Women's Pictures - Amy Heckerling's Clueless

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a teen movie made after 1995 owes a debt to Clueless. Since its release 20 years ago, Amy Heckerling's classic has had surprising longevity: it revitalized teen fashion in the wake of grunge, resuscitated a genre (while also spawning a new subgenre), spawned a platinum soundtrack, launched a new generation of acting careers, like way altered the teenage lexicon, and inspired a rap video as late as 2014. We at Team Experience reference it at least once a year. And though Clueless landed at #3 on our recent Back To School Team Top 10, the two films that topped it were both direct beneficiaries of Clueless's wit and satire. Clueless redefined the teen film genre, divorcing it from the darkness of the 80s, while maintaining the social satire and serious observation that gave the totally quotable dialog resonance for an optimistic, clueless new generation of 90s teens. 

When Amy Heckerling was refining her Austen-inspired idea at Paramount, the genre she had helped create a decade previous with Fast Times At Ridgemont High was faltering. [More...]

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Team Top Ten: Back to School Edition

Amir here, bringing you Team Experience’s latest top ten list.

It’s hard to think of a genre that gets less respect than the high school film, but try contemplating a list of the best high school films of all time and a never-ending stream of classics seems to rush forward. That’s exactly what our team decided to do this month, and to make things difficult for ourselves, we expanded our horizons to include school films about kids of all ages, from all countries. After all, teenagers aren’t the only ones going back to school next week. What about the younger kids?

As it turned out, our team was more enthusiastic about this poll than any we had done before. With more ballots and more votes than ever before, this list was a real hoot for me to compile; and the range and quality of the films that were left off the final ten only serves to highlight the wealth of options at our disposal. From bonafide classics like Splendor in the Grass and If…, to influential foreign films like Zero for Conduct and Where Is the Friend’s Home?, to more recent films like Elephant and Perks of Being Wallflower, to documentaries like Hoop Dreams, back to school gives everyone with any cinematic taste something to savor. And those are just the stuff that didn’t make the cut! Well, those along with Grease, Boyz n the Hood, American Graffiti, Heathers, Wet Hot American Summer, Back to the Future, Dead Poet’s Society, and… you get the picture.

So, without further ado...

 Team Experience’s Top Ten School Films

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Curio: Too Cool For School Supplies

Alexa here. This year was the first year I had to get school supplies for my daughter and it was pretty depressing. She isn't allowed any choice, even in the color of her folders! As a form of rebellion by proxy, I've been searching for the coolest supplies out there to keep things weird at home.  Some for my daughter and, of course, why not choose a few for myself, too?  Here is a selection of film-themed supplies that could help my cause.

After the jump: Werner, Duckie, Cher, and more...

 

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1995: The Year Jane Austen Came to the Movies

Our look back at 1995 continues with Lynn Lee on an unexpected breakout...

Clueless turned 20 this week, but as the Internet has constantly reminded us, it hasn’t aged a day.  At once timeless ("a classic," as Cher would say) and delightfully dated, it’s a modern riff on a period piece – Jane Austen’s Emma – that's become something of a period piece itself. The latter aspect tends to draw attention away from the former, but I happened to see the movie again at a recent party and was reminded not just how perfectly it captures the ’90s, but also (1) how brilliantly it adapts Emma, and (2) how 1995 really was the breakout year for Jane Austen in film. 

Keep in mind that prior to 1995, the only film version of a Jane Austen novel was the 1940 B&W “Pride & Prejudice” starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier.  1995 changed all that...

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CAST THIS: Clueless, The Musical

Manuel here still recovering for a wonderful Pride weekend which I'm greedily extending for two more days with Bette Midler tonight and Fun Home tomorrow. Needless to say, movies and musicals, and movie musicals are on my mind. Thankfully, Amy Heckerling is here to tide me over, stoking Clueless fandom by letting us know she's finished writing the book for a stage musical adaptation of her 1995 film (though dampening the excitement a bit by confessing it's a jukebox musical to be directed by ??, of Rock of Ages fame). And so, since she acknowledged casting would be a big hurdle before we see "As if!" being uttered on stage, I thought we could help her out brainstorming names for the central three performances.

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