Bob Garrett: The Motion Picture began as Daryl Della and Ray Revello’s gleefully unauthorized attempt to immortalize one of El Camino High’s most eccentric and unforgettable teachers. Armed with a camcorder and absolutely no adult supervision, the two roamed the halls interviewing classmates and faculty about the mysterious Mr. Garrett, whose reputation already loomed large over campus.

The interviews quickly went sideways.

One especially memorable segment featured Chris Riessen casually informing the camera that Garrett had “a fish for a wife,” and implicating himself in an “assassination attempt” by allegedly putting staples in the teacher’s coffee, an incident that very much did happen and left Garrett, understandably, furious. Production was abruptly shut down after the increasingly unhinged line of questioning offended faculty, most notably English teacher Mary-Liz Guthier, who deemed the entire senior project inappropriate.

Garrett himself was an intriguing figure. Beneath the chemistry teacher persona, he quietly aligned with Daryl and Riessen on a number of the political and cultural issues that animated high school conversation at the time, his secret Republican streak adding yet another layer to the mystique.

And the rumors never stopped. By the early 2000s, the dominant legend circulating through El Camino was that Garrett was secretly a porn star, a theory he seemed to grin at rather than shut down, which of course only made it spread faster.

Years later, when Brian Grima joined the Dollars & Donuts orbit, he brought an older chapter of Garrett mythology with him. Having attended El Camino about a decade earlier than the other guys, Brian revealed a longstanding rumor from the 1990s that Garrett had once been spotted holding hands with another man in the Castro. After Garrett’s death in 2009, and the later revelation that he was, in fact, a gay, the old whispers suddenly snapped into focus.

In hindsight, it raises an almost melancholy possibility: that the more outlandish porn-star legend may have been easier, funnier, and safer to let live than the truth.

The film itself never survived long enough to explore any of that, but it remains a terrific time capsule of El Camino High School in 2003.