Stand and Deliver is a 1988 American biographical comedy-drama film directed by Ramón Menéndez, written by Menéndez and Tom Musca and produced by Musca. It is based on the true story of Garfield High School mathematics teacher Jaime Escalante, who inspired 18 Latino students to pass Advanced Placement Calculus in 1982. The film's title refers to Mr. Mister's 1987 song "Stand and Deliver", which is also featured in the film's ending credits.
For portraying Escalante, Edward James Olmos was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 61st Academy Awards. The film won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Feature in 1988. In 2011, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot
In the early 1980s, Jaime Escalante becomes a mathematics teacher at James A. Garfield High School in East Los Angeles. Latino students from working-class families have academic achievement far below their grade level. Students Angel and another gangster arrive late and question Escalante's authority. Escalante demonstrates how to multiply numbers using one's fingers and appeals to the students' sense of humor. After class, some gangsters threaten him. After school, he stops the gangsters from fighting. Escalante decides to teach the students algebra.
At a meeting, he learns that the school's accreditation is under threat, as test scores are not high enough. He says that students will rise to the level that is expected of them and gives the students a quiz every morning. He instructs his class under the philosophy of ganas. Escalante tells other faculty that he wants to teach the students calculus, seeking to change the school culture to help the students excel in academics. Other teachers ridicule him, as the students have not taken the prerequisites. Escalante states that the students can take the prerequisites over the summer, setting a goal of having the students take Advanced Placement Calculus by their senior year.
The students sign up for the prerequisites over the summer. In the fall, he gives them contracts to be signed by the parents; they must come in on Saturdays, show up an hour early to school, and stay until 5pm in order to prepare for the AP Calculus exam. Two weeks before the exam, Escalante teaches an ESL class when he suddenly clutches at his torso in pain, stumbles into the hallway, and falls. Escalante escapes from the hospital and shows up at school to continue teaching.
After taking the AP calculus exam, the students head to the beach and celebrate. All 18 students who took the exam pass it. At a meeting to congratulate them, a plaque of appreciation is presented to Escalante.
To the dismay of Escalante and the students, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) questions the students' exam scores. Escalante finds an anonymous letter of resignation in his school mail and walks home that evening, as his car has been stolen. Dismayed, he confides in his wife that he regrets having taught calculus because the students did well but nothing changed. Fabiola reassures him, stating that his students appreciate his efforts. Outside, students surprise him by fixing his car. Escalante meets with the investigators from ETS and offers to have the students retake the test. Despite having only one day to prepare, all the students pass, and Escalante demands that the original scores be reinstated.
End captions indicate that in the summer of 1982, Escalante's entire class passed AP Calculus and in subsequent years, his program became even more successful.
Cast
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- Edward James Olmos as Jaime Escalante
- Estelle Harris as Estelle, the School Secretary
- Virginia Paris as Raquel Ortega
- Will Gotay as Francisco "Pancho" Garcia
- Ingrid Oliu as Guadalupe "Lupe" Escobar
- Carmen Argenziano as Jesse Molina
- Rosanna DeSoto as Fabiola Escalante
- Vanessa Marquez as Ana Delgado
- Lou Diamond Phillips as Angel Guzman
- Karla Montana as Claudia Camejo
- Lydia Nicole as Rafaela Fuentes
- James Victor as Ana's Father
- Mark Eliot as Armando "Tito" Guitaro
- Patrick Baca as Javier Perales
- Andy García as Ramirez
- Rif Hutton as Pearson
- Daniel Villarreal as Chuco
Production
Preproduction
In 1984, Ramón Menéndez, a recent UCLA film school graduate, discovered Jaime Escalante's story through a Los Angeles Times article about the controversial re-testing of his calculus students. Menéndez collaborated with fellow UCLA alumnus Tom Musca to co-write the screenplay. Securing the film rights required six months of persuasion, culminating in Escalante agreeing to the project for a nominal fee of one dollar. Initial attempts to secure funding from independent studios were unsuccessful, as the subject matter was deemed commercially unviable. However, the project gained traction through a $12,000 grant from PBS' American Playhouse anthology series. Additional financial support was provided by the National Science Foundation, the Atlantic Richfield Company, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The film had a modest budget of approximately $800,000, a sum raised by Musca knocking on closed doors and eventually getting a L.A. based oil company to step up to the plate. Olmos attributed the film's eventual realization to a concerted grassroots effort and described the project as a "miracle" given the climate for Latino-themed films in Hollywood at the time. Escalante reportedly recounted his real-life classroom interactions in detail. A number of the film's most quoted lines such as "You burros have math in your blood", were lifted directly from Escalante's classroom. and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture.
Actor James Victor, who played Ana's father, sued the film's producers for $3 million, citing breach of contract and failure to provide front-end credits. His request for an injunction against the film's release was denied by a Superior Court judge.
Postproduction and music
The film was edited by Nancy Richardson, marking her debut in feature film editing. Metacritic has given the film a score of 77 out of 100 based on 11 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
The film received largely positive reviews. The Hollywood Reporter called it a "gutty little underdog film", highlighting the performances of Edward James Olmos, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Will Gotay.
Accolades
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="width: 99%;"
|-
! scope="col"| Award
! scope="col"| Category
! scope="col"| Recipient(s) in
! scope="col"| Result
! scope="col" class="unsortable"|
|-
| rowspan="1" | Academy Awards
| Best Actor
| rowspan="2" | Edward James Olmos
| rowspan="3"
| rowspan="1" |
|-
| rowspan="2" | Golden Globe Awards
| Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama
| rowspan="2" |
|-
| Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture
| Lou Diamond Phillips
|-
| rowspan="7" | Independent Spirit Awards
| Best Feature
| Tom Musca
| rowspan="6"
| rowspan="7" | The movie gives the impression that the incident occurred in the year Escalante was teaching, after students from his first year took a summer session for the calculus prerequisites. In fact, Escalante first began teaching at Garfield High School in 1974 and taught his first Advanced Placement Calculus course in 1978 with a group of 14 students, and it was in 1982 that the exam incident occurred. In the first year (1978), only five students remained in the course at the end of the year, only two of whom passed the AP Calculus exam. Writing in Reason, Jerry Jesness stated, "Unlike the students in the movie, the real Garfield students required years of solid preparation before they could take calculus. So Escalante established a program at East Los Angeles College where students could take those classes in intensive seven-week summer sessions. Escalante and [principal Henry] Gradillas were also instrumental in getting the feeder schools to offer algebra in the eighth and ninth grades." In 1987, 27 percent of all Mexican Americans who scored three or higher on the AP Calculus exam were students at Garfield High.
Escalante described the film as "90 percent truth, 10 percent drama". He said that several points were left out of the film. He pointed out that no student who did not know multiplication tables or fractions was ever taught calculus in a single year. Also, he suffered inflammation of the gall bladder, not a heart attack.
Ten of the 1982 students signed waivers to allow the College Board to show their exams to Jay Mathews, the author of Escalante: The Best Teacher in America. Mathews found that nine of them had made "identical silly mistakes" on free response question six. Mathews heard from two of the students that during the exam, a piece of paper had been passed around with that flawed solution. and that her name had been changed.
Analysis
Context
The film was released during a period of heightened attention to the Latino filmgoing demographic, spurred in part by the box office success of films such as La Bamba and Born in East L.A.. Hollywood executives, recognizing the purchasing power of Latino audiences—estimated at $180 billion in the 1980s—began exploring Latino-centered stories and bilingual marketing strategies.
Olmos emphasized the film's long-standing role in educational settings, noting its frequent use in U.S. high schools where many students view it multiple times before graduation. He attributed the film's enduring popularity to its inspirational message and universal themes.
In December 2011, Stand and Deliver was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. The Registry said the film was "one of the most popular of a new wave of narrative feature films produced in the 1980s by Latino filmmakers" and that it "celebrates in a direct, approachable, and impactful way, values of self-betterment through hard work and power through knowledge."
In 2016, the United States Postal Service issued a 1st Class Forever "Jaime Escalante" stamp to honor "the East Los Angeles teacher whose inspirational methods led supposedly 'unteachable' high school students to master calculus." That year, the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia sponsored a screening of Stand and Deliver at Cinemateca Boliviana on September 7.
See also
- 1988 in film
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers
- List of American films of 1988
- List of films about mathematicians
- List of hood films
- Mathematics education in the United States