Fame

And I got a lot of time.

This is a true story, but I bought, you remember the movie Fame? I bought the soundtrack to the movie Fame on vinyl at Joy Behar's garage sale a month ago.

That

is a

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense, but maybe it takes a moment on that.

You know, it's kind of like, it's kind of like the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Hall of Fame.

Right?

Yeah.

Um, Susan Seidelman's Desperately Seeking Susan.

[phone dings] Sorry, my phone went off there.

Um, Fame, the Alan Parker movie about the, uh, um, high school-

Yeah, it is endlessly clever and such great wordplay and so many great sight gags and all the things that you love about Looney Tunes are all here.

Sammy Burch, by the way, also wrote Late Fame recently.

So what an incredibly random trio of films in the last couple of years from her, but so talented and so versatile there.

So yeah, I'm going to say on Coyote vs. Acme, I will say like...

remember, remember, remember, remember the films of our

childhood and decide whether or not they've held up over the years or if we just have fondness for them because we were kids when we saw them.

This week, it's Christy looking back to 1980, Alan Parker's groundbreaking R-rated musical, Fame.

I've wanted to do this one for a while.

No wonder she had a Tony nomination, her first of a few.

At this same time, she played Lydia Grant in the 1980 film Fame.

Fame followed the lives of teenagers at a performing arts high school in New York City.

Of course, the Fame High School is based on LaGuardia High School, which is a very real performing arts high school in New York City with very successful graduates.

People like Jennifer Aniston, Timothee Chalamet, Liza Minnelli, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Diane Carroll, Adrienne Brody, so many more.

Sarah Michelle Gellar, so many people went to this school.

She was nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Actress four times for this role.

She also won a Golden Globe for Best Actress for playing Lydia Grant, which made her the first Black woman to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV series, musical or comedy genre.

uh in high school and it's always the older kids that are like oh you know what we should go do we should go to the rocky whore what's that well we get we have to pack a bag before we go to we need some hot dogs and we need some the squirt bottle and we need uh like what you can take that into the theater have you ever been to a rocky horror show nick Like a drive-thru? No.

So like when you go see it at the movie theater, it turned into this thing where when certain things happen on the screen, like you throw hot dogs or you –

Oh, no.

I don't know any – I've seen it in my adult life at home.

you're in on it.

Sure.

It's not where you go to just sit and watch a movie.

But I

Mm-hmm

... um, Bugsy Malone, Fame, Pink Floyd's The Wall-

Mm-hmm

...

... kind of a little meta.

[laughs]

And also when they're doing the film shoot, uh, Mick, uh, shouts, "Fame, I wanna live till Tuesday"

[laughs]

So did we have any thoughts on that?

I had commented on it reminded me of fame, like the beginning of the movie Fame, which, of course, is definitely supposed to to call attention to.

But what also got me is I actually zoomed in and looked at some of the movies that were displayed there.

And they are some of the darkest frickin movies that have ever been made.

The movie Sparkle follows the troubles and triumphs of a trio of singers trying to make it in the soul music world of the 1960s.

Released in 1976, Sparkle was the film debut of Irene Cara, who'd become a big star four years later in the movie Fame.

The movie was only a modest success, and what now seems most impressive about Sparkle are Curtis Mayfield's songs as sung by Aretha Franklin.

If you look into your heart.