Taglines: Life in the Valley: Hair, clothes… and attitude.
Valley Girl movie storyline. Julie Richman (Deborah Foreman) is a sweet-natured, if shallow, Valley Girl. After breaking up with her jerk boyfriend Tommy (Michael Bowen), she is at her friend Suzi Brent’s (Michelle Meyrink) party (“the social event of the season”) when two boys from Hollywood crash the scene. One of them, the sensitive and adventurous Randy (Nicolas Cage), is immediately smitten with Julie, and she with him.
Julie’s friends, however, are not smitten with Randy purely because he is from “Holly-weird” and want Julie to dump Randy and get back together with Tommy. Julie must decide which is more important: her heart and the boy she loves, or the approval of her friends. A side story involves Suzi and her stepmom (Lee Purcell) vying for the attention of Skip (David Ensor) the grocery delivery boy.
Valley Girl is a 1983 American teen romantic comedy film directed by Martha Coolidge and starring Nicolas Cage, Deborah Foreman, Michelle Meyrink, Elizabeth Daily, Cameron Dye and Michael Bowen. The plot is based loosely on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Valley Girl was released on April 29, 1983 and opened in 442 theaters in the United States. In the opening weekend, it grossed $1,856,780 at #4. The final domestic gross reached $17,343,596.
The film originally was conceived as a teen exploitation film to capitalize on the valley girl fad inspired by the Frank and Moon Unit Zappa song “Valley Girl.” Zappa explored the possibility of making a “Valley Girl” film and received inquiries from several studios, though nothing materialized. Zappa later unsuccessfully sued to stop production of the film, claiming it infringed on his trademark.
The opening scene of the movie features an aerial shot of the Mulholland Dam. The camera then pans over the Hollywood Hills and the iconic Hollywood Sign to a wide-angle shot of the San Fernando Valley, cleverly setting up a recurring compare and contrast theme between the San Fernando Valley culture of the eighties versus the grittier culture of Hollywood and central Los Angeles.
Cage and Foreman found it difficult to do the breakup scene at Julie’s front door because it was shot late in the filming when Cage and Foreman were dating. It took several takes and some counseling by Martha Coolidge. She told Foreman to think of another guy she had broken up with.
Valley Girl (1983)
Directed by: Martha Coolidge
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Deborah Foreman, Elizabeth Daily, Cameron Dye, Michelle Meyrink, Camille Calvet, Richard Sanders, Colleen Camp, Frederic Forrest, Heidi Holicker, Joanne Baron
Screenplay by: Wayne Crawford, Andrew Lane
Production Design by: Marya Delia Javier
Cinematography by: Frederick Elmes
Film Editing by: Éva Gárdos
Set Decoration by: Barbara Benz
Music by: Marc Levinthal, Scott Wilk
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Atlantic Releasing
Release Date: April 29, 1983 (United Statets)
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