Jacob Buehler’s Day Off
A parody of the hit movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, “Jacob Buehler’s Day Off” features Jacob Buehler ’19 re-enacting the role of Ferris Bueller. Written by Darius Lam ’17 and Alex Davenport ’17 and directed by Isaiah Lee ’19, the film opens with Buehler deciding to skip school, much like the original movie. After hacking into the Rebecca M. Sykes Wellness Center to delete his unexcused absences, he meets up with his friend Nathan Goldthwaite ’18, who also skips school, and they run around campus pulling fire alarms and playing on playgrounds much too small for them.
“We knew we wanted to have Jacob as our starting actor and the play off his name came naturally. There was no deep reasoning for the idea. It was a rather silly idea that made me laugh so Darius and I ran with it. I thought that the opening scene was flawless. It was way better than I ever imagined it being. It had me in stitches. When I wrote that bit I never expected them to actually put him in the shower and I’m so glad they did,” said Davenport.
Le Tour de Andover
Written by Ina Megalli ’19 and Piper Winkler ’17 and directed by Julian Baz ’20 and Will Yun ’20, “Le Tour de Andover” follows two tour guides, Zar Cordova-Potter ’20 and Sam Katz ’19, who are assigned the same prospective student Lena, played by Victoria Lopez ’20. During the tour, the two continuously bicker about past arguments. As they are distracted from the tour, Cordova-Potter and Katz fail to see Lopez slip out, and they face possible dismissal as tour guides for their disrespectful behavior. In the end, the tour guides reconcile their relationship and run into Lopez, only to find she has been chosen as an editor for The Phillipian and needs to write an exposé on the 4×5 schedule.
“My co-writer and dear friend Ina Megalli came up with the concept of the dueling tour guides, and having worked in Admissions, I thought it would be really fun to write a sort of parody of a run-of-the-mill admissions tour. The actors really captured the ‘parody’ feeling that we tried to write into the script. We were very impressed!” said Winkler.
Handy
“Handy” was written by Jihoun Im ’17, Kelly Sheng ’17, and Richard Zhong ’17 and directed by Sithya Lach ’17. Featuring Nick Demetroulakous ’19 as himself and Katherine Wang ’17 as God, the film opens with Demetroulakous trying to sleep in Sykes before noticing a light under a door. Teleported to the woods, he is approached by Wang who gives him several challenges. Demetroulakous fails all challenges in his stupor before Wang gives up and Demetroulakous is left to rest.
“There was this scene where me and Andrew [Lin ’17], [who made a cameo appearance], are spinning around the camera, and it was a lot harder to film than we expected because our director was really small, and she had to crouch in underneath the camera and twist it around while we spun in the opposite direction, but what would happen is one of us would go a lot faster than the other, so we would start drifting over, and we almost clotheslined the camera a couple of times which would’ve been bad because it would’ve broke. It was really funny,” said Demetroulakous.
Day with Andover
Paralleled to this past weekend’s Day with Andover, Andrew Stern ’19 and Masho Jmukhadze ’18 co-directed “Day With Andover,” an improvisational film, without any prior preparations. Starring Junah Jang ’20 as a two-time Exeter legacy and Tyler Rynne ’18 as Head of School John Palfrey, Jang comes to Andover to interview and tour the campus, but she mostly just berates the school and tries to prove her superiority to Rynne. The directors used real prospective students and Director of Admissions, Jill Thompson, to create more realistic conversation.
“Our interviewer, Jill Thompson, was definitely the highlight of shooting that. She had all these really genuine reactions since she was giving a real interview of sorts, so when Junah’s character talked about how she was planning on dropping out her upper year, that created these great awkward silences and improvised moments for both of them, and that’s really what made the film,” said Stern.
Editor’s Note: Tyler Rynne ’18 is a Photography Associate Editor for The Phillipian.
