I watched Ben Affleck and Matt Damon make a movie at my high school that could never be made today

Thirty-five years ago, a film crew descended on my high school, Worcester Academy.Trailers filled with cameras and costumes arrived at the end of the summer before my sophomore year to shoot a movie about a prep school set in the 1950s.Apparently, our gym and pool, unrenovated for decades, were perfect for the vibe.

A few of my classmates even got to be extras.When I saw “School Ties” in theaters the following year, the setting seemed recognizable, but the scenes of rampant antisemitism could not have felt more foreign.Watching the movie again with my daughter a few weeks ago, however, they were sickeningly familiar. “School Ties” — which starred Brendan Fraser, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Chris O’Donnell — is the story of a Jewish high-school quarterback, David Greene, from a working-class Scranton family.

He’s recruited to save an elite prep school’s failing football team from defeat at the hands of its rival.David, who’s played by Fraser, decides with the implicit encouragement of the coach that he should keep his Jewish identity to himself.

Early in the film, he takes off his Star of David necklace and hides it in his top drawer — subtlety is not one of the movie’s strengths. Within hours of his arrival, David hears one of his classmates use the phrase “Jew him down” to mean getting a better price for something.Some boys wonder how another one could choose Harvard instead of a different Ivy League school given the large number of Jews there.

When there is a football game on Rosh Hashanah, David doesn’t tell anyone despite the fact that his father instructs him over the phone to go to synagogue.He dons his tallis and yarmulke and goes to pray by himself in the chapel late that night; the headmaster finds him and lectures him about “you people.” Eventually, Charlie Dillon (played by Damon) learns from an older alum about David’s secret.

Charlie, who has been supplanted on the team by David, seizes this information.He st...