THE BLUES BROTHERS 1980

"We're on a mission from God."

The first thing I think about when I think about The Blues Brothers is that it opened in Los Angeles on the exact same day as Can't Stop the Music. Yes, on Friday, June 20^th, 1980, two big-budget, heavily-promoted Hollywood musicals played within blocks of one another on Hollywood Boulevard. One R-rated, the other PG, each a pre-fab pre-marketed project pitched to a specific (polar opposite) audience demographic. The timing of the release of Cant Stop The Music couldn't have been less fortuitous; the unanticipated success of The Blues Brothers spearheaded an R&B music resurgence and spawned a dreadful sequel. But as dissimilar as these two films appear to be on the surface, they have much in common.

Both are expensive pop musicals structured as the fictionalized biographies of real-life "manufactured" musical acts that found unexpected success and a curious form of legitimacy during the late 1970s. I say curious because, to some extent, both The Blues Brothers and The Village People are novelty acts that were taken seriously as musicians after becoming chart-topping record sellers and popular touring acts. The acts themselves: The Village People was chiefly a collection of costumed dancers marching behind a talented lead vocalist; The Blues Brothers, two costumed Saturday Night Live alumni assuming alter-identity roles as the fictional characters fronting a band of genuinely accomplished musicians. 

as "Joliet" Jake Blues

as Elwood Blues

It can be argued that both bands benefited significantly from white America's preference for the watered-down interpretations of musical styles rooted in the Black American experience. Disco having developed from dance R&B and funk, while the blues came out of jazz and classic R&B. The "novelty act" identities of both bands was a form of winking pop-cultural pretense allowing the bands to market themselves in ways that expanded their appeal beyond the scope of their music. The Greenwich Village "types" that gave the Village People their costuming enabled the band to have it both ways: they were a gay band for those who "got" the coding; to the rest, they were just a party band. The Blues Brothers more or less updated an ages-old music industry trope: white audience resistance to Black artists allows mediocre covers performed by white musicians to outdistance the far earthier (re: too Black) originals.

To achieve the kind of mainstream success necessary to turn a profit, the PG-rated, $20 million Can't Stop the Music needed to downplay The Village People's gay disco origins and hopefully attract the same clueless pop/teen record-buying audience that incredibly never picked up on the group's homoerotic costuming or the gay subtext of songs like YMCA and Macho Man.

For The Blues Brothers to succeed, this R-rated, $27 million well-intentioned "Tribute to African- American music" (sentiments expressed by both Aykroyd & Belushi) had to play up the faux "soul" personas of its two white male stars whose chief demographic, via SNL and Animal House, was 20-something straight white males. All the while exploiting the fleeting "guest star" presence of Black entertainers who were the genuine article: i.e., true legends from the worlds of blues, jazz, and R&B.

In short- Can't Stop the Music featured a gay band playacting as straight, and The Blues Brothers band featured two frontmen playacting at being Black. 

But that's where the similarities end. Can't Stop the Music banked everything on the enduring popularity of disco, but by the time the film hit theaters, disco had fallen out of favor. As a result, Can't Stop the Music died a swift and ignominious death at the boxoffice. The Blues Brothers, however, took a gamble on music that hadn't been popular among young people for many years. The film's unexpected blockbuster success sparked a renewed interest in classic R&B, and wound up rejuvenating the careers of the Black artists showcased in the movie.

In 1980, I was personally far too much into disco to even consider going to see The Blues Brothers, the first two weekends of its release finding me at the Paramount Theater (now The El Capitan) on Hollywood Blvd watching Can't Stop the Music playing to a near-empty house. I didn't actually see The Blues Brothers until after Xanadu had opened the following month. By then, the poorly-reviewed Belushi/Aykroyd starrer had already emerged as the hit of the summer... coming in second only to The Empire Strikes Back. 

I can't profess to ever have been a big fan of SNL, I've never seen Animal House, and the appeal of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd was largely lost on me. So when they began appearing in concert as The Blues Brothers, opening for a young Steve Martin, I was among those baffled by their success. I genuinely thought their chart-topping 1978 LP "Briefcase Full of Blues" was a comedy album. I suspect my reaction to The Blues Brothers as a legitimate musical act was very likely similar to how rock fans reacted to The Monkees in the '60s.

Chaka Khan has a cameo as a member of the Triple Rock Baptist Church choir

But despite my initial misgivings, John Landis' The Blues Brothers ultimately did more than win me over; I actually fell in love with it. This ragtag tale of two musical miscreants on a mission of reform took me back to my childhood; the film struck me as a hip update of those overblown slapstick chase comedies like The Great Race (1965), crossed with a hip Bob Hope Bing Crosby vibe, all added to one of those all-star cameo epics like Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Set in contemporary Chicago, the tone of The Blues Brothers and its depiction of Black culture is forever skirting the fine line between veneration and patronization (the Black artists are the supporting cast in a film dedicated to the music they invented). Still, the overall cleverness and humor of the film allow it to coast a great deal on good intentions, goodwill, and the exhilaration that comes from The Blues Brothers being a bang-up, enjoyably silly musical comedy.

Kathleen Freeman as Sister Mary Stigmata (The Penguin)

Carrie Fisher as the Mystery Woman

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
That The Blues Brothers is now considered by many to be a classic (and deservedly so, in my opinion) has much to do with its age. Now almost 40 years old, many of the film's biggest fans discovered it on cable TV as kids, citing it as the first R-rated movie they ever saw. It also doesn't hurt that the film was a major boxoffice success, ranking as the 10^th highest-grossing film of 1980. But, linked as it is to the glory days of SNL, The Blues Brothers earns its status as a classic because it's remembered fondly for its guest roster of musical greats. Even if you don't care for the film, there's no denying that something about The Blues Brothers seized the public's imaginations enough for the group to become a household name and pop phenomenon. And like the film it most resembles—the equally unwieldy and intermittently funny car chase comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) —The Blues Brothers is a product of a distinct era (the post-'70s blockbuster days of pre-CGI excess) and features the final or only screen appearances of several entertainment industry greats no longer with us. In that respect, it can't help but look great from a rear-view perspective.

John Candy as Corrections Officer Burton Mercer

I was a huge fan of The Blues Brothers in 1980, seeing it so many times I could repeat jokes and recite verbatim bits of dialogue. I still enjoy it a great deal, but upon revisiting it recently via the extended Blu-ray edition (approximately 15-minutes longer than the theatrical), it became clearer to me that the music and musical sequences are where my heart lies. They're so good they tend to make me forget that the deadpan give-and-take between Jake and Elwood can feel a little draggy. The film's soundtrack is a major saving grace, the personal nostalgia dredged up by the songs reminding me of the music my parents used to play around the house when I was a kid. It's only humor-wise where things start to get dicey for me. Aykroyd comes off as a nice kind of goofus type, but (and I know I'm alone in this) I honestly don't get Belushi's appeal. I kept waiting for him to catch fire on the screen, to show some flash of comic brilliance... but, zip. He starts out and remains a fairly inert presence. The contributions of the guest stars and cameos are fun, as are the almost surreal touches of over-scale lunacy that give the film the feel of a live-action Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Twiggy as The Chic Lady

But retro-romanticizing aside, I must confess that refamiliarizing myself with The Blues Brothers left me at a bit of a loss when it came to accessing what the hell I once thought was so outrageously funny about it all. Some bits still get me, like the scene where a car driven by Nazis launches off an unfinished freeway overpass to an absurdly high altitude. Or the way Elwood zeroes in on a toaster oven (a slice of white bread materializing from his pocket) while the band members examine musical instruments at Ray's shop. But did I really laugh that loud and long at the mere sight of so many scenes of cars crashing into one another back in 1980? (Answer: Yes.) Did I really not notice how women figure so marginally (and dismissively) in this puerile boys club demolition derby fantasy? (Regrettably, yes.)

The whole viewing experience reminded me of when I tried relistening to one of those '70s Cheech & Chong comedy albums that were all the rage when I was in high school. Verdict: WTF?

Henry Gibson as the Head Nazi

Comedy tastes change, I know. And while I never tire of some '70s comedies like What's Up, Doc? and Young Frankenstein, perhaps the style of comedy that came into vogue at the start of the '80s—the cocaine-fueled variety, anyway—just has a shorter shelf-life for me. (I'm equally immune to the comedy of early Steve Martin and Robin Williams.). The biggest laugh The Blues Brothers elicited from me this time around is courtesy of footage not even found in the original release. It's a scene where Cab Calloway explains to the band that Jake and Elwood plan to give the proceeds from their Palace Hotel concert to the orphanage. The band members' collective reaction is excellent. 

Steve Lawrence as Maury Sline

THE STUFF OF FANTASY  

For many, The Blues Brothers endures because of its standing as a filmed record of so many now-deceased legendary Black artists from the worlds of jazz, R&B, gospel, and blues. In a year that saw the release of many large-budget musical films--Xanadu, Popeye, Coal Miner's Daughter, The Apple, The Jazz Singer (which gave us Neil Diamond in blackface, fer chrissake), and Can't Stop the Music --The Blues Brothers was the only one with soul. Too bad the only way to access it was after Belushi and Aykroyd had relinquished the spotlight.

The Blues Brothers shines brightest in its musical interludes. And what a treat it is to see Aretha Franklin in her first movie appearance, James Brown singing gospel, Cab Calloway in Technicolor, and a street full of Chicago residents doing the twist to Ray Charles (the latter being the image that most stuck in my mind the first time I saw the film's trailer.)

Choreographed by the late Carlton Johnson (familiar to many as the sole Black male member of the Ernie Flatt Dancers on The Carol Burnett Show), each number is a standalone set piece staged with witty exuberance and cinematic panache.

My favorites, in order of preference:

Ray Charles - "Shake a Tailfeather"

Ray Charles really blows the roof off with his driving rendition of this upbeat R&B dance tune first sung by The Five Du-Tones in 1963, making it more than fitting that the number spills out into the Chicago streets, inspiring the first flash mob. Playing the proprietor of Ray's Music Exchange, where the band goes to purchase instruments, Charles' infectiously soulful vocals are so raw and playful that he fairly dares you to stay in your seat. Which makes it so ideal that the throngs of amateur dancers outside his store so enthusiastically accommodate his requests for a rundown of the popular dances of the '60s. I love absolutely everything about this number, which is the most assured in terms of choreography, staging, and editing. Just brilliant. Watch a clip of it HERE.

The center member of the Soul Food Chorus is Aretha Franklin's younger sister Carolyn

Aretha Franklin - "Think"

Although she briefly sang and acted in a 1971 episode of TV's Room 222, The Blues Brothers marks Aretha Franklin's film debut. Cast as the wife of Blues Hall of Fame inductee Matt "Guitar" Murphy, Franklin's now-iconic performance of her 1968 hit "Think" is both rousing and an uncontested high point in the film. Many consider it the best number in the film, something I wouldn't necessarily argue with, save for a quibble or two. No one can fault Franklin's peerless performance and star quality, but my problem (and this is likely due to the multiple takes required due to Franklin's discomfort with lip-syncing) but the editing feels soggy and screws with the song's rhythm. Plus the imprecise staging frequently leaves Franklin not knowing what to do with her arms or body as she waits for the next verse.  

James Brown - "The Old Landmark"

Jake and Elwood find religion and a higher purpose at the Triple Rock Baptist Church listening to the sermon of Rev. Cleophus James. And who wouldn't in the presence of The Godfather of Soul himself, James Brown? When the Reverend and his choir break into this 1949 gospel standard (which Brown had never heard of before) the church erupts into a jubilant revival production number that literally defies gravity. James Brown (a personal favorite) is dynamic as all get-out in this, the film's first musical set-piece, whose contagious energy and gymnastic, high-kicking dancers get things off to a very spirited start. 

Cab Calloway - Minnie the Moocher

A delightful moment that I recall brought a round of applause from the movie theater audience I saw this with, was when 72-year-old Cab Calloway, as Curtis, the janitor at the orphanage where Jake and Elwood were raised, entertains a restless audience by magically morphing into the 1930s incarnation of the Big Band Cab Calloway we all remember (transforming the stage and the motley band members along with him). In the theatrical release, this stylish highlight was marred by cutaways to the tardy Blues Brothers trying to make it to the theater. The restored Blu-ray allows us to see more of Calloway's hep rendition of his 1931 signature song. A song he co-penned with Irving Mills, and which was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, five years after Calloway's death. 

Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman) as a waiter at the Chez Paul restaurant

THE STUFF OF DREAMS   

As my partner can attest, a favorite phrase of mine is "Two things can be true at once." A phrase that comes in particularly handy when writing about film. Take, for example, the observation that Faye Dunaway is an unrepentant ham, while at the same time being an absolutely brilliant actress. Both are circumstantially true, resulting in the truth of one not negating the truth of the other. It's all a matter of perspective.

As per The Blues Brothers: It's true the film and its makers provide a respectful and, in some instances, classic showcase for Black artists ignored by Hollywood. It's a fact that Aykroyd and Belushi used the privilege of their fame and took a risk on the moneymaking potential of the film by insisting on hiring these legendary Black stars and featuring so many Black faces in the supporting cast. (Theater distributors like Mann's Westwood, not wanting what they perceived to be a "Black film" in their neighborhoods, wound up cutting The Blues Brothers opening venues by more than half.) It's also true The Blues Brothers was instrumental in a whole new generation of people discovering music and artists that white record companies and radio stations had long ignored. 

All that being said, it's also true that The Blues Brothers is almost embarrassing as an example of cultural appropriation. When my parents (who grew up on real blues and jazz) watched The Blues Brothers on cable TV many years ago, their takeaway was that the Black performances in the film reminded them of the days when Lena Horne would appear in isolated numbers in MGM musicals so that her scenes could be edited out when the films played in the South.

Subtextually, Black culture is used as a backdrop in The Blues Brothers, a thing Jake and Elwood have free access to lay claim to and use in any way they wish. Black music is theirs to perform, Black personas are theirs to adopt; all the while they're secure in the fact that they don't even have to be any good to succeed—they merely have to be Not Black. An unfortunate fact borne out by the music history statistic that both The Blues Brothers soundtrack and the aforementioned Briefcase Full of Blues rank as the top-selling blues albums of all time. My head hurts just thinking about that one. 

Critics of the film rightfully question whether the humor of The Blues Brothers 
is rooted in merely seeing whites occupying Black spaces

None of this should detract from the obvious merits of The Blues Brothers. It's mentioned merely to call attention to talking points and food for thought that's impossible to ignore when watching a nearly 40-year-old film.

I consider The Blues Brothers to be a classic, but to true fans of blues and R&B, Aykroyd and Belushi are a bit like the Jayne Meadows (wife of Steve Allen) and Nanette Newman (wife of director Bryan Forbes) of Soul: if you want to see Aretha Franklin and James Brown on the screen, you have to take Jake and Elwood in the bargain.

Steven Spielberg as the Cook County Office Clerk

BONUS MATERIAL
A poorly-received Blues Brothers sequel--Blues Brothers 2000--was made in 1998, some 16-years after John Belushi's death. Co-written by Aykroyd and Landis, this PG-13 misguided venture brought back several members of the original cast (Aretha Franklin, James, Brown, Steve Lawrence, Kathleen Freeman) but to less entertaining effect. Budgeted at  $28 million, it grossed something in the neighborhood of $14 million. I tried watching it, but the introduction of that kid Blues Brother did me in.

Choreographer Carlton Johnson staging Franklin's "Think" musical number

The sixty-minute 1998 behind-the-scenes documentary "The Stories Behind the Making of The Blues Brothers" is currently available on YouTube. Click Here.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2019

FAME 1980

"I am so excited because I'm gonna go to the High School of Performing Arts! I mean, I was dying to be a serious actress. Anyway, it's the first day of acting class—and we're in the auditorium and the teacher, Mr. Karp... ."    
                                                       A Chorus Line - James Kirkwood & Nicholas Dante

I read recently that the estate of choreographer/director Michael Bennett is planning a 2025 Broadway revival of A Chorus Line to commemorate its 50^th Anniversary (feel old yet?). A Chorus Line opened on Broadway in July of 1975, and I still have vivid memories of seeing the touring company when it played San Francisco in 1976. A theatrical experience that, to this day, has never been surpassed.

I didn’t see the iconic musical’s most recent incarnation, the official 2006 Broadway revival, but I recall with equal vividness a conversation I had at the time with a young dance student who’d just returned from seeing the NY production, his first-ever encounter with A Chorus Line. He raved about the dancing and thoroughly enjoyed the production, but in the end was at a loss to understand the show’s reputation as a groundbreaking classic: “I liked it…I just don’t get what all the fuss was about!”  

Said “fuss” being that A Chorus Line won nine Tony Awards including Best Musical, the Pulitzer Prize, ran for 15 years on Broadway, and was an seminal and influential pop culture phenomenon the world over.

While listening and resisting the impulse to explain the significance of A Chorus Line by means of sign language (i.e., my hands around his throat), it became apparent to me that this youngster’s reaction was perhaps born of his having grown up during the Disneyfication years of Broadway. Raised in the post-The Lion King/Wicked world of musical-theater-as-amusement-park-attraction, seeing a show consisting of little more than a bare stage and a troupe of talented dancer/actor/singers must have come as something of a shock.
Similarly, having been weaned on stunt-dance movies like Step Up #643 and dance competition TV shows like So You Think You Can Dance, it's also likely that this young man grew up with a perception of dance as athletic spectacle. I can't imagine Michael Bennett’s classic musical theater choreography looks very impressive when one has been conditioned to see dance performance in terms of Herculean feats of gymnastic strength, flexibility, and showboating "Look at me!" grandstanding of the sort antithetical to the “move as one” aesthetic of chorus work (“Don’t pop your head, Cassie!”).

However, there was one eye-opening takeaway from our conversation which gave me a better grasp of why new generations might find themselves at a loss to understand exactly what my generation found so powerful and innovative about A Chorus Line: personal self-disclosure as a metaphor for the significance of the individual. A Chorus Line came out smack in the middle of the "Me Generation," when the notion that the average person might have a story worth telling was still something of a novelty.

In today’s climate of reality-TV, famous-at-any-price celebrity, and toxic social media oversharing; nothing dates A Chorus Line more than its cast of dancers who shun having the spotlight shone on them. They recoil from being asked to talk about themselves, don't like getting personal, and (horrors of horrors) resist being the center of attention. They'd prefer to communicate through dance, finding both dignity and self respect in being allowed to do what they do for love. Even if it means being part of a corps of dancers; an anonymous, nameless, member of a chorus line.

As nakedly honest and heartachingly revelatory as those monologues seemed to me in 1976, I suspect that nothing disclosed by those characters would even warrant more than a handful of “likes” on Twitter today. This awareness of the degree to which the show business landscape has changed over the years became an ineradicable part of my revisiting one of my favorite musicals of the ‘80s: Alan Parker’s Fame. 

Irene Cara as Coco Hernandez
"How bright our spirits go shooting out into space depends on how much we contribute to the earthly brilliance of this world. And I mean to be a major contributor. A sure-as-shit major contributor."

Gene Anthony Ray as Leroy Johnson
"I'm gonna be a good dancer. You will NOT keep me down!"

Maureen Teefy as Doris Finsecker
"If I don't have a personality of my own, so what? 
I'm an actress. I can put on as many personalities as I want!"

Barry Miller as Ralph Garci (Raul Garcia)
"That's the meanest high there is. It beats dope. It beats sex. I LOVE fucking acting!"

Paul McCrane as Montgomery McNeil
"I mean, never being happy isn't the same as being unhappy."

Laura Dean as Lisa Monroe
"I only ever wanted to be a dancer."

Lee Curreri as Bruno Martelli
"You're not my age. Nobody's my age. Maybe I'm ahead of my time!"

Antonia Francheschi as Hilary van Doren
"You see, I've always had this crazy dream of dancing all the classical roles before I'm 21."

Fame, the American feature film debut of British director Alan Parker (Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express) was inspired—according to Parker, but denied by producer David De Silva—by A Chorus Line. Specifically, the dramatic potential suggested by the song “Nothing,” which references a young dancer’s early experiences attending New York’s High School of Performing Arts.

In a way, that makes Christopher Gore’s original screenplay for Fame something of a prequel to A Chorus Line; being that the film concerns itself with the formative experiences in the lives of eight young theater hopefuls at The High School of Performing Arts—from freshman auditions to senior graduation. Taking the kids from roughly the ages of 14 to 18, the movie combines elements of the coming-of-age film, the slice of life drama, and the backstage musical. Most effectively (and entertainingly), Fame also recalls and revitalizes those fondly-remembered high-school movies of my youth: Up The Down Staircase, The Trouble With Angels, To Sir With Love, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Blending elements of comedy and drama, the four-year journey of the students of PA (High School of Performing Arts) is, contrary to its title and the sanitized, rah-rah movies and TV shows it inspired, a fairly dark, hard-shelled look at the blood, sweat, and tears that go into pursuing a life in the arts. Ironically, the achievement of fame doesn’t even factor into the fates of the characters.

Ann Meara as Mrs. Sherwood

Jim Moody as acting teacher Mr. Farrell

Fame's main characters represent a familiar cross-section of ethnic, cultural, and temperamental types, and as such, their experiences and relationships tend to follow a fairly predictable arc. There’s driven Coco (triple threat dancer/singer/actor); brash Leroy (dancer); shy Doris (actor/singer), troubled Ralph (actor/stand-up comic); closeted Montgomery (actor/singer); solitary Bruno (musician/composer), directionless Lisa (dancer or actor…whatever), and self-assured Hilary (ballerina). These terse descriptions are in no way a diminution of the characters or performances; merely an indicator of the built-in limitations of the film’s multi-character structure.

Ilse Sass and Albert Hague as Mrs. Tossoff & Mr. Sharofsky

Debbie Allen and Joanna Merlin as honor student Lydia Grant and ballet instructor Miss Berg

In order to make room for songs and dance numbers while tackling everything from first love, illiteracy, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, and sexual exploitation; it’s necessary for Fame to resort to a bit of narrative shorthand. But the sublime triumph of the script and the film as a whole—which stands as a resounding testament to Parker and the film’s remarkably engaging cast—is that the abbreviated feeling of the various vignettes only leave you wanting more. No particular character or storyline overstays its welcome.

The end result, by virtue of the script's emotional vitality and the cinematic ingenuity of cinematographer Michael Seresin and longtime Alan Parker editor Gerry Hambling, is that the film achieves moments of real poignancy and passion.
Never less than an exhilarating, kinetic delight, Fame, instead of avoiding the “aspiring teens put on a show” tropes standardized by Judy Garland Mickey Rooney in those old MGM musicals, cozies up to them and updates these showbiz movie conventions in surprising ways. I found myself responding to clichés I thought I’d grown immune to ages ago.

As teen musical’s go, Fame is distinguished by its R-rated grittiness and the strength of its supporting cast of pleasingly inclusive and interesting fresh faces. The kids - many of them students from the real High School of Performing Arts - look like kids, dress like kids, and exude an appealing naturalness. Mercifully spared the coyness in language and presentation that marred the already pretty terrible 2009 PG-rated remake; Fame 1980 presents a vision of New York simultaneously seedy and scintillating. Bracingly at odds with the all-white pop-culture visions of Manhattan foisted upon us by Woody Allen and TV shows like Sex & the City, Seinfeld, and Friends; Fame’s New York actually looks like New York. It’s level of inclusion (it’s nice to see so many PoC studying ballet, classical music, and Shakespearean acting) is something 2018 filmmakers could still take a lesson from.

Carol Massenburg as Shirley Mulholland ("That's two L's")
One feels the camera could be trained on any of the kids in the cast and still produce a fascinating story. One of my favorite small roles, played with authenticity, humor, and sass, yet never fails to break my heart, is that of Shirley, Leroy's less-then-gifted dance partner.

If I have any criticisms at all, they’re of the subjective, nit-picking sort. For all the scenes that soar (the audition sequence is so good it could stand alone as a short film), there are head-scratchers like the recurring gag that asks us to share the ogling gaze of the adolescent boys peeking into the girls’ locker room. My problem isn’t so much with the fact that this sort of mainstreamed harassment has been normalized with “boys will be boys” rhetoric for too long; it’s that--given how Coco’s story plays out (a scene in which, once again, the director’s gaze renders us complicit in a woman’s sexual exploitation) it baffles me how a director can display so much sensitivity in some areas while revealing such a blind spot in others.

When I was young, I thought the sequence in which Coco is taken in by a pervy con man (one calling himself Francois Lafete, no less) lacked credibility. I thought it portrayed Coco as dumb, which she never was. Now I see the scene as being considerably smarter and more perceptive of Coco's fatal character flaw than I'd first realized. She prides herself on being a savvy professional who knows all the angles. When I watched the scene again I noticed how much lying and obfuscating Coco does in an effort to seize a perceived advantage. This con is able to work only because Coco is led to believe she has the upper hand.

Another of my gripes is the character of Montgomery. He simply hasn’t aged very well. Putting aside his cringe-worthy monologue (“Gay used to mean such a happy kind of word once.”), I give Fame credit for a positive portrayal of a gay character in a mainstream film at a time when William Friedkin’s Cruising (1980) gave us yet another homicidal homosexual, and The Village People were still tap dancing around their own queer identity (the deeply closeted Can’t Stop The Music was released just a month later). But for me, Montgomery is a throwback to the days when movies thought the best way to make a controversial character sympathetic was to render them as a figure of pity.

As a teen grappling with his homosexuality, Montgomery feels isolated (in a Performing Arts School, yet!), but we in the audience can see he’s surrounded by all manner of gay kids. I don't expect anything as progressive as giving him a high-school sweetheart, but it would have been nice for his character to see that he wasn't the only one, and that "gay" could be happy. But, as written, Montgomery is content to stay on the sidelines, looking all alabaster and moony while playing Queer Eye for the Straight Guy & Gal to Doris and Ralph. At least he gets his own song (penned by McCrane).

My functioning gaydar knew in 1980 that the late Gene Anthony Ray was gay long before it was confirmed personally by Fame TV show cast members several years later after I had become a dancer myself. Making his film debut in Fame, the dynamic Ray passed away from an HIV-related stroke in 2003.

Fame was released three years before Star Search popularized caterwauling as singing and made way for today’s barrage of I-deserve-fame-because-I-want-it, celebrity-in-an-instant horse races like American Idol, The Voice, and America’s Got Talent. Thus, one of the things I find most gratifying about Fame is its realistic perspective and persistent repudiation of the fame myths our culture keeps feeding young people.

I've always perceived A Chorus Line's glittering finale to be a much more heartbreaking and stark close to the show than its rousing melody would have us believe (after spending an entire evening getting to see these dancers as unique individuals, it is their fate to once again fade into chorus anonymity). Similarly, I've never felt Fame's exuberant theme song or its emphatic title to be really  what the film is all about. The cocksure lyrics (in the context of the film, written by Coco, but actually written by Dean Pitchford to Michael Gore's music) may reflect Coco's determined quest for for fame and immortality, but the movie is more about the pain and sacrifices of chasing success. For me, the Oscar-winning song "Fame" is less a paean to the power of dreams than a pep-talk anthem to  optimistic wishful thinking.

Leslie Quickley as Sheila
Fame's casting is so spot-on and the kids so idiosyncratic and charming that no matter how brief their on-camera time, you come to look for them in scene after scene. They become the ones you cheer for in the big graduation number 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Fame is technically an '80s film, but its roots are clearly in the '70s. By this I mean it's a product of a  '70s film sensibility. That decade-affixed mindset where creative choices were made appropriate to the material (swearing, nudity, drug use, sex) and not simply grinding out a feel-good musical to pander to the lucrative PG-rating demographic. I can't imagine a studio today releasing films like Fame or Saturday Night Fever with R-ratings. Some accounting actuary or focus-group survey would point out how much more money could be made from a PG release, and that would be the end of the very grittiness that gives these films their uniqueness.
I've always thought Fame was a very good movie, but in these post-High-School Musical years it has taken on the feel of a genuine classic. One look at the remake (a film I recommend you avoid at all costs) confirms that what Alan Parker and company have pulled off here is something very, very special. So good that even the watered-down TV show and fairly awful theatrical version couldn't defile it.

What Are You Doing Now?
Anyone who knows an actor learns quickly never to ask that question, for it invariably leads to the awkward conversation centered around the jobs that one didn't get. I love that Fame includes such painful, reality-check moments. Here the current graduating class encounters the most promising senior of their Freshman year (Boyd Gaines)...waiting tables.

PERFORMANCES
An example of ensemble casting at its finest, I can't say there's a single performance in Fame I find any fault with. The veterans and novices deliver with equal assurance, a credit to Parker casting cannily close both to type and the relative demands of each role. To cite a particular favorite is less a comparative assessment of one player being "better" than another, so much as it's a recounting of my own emotional journey watching the film. Based on who I am and how I'm wired, some plot points and characters just spoke to me more persuasively than others.

Irene Cara's delicacy (those cheekbones!) contrasts with her character's hardness, 
making for a compelling and strong screen presence. Cara, already a 10-year showbiz veteran by 1980, went on to win an Oscar, Golden Globe, and a Grammy for co-writing the theme song to Flashdance (1983)

I have to say that the Doris/Ralph relationship is my favorite in the film. I didn't expect to like their characters, but the actors bring some remarkable nuances to their performances. Just watch how Miller listens in his scenes.

The contentious relationship between English teacher Mrs. Sherwood and Leroy is very nicely played.
Ann Meara really gives the inexperienced Ray a lot to work off of. He's at his best opposite her

As stated, it's not a matter of assigning the label "best" to anyone, but I really liked the performances of Barry Miller and Paul McCrane. McCrane's earnest naturalism redeems what I find lacking in the role as written. Miller went on to win a Tony Award for Biloxi Blues in 1985 while McCrane won an Emmy for the TV series Harry's Law (2011) on whose finale he sang the song he wrote and performs in Fame.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
The music and dancing in Fame is glorious. I'm not exactly sure why, but it's one of the few '80s soundtracks that doesn't sound painfully dated. That's not to say the sound isn't very much locked into the time, for it is. But like the scores to many great musicals, it has a sound characteristic of the time and place depicted, it doesn't have that overly-trendy sound (like say Voyage of the Rock Aliens, or Earth Girls are Easy) that feels so corny and out of date it only has a distancing effect.

Hot Lunch Jam
For sheer percussive energy, you can't beat this number. Cara's vocals slay

I Sing the Body Electric
Each and every time I make a bet with myself that I'm not going to get
waterworks from the graduation finale number. A bet I lose each and every time. 

Fame choreographers Louis Falco (r.) & William Gornel

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

As you can see from the photo above, Fame opened at Hollywood's Cinerama Dome on May 16th, 1980, which is the date I saw it and fell in love. Although I was a big fan of Alan Parker, the only names in the cast familiar to me were Barry Miller (who I thought was as terrific in Saturday Night Fever); Anne Meara (from the comedy duo [Jerry]Stiller & Meara); and most famously, Irene Cara. Fame is credited with launching Cara's career, but I remembered her from TV's The Electric Company and Roots, and on the big screen in Sparkle and Aaron Loves Angela.

Pre-release publicity was minimal, so I didn't know what to expect. Try to imagine, on that big Cinerama screen, what it was like to discover all these talented unknowns and hear for the first time those songs that are now almost too-familiar. A rousing, thrilling motion picture experience from start to finish. And I returned to see Fame many, many times over the summer. I was enthralled and surprisingly moved by it.
I was still attending film school at the time and working full-time at a bookstore, but within the short window of eight months, the releases of All That Jazz (December -1979), Fame (May -1980) and Xanadu (August-1980) became the dance film trifecta that inspired me to seek a career as a dancer.

The Roland Dupree Dance Academy on 3rd Street in LA is where I took my very first dance class (and eventually taught). Strange to think there was a time I didn't even know what legwarmers were and had to ask someone what a dance belt was (a thong/jock for male dancers); but it's here I studied ballet, tap, jazz, and modern. I wish I could remember when I took this photo, but I attended from 1980 to at least 1984.

As for Fame, one of the main reasons I always get teary-eyed during the film's finale is because in that spectacular display of goosebump-inducing talent (in which the "stars" sung about have nothing to do with celebrity), the experience is like bearing witness to the dedication and hard work that goes into making an artist...into creating something beautiful. It has nothing to do with making someone famous.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2018