It made an indelible impact on me, in the same way having your testicles bitten off by a rampaging alligator might.
Diamond makes the taping of the iconically terrible tween sensation seem like a cross between Caligula and Boogie Nights, but with infinitely more sport-fucking and drug abuse. Because five years after Behind the Bell shocked and mortified the tiny subset of the population fascinated by the emotional life of the guy who played Screech, Lifetime made The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story, a TV movie about the making of Saved by the Bell told from the perspective of Dustin Diamond, who regularly breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience directly, Zack Morris style.
In Unauthorized Saved by the Bell, however, Diamond has decided that, actually, life on the set of Saved by the Bell was exactly like the show itself, fun, light and relentlessly bland, a good time, but also with some important lessons to impart. He angrily dared audiences to hate him. The diminutive, adorable Diamond of Unauthorized Saved by the Bell, in sharp contrast, spends all 87 tedious minutes of the movie begging the audience for affection.
The repellent, oversexed and profane Diamond of the book is replaced by a big-eyed boy who just wants to be loved and accepted but is continuously overshadowed by his more attractive and confident costars.
More than anything, the Diamond of the movie is sad. Emo Screech is also sad because all of his costars got to do cool promotional events in sexy, international cities while he was reduced to signing autographs while buzzed on vodka in a shit town in the south.
