Fame

After Midnight Express Alan Parker made another musical with young people, but the tone of Fame is far different than Bugsy Malone. Watching it again for maybe the third time, I noticed how brutal it is to its characters. 

Fame covers the four years of high school of about a half dozen kids at New York City's High School of the Performing Arts, from auditions to graduation. The script, by Christopher Gore, shows both the idealism of students of the arts, but is brutally honest about the minimal chance of them making careers out their talent.

The main characters are a boy who comes out (Paul McCrane), a girl who is at first extremely timid but learns to come out of her shell (Maureen Teefy), a kid from the South Bronix who idolizes Freddie Prinze and wants to be a stand-up comedian (Barry Miller), and an illiterate boy that wants to dance (Gene Anthony Ray). All of them are dealt some knocks, most notably Irene Cara, as the multi-talented Coco. Late in the film she is duped into a screen test with a pornographer, who has her take off her top while she is sobbing. This is one of the hardest scenes to watch, and one wonders how Cara felt about doing it, given that she does expose her breasts. Is Parker any better than the sleazeball director in the film?

Anyway, I nevertheless love Fame less for its quality as a movie than as nostalgia. It has the feel of a "hey kids, let's put on a show" film, albeit with rough language and nudity. I didn't go to a performing arts high school, but I did study theater in college, and went to see Fame with a bunch of other theater students at a second-run theater. I think we could all identify with what the kids were going through.

It also recalls a New York City that isn't the same (this was forty years ago). A scene showing the kids at The Rocky Horror Picture Show was shot at the 8th Street Playhouse, long shut down. The school itself isn't in the same place--it moved from it's Theater District location to Lincoln Center not long after the film was made.

The young performers are all great. Most of them didn't do much of note since then, except ironically Boyd Gaines, who has since won four Tony Awards. I say ironically because he plays a kid who is the best actor in school and is off to Hollywood, only to show up later as a waiter. If Fame does anything, it shows how tough it is to be a performer.