PCU (film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
Question book-new.svg
 This article does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2008)
PCU

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Hart Bochner
Produced by Paul Schiff
Written by Adam Leff
Zak Penn
Starring Jeremy Piven
David Spade
Chris Young
Jon Favreau
Music by Steve Vai
Cinematography Reynaldo Villalobos
Editing by Nicholas C. Smith
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release date(s) April 29, 1994
Running time 79 min.
Country United States
Language English
Budget $9,000,000
For other meanings, see PCU.

PCU is a 1994 comedy film. The movie follows in the footsteps of Animal House, showing college life at the fictional Port Chester University.

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

The story involves preppy pre-freshman (pre-frosh) Tom Lawrence (Chris Young) who visits Port Chester University, a college where fraternities have been outlawed and political correctness is rampant on campus. The film makes heavy use of the political correctness movement as a comedy device. The initials PCU are an abbreviation for "Politically Correct University."

During his visit, Tom manages to make enemies with nearly every group of students on the campus. Getting caught in an infamous "meat tossing incident" (where tubs of raw meat were dropped on a group of animal rights protesters) angers the "cause-heads" (the name given to a group of students who jump from cause to cause protesting), and while taking a short cut through the computer lab, he trips over the power cords and accidentally crashes all the computers, angering all the people working on their thesis papers.

During his visit, Tom also gets in the middle of the war between "The Pit" and "Balls and Shaft", two rival groups on campus. The latter group (officially known as "The Order of Balls and Shaft") is a parody of the Skull and Bones secret society and conservative fraternities generally. Among its members is Rand McPherson (David Spade). Balls and Shaft members want the outlawed Greek system to return. Members of "The Pit", a party-frat which split from Balls and Shaft years ago, currently led by James "Droz" Andrews (Jeremy Piven), just want everyone to get along. The movie is in part about the battle between Droz and Rand.

Besides Balls and Shaft, the other great nemeses of The Pit are a radical feminist group on campus known as the Womynists, and the college president, Ms. Garcia-Thompson (Jessica Walter), who is obsessed with enforcing "sensitivity awareness" and multiculturalism to the point where she proposes that Bisexual Asian Studies should have its own building (ousting either mathematics or hockey). The Womynists' entire world view revolves around a paranoia about rape culture and all things phallic, and they are known to hold protests at parties chanting "hey hey, ho ho, this penis party's got to go!" Ms. Garcia-Thompson conspires with Balls and Shaft to get The Pit, their mutual nemesis, kicked off campus.

The Pit responds by throwing a party to raise funds to pay off their debts and keep their house. The Womynists take offense to The Pit's flyers advertising the party, and hold a protest outside. The party at first appears to be a failure. However, a series of unlikely events results in George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic performing at the party. Students begin streaming in and the party successfully raises the funds to keep the house. After Garcia-Thompson decides to throw The Pit off campus anyway, using the history of complaints against The Pit as her reason, the members of The Pit plot their ultimate revenge at an alumni gathering the next day. They succeed in provoking the other students into an impromptu protest (ironically using the collective chant "We're not gonna protest"), causing the Board of Trustees to fire Garcia-Thompson due to her inability to control the students.

[edit] Production

PCU was based on Wesleyan University, the alma mater of the screenplay's two writers, Adam Leff and Zak Penn. And, it was shot primarily there and on the campus of the University of Toronto. It also features buildings from other colleges, such as the Olin-Rice science building at Macalester College and the Rogers Communication Center at Ryerson University. In one scene, the building referred to as "the freshman dorms" is actually the Ontario Provincial Legislature.

Jeremy Piven noted that the actors weren't allowed to improvise at all, and he only got away with improvising the line "Dont be that guy". Piven also contracted malaria while shooting the movie and had to be rushed to the hospital. Since he also wasn't a smoker, Piven replaced regular cigarettes with those filled with ground up dried fruits. Also, the shirt Stivi Paskoski wears throughout the film for The House of Guitars is for an actual store of the same name in Rochester, NY.

Parliment Funkadelic was actually the third choice for the band at the party. Originally, the producers wanted Nirvana to play, but couldn't come up with the money the band requested. Also considered were the Goo Goo Dolls, but the producers raised concerns that the band wasn't well known, as it was prior to them coming to national fame, so the producers finally settled on P-Funk.

Ashley Judd and Steve Zahn both read for the roles of Samantha and Tom respectively.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Caine–Hackman Theory

In the film, a member of "The Pit" named Pigman bases his senior thesis on proving the "Caine–Hackman Theory", which states that there is a 100% statistical probability that at any given moment in time, a film starring either Michael Caine or Gene Hackman will be showing on television. He spends the majority of the film in an unbroken television-watching marathon, culminating when the movie A Bridge Too Far, which is the only film starring both Michael Caine and Gene Hackman, airs.

The "Caine–Hackman Theory" was later presented in a book by Roger Ebert, Ebert's Little Movie Glossary, listed among many other similarly satirical movie "rules".

[edit] Critical reception

The movie received mostly negative reviews. Roger Ebert said the movie "begins with a fantastic premise, but immediately loses faith in it."[1]

[edit] Media releases

There have been at least two releases of PCU for home viewing; a VHS copy in 1994, and much later a DVD in 2003. The DVD shows the film in full screen on one side and wide on the other, with either version available with commentary by director Hart Bochner or by actor Jeremy Piven.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Roger Ebert, "PCU", Roger Ebert], April 29, 1994

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCU_(film)"