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ALL I WANNA DO stars Gaby Hoffman as Odette Sinclair, a young woman transferred to an all-girls boarding school by her parents in an effort to stall her sex life. There, she falls in with a group of ambitious, rambunctious classmates led by Verena von Stefan (Kirsten Dunst), a serial instigator who becomes the architect of an outlandish plan to derail the school’s looming merger with a nearby boys’ academy.
A riotous teen comedy about sex, solidarity, and female empowerment with an impeccable, endlessly-quotable script, a phenomenal cast of early-career stars (including WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE’s Heather Matarazzo, SHE’S ALL THAT’s Rachael Leigh Cook, and MAD MEN’s Vincent Kartheiser) and a third act that outdoes some of the most raunchiest gross-out blockbusters of the 1990s—ALL I WANNA DO has all of the ingredients of a generational touchstone. So why are you googling it right now? It’s possible you know the film by its unfortunate alternate title, STRIKE!, bestowed by its hostile distributor Miramax, whose founder Harvey Weinstein went to great lengths to undermine the film and its defiant writer-director Sarah Kernochan.
Kernochan (who won an Academy Award for co-directing the seminal 1972 vérité documentary MARJOE) refused to compromise the film’s authentic evocation of her experiences at the Rosemary Hall boarding school in the 1960s during an era of feminist awakening, even going so far as to pay out-of-pocket for the film’s NYC theatrical run in March 2000. Such lengths may seem outlandish, but are entirely in keeping with the by-any-means-necessary, “up-your-ziggy-with-a-wawa-brush” spirit of the film’s protagonists. Despite this, ALL I WANNA DO remains frustratingly hard to see in 2024, which makes this rare 35mm screening (from producer Ira Deutchman’s personal print) all the more essential.
Following the screening, producer Ira Deutchman will appear for a discussion.
Presented in partnership with the Master of Science in Leadership for Creative Enterprises and the Department of Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern.
