Amy Heckerling Films | Amy Heckerling Filmography | Amy Heckerling Biography | Amy Heckerling Career | Amy Heckerling Awards

Amy Heckerling is an enormously successful commercial Hollywood director whose forte is comedy filmmaking. After film school, she worked as a television editor where she learned to create effective comic rhythms. Subsequently, her first feature, the smash hit Fast Times at Ridgemont High was a career-making effort. The film was based on Cameron Crowe?s novel about his return to high school to examine what contemporary teenagers were doing. A hilarious parody of high school teenpics, it was enthusiastically endorsed by several critics. It is also noteworthy as the film that introduced Sean Penn and Jennifer Jason Leigh to mainstream audiences.

Heckerling?s second feature, however, Johnny Dangerously, performed poorly at the box office, though it is a clever comic spoof of the 1930s gangster movies, in which an honest man turns to crime to fund his mother?s surgeries. Likewise, National Lampoon?s European Vacation, a fluffy comedy with an anemic screenplay that seems to gently mock the all-American family, was not a box-office success. Nevertheless, Heckerling has demonstrated a tenacious will to succeed in Hollywood. For example, when her screenplay My Kind of Guy unsuccessfully made the rounds of the studios, from Warner Bros., to Universal, to MGM, she responded by working on another screenplay?for Look Who?s Talking, which was inspired by her own pregnancy. It ultimately proved to be a smash hit and marked her career ?comeback.? In addition, it prompted two sequels, the first of which she also directed, Look Who?s Talking Too. In Look Who?s Talking, an unmarried woman played by Kirstie Alley pursues her quest to find the perfect father for her baby. She finds him, unexpectedly, in an unconventional candidate?a taxi driver (played by John Travolta). The film?s hook is baby Mikey?s amusing impressions of his experiences between the time of his conception and his first birthday.

Heckerling had another huge commercial and critical hit with Clueless, a charming contemporary adaptation of Jane Austen?s Emma. Arguably, it represents a career summation film, one that evokes prevalent issues and themes from her earlier movies. Yet, it is utterly original. Her most feminist film, it features a heroine who is a spoiled yet engaging Beverly Hills incorrigible who indefatigably endeavors to arrange and manipulate the romances of her high school cohorts, while she puts her own love life in neutral. Much of its considerable appeal is due to its clever take on the fads, slang, and other preoccupations of teenagers, especially girls. Like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and unlike most teenpics, it attracted both teen and adult audiences. But, whereas the earlier film had a more realistic look and tone, in addition to more explicit depictions of youthful sexuality, Clueless revels in bright colors, quick, witty repartee, and camp sensibilities?especially in terms of the slightly-over-the-top performances Heckerling elicited from the film?s leads, including Alicia Silverstone in her career-making role.

Heckerling has spoken of the pressure she felt in Hollywood whereby male directors can make a string of bad films before they finally succeed and are considered ?hot directors??a path she had never seen a female director tread. Therefore, she felt compelled to work without stopping so that she would not be forgotten in Hollywood. Her critics, therefore, often charge that her eye is focused entirely upon the box office. But, as she herself explained, it would be great if a woman director could make ?tons of money? since the ?best and the worst thing about this industry is that that?s the bottom line.? Furthermore, her critics complain that her films look as though they were directed by men?sometimes leering men. They point to her first film, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, in which it is only the males who are fully developed characters, while the girls are obsessed with their looks and with boys, and whose bodies are featured in various states of undress.

Despite such criticisms, Heckerling?s comic scripts boast fast-paced dialogue and clever humor that occasionally point to the sexism and superficialities of American consumer culture, as they mock and celebrate the insipid yet well-intentioned values of suburbia, even in upscale Beverly Hills. Likewise, they include subversive feminine humor despite their big studio backing. Thus, in Look Who?s Talking, the babies voice the absurdities of their adult companions, and in Clueless, the teenage heroine expresses a clever awareness of the superficialities of consumer obsessions and of sexism. Accordingly, astute critics have compared her films to those of Jerry Lewis and Frank Tashlin. They are well-produced, technically proficient, and engaging works that employ the narrative conventions and formulae that predominate in commercial Hollywood movies. In addition, they are testimony to Heckerling?s considerable skill in evoking humorously engaging performances from her actors.

Heckerling?s r?sum? includes directorial assignments for television, including several episodes of the series Fast Times. Recently, she has worked as a producer on the feature film, A Night at the Roxhury.?CYNTHIA FELANDO