MovieChat Forums > Teachers (1984) Discussion > Is this the movie where a teacher dies a...

Is this the movie where a teacher dies and. . .


A friend and I were talking about old movies and she mentioned on in which a teacher dies and no one notices for days because the students are trained to just pick up paper, turn in papers, etc. Is this that movie?

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Yes it is.

You and your friend are referring to the character Ditto played by Royal Dano. Ditto is a teacher who often falls asleep behind his open newspaper while the students pick up their quizzes and turn them in at the end of period bell. One day he dies rather quietly in mid-sleep but none of the students notice and no one picks up on it until the school secretary questions Ditto's whereabouts a few days later (once his call for testimony comes up).

Hope this helps.



im sorry to hear about your condition. But you are out of your mind.

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Seems Royal Dano always played the wierd types in any movie, I rmember him in Little Huse on the Praire as Sylvia's strict dad when Albert fell in love with her in the episode "Sylvia"

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i'm watching this movie for the first time right now on MGM HD....and i just saw that scene....i didn't even realize he died until now...i'm watching the scene where they find him dead as i type this....

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Yes, what happens is there is this teacher named Kenneth Stiles, nicknamed Ditto who has his students take these mimeographed exams everyday so he can sit in the back and read his paper. What usually happens is he falls asleep. Well, what happens is he has a heart attack but nobody notices and thinks he is just sleeping so each class during the day is still running through the procedure. It isn't until later in the same day that they realized he was dead-it wasn't days later.

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Royal Dano did do some funny roles. He was "Grampa" in House 2 and also the farmer in Spaced Invaders. His roles were real characters in the movies.I knew teachers like this back in the "80's". How they corrected all those papers every day I haven't the faintest idea. Those mimeographs were no fun to run either.

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Well, he probably spent each day making the exams, right? That's why Miss Blume is annoyed with him hogging the machine. By the time he is done, he is tired and uses the classroom time to sleep. During the breaks, he is in the lounge correcting, as we see in an early scene. It probably doesn't take him that long since he probably makes the exams easy enough. And I have the feeling his arm would wear out from using that machine for so long. Note how he does it mechanically.

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It's a funny scene, one of my favorites in this movie.

There's really no excuse for Mr. Stiles' (Ditto's), sitting in the back of the room, reading the newspaper, and ignoring his students. He's meant to represent a stereotypically burned-out, disinterested teacher.

However, it's probably not a fair stereotype. in reality, he'd probably represent. a teacher who'd worked very hard for many years sincerely attempting to educate his students, then eventually developed heart-disease, and was no longer able to fulfill his mission, and had to take it easy in order to make it to retirement, thus gaining an undeservede reputation for slacking.

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Well, he had tenure at the time, as Alex mentioned to him, so he couldn't get fired. He was probably counting down the days until he could retire and go fishing or something. He had trained his classes to be orderly so no one could complain-in fact he got three consecutive awards for the most orderly class.

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But they smelled goooood. The scene in Fast Times.....is right on.

This will be the high point of my day; it's all downhill from here.

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That is Soooo True!!!!

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They did smell good.


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I actually had a teacher like this, he was a mean old cuss. Everyday we would come in and read out American History book, he would sit at the front of the class and read his paper. By the end of the week we would have to present a timeline where he then would rip every student to shreds. I never did my homework because I was so intimidated by him and ended up getting transferred from the class.

So this character always hit home to me.

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