, Solita makes sure to reference the male reproductive organ a few times.  Ah, the old Bonneville. My first car. Good times.

I don’t remember what grade we got on this but I think it was a favorable one.  I think Preuss just appreciated we put that much effort into the project, so he was willing to overlook the artistic liberties we took when retelling Chaucer’s work.  I can’t say this was the best video he got to see (spoiler alert) but I know he enjoyed it nonetheless.  It was Preuss’ first year teaching at Peotone, and the bar was set for future British Lit classes.  I was told by future seniors that our video and others were replayed for them.  Pretty cool.

Watch the video here

[Obligatory disclaimer that I do not own the rights to any copyrighted material in the video.  This video was created and is being shared for completely non-profit purposes.]

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