FAME

Twenty years ago I spent time at mrcranky.com, a website full of snarky reviews of movies.  A few years ago I tried to create a similar forum at 

http://captainsnark.freeforums.net/

but ran out of snark.  Before that I tried posting a prototype review of Fame at mrcranky.com.  This is it as I best recall it:

Quiz time!  Let's say that you're a teenage girl who's an aspiring singer-dancer-actress, and you meet this guy who calls himself Francois Lafete, though his accent is as Brooklynese as the next man! He says he admired you in A Chorus Line(!!) and invites you to his place for a movie audition.  What do you do?

A:  Tell him "Nice try, sleazebag!" and show him the door.

B:  Go to the audition, but when he tells you to take your top off, say "Nice try, sleazebag!" and show yourself the door.

C:  Take your top off and stick to your new career until you're the new Jenna Jameson.

D:  Take your top off, but burst into tears so the audience will pity your stupidity.

If you're Coco (Irene Cara), you of course choose D. That's right, we're talking the original 1980 version of Fame!  I'm too stingy to buy a movie ticket to the new version and watched the original on video instead. It tells the story of kids in New York City's High School for the Performing Arts, in the tradition of those '70s movies that made a big deal of showing The Unflinching Truth but are now badly dated. (Looking for Mr. Goodbar, anyone?) It plays like an After School Special crammed with R-rated cliches, such as boys peeking through a hole to watch girls undress.

Besides Coco, we have Ralph (Barry Miller), a jerky Puerto Rican comedian who aspires to be the next Freddy Prinze--not the junior version who needs a personality transplant but the senior one who screwed the pooch and blew his brains out; Montgomery (Paul McCrane), a gay actor who fell in love with his shrink; Leroy (Gene Anthony Ray), a Negro who's a terrific dancer but can't read! (sob, sob); Martelli (Lee Curreri), an electronic musician; and Lisa (Laura Dean), a ballerina who ends up aborting Leroy's baby.

And then there's Doris (Maureen Teefy), who has to be seen to be disbelieved! When she says "I don't know why I'm here," I didn't know either:  her audition is extremely lame.  In one scene she has to miss going to The Rocky Horror Picture Show because her mother insists that she entertain a children's party. (Say, isn't TRHPS usually shown way past most children's bedtime?) Later she has this line: "Something wonderful is happening to me, Mama--I'm growing up." Has any teenager in the history of the world said anything remotely resembling that?  Christopher Gore's script would rate B Minus at screenwriting school.

This unconvincing kaleidoscope is directed by Alan Parker, who believes that nothing succeeds like excess. (Take The Life of David Gale, please!) So we get a scene where Ralph's five-year-old sister has been raped by a junkie and gets an exorcism. At least I think that's what happened--they didn't subtitle the Spanish dialogue.  We get a scene where Leroy can get into the Alvin Ailey dance company but needs a high school diploma, so he bugs his English teacher to pass him when she's in a hospital reception room because her father is dying.

The music teacher dismisses electronic music with the line, "That isn't music, Martelli, that's masturbation!" I wanted to say, "This isn't filmmaking, Parker, it's masturbation!"