Bad Education (2019 film)
Bad Education is a 2019 American crime comedy-drama film directed by Cory Finley and written by Mike Makowsky. The film is based on the true story of the largest public school embezzlement in American history. It was adapted from an article in New York magazine by Robert Kolker. It features an ensemble cast, including Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney, Geraldine Viswanathan, Alex Wolff, Rafael Casal, Stephen Spinella, Annaleigh Ashford and Ray Romano.
The film is set in the Long Island village of Roslyn during the early 2000s. It tells the story of the charismatic and esteemed Dr. Frank Tassone and Pam Gluckin, who steal millions of dollars from the same public school district that they seek to make the best in the country. The screenwriter, Makowsky, briefly met Tassone as a child before the scandal broke and attended Roslyn High School in the late 2000s.
Bad Education made its world premiere on September 8, 2019 at the Toronto International Film Festival and was broadcast on HBO on April 25, 2020. It was well received by film critics, with particular praise for Makowsky's screenplay, Finley's direction, and the performances of Jackman and Janney.
Plot
In 2002, Dr. Frank Tassone is the superintendent of the Roslyn Union Free School District on Long Island, which oversees Roslyn High School. Frank, along with his assistant superintendent Pam Gluckin, have overseen major improvements in the district, with Roslyn becoming the fourth-ranked public school in the country under their watch. The school's performance in turn stimulates the local economy, reaping rewards for school board head and real estate broker Bob Spicer. Frank is beloved by students and parents alike, and sought after by women; Frank claims to have lost his wife several years ago and expresses disinterest in advances from some of the local mothers. While attending a conference in Las Vegas, it's revealed Frank is in fact gay and begins an affair with former student Kyle Contreras.While writing an article for the Roslyn school paper about a skywalk the school is planning to construct, student reporter Rachel Bhargava begins to notice irregularities in the district’s finances. Frank blithlely encourages Rachel to treat her article as any top journalist would, which begins to irritate Pam as Rachel continues to ask more questions for what is considered a "puff piece." One day when Pam's son is shopping for thousands of dollars worth of construction materials, it's revealed he's doing so with the use of a Roslyn expense card. The purchases are noticed by a relative of Bob's working at the store, which sets off an alarm among Bob and the school's high ranking officials.
The next day, Pam is confronted about her actions. It's estimated Pam's embezzlement has amounted to $250,000 in taxpayer funds. As Bob and the rest of the board are about to feed Pam to the authorities Frank swiftly halts their intentions. As Frank begins to elaborate on the ramifications of the school's fate as well as their own personal and financial consequences for their oversight, the board reluctantly agrees to handle the matter as quietly as possible. The school board agrees to conceal the embezzlement from the public and law enforcement, forcing Pam to resign and pay restitution. Frank then transfers Pam’s niece Jenny, into a less visible ‘special utilities’ role, threatening to expose her own misuse of district funds when she feebly attempts to implicate him.
Meanwhile, Rachel begins to uncover evidence of the embezzlement in the form of supply orders that were never fulfilled and massive consulting fees paid to unknown companies. She comes across an annual expense of $803,000 to Wordpower Tech, listed to a disconnected number and an address in Manhattan. When she arrives at the registered addresses, she discovers that it's not an office, but in fact an apartment building. Amidst her confusion she has a brief and befuddling conversation with an older man who answers the door. Unable to come up with an excuse for her presence and glean any information from the strange situation, Rachel begins to leave without any further explanation. However as she is about to leave she spots Frank entering the same apartment. The two briefly spot each other, but Rachel quickly leaves before Frank can confront her. It turns out the apartment belongs to Tom Tuggiero, Frank’s husband. Rachel puts the pieces together and realizes Wordpower Tech is a front created by Frank, thus making him a co-conspirator in the embezzlement all long. Frank later meets with Rachel and tries to warn her of the potential fallout for exposing a story he believes she doesn't understand.
With the threads of the scheme starting to unravel, Phil alerts Frank to more illegitimate expenses. As Frank tries to dismiss these expenses as further wrongdoing on the part of Pam, Phil confronts him about a damning purchase linked to him and his lover, Kyle, when they flew first class to London. Realizing he's now in the crosshairs and close to being exposed, Frank angrily threatens to put the blame squarely on Phil for failing to catch Pam and the embezzlement scheme to begin with. Although Phil agrees to keep quiet, Rachel has completed her account of the Roslyn scandal. After careful consideration, she publishes her story in the school paper and exposes Frank as a nefarious and key figure within the embezzlement. Frank obliviously insists he acted with the school's best interest at heart, and he pleads for Bob not to expose the scandal until the school budget is approved, believing the skywalk and a #1 ranking will spare him liability. But with Frank's delusion and vanity now on full display, Bob abandons him and reports the cover-up in its entirety. The investigation becomes a criminal matter; Pam, Jenny, and Phil are all arrested. After the authorities threaten to prosecute her husband and children, Pam agrees to testify against Frank and turns over evidence of the scheme. Tom is informed by the authorities about Frank's second life with Kyle. Frank resigns as superintendent and flees to Nevada with tens of thousands of dollars in cash, staying with Kyle in a house Frank bought for him. Eventually, police arrive and arrest Frank, returning him to New York where he is convicted for his crimes. While in prison, Frank fantasizes about being back at Roslyn, where he is congratulated for bringing the school to #1 ranking in the country.
An epilogue reveals that Frank was convicted of embezzling $2.2 million and sentenced to 4–12 years in prison. Pam, who pled guilty to embezzling $4.3 million and testified against Frank, was sentenced to 3–9 years in prison. However, due to an oversight in the regulations governing the state pension fund, Frank is slated to still receive his teacher's pension of $173,000 per year.
Cast
Production
The screenplay was written by Mike Makowsky, who in 2004 was a middle school student in the Roslyn Union Free School District when its superintendent, Frank Tassone, was arrested for first-degree larceny. Makowsky bought the rights to Robert Kolker's New York article on the subject and returned to his childhood hometown to compile research for the project. He expected to write a film portraying Tassone as a straightforward villain. However, interviews with his former teachers and neighbors revealed a much more nuanced portrait of Tassone that informed the eventual screenplay. A decision was made not to involve any of the perpetrators in the development of the film out of respect for the town of Roslyn.Makowsky, Fred Berger, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Julia Lebedev, Edward Vaisman and Oren Moverman serve as producers on the film, under their Automatik and Sight Unseen banners, respectively. In March 2018, Hugh Jackman entered talks to star in the film. Cory Finley was announced as director at the same time.
Jackman worked with his dialect coach, Jess Platt, to perfect his accent as Tassone. Jackman noted that, "I haven’t done a film without him—except for Australia, of course—for 20 years. I'm someone who can get to 80 percent of an accent sort of easily, but it's that final 20 percent that really makes a difference. He was on set with me yelling and screaming, and he's originally from Brooklyn, so he's around the area and knows it well."
In June 2018, Allison Janney joined the cast of the film, with Geraldine Viswanathan and Ray Romano signing on the following month. More than a dozen supporting cast members were hired in October 2018, including Alex Wolff, Rafael Casal, Stephen Spinella, and Annaleigh Ashford. Principal photography began in October 2018.
Rebekah Rombom, one of two Roslyn students who broke the spending scandal story in 2004, stated that her film counterpart Rachel Bhargava "does a little more investigative reporting than I did."
Themes
Jackman felt one of the main themes of the film was appearance and the difference between the image one projects and the truth. He noted, "For Frank, how he was perceived and judged by people on-site was very important, and he justified that as being a part of his job, how he needed to project being upstanding to represent the school district in order for it to get to No. 1. And by the way, it’s a battle that most of us face in our everyday life. It starts off as a teenager when you’re trying to get a boyfriend or girlfriend or someone to like you, and you’re like, OK, I’m not going to try that part, what’s going to work for me?"Release
It had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2019. Shortly after, HBO Films acquired distribution rights to the film for $17.5 million in the largest deal of the festival. It was released on April 25, 2020 on the HBO premium cable network and on HBO's streaming services. The film was also made available at launch for HBO Max.Reception
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 93%, based on 129 reviews, with an average rating of 7.65/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Anchored by an outstanding Hugh Jackman, Bad Education finds absurd laughs – and a worthy message – in the aftermath of a real-life scandal." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 79 out of 100, based on reviews from 29 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".Peter Travers of Rolling Stone described Jackman's work as "a career-best performance from a movie star with a genuine actor's depth and range" and the script as "devilishly clever and detailed". Ben Kenigsberg of The New York Times chose the film as the publication's critic's pick and praised Finley's composition, Makowsky's dialogue, the set decoration, Abels' "jarring, percussive score", and Jackman's "darkly charismatic" performance.
David Ehrlich of IndieWire commended Makowsky's script as a "well-calculated masterclass in narrative economy". Jake Coyle of the Associated Press compared the film's tone and story favorably to Alexander Payne's 1999 film Election. Coyle also singled out Janney's performance as sliding "into the movie so perfectly that it feels more like she came first and the film was sensibly built around her".
The real Frank Tassone spoke admiringly about Jackman and Janney's performances. He noted that Jackman "did a very good job playing me. Especially at the end, when I walk out of prison and I see what I lost. That really hit home for me. Because I did lose all of that." However, Tassone took issue with the subplot involving his affair with a former student. Tassone said: "I have never, ever, in my 36-year career in education, had a relationship with a student or with someone who had graduated."