HALF NELSON STARS’ SCHOOL DAYS

School’s out for summer but for the cast of Half Nelson, memories of their classroom experiences came flooding back to them at the film’s premiere at Tribeca Cinemas in New York. The Notebook star Ryan Gosling plays a young inner city junior high school teacher who tries to inspire his teenage students but fails to enlighten himself, instead spiraling into a dark world of drug abuse. Ryan showed up in the sweltering summer heat with his older sister Mandi stepping in for his girlfriend Rachel McAdams who is on location shooting a film. The Canadian born actor recalls being taken out of elementary school by his mother.

Half Nelson began as a short digital film called Gowanus, Brooklyn from New York University graduates Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden. Anna who co-wrote the script based on her own educators growing up in the industrial neighborhood was recently contacted by one of her teaching mentors.

“My mom home schooled me for a year and that had a real big impact on me. And so I think in a lot of ways I pulled from that experience. Just how she was, she just related to me as an equal. It really changed my perspective on a lot of things.”

Guests at the premiere included Dean Winters from Rescue Me and Trudie Styler with her hubby Sting aka Gordon Sumner, a former primary school teacher in England before The Police were born. Sting recalls how he inspired his young eager minds thirsting for knowledge and reveals his favorite pupil.

“I had a great eighth grade social studies teacher who actually funny enough saw a little clip on TV in Boston the other day and he gave me an e-mail. I was like, ‘you know what I just made a movie about an eighth grade social studies teacher,’ so it’s kind of funny.”rn

Half Nelson opens August 11th in theaters nationwide. rn

“Only by teaching them what I liked. What I was inspired by and I enjoyed so that was basically soccer and poetry. The rest of it I couldn’t teach. This is one of my pupils actually (Trudie). She was under age at the time. Trudie: What have I learned from him? To be happy. That’s sappy. Sting: Yeah really sappy.”