For a month last summer, Schenley High School was once again a high school.
Students attended a pep rally in the auditorium, crowded tables in the cafeteria and filled desks in classrooms — all part of the set for the movie “Me & Earl & the Dying Girl,” which premieres today at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
The school, which closed amid controversy in 2008, is slated to be turned into apartments.
But the movie, based on a book by the same name written by 2000 Schenley graduate Jesse Andrews, gave it one last hurrah.
“Me & Earl” was one of 16 feature films selected for the U.S. Dramatic category out of 1,157 submissions. It was produced by Indian Paintbrush, which also made the Wes Anderson films “Moonrise Kingdom” and the Oscar-nominated “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”
On one day in mid-July, crew members milled around Schenley’s former gym, which served as a soundstage of sorts. On one end of the gym, where just eight years ago DeJuan Blair dunked his way to a state basketball championship, set designers built a replica of an attic bedroom in Squirrel Hill, complete with a weathered radiator cover and textured plaster walls.
Actor Thomas Mann (“Project X,” “Beautiful Creatures”) paced around the room in preparation for one of the most emotional scenes of the movie, as set artists hastily drew extra squirrels onto the wallpaper as props.
Mr. Mann plays Greg Gaines, the book’s main character, whose mother, played by Connie Britton (“Nashville,” “Friday Night Lights”), insists that he befriend a classmate who has been diagnosed with leukemia. He has 10 movies awaiting release but recently called his “Me & Earl” part “the greatest role that has ever come across [his] lap” in a story in Interview magazine.
Prior to befriending Rachel (Olivia Cooke), Greg and his only friend, Earl (RJ Cyler), had spent most of their high school career watching and making obscure movies, none of which they had ever shown to another person.
The book was Mr. Andrews’ first published novel, and he was tapped to write the screenplay even before it was published. He had hoped, of course, that they might film in Pittsburgh, but he ended up getting much more.
Not only did Schenley end up as the movie’s base of operations, both for the high school scenes and as the sound stage, but his parents’ home in Point Breeze was used as the set for Greg’s house.
“I was curious where Jesse grew up and to meet his parents, and then there was something really beautiful about his home,” said director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. “We couldn’t find anything that had that lived-in quality, that family love. We asked and they said yes and that was that.”
As for filming in Schenley, “I can’t really put it into words, which is weird for a writer,” said Mr. Andrews, standing in the Schenley gym. “Your high school is this sacred place for you.”
Mr. Andrews, 32, who now lives in Boston, even dedicated the book “To Schenley, which Benson is not,” referencing the name of the fictional high school where the book is set. After Schenley, Mr. Andrews went on to graduate from Harvard University.
The years since have not been kind to Schenley. Mr. Gomez-Rejon joked that the building looked “like Chernobyl” when they first visited. “It was very clear that we wanted to shoot there,” he said. “It was just a matter of how much we could clean it up. We couldn’t afford to renovate all of Schenley High School, so we had to be very surgical.”
Paint puckered inside the building, peeling off the walls from years of humidity. Movie crew members joked that when the acoustic tiles fell from the ceiling, at least they descended slowly, making it easy to get out of the way before they shattered on the hallway floor.
Old items still on the walls added to the school ambiance. In room 140, where the movie filmed its “confessionals” scene and where Mr. Andrews once took German, the 2008 “Tardy and Afterschool Detention Policy” and a 12th-grade newsletter still hung on the walls. It was often unclear whether hallway decorations were made for the movie or were left over from the last year at Schenley. Sets painted for the school’s final musical still leaned on the stage in the auditorium, where Mr. Andrews remembered “sitting in the weird chairs, being lectured about something” and where moviemakers were preparing to film a scene later that day.
Mr. Gomez-Rejon said that even though he had never been to Pittsburgh before and was no longer in high school, the script of the film resonated with him for its lessons about death.
“There’s such a universal truth in Jesse’s beautiful script,” he said, noting that he had suffered three losses in his own life just before reading it. “It was put to me at the right time of my life, when I needed it most.”
Mr. Gomez-Rejon knew Ms. Britton from his work directing “American Horror Story” — indeed, he was repeatedly congratulated that day last summer for receiving an Emmy Award nomination early that morning. Once he became attached to the project, Ms. Britton “got her hands on the script and called me and said, ‘I want in,’ ” he said. “It becomes real when an actor says it’s a small role but I want to be a part of it.”
Nick Offerman of “Parks and Recreation” and former “Saturday Night Live” regular Molly Shannon also play parents in the movie.
While in Pittsburgh, Mr. Gomez-Rejon lived in a rented apartment in Shadyside, ate once a week at Cure and also frequented Legume, Round Corner Cantina and Salt of the Earth, all in the East End. “I fell in love with the city — I can’t wait to shoot something else there,” he said. “I loved the crew. I loved the food. I put on, like, 10 pounds.”
The city also contributed to the movie. Costume designer Jennifer Eve scouted local vintage shops such as Eons and Hey Betty, as well as visiting Red White & Blue thrift store and making mall trips. A trip to The Warhol Museum helped Mr. Gomez-Rejon figure out how to shoot a tricky scene in the movie, using one of Andy Warhol’s films as inspiration for a film-within-a-film. And legendary Pittsburgh filmmaker Tony Buba has a cameo in the movie as a math teacher.
When Pittsburghers not lucky enough to have a ticket to Sundance will be able to see the 104-minute movie is still in question. It doesn’t yet have a distributor, said producer Jeremy Dawson, although such deals are often struck at Sundance.
“We’re thrilled to be in competition at Sundance against all these amazing movies,” he said, “and excited to see where the rest of this journey will take us.”
Anya Sostek: asostek@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1308.
First Published: January 25, 2015, 5:00 a.m.
