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In the wilderness of the Christmas television scheduling this year, 5STAR (Sky Digital channel 128) will show the classic 1980 film Fame during the eleventh hour of Christmas Evening, around the same time as "On Christmas Night" will be on BBC One as part of the late evening's schedules. Searching for such a word such as Fame in the search box on here makes it a bit difficult to see whether anyone has already started a thread about the film in the past, and so I will assume that they haven't. At the end of a day where most of the British public will be already dozing off by the evening of Christmas Day, one cannot imagine too many people staying up to watch it, and will be setting the EPG to record it for later. I will hopefully be one of them. Being 5STAR, it will have an Entertainment News bulletin an hour into it which is already in my Room 101.
For as long as I can remember, I have always thought that the Fame logo reminded me so much of the Boots the chemist logo, especially when the shop logo was white lettering inside a dark blue oival shape. Fame the series came around a couple of years after the film did, and so therefore the series was more or less a spin-off of the film rather than the other way round; the series was seen on BBC One either on post-Top of the Pops Thursday evenings, and later moving to Mondays between 1982 and 1985. The film was made a couple of years before the late Irene Cara's hit reached the top of the British charts, and the success and publicity of it came on the back of the TV series rather than the film which premiered in the UK on New Year's Day 1984 on BBC One. By 1983 the Fame tune became such a familiar theme tune and song that Grampian TV even used it as their theme tune to the 12.30 pm post-Rainbow series Do It Herself - back then, the I probably thought that the tune was a library piece and so it was familiar to me from the outset.
Directed by Alan Parker, an Englishman who was also involved in the 1970s Hovis adverts (they were filmed in Dorset and not Yorkshire if you must know), Fame couldn't be any further away from anything British. Glee in the late 2000s felt to me like an updated version of Fame or even High School Musical; the usually female stars in character covering any song that they can think of. Going back to the start of the 1980s, the keep-fit craze was just a year or two away from kicking into the public's consciences, and I suppoise that Fame pioneered that paticular movement. Olivia Newton-John (as seen as Sandy dressed in black in my avatar) was also responsible for the keep-fit genre in the opening years of the eighties as well. Flashdance was another one. Both the film and series provided a refreshing approach to life at the start of that decade; the publicity posters vouched "coming this summer" in white lettering at the bottom. This was made just before the start of Reagan's America, lest we forget. According to Wikipedia, as recently as 2023, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". I suppose that it is the American answer to the British Film Institute.
I just couldn't help noticing that Digiguide had given the film a 15 certificate; ironic as I am certain that the film has had pre-9.00 pm showings in the nearly 41 years since it was first premiered on British television. Despite being filmed in 1980, the film seems to be set a couple of years earlier in the late 1970s when a group of teenagers (I prefer the phrase "young people", myself, but this was the start of the 1980s) audition to study at the High School of Performing Arts which was where director Parker promised to hold auditions for the cast. Irene Cara herself appears as Coco Hernandez, responsible for the trinity of Drama, Musi,c and of course, Dance; Coco seems an apt name considering the film's late scheduling and those still awake will be having their cocoa in any case. The fact that florescent-coloured leggings were the new flares and leg-warmers were new the socks with bigger holes than usual, not to mention, leotards were the new swimsuits, perhaps? - either way, it certainly got most people'a attention back then, (leg-warmers were to Fame in the same way that denim skirts were to Prisoner: Cell Block H), but I bet that no John England catalogue had "Fame" leggings for sale in their books back then.
Fame feels like a place of sheer excitement in the same way as musical theatre often does to an audience member such as myself, albeit either the film or the series where character names feel a lot more like stage names due to the Performing Arts angle. Laura Dean was just 16 when she got the part of Lisa Monroe; she was born in 1963 and appeared in the film prior to her 17th birthday. Dean was cast in a principal role while most of the others she worked with mostly appeared as extras; she is certainly one to look out for when watching the film. I suppose being British, a lot of Americanisms that we hear can pass me me by, and I am someone who was fed a junk TV diet of Sesame Street and "how to pronounce the last letter of the alphabet incorrectly" during the early to mid 1980s. Maureen Teefy who appeared as Doris Finsecker made me think that she was an older character, and looking online, the American actress (not US actor) was to appear in the second Grease film in 1982, and also the 1984 Lee Jeans-sponsored Supergirl film - another film which deserves an outing after over 20 years away from terristrial schedules.
One can easily understand how Fame has been translated into a musical many times over; it has been performed on the stage a number of times over the years, and I actually saw for myself the 2019 incumbent cast of Fame the Musical who were actually at the Bournemouth Pavilion threatre on Westover Road on my birthday where I went on holdiay to see them that year, quite nicely keeping the traditions of the performance that we saw on-screen over 35 years previously. That version starred the excellent Mica Paris, along with Jorgie Porter, who was taking a sabbatical at the time between her two stints in Hollyoaks; and also Keith Jack, who at the time on the Watching Musicals at the Theatre thread, I commented on him being similar to Rylan Clark as a performer. If there is another version of Fame the Musical going around the UK, depending which town or city they will be in at the end of August in time for my birthday, I would seriously consider booiking tickets to see it; (especially if there is a matinee performance if the magical day falls on a Saturday like it will do in 2025). Remember my name - Fame! I am gonna live forever! Lisa Monroe rules - even during the early hours of Bolxing Day 2024!!!!
For as long as I can remember, I have always thought that the Fame logo reminded me so much of the Boots the chemist logo, especially when the shop logo was white lettering inside a dark blue oival shape. Fame the series came around a couple of years after the film did, and so therefore the series was more or less a spin-off of the film rather than the other way round; the series was seen on BBC One either on post-Top of the Pops Thursday evenings, and later moving to Mondays between 1982 and 1985. The film was made a couple of years before the late Irene Cara's hit reached the top of the British charts, and the success and publicity of it came on the back of the TV series rather than the film which premiered in the UK on New Year's Day 1984 on BBC One. By 1983 the Fame tune became such a familiar theme tune and song that Grampian TV even used it as their theme tune to the 12.30 pm post-Rainbow series Do It Herself - back then, the I probably thought that the tune was a library piece and so it was familiar to me from the outset.
Directed by Alan Parker, an Englishman who was also involved in the 1970s Hovis adverts (they were filmed in Dorset and not Yorkshire if you must know), Fame couldn't be any further away from anything British. Glee in the late 2000s felt to me like an updated version of Fame or even High School Musical; the usually female stars in character covering any song that they can think of. Going back to the start of the 1980s, the keep-fit craze was just a year or two away from kicking into the public's consciences, and I suppoise that Fame pioneered that paticular movement. Olivia Newton-John (as seen as Sandy dressed in black in my avatar) was also responsible for the keep-fit genre in the opening years of the eighties as well. Flashdance was another one. Both the film and series provided a refreshing approach to life at the start of that decade; the publicity posters vouched "coming this summer" in white lettering at the bottom. This was made just before the start of Reagan's America, lest we forget. According to Wikipedia, as recently as 2023, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". I suppose that it is the American answer to the British Film Institute.
I just couldn't help noticing that Digiguide had given the film a 15 certificate; ironic as I am certain that the film has had pre-9.00 pm showings in the nearly 41 years since it was first premiered on British television. Despite being filmed in 1980, the film seems to be set a couple of years earlier in the late 1970s when a group of teenagers (I prefer the phrase "young people", myself, but this was the start of the 1980s) audition to study at the High School of Performing Arts which was where director Parker promised to hold auditions for the cast. Irene Cara herself appears as Coco Hernandez, responsible for the trinity of Drama, Musi,c and of course, Dance; Coco seems an apt name considering the film's late scheduling and those still awake will be having their cocoa in any case. The fact that florescent-coloured leggings were the new flares and leg-warmers were new the socks with bigger holes than usual, not to mention, leotards were the new swimsuits, perhaps? - either way, it certainly got most people'a attention back then, (leg-warmers were to Fame in the same way that denim skirts were to Prisoner: Cell Block H), but I bet that no John England catalogue had "Fame" leggings for sale in their books back then.
Fame feels like a place of sheer excitement in the same way as musical theatre often does to an audience member such as myself, albeit either the film or the series where character names feel a lot more like stage names due to the Performing Arts angle. Laura Dean was just 16 when she got the part of Lisa Monroe; she was born in 1963 and appeared in the film prior to her 17th birthday. Dean was cast in a principal role while most of the others she worked with mostly appeared as extras; she is certainly one to look out for when watching the film. I suppose being British, a lot of Americanisms that we hear can pass me me by, and I am someone who was fed a junk TV diet of Sesame Street and "how to pronounce the last letter of the alphabet incorrectly" during the early to mid 1980s. Maureen Teefy who appeared as Doris Finsecker made me think that she was an older character, and looking online, the American actress (not US actor) was to appear in the second Grease film in 1982, and also the 1984 Lee Jeans-sponsored Supergirl film - another film which deserves an outing after over 20 years away from terristrial schedules.
One can easily understand how Fame has been translated into a musical many times over; it has been performed on the stage a number of times over the years, and I actually saw for myself the 2019 incumbent cast of Fame the Musical who were actually at the Bournemouth Pavilion threatre on Westover Road on my birthday where I went on holdiay to see them that year, quite nicely keeping the traditions of the performance that we saw on-screen over 35 years previously. That version starred the excellent Mica Paris, along with Jorgie Porter, who was taking a sabbatical at the time between her two stints in Hollyoaks; and also Keith Jack, who at the time on the Watching Musicals at the Theatre thread, I commented on him being similar to Rylan Clark as a performer. If there is another version of Fame the Musical going around the UK, depending which town or city they will be in at the end of August in time for my birthday, I would seriously consider booiking tickets to see it; (especially if there is a matinee performance if the magical day falls on a Saturday like it will do in 2025). Remember my name - Fame! I am gonna live forever! Lisa Monroe rules - even during the early hours of Bolxing Day 2024!!!!
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