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| Images courtesy of Columbia Pictures |
The Blues Brothers casting
director Lisa Gottlieb made her debut feature film in 1985 with the cult teen
comedy Just One of the Guys, a modern day transposition of William
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night into the high school arena. One of many adaptations over the years
including but not limited to Shakespeare in Love, Wicker Park and
She’s the Man, though it would right on the crest wave of the John
Hughes teen brat pack picture following The Breakfast Club it
unfortunately got lost in the shuffle.
Thanks however to the rising popularity of actress Sherilyn Fenn in the
David Lynch television show Twin Peaks, Gottlieb’s film saw numerous
rentals over the years before becoming a recurring Comedy Central
favorite. With the Shakespearean
characters and dialogue updated from fifteenth century Balkans to contemporary
American high school, Gottlieb’s film sits nicely alongside Gil Junger’s 10
Things I Hate About You which also moved Shakespeare’s The Taming of the
Shrew into the high school setting.
Terri Griffith (former The Hollywood Knights actress
turned screenwriter Joyce Hyser) is an aspiring Phoenix, Arizona based journalism
student in high school trying to submit to a professional internship but her sexist
middle-aged male teachers balk at her writing talents based on her good
looks. Living with her horny younger
virgin brother Buddy (Billy Jacoby) whose walls are adorned with pornographic
pinups begging the question how this film at the time got away with a PG
rating, Terri hatches a plan while their parents are out of town on a Caribbean
vacation: she will reenlist in high school posing as an androgynous teenage boy
named Terry with her younger brother being the only other person aware of her
ruse. Very quickly she immerses herself in
the men’s world of locker rooms and hanging out with a meek but handsome
transfer student named Rick (Clayton Rohner), all the while fending off bullies
like Greg Tolan (Willam Zabka the villain from The Karate Kid) and the
romantic come-ons of classmate Sandy (Sherilyn Fenn).
A sweet natured female-driven teen romantic comedy with
elements of sex, androgyny, bisexual curiosity, gender politics and female
agency, the film with its hit soundtrack of needle drops and Bruce Springteen
posters hinting at Joyce Hyser’s then-ongoing romantic relations with the
musical giant is a wonderful but pointedly bawdy little flick with more than a
few meta leanings and connections. For
instance Joyce Hyser herself started out in performing and doing nudity
(including this film) before working her way up towards screenwriting,
meanwhile Lisa Gottlieb and her screenwriting partner Mitch Giannunzio were
both denied writing credits by the producer instead giving Dennis Feldman and
Jeff Franklin sole credit, pointing to very real gender discrimination going on
during the making of a film about gender discrimination. Rarely has a teen sex-oriented comedy with
proto-LGBTQ leanings had such a wise feminine attitude about navigating a male
dominated world since the works of Amy Heckerling with Fast Times at
Ridgemont High in characterizing the female high school experience.
Featuring a funky jazzy score by former The Blues
Brothers member Tom Scott and a serviceable if not understated visual palette
by recurring television cameraman John McPherson (sadly also behind Jaws the
Revenge), Just One of the Guys has the carefully coined look of the
John Hughes ‘Brat Pack’ film.
Performances from the cast of newcomers are good with Joyce Hyser doing
all of the heavy lifting from playing up her feminine assets including a bikini
scene to diving deep into the role of an androgynous young man who at times
feels like a cross between a greaser and an 80s New Wave performer. Playing off of her beautifully are Clayton
Rohner as the awkward but well-meaning transfer student and Billy Jacoby
channeling a kind of Corey Haim energy in his horndog younger brother. A little bit of meta casting and characterization
comes with William Zabka’s bully, curiously named Greg Tolan (related to the Citizen
Kane cinematographer?) while Sherilyn Fenn seems to be working out how to
eventually play Audrey Horne.
Though the film did okay at the box office, raking in around
$11 million or so in 1985, it more or less got lost in the Brat Pack shuffle
amid John Hughes and the aforementioned Amy Heckerling films. It also emerged at a curious time when the ratings
board was shifting and despite getting away with a PG the first time around, it
was rightly reevaluated and given a more appropriate PG-13. Thankfully following Comedy Central replays
over the years, it finally did achieve a kind of cult status as an overlooked
80s comic gem. Startlingly ahead of the
curve in terms of its insight into gender politics, navigating from the perspective
of a pretty young woman the sphere of male (if not chauvinistic) influence to
try and find her way into the world beyond good looks while tapping into the
curious New Wave fashion of the 1980s, Lisa Gottlieb’s film remains an
underrated riff on William Shakespeare that hasn’t quite attained the cult
following of 10 Things I Hate About You just yet but is well on its way
and clearly spoken of the same breath.
--Andrew Kotwicki
