Culture

Howard Stern to Remake Rock 'n' Roll High School

by Jordan Yerman | July 31, 2008 at 07:03 am

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Rock 'n' Roll High School was a surreal high-school flick about a girl who wanted The Ramones to record her song, even as a new principal wanted to eradicate the influence of rock music from the eponymous high school. The movie, to the best of my admittedly-hazy recollection, featured a human-sized lab rat addicted to punk, The Ramones performing in a teenage girl's shower, and a teenage wannabe-player who operated from the back of his van.

To me, it was a love note to punk, and to The Ramones in general: while a decent remake isn't impossible, I have a hard time envisioning it without The Ramones... otherwise, you're just remaking Footloose.

Fair enough, though, Howard Stern is the perfect producer for this, since it the original had a lurid, exploitation-feel to it, and Stern (love it or loathe it) is a modern master of exploitation media. Also, I didn't know that Alex Winter was a screenwriter. Cool.

The shockjock is producing, along with Larry Levinson, a remake of the 1979 film. Alex Winter, best known for playing alongside Keanu Reeves in "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure," has been hired to script it.

Pic was about a group of rebellious students who, with the help of punk rock band the Ramones, thwarted a repressive, rock-music-hating principal.

Stern, while busy hosting and programming two daily channels on Sirius Satellite Radio, is now partnered on two films with Levinson. They also are working on a remake of the raunchy Bob Clark-directed 1982 comedy "Porky's" that could start production in the fall.

Stern got involved because he was a fan of both pics.

"I'm hep, Daddy-o. I'm into the Ramones." - Mr. McGree

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Dave Ehrlich (not verified)

at 08:08 on July 31st, 2008

How does one go about remaking a film that featured a band who are now 3/4ths dead (not to mention featuring a band who wrote the song the film is named after)? With any luck, this hack-job will feature our, um, modern-day equivalent of the Ramones, who I guess, for all intents and purposes would be...Fall Out Boy, right? I think I just puked a little bit in my mouth after I typed that. This is quite possibly a even more horrible idea than the forthcoming Last House on the Left remake. Maybe we could just fuse the two projects together and have ourselves a Last Rock 'n' Roll High School on the Left, wherein all the students and teachers (and don't forget Fall Out Boy) are brutalized by a gang of murderous druggie sociopaths.