Ginger Rogers, Katherine Hepburn and Frank Sinatra, fame is associated with glitz and glamour, big parties, more money than you can ever could dream off and millions of adoring fans all screaming your name. But what they don't tell you is that fame can also be associated with a world of no trust, self loathing, and drug abuse, loss of a perspective or reality and heart break. For every rags to riches story, is a slow painful descent from the heavens and the stars into a hell were you constantly face the dark side of humanity. For every Beyonce there is a Marilyn Monroe, for every Clint eastwood there is a Kurt Cobain and for every Jerry Seinfeld there is a Michael Jackson. Fame has the beautiful, yet macabre ability to change some people's lives, and destroy others. So why do we risk so much and seek it so adamantly? Everyone has their own reason for wanting fame, but the most common is our quest for acceptance, and when you're a young teenager in the most populated city on earth, you can still feel more isolated than if you were the only person there. 1980 was the very forefront of the massive boom in coming of age films, which details the lives of young people and their trials and tribulations of the difficult and confusing transition into adulthood whilst trying to recover from pain of watching their childhood end. But whilst later films like Dazed and Confused and American Pie took more of a light hearted and humorous tone, it was Alan Parker who brought us a more realistic, gritty and niche magnifying glass into the lives of teens in New York City. They come from all walks of life, from the poor Bronx to the right upper eastside of Manhattan, however what they all have in common is a whole lot of ambition, dreams and talent and insatiable hunger for fame, but the world is cruel and not everyone has what it takes to make it. Over the course of; Auditions, freshman, sophomore, junior and senior year we follow the lives of; Leroy (Gene Anthony Ray) the hot headed naturally gifted dancer who can't read, Montgomery (Paul McCrane) a ultra serious thespian struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality, Ralph a street wise compulsive liar, Bruno (Lee Curreri) who is by far ahead of his time and lastly Doris a personality less shrinking violet who soon learns to blossom. Besides Doris who seems forced by her mother to pursue a life in the creative arts, the exact motivations for each of the main characters reasons for wanting fame is generally unclear and the film never really explicitly defines them, but as the audience we don't care because in each of these kids we see a little bit of ourselves, and thus will them to success with all our hearts. Similar to a Robert Altman film we weave effortlessly through the ensembles lives, experiencing their uplifting highs as well as their crushing lows as if we were actually standing right next to them throughout. Warning don't expect any fairy tales and happily ever afters in Fame; there is abortion, exploitation, attempted suicide, racial divides, death and drug abuse in Christopher Gore script that never stops shocking you and sending you on an emotional roller-coaster, as you immerse yourselves in the lives of these teens, laughing and crying as they do and eventually falling in love with them. Working so expertly with such a young cast of relatively unknowns and producing such a excellent piece of filmmaking, wasn't a flash in the pan or fluke by Alan Parker, because you just have to look back to the toe tapping all kids gangster musical Bugsy Malone as a further demonstration of Parkers ability to work so well and nurture young talent into giving such breath taking performance. In particular the one that stood out to me the most in Fame was Barry Miller as Ralph we was able to pull of the most dynamic and layered character with ease and charm, but never being afraid to lay out his entire soul to the audience. You just have to look at the scene he shares with his mother, sister and preacher in church as an example, a scene absolutely dripping with raw emotion. I personally was one of those people to fall in love not just with the characters but with the film as a whole because it has the grace of ballerina, the power of a Ballard and the ability to provoke thought like a Shakespearean actor. Fame stands fearless, toe to toe with controversy and bat an eye lid, but it's not serious all the time there is a swimming pool full of fun gushing into every scene; the boys in the toilets trying to see into the girls changing rooms and the spontaneous soul-drenched dance numbers, that gallivanted a whole generation of New Yorkers to risk a beat down and try to pirouette on top of a taxi if you haven't already laughed enough. Bring him a well deserved BAFTA nomination, Fame sits aptly next Mississippi Burning and American Express as some of Alan's greatest crowning achievements, which helped him win BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, the highest honour the British Film Academy can give any filmmaker in 2013. While the immediate legacy of Fame was the double Oscar Winning sing- along inspiring song named 'Fame' named after the film which won the film an Oscar for best original score and a Oscar for best song for Michael Gore. But what really stands out was the films ability to influence later coming of age films in the likes of Footloose and The Breakfast Club, however it should come as great surprise to know that the film only ranked at #42 on Entertainment Weekly's 2006 list of the "50 Best High School Movies". Shocking!

I don't know if I would class this as a musical, but it is certainly a teen drama with some songs and performances in it that I wanted to try, from BAFTA nominated director Alan Parker (Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express, Mississippi Burning). Basically the story is set at New York High School for the Performing Arts, where the newest students are training to achieve their goals to become great singers, actors and performers. The four students that the film mainly follows are black wannabe starlet Coco Hernandez (Golden Globe nominated Irene Cara), shy and less than confident Doris Finsecker (Maureen Teefy), gay and sensitive Montgomery MacNeil (Paul McCrane), and the often aggressive Raul Garcia (Barry Miller). The film follows their journey from auditioning to be in the school, singing and dancing rehearsals, personal downfalls in their bid to get somewhere, including Coco unintentionally going into pornography, and of course graduation with the whole gang performing on stage. Also starring Eddie Barth as Angelo, Lee Curreri as Bruno, Laura Dean as Lisa Monroe, Antonia Franceschi as Hilary Van Doren, Boyd Gaines as Michael and Gene Anthony Ray as Leroy. I mainly heard about the film first because of the title song "Fame" going to number one in the UK, and then again when Justin Lee Collins tried to get Irena Cera on board for the Bring Back... Fame reunion, which she refused. I will be honest in saying that I wasn't completely interested in the story, more the singing and dancing, but even that didn't stop me thinking this wasn't really my cup of tea, but it certainly wasn't bad. It won the Oscar for Best Music for Michael Gore and Best Song for the title song (it also won the Golden Globe), and it was nominated for Best Film Editing, Best Song for "Out Here on My Own", Best Sound and Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, it won the BAFTA for Best Sound, and it was nominated for the Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music and Best Editing, and it was nominated the Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture - Musical/Comedy and Best Original Score. Okay!

Although the traditional cinema musical, generally based upon a successful Broadway show, went into something of a decline in the late seventies and eighties, this period saw the rise of a new musical genre based around dance and pop music. Like "Saturday Night Fever" and its sequel "Staying Alive", "Flashdance", "Grease" and "Dirty Dancing", "Fame" is an example of this trend. The original title for the film was, apparently, to have been "Hot Lunch ", but this had to be changed when director Alan Parker realised that there was already a pornographic film with the same title. The change was doubtless one for the better; I cannot really imagine Irene Cara singing "Hot Lunch! I'm Gonna Live Forever!"The film follows a group of students through their studies at the New York High School of Performing Arts, which was a real institution at the time. It is split into sections entitled "Auditions", "Freshman Year", "Sophomore Year", "Junior Year" and "Senior Year", and hence takes place over a time-span of some four years. The opening scenes have something of the feel of a "fly on the wall" documentary about them, As the film progresses we get to know the various students and something of their stories. New York, of course, is a famously multi-ethnic city, and the film-makers were obviously keen to reflect this racial diversity by including at least one representative of most of the city's various ethnic groups (Jewish, Hispanic, Italian, Black, Irish and WASP). Dance student Leroy Johnson struggles with his academic work, which at this school is given equal weighting with performance, because he is illiterate. Lisa Monroe, another dance student, is dismissed from the course for not working hard enough, and switches to the drama department. Montgomery MacNeil, a drama student, comes out as gay, probably a more daring plot-line in 1980 than it would be today, when it is virtually compulsory for every high school drama to have a token gay character. I wondered if his Christian name was a reference to the gay film star Montgomery Clift. Raul Garcia, an aspiring stand-up comic, prefers to be called Ralph Garcey in order to hide his Puerto Rican background. His great ambition is to be the next Freddie Prinze- not the future Mr. Sarah Michelle Gellar, who would only have been four years old in 1980, but his father Freddie senior, another Puerto Rican comedian who died in 1977. Unfortunately Ralph seems to feel that the best way of achieving this ambition is to ape Prinze's self-destructive lifestyle. "Fame" was clearly popular in the early eighties, spawning a television series and a stage musical. That irritatingly catchy theme song provided Cara with a huge chart hit. The basic concept is obviously still thought to be a viable one, because there has been a recent remake (which I have not seen). Yet like many of the musicals of this period, although not perhaps as much as the likes of "Saturday Night Fever", the original film seems rather dated today. (The one which seems to have held up the best is "Grease", probably because that was always intended as a defiantly deliberate anachronism, being twenty years behind the times even when it is made). The song-and-dance numbers are lively enough, even if the music is not always to my personal taste. Yet there are other reasons, quite apart from its old-fashioned feel, why "Fame" is not my favourite film. One is that, despite the film's apparent aim of celebrating New York's ethnic diversity, too many characters are seen in terms of ethnic stereotypes. (African-Americans are bolshie with a bad attitude, Hispanics ditto, Jewish mothers are domineering and over-protective, etc.)Another reason I didn't like the film much is that too many of the characters are just too obnoxious to care about. I would agree with the reviewer who found Ralph a "boorish self-centred jerk" but unlike that reviewer I found several of the other characters equally unpleasant. I could not sympathise with the bad-tempered, petulant Leroy and his frequent outbursts of rage, mostly directed at his long-suffering English teacher. Nor with Ralph's girlfriend Doris Finsecker, as keen to deny her Jewish identity as he is to deny his Hispanic one. (She renames herself "Dominique DuPont", largely because she knows this will annoy her mother). Nor with the bone-idle Lisa. Irene Cara's character Coco Hernandez is difficult to sympathise with for another reason; not because she is a jerk but because she seems too naive to be true. She is taken advantage of by a man posing as a film director who offers her a "screen test"; she turns up at his apartment even though he is played as an obviously sleazy sexual predator. (Had he seemed more plausible this plot line would have had more credibility). Montgomery is one of the film's few likable characters, but the film does not concentrate on his story to any great extent. He largely functions as the school's kindly agony uncle, a shoulder for his heterosexual classmates to cry on. My final complaint about the film is that there are too many main characters. Even the film's two and a half hour running time is inadequate to do justice to all these stories, some of which could have provided enough material for a whole film in their own right, and few of them are fully developed. Alan Parker has made some excellent films, including "Mississippi Burning" and "Evita", but "Fame" is not really one of them. It is perhaps ironic for a film with this particular title that few of its stars, except Cara, went on to achieve any great fame of their own. 5/10

This was on TV last night. I painfully forced my way through it, and barely made it through. First of all, except for Leroy, Hilary, and possibly Coco, NONE of the other students we are supposed to care about have any discernible talent. It's like HSPA had no standards, just sign on the dotted line and you're in. The story lines were grating and obvious. Doris was just impossibly awful. The gay guy was such a thrown away cliché (funny how that school had only one gay guy, right...) I liked the Leroy character, but calling your teacher an obscenity and then vandalizing the school should have sent Leroy packing. Lisa looks like she'd rather be anywhere else, and since she wasn't any talent, I wonder why they kept her. I would have rated this one star (awful), but the music wasn't that bad, and I did like the premise. It just would have worked much better if the students had been attractive and actually had some talent.