Fame (1980)

I think what makes this film work, even now, is that it selected it's stars from a bunch of aspiring and talented individuals whom it was perfectly plausible to believe in. To like and dislike. It has something about it that offers hope, optimism and realism to people from a range of backgrounds whose skills with their feet, their fingers or their voices might well be the only thing saving them from a life of banality in parts of New York that couldn't have cared less if they lived or died. On that score, it also presents a certain transferability to other big cities in the world where mundanity is the currency and where just getting noticed - and not exploited - is an achievement. This centres around half a dozen characters - each with their aptitudes and each with their demons, and it also shows us just how vocational a talent for teaching is, especially when it is trying to develop an interest in the academic amongst the artistic and also of containing the artistic when it, frequently, gets out of control. This is also fairly groundbreaking in that it deals, quite casually but still potently, with issues of education, race and sexuality - and the hostility faced by people who don't conform - espoused well here by Gene Anthony Ray; Paul McCrane and in a more vulnerable fashion by Barry Miller's would-be stand up comedian "Ralph". My own favourite? Well that had to be "Mr. Shorofsky" (Albert Hague) whose sarcastic turns of phrase when trying to teach his more digitally minded student "Bruno" (Lee Curreri) the merits of Mozart and Beethoven often raised a smile. This is more than a movie about a song - albeit Irene Cara at her best, and the fact the the spin-off television series' retained many of the cast and ran for so long shows that this did touch nerves in a 1980s world that was at the height of the cold war and was only just becoming aware of the effects of the AIDS epidemic. It's rough around the edges, but it's also characterful and has an authenticity to it that I think still holds up.