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 a 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 by 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" they sing about are of the celestial and spiritual kind), 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.

Scene from "Fame"   1980

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2018

GHOST OF DRAGSTRIP HOLLOW 1959

As a youngster, it seemed as though I became interested in movies about grown-ups at precisely the time Hollywood became fixated on making movies about youngsters. In 1967 when I was about 10-years old, Hollywood, having opened its eyes to the newfound autonomy and boxoffice clout of teenagers and the college crowd, set about aggressively courting the youth market. Then still an industry run by old men who were, at best, only superficially aware of what the youth market even wanted, Hollywood nevertheless flooded movie theaters with all manner of what was presumed to be youth-themed product. A significant number of these films being devoted to hippies and social rebellion.

My personal apathy towards movies about young people and kids my own age wasn't born of any specific dislike for my peers so much as it was reflective of how badly at the time I wanted to be an adult. I was still at an age where I went to movies for escapism, and, what with having three teenage sisters lording over me at home 24/7, the last thing I wanted to do in my away time was to spend hours in a dark theater looking at more teenagers...or worse, adults pretending to be teenagers. It didn't help, either, that I grew up in the vicinity of San Francisco’s Haight/Ashbury district during the peak of its Summer of Love popularity; the proximity and ubiquity of so many real-life hippies sufficiently killing any mystery or allure they might have otherwise held for me on the big screen.

The dry rivers of Los Angeles popularized the postwar craze of hot rod drag racing.
The LA River was used for drag racing scenes in numerous films, among them: Girls Town (1959) and Grease (1978)

No, I wasn't interested in the "happening" younger generation movies of the day like Woodstock, Alice’s Restaurant, or Zabriskie Point. The movies I longed to see were those I thought would offer a glimpse into what my overactive and melodramatic imagination fancied the world of grown-ups to be like: Two for the Road, Hotel, Valley of the Dolls, Reflections in a Golden Eye.  But, alas, I was at that awkward age: a cinephile "tween" too old for Walt Disney but too young for Ken Russell. 

Paradoxically, while young people in contemporary films held little interest for me on the big screen, on the black and white console TV in our family’s living room, I was positively gaga over movies about teenagers from the ‘50s and early ‘60s. On Saturday afternoons local TV stations could be relied upon to supply a steady stream of ‘50s juvenile delinquent melodrama (The Violent Years - 1956); hot rod exploitation (Dragstrip Riot - 1956), rock & roll romance (Rock, Rock, Rock - 1956); jukebox musicals (Don’t Knock the Rock - 1956); low-budget monster movies (I Was a Teenage Frankenstein -1957), screwy sci-fi flicks (Teenagers from Outer Space - 1959); and Drive-in oddities (Teenage Caveman - 1958).

Kids Just Wanna Have Fun

These poor-relation follow-ups to Brando’s The Wild One (1953), Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and Poitier’s Blackboard Jungle may have been marketed to teens, but in favoring harmless generation gap clashes over social rebellion commentary, their narratives always hewed close to the middle-class status quo. Juvenile delinquents were never depicted as anti-heroes whose mistrust of authority was justified, rather, they were seen as atypical bad apples and stand-alone troublemakers. Their disobedience was often shown to be the pitiable product of broken homes or of having been raised without the proper advantages (aka, a suburban home with a white picket fence).

Moderne Family: Jeanne Tatum, Jody Fair, and Kirby Smith
bask in the Streamline furniture, starburst clocks, wall sconces, and enormous coffee tables

Known in our house as "juvies" (juvenile delinquent movies) or "black & white shoe pictures" (in reference to the bobbysoxer footwear-of-choice: saddle-shoes), the movies in this genre I most enjoyed were those distinguished by their non-existent budgets, prodigious use of bop-talk slang, and the then-vanguard preponderance of rock & roll music on the soundtrack. (Predictably, the vision of America presented in these movies was unrelentingly white, save for the occasional, controversial appearance of an African-American rock & roll music act).

What used to really fascinate me—especially given that, at the time, these movies were only about 10 or 13 years old—was their jarring “otherness.” In everything from hair, speech patterns, modes of dress, music, dances, and choice of leisure pastimes; these movies depicted a teenage world so alien to life as I knew it, it was like our TV set was receiving transmissions from another planet. Compared to the real-time preoccupations of the day (the Vietnam War, civil rights, lowering the voting age, free love, drugs, Women’s Lib, and religious exploration) the '50s restlessness brought about by the Bomb and the Cold War seemed positively quaint.

Attack of the Well-Behaved, Appropriately-Dressed, Party Crashers

While some of these films were sincere in their efforts to call attention to the delinquency crisis hitting the suburbs at the time, most were conceived as exploitation programmers pandering to the teen preoccupations of the day, and geared for quick turnover in the Drive-In market. The silliest, ergo, the most entertaining of this ilk were the programmers that played out like dry-runs for the yet-to-come Beach Party movies of the sixties. These films had nonsensical plots, an almost vaudeville approach to humor, stock teen characters (the bland hero, his loyal “girl,” the jokester, the bad kids/rivals), and the elders were always well-meaning allies, ineffectual authority figures, or comic buffoons. 

A particular favorite I made a point never to miss whenever it cropped up on TV was Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow; a goofy titled, likeably awful goulash of teen-movie tropes economically crammed into a brisk 65-minutes...which made it perfect for those 2-hour afternoon TV programs whose hosts served up jokey commentary between the countless commercials.

Top on my list of reasons why Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow rocks is that the only rebellious drag racing done in the entire film is by the women 

Jody Fair as Lois Cavendish 

Nancy Anderson as Annita (Nita)

The almost surreally silly Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow was promoted as a sequel (of sorts) to 1959’s more straightforward Hot Rod Gang, but newcomers to this film needn’t worry about not being able to pick up the thread. There isn’t one.

Remember that list of ‘50s teen flick genres I referenced earlier? Well, Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow somehow manages to be ALL of them at once. Yes, in a mere 65 minutes you get juvenile delinquent melodrama, hot rod exploitation, rock & roll romantic comedy, a rockabilly and girl-group pop jukebox musical of (all the better to promote American International Pictures’ newly-formed record label), a ghost/monster flick, and a Scooby Doo mystery, to boot.

Members of The Zenith Motor Club
Amelia (Sanita Pelkey), Dave (Henry McCann), Bonzo (Leon Tyler), and Rhoda (Elaine DuPont)

The Zenith Club is a group of suburban hot rod enthusiasts devoted to disaffirming the public perception of hotrodders as street-racing, authority-flouting, juvenile delinquents. Pledged to a strict code forbidding street racing of any kind, this clean-cut clique spends its time tinkering with engines and bop dancing in the adjacent soda shop. Journalist Tom Hendry (Russ Bender), writing a human interest article on teenagers called “This Restless Breed,” has been invited to tag along as the Zeniths do whatever it is they do. A plot contrivance opening the door for a lot of exposition and the reciting of more hot rod minutiae than any of us deserve.

Alleged hot-rodder and likely junior ROTC recruit Stan (Martin Braddock) helps superannuated cub reporter Tom (Russ Bender) understand that not all young people are as trouble-making (or talented or charismatic) as Marlon Brando in The Wild One 

The leader of The Zeniths is Stan (Martin Braddock), a wholesome, cardigan-wearing type characterized  by his level-headedness and never being seen doing anything remotely car-related. Other members include pint-sized brainiac Dave (Henry McCann) and his bookish, Amazonian gal-pal Amelia (Sanita Pelkey); annoying, comedy-relief cut-up Bonzo (Leon Tyler) and kewpie-eyed girlfriend Rhoda (Elaine DuPont); and real-life drag racing Hall of Famer Tommy Ivo (as himself...and perhaps wondering, like me, why he isn’t the leader of the club) and his mostly silent, ponytailed partner Sandra (Judy Howard). A welcome break from all this gender stasis (the women don’t really do anything in the club except stand around watching their boyfriends work on engines) is Lois Cavendish (Jody Fair).

Madonna prototype Sandra (Judy Howard) stands by as drag racing legend Tommy Ivo contributes some long-winded verisimilitude to the film by delivering a 60-second, documentary-level monologue about his narrow rear end and unblown gas engine.

Lois is the only female hotrodder and mechanic in the club, and, as she’s so easily goaded into “chicken run” drag races by Nita (Nancy Anderson), a snarly rival gang member, she’s also the film’s only rule-breaker (albeit, reluctant). Refreshingly independent-minded for a film of this sort, Lois has her interest in cars trivialized (“I can dig the male of the species, but the female hotrodder baffles me!”) and boyfriend Stan laments her not placing him first in her passions (“She prefers hot rods instead of hot romances”), yet she persists. Even when it comes to her parents.

"You're approaching womanhood...."
"I've got news for you...I've arrived!"

When The Zenith’s lose their clubhouse lease, elderly eccentric Anastasia Abernathy (Dorothy Neumann) kindly grants the kids use of her late grandfather’s deserted house in Dragstrip Hollow…provided the youngsters can rid the place of a skulking monster and spooky ghost. And it’s at this point—roughly, some three-quarters into the movie, mind you—that Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow finally decides it might be time to actually be about a ghost of Dragstrip Hollow. Good idea. Especially since up to now the movie’s mostly been a series of vaguely connected false leads and narrative fake-outs designed to quash dramatic conflict (or story momentum, for that matter) every time it rears its head.

Dorothy Neumann as Anastasia Abernathy - with Alphonso, her loquacious parrot.
Fans of The Andy Griffith Show might recognize Neumann as the wife of Otis, the town drunk 

Among the many introduced-only-to-be-abandoned plot points: the whole gang rivalry angle; Lois’ generation-gap clash with her parents; Tom’s forgotten magazine article; the chance that Lois’ involvement in hot-rodding could adversely affect her father’s real estate business; and boyfriend Stan’s concern that he comes second to Lois’ love of fast cars.

But that’s no reason to despair. Not when there’s so much time devoted to slumber parties, bop dances, lengthy musical interludes, a wisecracking parrot, the invention of the smart car, and a wrap-up so hasty you’ll think you nodded off and missed something.

That's B-Movie monster costume designer/creator Paul Blaisdell inside this outfit he originally made for The She-Creature (1956).  A Blaisdell-designed costume for Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957) also makes an appearance in Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE

If ever there was a movie to exemplify the principle of making a virtue of one’s flaws, that movie is Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow. Proof that a deficit of production values and a meandering screenplay is no match for an appealing cast and a rockabilly soundtrack. Revisiting this film after so many years, I was certain that personal nostalgia would play the most significant role in determining how I would respond. But imagine my surprise to discover that Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow—in all its nonsensical, unpretentious glory—still rocks! 

And I don’t mean just in a campy, Mystery Science Theater 3000 way, either (although it has that to spare). I don’t know what it is, but there’s something so inoffensively featherweight and ridiculous about the whole premise and execution of this film that getting caught up in its jaunty good nature proves rather effortless. I actually found myself laughing with the film as often as I was laughing at it.  

The best way to rid a haunted house of a ghost is to throw a rock & roll masquerade party

What once felt like an “otherness” in the film’s setting and characters, now feels recognizably old-fashioned. Like a mash-up of Scooby-Doo, The Munsters, Father Knows Best, American Bandstand, and those “Abbott and Costello Meet…” movies.

Although it sounds like faint praise, the cast of Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow wins me over with their likeability more than their talent, the latter ofttimes proving to be a downright obstacle in movies like this. The older players fare best, what with the younger ones at constant risk of being upstaged by a wisecracking parrot. Jody Fair makes for a pleasantly spunky leading lady, but whenever bespectacled, statuesque Sanita Pelkey appears in the scene, I can’t imagine anyone’s eyes being on anyone else.

A former Miss New York and onetime showgirl, Sanita Pelkey appeared on a
1958 episode of the Groucho Marx game show You Bet Your Life  (audio only)

DIG THAT CRAZY BEAT:

American International Pictures, an independent movie studio that would make a name for itself in the '60s and '70s (not a particularly good one) with their Beach Party movies and biker flicks, was one of the first to mine the lucrative boxoffice potential of teenagers. In 1959 they launched their own record label, and the songs from Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow (most written by Beach Boys producer Nick Venet) were among the first to be pressed. I'm happy to say I have them all in my collection. Perhaps I should be mortified.

Rockabilly band "The Renegades" perform Geronimo and Charge! and Ghost Train

The girls of the Zenith Motor Club badly lip-sync to a song titled My Guy. The song was released
as a 45 single by a group calling themselves "Linda Leigh and the Treasure Tones"

Jimmie Maddin sings "Tongue Tied." Maddin was a singer/saxophonist and nightclub owner in LA. He was still performing at one of his clubs (The Capri Club in Glendale) a year before he died in 2006

GINCHY* GLOSSARY:                                                  

From a narrative standpoint, Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow is a bit of a hodgepodge. But its silly/funny dialogue and overemphatic slang is the ginchiest.   (*ginchy means cool)

“Put the cork, York.”    —Please be quiet

“He’s got static in his attic. Completely zonk!”    —He knows not whereof he speaks

“My dragon wagon’s laggin'”      —My automobile is in need of a tune-up

“It’s PM-ing, I’d better peel out”   —It's getting late, I'd best take my leave

“Put that thing down, Dad. Before you clobber your clavicle.”    —Don't overexcite yourself

“Two weeks on the slab? That’s a real buffalo.”  —Grounded? That's distressing news

“This gal’s got what it takes. If she’d only give it.”  —She's pretty. I wish she'd notice me 

“Somebody get this bag of bacteria lost.”   —I'm afraid we haven't been introduced 

“It’s not a chop, kitten. I purr you. Why, I’m not just makin’ sound waves. Like, if you weren’t jacketed, I’d move in.’Cause you’re a dap…I mean a real dap!”  

    —I'm being sincere, I like you. If you weren't already spoken for I'd ask you out, because I find you quite dapper

(A parent confronting two kids necking)

 “We thought we’d come out for a breath of fresh air”

“Where’d you think you’d find it? Down her throat?”

  

“I dreamed I was an 18-cylinder motor. It was wonderful...you should have seen my driveshaft!”

“That was grandmother Aphrodite!”

“How’d she die, trying to spell that name?”

BONUS MATERIAL:

Available in its entirety on YouTube

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2018

OPEN SECRETS: MOVIES AND THE ME TOO MOVEMENT

Had someone spent the better part of this year in a cave (an idea that grows increasingly appealing to me with each passing news day), only to just now become aware of the seismic social phenomenon that is the Me Too Movement; one could hardly fault them for assuming this newfound global discourse had been instigated by Hollywood as a means of addressing and drawing attention to the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment in the entertainment industry exclusively.

Indeed, as a sea of celebrated (largely white) faces comes to signify the frontlines of a movement that has, since an October 2017 tweet by actor Alyssa Milano, spawned a thousand hashtags and sparked a long-overdue cultural conversation, it’s easy to forget that the Me Too Movement was founded by African-American civil rights activist Tarana Burke as far back as 2006 as an “empowerment through empathy” program targeting women of color…traditionally the most underserved survivors of sexual violence.

The Color Purple (1985)

One of the few feature films to treat the sexual abuse of black women as a serious theme.

Historically, black women who speak out about rape, molestation, and sexual assault face resistance from all sides: accusations of race disloyalty if the perpetrator is a black male; said assault trivialized or disregarded if the perpetrator is a white male; silence or indifference from white females. 

When social-media frenzy—that unwieldy, modern equivalent of the scandal sheets of old—seized upon the band-aid-on-a-broken-leg karmic purge of the whole Harvey Weinstein scandal (offenses so unequivocal, males nationwide wide were granted license to condemn him free of having to bear either the weight of self-recognition or sting of complicity), defenders of the status quo were quick to whine about the  pendulum of consequence and accountability swinging too far. (This, after all of six months, mind you.) In the glare of spotlights and ancillary campaigns like #TimesUp and #NoMore, it looked for a while as though the essential tenets of Tarana Burke’s “me too. Movement” were in danger of submersion.  

Always a social movement about survivors (e.g., I see you and I understand) and less about naming and shaming, the focus of Burke’s Me Too movement encourages speaking aloud about that which gains its power from suppression, shame, and secrecy; recognizing the strength and value of those who survive traumas intended to instill feelings of guilt and worthlessness; and, most significantly, challenging the accepted perception that sexual assault and harassment are the isolated transgressions of a few bad apples, rather than a toxically pervasive by-product of socially-sanctioned misogyny and systemic sexism.

America is a fame-culture addicted country. So, if in the land of Celebrity Lives Matter it took our preoccupation with the problems of the privileged to give voice and visibility to what has long been an open-secret reality for millions of women nationwide; then it’s only fitting (if not downright ironic) that it should be via the industry that has made a fortune perpetuating and normalizing images of sexual abuse and violence towards women.

Marnie (1964)

Rape culture is when an esteemed director has to die before the public engages in a serious dialogue about an actress’ career-long disclosure of the sexual harassment she endured while in his employ. 

Alfred Hitchcock's behind-the-scenes harassment and obsession with Tippi Hedren
 lends Marnie's already distasteful rape scene an extra layer of ick.

For me, the single most surprising thing to come out of the whole #MeToo Movement are the reactions of shock, surprise, and incredulous outrage. All that convenient "Has this been happening under our very noses all this time?" self-absolution, instead of the more self-implicating—but arguably more accurate—realization that when it comes to acknowledging society's apathy towards the prevalence of sexual assault, our culture tends to adopt a position in line with a lyric from Stephen Sondheim's Company: "Think what you can keep ignoring...."

Movies have the potential to be an eloquent voice for the things we find most difficult to discuss or even speak aloud. Similarly, I can think of few art forms more influential than film when it makes up its mind to utilize its magic to help shine a widescreen, Technicolor spotlight on some dark aspect of humanity society likes to keep relegated to the shadows. But traditionally speaking, when it comes to the depiction and treatment of women, it can’t be said that movies have always been what you might call a ready ally.

The Lonely Lady (1983)

Hollywood rarely knows how to write a lead female character who is both sexual and sympathetic. Trapped by the narrow Madonna-whore social construct of womanhood, hack writers are often at a loss for how to feature as much nudity and sex as possible while still giving the audience a female lead they can root for/identify with. The irresponsible solution? Have her be the target of multiple sexual assaults. The Lonely Lady was marketed as a film with lots of sex and nudity, but in truth, there is very little sex in the film. What there’s plenty of is assault, coercion, battery, and rape.

Whatever brownie points The Lonely Lady earns for relevance (plot: women aren't taken seriously behind the camera in Hollywood) it loses due to its trivialization of sexual assault

If Movies Could Say #MeToo

So many of the films I cover for this blog are female-centric and were made during the era specific to when the Feminist Movement began to influence women’s roles both on and off screen. I'm intrigued by the possibility of exploring whether the attitudes in some of my favorites (and, in turn, my response to them) are dated, or, since many were once considered progressive, if they are in any way in tempo with the timbre of the times. Limiting my scope to films from my personal collection, my purpose in highlighting these movies is not just to illustrate how frequently rape, harassment, and sexual violence have figured in narratives and roles written for women over the years; but to examine the ways movies can reflect, shape, and possibly change our perceptions of behaviors and attitudes that have existed for too long without being challenged.

THE BORN LOSERS (1967)

As with so many horror films and westerns, the raison d’être of biker movies (essentially westerns on wheels) is the spectacle of assault on the female form. Not because women’s vulnerability to male violence is of any real import to the plot, it’s there simply to convey how bad the bad guys are. A staple of movies devoted to the wrongheaded notion that the banner heading of "action" always denotes the confluence of sex and violence. The Born Losers was written by the film’s star Elizabeth James, whose screenplay she decided--whether out of embarrassment (appropriate) or the belief that no one would see a biker flick written by a woman (misguided)--to credit under the pseudonym James Lloyd. I ascribe to Ms. James the refreshingly fearless and independent-minded heroine, and I thank her for providing personal fave Jane Russell with a colorful guest appearance. But in all other aspects this cycle melodrama (which introduced the "peace through asskicking" character, Billy Jack) is non-stop rape, female victimization, and by-the-numbers damsel in distress stuff.

VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1967)

The “working girl” genre is long dead, but for a time there seemed to be a glut of films devoted to dramatizing the perils facing single women trying to make it in “a man’s world.” These films gave lip service to female independence, but always managed to make it clear that women were better off (safer) sticking closer to hearth and home. While the sincerity of the intentions of these films is up for debate, and their attitude often smacks of the sexist “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen” toxic male in the workplace ethic; at least these movies recognized the commonality of sexual assault in women’s shared experience. In Valley of the Dolls Sharon Tate is subjected to objectification and sexual coercion; In The Best of Everything (1959) Diane Baker is sexually harassed on the job; and in The Group (1966) Jessica Walter is battered and narrowly escapes date rape. 

MANHATTAN (1979)

No insult to anyone who loves this film, but as soon as Woody Allen says the line "I'm 42 and she's 17," Manhattan morphs into a horror movie. I adored this film once, and back in 1979 nothing about this May/way-past-December romance gave me the willies (beyond Allen's fundamental unattractiveness, of course). I look at it now and...I mean, even applying the blinkers-on standards of the time (it was released two years after the Polanski rape trial) the Allen/Hemingway thing still creeps me out. She's of age and so is he, but the legalities don't undercut the gross-out factor. Now, I suffer a Breakfast at Tiffany's response when I encounter it. Which is to say that much in the same way I wish for there to be some way to cut Mickey Rooney's Mr. Yunioshi out of that lovely film, I harbor a similarly unreasonable desire for there to exist somewhere a Mariel Hemingway-free cut of Manhattan.

UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE (1967)

There's probably not a woman alive who can't relate, at least in part, to this image of Sandy Dennis being harassed by guys on a sidewalk. I'm forever baffled when I hear men say that women should feel complimented by wolf whistles and catcalls. That is, until I recognize the disingenuousness of such sentiments. Men know precisely what they are doing. They know the entitlement, they know the power, and they know they are exerting a subtle form of dominance. It's a put-down and sign of mastery; a signal that the right to speak out about a woman's body matters more than that woman's right to say she doesn't want to be subjected to it.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK (1977)

Written as a "meet cute" introduction for the two leads of Martin Scorsese's uneven musical romantic drama, this opening scene comprised of Robert De Niro's persistent pursuit of Liza Minnelli at a V-Day function has always felt more than a little creepy and threatening. Back in 1977 I chalked it up to the Travis Bickle effect, but upon revisiting the film recently, I have to say the toxic masculinity, sexual harassment vibe is off the chart. De Niro comes off as stalker material and Minnelli looks as though she wished pepper spray had been invented in 1945.

TO DIE FOR (1995)

In this satirical black comedy loosely based on a real-life incident, Nicole Kidman plays a cunning (albeit, not very bright) sociopath who dreams of a career as a news anchor. While Kidman's character is set up to be a parodistic amalgam of the worst of our fame-at-any-price culture, the way men respond to her character's professional ambitions offers a piercing (perhaps unintentional) commentary on how some men regard women in the professional sector. It says a lot when one realizes the level of professional condescension, objectification, harassment, and disregard Kidman's grossly unqualified character is met with would be precisely the same were she Diane Sawyer or Robin Roberts. America got a poisonous taste of this in our last election.

LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR (1977)

The jury is still out as to whether Richard Brooks' adaptation of Looking for Mr. Goodbar is a moralizing cautionary tale or a bracing expose of our culture's sexual hypocrisy (I vote for the latter). More disturbing than this film's violent denouement are the comments I read on IMDB and other online sources where the biggest takeaway some men (and a distressing number of women) have regarding the tragedy that made this movie such a shocker, is that Diane Keaton's character really shouldn't have laughed at Tom Berenger's inability to perform in bed. Yes, the fragility of the masculine ego is such an acknowledged no trespass zone that people actually think death is a foreseeable consequence of wounding it. 

LIPSTICK (1976)

The sensitive, thought-provoking, well-intentioned film about the subject of rape and its far-reaching psychological, emotional, judicial, and social aftermath has yet to be made. Back in 1976 this glossy pseudo-feminist Death Wish exploitation film pawned itself off as the genuine article by introducing many good talking points in its courtroom scenes. Especially as pertaining to the (continued) assertion that a woman can "provoke" her own sexual assault due to what she wears or how she looks. But by lingering over the unsavory particulars of the act of rape and giving short shrift to the characters and their motivations, Lipstick showed its true hand: it was simply interested is exploiting violent physical assault for sensation.

SOMETHING WILD (1961)

On the opposite end of the Lipstick spectrum is this rarely seen Carroll Baker arthouse entry that stands as one of the more complex and contemplative studies of a woman dealing with the emotional and psychological trauma of rape. Unfortunately, the brilliant character-study feel of the film's first half feels curiously at odds with the compassionate but arguably problematic second half. Recommenced for its focus on the survivor aspects of rape, and not dwelling upon nor exploiting the violence of the act itself.

SMOOTH TALK (1985)

The tendency for movies to sensationalize sexual assault and rape is that when the perpetrators are depicted as drooling monsters (Showgirls), it supports men not being able to recognize their own inappropriate or abusive behavior in these outsize portrayals. Similarly, when rape is only shown in terms of extreme violence and brutality (Blue Velvet), it reinforces a tendency in both sexes to only recognize and accept allegations of rape in terms of how brutal the assault and how much of a struggle the victim puts up. Smooth Talk, in which a sexual predator rapes a teenage girl by means of subtle threats and terrifying coercion, raises very real issues concerning how many date rapes and incidents of sexual assault occur with no physical violence. What can't be ignored is that in many instances assault can arise out of the threat of violence, the potential for violence, or merely the verbal and psychological assertion of power. In these instances, the perpetrator relies on society's blurred lines to ensure a victim's silence.

LOLITA (1962)

Stanley Kubrick was a genius. Vladimir Nabokov's novel is brilliant. James Mason's performance is his finest screen work. And I adore Shelly Winters in this. All that being said, my problem with Lolita is that it appears as though no one involved in the making of the film was the least bit concerned with the single aspect of the plot that strikes me as being so profoundly sad and scary. Lolita, a teenager, following the death of her mother, is bound to the possessive, predatory, obsessive molester her mother married. She has no one else. And like a captor, Humbert likes it that way. Add to this the fact that her only means of escape (as presented) is into the arms of another creepy pedophile (Clare Quilty) and you've got the makings of a tragedy, not a dark satire. Sure, the film is told from Humbert's twisted perspective, but for the film to ask the viewer not to concern themselves too unduly with what this girl is feeling or going trough is, for me, asking a bit much.

THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE (1992)

In this suspense thriller, Annabella Sciorra (a real-life Harvey Weinstein assault victim/accuser) plays a woman who is sexually molested by her gynecologist. The filing of her complaint spearheads the film's not-always-plausible nanny-takes-revenge plot and brings an end to this aspect of the story, but the strength of the sequence is that it offers a realistic, non-sensationalized look at the kind of assault that can happen to any woman. That it's also the kind of assault that leads so many women to question their own judgement makes it a brief but powerful entreaty for women to trust their instincts and listen to their bodies.

ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE (1974)

In closing, a look at this marvelous moment courtesy of Ellen Burstyn. A reminder that it's never too late to call 'em out on their bullshit.

This Is Just The Beginning

9 to 5 (1980)
A shout-out to my favorite workplace comedy. A film that humorously tackled sexism, workplace misconduct, the glass ceiling, and equal pay for women. There's no denying a lot has changed since this film came out, just as it's painfully clear there's a lot more work that needs to be done. But I've a feeling the recent groundswell of grassroots social activism is just the beginning of a wave of change. Here's hoping movies stay in step with the times and (better still) occasionally lead the way

"Silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the oppressor" - Ginette Sagan

There's so much backlash talk these days about the Me Too Movement fostering a "victim" mentality (something said at one time or another about all civil and human rights movements). But the reality has always been that speaking one's truth aloud, no matter the risk, odds, or assurance of outcome, is an act of triumph, the sign of a survivor, and profoundly heroic. me too. #MeToo

BONUS MATERIAL

A short film about civil rights activist and Me Too founder Tarana Burke 

(click on link to view)

SHE'S REVOLUTIONARY (2018)

THAT'S HARASSMENT (2018)

Filmmaker Sigal Avin and actor David Schwimmer produced a powerful series of five short films designed to demystify sexual misconduct. (click on link to view)

In this splendid New Yorker article by Molly Ringwald, the former Brat Pack member revisits her films The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles in the age of #MeToo 

Copyright © Ken Anderson