Director Pink reflects of the definition, “Clearly, acceptance must be, first and foremost, acceptance of one’s self. After that, it shouldn’t matter if who you are—or what you want to be—doesn’t conform to the expectations of society or the institutions that govern college education.”
He recognizes that this definition of acceptance conflicts with everything mainstream youth are taught about traditional education. “I hope that people will identify most with the idea in this film that you can actually be successful by making college fit your needs rather than the other way around.”
In Bostick’s eyes, Accepted is not another fantasy teen comedy padded by simply bacchanalia and impossible schemes. “Acceptance is really about the triumph of underdogs. This story has that optimism. It’s a concept comedy that speaks to the human condition.”
Long feels, “The very simple message of acceptance is addressing what it means to accept others and accept yourself. This is not just another teen comedy. It has a heart, and it’s got something to say.”
Once a student at The Juilliard School studying musical theater, Thayer veered from her mapped-out course and joined Comedy Central’s show Strangers With Candy. Like her character, Rory—the academically smartest character in B’s brigade of college rejects in Accepted—Thayer has found her niche and is thriving on her altered course to success. She does, however, relate to her character’s predicament. “Nothing in my life has ever worked out the way I thought it would. I am like Rory that way. I thought I knew what I wanted to do.”
Life imitating art, Uncle Ben himself, Lewis Black, applied to seven universities during his senior year of high school and was rejected by all but one. Though self-professing that he did, “stupidly well” throughout high school, he was sunk by average SAT scores and bad advice from a well-meaning guidance counselor. Eventually transferring to UNC Chapel Hill, Black found a home at the then party school, where he would eventually begin to hone his craft.
Building S.H.I.T. Designing a College of Their Own “What is learning? It’s paying attention. It’s opening yourself up to this great big ball of &$%^ that we call life.” —Uncle Ben
While cast and filmmakers pondered what it’s all about, Pink’s team would need to create an abandoned mental facility to host the misfits. As B and Schrader knew after their discovery that creating a fake web site would attract them new students, there was much reparations and scouring to be done to get a school in working order. Like its sister school to the north, S.H.I.T. was not built in a day.
The production design for Accepted called for three principal locations: a high school where B and his gang graduate, a psychiatric ward-turned-university to host the free thinkers and/or rabble-rousers who visit the campus and a classic-looking Ivy League private university to serve as the pretentious Harmon University. Fortunately, all of the above were found within Southern California’s San Fernando Valley and Orange County.
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