Frat House

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This article refers to the documentary. For the campus housing facility, see Fraternity house.

Frat House is a purported documentary which explores the darker side of fraternity life. It won two Sundance Film Festival awards in 1998. The film was directed by Todd Phillips and Andrew Gurland, and largely filmed at Allentown, Pennsylvania's Muhlenberg College. A majority of the film was shot in the house of the now banned Alpha Tau Omega fraternity.

Originally intended to be shown on HBO, the show was never aired after allegations that much of the final portion of the film was staged. The fraternity chapter shown in the film was allegedly paid $1500 to film the events, and several brothers were paid $50 each to act as pledges since Muhlenberg did not rush during the spring. The filmmakers signed non-binding forms stating that the school and fraternity names would not be used, and that the events did not reflect the behavior of the fraternity. Allegedly the filmmakers specifically asked the brothers and "pledges" to do particular things rumored to happen during fraternity pledging. Phillips and Garland claim their film is completely accurate; however, they have not refuted the claim that pledging did not happen during the Spring at Muhlenberg College. Phillips also points out that various filmmakers such as Michael Moore have staged reenactments of actual events. [1]

[edit] References

Rapkin, Mickey. "Burning Down The House". The Cornell Daily Sun. October 15, 1998.
Daly, Steve. "Hazed & Confused". Entertainment Weekly. Iss 466, pp. 19-20. January 8, 1999.