Notes about the 1980 film "Fame"

[Harry Hollywood]

Hello everyone.

Since it appears people enjoyed my thread on Seinfeld/Benson, I figured I would give you some bonus content regarding a move from around the same time period.

In 1980, New York was still the clear cultural center of the US. Los Angeles was just Hollywood and beaches and not much else notable, Chicago was just a cold and windy place with a big lake, and Miami was just a place full of old people and hot weather.

The public had a fascination with the grittiness and vibrancy of New York City. You didn't just set a film or television series in New York City. New York City was always at least a co-star.

In the late '70s, British filmmaker Alan Parker was best known for directing Midnight Express, an Oliver Stone film which raked in $35 million over its low $2.3 million budget. Midnight Express introduced the world to the brutality of Turkish prisons, and in fact was the inspiration for the famed "Have you ever been to a Turkish prison?" joke on Airpane! two years later.

The 1980 film Fame, about an ensemble of students going through four years in the famous New York City High School for Performing Arts, a public school known simply as "PA". It was originally conceived by David De Silva, with the goal to make it similar to A Chorus Line. However, once director Alan Parker was hired, he teamed up with writer Christopher Gore to turn it into a somewhat dark tale of massive dysfunction amonst the students at the school.

Unfortuately for Parker, concerns about the script's dark tone and his previous violent film about Turkish prison made him unpopular with the New York City Board of Education. The head of the board, a stern older woman, wanted no part of Parker's celluloid antics. She told him, "Mr. Parker, I can’t risk you doing for New York High Schools the same thing you did for the reputations of Turkish prisons in your last film."

Parker attempted to counter that the film would bring tremendous publicity to PA. The woman responded, "We already have more students applying than we can admit. The last thing we need is more publicity."

The studio was tired of Parker's battles with the NYC Board of Ed, and planed to just move the whole production to Chicago. This upset Parker, who always wanted to do a film on location in New York, and had felt this was his big opportunity to do so.

Was Fame actually filmed in Chicago, with stock NYC shots simply spliced in? I'll tell you below...

[Harry Hollywood]

Alan Parker, then just 35 years old and not commanding a ton of respect from his elders on the NYC Board of Ed, knew that this was a dead end.

He decided to scout alternative NYC locations before giving up and letting the studio move the film to Chicago.

Fortunately, they found two abandoned schools very nearby to PA. The larger school was used for the big sets (including the ones not supposed to take place at the school), and the smaller school was used for stairwells, hallways, and smaller school rooms. It worked out great, and only those who had been to PA coudl tell the difference that it wasn't actually filmed there.

I'm sure by now you are wondering why I haven't yet mentioned Irene Cara, the person with whom Fame is most associated with, both as a star of the film and the singer of the song of the same name.

Cara was a child actress who had mostly appeared on stage, and was 20 when Fame was being cast. She was not yet famous, and Parker was not particularly impressed with her audition, finding her singing to be uneven. However, seeing some potential in her, he had her work with songwriter Michael Gore (no relation to film writer Christopher Gore, but Michael was the brother of singer Leslie Gore.) By the time Gore fine tuned things, Cara seemed to be something special, and the script was retooled in order to feature Cara's singing, all written by Gore.

The original title for Fame was Hot Lunch, but this was changed for two reasons. First, the British Parker came to learn that '70s slang had "hot lunch" as a local term for oral sex. Even worse, Parker learned that one of the bigger stars in '70s porn was named Al Parker. Terrified of the implications of releasing a film about New York called "Hot Lunch" by Al Parker, the title of the film was changed. After a few iterations of possible titles, they settled upon Fame. The film began production with no title selected yet.


You might think that Fame was adapted from a Broadway play, as it seems almost like a Broadway play (in fact, it's somewhat about Broadway) shoehorned into the big screen. Musical numbers seeimngly start from out of nowhere, and do not otherwise advance the plot. But you'd be wrong. Fame was a play, but it never made it to Broadway, and it was adapted 7 years later from the film, and not the other way around.




You might also think, from watching the ensemble cast and the massive number of complex stories told, that Fame was likely adapted from a TV series. Again, this would be backwards. Fame did become a TV series, but again was adapted from the movie, and ran from 1982 to 1984.


Fame was about high school kids, but it was not a kids' movie. It dealt with mature and controversial subject matter, some of which wasn't explored very much in other films of the time. It was one of the first films to portray an openly gay high school student, and he wasn't just a throwaway character. Montgomery Macneil was one of the main characters of Fame, and was one of the leaders in screen time. An interracial relationship was portrayed between two students, which featured a competition of girls of two different races for a black man, where the racial differences were directly stated. Two of the main characters were from neglectful families, and left to basically fend for themselves. A troubled young black student was shown to quietly struggle with illiteracy, complete with violent outbursts when accused by his teacher (played by Ann Meara) of not being able to read. Irene Cara's character was exploited by a phony "filmmaker", who possibly raped her off screen. The term "faggot" was thrown around quite often. A girl gets pregnant and runs away to California to get an abortion and start over.

The film was a box office success, despite mixed reviews at the time. Many critics felt that the film had no point and just plodded along without telling a real story. However, as evidened by the various spinoffs and adaptations, the film caught the public's interest, and in 2023 finally got preserved by the National Historic Film Registry, for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." It is believed by some that Irene Cara's 2022 death helped spur this to occur.

I will tell you about some casting and production difficulties in the next post, most of which were not made public.

[Harry Hollywood]

One of the main characters of Fame was Doris Finsecker, a shy, sheltered Jewish girl with an overbearing single mother. When he originalyl conceived the movie, David DeSilva had envisioned Finsecker as a teenage version of Barbara Streisand.

He was quite upset when Parker decided to select an older actress (26 in 1979) named Maureen Teefy, who was Irish and from Minneapolis. Teefy looked every bit of her Irish roots, and much more fit the role of a wholesome midwestern girl than a New York Jew. Decades later, Parker admitted that he made a mistake with the casting. He revealed that during casting, he had the unfounded concern that he might be criticized for "stereotyping" Jews by casting a typical east coast Jewish girl into the role.

There was a Jew cast into a prominent role, however. Barry Miller played the troubled but mostlty good hearted Ralph Garci. The problem? The Garci character was supposed to be Puerto Rican, and yet he was played by the white, Jewish Miller! Miller could have perhaps passed for Italian, but not Puerto Rican. It required some suspension of disbelief to see the Irish girl playing a Jew, and the Jew playing a Puerto Rican. Oy vey!

Gene Anthony Ray played Leroy Johnson, the volatile, illiterate, but talented black dancer. Here life imitated art, and vice-versa. At the time of casting, Ray was an unstable young man who had been a previous real-life PA student, kicked out for disruptive behavior. He was found breakdancing on the street, and recruited to try out for the role by the casting director. The Leroy character was shown busting up the library after being accused of being illiterate, which would have gotten him expelled in real life, which mirrored the fact that he had actually been expelled from the school. Leroy was portrayed as selfish, unstable, talented, and of questionable sexuality. The character never fully redeems himself, and if Leroy Johnson were a real person, you'd picture him ending up on drugs and dying early, perhaps dabbling in homosexuality on the down-low. That's pretty much the exact story of Gene Anthony Ray. After being involved in some Fame spinoffs during the '80s, he developed a bad drug habit, and died of AIDS-related complications in 2003. Like his character, he went through periods of homeslessness. Like his character, he was believed in real life to be a closeted bisexual, and in fact would never address questions about his sexuality.


Parker had promised PA that he would allow their existing students to try out for roles in the film. Despite huge interest in this, only one student was cast in a major role, a girl named Laura Dean, playing Lisa. Fittingly enough, the most memorable thing about Lisa was the fact that she was kicked out of the PA dance program for not being talented enough. This means the only PA student to get a major role in Fame was one playing an untalented student!

Lots of PA students were cast as extras. At first the NYC Board of Ed again stuck their noses in, prohibiting students from being in the film out of concern that too much time would be taken out of their days instead of studying. However, the film ended up being mostly shot in the summer, so these restrictions were not in place, thus allowing students to appear.

Parker still retains a lot of animosity toward the NYC Board of Ed for how they treated him.

Prior to filming, Parker sent a letter to all of his crew, as he apparently always would do. One memorable passage read, "Our film I hope will be a microcosm of New York. It’s the glamour of the Great White Way of Broadway and the squalor of 42nd street; the dream of instant success and the constant reminder of failure; the fine line between a Julliard scholarship and dancing topless at the Metropole. It’s George M. Cohen and the City Ballet. Lieber & Stoller and Vivaldi. It’s New York: vulgar and beautiful. A dozen races pitching in each having their own shot at the American dream."

Parker chose a lighter, less demanding filming schedule, only requiring crew and actors to work 5 days per week, as opposed to the 6 or 7 day weeks sometimes seen in other productions. However, he did run into issues with the union about a silly matter.

Parker had developed a scheme to take quick Polaroid pictures of costumes, props, and the cast, and display them for everyone's reference. This was a well liked feature of previous films he had directed. The camera union in New York balked at this, stating that still photography is a union position, even if the photography is not to appear in the film. After they wouldn't budge, Parker was forced to compromise and hire a union employee simply to take Polaroid pictures and nothing else. However, this employee was having trouble keeping the various photos separated and organized, and she was only used to photography and didn't have very good organizational skills. This led to the absurd situation of several photographers being hired, one for each department's Polaroids! Finally Parker and others involved with the film reasoned that this was getting out of control, and that this would be an embarrassment to the union in the press if the story leaked out. The union relented and let Parker go back to taking his own Polaroids.

One other problem occurred during filming. The summer of 1979 was an unusually hot one in New York City. This made things very unpleasant for cast and crew, and it was reported that everyone was constantly sweating, dehydrated, and having to change clothes often during filming.

The most famous scene of the film featured the students dancing the Irene Cara's "Fame" on 46th street, jumping on cars and taxicabs, and blocking traffic. Drivers were shown in the film being annoyed by this, with one starting a fistfight with the cabby who brought the speakers to play the song and promote the music made by his son and the character played by Cara. In real life, drivers were also really annoyed and angered by this scene. The NYPD was called to clear out the production from the streets, and finally an agreement was made that they would vacate the area by 4pm.



To show you how dancing can be set interchangeably to music, the scene with everyone dancing to "Fame" was actually filmed with everyone dancing to Donna Summer's "Hot Stuff"! The Fame song had not been written nor performed yet, and was dubbed in later.

[Harry Hollywood]

One of the more surprising features of Fame was a movie within a movie.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is now well known for being a cult classic, still watched in small theaters today where the audience dresses in costume and both imitates the characters and heckles the screen. Seeing Rocky Horror today is more about the experience than the movie itself. The campy 1975 film is almost ancient history by this point.

However, in 1980, it was still relatively recent. By comparison, it would be like a 2019 film today. Fame featured two characters visiting a showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show, complete with all the same audience routines we still see now. It was seen as a coming of age moment for the reserved Doris character, who smoked pot in the audience, took off her top, danced on stage, and presumably lost her virginity with her boyfriend (the Ralph characer) later in the evening.



To my knowledge, it remains to this day the only major film with attending the Rocky Horror Picture Show being part of the movie. They filmed that portion at the 8th Street Playhouse, where Rocky Horror was really being shown.


I will conclude by saying that Fame was an interesting and unique film, but much more suited to be a television series. None of the character arcs really reached any conclusion. You were left wondering if Ralph Garci was still an alcoholic in a tailspin, if Doris had gotten over her rebellious phase, if Leroy Johnson ever learned to read, if Bruno Martelli ever got over his social anxiety, if Coco Hernandez (played by Cara) got over being possibly raped by that pervert, and if Montgomery McNeal ever came to terms with his various demons. By the time the film was over, which already ran for a long 133 minutes, you really saw no satisfying conclusion to anything. The students came in as troubled freshmen, went 4 years of high school (and they didn't even attempt to make anyone age), and came out on the other end just as troubled, and with most of the same problems as before. Was Fame just an excuse for elaborate musical dance numbers, and a way to showcase the gritty life of dysfunctional NYC kids? The answer is pretty much yes.

While they have little simiarity in plot or theme, Fame actually reminds me a lot of Miami Vice (the TV series, not the movie). The atmosphere, the city, the music, and the characters were the point. The story was secondary.

The attempt to make it into a television series didn't work out. It did not have the same energy, and it got cancelled after 2 seasons.

The attempt to make it into a play was middling. It ran for awhile in Miami, London, and some other venues, but never made it to Broadway.

The attempt to remake it in more modern times was a failure. A 2009 version of Fame was produced and released, but was mostly critically panned. Among other things, the dark themes were all removed, and it became a frivolous fluff piece.

Under the right direction, an '80s TV series of this show could have been successful. A modern adaptation was likely to, and did, fail. Much of the movie's appeal was the dark and troubled NYC setting, which you could tell was eating the wayward characters up inside, while at the same time giving them all a bit too much freedom during their tender years. It's just not the same anymore, and it's hard to picture teenagers today acting like the ones depicted in the 1980 film. It's just one of those films which is better left untouched.


I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into Fame. I did not work on this film, but I knew someone who spent a lot of time there during that hot NYC summer, and he gave me more information than I ever cared to know.

[ShawnFanningsLimpDick]

The Fame TV series was shown in the UK and became hugely, disproportionately successful, much more so than in the US. I was at school at the time and remember how it became the absolute top show for teenagers although youth culture was obviously a lot more monolithic then. The stars of the show also came over and did very successful concert tours.

[Dive_Bar_Dave]

That’s a lot of detail to learn from a “friend.” Maybe a significant other?

[Sanlmar]

@Harry

I read every word and appreciate the work.

I never saw the movie or the series so it was like reading about the rings of Saturn. It wasn’t likely I’d be interested in a singing and dancing movie/show at that time unless it was at the direction of a girlfriend.

99% of PFA members weren’t likely to have had girlfriends. This explains our uniform lack of response.

Be patient with us.

[Dan Druff]

Rocky Horror is a strange phenomenon.

I had heard it mentioned but wasn't really aware of what went on at these showings. At age 19, I attended my first Rocky Horror, but it was kind of a toned down experience, as it was shown in a room at my college, and it didn't quite have the same dynamic as the ones regularly shown in art houses.

I quickly realized that the stuff being shouted at the screen was itself part of an informal script, and not just random banter or heckling. However, a kid from my dorm wasn't quite getting it, and was just shouting random stuff at the screen, as well as heckling the people in the audience participating. This caused people to get progressively angrier at him, and the dude's girlfriend was getting increasingly embarrassed with the whole thing. I found it amusing, but kept my mouth shut. This and other similar things caused the dude's girlfriend to finally dump him about a week later, after many months together.

The college version didn't have anyone "leading" the movie on stage, nor did they do any kind of ceremony for the "Rocky Horror virgins" who were seeing it for the first time.

I ended up going twice more at real theaters, both times with a girl I was dating (two different ones, about 2 years apart), both of whom were moderately interested in it.

Something I didn't realize until I was at the theater was that the Rocky Horror fanbase has a huge gay contingent. The comments on the stage had a lot of gay innuendo or outright remarks about things like buttfucking, and many of the dudes there look/act very gay. On the plus side, the girls into it seem to mostly be bi, so if you've always wanted a threesome with your girlfriend and another chick, a Rocky Horror showing is probably a good place to meet someone who would be on board for that.

A lot of people into Rocky Horror are also the "weird kids" who used to have trouble fitting in anywhere. The showings got to be known as an accepting environment where you could let your freak fly and nobody would judge you. I did laugh at a remark I heard from someone about 30 years ago, where a dude told me, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show is where you go to see the people you used to beat up in high school."

The whole scene never appealed to me much, but it's one of those things which is interesting to see once.

[ShawnFanningsLimpDick]

Something I didn't realize until I was at the theater was that the Rocky Horror fanbase has a huge gay contingent.