LouAnne Johnson served 8 years in the Navy, graduated from Marine Corps Officer Candidate School and spent 5 years teaching English to some of the toughest and most academically unsuccessful teenagers in an inner-city high school in Northern California, but after a brush with Hollywood, she says she simply doesn’t have the right stuff to be a movie star.
Johnson, whose 1992 autobiography, “My Posse Don’t Do Homework,” is the basis for the movie “Dangerous Minds,” starring Michelle Pfeiffer, says that “when Michelle visited our school, the people mobbed her and this is just a small dose of what she has to deal with.”
“Also, doing the same scene over 50 times would be very tedious for me. I don’t think I could do it. I don’t have that kind of patience. I’d be prone to say, `Hey, I did it a couple of times and it’s good enough.’ I realize why they have to do that to get the shots they need but I don’t have the personality to do it.”
As for seeing Pfeiffer’s portrayal, Johnson says, “it’s very unreal to watch someone play you. It was funny, too, because in some cases she says exactly what I said and she says it just as I would, and I would say, `Yes!’ But just the idea that someone gorgeous and famous that you’ve seen for years and you’re in the same room with them and they’re going off to be you–there’s no other word for it but `weird.’ But it’s weirdly wonderful.”
Similarly to the way it’s depicted in “Dangerous Minds,” which opened Friday, Johnson began her teaching career without first going through the usual year of student teaching. After one day of observation as a student teacher, she was hired immediately to take over a class at another school because the teacher had suddenly quit.
“They didn’t tell me why she had quit,” Johnson says during a recent visit to Chicago. “I thought she just retired. They didn’t tell me she just walked out.
“When I said something about their grades, the students said, `It doesn’t matter because she gave us all Fs.’ I said, `I don’t have the gradebook, so as far as I’m concerned you all have an A. If you want to keep it, I’ll show you how.’ They didn’t know what to do with me. That was probably the key to my success, because I didn’t do what I was supposed to do.
“When they acted bad they expected to be sent to the office. Instead I would give them a card that said, `Your present behavior is unacceptable. Please be more polite and see me in person after class to return this card.’ After class I would explain to them why I didn’t like certain behavior and how they would have to change that behavior if they chose to come back to class.”
Johnson also used bribes– dollar bills and candy, among other things–to get recalcitrant students to do their assignments, an unusual ploy that sparked considerable discussion among the filmmakers.
“Michelle called and asked me about the idea of bribing kids,” Johnson says. “If you have somebody who has failed every class their freshman year, threatening to flunk them is no threat. They already know how to fail and will say, `Oh yeah, so what? I flunk everything.’
“These are kids, many of whom have never been successful, so whatever it takes to motivate them to succeed. Once they know how that feels, they want to succeed again. So I’m willing to say, `I’ll give you a dollar if you write this essay.’ To me that doesn’t seem like a great bribe. Of course, I wouldn’t do it to everybody, just the ones that were holding out. Or if I gave them a candy bar because they tried to translate some Shakespeare, well, we’re both working for the same end but I’m not threatening them and I don’t have to deal with that environment in the classroom where they hate me and I hate them and who’s going to win?
“I never did bring in a whole box of candy bars and throw them out to the students,” Johnson adds, in reference to one scene in “Dangerous Minds.”
All in all, she says she’s satisfied with the film. “I was prepared for the worst because I’ve seen lots of movies based on books that I thought lost so much. But I actually liked the movie.
“Michelle knew I was really concerned that they keep the integrity of the book. I said, `If you don’t keep anything out of the book, what I would really like to see is the idea that the kids have a choice to be who they choose to be.’ That was the important thing and they kept it.”
“Dangerous Minds” was produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer (“Flashdance,” “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Top Gun”), who hired Canadian director John N. Smith after seeing his controversial and award-winning movie “The Boys of St. Vincent” at a film festival.
Johnson says, “When I sold the rights to the book, I said, `I’m not going to sell it and then complain about all the changes they make.’ I thought of it as a baby that’s adopted and I wanted it to be taken care of. So I chose carefully and I respected them. I had to trust them.
“When I would talk to the producers, the director and the writers, they obviously were taking mental notes so a lot of things got in the movie that aren’t in the book. They were really listening. And I thought they just liked me and were having conversations with me.”
Nevertheless, the filmmakers, in typical fashion, originally made a major invention–a boyfriend for Johnson’s character, played by Andy Garcia–but the part ended up on the cutting-room floor.
“I had just gotten divorced when I started teaching,” Johnson notes. “That’s one of the reasons I was able to do so much with these kids. I didn’t have other ways to spend my time or my emotional energy. I wasn’t interested in dating. I wasn’t using these kids as a substitute. I just said, `This is my project now, working with these kids.’
“When they the movie, first they said, `Michelle Pfeiffer is too pretty to be a teacher.’ I said, `Give me a break. Number one, teachers aren’t all ugly and just because she’s pretty doesn’t mean she can’t be something. That’s stupid.’
“They said, `She’s too pretty and she has to have a boyfriend.’ I said, `What? Only ugly women can choose to be single?’ And they said, `That’s not what we’re saying.’ And I said, `Yes, you are. I know you don’t intend to be insulting but you’re insulting a lot of women when you do that–and men, too.’
“They said, `She has to have a love interest. You don’t understand. This is Hollywood, this is dramatic structure, blah blah blah.’ I said, `OK, fine. Say I had a boyfriend if that makes you happy.’ And of course, they picked Andy Garcia and who’s going to complain about having him as a boyfriend?”
Johnson laughs. In the end, truth won out over fiction.
“It wasn’t a love story and there was nothing to support that, nowhere for it to go,” she says. “He was supposed to be some guy she worked with before she started teaching and they dated and he ended up breaking up with her because of how much time she spent with the kids. So what’s the point of being there if all you’re going to do is be a jerk? I think they showed it to some test audiences and they said the same thing, so they took the character out.”
The real love story in “Dangerous Minds,” of course, is the one between teacher and students. In movie time, it happens during the course of one semester. In real time, it took a bit longer.
“It was not quite that easy to connect with all of the students,” Johnson says. “Some of them immediately responded. You love me, I love you back. That’s it. Other ones didn’t come around until the second year. That whole first year they sat there and watched me to make sure what I said was what I meant and that I was really serious about things. Because they’d been lied to and they’re not going to believe anything. You can see that they want to, because they’re kids and it’s hard work to hate teachers. It’s not natural.”
In “Dangerous Minds,” the Johnson character’s main relationships outside the classroom revolve around three students–Emilio (Wade Dominguez), Callie (Bruklin Harris, who plays Aisha on TV’s “Picket Fences”) and Raul (Renoly Santiago).
“They were great,” Johnson says of the young actors. “Callie was actually very close to the actual student. Very bright. Just seemed a little older than the other kids. Raul is definitely . The Emilio character in the movie is actually a composite of two boys.
“The kids in the movie, their language was much worse than the kids that I had–at least in front of me. Their language wasn’t as bad but their attitudes were probably a lot worse. So I figure their language kind of represents that.”
Johnson, who is taking the next year off from teaching, says that she, too, tried to quit, “but the kids wouldn’t let me. So the next year I tried to back off but I just couldn’t. I realized I was burned out and so the next year I went to New Mexico and took graduate writing courses. I taught freshman composition for a year in college and then I went back to teaching remedial English to 18-year-old high school students who hadn’t yet passed freshman English. It was a rural area and a smaller school, but it was the same problems.”
