School of Rock

This week, Billboard is publishing a series of lists and articles celebrating the music of 20 years ago. Our 2003 Week continues here as we check in with a number of the grown-up kids from that year’s hit film comedy School of Rock — to find out what they’re up to now, and hear about what they take away from their experiences with the film and its deeper-than-rock history lessons two decades later.
Brian Falduto was 10 years old when he was cast in a movie about rock and roll starring Jack Black. He was slated to play Billy, a preppy student who eventually becomes the designer for a band of preteens led by Black’s burnout rocker Dewey Finn. Like his co stars, Falduto left school for two months to work on School of Rock. 

It was like being teleported to another world. Like other kids his age, back at home, Falduto did his best to blend in. But on set, he and his fellow school-aged actors were seen and celebrated regardless of who they were or what they did. The things that made them “different” or “weird” at school were the things that got them into the film. Falduto’s Billy, nicknamed Fancy Pants, was sassy, snappy, and unforgettable. “On set, people were like, ‘Just be yourself, we just want more of you,’” he recalls.

Then filming ended, and Falduto returned to school and the real world, where difference wasn’t celebrated – it was punished. “It was this weird mixed messaging that I got,” he says. “[After filming], we went back to school where people are mean – and if you stand out, you get picked on. It was a really confusing thing to navigate.”

It’s been nearly 20 years since the alternate universe of Richard Linklater’s School of Rock delivered its earnest message of high-wattage self-empowerment through rock music, and stage-dove into North American pop culture. It didn’t take long for the film to become a pop culture phenomenon: School Of Rock’s worldwide gross nearly quadrupled its $35 million budget, and eventually spawned both a 2015 Broadway show and a television series, which debuted in 2016. At the time of its release, Roger Ebert wrote in his review that the film proved that “you can make a family film that’s alive and well-acted and smart and perceptive and funny — and that rocks.” Fondness for the movie persists; in early April of this year, Black even teased a reunion and potential sequel.

In 2003, it made perfect sense to use rock and roll to tell a story about breaking out of society’s tightly-policed boundaries. Buoyed by emo, nu-metal, pop-punk, and the early days of the ‘00s indie-rock boom, alongside recent entries from legacy acts like Tom Petty and Johnny Cash, guitar music was still widely appreciated and sought-after, even as pop and hip-hop overtook it in overall popularity. School of Rock’s ancestral family tree of rock, depicted in a scene where Finn has covered a chalkboard with the genre’s lineage and subgenre offshoots, became a learning tool for kids getting into classic rock—both inside and outside of the movie.

Two decades later, guitar music and rock and roll are still omnipresent, shapeshifting into new, subversive forms that can make Finn’s idolatry feel distant and dusty. Artists as wide-ranging as Olivia Rodrigo, Lil Yachty, and Turnstile are updating the curriculum. In the cultural and political upheaval of 2023, School of Rock and its guitar-god worship might seem dated. But as the former students of Horace Green share, Black and his band of classroom misfits still have a lot to teach us.

*****

“It’s The Sound of Music with no Nazis.”

That’s how Rivkah Reyes, who played student and bassist Katie in the film, describes School of Rock nowadays. The comparison is apt. Both movies find a wayward adult (by civil society’s standards, anyhow) taking charge of a crew of buttoned-up, well-disciplined children, who eventually learn to color outside the lines and live freer, more confident lives. Besides the Nazis, the other key difference is that School of Rock gets a lot louder, and the Von Trapp kids never tell their father that he’s “the man.”

In Sound of Music, Julie Andrews’ Maria uses singing to break the children out of their cages, but Jack Black’s disheveled Dewey Finn employs the sounds and culture of rock and roll to teach the uptight kids at Horace Green Preparatory School to be themselves, and to love themselves. The kids get a crash course in classic rock history: Led Zeppelin. Black Sabbath. AC/DC. Motorhead. Anyone who has seen the movie likely can’t read those names without blurting out Black’s iconic cry of despair: “What do they teach in this place?!”

The learning in Finn’s classroom felt authentic because for most of the young actors in School of Rock, it was. Z Infante, who played the lighting designer Gordon, says that between takes, Black would point to band names on the aforementioned family tree and ask who knew them. “The rock education was very in the moment,” says Infante.

Infante, now 30, grew up listening to ‘90s freestyle, dance music, and Sade – but when he got cast in the film, his family started listening to classic rock, and Infante fell in love with punk and alt-rock. Maryam Hassan, who played Tomika, says the same thing happened in her home. She was raised on R&B and soul, the former of which was a precursor to rock and roll, so leaning into rock music wasn’t a big leap. “You listen to blues music, and you hear that funk, that guitar,” says Hassan, 30. “That’s the foundation of rock music.”

Hassan grew into a punk rock fan, taking to bands like Paramore when she was younger. That adrenaline-inducing thrash of guitars, bass, drums, and vocals can take anyone “from zero to 100,” she says. “There’s no better way to break someone [out of their shell] who’s insecure or unsure of themselves.”

Others had been steeped in rock since they were young. Joey Gaydos Jr., who portrayed soft-spoken guitarist Zack Mooneyham, came up surrounded by the originators of Michigan’s early 1970s proto-punk scene. Long before he was born, his father played guitar in Detroit rock bands and gigged with Brownsville Station’s Michael “Cub” Coda and MC5’s Rob Tyner. Seeing photos of his dad with the rockers filled him with reverence and awe. “I’ve always been so into the hero, the Link Wray,” he says of the influential early rock guitarist. In the film, Mooneyham’s father disapproves of his son’s interest in rock music. Gaydos Jr.’s reality was the opposite. “Of course the bond of father and son will have its idiosyncrasies, but [fighting over] playing rock guitar? Hell no,” he grins.

For some of the cast, rock’s disaffected nerve was more appealing than AC/DC riffs or “Smoke on the Water.” Falduto says even after the film, he wasn’t “bit by the rock bug,” but he connected with the genre’s encouragement of letting loose and throwing caution to the wind. It was the perfect vehicle for telling kids to plow through the boundaries of normativity. “It had to be the school of rock,” he says. “What was it going to be? The school of classical music?”

*****

Classic rock’s contemporary cultural position as primarily the domain of heterosexual white men (increasingly cranky and conservative, a trend demonstrated by Van Morrison and Eric Clapton) is reflective of the genre’s canon, and School of Rock’s syllabus didn’t necessarily unseat that notion. But the film succeeded in spotlighting the essence of rock and roll, a genre pioneered by queer Black women, beyond its aesthetics: it celebrated the act of rebelling against the tyranny of normativity. It didn’t just normalize difference – it threw out the idea of “normal” in the first place.

“It’s that whole line, ‘stick it to the man,’” says Infante. “Rock has always been a place of rebellion, particularly thinking about the roots of rock music being in blues and the protests that exist in that music, the acknowledgment of their reality. Rock music expanded upon that. School of Rock was able to be rebellious and teach people about rebellion.”

For Hassan’s Tomika, that meant demonstrating that all bodies are beautiful in the scene when Black pulls her aside to discuss her insecurities about her weight. Hassan was a confident kid, so she didn’t share Tomika’s misgivings, but when the scene goes viral on Twitter every few years and she revisits it, it feels like a pivotal moment. “That was pretty monumental, to have a young Black girl in that scene,” she says. “I’m happy we can celebrate that, and kids can feel seen.”

Maryam Hassan

Ashley Johnson

Falduto recalls that when his character approaches Finn in the classroom to ask to be reassigned as band stylist, his teacher doesn’t bat an eyelash; he just approves the request. “It’s not remarkable that Billy likes to be effeminate and dress things up,” says Falduto. In the years since, Billy has been labeled a gay character, but Falduto said the script never referenced his sexuality, and it never came up on set.

“It didn’t need to be labeled as something, because you don’t need to be gay or a certain gender in order to like fashion or to be effeminate or to be sassy,” says Falduto. “It was a testament to what our society was like at the time that everyone saw that kid and was like, ‘gay.’ When people don’t understand something, they want to understand it, so they put a label on it because things that we don’t understand scare us. It’s a way of normalizing yourself to put a label on something else. It’s still happening to this day.”

Growing up in Chicago, Reyes was bullied for being “the weird girl with the classical guitar” and Filipino lunches at school. But School of Rock turned that weirdness into a weapon. “We all had similar stuff, being bullied at school,” says Reyes. “But whatever our cool unique thing was, was the reason why we ended up in School of Rock. It was really empowering. To its core, it’s a movie about radical self-acceptance.”

For Reyes, two scenes in particular evince the film’s anti-establishment heart. The first is when Finn asks the students what rock and roll is about. Scoring chicks and getting loaded? No. Sticking it to the man? Yes. Later, when the snotty, punk drummer Freddie – played by Kevin Clark and affectionately nicknamed Spazzy McGee – is found hanging with a crew of grizzled rockers smoking and playing cards, Black gives him an earful. The purpose of the scene isn’t necessarily to communicate that partying is bad. It’s that Freddie made a commitment to his friends, and it needed to be honored. 

In May 2021, Clark was biking in his native Chicago when he was struck and killed by a driver. He was 32. Reyes and Gaydos stayed close friends with Clark until his death, and the loss still lingers with them. The two make music together, and when the snare begins to rattle in the corner, they know it’s Clark piping up with a drum idea. “He’s still very much with us,” says Reyes. “He’s a very loud, very friendly ghost.”

“That loss is devastating all the time,” says Gaydos. He adds with a gentle smile, “We keep rocking for him. What else can you do?”

Gaydos’ simple affirmation gets at something deeper, something that cuts to the bone of the film and its romantic vision of rock music. “This is the truth: rock and roll is just about connection with your bandmates,” says Reyes. “The real essence of it is sticking it to the man, then connecting with your people and creating something together.”

Reyes has spent years developing a keen sense for whether fellow creatives are in it for the right reasons. They’re protective of their musicianship and bass playing after being pigeonholed as “the bass girl from School of Rock.” They eventually had to leave one musical project when another member kept making references to the film and using their presence for clout. Reyes credits the sensitivity to School Of Rock.

“I live in L.A., where everybody is kind of in it for the sex, drugs, and rock and roll of it all,” they say. “I can sense it right away. Those people don’t stick around in my life very long.”

Reyes has been sober for five years now. After years in acting, comedy, and music surrounded by drugs and alcohol, they were nervous that eliminating substances might have a negative impact on their artistry. “I thought, ‘I’m gonna be a bad rock star if I don’t do coke before the show,’ or ‘I’m not gonna write good comedy if I’m not a little stoned,’” they say. “At the end of the day, my authenticity comes out through my desire to stay away from the stuff that society told us was the cool thing to do if you wanted to be a rock star.”

Part of School Of Rock’s enduring appeal is its encouragement of deviation from the norm, but the real world—even as it enjoyed and celebrated the film—has never been quite as welcoming to change. For a long time, Falduto resented the long shadow of his role for years, lost between experience of on-set acceptance and the reality of a society that punished uniqueness. “It was a hard thing to carry while I was confused about how I was,” he says. In middle and high school, classmates knew him as “the gay kid from School of Rock.” 

Now he works as a life coach for queer youth, and records and releases country music—a love he picked up while working at a country radio station after college. “For a really long time it was really hard to be the gay kid from School of Rock,” he says, “but it’s come full circle. Now I’m soaking in the beauty of the process.”

Brian Falduto

Ashley Johnson

*****

This year’s milestone marks a span of time that’s flung the actors from their desks into the grown-up shoes of the film’s adults, like Finn, Mike White’s Ned Schneebly, or Joan Cusack’s Principal Mullins. Finn’s struggles to pay his rent hit closer to home these days. “What adult can’t relate to that?” says Reyes. “There’s always that thing at the end of the month like, ‘oh shit, is the legend of the rent way past due? Are we about to have to commit fraud to pay our rent?’”

One of the film’s central subtexts is the struggle for liberation in a world that demands submission – via bills, social pressure, or, for Cusack’s Mullins, parental overwatch. School of Rock gave its cast some tips on how to do that. Jordan-Claire Smith, who played Michelle, one of the band’s groupies – a rare poorly aged misstep for the film, the cast acknowledges – entered the film as a child actor, and stayed in the industry until she was 18. But the joy of acting was disappearing. “I was having so much anxiety around auditioning and representation,” says Smith. She decided to take a break.

Smith went to college, and discovered a new passion: nursing. She works as a nurse now in California, and produces and acts in short films with friends and her husband. Her work now doesn’t involve cranked guitar amps and dimly lit venues, but she says her decision to chase what felt best for her ties back to the film. “Obviously not every kid in the movie, if they were a real person, was going to go on to become somebody in a rock band,” says Smith. “But having that experience with Mr. Schneebly would have opened up all of their minds to be like, ‘Oh, what is it that I love, what do I wanna do, and how do I pursue that?’ I don’t think I ever put together that that was something that I really learned from my experience on School Of Rock.”

Aleisha Allen, who played Alicia in the film, says the film gave her a similarly discerning approach to her work. She had been acting since she was three years old, but realized that by young adulthood, she was being typecast in specific roles. “Because of the passion and respect and love for the art that I do have, I didn’t want to just take jobs that would keep me relevant,” says Allen. Like Smith, she decided to go to college, and now works as a speech language pathologist, where she uses her vocal skills in exercises to empower her clients. In the face of conservative political movements working to erase queerness and critical race theory from schoolrooms, Allen says “rebellion is needed more overtly than ever.”

Gaydos, too, says there have been ebbs and flows in his musical life. Sometimes guitar would be a thrill. At other points, whatever job he had to work to pay the bills would nudge it out of his day-to-day routine. He suggests that in the long run, “evenness” is the best you can hope for. “I never lost my passion, but I got so far disconnected from it that it wasn’t a part of everyday necessity,” he says. “But it’s like air, man. Start choking without it. As far as my sanity just dealing with living, I gotta have it.”

Infante is starring as Angel in a production of Rent at the Oregon Shakespear Festival, and Hassan is prepping new music for release this year. Falduto released his Gay Country EP in early March. (Black lip-synced to one of the singles on his TikTok.) Reyes is busy writing and acting. The School of Rock alumni have each found a path that feels right for them. It’s not all smashed guitars and stage dives, because it was never about those things in the first place.

“That’s the real beauty of rock and roll,” says Smith. “It gives people an outlet to be exactly who they are.”