The administrators were asking for more and more money, and, because they were doing an incredible job, the tax payers were happy to oblige. The embellishment of Frank becoming romantically involved with someone whom he used to teach was likely added to Bad Education for the sake of demonstrating Tassone's complicated relationship with the students in his care. I had tried to do a Freedom of Information Act request to dig a little bit deeper on some of the documents that I thought revealed more detail about what was going on, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it in time, so I reported the facts that I had from interviews that I was able to do before we published. While it's certainly true that the embezzlement story was first broken by Roslyn High School's own newspaper, the Hilltop Beacon, the depth of investigative reporting that Rachel (Geraldine Viswanathan) does in Bad Education is exaggerated. Speaking to New York Magazine when the story broke, Tassone's assistant superintendent Charlie Piemont said that "Frank was really the master.

I mean, this guy was loved. Speaking of which, you can follow Hannah online at @HSW3K, All the latest gaming news, game reviews and trailers. Who is … Bad Education leaves it up to the audience to judge. All their kids were getting into amazing schools and doing great on their SATs, and property values in the town were going up.

HBO movie Bad Education stars Hugh Jackman in the true story of Frank Tassone, a superintendent who embezzled millions of dollars in school funding.

"Frank is a tremendous manipulator of people," Miller said. It is based on the true story of the largest public school embezzlement in American history. HBO’s Bad Education tells the wild tale of former Roslyn schools superintendent Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman), a beloved educator who hoodwinked … As depicted in the movie, Tassone had money paid to his primary partner under the heading of WordPower that was later siphoned back into his own accounts, and also put many expensive vacations on his work credit card, including regular gambling trips to Las Vegas. So it was a really sort of complicated, awful thing.". Were these results worth the cost that Tassone had to the local taxpayers, and the underhanded way in which he acquired his wealth? Related: Hugh Jackman Was Offered A Role In Cats. However, some careless DIY purchases by Pam's son lead to an investigation that initially turns up $250,000 in embezzled funds that Pam has been directing away from schools and into her own lifestyle - as well as that of her family. Her hobbies include drawing, video games, long walks in the countryside, and wasting far too much time on Twitter. Bad Education covers just some of the ways in which Frank Tassone and Pam Gluckin spent the money they siphoned away from the school district's budget, including Tassone's sharp clothing and first-class flights (not to mention the house he bought with his second partner in Las Vegas), and Gluckin's multiple houses and vanity-plated Jaguar. Based on a real school scandal, Bad Education features Jackman, Allison Janney, Ray Romano, and more. Rebekah Rombom, the student journalist who broke the story in real life, told The Island Now that while she "took the endeavor pretty seriously and tried hard to do a good job," her original scoop only involved Pam Gluckin and the missing $250,000.

Moreover, he was widely well-liked and appeared to genuinely care about students in his district. "I had great experiences at those schools. "Rachel does a little more investigative reporting than I did. I had an incredible education there." “I know the film is called Bad Education,” Makowsky told Vanity Fair. Adapted from an article in New York magazine by Robert Kolker, it features an ensemble cast including Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney, Geraldine Viswanathan, Alex Wolff, Rafael Casal, Stephen Spinella, Annaleigh Ashford and Ray Romano. Frank's final fantasy before the credits roll is of getting Roslyn High School to the #1 spot in the country (though this fantasy seems to be tangled up with his own ego). Among his larger expenditures was $56,645 in payments to a Manhattan weight loss doctor.

Yet there are a … He walked on water." Pam's discreet dismissal marks the first pull on a thread that unravels Frank's own misdeeds and eventually lands both of them in prison, which what happened to Tassone and Gluckin in real life. The go-to source for comic book and superhero movie fans. That being said, one element of Bad Education that is very true to life is the conflict that Rachel feels over seeing the consequences of her reporting. Moreover, she didn't dive quite as deep as Rachel is able to in Bad Education. Bad Education is based on a New York magazine story by reporter Robert Kolker, and for the most part the film is relatively faithful to its source material. By Hannah Shaw-Williams Apr 26, 2020 Instead, it seems that the two simply met and hit it off during one of Tassone's gambling trips to Las Vegas. Bad Education's screenwriter, Mike Makowsky, was a middle school student in Roslyn when the scandal broke, and first met Tassone when he was six years old. One of the strengths of Bad Education is that it's not just a simple story of an outright villain. Bad Education begins with Frank Tassone being hailed as a hero to the parents of kids in the Roslyn school district, given a glowing introduction at a PTA meeting by school board chairman Bob Spicer (Ray Romano). Here are some of the details that were changed for the movie. ", Related: What HBO's McMillions Leaves Out About The McDonald's Monopoly Scam. Bad Education True Story: Biggest Changes To Frank Tassone’s Real-Life Crimes HBO movie Bad Education stars Hugh Jackman in the true story of Frank Tassone, a superintendent who embezzled millions of dollars in school funding. Click the button below to start this article in quick view. Hannah has been with Screen Rant since the heady days of 2013, starting out as a humble news writer and eventually clawing her way up the ladder through a series of Machiavellian schemes and betrayals. It follows the true story of the $11.2 million embezzlement scandal in … A one-stop shop for all things video games. She's now a features writer and editor, covering the hottest topics in the world of nerddom from her home base in Oxford, UK.
Directed by Cory Finley, the film delves into the stolen money scandal that rocked the community of Roslyn, Long Island in 2004. In Bad Education, Frank strikes up a romantic relationship with Kyle Contreras (Rafael Casal), a Las Vegas bartender and exotic dancer whom Frank taught in his English class 16 years previously. Justice League: Gods And Monsters' Elseworlds Heroes Explained, Bad Education True Story: Biggest Changes To Frank Tassone’s Real-Life Crimes, What HBO's McMillions Leaves Out About The McDonald's Monopoly Scam, Why The Knights Of Ren Didn't Have Lightsabers In Rise Of Skywalker, 10 Cloverfield Lane: Every Alternate Ending & Plot Change Explained, MCU: Every Villain Rumored For Spider-Man 3 (& Who It Should Be), The Devil All the Time Review: Tom Holland Shines In An Otherwise Grim & Tedious Thriller, Back To The Future 4 Unlikely According To Stars, John Cusack Proposes Alternate Ending For Stephen King’s 1408, Spiral Director Hints At Connection to Original Saw Franchise, Dr. Seuss Movie Universe Launching With New Cat in the Hat Film, Batman: Death in the Family Opening Title Sequence Sets Up Dark Knight Vs Joker, Borat 2: Republic of Kazakhstan Twitter Video Trolls Trump During Debate, Vin Diesel Inspired Guardians of the Galaxy's Drax (So Why Wasn't He Cast? As highlighted in the movie, Tassone was living out his lavish lifestyle while the ceilings in Roslyn High School were leaking - symbolic of the cracks underneath the school's outwardly shining reputation, and Tassone's own. However, Bad Education also has a number of departures from the true story. Regardless of whether Tassone genuinely cared for his students or was simply the "sociopath" that Pam calls him in the movie, Bad Education's story is complicated by the fact that he seemed to have had a genuinely positive impact during his time as superintendent. ", After the Hilltop Beacon broke the story, the bulk of the investigative reporting into the embezzlement scandal - including the discovery that the address of the supposed word processing company WordPower was the same as Tassone's home address - was done by Newsday. Kyle is based on a real person, Jason Daugherty, and Frank really did end up buying a house with him. Meanwhile, Gluckin used her access to school funding to support not only herself, but several members of her family.

However, in reality Daughtery wasn't Tassone's former student. "Which is probably why some people thought he was a great superintendent." The comedy-drama, which was written by Mike Makowsky, follows the story of a school superintendent's larceny scam that threatened a school district.


Bad Education, a new HBO original film starring Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney, and Ray Romano, tells the true story of the largest embezzlement scheme ever to target an American school district…

Who is Frank Tassone? Andrew Miller, the school auditor who had to try and untangle Roslyn's accounts after the embezzlement scandal broke, had a different take. Bad Education is based on the true story of Dr. Frank A. Tassone and a scandal he was involved in the early 2000s. "The fallout was difficult for the community, and I certainly felt very conflicted about that," Rombom recalled. HBO movie Bad Education stars Hugh Jackman as Frank Tassone, the Roslyn school district superintendent who was caught embezzling millions of dollars in school funding - but how does the dramatization compare to the true story?

While he may have stolen millions of dollars in taxpayer money, Frank Tassone did indeed oversee Roslyn's rise to become one of the top school districts in the country. Speaking to Vanity Fair, Makowsky recalled: "He had been in the Roslyn school district for 10 or 12 years - and in that time, he had grown the school district to this point of national prominence... which meant that the town itself was doing well because the regard of a school district is directly tethered to things like property values. Bad Education is a 2019 American crime comedy-drama film directed by Cory Finley and written by Mike Makowsky. Hannah enjoys weird horror movies, weirder sci-fi movies, and also the movie adaptation of Need for Speed - the greatest video game movie of all time. Frank's assistant superintendent, Pam Gluckin (Allison Janney), also seems to be a hard-working and upstanding civil service worker. She has lived and studied in New York and Toronto, but ultimately returned home so that she could get a decent cup of tea. He is said to have made a point of personally meeting every new student and even ran a book club for local parents, as depicted in the movie. ), Sarah Megan Thomas Interview: A Call To Spy, John Belushi Documentary Trailer Explores Animal House Star's Rise & Fall, Mulan Is Streaming On Other VOD Platforms Next Week, The Lion King 2: What Happens In The Original Sequel Simba's Pride, Snake Eyes’ Filming First Week Was Hell For Henry Golding.