My Old School teaches new lessons from a '90s hoax

Fact is indeed sometimes stranger than fiction, and such is the case with My Old School. Despite actor Alan Cumming’s top billing, this is really a documentary—and not one about him. The actual subject agreed to be profiled, but declines to appear on camera, so Cumming stands in for him, lip-syncing the testimonial.

Around 1993, a pupil known as Brandon Lee pulled an elaborate hoax at the Bearsden Academy in posh suburban Glasgow, Scotland, and created a media circus when he got busted for it two years later. Filmmaker Jono McLeod, who attended Bearsden Academy with Brandon, assembles 30 former classmates and teachers to recount the events of the hoax.

Spoilers are easily Google-able for the curious, but this review won’t go into details beyond what was disclosed in the pre-release press materials. On the first day Brandon showed up for junior year, classmates noticed that he appeared much older than everybody else. He claimed to have been privately tutored abroad in Canada, after his opera-singer mother brought him along on her world tour. But after a car accident ostensibly killed her and disfigured him, Brandon returned to Bearsden to live with relatives. Although he initially kept to himself, he excelled academically, defending classmates from bullies, introducing peers to ’80s punk bands like Hüsker Dü, and playing Lt. Cable in the school production of South Pacific.

He further burnished his cool-kid bonafides by obtaining a Canadian driver’s license and a car while his mates were still underage. But after entering the University of Dundee School of Medicine, Brandon soon dropped out, eventually getting arrested during a holiday with three former Bearsden classmates—and setting off a media firestorm around him.

Clio Barnard’s documentary The Arbor (2010), about Andrea Dunbar, and Sonia Kennebeck’s film Enemies Of The State (2020) both precede this film’s use of actors to lip sync subjects who are unwilling to appear on camera, but My Old School seems to be the first to commission an actor of Cumming’s stature. He was originally set to play Brandon in a dramatized treatment in 1996, until the real-life Brandon cut off contact with that production. Cumming is magnificent in this role, mastering the exact rhythm of Brandon’s speech while also interpreting his emotions with a naturalism that blends seamlessly with testimonials from former students and instructors.

The film incorporates some archival footage, so we do get glimpses of what Brandon actually looked like. But for the most part, it relies on animation to illustrate flashbacks. Appropriate for the era it depicts, the animation is done in the same style as MTV’s 1990s series Daria, with thick outlines and flat, two-dimensional shapes filled by acid-hued palettes. There are sporadic sight gags, like a Nosy- (as opposed to Sony-) branded camcorder and Brandon flipping through the “Yolo Pages.” These nice, artful touches might seem slightly excessive on top of the lip-sync gimmick, but they provide a satisfying method of recreating the testimonials.

It’s safe to say the hoax at the center of the documentary doesn’t seem altogether that outrageous in the context of soapy ’90s teen TV shows like Beverly Hills, 90210, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Dawson’s Creek. In fact, Brandon actually cites Jason Priestley’s character on 90210, Brandon Walsh, as an inspiration. But many interviewees still exude a sense of betrayal years after the fact, and think Brandon deserves some form of punishment. And in fact, McLeod himself suggests in one conversation with an interviewee that he has not taken a neutral perspective in relitigating his subject’s behavior. Nevertheless, the film as a whole leaves us with a different impression, one more sympathetic toward Brandon, despite individual attitudes about him.

As Lulu’s cover of Steely Dan’s eponymous song wraps the film, McLeod superimposes yearbook portraits over snapshots of their family or professional lives. It’s a sweet and heartwarming moment that brings to mind Michael Apted’s Up series, showing viewers how all of these people fulfilled their destinies—well, all except for Brandon, who seems stuck in time and in his obsession. Even without formal legal repercussions, maybe he was punished after all.