Welcome to "Saturday Night at the Movies."

I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

Tonight's movie is the 2003 comedy "School of Rock," was directed by Richard Linklater from an original screenplay by Mike White.

"School of Rock" stars Jack Black, Joan Cusack, Mike White, and Sarah Silverman, with the supporting cast of young actors and musicians, notably, child actress and singer Miranda Cosgrove.

Dewey Finn is a guitarist with No Vacancy, a heavy metal rock group auditioning for a place in an upcoming battle of the bands.

A dyed in the wool metalhead, Dewey augments his guitar work with rockstar posturing, including an ill-advised stage dive into the crowd that brings No Vacancies' set to a sudden halt.

Back at the apartment he shares with his friend and former band mate, Ned Schneebly, Ned's girlfriend, Patty, berates Dewey as a loser who takes advantage of Ned's good nature while stiffing him on the rent.

She tells Dewey to take Ned as an example.

Ned has given up on his dreams of rock and roll to become a substitute teacher while working towards his teaching degree.

Ned reluctantly agrees with Patty's ultimatum that Dewey has to come up with the rent money he owes Ned or move out of the apartment.

When Dewey arrives for a rehearsal with his band, the other members tell him they're fed up with his stage attics and fire him.

Desperate for money, Dewey tries to sell some of his equipment with little success, but he then intercepts a call intended for Ned, offering him a long-term substitute teaching job at the prestigious Horace Green Prep School.

Dewey pretends to be Ned and accepts the job.

At the school, the uptight principal, Rosalie Mullins, introduces Dewey to his fifth grade students, who are confused by his casual demeanor, his anti-establishment attitude, and his total lack of practical teaching skills.

Dewey's content to allow the class to have recess all day, every day until he happens to overhear the students performing during a music class.

Their talent and instrumental skills inspire Dewey to devise a new plan: to teach his fifth graders how to play hardcore rock and roll and form them into a group that will give him another chance at entering and winning the battle of the bands.

Jack Black described the origins of "School of Rock" with pop music critic Jim de Rogatis of the Chicago Sun Times shortly before the film premiered in the fall of 2003.

He said, "Mike White called me and said, 'Hey, I'm thinking about a movie for you where you'd be a substitute teacher and a frustrated rocker, a failed musician kind of searching for your niche in the world of rock, and you end up teaching these kids your magical music.'

He was loosely basing it on the Langley School Project, that cult CD of a teacher in the '70s teaching grade schoolers these classic rock greats.

I thought that it was an amazing idea."

The CD Black is referring to was "Innocence and Despair," a 2001 compilation of popular songs sung by children's choruses from four different elementary schools in the Langley School District in British Columbia in 1976 and '77.

The music teacher who recorded them, Hans Fenger, later said, "I knew virtually nothing about conventional music education and didn't know how to teach singing.

Above all, I knew nothing of what children's music was supposed to be, but the kids had a grasp of what they liked, emotion, drama, and making music as a group.

Whether the results were good, bad, in tune or out was no big deal.

They had elan."

Copies of the recordings made in the mid-'70s were discovered by a collector in a thrift shop in 2000.

He passed them on to a promoter of Outsider Music, and after many rejections, the songs were released on a CD.

The album made many best of the year lists in 2001.

Fred Schneider of the B52s, one of the many musicians who praised the album, described it as a haunting, evocative wall of sound experience that is affecting in an incredibly visceral way.

From this initial inspiration, Mike White crafted "School of Rock" into a film comedy designed specifically for Jack Black's distinctive personality and comic abilities.

Black said in an interview with Indie London when the film premiered to the UK, "You know, it makes it easier if a film has a really good writer who knows you well and writes it in your voice.

I like to say that he's like a tailor who tailored me a suit of heavy metal armor so I could go in battle and conquer and slay the giant wildebeest."

In an article in the "Chicago Sun-Times," pop music critic, Jim DeRogatis, described what director Richard Linklater was looking for when selecting the young performers whose talents would be so prominently on display in "School of Rock."

He wrote, "In casting the students, Linklater, whose known for the gritty rock and roll feel of "Slacker" and "Dazed and Confused," opted to look for bonafide musicians rather than young actors who'd pretend to play their instruments.

Using young musicians who really knew their stuff not only gave "School of Rock" some necessary authenticity, love for music was also one of the primary bonds between them and star Jack Black.

Himself, a working musician with his satirical acoustic metal duo, Tenacious D. "Black would jam with the kids while the crew was setting up shots.

I was never the task master who would say, 'Stop goofing around, you guys, and let's get back to serious work,'" he later recalled, "I was always sort of goofing around with them, and then someone else would have to scold us."

Black admitted he also personally benefited from the experience.

"I picked up a few things from them about how to play my instrument.

I communicated more rock intensity, that was my strong suit."

He also said of his young colleagues, "With these guys, we were really a band and shared the load and the terror and the glory for hours."

The job of making Black and a collection of young musicians into working rock and roll group fell to Jim O'Rourke, a singer, songwriter, record producer, and one-time member of the noise rock group, Sonic Youth.

He was hired for a 10-week stint to lead a sort of rock and roll bootcamp for the young musicians.

In some ways, what he did was not all that different from what Dewey Finn does with his students in the film.

"I needed to find out what they were used to playing, what style they liked to play in, and what their strengths and weaknesses were," O'Rourke said in his notes included with the film's press materials.

"After I gathered that information, it was my job to make it all blend."

Jack Black told "Indie London" how much he enjoyed working with his young co-stars.

"It was a great experience," he said, "because now I've made a few films and am used to working with actors that have done tons of movies and are really jaded and like punching the clock, and just approaching like any other job.

But these guys were really excited to be there because, you know, it was pretty exciting being their first movie.

And it really rubbed off on me and made me feel like it was my first movie in a way."

One high point, or two in "School of Rock" was Dewey stage dives into the crowd.

The first try, a humiliating failure, and the second a triumph.

The first was based on something from Black's own experience.

"I've never done any stage dives in my performance because I'm heavy and short.

And if I dove into the audience, it would be like throwing a bowling ball out there," he said.

"But I went to see a reunion in Los Angeles of The Cult.

They were playing and Ian Astbury, the lead singer, took a dive.

It was at the Viper Room, and it was just a bunch of jaded Los Angelinos out there and they didn't catch him, and he plummeted straight to the ground.

I thought it was so hilarious, so that was put into the script."

Since "School of Rock" is a story about rock and roll, it's not surprising that it includes music from a variety of classic rock bands, including The Who, The Doors, Cream, T. Rex, the Ramones, Stevie Nicks, The Stooges and The Black Keys, as well as several original songs performed by the cast.

The biggest surprise, however, was the inclusion of Led Zeppelin's 1970 "Immigrant Song," since the band has been notoriously reluctant to allow its music to be included in motion pictures.

"It was Rick Linklater's idea," Jack Black told Jim DeRogatis.

"He was like, 'Man, you've got to get this song.'

It's kind of like the high point of the movie where the kids have had this kickass victory to be entered into the Battle of the Bands.

Linklaters said, 'Let's film you in front of a thousand extras, and you just make your case for why Zeppelin should give us the song.'

I just sort of improvised a little crowd participation grovel session with the crowd on the set that day, and by God, it worked.

We sent it along with some clips from the film, and they allowed us to pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars for the song."

"School of Rock" opened at number one and spent a total of six weeks among the top 10.

It eventually grossed over $131 million worldwide, almost four times its budget of 35 million.

A musical version of the film opened on Broadway in November, 2015 and ran for over 1,300 performances.

The show had music by Andrew Lloyd Webber with lyrics by Glenn Slater, and a book by the creator of "Downtown Abbey," Julian Fellowes.

Just the right combination of talents to help Dewey and the kids use hardcore rock and roll to stick it to the man.

Please join us again next time for another "Saturday Night at the Movies."

I'm Glenn Holland.

Goodnight.