The following notes on Clueless were written by Samantha Janes, PhD student in the Department of Communication Arts at UW Madison. A 35mm print of Clueless will screen at the Chazen Museum of Art at 2 p.m. on Sunday, September 22. The screening is the first in the Sunday Cinematheque at the Chazen series, Austen, Kawabata, Oates, and Didion on Film, presented in conjunction with the Chazen exhibition, Petah Coyne: How Much a Heart Can Hold, on view until December 23.

By Samantha Janes

In July of 1995, Amy Heckerling’s modestly budgeted teen film Clueless, hit theaters in a whirlwind of plaid skirts and designer hats. The film became near an instant hit with both teen and adult audiences nationwide. While the female-centered narrative and relatively unknown cast initially drew uncertainty from major Hollywood studios, the sensation caused by the release of Clueless drastically shifted the tides in 1990s teen-centered filmmaking. Acquired by Paramount Pictures after Fox failed to begin pre-production on the project, Clueless would go on to gross $56.6 million during its domestic run, on a budget of $12 million, and continued to grow in popularity with home video distribution. Despite the eventual box office success, the film’s production history reveals both the challenges and freedoms Heckerling encountered throughout the development of Clueless as one of the first teen-oriented films of the 1990s.

After over a decade writing and directing films such as National Lampoon’s European Vacation (1985), Look Who’s Talking (1989), and Look Who’s Talking Too (1990), in 1993, Heckerling began writing a television pilot originally titled No Worries that centered around popular kids at a Beverly Hills high school. With a knack for narratives that hinge on transitional periods in young characters’ lives, Heckerling stated that she wanted to develop the television pilot around a character who “would be so happy that no matter what happened you couldn’t burst her bubble.” While Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) was Heckerling’s first feature film and a success with teen audiences, she jokes that instead of the “realism” of high school in Fast Times, she wanted “escapism fun” for Clueless.

Drawing inspiration from Jane Austen’s novel Emma (1815), Howard Hawks’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and the teenage trends she observed in high schools, Heckerling created Cher Horowitz - a rich, blonde teenage girl from Beverly Hills who is kind yet infatuated with matchmaking, fashion, and driving without a license. Following sixteen-year-old Cher through her high school friendships and relationships, the audience is privy to Cher’s internal narration and remains aligned with her throughout the story. This loose adaptation of Austen’s comedy of manners made the script an unusual prospect in the industry during the mid-1990s. While Fast Times split focus between the lives of numerous high school students, Heckerling’s newest idea offered a comedic view of teen culture through the eyes of a female protagonist. Positioned as both agents and objects of humor, the central female characters in the script work to reinforce the film as both a teen comedy and a satire. However, hinging the coming-of-age narrative on female characters led to Fox abandoning the script over a dispute of the studio’s desire for a greater number of central male characters. With the support of her agent and team, Heckerling converted the pilot into a film script and began pitching to new studios.

During the early 1990s, only a few teen comedy films. like Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (1993), premiered to any commercial success. Adam Schroeder, a co-producer on Clueless, notes that by 1994, teen movies were more of a “relic of the John Hughes movies in the 80s.” Paramount Pictures sought to fill the gap in the market with Heckerling’s tongue-in-cheek script and a cast of newcomers. In their research on Heckerling, Frances Smith and Timothy Shary note that she had “an uncanny way of discovering young screen talent,” such as the cast of Fast Times that included Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sean Penn, and Forest Whitaker. This ability to discovery young talent continued in Clueless with the casting of Alicia Silverstone as Cher. When pitching the film to Paramount, Heckerling came armed with the script and an image of Silverstone in one of Aerosmith’s music videos, asking executives to picture Silverstone saying the lines in the script. Casting for the other lead roles in Clueless finished in 1994 and included young stars such as Brittany Murphy, Paul Rudd, and Stacy Dash, whose careers would drastically alter after the release of the film.

Dash, who plays Dionne, recalls that Heckerling’s directing style is one that “made everything just about having fun.” The combination of Heckerling’s lively yet detailed-oriented directorial style and the natural comedic timing of the cast, Clueless delivers a sense of power and playfulness that still resonates with audiences. The film opens with a montage of Cher’s life as a wealthy teenager, and less than a minute into the film, the audience is introduced to her voice-over narration. The voice-over narration employs both Cher’s “Valley Girl Speak” and unique slang terms like “buggin” in a manner that creates humor and establishes a disconnect from the expected eloquence of high culture or wealthy characters. Throughout the film, Heckerling establishes a relationship between Cher’s voice-over narration and the camera that allows for Cher to tease audience assumptions. Steeped in Cher’s perspective, the audience is immersed in Heckerling’s grounded yet fantastical high school narrative.

While Heckerling and the production team behind Clueless had a $13 million budget and relative creative freedom from Paramount, there was still concern over the studio’s reception of the film. This fear was quelled when the current Paramount Pictures chair and CEO Sherry Lansing watched the first cut and promptly laughed throughout the entire film. She declared that she had no notes for Heckerling and that the demographic for Clueless “was everybody.” Lansing was correct in her statement that the audience for Clueless was far wider than ever expected by studios. The film’s success as a sleeper summer hit at the box office triggered the film and television industries to seriously consider targeting teenage girls and female consumers as an important audience, also spawning a lucrative cycle of film adaptations of canonical British literature like 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) and She’s All That (1999). In addition, Heckerling’s script and the production of Clueless prompted the creation of a Clueless television series (1996 – 1999) and even a documentary from Charlie Shackleton titled Beyond Clueless (2015). Now, nearly thirty years after the film’s premiere, Clueless remains an enduring teen comedy and a cultural touchstone for numerous generations.