Amy Heckerling
Now I watch a lot of movies, more than I probably should, but I have never heard of an Amy Heckerling. I’m mad at myself for not discovering this director sooner. She has an awesome way of capturing the time that her movie takes place in, she is wonderfully witty with her writing, and she never uses the same actors in different productions.
Now for the nitty gritty. Mrs. Heckerlings talent for captuing the decade her movie takes place in is just simply awesome. For example her movie “Johnny Dangerously” took place in the early 1930’s. To capture the feel of it she only used little to no computer special effects. At the very beginning of the movie there’s a little intro of people dancing and then the title shows up as the name of a night club and the prop showing the year, which looks like it was computer generated, gets run over and destroyed by a car shortly after. She also takes advantage of the language of the people. There were a lot of immigrants in the 30’s, many of which didn’t completely grasp our language. She makes fun of this by having a rival gang leader use terms like “fargin” and “icehole” in replacement of the actual swear words.
Her writing is also laughably witty. I gave a previous example of foreigners butchering our language in Johnny Dangerously but I’ll move to a newer movie, “Fast Times At Ridgemont High”. It contains the typical 80’s cast of jocks, stoners, prudes, and she has wonderful writing for each class of highschooler. One of my favorite scenes took place in a Burger-town (the typical McDonalds knockoff). An uptight customer was giving the cashier a really hard time, demanding his 100% refund and insulting the cashier various times. The cashier finally gets fed up and yells, “You better shut up before I kick 100% of your ass!” Now I’m not really sure why I thought this was so funny, seeing as how I watched it 5 more times, but I did find a lot of her dialog very relatable to real world problems, like dealing with an unruly customer or awkwardly talking to girls. It’s not just witty, it’s realistic.
I think what I love most of all is that Mrs. Heckerling never uses the same actors for her movie. She keeps it fresh and is able to stray away from the “director specific actors” like Ron Pearlman in a Guillermo Del Torro movie. I’ll start with the oldest movie “Johnny Dangerously”. It stars Michael Keaton, who we all know as Batman and Beetlejuice. It also stars Peter Boyle (Everybody Loves Raymond) and Danny Devito (Always Sunny in Philadelphia). Fast Times At Ridgemont High however switches it up with a bit of a younger cast like Sean Penn (MILK) and a younger but just as scary Forest Whitaker (Blown Away). Clueless has a bit of a younger set of actors such as Alicia Silverstone (Batman and Robin) and Donald Faison (Scrubs, Kick-Ass 2). She likes to cast for people that fit the generation her movie is about and I really appreciate that kind of hard work from a director.
All in all Amy Heckerling is an above-par director. She’s witty, and put’s a lot of thought into what the audience can relate and will respond to. If you haven’t seen any of the movies I talked about then I recommend you do, they are well worth the time and you’re sure to walk away with more than a few good laughs.
If you’re interested in some more of Mrs. Heckerling’s work then may I suggest the following?
1. National Lampoon’s European Vacation – Comedy
2. Look Who’s Talking – Romantic Comedy
3. I Could Never Be Your Woman – Romantic Comedy
4. Vamps – Romantic Comedy, Horror
By: Skylar Myers
Storyboard Class 