By
Fiona Ng, Hollywood.com Staff
|
Friday, March 31, 2000
SANTA MONICA - Starting today, the path of two distinct social groups -- "Dawson's Creek" devotees and Yale undergrads -- may cross ever so briefly in the theaters, poring over every detail of "The Skulls." But while hypnotized "Dawson's" converts are expected to drool over the film's baby-faced star Joshua Jackson, Yalies will more likely be pondering the similarity between the school's fabled secret society (Skull and Bones) and the film's ersatz one (The Skulls).
In the movie version, the aforementioned Joshua Jackson plays a blue-collar townie attending an unidentified Ivy League school. Hijinks (well, mystery) ensues when he's recruited to join the school's prestigious secret society, eponymously named, "The Skulls."
And though the filmmakers are illusive about the source of their inspiration, many -- including the Yalies themselves -- have ID'd it as Yale's own "Skull and Bones" society.
For the uninitiated, the Skull and Bones is (or so legend tells us) a phantom society at the New Haven university -- an exclusive old-boy's club that grooms selected Yale seniors for powerful post-curricula roles such as presidents, CEOs, and other positions bent on world domination. Its members are bounded to a lifetime of secrecy.
But despite its worldwide fame, the Skull and Bones -- the existence of which has yet to be confirmed -- mainly functions on a level of mythology on the Yale campus.
"Supposedly George Bush is a member of that society. I don't know if [his son] George W. Bush is. But that's kinda what urban legend tell us," Yale graduate student Jason Pearson-Bausher tells Hollywood.com.
"[But] Skull and Bones is officially listed on the Yale School map, in the same way like other secret societies on campus are listed on High Street. They're large buildings, with no windows, large doors, and every once in a while, you'll see a small group of people leaving from it. But it's always under the cloak of night," Pearson-Bausher continues.
"And supposedly on a yearly basis, the secret society taps their members. But there's no verifiable source, but the society is oriented toward pulling people with money, and it becomes another form of networking and another highly elite form of networking."
On that note, Pearson-Bausher (who, no, is not a member) concludes his observation with this question: "[In the movie, do] the filmmakers have people piss [literally] on the Skulls and Bones tombs like we do here?"
Though the perimeter of that particular question was not broached, the film's director, Rob Cohen, did concede to a conscious effort in recreating the environs of the New Haven Ivory Tower in an interview with the school's newspaper, the Yale Daily News.
"[W]e specifically picked buildings that looked like Yale. [Writer John] Pogue having gone to Yale and me having applied to Yale and been there, we had a pretty good idea what it looked like," Cohen told the paper.
Given the film's undeniable Yale references, and unflattering depictions of its students (i.e. elitist, snobbish, exclusive, and even murderous), are the Yalies taking offense?
No, at least according to the Yale Daily News' staff reviewer.
"'The Skulls' is a guilty pleasure for anyone and a thigh-smacking obligation for any Yalies. We can all await the arrival of sequels with bated breath. 'Skulls II: The Bush Years,' anyone?"
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