PCU | |
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Theatrical release poster
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Directed by | Hart Bochner |
Produced by | Paul Schiff |
Written by | Adam Leff Zak Penn |
Starring |
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Music by | Steve Vai |
Cinematography | Reynaldo Villalobos |
Edited by | Nicholas C. Smith |
Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
Release date
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Running time
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79 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $8 million |
Box office | $4,330,020 |
PCU is a 1994 American comedy film written by Adam Leff and Zak Penn and directed by Hart Bochner about college life at the fictional Port Chester University, and represents "an exaggerated view of contemporary college life...." The film is based on the experiences of Leff and Penn at Eclectic Society at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.
Preppy pre-freshman (pre-frosh) Tom Lawrence (Chris Young) visits PCU (Port Chester University), a college where fraternities have been outlawed and political correctness is rampant on campus. During his visit, accident-prone Tom manages to make enemies with nearly every group of students, and thus spends much of his visit evading the growing mob upset with him.
During his visit, Tom also finds himself in the middle of a war between "The Pit" and "Balls and Shaft", two rival groups. Among the members of the latter is Rand McPherson (David Spade), who, with the other Balls and Shaft members, want the outlawed Greek system to return. Meanwhile, "The Pit", an unofficial group, runs the former "Balls and Shaft" frat house in a highly disorganized manner. Currently inhabited by seniors Gutter (Jon Favreau) and Mullaney (Alex Désert), mid-year Freshman co-ed Katy (Megan Ward), and led by multi-year senior James "Droz" Andrews (Jeremy Piven), The Pit is a party-centric house that rebels against the politically correct protests; their counter-protests and parties are a frequent source of complaint forms.
Other factions on campus include a commune-style house of pot users called Jerrytown that Gutter often frequents, a radical feminist group known as the Womynists, an Afrocentrist group suspecting the Pit of conspiring against them, and the college president, Ms. Garcia-Thompson (Jessica Walter), who is obsessed with enforcing "sensitivity awareness" and multiculturalism to an extreme. She proposes that Bisexual Asian Studies should have its own building, as well as a plan to change the campus mascot to a Whooping Crane instead of an offensive Native American character during their Bicentennial Anniversary. Garcia-Thompson conspires behind closed doors with Balls and Shaft to get the established residents of The Pit kicked off campus and give Rand control of the house. She provokes the Pit residents with a damage bill from their past semester. Left unpaid, the campus would seize their house, leaving them homeless and unable to continue attendance at PCU without getting jobs.