bad education 2019

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Bad Education

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Watch Bad Education with a subscription on Max, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

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A layered, wonderfully-acted, and passionate drama.

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Pedro Almodóvar

Fele Martínez

Enrique Goded

Gael García Bernal

Daniel Giménez Cacho

Padre Manolo

Lluís Homar

Sr. Manuel Berenguer

Javier Cámara

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Bad Education review – Hugh Jackman steals embezzlement drama

A fascinating central turn proves the most interesting ingredient in a shaggy retelling of a high school corruption scandal

W ith his stylish, misanthropic debut Thoroughbreds, the writer-director Cory Finley arrived on the scene with undeniable, if slightly unrefined, talent. It was the kind of first movie that made you excited to see where he might go next, successful enough to suggest that better things were waiting around the corner. With his follow-up, the darkly comic drama Bad Education, he’s stepped up in terms of scale and ambition, telling a fact-based story of a brazen high school embezzlement with a starrier cast at his disposal. But like his first film, it’s the work of someone still finding their footing, a few degrees away from something worth truly shouting about.

Like three other films also showing at this year’s Toronto film festival, it’s based on a long-read feature , a growing trend that often pushes unusual, under-reported stories even further into the spotlight. The case at the centre of Bad Education is a classic example, a scandal that might have gained traction locally but remains unknown to many. It’s 2002 and Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman), a much-loved school superintendent, is determined to push Long Island’s Roslyn high to the top of the area rankings and has helped push for the construction of an elaborate “sky walk” to help boost the school’s image. Rachel (Geraldine Viswanathan), an eager student reporter, is assembling what she calls a “puff piece” for the school paper about the plans but after interviewing both Frank and his assistant superintendent for business, Pam Gluckin (Allison Janney), she discovers that there’s something afoot.

For a long stretch of Bad Education, we’re not really sure where the film is going or even what the film is, whether we’re in darkly comic Election territory or something more straightforward and dramatic. At times, I wasn’t entirely convinced that Finley and the screenwriter, Mike Makowsky, were sure either, with a shagginess that borders on aimlessness, but their decision to skate so close to banality slowly pays off. We’re invested in the district’s dull bureaucracy as the thread starts to unravel, and it unravels in often un-cinematic ways, as does life. What’s most refreshing is how the pair avoid turning their characters into grotesque caricatures, something that a less humane film would have easily done. The wrongdoers, whose slow, increasingly unhinged, theft of school funds gets revealed, are closer to pathetic than evil.

While it’s never exactly dull watching Janney repeat her quippy, alcohol-soaked, Oscar- and Emmy-winning shtick, it’s a relief to see her dialled down here. She’s wonderfully restrained and utterly credible playing a woman whose only real motivation was wanting more from life, and Makowsky avoids the need to justify or excuse her behaviour. There’s also a strong turn from Viswanathan as the student whose reporting uncovered the depths of corruption, and her character is presented in an equally plain manner: she’s plucky without being Nancy Drew and with this and the Sundance hit Hala, her star is definitely on the rise. But the film’s real ace is a never-better Jackman, following up an underrated turn in last year’s The Front Runner with another difficult and inscrutable protagonist. It’s fascinating character work for reasons it would be unfair for me to reveal (even though it’s easily Google-able) but there are hidden, tragic depths and it’s one of the best performances we’ve ever seen from him as he appears to be thriving in a challenging and thrilling new phase of his career.

Makowsky shows us how people attempt to justify their own bad behaviour when they don’t think of themselves as bad people. There’s an unspoken arrogance often attached with working in a system that’s ultimately helping others to succeed, and in the film it acts as a weak defence of amorality, as if they’re somehow owed something. It’s a slight movie at times, unfocused at others, even plodding in parts, and I didn’t leave the cinema entirely convinced that it was the most satisfying way to tell this particular story but I did leave feeling confident in both Jackman’s prowess and Finley’s promise, yet to be fully realised.

Bad Education is showing at the Toronto film festival and is still awaiting a distributor

• Toronto film festival 2019
• First look review
• Toronto film festival
• Drama films
• Hugh Jackman

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‘Bad Education’: Film Review

Hugh Jackman delivers an acting master class, trading on his charismatic star persona to reveal the rotten core of bad-apple superintendent Frank Tassone.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Going forward, what will Hollywood do when it needs a Kevin Spacey type? The disgraced Oscar winner is precisely the actor a movie like “ Bad Education ” calls for: Cory Finley ’s audacious second feature centers on the true story of Frank Tassone, district superintendent of the Roslyn School District in Long Island, N.Y. — a hero to parents and students alike, responsible for turning Roslyn High into one of the state’s top-achieving public schools, while exploiting the trust the community put in him. It’s a tricky, two-faced role that calls for the kind of firm-handshake, direct-eye-contact duplicity Spacey brought to “House of Cards” and half a dozen movies before it. Go ahead, Google “Frank Tassone” and tell me that I’m wrong.

Now, Hugh Jackman isn’t the actor I would’ve expected to fill those shoes. He’s more movie star than character actor, and this role presents him in such an unflattering light — quite literally so, shooting its cast such that their skin looks like raw chicken and every wrinkle casts a shadow — that you’d think his agent would have advised him against it. (George Clooney’s probably did.) That’s what’s so courageous about Jackman’s decision, and one of several reasons that “Bad Education” is the best work he’s ever done.

Here’s a star at the height of his powers leveraging his own appeal to remind that even our heroes are fallible and that you can never really judge someone from the outside. And Finley — whose only prior feature credit is the ice-cold, Patricia Highsmith-worthy high-wire act “Thoroughbreds” — is every bit the director to bring it home, pairing Jackman with an equally astonishing Allison Janney as school business administrator Pam Gluckin, Tassone’s creative-accounting accomplice. Finley, who clearly thrives when dramatizing morally complicated situations, doesn’t do the first thing you’d expect from any telling of this national-headline-making story (one that was first exposed by the school paper, the Hilltop Beacon): He doesn’t sensationalize it. Not that it would have been wrong to do so.

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It worked for Martin Scorsese in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” It worked for Steven Soderbergh in “The Informant.” Splash it up — that’s the obvious answer. Make the colors pop, the movie’s carotid artery bulge. That’s how such material is usually played. Look at this story on paper — a high school student exposes an $11 million embezzlement scheme perpetrated by the institution’s most admired figure — and you might expect a tongue-in-cheek cross between “Election” and “To Die For” (the Gus Van Sant-directed satire inspired by Pamela Smart, a high school employee locked up after enlisting her teenage lover to murder her hubby).

Written by Mike Makowsky (“I Think We’re Alone Now”), who was attending Roslyn Middle School when the Tassone scandal broke, “Bad Education” doesn’t shy away from the humor of the situation, but it doesn’t go for the cheap laughs either (unless you count some of the distractingly tacky decorating choices in Gluckin’s ready-for-remodeling home). With their strong accents and “Sopranos”-like way of dressing, the movie’s all-too-trusting Long Island residents would’ve been an easy target for parody, but that’s not the tone Finley’s going for. From the high-contrast, stark-widescreen look of things, he’s most interested in the way that people like Tassone and Gluckin could rationalize what they were doing.

That’s easy: Of all the careers in America, educators are by far the most undercompensated. In New York, where the cost of living is high and the real estate outrageous (the latter ironically exacerbated by the quality of the public schools), how are teachers supposed to afford being part of the community they serve? That doesn’t justify graft, mind you, but it suggests how people who’ve dedicated their lives to a low-earning field might find themselves bent toward skimming a little something extra for themselves out of the school budget.

“Bad Education” makes a point of showing how much Tassone meant to the community. Early on (the year is 2002, as signified by flip phones, compact discs and other period details), Tassone is seen tweezing his nose hairs before going onstage to take credit for turning the school into a success. Roslyn is ranked No. 4 in the country. Test scores are up. Seniors are getting into Ivy League schools in record numbers. And Roslyn is set to break ground on a $7.5 million “sky walk” that could give the community a massive boost.

Rachel, a sophomore played by “Blockers” standout Geraldine Viswanathan , has just joined the school paper, whose editor isn’t prepared for the deep dive into the school’s financial records that she has in mind. “We are an extracurricular designed to get us into good colleges,” he says. But Rachel (a fictional character based on an actual student journalist) has something to prove — to herself; to her father (Harid Hillon), who was canned in an insider-trading scandal; and to Tassone, who truly cares about the students, encouraging her to turn the puff-piece assignment into something meaningful.

At times, the story borders on the incredible, and it may spoil the surprise to read some of the details that follow. Through an imbecilic mistake — in which Gluckin’s son charges thousands of dollars of home renovation supplies to the school account — the school board gets wind of Gluckin’s financial misdeeds. When it happens, audiences don’t know whether or to what degree Tassone is involved, and it’s fascinating to watch Jackman in action: Like a master politician (or a brilliant actor), he sizes up the situation, assesses his audience and begins to spin things to best protect all involved. In other movies, scenes like these are played such that viewers can see the con man’s hand, but Jackman keeps a poker face, which protects the remaining surprises until such time that Rachel can reveal them.

True-crime movies so often serve to reinforce the notion that wrongdoers are eventually brought to justice in this country. But “Bad Education” refuses to get so reductively didactic. Yes, Tassone and Gluckin stole millions of dollars, but they also made Roslyn an extremely successful school (if you don’t dwell on the leaky ceilings and outdated equipment). When certain details of Tassone’s private life come to light — including a reunion with a former student (Rafael Casal of “Blindspotting”) and an unconventional arrangement with one of the school’s mysterious suppliers (Stephen Spinella) — one may be tempted to judge. But the real takeaway is how hard that can be.

Maybe Spacey isn’t the only one who can handle the ambiguity such a performance demands. The way Jackman plays it, Tassone was a villain who didn’t see himself as such. Finley finds creative ways to suggest the discrepancy between inner and outer selves. The hair-slicked, health-conscious superintendent is constantly watching his cholesterol, forgoing carbs in favor of charcoal smoothies — which amounts to nourishing his insides with what looks like black bile. Late in the game, before the jig is up, he goes in for a face-lift — another reminder of the mask Tassone wears (and an unexpected sight for a now-50-year-old movie star). Appearances can be deceiving. This we know. But how do young people cope with having their images of their heroes shattered? And is it really any easier for adults? “Bad Education” can be a hard lesson to accept, but a necessary one in how the world works.

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 8, 2019. Running time: 108 MIN.

• Production: An HBO release of an Automatik, Sight Unseen, Slater Hall production. (Int'l sales: Endeavor Content, Los Angeles.) Producers: Fred Berger, Eddie Vaisman, Julia Lebedev, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Oren Moverman, Mike Makowsky. Executive producers: Leonid Lebedev, Caroline Jaczko.
• Crew: Director: Cory Finley. Screenplay: Mike Makowsky, based on the New York Magazine article "Bad Superintendent" by Robert Kolker. Camera (color, widescreen): Lyle Vincent. Editor: Louise Ford. Music: Michael Abels.
• With: Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney, Ray Romano, Geraldine Viswanathan

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‘bad education’: film review | tiff 2019.

Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney and Ray Romano star in 'Thoroughbreds' director Cory Finley's second feature, 'Bad Education,' which was inspired by a school district scandal on Long Island.

By Jordan Mintzer

Jordan Mintzer

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An embezzlement scheme whose total take was $11.2 million seems like peanuts compared to Enron, Bernie Madoff or any other billion-dollar fraud of our epoch.

But in Cory Finley’s engagingly devious new dramedy Bad Education , it takes on the guise of a real-world morality play where the mighty fall from up high — even if up high means the superintendent seat of a public school district on Long Island.

The Bottom Line Gets a solid B+ without even cheating.

Based on a scandal that rocked the upmarket New York suburb of Roslyn over a decade ago, and adapted to the screen by a former student, Mike Makowsky, who witnessed the ordeal firsthand, the film marks something of a departure for Finley from his pitch-black comic debut Thoroughbreds , which drew more than one comparison to Heathers .

Here, the satire is softened to let reality sink in, with characters and plot points drawn from actual sources, resulting in a movie that plays like a slow-burn investigative thriller with comic touches and a major comeuppance in the last act. It’s perhaps less flamboyantly enjoyable than Finley’s first feature, but it also digs deeper into the souls of its characters, asking how a few people meant to ensure the pedagogy of hundreds of children could flunk out so badly.

The man behind all the monkey business was one Frank Tassone ( Hugh Jackman ), the beloved Roslyn School District superintendent who rules over his fiefdom like a lifelong educator, assuaging the fears of overzealous parents and encouraging his students with generous pep talks. He’s assisted by Pam Gluckin ( Allison Janney ), who minds the budget in the office next door, and flanked by school board president Bob Spicer ( Ray Romano ), who works as a local realtor and sees Frank’s success as his ticket to major bucks.

With his house-of-wax complexion, oversize suits and jet-black pompadour, Frank resembles a textbook New Yawk bureaucrat, even if he reads Dickens for fun and appears to be more refined. Jackman slips into such a role perfectly, staring beady-eyed at his interlocutors in the creepy way we all remember school officials used to look at us, and joining Janney, Queens boy Romano and the rest of the cast in a chorus of Long Island accents that could constitute its own Billy Joel fan club.

Initially the film’s plotting seems a bit subdued as we follow Frank on his mission to make Roslyn number one in the region — only in such a location-specific movie could the competing towns of Jericho and Syosset be referred to as “sons of bitches” — watching as he deals with the dull day-to-day duties of running his district. Things seem to be going fine, and Frank seems like a great guy, so why should anybody worry?

It’s at this point that the superintendent dishes out advice to an eager but somewhat inhibited student reporter, Rachel (the excellent Geraldine Viswanathan), telling her to take the puff piece she’s writing about a planned school renovation a little more seriously. Little does he know that Rachel will become the Woodward & Bernstein to his Richard Nixon, spinning her story into a full-blown inquiry that will open up a giant can of worms.

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Things slowly but surely unravel, and then completely fall apart, as we learn that the supposedly grieving widower Frank leads a double life both professionally, where he’s been generously serving himself from the district cash till for a good decade, and personally, when we see him start a fling with a former pupil, Kyle (Rafael Casal), now working as a bartender in Vegas. Meanwhile, right-hand gal Pam has been doing some unruly things with the official credit card, including making major improvements on a house in the Hamptons that seems way over her pay grade. This will get her fired, but it will also be the tip of the iceberg in a much bigger conspiracy.

If Finley eases us into the action during the first hour, teasing out lots of information with occasional jokes and digressions, his film snowballs into a tragic-comic tale of retribution in the second half as Frank’s glistening mask of Botox tumbles, taking down everyone else in the room. It’s at this point that emotions run high, especially during a rather moving montage and dance sequence — set to Moby’s “In This World,” which came out a few years before the actual scandal broke — where we see Frank experiencing one sad last hurrah before his number’s up.

While the filmmaking overall is less distinctive here than in Thoroughbreds , the characters seem more lifelike and the story itself is riddled with irony. Frank is not only undone by one of the very students he tried to motivate, but the movie ponders what his guilt means in a place where parents, many of them way wealthier than he is, are constantly pushing him for favors and then showing little gratitude for it: Didn’t the guy deserve a few million for helping so many of their kids get into Harvard?

Working once again with cinematographer Lyle Vincent, Finley captures this ethical shit show in cool colors and wide lenses that frame Jackman against some of L.I.’s finest schools, administrative offices and seven-figure homes. Production design by Meredith Lippincott and costumes by Alex Bovaird further add to the suburban authenticity, turning Bad Education into a paean to bad taste and even more questionable morals.

Production companies: Automatik, Sight Unseen, Slater Hall Cast: Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney, Geraldine Viswanathan, Ray Romano,  Alex Wolff Director: Cory Finley Screenwriter: Mike Makowsky Producers: Fred Berger, Eddie Vaisman, Julia Lebedev, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Oren Moverman, Mike Makowsky Executive producers: Leonid Lebedev, Caroline Jaczko Director of photography: Lyle Vincent Production designer: Meredith Lippincott Costume designer: Alex Bovaird Editors: Louise Ford Composer: Michael Abels Casting directors: Ellen Lewis, Kate Sprance Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Special Presentations) Sales: Endeavor Content (U.S. and international), CAA (U.S.)

103 minutes

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Bad Education (2019)

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Bad Education

  TV-MA | biographical dramas | 1 HR 49 MIN | 2019

A respected Long Island school superintendent (Hugh Jackman) and his assistant (Allison Janney) turn up in a massive embezzlement scheme.

Bad Education

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Currently you are able to watch "Bad Education" streaming on Max, Max Amazon Channel. It is also possible to buy "Bad Education" on Apple TV, Amazon Video, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Vudu as download or rent it on Apple TV, Amazon Video, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Vudu online.

Where does Bad Education rank today? The JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts are calculated by user activity within the last 24 hours. This includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as 'seen'. This includes data from ~1.3 million movie & TV show fans per day.

Streaming charts last updated: 1:25:57 PM, 05/01/2024

Bad Education is 12081 on the JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts today. The movie has moved up the charts by 7041 places since yesterday. In the United States, it is currently more popular than My Suicide but less popular than Riverworld.

A superintendent of a school district works for the betterment of the student’s education when an embezzlement scheme is discovered, threatening to destroy everything.

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Streaming Charts The JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts are calculated by user activity within the last 24 hours. This includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as 'seen'. This includes data from ~1.3 million movie & TV show fans per day.

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The perception of perfection, hugh jackman & allison janney: virtual conversation, rotten tomatoes® score.

Bad Education is a strong film overall, especially during a time in which we are bereft of theatrical releases and original ideas.

Frank Tassone isn’t a likeable character; in fact, he’s rather detestable. But that almost makes me love this film even more. It’s been a long journey towards real queer representation...

Bad Education is a criminally entertaining film.

This is one of those deadpan farces where we get to chortle as awful people are hoisted high on the petard of their own greed.

A deeply American tale about the drip-drop nature of morality in positions of power, and how easy it can be to excuse the wrong thing when it feels so right.

The film effectively sheds light on an ongoing problem in many school systems that quite frankly goes unnoticed. There is no denying that Bad Education is one of 2020s best films and a must-see for any cinephile.

This is a realistic, intelligent drama with a strong cast and a brilliantly flawed protagonist.

It's truly a small miracle to watch the way these two antisocial misfits con their way into people's trust, as Jackman and Janney make them all too human.

It dialogues with topics about hypocrisy and corruption in the American educational sphere, but even with the decent performances from Jackman and Janney cannot rekindle a flat narrative that stumbles along. [Full review in Spanish]

Lightweight as a drama, but the performances - especially from Janney and Jackman - are first rate.

Additional Info

• Genre : Drama, Comedy
• Release Date : September 8, 2019
• Languages : English
• Captions : English
• Audio Format : 5.1

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Bad Education (2019)

TV-MA | Biography, Comedy, Crime, Drama

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, bad education.

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Pushy parents basking in the reflected glory of driving their kids toward extreme excellence is not exactly a new phenomenon. Long before the college admissions scandal that brought down corporate executives and Hollywood stars alike, the pursuit of academic superiority—real or imagined—has inspired perfectly sensible people to go to insane lengths. The right neighborhood with the right schools, a packed schedule of the right kinds of activities and athletics—it’s all to achieve the greater goal of sending their children to the right Ivy League university which will prepare them for the right lucrative career.

The top administrators at the Roslyn, New York, school district seemed not only to understand this instinct but also to exploit it for their own personal gain. “ Bad Education ” explores their real-life embezzlement scheme, which came crashing down when the high-school newspaper broke the story in 2004. Spending nearly $8 million on a sky bridge to beautify a campus seems reasonable when you’re trying to exude an aura of success—when you’re the fourth-ranked district in the country, gunning for that No. 1 spot. With that much money flying around, skimming a little here and there for a bagel or jewelry or renovations on your beach house in the Hamptons is no biggie.

Director Cory Finley finds the dark humor within this scandal, which he depicts with wit, style and a terrific cast. Hugh Jackman does some of the best work of his long and varied career as the superintendent, Dr. Frank Tassone, whose charisma and polished image disguised a multitude of secrets. Jackman plays on his usual charm and looks to great effect. But there’s something sinister within the slickness that’s unsettling from the first time we see him, spritzing cologne and trimming nose hairs in the mirror of the boys’ bathroom in extreme close-up. Frank clearly cares deeply and works hard to recall names and personal details of students and parents alike throughout the district; we can still see glimmers of the calling that drew him to this challenging profession in the first place. Fundamentally, he’s a pleaser and he wants to be liked—yet increasingly, he savors the fame and power that come with being in a position of authority in an affluent community. And as Frank and his second-in-command (played brilliantly by a brash Allison Janney ) find themselves squirming to survive when their $11.2 million scheme comes to light, their flaws and follies become even more glaringly evident.

Finley’s follow-up to “ Thoroughbreds ,” one of my favorite films of 2018, doesn’t seek to dazzle with sleek, showy camerawork like that film did. But it’s similarly interested in mining the depths of out darkest impulses, and doing so with sharp satire. ( Mike Makowsky , who was a middle school student in Roslyn when the embezzlement scandal broke, wrote the script.) “Bad Education” also calls to mind the great Alexander Payne film “ Election ,” with its students who are smarter and savvier than you’d expect and teachers who aren’t as mature and responsible as you’d hope. Finley actually could have used a bit more of Payne’s sharp bite in tackling this material. Geraldine Viswanathan radiates a quiet but increasingly assertive confidence as the high school reporter whose tough questions and thorough document searches reveal the district’s financial irregularities. Just as compelling as what she finds is her internal debate over how to handle that information. She knows what’s the right thing to do—but what if that’s the wrong move for her future?

That’s the dilemma that also plagues the school board members—led by a vividly haggard Ray Romano —when they first learn of the administrators’ indiscretions. Going public would not only jeopardize the standing of the school district nationwide, it also would damage its reputation locally, which would make it harder for high-school seniors to gain acceptance at top universities, which would cause property values to plummet.

For a long time, Jackman keeps us guessing as to the amount of Frank’s knowledge and the depth of his involvement. Janney’s Pam Gluckin chats casually about flagrant misuse of her district credit card over the buzz of the blender as she mixes margaritas. (And the film’s costume and production design find just the right amount of Long Island tacky and flashy without diving over the top into parody.) Frank, on the other hand, contains myriad, fascinating multitudes. As Jackman gets older, he seems less interested in getting us to like him and more inclined to play complicated characters who make questionable decisions. Wildly violent as his Wolverine may be in the “ X-Men ” universe—particularly in the excellent, standalone “ Logan ”—he’s still essentially a hero. “Bad Education” gives him the chance to play someone who may be doing some truly bad things, and you can tell he’s really sinking his claws into the role this time.

Premieres on HBO on Saturday, 4/25.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Bad Education (2020)

103 minutes

Hugh Jackman as Frank Tassone

Allison Janney as Pam Gluckin

Ray Romano as Bob Spicer

Alex Wolff as Nick Fleischman

Geraldine Viswanathan as Rachel Kellog

• Cory Finley
• Mike Makowsky

Cinematographer

• Lyle Vincent
• Louise Ford
• Michael Abels

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Bad Education (2019)

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The True Story Behind HBO’s Bad Education

HBO’s Bad Education tells the wild tale of former Roslyn schools superintendent Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman), a beloved educator who hoodwinked a tony Long Island town to the tune of $11.2 million over a dozen years. Based on a true story reported in New York Magazine and adapted by screenwriter Mike Makowsky, who was a Roslyn middle-schooler when the scandal broke, the film rollickingly details Tassone’s duplicitous double life.

While elevating the affluent North Shore enclave’s public school system into one of America’s best, Tassone and his larcenous accomplice, school business administrator Pamela Gluckin (Allison Janney), were embezzling millions — taking more than $1 million in cash withdrawals and buying homes, luxury vacations, high-end cars, boats, jewelry, and artwork. After Gluckin was caught, Tassone finessed her quiet firing to save his own face-lifted skin. It was only after a local student reporter began digging into the real reason for Gluckin’s dismissal that the town learned what had been going on.

But to what degree is the film’s story true? Using the original New York account plus subsequent reporting, including the New York State comptroller’s audit — which could only account for about $7 million of the missing money — here’s a character-by-character guide to instruct you.

Hugh Jackman as Frank Tassone

Like Hugh Jackman’s would-be widower, the real Tassone — a double master’s- and doctorate-degreed Bronx native — worked diligently for a community whose sense of entitlement is as inflated as the prices at the Kitchen Kabaret store we see as Bad Education opens. Deciding his worth was as high as those he served, Tassone helped himself to $2.2 million for rent on an Upper East Side apartment he shared with his longtime partner, Stephen Signorelli, a country home, trips, parking garages, and dry cleaning, among other expenses. He also owned a Las Vegas home that he shared with a second boyfriend, Jason Daugherty (who inspired the film’s Kyle Contreras character, played by Rafael Casal). As Bad Education notes, Tassone still draws a pension of $174,035 , even after pleading guilty to grand larceny and serving about three years of his four- to 12-year prison sentence. Tassone returned $1.9 million in 2006 and promised to repay the rest. He was released from jail in 2010.

Allison Janney as Pamela Gluckin

Like her real-life counterpart, Allison Janney’s affable school administrator earned about $160,000 annually and was brazen enough to drive a car with personalized “DUNENUTN” plates — a nod to the West Hampton beach house the district unknowingly paid for. As in the film, $223,000 of Gluckin’s bills, including for her son’s building supplies, led to her dismissal and relinquishing of her administrator’s license in 2002. Arrested in 2005, Gluckin admitted in 2006 to absconding with $4.3 million for a lavish lifestyle that included two more district-funded homes in Bellmore, New York, and Hobe Sound, Florida. She ultimately struck a plea deal, got a three- to nine-year sentence , and spent nearly five years behind bars while still drawing her annual $54,998 pension (half of it went to Roslyn’s restitution). According to HBO, Gluckin died in 2017.

Ray Romano as Bob Spicer

Spicer, a local real-estate agent and big Tassone booster, is a fictitious stand-in for the community at large. In a place where appearance is everything, Spicer is blinded by Roslyn students’ increased acceptance to top-tier colleges — and the soaring real-estate prices that benefitted the town’s bottom line, a.k.a. higher taxes! William Costigan, whom the New York Times described as “a close ally of Tassone’s,” was school board president in 2005, when a new assistant superintendent began discovering the true depths of Gluckin’s scamming.

Annaleigh Ashford as Jenny Aquila

Though Bad Education gives her a different name, Gluckin really did install her niece Debra Rigano as a district clerk — even bestowing a salary beyond what was budgeted. One of the younger Rigano’s responsibilities was arranging school board members’ trips to conferences, including Tassone’s boondoggles. Her freelance work as a travel agent garnered her commissions on the district trips she booked. Jenny’s petty video-game and Macy’s and Lord and Taylor purchases pale in comparison with the approximately $780,000 that Rigano ultimately admitted to stealing. After cooperating with prosecutors, she was sentenced to two to six years in jail.

Geraldine Viswanathan as Rachel Bhargava

Bhargava is a stand-in for real student-reporter Rebekah Rombom, one of two editors-in-chief of the high school paper The Hilltop Beacon. Rather than a puff piece evolving into the scoop we see in the film, a tip led to Rombom breaking the story about the real reason for Gluckin’s 2002 exit, though she wasn’t allowed to print her name. She likely obtained the information from a 2004 anonymous letter that began circulating and for which Tassone tried to do damage control. Once the Beacon story broke, Newsday and other newspapers began digging into the scandal that became the biggest school fraud case in the country .

Jeremy Shamos as Phil Metzger

Like Metzger in the film, a real Roslyn accountant named Andrew Miller conducted an audit and found about $250,000 went to Gluckin’s profligate spending. As with Metzger, the auditor let the crime go unreported and was brought back at Tassone’s urging years later after the D.A. got involved. Miller was ultimately charged with cooking the books to conceal millions of missing taxpayer money. He pleaded guilty to a felony and received a four-month sentence and 18 months probation.

Stephen Spinella as Thomas Tuggiero

The loyal Tuggiero hews closely to Tassone’s real domestic partner, Stephen Signorelli. The computer consultant was listed as the CEO of a company that submitted fake printing invoices for over $500,000, more than $200,000 of which he passed on to Tassone. Signorelli pleaded guilty to grand larceny in 2006 and was set to serve at least a year of his one- to three-year prison sentence.

Jimmy Tatro as Jimmy McCarden

The parallels between Jimmy Tatro’s construction contractor and Gluckin’s real son John McCormick are pretty accurate. McCormick’s home-center spending spree was indeed what led to the unraveling of his mother’s scamming in 2002. But rather than a tip from the cousin of the school board president’s wife as the film depicts, it was an eagle-eyed Home Depot salesperson who noticed McCormick was using a Roslyn district credit card. In 2006, McCormick was sentenced to five years of probation and 100 hours of community service for stealing $83,000. Were it not for that imprudent act, who knows how long Tassone’s and Gluckin’s greed could have continued undetected?

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Film / Bad Education (2019)

Edit locked.

Bad Education is a 2019 film directed by Cory Finley.

It is a based-on-a-true-story dramatization of the Roslyn, NY school district embezzlement scandal. Roslyn school superintendent Frank Tassone ( Hugh Jackman ) is the popular leader of the district. In particular, he has built Roslyn High School up into the #4 school in the nation, a reliable supplier of students to Ivy League universities. He's handsome, well-dressed, and widely admired. He's about to start a big construction project, namely, a raised pedestrian walkway to connect the various buildings of Roslyn High.

He's so admired that when the district's business manager Pam Gluckin ( Allison Janney ) is caught embezzling $250,000 from school funds, Tassone is able to talk the school board into keeping the matter quiet and not going to the cops, but instead allowing Pam to resign quietly and pay back the money. Unfortunately for Tassone, however, high school junior Rachel Bhargava ( Geraldine Viswanathan ) is not as easy to placate. Rachel, a reporter for the Roslyn High paper, starts digging into the bids for the walkway and starts finding a lot of very fishy items in the district's expense reports, for much more money than the original $250K estimate. Those fishy items eventually implicate Tassone himself.

Ray Romano plays Bob Spicer, a member of the school board. Screenwriter Mike Makowsky was a middle school student in the Roslyn district when the scandal broke.

Not to be confused with BBC comedy Bad Education or Bad Education (2004) .

• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing : The film does an excellent job in the first act of making it look as if only Pam is stealing...but then you find out the truth about Frank as Rachel continues digging.
• Book Ends : Begins and ends with scenes where Frank's being cheered and applauded at a public meeting. The second one's an Imagine Spot .
• Closet Gay : Frank is depicted as having two boyfriends (one younger living in Vegas, and one longterm partner who helps with his fraud), which Rachel is shocked to discover. Frank is also shown repeatedly referring to his long-dead wife, whose picture he keeps on his desk, as a means of rejecting the advances of enthusiastic mothers. (In real life, Frank did have a wife who died young, and two boyfriends, but he was not closeted and he and his longterm partner had an open relationship.)
• The Dandy : Frank. He spends district money on fancy suits. He puts on makeup. (He's still putting on makeup in jail!) He's revealed to have spent thirty grand on dry cleaning. He spends district money on a facelift.
• Dramatic Drop : Not the drop, but the aftermath. Frank walks into the office to see a coffee cup lying unattended on the floor in the middle of a puddle of coffee. Everyone in the office is shocked because the school paper has just broken the story.
• Education Mama : Mrs. Schweitzer, who keeps trying to get her poor dim son Chad into an advanced education program despite the fact that Chad can't read the word "accelerate". First she complains that the teacher wouldn't let Chad take enough bathroom breaks for the test, then after Chad fails a second time she says the teacher made the test harder out of spite. This pisses a stressed-out Frank off and triggers his Motive Rant .
• Facecam : A camera is trained on Frank's face as he enters the school, and steadily grows more and more unnerved at the sight of all the students gaping at him. Then he comes into the office and discovers that the school newspaper has published its story about the embezzlement.
• Fatal Flaw : Greed and pride, in Frank and Pam's cases. Pam became overconfident from getting away with it for so long and a family member gets her caught. Frank's greed and pride about his position is what pushes Rachel into deciding to run the story after she learns the truth.
• Flipping the Bird : The last time Bob appears onscreen, he goes out to get the paper only to find fresh dog poop on his porch, and the owner of the dog giving him the finger as she and her dog walk away.
• Hero Antagonist : Rachel Bhargava is the one investigating the budget on the skywalk and discovers the fraud as a result.
• Historical Villain Upgrade : Real Life Frank did have a younger boyfriend in Vegas, but he had an open relationship and his partner was aware of the Vegas boyfriend - who also was not a former student. The real life Frank was actually quite offended by the assertion that he would cheat on his partner or date a former student .
• Imagine Spot : The film ends with Frank, in jail, imagining himself at a district public meeting where he's being cheered and applauded by the crowd.
• Intrepid Reporter : Rachel, who treats the student newspaper like an actual paper instead of a club designed to make her college application look good, which is what the editor calls it. She starts digging into district records and eventually uncovers massive fraud.
• The Lost Lenore : Frank keeps a picture of a woman in a wedding dress on his desk. He claims that it's his wife, who died young; he cites his Lost Lenore when a divorced mother makes a pass at him. It's later revealed that not only is Frank gay, he's been in a relationship for 33 years , calling into question whether the wife even existed. (In Real Life it seems that Frank was in fact once married to a woman who did in fact die young, but Real Life Frank was not closeted.)
• Motive Rant : Frank slips into his office after the scandal has broken, practically shaking with fear, only to find that annoying Education Mama already in the office, still trying to get her dumb kid into the gifted program. His control finally cracks and he lets loose on her. Frank : My problem? My problem is you. It’s the people who trot their poor children out like race horses at Belmont; who derive some perverse joy out of treating us like low-level service reps. Do you remember the teachers who sat with you, who held you by the hand, who taught you to add and subtract, or showed you Gatsby and Salinger , for the first time— Mockingbird even? Do their names escape you? Are their faces a blur?...You might forget, but we don’t. We never forget. Ever.
• Plastic Bitch : Rare Male Example ; one of the most selfish ways Frank spends the money he stole from the school is by getting plastic surgery.
• Reassigned to Antarctica : When Pam gets fired, her cousin Debra gets a demotion and is reassigned to a windowless, closet-sized office in the basement.
• Refuge in Audacity : Frank never really comes completely clean throughout the film, but the audience starts to understand how he and Pam stole $11.2 million dollars total between them after Frank mentions that they both (separately) came to the realization that there wasn't a real system of checks and balances in their office, so "no one noticed." It's basically the justification for how both of them decided to yoink that much cash from the district.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil : The closest Frank ever comes to a confession is when he tells Bob that he once accidentally used a district credit card for lunch, and nobody cared, and then he used the card to get a drink, and nobody cared.
• Small Name, Big Ego : Frank, definitely. Not that getting the district to number four isn't impressive, but he seems to have developed a massive ego and narcissistic tendencies as a result of his success, even though no one outside of his office knows who he is until the scandal breaks.
• Stealing from the Till : Frank, Pam, and Pam's family relations stole $11.2 million from the school district.
• Stepford Smiler : Part of why Frank got away with everything for so long is that he has perfected his persona of the smiling, patient, devoted leader in his district.
• Suspicious Spending : Pam Gluckin and her family, who have three homes and live a high-flying lifestyle. Pam says it's because her husband's car dealership is doing very well. The scandal starts to unravel when a hardware store clerk catches Pam's son using a school credit card to pay for construction materials which are delivered to his home. Frank for his part is smarter, with a fancy apartment in New York City and a home in Vegas, both far away from folks in Roslyn.
• Tempting Fate : Rachel comes into Frank's office to write what she calls a "puff piece" about the overhead walkway. Frank, the educator, tells her that it doesn't have to be a puff piece and she can write a real story. So Rachel starts digging, and ruins Frank's life.
• Vanity Plate : Pam Gluckin, who has used the money she's stolen from the district to buy a fancy house on upscale Dune Street, has a vanity plate that says "DUNENUTN".
• Villain Protagonist : Frank Tassone, who masterminded a long-term conspiracy wherein $11.2 million was stolen from the school district.
• Visible Boom Mic : In the first hotel scene between Frank and Kyle in Las Vegas, the boom mic is subtly visible in the top of the bedroom mirror.
• What Happened to the Mouse? : Andrew Miller, the auditor, is first shown being deeply apologetic, saying that he took Pam at her word about a lot of things. Later he lets Frank browbeat him into not digging further. Still later he digs up the time when Frank bought first-class tickets to London for himself and his boyfriend, but again he backs down when Frank intimidates him. Near the end of the movie he's shown being led away in handcuffs, despite never doing anything criminal. In Real Life Miller altered records at Frank's behest in an effort to cover up the crime.
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