Fame

I mentioned a week or so ago that I had watched the 1980 version of Fame, not realizing until after I watched it that it was going to be on TCM overnight tonight at 2:45 AM (which is still technically Wednesday out in the Pacific time zone, at least when the movie starts) as part of a night of movies directed by Alan Parker. So I decided to hold off on my review until the TCM airing.

The movie starts off with a bunch of auditions for incoming freshmen at New York's prestigious School for the Performing Arts. Among the kids -- since they're really supposed to be about 14 years old trying to become freshmen -- are neurotic actor Montgomery MacNeil (Paul McCrane); shy Doris Finsecker (Maureen Teefy), who's being pushed into an audition by her mom who wants something for her; tremendous singer Coco Hernandez (Irene Cara); Bruno Martelli (Lee Curreri), who is more interested in the new electronic music than the traditional instruments that are more the area of expertise of the school, although he's ridiculously talented on synth; Raul Garcia (Barry Miller), a kid of Puerto Rican descent who wants to overcome the perceived stigma of his ethnicity and family history and calls himself Ralph Garcy; and Leroy Johnson (Gene Anthony Ray), a dancer who really only came to accompany a friend who was auditioning but is the one who gets accepted.

Eventually we see who gets accepted, and of course, all the people I mentioned above do since they wouldn't really be worth mentioning if they didn't get accepted. They then start school, which includes training in the various artistic endeavors they've signed up for, along with some harsh lessons from the school of hard knocks that they've all chosen to go into a field which is most likely not going to be financially remunerative for them. The actors, for example, will be lucky to be have roles in TV commercials. The instrumentalists are generally more likely to become future music teachers, too. But there's also academic learning, which is a huge problem for Leroy, who has serious reading deficiencies, as the topic of adult illiteracy was somehow a big thing in the early 1980s. But instead of the teachers being able to get through to him and get him to realize this shouldn't be a stigma and is something that can be corrected, Leroy goes through the rebellious minority student against the horrendous white teachers subplot.

Of course, all of the students get their subplots over the course of the four years they're in high school. One student is told by her teachers that she really doesn't have what it takes and should transfer to a regular school, something that has serious consequences. Coco shows the talent she has, as does Bruno, who writes "Fame", which brings all of the students out on to the streets for an impromptu dance party that probably pissed off everybody in a car. Ralph tries to become a stand-up comic among other things, while taking Montgomery's pills. Montgomery comes to grips with his homosexuality, amazingly apparently being the only gay student in the school. Along the way, there are several dance and music numbers and the students ultimately graduate to an uncertain future.

Fame is an interesting movie that is in some ways of a place and time, considering the subplots. But in another way, it's timeless in that pretty much everybody who goes through adolescence has the sort of big dreams that will come up against hard realities that the students here do; it's just set in the world of the performing arts as opposed to some other world. (I'm reminded of Eric Linden at the beginning of Ah, Wilderness! and the radical high school graduation speech he wanted to give.)

On the other hand, Fame has a lot of characters, and having the movie cover four years, it feels like most of the characters' back stories get short shrift in exchange for the stories being convient archetypes and plot devices. That's a bit of a shame, since all of these young adults turn out to be pretty darn talented, even if they'll go on to have varying degrees of success.

Two of the songs were nominated in the Best Original Song category. "Fame" won, and it's easy to see why considering the joyous spontaneous dance that it's set against. In many ways, "Out Here On My Own" feels more like the sort of song that the writers would have been trying to get nominated. However, it's only used in the movie in the context of Coco singing it in practice. It's really a metaphor for the tribulations they're all going to face when they graduate, except the song isn't used that way.

Fame is over 40 years old now, and spawned a TV series, a Broadway show, and a remake over a decade ago. But the original still holds up thanks to its universal themes and some fine talent.