Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney Play Notorious Long Island School Scammers in Bad Education Trailer
A school superintendent doing anything for his district to get ahead might just have gone a little too far in the first trailer for the HBO film Bad Education.
The movie stars Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney as the real-life Frank Tassone, a Long Island school superintendent, and Pam Gluckin, a district official. The two worked together to raise their school district to be one of the best in the country — with dubious methods.
“I wanted to make a difference. And look, we did! I got us all the way to number 4, and I will get us to number 1,” Jackman’s Tassone says at the beginning of the trailer.
And he remains confident as a student journalist starts writing a story on the district’s budget, which she dismisses before Tassone’s encourages her to dig deeper.
“It’s only a puff piece if you let it be a puff piece,” he tells her.
JoJo Whilden/HBO Bad Education
But it seems his advice backfires, as people quickly find out that Tassone has also been defrauding the district budget out of out of $250,000.
“We can’t jump the gun here, not when there’s this much at stake. We need to know what we’re dealing with,” Tassone advises at first, though Janney’s Gluckin is seen getting more and more spooked before finally making a teary confession near the end of the trailer.
Making the movie more real is the fact that writer Mike Makowsky was actually one of Tassone’s students during this time. He was in middle school when Tassone and Gluckin were eventually arrested for stealing millions of dollars.
“Frank Tassone was the first person I met in Roslyn,” Makowsky told Vanity Fair last year when the movie premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. “I wanted to write something more personal about my hometown…and this story was ostensibly the biggest thing that has ever happened in it.”
“It’s a strange thing,” Makowsky continued. “How can you care so deeply about the students, education, and devote your whole life and career to this very noble profession…but at the same time, take in such an egregious way from the students, from the community, from the tax payers?…. I’m still kind of hopeful for a greater dialogue.”
Bad Education premieres on HBO April 25.
