Valley Girl

In 1982, Frank Zappa's song "Valley Girl" brought his daughter Moon Unit's lilting "grody"s "for sure"s and "gag me with a spoon"s to the ears of a nation. For most it was only a parody of California teen-speak.  But for the producers of Valley Girl, it was inspiration. Approaching Zappa with the idea to make a movie based on his song, they were roundly rejected. But not to be denied, they went ahead and made the movie anyway, seeking further inspiration from the next best source they could think of: William Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet were transformed into Randy and Julie, high schoolers from opposite worlds, or at least different youth subcultures, whose love is tested by a rigid society. Nicolas Cage stars as Randy, the first in a long line of raw, sleazy characters with a sensitive soul. In the New York Times review from its release, an otherwise disappointed Janet Maslin praised Cage for being the only one of Julie's suitors "with any vitality" and indeed he stands out in an otherwise run of the mill teen-movie-based-on-a-novelty-pop-song.
    The film opens with panoramic shots of The Valley then drops us into a shopping montage overflowing with the sort of saddle shoes, windbreakers, and off-the-shoulder sweaters with piano-key sleeves now being fought over by hipsters at Beacon's Closet. Taking a shopping break to snack at the food court, one of the shoppers, the subtly named Julie Richman, complains to her friends about her hunky but dumb boyfriend Tommy: "he's got the bod, but his brains are bad news".  When Tommy happens to saunter over, in an eye-catching pumpkin orange popped collar polo shirt, she breaks up with him brusquely, removing his I.D. bracelet from her wrist with a curt "Like, I'm totally not in love with you anymore".

    Cage makes a striking first appearance at the beach, emerging from the water and eliciting lustful coos of "What a hunk!" from the Julie and friends. They change their tune, however, when he and best friend Fred show up at their party in matching ripped-up black and red outfits, weaving their way through a sea of pastel to wide-eyed stares and disapproving whispers [FOOTNOTE 1]. Although perpetually horny sidekick Fred is the one looking to score, it is Randy who catches Julie's eye from across the room and they strike up a sweetly awkward conversation. Unfortunately, this catches the ire of Tommy, who punches Randy in the face (a staple of Cageian cinema) and literally throws him out the door with the help of his thuggish friends. 

    Love cannot be denied, however, and fuming on the injustice of it all ("Nobody is gonna tell me who I can score with!") Randy determines to go back to the party and see Julie once more. He sneaks into the house via bathroom window and proceeds to hide in the bathtub, emerging when Julie enters and whispering "Don't be afraid". Remarkably not freaked out, she agrees to leave the party with him, although has the sense to bring her best friend Stacey along. Fred and Randy take the girls into Hollywood (or as the girls denigratingly dub it, "Hollyweird") which is evidently supposed to be dangerous although that danger is represented by one police car and a lingering shot of Mann's Chinese Theater (playing An Officer and A Gentleman. Seedy!). As they drive along Randy shouts convivial greetings to people walking by on the street-- some of whom are black! others of whom are named Rico!-- in case you are in any doubt over how real he keeps it. This point is hammered home in one of the movie's more irritating scenes, as Fred and Randy admonish the girls with heavy-handed dialog like "This is the real world. It's not fresh and clean like a television show" and "We're ourselves... you're all fucking programmed" as though wearing sunglasses in a nightclub were a profound statement of authenticity.

    But Julie is hooked, and after a charming falling-in-love montage she gushes to her friends that Randy is "the most awesome dude ever! ... man, he's just like tripendicular you know?" However as Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary learned before her, society will not stand any naive attempt to break rank.  The girls pull an intervention to warn Julie of the dire consequences of her love-- she'll never be invited to any more parties, she won't be elected class representative-- and  when she laments having to choose between her love and her friends, she is met with the Mean Girl-style retort "Well, life's not fair." Her hippie dad counters that it's not what you wear, but what are are on the inside that counts, but though she lies awake in her bed agonizing over the decision by the time Tommy saunters up to her at a diner, her will has been broken and she allows him to slip his bracelet over her wrist and eat french fries off her plate as she stares in mute horror. [FOOTNOTE 2]

     Randy does not take this news well, and this I would argue is where the Cage we know and love really comes to the fore. After a bout of angry shouting ("Fuck off for sure like totally!") he descends into a alcoholic depression,  mournfully standing on on a hillside overlooking the Valley, lamenting "She's out there somewhere," and playing a single despondent note on a plastic pan pipe. Fortunately the ever-faithful Fred is around to buck Randy up and offer him some sage advice: "Go wild and crazy. The romantic stuff. Girls love that." Emboldened, Randy embarks on a series of escalating gestures: dedicating a song to her on the radio, planting pictures of himself in her history book, somehow impersonating an usher at a movie theater and a chef at a restaurant she frequents, and spending a night in a sleeping bag on her front lawn. 

     Inevitably these gestures fail, since the ultimate showdown must of course take place at prom. Randy and Fred sneak in (Fred resplendent in a tailcoat, blue vest, and matching blue pompadour) ready to enact their "master plan" which turns out to be punching Tommy in the face right before he and Julie are to be announced as prom king and queen. After meticulously removing several layers of his pastel pink tux and cummerbund, Tommy tries to fight back but his odd, kickboxing- inspired moves are no match for Fred and Randy, who as we all know are from the streets. As prom erupts into a chaotic food fight, Randy and Julie escape into a waiting limo, which drives them off to an ending seemingly cribbed from The Graduate as they smile shyly at each other while Julie, exercising her one remaining bit of agency, removes Tommy's bracelet from her wrist and throws it out the window. [FOOTNOTE 3]

    Originality is clearly not this movie's strong point, but if you are a fan of teen movies, it is a fairly enjoyable assemblage of tropes, dressed in their 80s finest and set to some rad tunes. [FOOTNOTE 4] As the first stop on my Long Day's Journey into Cage, it was interesting to see his manic energy and smoldering intensity fighting against the restraints of the genre. While Deborah Foreman sticks to the standard giggles and sighs of a smitten teen, Cage ratchets up the emotions until he borders on creepy, staring into her eyes with unabashed ardor. The scene where he serves burgers and fries to Julie and her friends while wearing a chef's outfit is Cage at his finest-- he is bounding with barely contained energy, doing a crazed impression of a Southern drawl, and when Tommy complains that he forgot to bring his burger, you do not know whether Randy will laugh it off or pull a gun on him. This is a testament to Cage's talent: in a completely by-the-numbers movie, he is entirely unpredictable.

FOOTNOTES:

1. Interesting fashion sidenote: Throughout this scene, Randy appears to be wearing an American flag lapel pin. Presumably it is somehow punkish and ironic but with the red shirt he could easily be vying for a spot as McCain's running mate.

2. One of the more genius touches to this movie are Julie's parents, a pair of hippies who run a health food store and are given enough screen time to smoke pot, do yoga, listen to sitar music, and reminisce about Woodstock. Julie and her parents have a generally supportive, loving relationship, but the generation gap is present as Julie pines embarassedly "[health food's] so uncool. why can't they own a Pizza Hut or something?" 

3.  The Graduate's influence also evident in the competition between Julie's friend Loryn with her mother over the affections of high school student/grocery delivery boy Skip, a subplot which frankly, the less said about the better.

4. The soundtrack is rife with classic 80s New Wave music, but most amazing is a relatively obscure track Johnny are you queer?  performed live at prom by Josie Cotton.

LIKE, OMIGOD YOU GUYS: Can't get enough Valley Girl? Check out MGM's upcoming musical remake of the film, due out in 2011.

Hollywood is no stranger to controversy, but it has produced perhaps no more consistently polarizing figure than Nicolas Cage.  Any website devoted to him quickly devolves into a  Hatfield and McCoy-esque feud in which the commenters' love for/hatred of Cage is expressed in increasingly exclamatory lists of his movie titles (i.e. "OMG, Adaptation!" "OH YEAH???GHOST RIDER!!!") which are eventually supplanted by posts expressing the wish that the other commenters would get stranded on a desert island and die. 

Even when one can find slightly meatier debate, it is hard to know what to think. Depending on what you read, he is either a hack with "next to no talent" or an Oscar winner with "great charisma"; an actor who bravely breaks down genre conventions or who robotically plays the same character in every movie; a man whose hair looks like he stapled a dead muskrat to his forehead or one who is "soooo fucken hott".  

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Cage's first starring movie role (as high-school rebel Randy in 1983's Valley Girl) and he has been working prolifically ever since, with over 50 released films under his belt and another nine in production. In honor of his silver anniversary on the silver screen, I am embarking on a quest: to watch every Nicolas Cage movie ever made, in chronological order. Some I have seen; most I have not. Some I expect to enjoy; others I am already dreading.  By doing this I hope to cut through both the vitriol and adoration and get some answers. Firstly to the question underlying all Cage debate: Is he a good actor with terrible taste or a bad actor who occasionally gets lucky? But I also intend to examine issues raised by a film-by-film analysis of his entire career: How does his take on fatherhood change from Raising Arizona to Matchstick Men? Which does he play more often, a con man or a hit man?  What happened to Las Vegas in between Honeymoon in and Leaving?

On the war-torn boards of IMDb, one commenter posted a plaintive request for unpartisan discourse: "if ur in luv wit the guy leave, if u absolutely hate him leave... wut do some of u unbiased ppl think?"   I think it is about time we find out.