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Rocket Science (film)
Encyclopedia
Rocket Science is a 2007 American comedy-drama
film written and directed by Jeffrey Blitz
, and starring Reece Thompson
, Anna Kendrick
, Nicholas D'Agosto
, Vincent Piazza
, and Aaron Yoo
. It tells the story of Hal Hefner, a fifteen-year-old stutterer who decides to join his school's debate team when he develops a crush on its star member, and addresses the themes of coming of age
, sexuality
, and finding one's voice.
Blitz conceived a rough storyline for the film while making Spellbound, a documentary about 1999's Scripps National Spelling Bee
, but an HBO Films
executive persuaded him to write the film based on his own adolescence when he told her about his experiences as a stutterer. The film's producers visited several cities in the United States and Canada; Thompson was cast based on a tape which his agent had sent and a follow-up audition after the first actor cast in the lead was forced to pull out. The film was shot over 30 days in Baltimore, Maryland
and Trenton
, New Jersey
.
Rocket Science premiered on January 19, 2007 at the Sundance Film Festival
and was theatrically released on August 10. It was not a financial success, earning only US$
756,000 from its $4.5 million budget, though it was well-received by critics. Reviewers praised Thompson and Kendrick's performances and the film's parallels to real life; others believed that the film was deliberately quirky and forgettable. It was nominated for Sundance's Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and three Independent Spirit Awards
, though it failed to win any.
with a pronounced stutter. His older brother Earl is an obsessive-compulsive kleptomaniac, his father Doyle has recently walked out on the family following a heated argument, and his mother Juliet has begun to date the father of his school friend, Heston.
Hal is riding the school bus home one day when he is approached by Ginny Ryerson, the articulate, competitive star of the debate team. She urges him to join her and replace her former partner, Ben Wekselbaum, who has dropped out of school after falling silent midspeech and losing the New Jersey State High School Policy Debate Championships. Though Hal initially declines, he finds himself besotted with Ginny and agrees to be her partner. Hal and Ginny begin to study for the upcoming tournament and form arguments on either side of whether the federal government should support the teaching of sexual abstinence
in public schools. When Hal finds himself unable to talk in debate practice, he runs out of the room and hides in the janitorial closet, where Ginny joins him. Hal kisses her hopefully, but she subsequently falls out of contact with him. Ginny's parents assure him that she is confident with the work they have already completed, and that she will meet him on the day of the debate.
On the day of the tournament, Coach Lumbly of the debate team tells Hal that Ginny has transferred to Townsend Prep for the remainder of her senior year, and that Hal will be paired with Heston for the day. Struggling with his speech and his stutter, Hal calls his therapist, who suggests that he sing his speech or talk with a foreign accent. Hal and Heston finish the day without much success, while Ginny wins a trophy for First Place as an Individual Speaker, which inexplicably goes missing. Coach Lumbly asks Hal to leave the team, telling him that Ginny had never planned to debate as his partner, and had only recruited him as a cruel joke to damage the school's chances of winning. He breaks into Earl's bedroom and takes a bottle of stolen tequila, then rides with Heston to his friend Lewis's house, who lives across the street from Ginny. A drunken Hal drags Lewis's mother's cello across the street and throws it through Ginny's window just as she is arriving home with her new teammate, Ram.
Later in the year, Hal's mother breaks up with Heston's father, and Hal decides to seek out Ginny and return her trophy, which he stole. She rejects his apology, and he travels to Trenton
—the "Big City"—to find Ben, Ginny's former debate partner. Hal convinces Ben to debate with him and they register as a home-schooled team in the upcoming Policy Debate Championships. In order to overcome his stutter, Ben helps Hal to write his entire speech to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic
". He is interrupted in the middle of his song-speech by Coach Lumbly and a Debate Official, who disqualifies Hal and Ben on the grounds that neither of them is home-schooled and thus would have to be enrolled in a school team. Ben is satisfied with their efforts, but Hal finds Ginny before leaving. He insists that one day will be his day, while she tells him that it was not easy for her to betray him as he walks off. He spends the evening at a nearby beach, and when his father picks him up, Hal tries to tell him his view that life and love "shouldn't be rocket science", although he is unable to say the phrase "rocket science" due to his stutter.
Blitz and the film's producers considered having celebrity cameos
in Hal's parents' roles, though he decided that cameos would draw away from the film as the celebrities would not be "onscreen long enough for them to become someone other than the celebrity". In between shooting the film and its release, Hill became a well-known celebrity with the films Knocked Up
and Superbad; Blitz describes being "bummed about that" because of his reluctance to feature celebrities.
, summarized the film as "eloquent about love, self-realization and adolescent angst". The main theme addressed in Rocket Science is Hal's coming of age
, which is portrayed both by his understanding of love and finding his voice. The film takes its title from Hal's closing quote that understanding life and love "shouldn't be rocket science".
Blitz described Hal as "lost in the mystery of love" and he "loved the idea that a kid who is lost when he's confronted by love and sex would be saddled with the name Hal Hefner", an homage to Playboy
founder Hugh Hefner
. Throughout the film, Hal is seen to be surrounded by sex and relationships—titlecards for the seasons of the year are placed over images of kissing students; Hal listens to his mother having intercourse
with her new boyfriend; his friend Lewis shows Hal images from the Kama Sutra
; while Lewis's parents attempt to mend their relationship through music therapy
—but the adults in the film were written to be similarly confused and frustrated with love. "In a world where all the children are trying so hard to be like adults", according to Stylus
Yannick LeJacq, "the adults are all sullenly try[ing] to reenact their childhood, taking every chance to ignore their children and savor the meaningless void of leisure time."
Blitz believed that Hal's stuttering was a metaphor for his lack of mastery of life and love: "He can't control this thing that ought to be so simple ... And so much of his life is like that." Journalist Mark Baumer highlighted the juxtaposition of Hal with the fast-talking debaters, who are at opposite ends of the spectrum with their speech but are both struggling with communication and expression. Blitz said that "Even when [the children] can speak incredibly fast and are packing their sentences with tons of SAT
words, they still don't know exactly what they're talking about. There is still a question about whether their content of what they're talking about matches up with what they're feeling or trying to express. Whether it's the kid who's talking a million miles an hour, but saying nothing or the kid who isn't able to get out any word at all they're both at the mercy of not knowing how to express what's inside them."
After the success of his 2002 documentary
Spellbound, Jeffrey Blitz
was encouraged by his agents to write fiction because of the larger revenue brought in by fiction films. Blitz began to piece together a story that had come to him while he had been filming Spellbound: "I kept thinking, what if we met a kid that was just an amazing lover of words? What if we met a kid that was lured into the spelling bee because he was in love with a girl?" He had compiled a mental list of characters who he expected to encounter while making Spellbound, several of whom eventually became Rocket Science characters. Despite claiming to be "allergic" to autobiographical films, he was persuaded by HBO
executive Maud Nadler to write a screenplay based on his own adolescence when he told her that, as a teenager, he joined his school's debate team to try and overcome his stutter. He says that he is uninterested in teen film
s, so "the only way I was going to do a teen movie is if I felt like I could try to be more honest about what the actual experience of being a teenager is like." He was aware of the clichés in teen films, so "tried to undo them without wrecking them". Blitz wrote the script "off and on" over a year in between stints of commercial directing. He cites directors Hal Ashby
and Billy Wilder
as his greatest influences with their absurdist comedies, though critics have suggested influence from Gary Larson
, Alexander Payne
, Mike Nichols
and Wes Anderson
—the latter despite Blitz specifically saying, "I did not want a Wes Andersen snowglobe artificial world."
While many parts of Rocket Science are completely fictitious, a number of the story's details are lifted directly from Blitz's own experiences. In several scenes of the film, Hal is trying to ask for a slice of pizza but cannot say the word "pizza"; this is drawn from Blitz's experience of trying to order a hamburger from hotel room service without being able to say the word "hamburger". Hal's first debate scene is based on Blitz's first debate, where, for a full eight minutes, he could only make the sound "agh", and the scene in which Hal throws a cello through a window was inspired by Blitz's own destruction of a flute. While Blitz grew up in Ridgewood, New Jersey
, he chose to set the narrative in Plainsboro, New Jersey—a place he has never visited—because it was closer to Trenton
, rather than New York City
. He found it humorous that the characters referred to Trenton as the "Big City" and that Plainsboro seemed to orbit around a dead city, Trenton, in comparison to New York.
Jo Willems as the cinematographer
, having collaborated previously on commercials. Blitz admired Willems' "European sensibility about shooting" and wanted to use his aesthetic to "tell a story that was equal parts deadpan and suggestive of the 'real' world". In creating a "look" for the film, he said that he relied upon "almost opposite impulses"—to tell the story intimately but also carry the comedy. Through the film, he used lighting and art direction that felt real, while framing the shots to come across as deadpan. Production designer
Rick Butler chose bland, simple furniture and commonplace houses and cars to give the film a sense of timelessness and familiarity. The color palette in both production and costume design
was drab and ordinary to give a deadpan undertone. Blitz was most inspired by the cinematography and production design of Hal Ashby's films: "I watched his films again and again ... He has a masterful blending of absurd comedy and naturalism."
asked the waitress for a fresh straw each time she passed; and Yoo, as Heston, could not decide what to order and had the waitress explain the menu repeatedly. The purpose of the evening, according to Blitz, was for the actors to "be comfortable around each other inhabiting their roles without self-consciousness", as each of their roles required them to act in potentially embarrassing ways.
Principal photography began in Baltimore, Maryland
on the week beginning July 18, 2005, the project receiving a tax rebate as part of Baltimore's Employer Wage Rebate Program for filmmakers. The film was shot on a 30-day schedule with an overall budget of $4.5 million. Blitz chose to film in Maryland, as its child labour laws are much less restrictive than those of New Jersey, where the film is set. This was important because Reece Thompson, who was sixteen years old at the time, appears in almost every scene. While Baltimore stood in for Plainsboro, New Jersey, scenes set in Trenton, New Jersey
were filmed on location, including shots of the Lower Trenton Bridge
over the Delaware River
. The final scenes of the film took place on a boardwalk at the Jersey Shore
with the shoot concluding at 5 am. While filming, Blitz sometimes used hand gestures from the director's chair instead of yelling "cut" because of his stutter.
band Clem Snide
's music and suggested the use of their music on the soundtrack
to the HBO executive producers. He contacted Clem Snide's lead singer Eef Barzelay
to use some of the band's songs, but Barzelay says "it just made more sense for me to write original instrumental music", and composed the incidental score
himself. When choosing instruments, he tried to create sounds that would match Hal's awkwardness. "I had this little ukulele
that I never played ... And Jeffrey [Blitz] had gotten a little bee in his bonnet about the accordion
... and then at one point I started using a kazoo
." One of his original songs, "I Love the Unknown", was chosen from the 1999 album Your Favorite Music
.
Blitz also chose to use the Violent Femmes
' songs "Blister in the Sun
", "Kiss Off", and a cover version of "Add It Up
". The Violent Femmes' songs were chosen for the film by Blitz before filming had begun as he believed that they expressed "the rage of love gone wrong better than any band out there", and they allowed their songs to be used in the film after reading the script. Blitz thought that the Violent Femmes suggested "both [Hal's] anger and the humor all around it".
, Rocket Science was rated R for strong sexual language, brief sex, brief nudity, some violence and a scene depicting teen drinking. Jeffrey Blitz described the decision as "mind boggling" and "ludicrous"; he claimed that the images of Kama Sutra
seen briefly in the film were "antique Indian paintings" and that the teenagers' discussion of blow jobs
was harmless as they had clearly never engaged in fellatio themselves. He criticized the MPAA for its PG-13 rating of Live Free or Die Hard
(also released in 2007), which involves "a girl getting groped at the beginning, all sorts of cursing, gigantic body count, just completely fucking crazy." Other questionable elements were altered during production, including a more graphical male beefcake
calendar shown to Hal by Heston.
. The film was subsequently screened at the European Film Market, U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, AFI Dallas International Film Festival, Philadelphia Film Festival
, Atlanta Film Festival
, San Francisco International Film Festival
, Cannes Film Festival
, Maui Film Festival
, Provincetown International Film Festival
, Nantucket Film Festival
, and Edinburgh International Film Festival
before its theatrical release on August 10, 2007.
Rocket Science had a limited theatrical release
in the United States, initially playing only in selected theaters in New York City
and Los Angeles
. In its debut week beginning August 10, it was the week's second highest-grossing independent film after 2 Days in Paris
, earning US$
58,536 across six screens with a per-screen average of $9,756. The following week, the film expanded to 40 screens but fell to a per-screen average of $2,930. In its third week, it earned a per-screen average of $1,998 from 59 different theaters, placing 22nd on the list of highest-grossing independent films with a cumulative total of $389,261. Rocket Science ended its theatrical run with a total domestic gross of US$
714,943 and a foreign gross of $40,831, a worldwide total of $755,774. It placed 258th for the highest-grossing films of 2007 and 104th for the year's R-rated films.
and February 4, 2008 in Region 2. The single-disc volume includes two additional featurettes: "The Making of Rocket Science" and a music video
for "I Love the Unknown" performed by Eef Barzelay
, featuring various clips from the film.
website Rotten Tomatoes
reported that 83% of 101 collected reviews for Rocket Science were positive, with an average
score of 6.9/10. At Metacritic
, which assigns a normalized
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 73 based on 28 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Chicago Sun-Times
critic Roger Ebert
gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, praising Thompson and Kendrick's performances and the film's honesty and plausibility. He suspected that "a lot of high school students will recognize elements of real life in the movie." Bruce Feld of Film Journal International
agreed, calling the film a "dead-on revelation of what high school is really like". Variety
magazine's Justin Chang thought that Blitz displayed a "terrific ability to embrace people's idiosyncrasies, real or fictitious" and called the cast a "strong ensemble", commending Thompson, Kendrick and D'Agosto in particular. The San Francisco Chronicle
' s Peter Hartlaub thought that the script "never fails to present an unexpected scenario – usually accompanied by a moment or two of hilarity", but felt that Hal's ultimate failure was anticlimactic and "frustrating for moviegoers who prefer tidy endings". Stephen Holden
, however, writing for The New York Times
, believed that the final scenes were a "[sure] sign of the movie's integrity". TV Guide
' s Ken Fox similarly admired the more "real" ending, and wrote that the film was "sharp, observant ... [and] wonderfully dry". Desson Thomson
of The Washington Post
praised Blitz for straying from common stereotypes and "opt[ing] for deeper, darker and wittier developments".
Other reviews were less positive. Owen Gleiberman
of Entertainment Weekly
graded Rocket Science as a C
, calling the film "one of those terminally annoying, depressive-yet-coy Sundance
faves in which the tale of a mopey teen misfit unfolds behind a hard candy shell of irony". David Cornelius of DVD Talk
criticized the film's phoniness and deliberate quirkiness. He was impressed by Thompson's portrayal of Hal, "bursting with authenticity", but wrote that the supporting characters "never have the chance to ring true" in a cast "overflowing with unnecessary hokey colorfulness". Online film critic for ReelViews James Berardinelli
called the film "moderately uplifting but not especially memorable" and claimed that "the problem with Rocket Science is that the character at the center of the drama isn't very energetic or, truth be told, interesting." The Chicago Tribune
' s Michael Phillips
, who gave the film 2.5 out of 4 stars, felt that it "doesn't quite work" and "the spark goes out of the writing" when Hal seeks out Ben in Trenton.
", "Best First Screenplay
" (Jeffrey Blitz) and "Best Supporting Female" (Anna Kendrick), but failed to win any. At the Sundance Film Festival
, Blitz won the Dramatic Directing Award and the film was nominated for the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize. The film's DVD trailer was also nominated at the Golden Trailer Awards
for the "Best In-Theater Advertising" and "Best Music".
Comedy-drama
Comedy-drama is a genre of theatre, film and television programs which combines humorous and serious content.-Theatre:Traditional western theatre, beginning with the ancient Greeks, was divided into comedy and tragedy...
film written and directed by Jeffrey Blitz
Jeffrey Blitz
Jeffrey Blitz is an American film director, producer and screenwriter from Ridgewood, New Jersey. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his 2002 documentary, Spellbound and he won the Dramatic Directing Prize at the Sundance Film Festival for his 2007 film, Rocket Science.Blitz won the 2009...
, and starring Reece Thompson
Reece Thompson
Reece Daniel Thompson is a Canadian actor. Thompson started his acting career by voice acting in several animated television series and minor roles on television shows before transitioning to films. His first major role came in the 2007 film Rocket Science...
, Anna Kendrick
Anna Kendrick
Anna Kendrick is an American film and stage actress best known for the role of Natalie Keener in the 2009 film Up in the Air. Her other work includes the films Camp , Rocket Science , Scott Pilgrim vs. the World , 50/50 , and the Broadway musical High Society...
, Nicholas D'Agosto
Nicholas D'Agosto
- Early life :D'Agosto was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Deanna Rae and Alen D'Agosto, who own several Arby's in Omaha. His father is Italian and his mother is of Dutch and English descent. He was raised Catholic and selected Genesius of Rome, the patron saint of actors, as his confirmation...
, Vincent Piazza
Vincent Piazza
Vincent Piazza is an American film, television and stage actor best known for his roles in the television series Boardwalk Empire and the 2007 film Rocket Science.- Biography :...
, and Aaron Yoo
Aaron Yoo
-Personal life:Aaron Yoo was born in East Brunswick Township, New Jersey to Korean parents. He has an older sister. He played the cello for the East Brunswick High School orchestra and ran track...
. It tells the story of Hal Hefner, a fifteen-year-old stutterer who decides to join his school's debate team when he develops a crush on its star member, and addresses the themes of coming of age
Coming of age
Coming of age is a young person's transition from childhood to adulthood. The age at which this transition takes place varies in society, as does the nature of the transition. It can be a simple legal convention or can be part of a ritual, as practiced by many societies...
, sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
, and finding one's voice.
Blitz conceived a rough storyline for the film while making Spellbound, a documentary about 1999's Scripps National Spelling Bee
Scripps National Spelling Bee
The Scripps National Spelling Bee is a highly competitive annual spelling bee in the United States, with participants from other countries as well. It is run on a not-for-profit basis by The E. W...
, but an HBO Films
HBO Films
HBO Films is a division of the cable television network HBO that produces feature films and miniseries. While much of HBO Films' output is created directly for the television market, such as the film Witness Protection and the mini-series Band of Brothers, Pacific, Generation Kill and Angels in...
executive persuaded him to write the film based on his own adolescence when he told her about his experiences as a stutterer. The film's producers visited several cities in the United States and Canada; Thompson was cast based on a tape which his agent had sent and a follow-up audition after the first actor cast in the lead was forced to pull out. The film was shot over 30 days in Baltimore, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
and Trenton
Trenton, New Jersey
Trenton is the capital of the U.S. state of New Jersey and the county seat of Mercer County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Trenton had a population of 84,913...
, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
.
Rocket Science premiered on January 19, 2007 at the Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
and was theatrically released on August 10. It was not a financial success, earning only US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
756,000 from its $4.5 million budget, though it was well-received by critics. Reviewers praised Thompson and Kendrick's performances and the film's parallels to real life; others believed that the film was deliberately quirky and forgettable. It was nominated for Sundance's Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and three Independent Spirit Awards
Independent Spirit Awards
The Independent Spirit Awards , founded in 1984, are awards dedicated to independent filmmakers. Winners were typically presented with acrylic glass pyramids containing suspended shoestrings representing the paltry budgets of independent films. In 1986, the event was renamed the Independent Spirit...
, though it failed to win any.
Plot
Hal Hefner is a fifteen-year-old student of Plainsboro, New JerseyNew Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
with a pronounced stutter. His older brother Earl is an obsessive-compulsive kleptomaniac, his father Doyle has recently walked out on the family following a heated argument, and his mother Juliet has begun to date the father of his school friend, Heston.
Hal is riding the school bus home one day when he is approached by Ginny Ryerson, the articulate, competitive star of the debate team. She urges him to join her and replace her former partner, Ben Wekselbaum, who has dropped out of school after falling silent midspeech and losing the New Jersey State High School Policy Debate Championships. Though Hal initially declines, he finds himself besotted with Ginny and agrees to be her partner. Hal and Ginny begin to study for the upcoming tournament and form arguments on either side of whether the federal government should support the teaching of sexual abstinence
Abstinence
Abstinence is a voluntary restraint from indulging in bodily activities that are widely experienced as giving pleasure. Most frequently, the term refers to sexual abstinence, or abstention from alcohol or food. The practice can arise from religious prohibitions or practical...
in public schools. When Hal finds himself unable to talk in debate practice, he runs out of the room and hides in the janitorial closet, where Ginny joins him. Hal kisses her hopefully, but she subsequently falls out of contact with him. Ginny's parents assure him that she is confident with the work they have already completed, and that she will meet him on the day of the debate.
On the day of the tournament, Coach Lumbly of the debate team tells Hal that Ginny has transferred to Townsend Prep for the remainder of her senior year, and that Hal will be paired with Heston for the day. Struggling with his speech and his stutter, Hal calls his therapist, who suggests that he sing his speech or talk with a foreign accent. Hal and Heston finish the day without much success, while Ginny wins a trophy for First Place as an Individual Speaker, which inexplicably goes missing. Coach Lumbly asks Hal to leave the team, telling him that Ginny had never planned to debate as his partner, and had only recruited him as a cruel joke to damage the school's chances of winning. He breaks into Earl's bedroom and takes a bottle of stolen tequila, then rides with Heston to his friend Lewis's house, who lives across the street from Ginny. A drunken Hal drags Lewis's mother's cello across the street and throws it through Ginny's window just as she is arriving home with her new teammate, Ram.
Later in the year, Hal's mother breaks up with Heston's father, and Hal decides to seek out Ginny and return her trophy, which he stole. She rejects his apology, and he travels to Trenton
Trenton, New Jersey
Trenton is the capital of the U.S. state of New Jersey and the county seat of Mercer County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Trenton had a population of 84,913...
—the "Big City"—to find Ben, Ginny's former debate partner. Hal convinces Ben to debate with him and they register as a home-schooled team in the upcoming Policy Debate Championships. In order to overcome his stutter, Ben helps Hal to write his entire speech to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is a hymn by American writer Julia Ward Howe using the music from the song "John Brown's Body". Howe's more famous lyrics were written in November 1861 and first published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862. It became popular during the American Civil War...
". He is interrupted in the middle of his song-speech by Coach Lumbly and a Debate Official, who disqualifies Hal and Ben on the grounds that neither of them is home-schooled and thus would have to be enrolled in a school team. Ben is satisfied with their efforts, but Hal finds Ginny before leaving. He insists that one day will be his day, while she tells him that it was not easy for her to betray him as he walks off. He spends the evening at a nearby beach, and when his father picks him up, Hal tries to tell him his view that life and love "shouldn't be rocket science", although he is unable to say the phrase "rocket science" due to his stutter.
Cast
- Reece ThompsonReece ThompsonReece Daniel Thompson is a Canadian actor. Thompson started his acting career by voice acting in several animated television series and minor roles on television shows before transitioning to films. His first major role came in the 2007 film Rocket Science...
plays Hal Hefner, a shy fifteen-year-old student at Plainsboro High School, New Jersey with a pronounced stutter. Beginning in late 2004, Rocket Science' s producers traveled to several American and Canadian cities looking for an actor to play the lead role of Hal. At one point, Carter JenkinsCarter Jenkins-Career:Jenkins began performing in community theatre, and then on local and national commercials. He has starred in television shows such as Surface, Viva Laughlin, CSI: Miami, House, CSI: NY, Without a Trace, The Bernie Mac Show, and Unfabulous along with feature films Aliens in the Attic, Bad...
was set to play Hal, but NBCNBCThe National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
blocked this as he was contracted for further episodes of SurfaceSurface (TV series)Surface is a science fiction television series that premiered on NBC on 19 September 2005. The program aired fifteen episodes before going on hiatus on February 6, 2006 due to NBC's coverage of the 2006 Winter Olympics...
. HBO FilmsHBO FilmsHBO Films is a division of the cable television network HBO that produces feature films and miniseries. While much of HBO Films' output is created directly for the television market, such as the film Witness Protection and the mini-series Band of Brothers, Pacific, Generation Kill and Angels in...
told the producers after six months of searching for a Hal that it would abandon the project if a lead actor was not found in two weeks, at which point a desperate Jeffrey BlitzJeffrey BlitzJeffrey Blitz is an American film director, producer and screenwriter from Ridgewood, New Jersey. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his 2002 documentary, Spellbound and he won the Dramatic Directing Prize at the Sundance Film Festival for his 2007 film, Rocket Science.Blitz won the 2009...
watched all of the unsolicited audition tapes that he had been sent and "knew immediately we had a promising candidate" when he saw Thompson's tape. Although a casting call was originally posted for a teenage boy aged 13–18 who had a stutter and could also act, Thompson had previously been taught how to stutter. However Blitz wanted Hal to stutter in a different style, knowing he was going to block up on a particular word and looking for ways to work round it. Before filming, Thompson was taught this specific style by a speech pathologist.
- Anna KendrickAnna KendrickAnna Kendrick is an American film and stage actress best known for the role of Natalie Keener in the 2009 film Up in the Air. Her other work includes the films Camp , Rocket Science , Scott Pilgrim vs. the World , 50/50 , and the Broadway musical High Society...
plays Ginny Ryerson, the ambitious and competitive star of the Plainsboro High School debate team. Anna Kendrick was one of the first cast members to sign on to the film. Blitz recalls writing "Anna Kendrick is Ginny Ryerson" after her audition and, after auditioning many other girls, she was cast. To prepare for her role, Kendrick learned the typical debating strategy of "spreading", a rapid-fire delivery used in order to present as much evidence and information as possible within a time limit. Kendrick and Nicholas D'Agosto studied with a college debate coach and also viewed a live high school debate. Ginny's comment "I upped your game, little man" was inserted into the script by Blitz from a journal which he asked Kendrick to write in character.
- Nicholas D'AgostoNicholas D'Agosto- Early life :D'Agosto was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Deanna Rae and Alen D'Agosto, who own several Arby's in Omaha. His father is Italian and his mother is of Dutch and English descent. He was raised Catholic and selected Genesius of Rome, the patron saint of actors, as his confirmation...
plays Ben Wekselbaum, Ginny's former debate partner who dropped out of high school to work at a dry cleaner's after falling silent midspeech and losing the championship trophy. "Nick takes his work very seriously—it's an approach that's very much like Ben, in my mind," said Blitz of D'Agosto, calling his performance "just right". D'Agosto joked about his being cast as a high school student, having been cast as a student previously in ElectionElection (1999 film)Election is a 1999 American comedy film adapted from a 1998 novel of the same title by Tom Perrotta. The plot revolves around a three-way election race in high school, and satirizes both suburban high school life and politics...
, which was released eight years before Rocket Science, in 1999. Like Kendrick, D'Agosto had to learn a number of debating techniques to prepare for his role.
- Vincent PiazzaVincent PiazzaVincent Piazza is an American film, television and stage actor best known for his roles in the television series Boardwalk Empire and the 2007 film Rocket Science.- Biography :...
plays Earl Hefner, Hal's obsessive-compulsiveObsessive-compulsive disorderObsessive–compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce uneasiness, apprehension, fear, or worry, by repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the associated anxiety, or by a combination of such obsessions and compulsions...
, kleptomaniaKleptomaniaKleptomania is an irresistible urge to steal items of trivial value. People with this disorder are compelled to steal things, generally, but not limited to, objects of little or no significant value, such as pens, paper clips, paper and tape...
cal older brother. Vincent Piazza was studying at the New York acting school where Rocket Science casting sessions were being held; he decided to audition and was one of the first actors to be cast. When he first auditioned, he spoke with a lispLispA lisp is a speech impediment, historically also known as sigmatism. Stereotypically, people with a lisp are unable to pronounce sibilants , and replace them with interdentals , though there are actually several kinds of lisp...
, said Blitz: "I eventually decided to do away with the lisp—one major speech impediment per family is plenty—but kept many of the rest of the choices Vince brought to Earl." Blitz cited Piazza's portrayal of Earl as an example of "the strong choices that actors make in interpreting their character".
- Aaron YooAaron Yoo-Personal life:Aaron Yoo was born in East Brunswick Township, New Jersey to Korean parents. He has an older sister. He played the cello for the East Brunswick High School orchestra and ran track...
plays Heston, Hal and Earl's bi-curiousBi-curiousBi-curious is a term used to refer to people of a heterosexual or homosexual identity who, while showing some curiosity for a relationship or sexual activity with a person of the sex they do not favor, distinguish themselves from the bisexual label. The term is sometimes used to describe a broad...
school friend who ends up joining Hal in the debate team. "Aaron made Heston almost an alien among the kids of New Jersey. He's never quite connected to the scene but he's always aware of it," said Blitz about Yoo's performance as Heston. He says Yoo was cast because of the "dramatic decisions" he brought to Heston's portrayal "from the start".
- Josh Kay plays Lewis Garrles, an eleven-year-old boy whom Hal befriends while loitering in the street outside Ginny's house. Blitz was pleased with Kay's original audition: "When Josh Kay came in to audition in New York, it was instantly obvious that he was perfect: smart, deadpanDeadpanDeadpan is a form of comic delivery in which humor is presented without a change in emotion or body language, usually speaking in a casual, monotone, solemn, blunt, disgusted or matter-of-fact voice and expressing an unflappably calm, archly insincere or artificially grave demeanor...
and with a natural ability to either nail the timing of the lines himself or mimic my reading to him."
- Denis O'HareDenis O'HareDenis O'Hare is an American actor noted for his award winning performances in Take Me Out and Sweet Charity as well as the HBO television show True Blood. He is also known for his supporting roles in the films Charlie Wilson's War and Milk...
plays Doyle Hefner, Hal's father who walks out on the family abruptly, following an argument with his wife about suitcases. Denis O'Hare originally auditioned in 2005 for an alternate role, and, describing O'Hare as a "must-have", Blitz had him re-audition at a different session in the role of Doyle. Because of scheduling conflicts, O'Hare was only available for filming on two days of production: the first day and the last, filming one of the first scenes of the film and also the final scene.
- Maury Ginsberg plays Mr. Lewinsky, Hal's vain speech therapistSpeech and language pathologySpeech-Language Pathology specializes in communication disorders.The main components of speech production include: phonation, the process of sound production; resonance, opening and closing of the vocal folds; intonation, the variation of pitch; and voice, including aeromechanical components of...
who offers no successful advice. The character was based on Blitz's own experiences as a youth with many well-meaning but mostly ineffective therapists when he sought treatments to his stutter.
- Jonah HillJonah HillJonah Hill Feldstein , known professionally as Jonah Hill, is an American actor, producer, screenwriter, and comedian. Hill is best known roles for his roles in Superbad, Knocked Up, and Get Him to the Greek. He made his theatrical debut in I Heart Huckabees, alongside Jason Schwartzman and Dustin...
plays the Junior Philosopher, a teenager Hal meets in the library while studying for the policy debatePolicy debatePolicy debate is a form of speech competition in which teams of two advocate for and against a resolution that typically calls for policy change by the United States federal government or security discourse...
with Ginny. Hill had initially auditioned for another role in the film, but was unavailable as he was shooting another film at the same time. Blitz was keen to have him appear, though, and so wrote him a small role as the Junior Philosopher, appearing in only two scenes.
- Dan CashmanDan CashmanDan Cashman is an American television and television film actor.Cashman has narrated a total 14 of the audio books for Books on Tape, Inc. Some of books narrated are Murdering Mr...
voices the narrator. Blitz chose to use an third-person narrative narrator to juxtapose Hal, a character with no voice, with a character who is "nothing but a disembodied voice, a purely articulate voice", showing "the gulf between who Hal is and who he wishes to be".
Blitz and the film's producers considered having celebrity cameos
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...
in Hal's parents' roles, though he decided that cameos would draw away from the film as the celebrities would not be "onscreen long enough for them to become someone other than the celebrity". In between shooting the film and its release, Hill became a well-known celebrity with the films Knocked Up
Knocked Up
Knocked Up is a 2007 American romantic comedy drama film co-produced, written, and directed by Judd Apatow. Starring Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Paul Rudd, and Leslie Mann, the film follows the repercussions of a drunken one-night stand between Rogen's slacker character and Heigl's just-promoted...
and Superbad; Blitz describes being "bummed about that" because of his reluctance to feature celebrities.
Themes
Film critic Justin Chang, writing for VarietyVariety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
, summarized the film as "eloquent about love, self-realization and adolescent angst". The main theme addressed in Rocket Science is Hal's coming of age
Coming of age
Coming of age is a young person's transition from childhood to adulthood. The age at which this transition takes place varies in society, as does the nature of the transition. It can be a simple legal convention or can be part of a ritual, as practiced by many societies...
, which is portrayed both by his understanding of love and finding his voice. The film takes its title from Hal's closing quote that understanding life and love "shouldn't be rocket science".
Blitz described Hal as "lost in the mystery of love" and he "loved the idea that a kid who is lost when he's confronted by love and sex would be saddled with the name Hal Hefner", an homage to Playboy
Playboy Enterprises
Playboy Enterprises, Inc. is a privately held global media and lifestyle company founded by Hugh Marston Hefner to manage the Playboy magazine empire. Its programming and content are available worldwide on television networks, Websites, mobile platforms and radio...
founder Hugh Hefner
Hugh Hefner
Hugh Marston "Hef" Hefner is an American magazine publisher, founder and Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises.-Early life:...
. Throughout the film, Hal is seen to be surrounded by sex and relationships—titlecards for the seasons of the year are placed over images of kissing students; Hal listens to his mother having intercourse
Sexual intercourse
Sexual intercourse, also known as copulation or coitus, commonly refers to the act in which a male's penis enters a female's vagina for the purposes of sexual pleasure or reproduction. The entities may be of opposite sexes, or they may be hermaphroditic, as is the case with snails...
with her new boyfriend; his friend Lewis shows Hal images from the Kama Sutra
Kama Sutra
The Kama Sutra is an ancient Indian Hindu text widely considered to be the standard work on human sexual behavior in Sanskrit literature written by Vātsyāyana. A portion of the work consists of practical advice on sexual intercourse. It is largely in prose, with many inserted anustubh poetry verses...
; while Lewis's parents attempt to mend their relationship through music therapy
Music therapy
Music therapy is an allied health profession and one of the expressive therapies, consisting of an interpersonal process in which a trained music therapist uses music and all of its facets—physical, emotional, mental, social, aesthetic, and spiritual—to help clients to improve or maintain their...
—but the adults in the film were written to be similarly confused and frustrated with love. "In a world where all the children are trying so hard to be like adults", according to Stylus
Stylus Magazine
Stylus Magazine was an online music and film magazine launched in 2002. It featured long-form music journalism, four daily music reviews, movie reviews, a number of different podcasts, an MP3 blog, and a text blog....
Yannick LeJacq, "the adults are all sullenly try[ing] to reenact their childhood, taking every chance to ignore their children and savor the meaningless void of leisure time."
Blitz believed that Hal's stuttering was a metaphor for his lack of mastery of life and love: "He can't control this thing that ought to be so simple ... And so much of his life is like that." Journalist Mark Baumer highlighted the juxtaposition of Hal with the fast-talking debaters, who are at opposite ends of the spectrum with their speech but are both struggling with communication and expression. Blitz said that "Even when [the children] can speak incredibly fast and are packing their sentences with tons of SAT
SAT
The SAT Reasoning Test is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. The SAT is owned, published, and developed by the College Board, a nonprofit organization in the United States. It was formerly developed, published, and scored by the Educational Testing Service which still...
words, they still don't know exactly what they're talking about. There is still a question about whether their content of what they're talking about matches up with what they're feeling or trying to express. Whether it's the kid who's talking a million miles an hour, but saying nothing or the kid who isn't able to get out any word at all they're both at the mercy of not knowing how to express what's inside them."
Conception
| "I see the arc that takes me from Spellbound to Rocket Science but I think you could see Rocket Science and not feel like there was any connection with Spellbound. In some ways, it's the anti-Spellbound. Because Spellbound has a kind of dramatic arc that it stays faithful to, whereas Rocket Science really goes out of its way to sloth off that arc." |
| —Jeffrey Blitz, writer/director |
After the success of his 2002 documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
Spellbound, Jeffrey Blitz
Jeffrey Blitz
Jeffrey Blitz is an American film director, producer and screenwriter from Ridgewood, New Jersey. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his 2002 documentary, Spellbound and he won the Dramatic Directing Prize at the Sundance Film Festival for his 2007 film, Rocket Science.Blitz won the 2009...
was encouraged by his agents to write fiction because of the larger revenue brought in by fiction films. Blitz began to piece together a story that had come to him while he had been filming Spellbound: "I kept thinking, what if we met a kid that was just an amazing lover of words? What if we met a kid that was lured into the spelling bee because he was in love with a girl?" He had compiled a mental list of characters who he expected to encounter while making Spellbound, several of whom eventually became Rocket Science characters. Despite claiming to be "allergic" to autobiographical films, he was persuaded by HBO
HBO Films
HBO Films is a division of the cable television network HBO that produces feature films and miniseries. While much of HBO Films' output is created directly for the television market, such as the film Witness Protection and the mini-series Band of Brothers, Pacific, Generation Kill and Angels in...
executive Maud Nadler to write a screenplay based on his own adolescence when he told her that, as a teenager, he joined his school's debate team to try and overcome his stutter. He says that he is uninterested in teen film
Teen film
Teen films is a film genre targeted at teenagers and young adults in which the plot is based upon the special interests of teenagers, such as coming of age, first love, rebellion, conflict with parents, teen angst, and alienation...
s, so "the only way I was going to do a teen movie is if I felt like I could try to be more honest about what the actual experience of being a teenager is like." He was aware of the clichés in teen films, so "tried to undo them without wrecking them". Blitz wrote the script "off and on" over a year in between stints of commercial directing. He cites directors Hal Ashby
Hal Ashby
Hal Ashby was an American film director and film editor.-Birth and early years:Born William Hal Ashby in Ogden, Utah, Ashby grew up in a Mormon household and had a tumultuous childhood as part of a dysfunctional family which included the divorce of his parents, his father's suicide and his...
and Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
as his greatest influences with their absurdist comedies, though critics have suggested influence from Gary Larson
Gary Larson
Gary Larson is the creator of The Far Side, a single-panel cartoon series that was syndicated internationally to newspapers for 15 years. The series ended with Larson's retirement on January 1, 1995. His 23 books of collected cartoons have combined sales of more than 45 million...
, Alexander Payne
Alexander Payne
Alexander Payne, born Alexander Constantine Papadopoulos is an American film director and screenwriter. His films are noted for their dark humor and satirical depictions of contemporary American society.- Early life :...
, Mike Nichols
Mike Nichols
Mike Nichols is a German-born American television, stage and film director, writer, producer and comedian. He began his career in the 1950s as one half of the comedy duo Nichols and May, along with Elaine May. In 1968 he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Graduate...
and Wes Anderson
Wes Anderson
Wesley Wales Anderson is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer of features, short films and commercials....
—the latter despite Blitz specifically saying, "I did not want a Wes Andersen snowglobe artificial world."
Ridgewood, New Jersey
Ridgewood is a village in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the village population was 24,958. Ridgewood is an affluent suburban bedroom community of New York City, located approximately northwest of Midtown Manhattan.The Village of Ridgewood was...
, he chose to set the narrative in Plainsboro, New Jersey—a place he has never visited—because it was closer to Trenton
Trenton, New Jersey
Trenton is the capital of the U.S. state of New Jersey and the county seat of Mercer County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Trenton had a population of 84,913...
, rather than New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. He found it humorous that the characters referred to Trenton as the "Big City" and that Plainsboro seemed to orbit around a dead city, Trenton, in comparison to New York.
Design
Blitz hired BelgianBelgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
Jo Willems as the cinematographer
Cinematographer
A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...
, having collaborated previously on commercials. Blitz admired Willems' "European sensibility about shooting" and wanted to use his aesthetic to "tell a story that was equal parts deadpan and suggestive of the 'real' world". In creating a "look" for the film, he said that he relied upon "almost opposite impulses"—to tell the story intimately but also carry the comedy. Through the film, he used lighting and art direction that felt real, while framing the shots to come across as deadpan. Production designer
Production designer
In film and television, a production designer is the person responsible for the overall look of a filmed event such as films, TV programs, music videos or adverts. Production designers have one of the key creative roles in the creation of motion pictures and television. Working directly with the...
Rick Butler chose bland, simple furniture and commonplace houses and cars to give the film a sense of timelessness and familiarity. The color palette in both production and costume design
Costume design
Costume design is the fabrication of apparel for the overall appearance of a character or performer. This usually involves researching, designing and building the actual items from conception. Costumes may be for a theater or cinema performance but may not be limited to such...
was drab and ordinary to give a deadpan undertone. Blitz was most inspired by the cinematography and production design of Hal Ashby's films: "I watched his films again and again ... He has a masterful blending of absurd comedy and naturalism."
Filming
The night before filming began, Blitz took Thompson, Piazza and Yoo to dinner, insisting that they stay in character. Thompson, as Hal, was unable to tell the waitress what he wanted to order; Piazza, as Earl, obsessive-compulsivelyObsessive-compulsive disorder
Obsessive–compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce uneasiness, apprehension, fear, or worry, by repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the associated anxiety, or by a combination of such obsessions and compulsions...
asked the waitress for a fresh straw each time she passed; and Yoo, as Heston, could not decide what to order and had the waitress explain the menu repeatedly. The purpose of the evening, according to Blitz, was for the actors to "be comfortable around each other inhabiting their roles without self-consciousness", as each of their roles required them to act in potentially embarrassing ways.
Principal photography began in Baltimore, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
on the week beginning July 18, 2005, the project receiving a tax rebate as part of Baltimore's Employer Wage Rebate Program for filmmakers. The film was shot on a 30-day schedule with an overall budget of $4.5 million. Blitz chose to film in Maryland, as its child labour laws are much less restrictive than those of New Jersey, where the film is set. This was important because Reece Thompson, who was sixteen years old at the time, appears in almost every scene. While Baltimore stood in for Plainsboro, New Jersey, scenes set in Trenton, New Jersey
Trenton, New Jersey
Trenton is the capital of the U.S. state of New Jersey and the county seat of Mercer County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Trenton had a population of 84,913...
were filmed on location, including shots of the Lower Trenton Bridge
Lower Trenton Bridge
The Lower Trenton Toll Supported Bridge, commonly called the Lower Free Bridge, Warren Street Bridge or Trenton Makes Bridge, is a two-lane through truss bridge over the Delaware River between Trenton, New Jersey and Morrisville, Pennsylvania, owned by the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission...
over the Delaware River
Delaware River
The Delaware River is a major river on the Atlantic coast of the United States.A Dutch expedition led by Henry Hudson in 1609 first mapped the river. The river was christened the South River in the New Netherland colony that followed, in contrast to the North River, as the Hudson River was then...
. The final scenes of the film took place on a boardwalk at the Jersey Shore
Jersey Shore
The Jersey Shore is a term used to refer to both the Atlantic coast of the U.S. state of New Jersey and the adjacent resort and residential communities. . The New Jersey State Department of Tourism considers the Shore Region, Greater Atlantic City, and the Southern Shore to be distinct, each having...
with the shoot concluding at 5 am. While filming, Blitz sometimes used hand gestures from the director's chair instead of yelling "cut" because of his stutter.
Score and soundtrack
Jeffrey Blitz wanted the film's music to be "sweet and a touch melancholy and just a step out of rhythm", demonstrating Hal's sense of himself in the world, and to express his teenage angst while "maintain[ing] an underlying sweetness". While writing the Rocket Science script, Blitz had been listening to indie rockIndie rock
Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrrl and emo, among others...
band Clem Snide
Clem Snide
Clem Snide is an alt-country band featuring Eef Barzelay , Brendan Fitzpatrick and Ben Martin .-History:"Clem Snide" is a character in several novels by William S. Burroughs, including Naked Lunch, The Ticket That Exploded, and Exterminator!...
's music and suggested the use of their music on the soundtrack
Soundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
to the HBO executive producers. He contacted Clem Snide's lead singer Eef Barzelay
Eef Barzelay
Ifar "Eef" Barzelay is an American musician, born in Tel Aviv, Israel on May 12, 1970. Most notably known as the principal songwriter and singer of alt country band Clem Snide, he has performed in a number of Boston-based bands, as well as toured as a solo act, both as headliner and as...
to use some of the band's songs, but Barzelay says "it just made more sense for me to write original instrumental music", and composed the incidental score
Incidental music
Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack"....
himself. When choosing instruments, he tried to create sounds that would match Hal's awkwardness. "I had this little ukulele
Ukulele
The ukulele, ; from ; it is a subset of the guitar family of instruments, generally with four nylon or gut strings or four courses of strings....
that I never played ... And Jeffrey [Blitz] had gotten a little bee in his bonnet about the accordion
Accordion
The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....
... and then at one point I started using a kazoo
Kazoo
The kazoo is a wind instrument which adds a "buzzing" timbral quality to a player's voice when the player vocalizes into it. The kazoo is a type of mirliton, which is a membranophone, a device which modifies the sound of a person's voice by way of a vibrating membrane."Kazoo" was the name given by...
." One of his original songs, "I Love the Unknown", was chosen from the 1999 album Your Favorite Music
Your Favorite Music
Your Favorite Music is the second album by indie rock band Clem Snide. The album was originally released as their major-label debut by Sire Records, but the label dropped them prior to the release...
.
Blitz also chose to use the Violent Femmes
Violent Femmes
Violent Femmes were an American alternative rock band from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, initially active between 1980 and 1987 and again from 1988 to 2009...
' songs "Blister in the Sun
Blister in the Sun
"Blister in the Sun" is a song by the American alternative rock band Violent Femmes, originally released on their 1983 self-titled debut album. It has also been covered by Nouvelle Vague, on their 2009 album 3. This version was used in an episode Gossip Girl.In August 2007, Gordon Gano was the...
", "Kiss Off", and a cover version of "Add It Up
Add It Up
"Add It Up" is a song by American rock band Violent Femmes, released on their 1983 debut album Violent Femmes.It contains the lyrics:Some radio stations substitute a guitar note for the swear word for airplay.-Use in film:...
". The Violent Femmes' songs were chosen for the film by Blitz before filming had begun as he believed that they expressed "the rage of love gone wrong better than any band out there", and they allowed their songs to be used in the film after reading the script. Blitz thought that the Violent Femmes suggested "both [Hal's] anger and the humor all around it".
Rating
When reviewed by the Motion Picture Association of AmericaMotion Picture Association of America
The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. , originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America , was founded in 1922 and is designed to advance the business interests of its members...
, Rocket Science was rated R for strong sexual language, brief sex, brief nudity, some violence and a scene depicting teen drinking. Jeffrey Blitz described the decision as "mind boggling" and "ludicrous"; he claimed that the images of Kama Sutra
Kama Sutra
The Kama Sutra is an ancient Indian Hindu text widely considered to be the standard work on human sexual behavior in Sanskrit literature written by Vātsyāyana. A portion of the work consists of practical advice on sexual intercourse. It is largely in prose, with many inserted anustubh poetry verses...
seen briefly in the film were "antique Indian paintings" and that the teenagers' discussion of blow jobs
Fellatio
Fellatio is an act of oral stimulation of a male's penis by a sexual partner. It involves the stimulation of the penis by the use of the mouth, tongue, or throat. The person who performs fellatio can be referred to as the giving partner, and the other person is the receiving partner...
was harmless as they had clearly never engaged in fellatio themselves. He criticized the MPAA for its PG-13 rating of Live Free or Die Hard
Live Free or Die Hard
Live Free or Die Hard , is a 2007 American action film, and the fourth installment in the Die Hard series. The film was directed by Len Wiseman and stars Bruce Willis as John McClane. The name was adapted from the state motto of New Hampshire, "Live Free or Die"...
(also released in 2007), which involves "a girl getting groped at the beginning, all sorts of cursing, gigantic body count, just completely fucking crazy." Other questionable elements were altered during production, including a more graphical male beefcake
Beefcake
Beefcake is a term denoting the use of nude or semi-nude male bodies. It can refer to a genre or a person. It often is used to denote male sexual attractiveness stemming from physical build but the definition has expanded to include anyone interested in physical fitness, bodybuilding and weight...
calendar shown to Hal by Heston.
Theatrical release
The world premiere of Rocket Science was held on January 19, 2007 at the Sundance Film FestivalSundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
. The film was subsequently screened at the European Film Market, U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, AFI Dallas International Film Festival, Philadelphia Film Festival
Philadelphia Film Festival
The Philadelphia Film Festival is held annually in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Until 2009 it was generally held during the first weeks of April....
, Atlanta Film Festival
Atlanta Film Festival
The Atlanta Film Festival is an Academy Award qualifying, international film festival held in Atlanta, Georgia. Started in 1976 and occurring every April, the festival shows a diverse range of independent films, including genre films such as horror and sci-fi...
, San Francisco International Film Festival
San Francisco International Film Festival
San Francisco International Film Festival is the oldest continuously running film festival in the Americas. Organized by the San Francisco Film Society, the International is held each spring for two weeks, presenting an average of 150 films from over 50 countries...
, Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
, Maui Film Festival
Maui Film Festival
The Maui Film Festival is a film festival held annually on the island of Maui, Hawaii.-External links:*...
, Provincetown International Film Festival
Provincetown International Film Festival
The Provincetown International Film Festival is an annual film festival founded in 1999 and held in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The festival presents a wide array of American and international narrative features, documentaries and short films for five days in June of each year.With panel...
, Nantucket Film Festival
Nantucket Film Festival
The Nantucket Film Festival is a film festival founded in 1996 to promote the cultural awareness and appreciation of the art of screenwriting in the world of cinema. Nantucket Film Festival screens a world-class program of independent, studio-produced, foreign, documentary, and short films in every...
, and Edinburgh International Film Festival
Edinburgh International Film Festival
The Edinburgh International Film Festival is an annual fortnight of cinema screenings and related events taking place each June. Established in 1947, it is the world's oldest continually running film festival...
before its theatrical release on August 10, 2007.
Rocket Science had a limited theatrical release
Limited release
Limited release is a term in the American motion picture industry for a motion picture that is playing in a select few theaters across the country ....
in the United States, initially playing only in selected theaters in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
. In its debut week beginning August 10, it was the week's second highest-grossing independent film after 2 Days in Paris
2 Days in Paris
2 Days in Paris is a 2007 French-German romantic drama film written, produced, and directed by Julie Delpy, who also edited the film and composed the soundtrack.-Plot:...
, earning US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
58,536 across six screens with a per-screen average of $9,756. The following week, the film expanded to 40 screens but fell to a per-screen average of $2,930. In its third week, it earned a per-screen average of $1,998 from 59 different theaters, placing 22nd on the list of highest-grossing independent films with a cumulative total of $389,261. Rocket Science ended its theatrical run with a total domestic gross of US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
714,943 and a foreign gross of $40,831, a worldwide total of $755,774. It placed 258th for the highest-grossing films of 2007 and 104th for the year's R-rated films.
Home media
Rocket Science was released on DVD on January 29, 2008 in Region 1DVD region code
DVD region codes are a digital-rights management technique designed to allow film distributors to control aspects of a release, including content, release date, and price, according to the region...
and February 4, 2008 in Region 2. The single-disc volume includes two additional featurettes: "The Making of Rocket Science" and a music video
Music video
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...
for "I Love the Unknown" performed by Eef Barzelay
Eef Barzelay
Ifar "Eef" Barzelay is an American musician, born in Tel Aviv, Israel on May 12, 1970. Most notably known as the principal songwriter and singer of alt country band Clem Snide, he has performed in a number of Boston-based bands, as well as toured as a solo act, both as headliner and as...
, featuring various clips from the film.
Critical reception
Review aggregatorReview aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services . This system stores the reviews and then uses them for purposes such as: creating a website for users to view the reviews, selling information to third parties about consumer tendencies and creating databases for...
website Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
reported that 83% of 101 collected reviews for Rocket Science were positive, with an average
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
score of 6.9/10. At Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, which assigns a normalized
Standard score
In statistics, a standard score indicates how many standard deviations an observation or datum is above or below the mean. It is a dimensionless quantity derived by subtracting the population mean from an individual raw score and then dividing the difference by the population standard deviation...
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 73 based on 28 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
critic Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, praising Thompson and Kendrick's performances and the film's honesty and plausibility. He suspected that "a lot of high school students will recognize elements of real life in the movie." Bruce Feld of Film Journal International
Film Journal International
Film Journal International is a motion-picture industry trade magazine published by the American company Prometheus Global Media. It is a sister publication of Adweek, Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, and other periodicals....
agreed, calling the film a "dead-on revelation of what high school is really like". Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
magazine's Justin Chang thought that Blitz displayed a "terrific ability to embrace people's idiosyncrasies, real or fictitious" and called the cast a "strong ensemble", commending Thompson, Kendrick and D'Agosto in particular. The San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
Stephen Holden
Stephen Holden is an American writer, music critic, film critic, and poet.Holden earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University in 1963...
, however, writing for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, believed that the final scenes were a "[sure] sign of the movie's integrity". TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
Desson Thomson
Desson Patrick Thomson is a speechwriter in the Obama Administration and a former movie critic for The Washington Post.-Biography:Thomson attended boarding schools in England from the age of 7 until 17. He went to the Abbey School in East Grinstead, Sussex, and the City of London Freemen's School...
of The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
praised Blitz for straying from common stereotypes and "opt[ing] for deeper, darker and wittier developments".
Other reviews were less positive. Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman is an American film critic for Entertainment Weekly, a position he has held since the magazine's launch in 1990. From 1981–89, he worked at the Boston Phoenix....
of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
graded Rocket Science as a C
Grade (education)
Grades are standardized measurements of varying levels of comprehension within a subject area. Grades can be assigned in letters , as a range , as a number out of a possible total , as descriptors , in percentages, or, as is common in some post-secondary...
, calling the film "one of those terminally annoying, depressive-yet-coy Sundance
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
faves in which the tale of a mopey teen misfit unfolds behind a hard candy shell of irony". David Cornelius of DVD Talk
DVD Talk
DVD Talk is a website for DVD enthusiasts founded in January 1999 by Geoffrey Kleinman when DVDs and DVD players were first beginning to hit the market.The site started as an online forum, an email newsletter, and a page of DVD news and reviews...
criticized the film's phoniness and deliberate quirkiness. He was impressed by Thompson's portrayal of Hal, "bursting with authenticity", but wrote that the supporting characters "never have the chance to ring true" in a cast "overflowing with unnecessary hokey colorfulness". Online film critic for ReelViews James Berardinelli
James Berardinelli
James Berardinelli is an American online film critic.-Personal life:Berardinelli was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey and spent his early childhood in Morristown, New Jersey. At the age of nine years, he relocated to the township of Cherry Hill, New Jersey...
called the film "moderately uplifting but not especially memorable" and claimed that "the problem with Rocket Science is that the character at the center of the drama isn't very energetic or, truth be told, interesting." The Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
Michael Phillips (critic)
Michael Phillips is a film critic for the Chicago Tribune newspaper. Previously he was the drama critic of the Tribune; the Los Angeles Times; the St. Paul Pioneer Press; the San Diego Union-Tribune; and the Dallas Times Herald....
, who gave the film 2.5 out of 4 stars, felt that it "doesn't quite work" and "the spark goes out of the writing" when Hal seeks out Ben in Trenton.
Accolades
Rocket Science was nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards, in the categories of "Best First FeatureIndependent Spirit Award for Best First Feature
The Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature is one of the annual Independent Spirit Awards. It is usually given to the director and producer . The "first feature" designation is applied to the director not the producer...
", "Best First Screenplay
Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay
The Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay is one of the annual awards given by Film Independent, a non-profit organization dedicated to independent film and independent filmmakers.-1990s:1994*David O...
" (Jeffrey Blitz) and "Best Supporting Female" (Anna Kendrick), but failed to win any. At the Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
, Blitz won the Dramatic Directing Award and the film was nominated for the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize. The film's DVD trailer was also nominated at the Golden Trailer Awards
Golden Trailer Awards
The Golden Trailer Awards is an annual awards show that honors achievements in motion picture marketing, including film trailers, posters and television advertisements.- Overview :...
for the "Best In-Theater Advertising" and "Best Music".