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I'm in love with the original "Fame" movie. I just re-watched the whole thing and am regretting not buying it permanently from Amazon. I will, I think.

When I tell people what a great film Fame is, they usually reply with "But isn't it just another dance movie?" Ach, what fools. They'll at best hum Irene Cara's famous title track, and envision spandex and legwarmers. Either they haven't seen it, or they've forgotten what a fantastic film it is - mainly because it's really not inspirational in a traditional Hollywoody sense. It's not Dirty Dancing - there's no fairy tale ending, where the ugly duckling is turned in to a beautiful, self-assured swan, floating on the arms of the beautiful boy from the wrong side of the tracks.

'Fame', instead, is really troublingly honest. Not necessarily about LaGuardia, the performing arts school where it's set - I've been fascinated by the film, and the TV-series that followed it for long enough to have quizzed every single graduate I've come across what the school was like. (Apparently, there was singing in the corridors. but not as much). It's not even necessarily honest in it's portrayal of different characters; the teachers are all charicatures and even the students portrayed from auditions to the final performance of "I sing the body electric", are barely more than sketches.

Where 'Fame' is really honest, what I guess makes it speak to me so much at the moment, is about theconcerns that go in to living a creative life; just how challenging it is to try to create something, anything, in the midst of regular life. Regardless of what that life may look like. Regardless if you're a cossetted Jewish girl in Brooklyn, an Upper East Side princess, a Puerto Rican boy who's sister is attacked by junkies in the South Bronx or an illiterate African American dance prodigy from the projects, life gets in the way. It's honest about all the temptations and selfishness and mistakes you make along the way - how easy it is to trip up. But it also portrays how the events around you, or even ones you self-destructively or unthinkingly set in motion don't have to be final. Hilary has an abortion and continues dancing on the West Coast, far away from the frosty family she rebelled against. Ralph doesn't quit after his drug use makes him royally screw up a show. Leroy manages to get back into school despite his feud with his English teacher. Coco stays in the business even after her gullibility and a predatory "movie director" have added up to what's suggested is a porn shoot.


And it shows quite how vulnerable you might need to make yourself to be any good. Montgomery opens up about his homosexuality in a move that probably helps him as an actor, but gives him continued problems in his peer group. Doris's search for originality and her own voice put her at odds with her family. In a film done today, I think these choices would be given some sort of censure or pat on the back, but that doesn't happen in "Fame". Montgomery is still lonely; Doris is still very much part of the chorus. They're better, sure, but they're still not Ralph, who may or may not make it anyway - having ridden on talent and chutzpah for the whole movie, his ambition and drug use may get in the way. Or he'll settle to "just" be a comic, an irresponisble goofball, rather than give his work the depth it's clear he has access to.


Perhaps the most poignant relationship, for me, is the one between Bruno and Coco. Bruno, is an Italian-American musical genius, so wrapped up in his own creativity that he can hardly share his music, let alone his emotions, with anyone. Beautiful, talented, determined and commercially minded, Coco becomes the voice of his music - what makes his work accessible and, you feel, the only person he opens up to. Bruno is clearly in love with Coco, who doesn't care for him like that - she's seeing Leroy who she doesn't know has gotten Hilary pregnant. You feel for Bruno, for loving this girl whos mind is set on bigger things and who only sees him as a creative partner and friend, but you don't hate Coco for it. You respect her, for being so wholeheartedly dedicated to what she's building for herself, no matter how childishly she goes about it; she lies to Bruno and his proud-but-exasperated taxidriver father about where she lives, to create an illusion about herself for the one person you feel probably wouldn't care. But there's no judgment passed on her for this - she does what she needs to do, figuring it out as she goes along. Her honesty's in her voice - her rendition of "Out here on my own", which she sings with Bruno listening in and his father nearly crying in the audience. That song, more than anything else, is really the heart of the movie - and it has very much been the soundtrack of my last few months.

That you, even if it's a slightly dented version of you, can come back from problems of yours and others' making, and keep doing what you care about - not because you want to be famous, or even because you're the very best at it, but because it's what you NEED to do - I guess that's why I love "Fame". You can screw up, sell out, doubt yourself and fail - but that doesn't mean it's over. Love it.