Cooley High (1975): 14 Shocking Facts You Totally Missed

Cooley High (1975): 14 insane behind-the-scenes facts you never knew

The screenplay was never written by a writer sitting at a typewriter. Eric Monte met with the director every day for a month with a stenographer in the room. Their conversations were transcribed. Those transcriptions became the script. The entire film was shot in 25 days on $750,000. It grossed $13 million and became one of the 30 highest-grossing films of 1975.

Only three cast members were professional actors. Everyone else came from the community around Cabrini-Green. Two of the villains were real gang members the director found by contacting the Chicago Police Department. They used their real names in the film. The Motown catalog cost almost nothing to license in 1975. When the leads watched the rough cut before the music was added they thought they had made a bad film. After the color timing and the Motown soundtrack were added, they were stunned.

ABC made a television adaptation and then panicked when test audiences found the tone too dark, stripped out everything that made it true, and made What's Happening instead. Garrett Morris was a real teacher at the time of filming and went directly from this set to the original cast of Saturday Night Live. Robert Townsend's entire screen debut is a 30-second walk-on with one line. Boyz II Men named their debut album after this film and covered its original song a cappella. That album sold over nine million copies. An entire generation learned the name Cooley High from Boyz II Men before ever seeing the movie.

And the bonus: George Lucas saw Glynn Turman's performance and placed him on the shortlist for Han Solo. The reason it was within reach at all is because Eric Monte sat across from a stenographer and told the story of his childhood.

⏱ Timestamps in the chapters below
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