WHAT WENT WRONG - Clueless

Episode Date: October 14, 2024

Paul Rudd was almost murdered, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones were wasted, and El Niño threatened to rain out production - that’s just the beginning of what went wrong on Clueless (1995). Find out how Alicia Silverstone and Brittany Murphy got cast, and why one studio almost changed it to be more about… the guys? As if! It took writer/director Amy Heckerling years to get her vision to the screen, but it was like, totally worth it.CORRECTIONS: Chris mistakenly refers to having watched the Criterion Blu-Ray release of "Clueless" - there is no Criterion release! He actually watched the 25th Anniversary Blu-Ray which had been gifted to his wife in a flawlessly photoshopped Criterion package. He apologizes for the confusion but can confirm the transfer looks great.This episode is sponsored by/brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/CINEPHILE and get on your way to being your best self.Get 10 FREE meals at HelloFresh dot com slash freewentwrong. Applied across 7 boxes, new subscribers only, varies by plan. That’s 10 free HelloFresh meals, just by going to HelloFresh dot com slash freewentwrongLumen - for 15% off your purchase go to lumen.me/WRONG Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, full stop that just so happens to be about movies, especially the one, that just so happens to be about movies, and how they're nearly impossible to make, especially a good one. And boy, do we have a good one for you today. Maybe my favorite of the season upon rewatching. It's so good.

Certainly up there. Yeah. Tell us what we're talking about today. We're talking about Clueless, which is a movie that I had not watched all the way through in far more than a decade. And it's so much better than I remembered. Just really, really great. Chris, reactions to Clueless? What'd you think?

Well, I will say that watching it on my Criterion Collection Blu-ray was the way to do it. What a nerd. Looks great. The transfer is great. I'm holding it up for the video if we offer that at some point. It's an amazing cover. It's like a Polaroid of Cher doing this amazing, like, blah face. It's very funny.

So I saw Clueless in high school. I enjoyed it. I think a lot of the humor went over my head. I had not read Emma at the time. And my wife, Clueless was her favorite film ever growing up. Oh, I didn't know that. Yep. She knows almost every line.

She just can literally quote the entire movie. And so we rewatched it a couple of times, and it's grown on me. and then most recently seeing it, having lived in L.A. for a decent amount of time now. It's so funny. And I wrote down a bunch of notes that I want us to talk about, but I also wanted to show my every outfit that Cher Horowitz wears in the movie Line Art poster. It's not every unless it's 63. One, two, three, five, six seven. Don't count them.

This is 28 outfits total. Okay. The 28 best outfits she wears in Fulis. It's the 28 best outfits. Maybe it's like the full ones. It's such a fun movie. Of course, there's like one and a half problematic things I'm sure we'll discuss at some point. I don't even know if I agree with that. Yes, we will talk about it. That's what I was going to say. The things that didn't really bother me, even though maybe they should. I don't know that they should. But yeah, we will talk about it.

Can I just read like five notes I wrote on my notes app because I was having so much fun? Yes, Chris. And then I'll say what I thought of the clueless. Hadesians. We'll get there. The prescience of Sher Horowitz predicting the Springfield incidents that were just discussed in the presidential debate. Oh, yes. Alicia Silverstone is so funny. Hot Paul Rudd. Yeah.

Westside Pavilion, RIP. Ooh, Snickers, one of my favorites. Breckenmeier, miss him, Britney Murphy, miss her. I was surfing the crimson wave. I had to haul ass to the ladies. Yeah. Great line. Excellent.

Paul Rudd is basically Paul Dano from Little Miss Sunshine when he's reading Nietzsche, and it made me think that maybe that movie stole it. And the costume design is so good in this movie. It's ridiculous. Yes, absolutely incredible. We're going to get to most of that. Also, the way you said Breckenmeyer missed him, I thought he was dead, and I had missed it. He's not dead.

He's not dead. He's not dead. He's not said it like that. And then follow it up by Brittany Murphy. That's why I said him first. It is unfortunately dead. I said him first. Don't scare me like that.

I was like, how did I miss this? He's very much alive and he's great in this movie. He's great in this movie. What's seven times seven? Stuff she knows. That's also one of my favorite lines. It's amazing. All right.

Sorry, Lizzie. I didn't mean to steal the podium, but I really liked it. No. I loved it. I loved it. And I, you know, I've always liked this movie, but I don't think I understood. I think it's like pretty revolutionary in retrospect. It's extremely smart.

And it really revived teen movies. I didn't realize how early this was. This is 1919. This is like kind of the renaissance of teen movies following John Hughes. Like they were really a relic of the past prior to this, which is interesting. Also, I don't know how many like super bankable movies were showing young women in the leads at this point. Like, I mean, this movie made a lot of money and that was kind of a first. I was thinking about how when BookSmart came out, people were like, it's the female super bad.

And then we went, I went back and watched this movie and I felt like, this is the female. super bad. Yeah, 100%. Also, helped to kick off a commercial interest in the OG Girls Girl, who you already mentioned, Jane Austen. Because just in case anyone doesn't know, this is a actually, I think, very faithful adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma, which is one of my, that might be my favorite of her books, I think. It was her second to last book, right? It wasn't persuasion published posthumously. I think that's right, but I can't remember. I think it's been one of the most successful over time, although I enjoy a lot of them. It's probably a funniest book.

I think books-wise, yes. I think that the Angli adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, which came out actually the same year as this movie is very, very funny as well. I highly recommend that if you haven't seen it. One additional thought, it's ridiculous that anyone pushed back on this centering around young women because the original source material centered around young women and was extremely commercially successful for hundreds of years. Yeah.

This is very much, the tone is very much it's a woman's world. And that's what makes it work so well. Alicia Silverstone's so well cast. Yeah. Well, don't worry. A lot of people wanted to add more men. So let's get into the basics. This is, of course, written and directed by Amy Heckerling, starring Alicia Silverstone, Paul Rudd, Stacey, Derry, Murphy, RIP, Wallace-Shon, Jeremy Sisto, Donald Faison, Breckenmeier,

and many, many more who we will talk about. It was released July 19, 1995. And as always, here is the synopsis, according to I.N. Mdb. Shallow, rich, and socially successful share is at the top of her Beverly Hills High School Pecking Scale, seeing herself as a matchmaker, share first coaxes two teachers into dating each other. That actually isn't the storyline that I would highlight, but yes. No, that's kind of just a prologue in a weird way before a tie shows up. That's true, because I guess the teachers are...

Miss Taylor and Mr. Weston. Yes, it's her friend. It's her friend and her former governess, the teacher angle. That's right. And then Harriet is the Thai character. Yes. And Mr. Knightley is the 16 years older than her love interest. That's right.

He's a lot older in Emma, which makes this positively fine, you know? Just a little creepy. No. I mean, we'll get into it. What Chris is referring to, if you haven't seen Clueless, is that the love interest, which, I mean, honestly, I still think it's very sweet. And only at the end of the movie, do they even remotely get together. but is her stepbrother, although he's not even still her stepbrother because his father is not married to her mother. You know what? I'm going to defend it. I think it's fine. We're going to talk about it. I'm not

going to argue with you. I think it's fine. Let's continue. We'll get to it later. Put a pen. Okay. So to talk about Clueless, we have to talk about Amy Heckerling. And I want to open with a quote of hers. She said, the world's always going to tell you no. You need that little voice inside you that goes, smack them off. It's hard to think of grabbing a spear and going out there, but fuck it. Do it. Wow. And do it, she does. Heckerling was born in 1954 in the Bronx. Her father was an accountant. Her mother was a bookkeeper, and she grew up in a very tight Jewish immigrant community, many of whom were survivors of the concentration camps. Her own parents, however, were not. She attended the art and design high school, and it was a little bit of good old-fashioned competition that set her mind on filmmaking. For a school project, she had to write what she wanted to be when she grew up. And she initially said, a writer for Mad Magazine, because she loved Mad Magazine. But the boy next to her, who apparently always cheated off of her papers, said he wanted to make movies. So she decided if he can make movies and cheat on me, I can make movies and cheat off him. Great artist Steele.

That boy was Steven Spielberg. Yeah, exactly. No, he was not. Her parents naturally not stoked about this. Sure. And so she found herself living a pretty unglaverous teen life, commuting from at this point, Queens to Manhattan for high school, and then to the life insurance company where she worked as a clerk, then back home to do homework with almost no free time. Wow.

It's more dedication than I've ever had in my life. I was going to say, the opposite of the Cher Horowitz experience. Yes, very much. She made it into NYU's very prestigious film program where she thrived. She even won a film competition there. However, she experienced a little taste of misogyny in this. The guy who she co-directed the film with wanted her to go out with him. Amy Hackerling is very cute.

And she repeatedly said, no. So this is unbelievable. After the screening, this guy went up to the projection booth and took the only print of the film. Despite asking for a copy many times, he would never give it to her, saying, you know, if you're cute and you're pushy, people say you're a go-getter. And if you're ugly and you're pushy, they think you're obnoxious and aggressive. So you'll make it. And I won't. You know what, sir?

Correct. You did not make it. At least he was self-aware? Well, wait until you're at the end of his story. We'll never see this film, even though she eventually hired a dude. detective because she found out this guy had died and she got a hold of his father, but his father had tossed all of his crap in the garbage. I shouldn't laugh. He's dead, but including this film, so we will not see this film. But you know what? Don't steal Amy Hackerling's only print of her

student film. Anyway, something much more important happened at NYU. There was another director a year ahead of her. And we've covered him somewhat recently on the podcast. Do you know who it is? I only know because when I had looked up that movie, I had seen her name. Who is it? It's Martin Brest. Yes, it is. Check out our Gilles'E episode for more on Marty Brest. So she loved everything that he did.

You may remember he had student films get into the Library of Congress, so understandable. Yep. When he got into and decided to attend AFI, Heckerling decided that she would follow. What year was this, roughly, Lizzie? So she graduated from Tish in 1974. Got it. So like late 70s, maybe. Yeah, mid to late 70s by the time they're at AFI. And by the way, I think that maybe they were very briefly romantically involved in New York, but I don't think it went anywhere and they just remained friends.

Got it. So she graduates and decides to head out west to California to follow in his footsteps. Now, you might think that the woman who created Clueless was enamored with Los Angeles. And you would be wrong because she hated it. You can almost get the sense of that well-observed disdain. You know what I mean? and some of the jokes, I feel like everywhere in L.A. It takes 20 minutes to get. Which is a lie. It takes an hour to get anywhere in Los Angeles. It takes me 20 minutes to get down the street. Yeah.

Well, she hated that there wasn't public transportation. Me too. She also failed the driver's test. And when asked eventually by criterion if she had any love for L.A., she said, I hate the beach, I hate the sun, I hate the wind, I hate the Santa Ana's. You know what? Me too. I was going to say, I still like L.A., but I don't like any of those things very much.

I agree. I go to the beach maybe. once a year and every time I'm like, ah. I haven't been to the beach in about six years. You don't need to go. No, and nobody there needs to see me without my shirt on, so it's fine. Shortly after finishing her student film at AFI, she was actually in a very serious car crash with a drunk driver. Jesus. Yeah, I think she was pretty seriously injured. Did not help her aversion to driving and did help inspire the incredible screaming freeway scene that we see later in Clueless. And she does not drive on freeways.

That is still... Wow. Well, you can get by on surface streets in L.A. To be fair. You can. I mean, it's going to take a long time, but you can.

So her directorial debut comes in 1982 with Fast Times at Ridgemont High. And I can't believe that is her first movie. Yeah. That's crazy. Cameron Crow's first movie, too, right?

Yeah, I think that's right. So I'm not going to spend too much time here in case we cover this movie at some point. Oh, we have to cover it. It's such a classic. There's a lot. But it seems like she

and Cameron Crow got along very well. She really loved the script, responded to it really positively. However, in a pattern that we're going to continue to see, Universal did not entirely trust Amy to handle the film. They got concerned when they initially saw her shooting more serious scenes, which obviously there are in the movie, even though it's very funny. And so they sent what went wrong alum, John Landis, to check up on her on set. He apparently came to set one day and poked around, said hi, watched the shoot, and to his credit, did go back to Universal and told them to leave her alone because she knew what she was doing. Good. Fast Times was a moderate box office success. It did make back its budget and then some. And of course, it launched Sean Penn's career

among many others. And definitely a critical success. And an early Nick Cage cameo as well. That is right. It was Nick Coppola, I think, still at the time. I think you're right. And I think it was like right before Valley Girl, maybe. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Now, if you're wondering how the hell did Hollywood let a lady behind the camera in the early 1980s, well, it does seem that at this time, because I was too. I just think of her wearing a mustache as she went on to set. Gwyneth Paltrowing from Shakespeare in love to get in.

I'm Brian Heckerling. Armand Heckerling. It sounds like this is sort of the beginning of a lot of baby boomers getting into position. of power finally in Hollywood. And that did mean that they were starting to take more chances on women both in front of the camera and behind the camera, obviously not a ton, but it was starting. However, as we learned on our episode on Ishtar, second chances were, and still, are not something that women in film are often afforded. Right. So once a movie didn't perform exactly as the studio had hoped, even though they had given a woman a chance, heckerling said to slant, quote,

if they didn't have the results they wanted, that wasn't like, well, we didn't develop that movie right or that wasn't the right person to be in it. It was always, well, it was a woman. That was the answer. So they shut that down. And unfortunately, she is about to learn this the very hard way. Since she was a very little kid, Heckerling had always loved James Cagney movies, like Angels with Dirty Faces. He was very cartoonish. She was a comedian, played a lot of, like, funny gangster roles, I believe. And after Fast Times, she really didn't want to do more teen movies. Understandable, did not want to get boxed in to something she had just done very well. So she started actively looking for a gangster comedy.

And she winds up making a movie called Johnny Dangerously, which is both a send-up and love letter to 30s gangsters. You've never heard of it. Yeah, I've never even seen that. It stars Michael Keaton. Oh, wow. It was panned. It was not a commercial success.

I always thought her next movie was European Vacation. No, there's one in between. This is 1984. Wow. It's right in there. Like, jammed in between them. Yeah, right away. She said a billion years later, some people tell me they like it, but I couldn't even watch it for decades because to me it represented something that I loved a lot, that got changed a lot, that didn't help me. But I'm not sorry. I didn't take one of the girls losing their virginity movies. So this is something we're going to keep seeing is like she does stick to her guns. Yeah. So you mentioned National Ampoons, European Vacation,

Well, that is, in fact, what got Amy Heckerling essentially thrown in the dreaded director's jail. Really? She's called it her least favorite of her films. She was in the midst of editing Johnny Dangerously. She was also about to welcome a baby girl as a single mother. Remember that? So the financial pressure was on. Out of fear, she accepted the job of directing European vacation.

Totally understand why she did this. Sure. You have to make money. People forget. This is a career. to make money. And also, like, the first one was a huge success. It was John Hughes. It's Harold Ramos. Also, it's great. I love National Lampoon's vacation. And I love Christmas vacation. I like Christmas vacation. I don't mind European vacation. I find them all enjoyable enough.

Yeah. I do always forget about this one. This one is the sandwich that I literally don't remember happened. But yes. Yeah. Of the film, Heckerling told Indy Wire, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The theory that I had didn't really hold up, which was that you could be a female filmmaker and could do something that makes money, but they still could say, we don't like it. And you could go, well, I don't like it either, but that doesn't count. That was that. So this film was not a box office disaster. Per her quote above, I think it at least made back its money and then a little bit, but it did receive pretty not good reviews. And between Johnny Dangerously and European Vacation, she at this point had a bad reputation in Hollywood.

Although I want to point out, not actually that bad of a track record. She had an amazing first movie. She has two like so-so not amazing follow-ups. That's not terrible, but it did keep her from working for several years. So after this, she welcomed her daughter and sat in the infamous director's jail being offered very, very few, very terrible scripts. Ever heard of the Whoopie Boys, Chris? I'm doing a remake. Good for you.

I don't know what that is. No, no one does, but she turned that down. And it was at this point that she decided if she was going to work on something, she was going to write it herself, which I think this is maybe a what went wrong lesson at this point. I think it's something that Zach talked about. Yeah. The only way to have any control in this business is to control the underlying property

or to be so desirable that you are effectively the property yourself. Yes. Makes sense. Zach Braff, we'll come back in this episode. Oh. So how did she break out of, director's jail. Oddly enough, Chris, it was by saying no. Listeners, you do not have to say yes. There's a lot of power in no. She said no to all the projects that were coming through, like the

Whoopie Boys, that were terrible. She was just like, I'm not doing it. I don't care. I'll walk away and I'll have a totally different career. I'm just not going to do it. Good for her. But she eventually breaks out in a big way with her own material. Do you know what this is, Chris? Look who's talking? That's right. But get ready for a plot twist, because do you remember the daughter that she welcomed right after taking on European vacation. I do because I just learned about her two minutes ago. That's right. Do you remember the director of the original vacation movie?

Harold Ramos? That's right. So Harold Ramos was secretly the father of Amy Heckerling's daughter. Really? I didn't know that? Yes. Wow. Yes. And in case you don't remember the plot of Look Who's Talking,

Kirstie Alley's character gets pregnant by a married client, who she's very in love with, but he won't leave his wife. Eventually, of course, she falls for the babysitter cab driver played by John Travolta, who her baby, voiced by Bruce Willis, loves. What a weird movie. I think I like it. I haven't seen it in a long time. I haven't either, but I remembered enjoying it.

It was better than baby geniuses, that's for sure. Sure. Or boss baby. Kind of likes a boss baby, but okay. Oh, boy. When Harold Ramos eventually told his daughter from his first marriage about the child, many years after she was born, it should be noted. He said, have you ever seen Look Who's Talking?

She said, yeah. He goes, well, you know that married asshole that gets Kirstie Alley's character pregnant and then won't leave his wife? She goes, yeah? And he said, that's me. You know, this is why movies are important, guys. They allow us to circumvent honest conversations by referencing film when telling our children we have out of wedlock bastard half children. Yeah, that's actually a whole crazy story, and she has a memoir that you can read. His first daughter does. Wow.

And they're on good terms now. She is with the other daughter. But he also, like, brought the first daughter to the hospital when Amy Heckerling had just had the baby to just come in and be like, hello, Amy and baby. And now we're leaving and didn't explain why they were there. Yeah, or who she was. Like nobody could take the first kid and he just had to bring her with him that evening. He's like desperately calling babysitters. Who knows? No, I think it was intentional. Got it. I think he wanted a little bit of a buffer.

So in 1989, she wrote and directed Look Who's Talking. And it was an absolutely wild box office success, bringing in a worldwide gross of almost $300 million. Whoa. Yep. It was Travolta's most successful film since Greece. And it would spawn two sequels. Now, despite this movie being pretty clearly based on Heckerling's person, experience, as we just mentioned. It was actually the subject of a pretty famous plagiarism case,

which was settled out of court. Not a lot of information out there about this. There was apparently a student film treatment that she allegedly received. I think she denies having received it. Far as I can tell, the similarity is that the baby has VO commentary. Got it. Maybe not enough, but who knows? I don't know. I do think, guys, there was a really interesting, plagiarism case, I'll mention if you want to look into it, about the holdovers that just came out, obviously, in the last couple years. Really? Yeah, and the writer of an original spec script who claimed that the holdovers was more or less lifted and knew for a fact that Alexander Payne had read his script and even been interested in it. It's so difficult to prove these plagiarism cases,

not the least of which, because if you think you have an original idea, nine other people, have it right now and the difference is who writes it first. And that's just an unfortunate reality in most of these instances or who knows the agent or who knows the studio. And so there are all, I mean, you can find it on these Reddit threads or, you know, famously Ross and friends came up with Jurassic Park. I'll show you the napkin, you know, sort of thing. This is also why production companies, studios, producers, actors will not accept a script that's simply sent to them by some random person on the street, no matter how good that script may be, it's because of liability. If they end up making a movie that's at all similar, and that person who sent it can prove,

oh, you read my script, even if they didn't actually take a single idea from it and they'd been working on their idea earlier, it opens them up to accusations of plagiarism. I think not always, but definitely. No, of course. I'm just saying generally speaking, that seems to be... Frequently, that is true, yeah. Yeah. So it's around 1993 that Heckerling started developing. a TV pilot for Fox.

20th century Fox had told her they wanted something about teenagers. She was very tired of doing teenage stuff, but they had said that they want something about the in-crow. And so she figured she would do it if she could make fun of the popular kids. So the pilot focuses on California Popular Kids with the main character being an aggressively optimistic teenage girl. She went through tons of drafts of this pilot, so many that they weren't even numbered, they were all just titled differently.

there was no worries, then I was a teenage teenager, then clueless in California, and then finally, clueless. Now, this varies a bit based on where you're reading this, but she, it seems, was initially just writing about a really happy go lucky teen girl when she realized that she was loosely following the structure of a book that she had loved for a long time, which I was mentioned at the top was Jane Austen's Emma. Also, I forgot to mention this at the top, but my main source for this episode is a really fun oral history of Clueless called As If, obviously. It features Amy Heckerling, the cast, really the whole

crew. It's great. And Jen Cheney is the journalist responsible for it. Very fun. If you love this movie, definitely worth a quick read. Now, obviously, the end result, as we said, more than loosely follows the plot of Emma. This is really, I think, a very, very good adaptation of Emma. And by the way, Chris keeps alluding to this, but the whole falling for your stepbrowel. thing does come from Emma, obviously. He's not technically a stepbrother. He's like a ward or something of the father in that. I think he is like someone who was under the care of her father at a certain point. Yeah, I know he was a friend of the family and he knew her when she was very young. He like lived with them for sure. But anyway, it also comes from Heckerling's real life. Her own grandparents met as

step siblings. So it never really struck her as weird. Interesting. Now, before you still say, it's weird, in fairness to her, they met in a Jewish ghetto in the pale settlement in Europe. Her great-grandmother was a widow. She married a widower because being a single mother at that point was not great. And they both already had kids, so they Brady bunched it up. Two of those kids who were teens or early adult at that time ended up falling in love and getting married. Got it. Here's what I will say, Lizzie.

I had no problem with it watching the movie. I didn't either. I get why some people have a strong reaction. I know some of our audience are going to say, Chris, you're a hypocrite. You had a whole scree about Indiana Jones being a sex criminal, which I stand by, he was. And were Paul Rudd's character to consummate their relationship, he too would be a sex criminal as he is over 18 and she is very much under 18 in the state of California. She is. But for some, for whatever reason, perhaps it's because I was familiar with the source material.

and what they're referencing. Perhaps it's the time period. It's the 90s. I was in high school in the mid-2000s. I very much remember some girls dating guys that were in college, mostly the local community college. And I remember thinking, what are they doing? Why aren't they dating me?

And then I look at photos of myself and I'm like, oh, but my point is, it just didn't, I agree with you, Lizzie. I see all these like TikToks and stuff about how problematic clueless is at 25. I don't think it is. I'm sorry. It didn't bother me. I'm sorry. fine with it. It didn't bother me. I also was fine with it. Yeah, that's just how good looking Paul Rudd

is at this period of time. He's really, really cute. What was she supposed to do? Come on. Not hook up with her brother? He's not even her stepbrother at that point. Yeah. It's like the beginning of a very popular genre of online video you can find it right now. Yeah. No, you know what? I feel fine about it. I'm sticking to my guns on this one. I think it's fine. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm I support you in your journey. It's fine. I think it's fine. But a lot of people, while she was making this,

were also like, are we sure they have to be stepbrother and step sister? I think it's a good question to ask. Like, I don't blame them raising it. Well, I mean, also, like, in fairness to her, that is quite close to the relationship that's in Emma. And I think that the closeness that they have is important to the love story, both in that and in this, because in that one, Mr. Knightley, you know, they did grow up together.

He is older, I think substantially older in that one. But I love the fact that it like kind of takes her growing up to have this realization that she is in love with him. And I think also the same for him. Yeah, because of their closeness, he's the one person who kind of can criticize her. And she listens to him eventually. Well, but I think also understands her value or comes to understand her value. Yeah, because I think one of the reasons this character is so well, written is that she is, yes, a little bit ditsy on the surface, but actually very smart and

very insightful. And obviously has a great acerbic wit. Yeah, and is a good person. You know, I think in Emma, we see maybe more of sort of a downfall than we do in this one, where she kind of makes moves that are potentially more catastrophic because of the time period than they are in this, just because this is high school. The stakes are not as high. But I don't know. I really, I love it. I love that she's allowed to make a mistake and that, you know, she's allowed to, like, learn what being selfish does and recover from it. And it's Paul Rudd. So it's fine. We're going to move on. You're a virgin and you can't drive. There's a fun fact about that coming up as well. Many of the main female characters that we see in the final product were in this original pilot.

share Dionne, Cher's father, Mr. Hall. I realize those last two are not female characters, and I miswrote that sentence, but you get the idea. Despite all of this, Fox passes on the pilot, but Heckerling dumps her agent, gets a new one. The new agent correctly lets her know that the script is not a pilot, it's a movie. So they bring it back to Fox, and then this time, Fox is on board. So Fox's film department actually bought it from their TV department. Cool. Did you get paid twice? Probably not.

No. Maybe not even once. Yeah. But Chris, what do you think Fox wanted more of in the script? Well, you're going to say boys. That's a ding, ding, ding for number one, yeah, men. I would guess sex or romance, euphemistically. Yeah, they wanted the men's perspectives, and they wanted it to be hotter. There was a lot of concern during development that it focused too much on one girl. So fewer female leads, more raunch, probably some boobs in the shower.

I'm editorializing, but I can't imagine someone didn't ask for that. They also wanted scenes from boys' perspectives that didn't include share, which, again, makes no sense, especially given the source material, because that is not the case. A lot of people were brought into audition during this development period at Fox, including Ben Affleck for Josh, which I think makes sense. sense. Reese Witherspoon did take a meeting for Share. She would be good, too. She would be great. Dave Chappelle took a meeting for Murray. He'd be great, too. And several final cast members were brought in during this time, including Jeremy Sisto, who I love, and I wish she would do more stuff. And Elton, I think there's a Mr. Elton, right, in Emma. Yeah. Donald Faison, who, of course, ends up playing Murray, and Britney Murphy. Ah, Britney Murphy is so good, and that she's so funny.

She's incredible. She had prepped two scenes for Ty with her. very thick Jersey accent. She's from Jersey, by the way. After one scene, they told her that that was enough. And she was so scared that she had not gotten the part that she was begging them to let her do it again. And they were like, no, no, you were really good. We want to call you back. We don't need to see anymore. Save it. By the way, this is a little fun fact. Along with many actors in the film, Murphy was an actual teenager, but she was the only one who was underage. So when she utters the line, why should I listen to you? You're a virgin who can't drive. She was actually a virgin who couldn't drive. Wow. She's really young. Because a lot of the guys look a little, there's some five o'clock

shadow poking through. There's like, I mean, Donald Faison, I want to say is like 20. I don't, I think Jeremy Sisto's around there too. He's pretty young. I would guess between 20 and 24, like for most of them. It's not Greece, you know. No. Well, with one exception, yes. Most importantly, one night during callbacks, as Amy was running on the treadmill and Aerosmith video came on the TV. Now, in case anyone doesn't know, Alicia Silverstone starred in three absolutely bonkers Aerosmith music videos between 1993 and 1994. They are Cryin opposite Stephen Dorff and I don't know if you watched this one. Josh Hawley. Yes. Sawyer from Lost. Yes. That's right. Who is also a villain in that video. He plays Sawyer from Lost in this music video. He's like, swoons her at this diner and then snatches

their backpack away. Yeah. It's great. Amazing, which that one ironically kind of sucks. Yep. Of all three, that one's not very good. But isn't that the one that features the computer that I feel like she uses in the movie? Yeah, there is something sort of similar. There's like a weird hacker computer element in that one. Right. And then, of course, Crazy, which also features Stephen Tyler's actual daughter, Liv Tyler. This is the one that Heckerling saw, since it famously features the two of them escaping a school in Catholic uniforms, going on the run, becoming what, Chris?

This is the only one I didn't watch. That's too bad because the answer is award-winning amateur strippers. These videos are all her going on like weird, dark journeys. I mean, crying, she jumps off, she goes, she gets the world's worst chest tattoo after falling in love with Stephen Dorff. Well, what else do you do? You know. And then eventually jumps off a bridge and a very cool stunt, whoever the stunt person is that's

going off that bridge. That was very impressive. But yeah, Steve Tyler's like, I can corrupt any woman, even my daughter. It's a very weird vibe. It is a weird vibe. They don't interact with Aerosmith at all, which, thank God. If you've never seen these, pause this. Go watch at least crying and crazy.

They are absolutely bizarre. They also made Aerosmith so much money and kind of saved their butts during this time because they were not doing super well with the album prior to this. Now, is it creepy that the girls are teens in these videos? Yes. I don't know. at least they don't interact with Stephen Tyler. Can't tell. I don't know. He's her dad.

Yeah, they'd interact with them. I think it's fine. I kind of like them. Yeah, I think they're fun. They're very emblematic of the 90s. I also like that even in the amateur stripper one, they end up like, it's her and Liv Tyler sort of having a love, a Thelma and Louise type love story. Sure. Now it is worth noting that casting director Carrie Frazier had apparently already pitched Silverstone heckering based on Silverstone's performance in a film called The Crush, where she was

obsessed with her much older neighbor, Carrie. Elwis. So who knows if this treadmill story is totally true. But Silverstone didn't really audition. They just met with her and loved her and were fully on board. However, Fox, of course, was not. Their response to her screen test was, eh, she's okay and asked Hackerling to test other people, which, like, I don't understand. We don't know without seeing it. Maybe she... She's the aerosmith girl. You can even see it in the aerosmith videos. I know, you can see it. Yeah, she's, I know. I actually thought those might have been after the movie. No.

Yeah. So Heckerling did also see Alicia Witt, Carrie Russell, and more, but no one really compared. So Amy Heckerling and her producing partner, Twink Kaplan, were set. They had their share. But despite all of this work, Fox decided that they were not on board. So in a classic tale of what went wrong, Chris, what did the film go into? Turn around? Turn around.

Wow. Hooray. When does it not go? to turn around on this show. I don't know. Never, it seems like. It seems like everybody's ready to bail at some point on these movies. So it sits and turn around for six months, and they set the budget at about $13 million, really pretty reasonable for what they're doing.

They had Alicia Silverstone in a damn trio of Aerosmith videos. They had a director with what was actually a very commercially successful track record at this point, but no one was biting until Scott Rudin got a hold of the script. Chris, who is Scott Rudin? Scott Rudin is one of the most prolific producers in the history of Hollywood. I mean, I believe he's an Egot winner, Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award winner. No Country for Old Men, Uncut Gems, Lady Bird, Zoolander, The Truman Show, so many movies. Of course, in 2021, he took a step back from a lot of his projects after a big Hollywood reporter, Expoise,

about his volcanic temper and a lot of allegations of abusive behavior toward his employees and his assistants. And of course, he was, I believe it's widely known or believed, the main inspiration for Tom Cruise's character in Tropic Thunder, Les Grossman, who loves nothing more than crushing diet coax and agent's throats and has very big hairy hands. So that's Scott Rudin in a nutshell. He has produced a ton. Yes, very prolific, extremely successful producer who maybe was abusive towards assistants.

We don't totally know. He had a first look deal producing at Paramount at the time. And apparently one of Heckerling's ex-boyfriends, who was an assistant cameraman on a Rudin movie, gave him the script, as did a music supervisor, and Amy Heckerling's loyal agent, Ken Stovitz. So as soon as Scott Rudin expressed interest in it, it became a very hot commodity.

Right. It does, of course, wind up at Paramount with a budget of somewhere around $13 million. By the way, credit to old Harryhand Scott Ruden, his notes sound like they brought it back to where it was before Fox had fiddled with it. I'm not surprised. Creatively, he obviously knows what he's doing and knows what material to go after and whatnot. And, I mean, again, Lady Bird came to mind because it's obviously a female director and writer and female-driven story.

and it seems like that movie was entirely Greta Growery's vision and obviously succeeded. That's true. Now, there were two casualties from this transfer to Paramount. Twink Kaplan, who had been Amy's producing partner for years and certainly had developed Clueless right alongside her, was relegated to an associate producer title because so many other producers came on board after the switch that they ate up all of the regular producer credits. She accepted it, but obviously that was not fair. And the original casting director, Carrie Frazier, who had brought in so many of the actors who would, of course, end up in the final film, was told that she had to agree to do the film for free since Fox had already paid her.

Eich. Yeah. But great job. Great job. Amazingly, well-casted movie. Understandably, she stood her ground and said, no, that casting directors deserve to be paid. This is not an indie movie. And so she left and did leaving Las Vegas, which also great. Great. Another great well-cast movie.

Yeah. She was replaced by veteran casting director Marcia Ross, who, I have to say, was very gracious in the oral history that I read and did give Frazier a lot of credit. They also only paid this lady $10,000. So justice for casting directors. Yeah. Now, at this point, Heckerling is finally off to the races with more creative control than she's ever had before. So let's talk about the casting. Donald Faison got the part of Murray.

And by the way, it came down to him and I don't think you're going to be. to get this. Terrence Howard. Oh, I definitely wouldn't have gotten that because I didn't really think of him until hustle and flow. Or as funny? Yeah. I mean, if you ask him to do math, he'll tell you some pretty weird things. So that can be funny. But we'll leave that there. You can listen to him on Joe Rogan for New Math. Good, good. Also, someone else tried to audition for Murray initially, and that was Paul Rudd. Okay. But the casting director... He just wanted to come in and say, woman, as loud as he could.

No, he misunderstood. Slop in the best man as he comes in. He misunderstood from the script and thought that it was a white guy sort of pretending to be black. Sure. I know those. Yeah. I mean, I guess it wasn't explicitly specified in the script, so he didn't get it. But the casting director had to be like, no, no, he's black. It seems like everyone read for Josh, including Henry Thomas. and maybe one of our former guests, Zach Braff,

who would have been quite young at this point, potentially still in college. Yeah. But Paul Rudd was an early frontrunner, and they actually had him on hold, but at some point cut him loose. And his manager at the time had told him that he had to take Halloween,

the curse of Michael Myers, the classic that everyone remembers, and said he probably shouldn't take clueless. So Paul Rudd shaved all his hair off because he assumed he didn't have the part, and then ran into Amy Hackerling in a restaurant who was like, what have you done? I haven't finished seeing people yet, and I still wanted you.

So that was a terrible agent. But he grew it back? He did. This took kind of a long time, the casting for this portion of it did. It came down to these are the three that they said were the finals. Paul Rudd, Norman Mailer's son, and an actor named David Kriegel, who had a small role in speed. It was Paul Rudd.

It had to be, come on now. So good looking in this movie. He's so cute. The ageless Paul Rudd with his portrait of Dorian Gray in his attic, it's just ridiculous. It reminded me of that line. I can't remember if it's from Knocked Up or This is 40 when Leslie Mann says, like, I just keep getting older and he keeps getting better looking. It's 100% true with him. Other guys who read, some for Josh, some for Travis, and some for Elton included Steve Zon, Peter Fassanelli, Justin Thoreau, Josh.

Hamilton, Michael Imperiali, and Adrian Brody. Interesting. Stacey Dash nabbed the role of Dion, but remember how I said most of the cast were teenagers? Stacey Dash was 28 years old. Which looking at her is quite hard to believe. She does not look 28. She still doesn't look 28. No, she looks great.

One of the hardest parts to cast was Christian, who of course ends up being her gay friend by the end of it, but who she's she initially is in love with. But when actor Justin Walker read for it, it was clear that he had the part, although he apparently only had like hours to study the sides for the audition. Yeah, he's great in it. He's really good. Breck and Meyer, we know obviously is cast as Travis, but so many interesting people read for this part, including Seth Green, which makes a ton of sense, I think. Johnny Galecki also makes sense. And then one really out of left field, Jeremy Renner. No, I could see it, like back in the day. I don't know. Did you ever see him guest on House?

No. He plays like a metal guitarist, heroin addict. Anyway, I think back before he was clean-cut arrow shooter, I don't remember the character's name from Marvel. Hawkeye. Hawkeye. Hawkeye. There we go. Hawkeye.

Before that, I think he could cut a burnout pretty well. All right. Well, he was in there. Also, I just want to say, I think making Travis a stoner is such a smart twist on what it is in Emma. Obviously, it was very intentional. she knew that it wouldn't make sense to make him financially unacceptable, which is what the character is in Emma. So instead chose to make him a stoner, which is, of course, someone that Cher would look down on but is not actually a different financial strata. Right.

Also, both Meyer and Silverstone were actual Beverly Hills high alums. Wow. And Chris, a top contender for Ty outside of Britney Murphy was someone you have worked with before. It was Alana Ubok. Oh, really? I love Alana Ubock. funny. She's wonderful. Yeah. And she apparently was really great in this and got very close to it, but she read as older and more cultured than Brittany Murphy, which I think makes sense. Sure.

Then, of course, we've got Wallace Sean as Mr. Hall. He was a close friend of Amy Heckerlings. I think she just kind of waited and then was like, it's yours. Yeah. Also, Miss Geist is played by Twink Kaplan. That's right. Yeah. Her longtime collaborator and associate producer who actually deserved a producer credit. She's really good in it. She's great. She's done a couple other things as well. It sounds like she didn't even really know that this was happening, but that Amy Hackerling did maybe write the part for her. A couple more fun ones.

Jerry Orbach was offered the role of Cher's father, but he couldn't get off of his TV show to do it. They also wanted Harvey Keitel, but could not afford him. And of course, they wind up with Dan Hedaya, who is wonderful. He's great in this. I think he strikes the exact right balance of intimidating and yet lovable. Harvey Kattel, I might be a little nervous,

that? I would be a little scared. Like, I don't know that I want him near 17-year-old Alicia Silverstone. One person who was strongly pitched to Heckerling but never read was the future Emma herself, Gwyneth Paltrow. Interesting. In an interview with New York Magazine, ahead of the release of Emma, which came out less than a year later, she said, I think it's sad that America's first cultural reference to this movie will be clueless. I mean, honestly. Also, the reporter noted that she lit up her first camel cigarette during this line. Wow, she doesn't smoke anymore, Lizzie. That we know of until Goop releases.

I'm just thrilled because both versions are great. They are. I actually really like the Gwyneth Paltrow, Emma. It is really good. And I think she's really good in it. And I really love Clueless. So I think we got the best of both worlds. I agree.

But I wish she wouldn't come after Clueless because she's wrong. Now, Heckerling reportedly pulled some of the vocab in the movie from kids she was auditioning, but also she pulled slang from real teens that she observed, her own mind, and something called UCLA Slang 2, which was a local slang dictionary published by the UCLA Linguistics Department. We can thank UCLA for Barney, Monet, Audie, Betty, and more. Oh, Betty, that was my favorite. I like Monet.

She's a real Monet. Looks good from a distance, but then you get up and it's a real mess. Yeah. I'm keeping it real. Seems to have come directly from Donald Faison. And she also watched kids at the mall and even went to the local debate team for inspiration, which directly inspired the immigration debate in the movie. She spent the most time at Beverly Hills High, where she met the actual Mr. Hall who showed her around. He has a cameo in the film. He is the principal who introduces Ty in the gym class scene. Oh. Now, a little bit of pre-pro director of photography, Bill Pope, seemed to really enjoy working with Heckerling, even if she's. She wasn't always the most specific. When he asked her what she wanted the movie to look like, she said, just happy.

So he grabbed a bunch of stills from other movies and asked her to just point to the ones that were happy. She did, and they went from there. And it does look very happy. Yeah, it looks great. And also, if you guys are unaware of Bill Pope's filmography, I mean, it's ridiculous. Yeah, he did all three Matrix movies. He's done, he's insane. He did the Matrix movies.

He did the World's End with Edgar. He did Spider-Man 2. He did Bound, which looks amazing from the 90s, and Army of Darkness. He's done so much. Yeah. And this movie is so unique, though, because a lot of what he's done is a much different color palette. And this is so vibrant and so poppy.

And it just, again, if you can get the Blu-ray from Criterion, it looks amazing. Seriously, the transfer looks great. I also put it up on Amazon Prime, where it is streaming, if you want to watch. it there. And it does not look as good. It just doesn't look as good. I like Amazon Prime, but it doesn't look as good. Well, you mentioned that this looks very different from a lot of his other movies. He has said that this is the most fun that he's had on any movie was for Clueless. Costume designer Mona May also really credits him for knowing how to capture the fashion and giving it the attention that it deserves, which I think is something that I took for granted

until reading a little bit more about this. They do such a good job. Like, the clothes are so, so beautiful and incredibly well done, and it is not wasted at all. You get little details of the cuffs or the shoes or the hat. And by the way, despite all the discussion of Alia, Calvin Klein, and many very expensive designers, Mona May only had about $200,000 for the costume budget, which is not that much when you consider how many people they were dressing in this. These scenes are packed. There are dozens of people in these scenes, and the outfits rotate constantly. Yes. So she ended up hunting and thrifting for a lot of the clothes that you see on screen. For the Eliadress that Cher is robbed in, those were going for like $2,500 to $3,000 a piece

at that time. So I believe they had to track down the designer and ask for it. Her iconic yellow suit is Jean-Paul Gautier, off the rack. And Heckerling initially wasn't sold on the idea of a yellow suit. But she was wrong, obviously. Mona Mae knew what she was doing. And before anyone tries to tell me that was a Dolce and Gabana suit because of a certain Vogue article, I believe that is a misprint. and I am sticking with Mona's own account in As If. We mentioned this at the top, but Cher alone has 63 costume changes in the movie.

And apparently my poster only has 28 of those, so I'm a little disappointed. Yeah, you're missing quite a few. Having watched this as an adult now, what do you feel like the costumes add to this movie? Well, so take a Jane Austen novel, right? Where costumes tell you class, they tell you status, and they tell you event, right? Right, or where we are right now. And so they've obviously got their school outfits, then she has the way she dresses in front of her father,

and then she has the way that she dresses at the party. And so the costumes do a lot of the narrative work for you, and I love that they do that here in high school. And there's obviously the moment where she talks about the way that the boys dress as if, right? And we see the kind of skater guys. But a lot of it's subtextual, and you see the change of tie across the film as a result.

and you can see Amber attempting to be Cher, and you can see Cher just pulling it off better. And you can establish Cher's position in the school through that. So I think the costumes do an amazing job of telling the story. And it's just so much fun to watch. And again, the colors are just incredible. They just pop off the screen. It looks wonderful.

Silverstone was actually given most of her wardrobe after filming, but in a true tragedy, it seems she may have given most of it away. She was very young. Hopefully she kept that yellow suit. It's great. So principal photography began on November 21st, 1994. It was originally slated to last 47 days but ended up wrapping in 53. That's pretty good, right? It's like decently over, but I think a studio film can definitely absorb that. Yeah. They filmed a lot over Christmas because that's when they had access to Occidental College, which served as the exterior of the school and a local Valley High School for some interiors. And guess what, Chris? Shares iconic Beverly Hills Mansion. It's not a sound sense. stage. It's an actual house. But plot twist, it's in the valley. That's right. It's in Encino. Beautiful hot, hot Encino. You can drive by it. Yes, you can. And Zillow estimates it's worth

about $6.4 million these days. They actually filmed most of the movie in the valley due to budget constraints because it's much cheaper. Right. Unfortunately, the crew messed up the very expensive floors in the house by tracking in mud and debris from the yard because it rained torrentially during this. There was an El Nino going on. It actually rained so much that Park Rangers showed up and told the crew they had to skedaddle immediately or risk getting washed away at one point. Wow.

It's also why the Mighty Mighty Boss Tones were confined to an indoor set. And speaking of the MMBs, they were hammered during their scene, extremely drunk. The Mighty Mighty Boss Tones are, as I like to call them, smash-mouth daddies. Well, they were evidently not

stoked about taping inside and across the street from the ongoing O.J. Simpson trial. So they were just ripping shots the entire time. They're like, this place is going to explode. We need to get drunk. Yeah, they were like, this is not it. They also only did the movie to get out of, quote, tax problems. So they were maybe at a bit of a low point. Yes, exactly. Paul Rudd also almost missed the boss tone scene because he was almost murdered. The night before he went out to dinner with with friends at Jerry's Deli in Studio City. And when he left, he was jumped in the parking lot and held at gunpoint. The guy apparently said to him, you don't think this is a real gun and fired the weapon off right next to his head to prove it. Oh my God. Fortunately, one of his friends who had

followed behind him saw what was happening, ran back inside to grab some cops who had also been eating dinner. At this point, the guy ran off, but he did grab Rudd's backpack, which had a disc man, and a copy of the clueless script in it with all of his notes on it. Wow. Yeah. And that man had the best night of his life reading that script. He probably threw it right in the garbage. Yeah, then shot it.

Now, a fun moment that technically went wrong, which you mentioned earlier, Chris, is Alicia Silverstone's pronunciation of Haitians. You may have noticed in the debate at the beginning that she says, Haitians. Hedians. And that is because she did not know how to pronounce that word. Oh, no. And Amy Heckerling had to stop multiple crew members from going up and explaining to her how to pronounce it because she was like, don't tell her. It's perfect. It's so good.

You couldn't ask for it to be any better. Also, if you've not heard a word before and you're pronouncing it for the first time, it's not a sign of subpar intelligence if you mispronounce it. That is true. she pronounced it phonetically. Yeah, exactly. She was apparently very worn down during the shoot. She'd done something like eight movies back to back at this point, like really, really quick succession.

Whoa. And she was constantly sick and battling ulcers during Clueless. She was getting frequent allergy shots and eating almost exclusively frozen yogurt because of the ulcers. That apparently was all she could keep down. And she was so tired that multiple cast members, including Paul Red, recall her, immediately falling asleep as soon as takes were done.

She would take power naps. She would just close her eyes. And she has to be at 11 in every scene in this movie. And she's so good, like really, really good. She carries it. Now you may wonder if Cher Horowitz is a member of the tribe, if she's Jewish. She's officially not, despite her very Jewish-sounding last name.

It was just the name that Wallace-Shahn made up during roll call, and it stuck. Really? Yeah. Well, because I was wondering, it's like Dan Hedea and her. I was like, oh, okay, maybe. No, they're not Jewish. Breck and Meyer did injure himself in Long Beach during the skate park scene. He sprained his ankle pretty badly on the half pipe.

That is him doing a lot, but not all of that. Some of the, like... Well, no, he was a legit skater, like skateboarder. Yeah, he's really good. He would skateboard all around town and that he was splitting that, you know, and auditioning and whatnot. I just think I saw some interviews with him. Yeah. He's not doing some of the, like, crazier tricks.

Those are professional skaters, but he is doing like the big half-pipe stuff. Also, the famous suck-in-blow scene was not a real credit card. It was too hard to actually suck on a real credit card. So that is a fake cardboard credit card. Interesting. And the actor who was supposed to play Cher's mugger was fired at the last minute because his agent had booked him on something else and told the crew that he couldn't be there at his call time. So they hired the guy who shot Paul Rudd in the face. This is actually kind of sad.

It seems like the agent was playing hardball thinking that they would move the shoot a little bit to accommodate this guy, but they obviously... No, they can't. And also, like, why would they do that for this? I know. He's excited. It's one scene, four lines. They fired him immediately and replaced him

with actor and future TV director, Jace Alexander. This was literally Scott Rudin calling this guy who would, like, send him a script recently and was like, hey, are you available literally right now to come to the... creepy clown circus liquor in the valley. And this guy was like, yeah, I'm half a mile away. And so he came and did it.

And he's like, do you have a gun? Can you bring that to? It really sucks for the original guy because it sounds like he may not even have known that his agent was doing this. I doubt he knew. He probably did not. Yeah. Also, a little fun fact, do you know who voices Josh's mom, Gail, who calls on the phone asking where he is? I don't.

It's Amy Heckerling. Oh. All in all, sounds like it was a very fun. shoot where the studio pretty much left them alone, I think probably due to the fact that it was not a super high budget. D.P. Bill Pope points out that their offices on the Paramount Lot were right next to the Waterworld sound stages, which cost at least as much as their entire movie, and also did not make as much money. Post-production was very smooth. Heckerling worked with editor Deborah I'm so sorry if I mispronounce your last name, Kiate, who she'd previously worked with on the

look who's talking films. They got along great. There also just wasn't that much. much to cut. They began during production and apparently kept for the most part to exactly what they shot. How common is that, Chris? Oh, no, to shoot, excuse me, to edit while you're shooting is obviously very common. That's standard. In terms of sort of staying. I mean, look, she's obviously very good at what she does. That's not how it's gone for me. But most movies change drastically. I mean, the famous line is there's ways to say it, but like your movie dies three times or the final right is the edit. So that's a bit unusual for it to kind of come out as planned. Yeah. One scene that they did end up cutting, however, featured a young school news reporter played by Hackerling's

daughter and Secret Love Child with Harold Ramos. Apparently, it just didn't fit. The film didn't fully click, though, until Silverstone's VO was dropped in. Throughout the edit, they'd been using Amy Hackerling's voice as a placeholder, which just didn't work. And fun fact, the line, looking for love in high school was like looking for meaning in a Polly Shore movie was originally like looking for meaning in a Chevy Chase movie. Remember European vacation? Yeah. But the difference is Chevy Chase would maybe do something horrible if you heard that. I don't know. It was actually executive Sherry Lansing, who we've talked about before, who frequented parties with Chase and thought that he was a nice guy. So she asked them to swap it out. Now to Chris's point, history would maybe come out

on Polly's side of this, as Chevy is notoriously not such a nice guy, which I imagine Amy probably knew at this point. But then it might be a bit of a wash because apparently Polly Shore has multiple lawsuits against him for people being assaulted at the comedy store, which he owns. So you just can't win. They both deserve to be roasted. Speaking of Sherry Lansing, when they showed her the film and came to her office for notes, she said, this is fantastic. I don't have anything I think you should change. I think you lock it. And then she gave them more money for the soundtrack. which never happens. No.

And it has a great soundtrack. I mean, they're using my Iron Lung Radiohead just randomly during a lunchroom scene like in the background. Radiohead was apparently pretty chill about being in this, especially since they get openly mocked in the car when Paul Red is playing that. But yeah, they were like, this is fine. You can use this. They also had a deal with Capitol Records for the soundtrack. Right. And kudos to Sherry.

It's not often that executives know when to back off, which frequently, is more important than knowing what to add, I think. She also pointed out to Amy Heckerling after test screenings that Clueless was decidedly one quadrant. What does that mean, Chris? Appeals to one portion of the general population. So men, women, and then age bracketing, basically. Right. So usually there's four quadrants,

is generally what they say. And they want you to hit all four quadrants most of the time. So naturally, Amy Heckerling panicked, because if this is hitting one quadrant, is that going to be a problem? But Sherry Lansing said, what's the problem? We found our audience and now we're going to sell it. Nice. Yeah, if you hit that one quadrant hard enough, you're fine.

That was it. She, I think, understood that women 13 to 35 were completely underserved at this time and that it was actually a great thing. And at $13 million, you don't need four quadrants to recoup the cost of the film either. No. So Clueless premiered in Malibu, California on July 7, 19, as part of an hour-long clueless MTV Beach Party special. It took place on Zuma Beach, hosted by Daisy Fuentes and Jenny McCarthy.

Oh, my God. I don't know if it gets any more 90s than the release of this movie. I love how they did it. Like, the Pizmo Beach disaster is in the movie, and then they're like, we're going to do it at Zuma Beach. Heckerling was dating Bronson Pinchot of Perfect Strangers, who also popped up in Beverly Hills Cop at the time. And when they went to walk the sandy red carpet initially,

all the photographers were calling to him for pictures. Eventually, someone told them that Amy was the one who actually wrote and directed the movie, so they started calling for her and asked Bronson to step aside. Naturally, this hurt his feelings, even though he had nothing to do with the movie. They did not stay together. Clueless released Wide on July 19, 1995 in a little over 1,400 theaters, and brought in $3 million on opening night. It actually became the number one movie in a movie.

America over Apollo 13. Within a week, it had made $15.8 million and was well on its way to becoming a certified hit, earning a total of $56.6 million at the domestic box office alone. Reviews were extremely positive right away, which was, of course, a new experience for Heckerling, and she didn't really know how to handle it. And then it went on to become one of the most popular home video rentals when it dropped on VHS, and it won best screenplay at the National Society of Film Critics Awards. Wow. Heckerling also received a very nice letter from Glad. They were thrilled that Christian, the gay character in the film,

was not dropped or treated as a villain as soon as he was outed and instead became Cher's close friend. Even better, he's the one who steps up and saves Ty in the mall. And they just make it, it was just her problem to figure out. That's right. He wasn't doing anything wrong. It wasn't that he was misleading her or anything like that. He was just having a good time. And then once she realizes it,

She has a shopping buddy. Yeah, which is maybe the biggest adjustment from Emma, by the way, is his character. Right. Because he does have sort of nefarious intentions in Emma. Because Cluiss had been such a hit, it was, of course, turned into a sitcom by ABC. Heckerling did work on this very briefly. Alicia Silverstone was never affiliated. In fact, she chose a very different route after Clueless, almost immediately signing a $10 million deal with Columbia Pictures.

Do you remember the TV show at all? No. I don't think I ever saw it. I do. I think I watched a little bit of it. The only returning main characters I remember it featuring prominently were Amber. She did return. Murray, Donald Faison returned and Dion, played by Stacey Dash. And then they did replace Cher with actress Rachel Blanchard and Josh with actor David Lashor.

Elisa Donovan, who plays Amber, had an interesting experience with the Barbies that were released along with the TV series. I had a Share Barbie. I did love it. When Mattel came to set, they took plenty of pictures of her face for the doll, but none of her body. She initially asked the Barbie executives if it were possible to measure her body, so the doll could look a little more anatomically correct, and they looked at her like, she was insane. She didn't reveal it at the time that had been battling an eating disorder

and was concerned about perpetuating the same stereotypes that had so negatively impacted her. Again, I did have the share doll, and I can confirm it was the shape of no human body ever. And I loved it. It ran for one season on ABC and was canceled and then picked up UPN for two more before it finally went away for good. The film, as we've said, led to a renaissance of teen movies, and just one year later, Jane Austen's OG share, Emma, made her way to the big screen too, starring Distinguished Clueless Hater, Gwyneth Paltrow. Many more Austin adaptations would follow shortly thereafter, including a personal favorite that my husband and our producer

David Hates, Bridget Jones's diary, David's wrong, it's great. And also Clueless's fashion legacy is still going to this day. It's maybe one of the first times that stores and brands realized that they should have gotten in on the franchise and branding before the movie came out. And they actually tried with Clueless. The studio was trying to get people involved and they didn't. They missed out on a lot of money. The senior VP of Bloomingdale's was kicking himself for not jumping on board the franchise and made the film required viewing for his buyers. There have also been numerous designer lines inspired by Clueless and Calvin Klein even reissued his famous slip dress that looks like underwear, according to Cher's dad.

Which by today's standards does not, because people are just wearing actual underwear. Yep. It also may have forever altered teen speak, spreading California vocabulary far and wide and adding like to the cultural lexicon in a way that we have never recovered from. Thanks, Clueless. No, that is the negative externality of Clueless has been like. As if, Chris. I am as much a perpetrator as anyone.

Now, while so much of the cast went on to have long, successful careers, Paul Rudd may have been slightly more of a slow burn than Alicia Silverstone coming out of this, but I think he is easily the biggest star to come out of the film. Absolutely. There's one person whose career was cut far too short, and that is, of course, Britney Murphy. I just want to take a minute to talk about how good she is in this. She is so cute in a role that I think could be really annoying and saccharin. And just like, I think it's played by Tony Colette in Emma.

She's great in it, but she is so annoying in a way that Britney Murphy isn't. She followed this film up with some smaller but excellent character roles in Drop Dead Gorgeous, one of my favorites, and Girl Interrupted, which she's great in. But then her big break really starts around 2001 with Don't Say a Word. And I don't know if you remember this, but she looks completely different from that point forward. Yeah, she got very emaciated. She gets very, very thin. She goes very blonde, which is not something that she ever was prior to this time.

And she does really look like a different person. And that was around 8 Mile, too? Yep, right before 8 mile. Yeah. And she shifts at that point into these sort of leading lady romantic love interest roles away from the character roles that she had been playing. It makes me really sad that we don't get to see what she could have done. She died at 32 in 2009 under very mysterious circumstances.

We still don't really know what happened. But I think we lost a really great, not just comedic talent. Like, looking at Girl Interrupted, she was a really amazing actor. Amy Hackerling still has Murphy's silver pair of Doc Martins that she wore in the party scene, saying, quote, they fit me. I just like having a piece of her. She means, and she meant so much to me. I don't know why I'm crying. I do love Britney Murphy.

But RIP, Brittany. All right, Chris. What went right? So much I will say, I would like to give a shout out to the casting director. Yes. Carrie Frazier. Carrie Frazier. I think this movie's exceptionally well cast, and it plays into existing stereotypes,

but then because of the strength of the writing, the characters don't actually have to solely exist or be boxed into those stereotypes. And you talk about Ty's character. That's obviously true of. share. But really, I think everybody has room to play. And it's a testament to the writing and then the vision of the casting director and the whole team to find the people who would be able to bring, you know, pretty nuanced characters to life. And so kudos to Carrie Frazier. Carrie Frazier. Yes. Both cast directors did a wonderful job, but you're right. I do think that

She really helped to set the tone for this. And I appreciate that they cast, A, a lot of people who were a lot more age appropriate than I think we see in many other teen movies. At the time. But also, at the time, yes. But also that, like, there's sort of a lack of self-awareness with a lot of the people that they cast. That's very sweet and very charming to see on screen. And they didn't go after super big names, which I think also was really helpful for this, even though, of course, many of them would become household names later on. I agree. Well, there's so many things that went right, as you said. I mean, I think I could easily

give it to Heckerling or Alicia Silverstone. They're both so wonderful. I think without them, obviously, this movie does not work. But I'm going to give it to Mona May and the costumes because I just, the look of this movie is amazing. And sometimes with these movies from any period, it can feel very dated. I still want to look like everything Cher is wearing in this. She looks. so good. Yeah. It's like there's something really both timeless and very much of the time about what these look like. Obviously, they're crazy over the top. I mean, they have like Kentucky Derby hats on in some parts of this that are just absolutely wild. But so much of it also is like beautiful. She looks great. Like, yes, they look funny. They look ridiculous in some things. But it just, it's so pretty.

And there is something really to be said for like, she made everyone look wonderful. So kudos to you, Mona Mae. I agree. I think this movie looks far more timeless than any other teen movie from about 93 to 2003. Yes. Like if you look at, you know, American Pie, for example, and then obviously not another teen movie is playing into the tropes, but those feel more dated to me visually.

Even 10 things I hate about you, which I love. It's great, but then this movie. And I agree, though, I think it's the costumes and the way Bill Pope shot those costumes. Yeah, that's true. It works in such harmony. Yeah, it's great. And it does, in fact, look happy and it made me feel happy. So thank you to everyone who made this movie. It really is wonderful, an absolute treasure. And thank you, Amy Heckerling, for sticking to your guns on this one and not doing the projects you didn't want to do and not taking the notes about adding in a bunch of guys' perspectives that you didn't need. Amazing job. No, I mean, it would have been better,

but, you know, it was good. And we should now announce that Lizzie and David were step siblings before they got married. I should say that is why I defended it so hard. No, I mean, yeah, cousins. It's different. All right. We're not cousins. Okay.

Sorry. Have you done a genetic test? We have. That's true. I forgot. Okay, guys. Lizzie, first of all, thank you for choosing Clueless. It was such a blast to rewatch.

It's a really fun movie. Do you know what's funny? I'll let you audience and do a little secret of our show. Usually we do choose our own movies. Chris, I actually think you chose this for me. I did choose it for you. I wanted you to cover it. You just lied.

You wanted me to do it. And you know what? I felt some resistance to that because I don't like being told what to do A and B. Oh, yeah. I sent her a schedule for 2025 unless he threw it away. But you know what? I'm so glad that you did put this one on the schedule for me. Because I don't know that it's one that I would have chosen

independently, and I really enjoyed both watching it and researching it. So thank you. And that's the teamwork that makes the dream work. And on that page, guys, we can't do this podcast without you. Seriously, in last year, we've experienced an unprecedented for us amount of growth. And it is really helping us keep this podcast alive. It is also allowing us to lay the track toward the goal of going weekly. And on that front, if you are interested in supporting the podcast. First of all, just listening. Thank you.

That's amazing. If you want to go one step beyond, tell somebody about it. Could be anybody. If you want to go one step beyond that, leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. We really appreciate it. We do read them. They don't hurt our feelings that much. And if you really want to go the extra mile, you can join our Patreon.

You can go to www. www.com slash what went wrong podcast. You can join for free. You can sign up for a dollar and vote on films that we cover in the future. We just announced we're going to cover the evil debt for Halloween as a result of a poll. Very excited. You can also get an ad-free RSS feed for $5. Or for $50, you can have your name shouted out on the show just like this.

And Chris, can you give it to us in your best California Valley Girl, even though Cher is not from the Valley, but she does visit for that one party? Let's hear it. This is so bad already. It's bad. It's great. It's like, oh my God. Ramon Belnova Jr. Brittany Morris.

Darren Dahl Kunkling. Jack Kellen. Kang. Like, do you even have a last name? Kang? Andrew McBaggle-Bagel. That doesn't even sound real. Matthew Jacobson.

Grace Potter. I like your music. Ellen Singleton. Jewish Reish Lamont. Scott Gourwin. Sadie, just Sadie. Brian Donahue. Adrian Peng Correa.

Chris Leal. Kathleen Olson. Leah Bowman. That's David's mom. Steve Winterbauer. That's my dad. I'm sorry, Dad, about all of this that's happening right now. Don Shible.

George. Rosemary Southward. That's my mother-in-law. Tom Kristen. Somon Chianani. Michael McGrath. As F. Whatever.

We love you guys. You're the best. Apologies for that. And if you'd like more of that, pay us money. What are we covering next, Lizzie? Evil Dead! That's right. We'll see you, Deadites, in two weeks.

Until then. Bye. Bye. Go to patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong. And check out our website at what went wrongpod.com. What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing and music. by David Bowman. Additional research for this episode provided by Sarah Bound.