Fame ***** (1980, Irene Cara, Lee Curreri, Gene Anthony Ray) – Classic Movie Review 2461

Director Alan Parker’s stupendous double-Oscar-winning 1980 musical-drama film Fame spawned the popular 1980s TV series and spin-off, a stage show that has played all over the world since 1988 when it premiered at the Coconut Playhouse in Florida, a reality competition series and a 2009 film remake. This Saturday Night Fever meets A Chorus Line film is a joyous hymn to the American dream.

Directed in America by English film-maker Parker, it stars Irene Cara, Lee Curreri and Gene Anthony Ray, and is all about the dreams, struggles and failures of students at the New York High School of Performing Arts. The film follows a band of hopefuls from audition piece through their studies to their graduation day four years after. It is split into sections corresponding to auditions, and freshman, sophomore, junior and senior years.

There are lots and lots of good things going on: the Oscar-winning Best Original Score and Best Original Song (‘Fame’ was a hit for Cara), lively performances by actors that were to become household faces on TV, thrilling dance numbers, exhilarating cinematography and jazzy editing, and exciting direction by Parker.

The screenplay is by Christopher Gore, the choreography by Louis Falco and musical score by Michael Gore.

As, yes, Fame – ‘we’re gonna live forever’. Ironically all the stars in this movie and its TV series spinoff have more or less vanished and are virtually forgotten.

It was the first movie to have two tunes nominated as Best Song (also ‘Out Here on My Own’), though many other examples have since followed. Both were hits and so was ‘I Feel the Body Electric’.

American singer and actress Irene Cara Escalera (March 18, 1959 – November 25, 2022) co-wrote the song ‘Flashdance… What a Feeling’, and won an Academy Award for Best Original Song and a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Cara died in her Florida home of an undisclosed cause, aged 63.

Sir Alan William Parker CBE (14 February 1944 – 31 July 2020).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2461

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