If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many is a movie? In the case of those filmed at Grant High School, a great number.
Through the years, many films have used Grant as a set. Some, like the 2005 film “Nearing Grace,” were filmed during school breaks and have since slipped through community memory. Others, such as “The Devil’s Keep” from 1995, have gone down as some of the most hilariously horrible locally-filmed movies of all time. A few have been remembered more vividly due to their involvement and impact on the Grant community. The 1980 movie “Reunion” is one such example — Linda Hamilton’s debut role lived in Grant alumna Karyl Whelan’s home, and Whelan’s teenage neighbor would often bring cookies to the set. The film’s somewhat disturbing plot of a returning class of ‘59 alumnus falling in love with a teenage girl aims to evoke the temporality of high school, and finds its center around the basketball court near Hollyrood field and the pre-remodel Grant gym.
Much greater than “Reunion,” however, was the lasting impact of the 1995 film “Mr Holland’s Opus.”
Released in 1995 but set over the three preceding decades, “Mr. Holland’s Opus” follows the late life of music teacher Glenn Holland (Richard Dreyfuss), and how teaching a music appreciation class moves him to build new interpretations of music, purpose and love. The two-and-a-half-hour movie is mainly set in Grant’s choir room and auditorium, with occasional scenes on the surrounding streets.
The film tackles the struggles of balancing teaching and raising children, finding love and connection despite surface-level barriers and navigating raising a Deaf child in a time when sign language was barely the norm — for this reason, students in American Sign Language classes at Grant are briefly taught about the movie.
The film’s immediate impacts on Grant were physical. In order to evoke the film’s temporal flow, a number of changes were made to the building’s interior and exterior. The most public of these was the redecoration of Grant’s front entryway to read “John F. Kennedy High School.” Even though the movie was mostly filmed during summer break, this change led to confusion — especially for swimmers.
“We lived up by Wilshire Park, and an old friend of my wife’s was visiting. He was looking for a place to go lap swimming so I gave him detailed instructions of how to find his way down to the Grant Pool,” writes Grant alumnus Wade Hockett. “He got his laps in, but when he returned he said, ‘It’s a good thing you told me exactly where it was because, when I got there it said ‘John F. Kennedy High School!’”
Changes to Grant’s interior design ranged from installing more dated window frames and light fixtures to match the film’s setting to reconstructing the choir room. To make up for this inconvenience to the choir program, the film’s production company agreed to cover the Royal Blues’ $25,000 trip to Europe that summer. According to Paul Duchene for The Oregonian, “Grant High School stands as an example of how to profit from the movie business.”
A more lasting change was, and is, central to the choir room. During the reconstruction for the film, a skylight that had been boarded up was uncovered; this skylight remains at the center of Grant’s choir room after the school’s renovation. Smaller remnants of the film include Grant Choir teacher John Eisemann’s desk — it’s the same one that Mr. Holland taught from.
The filming process had social impacts as well. Grant graduates who had heard of the film were drawn back to the campus: “My friend and I were wandering around checking out classrooms and places we remembered, but were secretly looking for Richard Dreyfuss,” says Class of 1974 alumna Sue Middleton. Although they weren’t able to meet the star, Middleton and her friends were interviewed by the film’s prop and costume designers about their time at the school. “We also had a blast watching the movie when it came out as some of our houses were in the movie,” she says. “Friends had big parts and it brought back such great memories.”
Grant students and community members worked on the set alongside its notable cast. This was in large part thanks to Grant’s theater director from 1982–97, Bruce McDonald, who worked closely with the film’s production company and choreographed its music, as well as advocating for it to be filmed at the school.
As a part of the deal McDonald organized with the production company, community members would be allowed to audition for the movie. This brought Sheri Pitcher and her daughters, who attended Grant at the time, onto the film, as well as many students in Grant’s theater program. Pitcher played Vice Principal Gene Wolter (William H. Macy)’s wife, and they have stayed in touch over email since. Moira Feeney, 18 at the time of filming, says to The Oregonian after the film’s release: “I graduated on the same stage twice, but the second time, Olympia Dukakis gave me my diploma.”
Other students involved recalled the dated clothing: “The worst brown shoes … beige bellbottoms and a beige-and-green butterfly collar shirt,” says Grant alumnus Joe Campbell in the same article.
According to the 1994 profiles, about 25 Grant students got speaking parts in the film. The community members who played extras agreed to donate all of their payments to Grant as a way of raising funds for the school.
McDonald’s time at Grant is well-remembered by the productions he created, some with casts of over 600 young children, teenagers, adults and grandparents, and others involving students from as many as 52 different schools. In a 1993 op-ed for This Week Magazine, Tamara Smith Allred writes of her involvement in McDonald’s production of “The Music Man”: “Five of my daughters and myself are onstage along with a huge group of students and parents … At our first all cast practice we could not even find a parking place. As we entered the auditorium, the reason why was obvious. Bruce McDonald, director of performing arts at Grant, has cast over 400 people in the musical, not including the orchestra, crew and (76) trombonists.”
The large audiences the plays attracted brought in enough money to prevent budget cuts to the art department. According to Smith Allred’s article, McDonald expected a $20,000 profit from “The Music Man” alone. “It was a time of budget cuts happening all across Portland Public Schools, but not here,” says McDonald. “No wonder the movie picked our school. Aside from the physical things about it, it was a community that really fostered the arts.”
Tim Appelo must have recognized this when he wrote a column for The Oregonian shortly after the film’s release titled “Mr. McDonald, like Mr. Holland, stages his opus, but in real life,” drawing parallels between the journey of the inspiring fictional teacher and McDonald’s efforts to involve as many community members as possible in his shows.
This quality remains visible when watching “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” or even “Reunion,” today. Since Grant’s remodel, it’s nearly the only aspect of the school — apart from its exterior and auditorium — that can be so easily recognized. Though each film followed its own separate plot, one could easily assume from the vibrancy of the student body and the loudness of the band in “Reunion” and the dedication to the arts in “Mr. Holland’s Opus” that they were really just years of life at Grant that happened to be recorded.
“Mr. Holland’s Opus” may have focused its scenes on one subject, but McDonald sees its message as something much broader. “‘Mr Holland’s Opus’ is about an inspiring arts teacher,” says McDonald. “In that case, music; mine was theater — but we all want a teacher who inspires us.”
To Whelan, these strengths are what make Grant unique. “A kid can come to Grant and find woodworking, find drama, find something that speaks to them that keeps them in school,” she says. “They can find their thing here, whereas they may not at every school.”
