Martha Coolidge, director of Valley Girl:
I wanted that feeling of love at first sight that just hits you. Hard. My goal in this picture was to accomplish the feelings that you have in your first love, the kind of incredible high that first love in high school gives you. There’s nothing like it. We all know it … I felt from old movies that the most important thing that you can do in a movie is play wanting. It isn’t actually the getting of the person that is hot on the screen. It’s the wanting. It’s the electricity, it’s the looks, it’s the feeling of tension, of sexual tension, the parallel-ing of emotions, that really builds feeling in a picture. The eye contact, the kind of reflecting of each other that people do, and that the old actors from old Hollywood really knew how to do, because they couldn’t show nudity then, they couldn’t show all the things they could show today, and I wanted very much for Randy [Nic Cage] and Julie [Deborah Foreman] to really have that great desire and electricity together … This is the theory of electricity and wanting, and I loved the pull between these two. Together they were just great.
The film was shot in 20 days.
OMG my favorite movie EVER!!
“That chick Julie, she’s truly dazzling.”
Dazzling!!! I know – I love his word choice there! So romantic and unexpected. He sounds stunned when he says it.
Haven’t seen the movie in eons and my brother gave it to me for Christmas. It holds up, it really does.
It didn’t hurt that the soundtrack was awesome too! I don’t think Deborah Forman did much after this movie.
Oh how I wish Josie Cotton played at my prom. Instead, some crap ass Whitney Houston song was our theme. “Johnny, Are You Queer?” would have suited my tastes much better.
Love love love this movie.
Find somebody who’s lived on a desert island for thirty years and show them that 1st pic of Nic Cage. “This is one of Hollywood’s biggest go-to-guy leading men. He’s named after a black comic book character!” Amazing.
In the beach scene, wasn’t Nic Cage’s chest hair in the shape of a triangle? It was also nice that the guy from Apocalypse Now put his head back on and married the Playboy Bunny to become Julie’s parents.
I remember the oddest things…
One of the longest-running jokes in my family is “If they attack the car, save the radio.”