Trivia / Bandslam

• Ability over Appearance: The cellist was written to be a boy, but Elvy Yost impressed with her audition. So Ira Lerman became Irene Lerman.
• Acclaimed Flop: Has an 80% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes but made only a little over $12 million at the box office. Its budget was $20 million.
• Actor-Inspired Element: Charlotte playing the piano at the start of "Someone to Fall Back On" was inspired by Aly Michalka auditioning with Aimee Mann's "How Am I Different?"
• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • David Bowie cameo'd at the end because he was a fan of Todd Graff's film Camp.
• California Doubling: Set in New Jersey but filmed in Texas, making Sa5m's line about "high school football in Texas" amusing.
• Cast the Expert: The other performers at Bandslam were local unsigned bands from Austin.
• Cast the Runner-Up:
  • Vanessa Hudgens auditioned to play Charlotte, but was cast as Sa5m instead. She apparently watched videos of Wednesday Addams for inspiration.
  • Gaelen Connell auditioned to play the cellist since he plays it in real life (as noted above), and Liam Aiken was up for the role of Will. Upon seeing Gaelen's audition, Todd Graff decided to cast him as Will.
• Dawson Casting: But of course. The only cast member who was still in high school was Charlie Saxton (Bug).
• Enforced Method Acting: Aly Michalka was on tour during pre-production and so arrived later mid-way through rehearsals. This helped convey that Charlotte comes from a different background than the rest of the band.
• Executive Meddling: There was much criticism over Summit Entertaiment's marketing strategy of the film, in which it changed the name of the film from Will to Bandslam and sold the film as a High School Musical-esque tween musical rather than as a coming of age story. With that, despite good critical reviews, it only made $12 million out of its $20 million budget. Several heads of marketing at various other studios called it one of the worst attempts at marketing a film they've ever seen.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Gaelen Connell is a talented cello player, yet does not play an instrument once in the film.
• Playing with Character Type: Vanessa Hudgens plays a similar character to Gabriella Montez in High School Musical but with considerably less Disneyfication. Her Friendless Background has led to her becoming an Emotionless Girl, and it takes a lot more to finally coax her to sing in public.
• Reality Subtext: The awkwardness in Will and Sa5m's kiss scene was very real, according to Gaelan Connell.
• Renamed to Avoid Association: Tim Jo is a classical bassist and auditioned for Bug originally. He was cast as Omar instead.
• Throw It In!: Gaelan Connell and Vanessa Hudgens filmed the New York home movies themselves.
• What Could Have Been: Glory Dogs were originally called River Dogs before the filmmakers discovered there already was a band in New Jersey called the River Dogs.
• Working Title: The title changed from Will to Rock On to Bandslam.

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