Inside 'Detention'

Let’s be honest. High school for most of us was not a romantic comedy. It wasn’t “American Pie” or “American Beauty.” Your student council president wasn’t Tracy Flick. The rebels cutting class and causing trouble weren’t James Dean or Heath Ledger.

I’m definitely sure high school wasn’t anything like “Detention,” the latest movie from Joseph Kahn, best known for his stylish music videos that reigned supreme on MTV back in the 1990’s and 2000’s. It’s not meant to be a realistic portrayal of what many often call “the best years of our lives.”

“Detention” doesn’t fall into one particular genre or category of storytelling, which may have been what Kahn was going for. “One person could be living a horror movie, one person could be living a romantic comedy and one person could be living Ferris Bueller’s life,” he said.“Detention is an Internet movie,” said Kahn. “It’s a movie about pop culture. All the genres represent different aspects of people’s lives.”

The movie was financed by Kahn himself. It took three years to write the script and two months for production. Overall, “Detention” was a five-year process. “I took as much time as I could shooting the movie,” said Kahn. The film took 52 days in principal photography.

“A lot of the bloggers were (skeptical) of me because I was a music video director and I did ‘Torque.’” In 2004, after years of being a commercially-lauded music video director, Kahn directed “Torque,” an action drama focusing on motorcycle gangs that featured Australian actor Martin Henderson (“The Ring”) and rapper/actor Ice Cube. While other music video directors were receiving awards, praise and Hollywood offers, Kahn’s movie was negativity received. “Silly and noisy, yet stylish fun for the MTV crowd” was the consensus from Rotten Tomatoes.

At the time, MTV was transitioning from a music hub to the exploitative reality TV wasteland it has become. In fact, “Detention” would have seemed like a good fit for MTV. This looks like something a viewer could catch in between reruns of “Jersey Shore” and whatever else the network is passing off as shows these days.

Kahn said that it might take some time before he starts working on another movie. While he has begun working on a new script with the co-writer of “Detention,” he needs to pay off the loans that were used for “Detention.”

“It’s been eight years since my first movie, and it might be another eight years till the next one.

“Detention,” starring Josh Hutcherson and Dane Cook, hits theaters April 13. Rated R.