Welcome back to another edition of Your Favorite Movie, where we thoroughly dive into the nuances of a friend's favorite film of all time, and the audience responds "Whatever!"
Today's yellow-plaid interviewee is Hannah D***, La Salle University's most famous alumnus. I've been friends with Hannah ever since I threw up in her living room in like 2008. This isn't the first time I've interviewed Hannah specifically—I published in the Collegian an AIM conversation we had in honor of her being her class's valedictorian, but unfortunately that issue has been lost in the sands of time. So an interview about her favorite movie, Clueless, will have to do for now.
You may remember Hannah from our inebriated round-table Beetlejuice interview (I have not been able to convince Hannah to join Record Club). Sam wasn't part of that, but he has been YFM's most faithful reader, and he's finally here to join in on the fun. Pam makes her 2020 debut. So does Martha, but I cut all her parts out, because they didn't add anything constructive to the conversation.
Our discussion has been transcribed below with Hannah's permission, and edited slightly because I fucked up and got drunk for the first time in a while. Everyone may feel free to read, since Puke on Your Birthday does NOT say "RSVP."
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Pam: I didn't know it.
Hannah: No. I really don't know a lot of her work.
Sam: "What Jane Austen movie?" [laughter]
Joe: Emma?
Hannah: Oh, I did read that.
Joe: Did you really? No shit.
Hannah: Yeah, but it was a long time ago.
Joe: In 1815 when it was released? [laughter]
Pam: Maybe if you read it again, you'd be like, "this is totally Cher from Clueless."
Joe: Well, apparently! Emma the character is described as "handsome, clever, and rich."
Hannah: Emma was?
Joe: Yeah.
Hannah: No, Emma is a girl.
Pam: "Handsome" in the classical sense.
Sam: Girls can be handsome, Hannah.
Joe: I read that question before I watched the movie. What I got from that was that Clueless was not going to be the movie I expected it to be.
Hannah: Okay, and was it?
Joe: It was definitely deeper than I thought it was going to be. I kind of thought it was going to be a Mean Girls type thing, with the main character being shallow and ditzy? And she wasn't! Cher was a pretty deep character. She felt like a real character to me.
Hannah: In what way did you think she was deep?
Pam: [laughter] You're flipping the interview, aren't you?
Joe: If you want to flip the interview, go ahead.
Hannah: I do, because I feel like I'm the stereotypical person that would like this movie, and you're not.
Joe: I was surprised. I thought Cher... she was definitely not stupid.
Pam: Just an "airhead."
Joe: Eh, I guess you would call her an airhead?
Pam: Well, when it came to certain things, like driving. She couldn't drive. And she didn't know Christian was gay.
Hannah: "A virgin who can't drive."
Joe: Right, her own self-worth might've been a little low because of that. The two qualities that she thought would make a well-rounded person—being able to drive, and being able to dick some dude—she didn't have those qualities. But she also had an emotional maturity, right? Like, when her friend accused her of being a carless virgin, she didn't freak out. She didn't have that moment where... I feel like in these types of movies, that would typically be the "breaking point" in the friendship. And she was just like, "Ah... that's a bummer you said that."
Pam: "That's way harsh."
Joe: "Way harsh," yeah!
Sam: And even the Brittany Murphy character was sad about it too, like, "You're right, that was mean."
Joe: And had Cher responded more poorly to that, then Brittany Murphy's character would've, ya know, clapped back, I guess?
Hannah: Cher's mom died when she was young, and her dad was working all the time, so growing up she had to be a little more self-sufficient.
Joe: Was she a latchkey kid?
Pam: Yeah, but she probably had maids and nannies and butlers who were there. She wasn't by herself. Oh, and Josh. The stepbrother.
Joe: When did he come into the picture? Did they specify?
Hannah: No, we don't know.
Joe: Probably before they were... hormonal?
Pam: Before they hit puberty.
Joe: Right. Because that wasn't a thing until—
Pam: Until she realized it, yeah.
Joe: What are some other things about Clueless that you like? I say "other things," but I'm sorry, I've only talked about what I like about Clueless. What are some things you like about Clueless?
Hannah: First of all, when you're watching Clueless as a younger girl—younger than Cher is at that time—Cher is everything you want to be. She's popular, but smart. She's got a really good sense of the world. She's worldly. She's taking care of her shit. She's super rich. Why wouldn't you want all those things?
Joe: She's somebody to look up to.
Hannah: Yeah! I mean, I don't think there's anyone that would be like, "That's not who I want to be when I grow up."
Joe: When did you first watch this?
Hannah: I don't even know when this movie came out. I'm gonna assume like sixth grade?
Joe: It came out in '95.
Hannah: So that makes sense, I would've watched it a couple years later.
Joe: When it came out on VHS.
Hannah: I was in sixth grade in '99. So, yeah.
Joe: And you remember thinking those things while watching it?
Hannah: Definitely. Actually, it must've been before sixth grade, because I had an outfit—when she does the outfit match at the beginning, with the yellow plaid on yellow plaid—I had that outfit, that I would actually wear to school.
Joe: On purpose, because of Clueless?
Hannah: Yes.
Pam: I said that to Joe, that I could remember going to the sixth grade dance, and there was a girl who dressed like Cher.
Joe: But you had negative things to say about it, didn't you?
Pam: Well, I had negative things to say about the girl herself.
Joe: Okay, not because she was dressed as Cher.
Pam: No!
Hannah: I do think it would be a weird outfit for a dance. That's not a dance outfit.
Pam: It was a Halloween dance, I think. But I do specifically remember being like, "Hey, Marielle!" and her being like, "Um... call me Cher."
Joe: That sounds like something Hannah would do.
Pam: But in a joking way!
Joe: How do you know Marielle wasn't joking?
Pam: I don't know.
Hannah: What grade was this, though?
Pam: Sixth, but for me, so it was a year after the movie came out.
Hannah: Okay, so in sixth grade I would've done that. In seventh and eighth, I would've been in really slutty shirts. I would not have worn that to a dance. I was all about "How do I grind with these boys?"
Pam: I feel like that all came back into fashion. The plaid shirt, the neon socks, Clueless brought all that back into fashion.
Hannah: It's something I would've worn to picture day, but I wouldn't've worn it to a dance.
Sam: Do you remember the first time you saw it?
Hannah: There was a rotating couple of movies that I would watch at sleepovers when they were at my house. Clueless, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, probably a couple others. But those were the main ones.
Sam: So that is an association you have, those movies with the sleepovers?
Hannah: Which was aligned also with the first Britney Spears CD and the first *NSYNC CD. All of that together.
Pam: Britney also did the "Catholic school girl" thing too.
Joe: What year was that?
Pam: I think '98.
Hannah: Must've been.
Joe: She might've been influenced by the Clueless look too. [to Pam] You don't have to go on your phone right now.
Pam: I'll just go on Apple Music, it'll tell me the year of the album!
Joe: ...Fine. This is the last time anyone looks at their phone!
Pam: 1998, yup.
Hannah: But I think as a sixth grade, it was like, "That's who I want to be." I remember very specifically how I thought Cher's hair was very beautiful, how she wore it, and I remember in seventh grade—Pam, I don't know if you remember this—but I feel like girls were brushing their hair a lot in class a lot. It was the first time I remember people taking hairbrushes out and brushing their hair, which I thought was weird.
Pam: You think Clueless was why?
Joe: Wait, was that something they do in Clueless? I didn't notice.
Pam: I feel like she was grooming herself a lot, in the classroom.
Hannah: I didn't not have hair like that, where it would silkily do that, so if I brushed my hair, it would be very big, and afro-y, and kind of frizzy. So that was the ideal—"I wish I had hair that was shiny, and I could just wash it, and it would be beautiful." But I tried, and it was gross. My seventh and eighth grade pictures, I had tried to do that, and they were really gross. My eight grade picture, I wore a mock turtleneck, and I had really short, poodle-like hair.
Joe: I definitely have similar hair, where I couldn't brush it.
Hannah: But you didn't have long girl hair.
Joe: Right.
Hannah: And you weren't required to have sex appeal. I feel like, in eighth grade, that started.
Joe: You feel like girls were required to look sexy?
Hannah: Definitely.
Joe: In eighth grade?!
Hannah: Yeah!
Joe: Jeez.
Hannah: It starts, like, "Oh, I need to have relationships with these guys..." I wish Pam was not in the bathroom right now. But you transition from wearing whatever you want to having to think about it. I have to think about what I wear to school, and putting lip gloss on.
Sam: And Cher makes that point in the movie, when she's like, "Let me look at what the available guys are," and the guys are gross. She's like, "These guys don't have to do anything!" Because they're all disgusting, and they don't care about anything. You [Hannah] were talking to me recently about how it was hard for girls to get dates to dances, and how it was easier for boys. And girls couldn't ask anyone either. So there was the idea that guys who was like [dopey voice] "Uh I wanna go to the dance" and he could just get anyone.
Hannah: Right, but a girl asking someone would have more of a stigma.
[Pam comes back from the bathroom]
Joe: Pam, do you feel like started to feel like you had to be "sexy" in eighth grade?
Pam: For me—Hannah, did you go to middle school?
Hannah: Yeah.
Pam: My middle school was sixth grade through ninth grade, so for us, sixth grade was when you started to grind up on each other. But... I didn't grind...
Hannah: When did you grind up on people? [laughter]
Pam: I don't know if I ever grinded up on people. Maybe ninth grade. We used to go to this club called Beat Street. I swear to god.
Sam: Not like a CYO dance?
Pam: No, it was a club!
Sam: Like a milk bar?
Pam: It was a club for teenagers, which was so stupid.
Joe: You guys all went to public school, right? I was curious about the dynamic of the classrooms in Clueless.
Hannah: Oh, because you didn't have that?
Joe: Yeah, I mean, it was either because it was all dudes, or private, or both. Or neither? I don't know. But it definitely wasn't "crazy" like it was portrayed in Clueless. Like how Wallace Shawn and Ms. Geist didn't have any control over the class whatsoever. And there would be the doofuses like, [dopey voice] "Uhh, can I use the bathroom?" There was some of that at La Salle, but it wasn't to that degree. Was that typical for you guys?
Hannah: All those distractions existed. They were exaggerated in these movies. But this is the only time that Cher is going to interact with Travis, right? That's the only time that's going to happen. Or, like Amber and Cher being in the same room together, and interacting. All of that is going to happen in front of the teacher, definitely.
Sam: I feel like, what you said, it was heightened. But it's kind of like that! Obviously, teachers do have control over the situation, and kids just shut up and listen, for the most part. But I feel like the dynamic was fair. At least at the public school that I went to.
Pam: There were definitely doofuses in the class that do dumb shit. They might say dumb shit, and you laugh at them, but that's as much as you interact with them.
Joe: Definitely the funniest line of the whole movie for me was when Travis tried to jump out the window, and Wallace Shawn is like, "Please save all suicide attempts for the next period!" [laughter] So good.
Hannah: And there's Cher, constantly making these arguments, like: "And it does not say 'RSVP' on the Statue of Liberty," and people would be like "Yeah!!!" I feel like people would be like [dopey voice] "That's so true! Right? Right?!"
Joe: Two points. My senior year English class had an ongoing joke that whoever clapped last would "win." So I guess we did have that kind of bullshit.
Pam: The teacher probably hated you. [Editor's note: Dr. Mrs. Ryan loved me.]
Joe: I also thought it was interesting, regarding the specific things she was saying during the debate—what she was saying was legitimately what I believe in. Whether I was a "doofus" in class or not—
Pam: It was about immigration, right? The "dinner party"?
Joe: It was about being accepting of everyone.
Sam: And she does it again, when they're arguing about violence on television, and censorship. In both situations, she makes very coherent and creative arguments, that are very hard to argue with.
Joe: Yeah, fuck Wallace Shawn for giving her a C- for that class! She was very good at making her point.
Hannah: Just not articulate in the academic way that he wanted in class, I guess.
Pam: It's part of that "airhead" personality.
Joe: That people assumed that she was?
Pam: The fact that she was rich in California. That's a "valley girl."
Joe: So people had the same assumptions of her that I did of this movie before watching it.
Hannah: Probably.
Joe: Do you think someone watching it and hearing her arguments in '95 would be like, "Oh, she's just being silly"? Like, the fact that it's 25 years later, and I'm watching it while immigrants are being locked up in cages—
Hannah: I don't think I would've gotten the immigrant thing as strongly. I might've been like, "Oh, this is an adult joke." Something I do feel like I appreciated was her ability to argue out of tough situations. That was an innate skill, and that was the type of brilliance that she had—probably inherited from her father. So I appreciated that. I thought that quality was really cool, that she can argue her way out of stuff.
Joe: That was another funny bit, how her dad appreciated the fact that she was able to raise all her grades.
Hannah: Which, to a certain extent, my dad—not that he's part of that type of profession, or like that at all—that he would encourage me to fight the machine in a way that he would've also appreciated me arguing for higher grades. Wouldn't you think?
Sam: Your dad, the Cesar Chavez activist? [laughter] He's in favor of "fucking the machine."
Hannah: And I feel like I was very Cher-esque in certain ways in high school. My French teacher had a drinking problem—or so we thought—and she was gone for the two weeks leading up to the final, so we had a sub. And then she tried to give us a final on things that she didn't really teach us very well. I lead a protest down to the principal's office, and was like, "We're not taking this, it's bullshit." [laughter] I feel like that was very Cher-esque, like, "This is not happening."
Sam: I feel like you—and I—have a problem with "principals," like Cher does, in that sense. But I'm just remembering at La Salle—you can cut this.
Joe: No.
Sam: Like how mad we were about...
[Editor's note: Okay, I am cutting this, so as to not bring up old bullshit. Plus, every time I write about the Masque, for some reason the click count is way higher than any other blog post, so I know that there are Masque kids reading this blog. It's like how the "Hottest Masque Girl" thread on Juicy Campus had like 20x the amount of posts as any other thread. Theater kids love drama. Anyways, I digress.]
Hannah: [laughter] Maybe because we made a stink about it? ...Maybe we should consider what we're saying in this interview. But yeah, I do think I generally have a problem with authority, that may or may not have been encouraged by this movie.
Joe: I mean, you're definitely preaching to the choir, in terms of "hating authority."
Hannah: But don't you think it's interesting how she not only challenges authority, but also plays it? Instead of going to her teachers and challenging them about her grades, she makes them fall in love with each other, in a very artful way.
Joe: That was a very smart thing to do. Do we think humility has anything to do with this? At one point, she acknowledges her place in high school—"I am smart, and pretty, and popular." Is that something that teenagers should emulate?
Hannah: I dunno, I think she changes in the movie. For example, she hates Travis at the beginning of the movie, but she realizes that Tai and Travis are good for each other. So, I don't know if she's the best model human—
Joe: So she's humbled throughout the movie.
Sam: She's humbled to a huge degree. I remember thinking, "Man, she's getting beat up throughout this whole movie." Things just do not go her way most of the time.
Joe: But she's still... it's not like one of those movies where she's knocked down to the "bottom of the totem pole" or whatever. "The whole school hates her" for whatever reason. That never happens.
Hannah: Which I think is more realistic to real life.
Joe: For sure, absolutely. Do you feel like you—
Pam: Sorry, I'm changing the music. It's Britney's Greatest Hits.
Hannah: That's perfect for this conversation.
Sam: Not the Clueless soundtrack, which we listened to on the way over here?
Pam: I could put that on!
Pam and Hannah: [sings] "We are young! We are free!"
Hannah: The soundtrack is pretty rock-y, actually. It's not very pop-y.
Pam: Is it? The only two songs I can think of are that one, and—isn't it David Bowie that's like, [sings] "All the young dudes!"
Joe: That's Mott the Hoople.
Sam: But it's written by David Bowie.
Hannah: And then the Mighty Mighty Bosstones.
Joe: I actually have some notes about them.
Pam: They play at a party, right?
Sam: They play at a frat party... in an airport hanger. [laughter]
Pam: That was supposed to be a frat party?
Hannah: It's a Valley Party, or whatever.
Joe: I guess I didn't know, before watching this movie, that the Mighty Mighty Bosstones had a credited member of the band who was just a dancer?
Hannah: Was that in the credits?
Joe: I mean, I looked it up, because me and Pam were like, "Is that dude just dancing?"
Sam: Like a skanker?
Pam: Yes! He was skanking! [laughter]
Joe: He is a member of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and his job is to dance on stage.
Hannah: Do they still perform?
Sam: I think they were the Jimmy Kimmel house band for a while. [Editor's note: Lead singer Dicky Barrett has been Kimmel's announcer since 2004. The MMBs have performed on the show, but Cleto and the Cletones are his house band.]
Pam: I feel like every movie of that time had a cameo from one of these ska bands.
Sam: Reel Big Fish I remember.
Pam: Right, they were in 10 Things I Hate About You. [Editor's note: That was Save Ferris.] Someone was in She's All That... No, that was Usher.
Joe: Matt Damon in Eurotrip! Who sang, um...
Sam: "Scotty Doesn't Know"! In Bring It On, there was a female musician from the music group Blaque. [Editor's note: Sam did specify an actress' name, but I couldn't hear it. Three Blaque members were in the movie—Shamari Fears, Brandi Williams, and Natina Reed.]
Pam: Oh, was she also part of that cheerleading squad?
Sam: She was.
Hannah: I want to say this before I forget. The actress who plays Dion, do you know what she has been most recently popular for?
Pam: We were talking about this.
Joe: Okay, but let me lead up to that. And we'll definitely circle back to the whole high school thing, and I also have some more to say about the music. When we were out at Las Vegas Lounge a few weeks ago, Frank F****** said—he was a little drunk, so I don't know if I'm quoting him accurately—but he said that Clueless' reputation has suffered because most, if not all, of the cast are not really A-list actors. None of them have flourished much past Clueless.
Pam: Paul Rudd.
Joe: Paul Rudd being the exception.
Sam: And I guess Brittany Murphy was one of the more successful...
Joe: She might've been trending upward.
Sam: R.I.P. we should say.
Pam: And what was the teacher's name?
Sam: Wallace Shawn?
Pam: I mean, he's obviously not that successful if I don't know his name.
Joe: He's well known, but he's never sniffed the A-list.
Sam: He's a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, though. [Editor's notes: Couldn't find anything about Pulitzers, but he does seem to be quite celebrated in the field.]
Pam: I could see that. That makes sense.
Joe: Is that why he was in the theater company in Marriage Story, I guess?
Sam: This is his second appearance in a Your Favorite Movie interview, right?
Joe: That's right. Maeve's.
Sam: The Princess Bride.
Pam: I wonder if Toy Story is anyone's favorite?
Joe: Who does he play in Toy Story?
Pam: Rex.
Joe: Good call. But, okay. Do you agree with that assessment, that Clueless has suffered?
Hannah: I don't care. Like, why do we... That's a very "person who contemplates movies a lot" type of thing to say.
Joe: And you're not that person.
Hannah: No. I don't give a shit. [laughter]
Sam: It's still an iconic movie.
Hannah: I don't care if no one knows it. This is just a movie that I enjoy. It's something that I laugh at, and I'll show Maggie.
Sam: Anyone from our generation will point to this movie and be like, "Oh yeah, sure." It was everywhere, at the time.
Pam: I feel like it changed the way people talked. People our age.
Hannah: "As if!"
Pam: Yeah, people didn't say that before Clueless came out. When it did, everyone was like, [obnoxious voice] "Whatever!"
Hannah: Even today, there exists this sort of East Coast, West Coast, "What are girls like over there?" For me, it was the first time I thought something like, "Girls on the West Coast are so different than me."
Joe: You were a Brittany Murphy type, then.
Hannah: But not that gross!
Sam: I said she was like the Frenchy character of Clueless.
Pam: She was really the Sandy, because she was the new one, but yeah.
Sam: And just how she talked like her.
Hannah: Ultimately... do we care?
Joe: No, we don't.
Hannah: I would say it's better, and funnier, that all these people went on to become big weirdos... or died...
Sam: I feel like the opposite. The guy from Scrubs is in this. The guy from Franklin and Bash is in this.
Joe: But what are they doing now?
Sam: The guy who plays Turk—the guy who plays exactly the same character here as he does on Scrubs—
Pam: Donald Faison.
Sam: He had a very successful run on a sitcom, ya know? That's not nothing.
Joe: Ten years ago!
Sam: Alicia Silverstone unfortunately didn't take off as much as people thought she was going to. But she's still around.
Pam: People still know who she is. When you say "Alicia Silverstone," everyone knows who you're talking about.
Hannah: She has a big career being a vegan.
Joe: Yeah. Pam, can you speak toward her current thing?
Pam: I don't know if it's current, it came out a long time ago, but she has The Kind Diet book. The weirdest—
Hannah: Very vegan, ASPCA.
Pam: The Kind Diet is that you're vegan, you don't kill animals, you probably can't even step on a bug. You don't kill a bee if it comes in the house. She also fed her son baby-bird style.
Joe: Yeesh.
Pam: Her son is named "Bear." [laughter] She would chew it up and spit it into his mouth.
Hannah: It's funny, because on the political spectrum, she's the opposite of Dion.
Pam: Stacey Dash, yeah.
Joe: Let's talk about Stacey Dash.
Hannah: I saw her on Fox News during the trump election, and was just so mortified.
Joe: What, were you at the gym watching Fox News? Why were you watching Fox News?
Hannah: Everywhere I go for work, depending on what state I'm in, the hotel is going to have it on in the lobby, at airports, whatever.
Joe: Ah, gotchya.
Hannah: But when I saw her, it was like, "This is shattering."
Joe: What's up with that?
Hannah: I don't even remember her argument. But it's like, who cares...
Joe: I'll tell you the title of her book.
Hannah: Ugh.
Pam: She has a book?
Joe: Oh yeah. She's definitely going to try to profit off being a black conservative. It's called There Goes My Social Life: From Clueless to Conservative.
Hannah: Ugh.
Joe: Definitely some self-pitying, playing-the-victim bullshit that Republicans are all about. She argued, in the discussion about where transgender people should pee, her argument was that "they should go outside and pee in a bush."
Sam: ...Why? Pushing the envelope?
Joe: It is also her belief that Black History Month should be abolished.
Hannah: I... don't know how to counter any of this. [laughter] It's like, what happened to her? If nothing else, it's entertaining... but it's also extremely sad. That this exists.
Joe: I don't even know if I find it entertaining. Like, it's funny to laugh about it, how some asshole is profiting off these beliefs...
Hannah: I mean, an icon from one of my favorite movies is doing something dumb. It's entertaining to me. But, it's also... come on.
Sam: There's also the joke, around the Republican National Convention, was that the Dems have Beyoncé—
Pam: And the Republicans have Stacey Dash. [laughter]
Sam: And Scott Baio.
Joe: I thought it was interesting that screenwriter and director—
Pam: Amy Heckerling.
Joe: She also did Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which I've already talked about how—
Pam: You hate that movie.
Joe: I hate that movie.
Hannah: You liked this better?
Joe: Absolutely! I thought that Clueless made up for a lot of the faults that I find in Fast Times. Fast Times presented teenagers as bad human beings. Whereas Clueless, they were basically good human beings.
Hannah: I don't see how Cher could've been written by a man, and come out the same way that she did.
Sam: I was wondering that when we were watching it, whether it was directed by a man or a woman. It was like, I feel like this would be hard for it to have been made by a man.
Pam: At one point, I thought the director also played Ms. Geist, but I don't think that's right.
Joe: Twink Caplan is Ms. Geist. She might've been a producer? She had another role in the crew for this movie. [Editor's note: Associate Producer.] But Amy Heckerling also did the Look Who's Talking series, and also Loser.
Pam: Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari?
Sam: The Wheatus movie?
Joe: Yes! "Teenage Dirtbag"! If we're going back to music, have you seen the Iggy Azaela video for "Fancy"?
Hannah: I think I've seen that.
Joe: It's based on Clueless.
Hannah: Oh really? That's right, Sam was saying that.
Pam: She's wearing Cher's yellow plaid outfit.
Joe: And I guess Charli XCX is Stacey Dash... but doesn't support trump...?
Sam: No one is saying that Dion supports trump!
Hannah: What do you guys think about Elton in this movie? Does that character hold up?
Joe: It's interesting, because before it's outright stated that he was gay—
Hannah: No, no, no. That's Christian.
Pam: Elton is Billy from Six Feet Under.
Joe: Okay, Elton is Jeremy Sisto. Sorry. Go ahead. Give your thoughts about Jeremy Sisto.
Pam: No, I was just saying—
Joe: I don't have any thoughts about Jeremy Sisto.
Sam: Well, he sexually assaults Cher.
Pam: She tells him to stop, and he doesn't.
Sam: And then she gets mugged at gun point.
Pam: I guess he's the antagonist in the movie? The villain?
Joe: That's a good question, if there is a villain in Clueless.
Sam: I think it's just "Cher vs. Herself."
Joe: The idea of being "the best" in school shouldn't be something that you should strive for, I guess?
Hannah: But with Elton, I thought he was just written as very real. The whole thing that she went through was not over the top, and it still happens today. And then how he tries to get out of being in a relationship with Tai, or being tied to Tai, he's very... careful. He's just like, "Eh, it just doesn't make sense! It doesn't work!"
Joe: That really is so real.
Hannah: That guys exists in 2020.
Joe: When you know someone who likes you, and you don't like them back, that's a very precarious situation.
Pam: Because Elton liked Cher, you're saying?
Joe: No, about how Tai liked Elton. And how Elton didn't go up to Tai and say "Fuck you, get out of here." Whether you want to say he "lead her on" or not, I don't know. But he definitely, from my perspective, he didn't give her overt reasons to make her think he liked her back.
Pam: That was Cher playing matchmaker.
Joe: Right, and I know we're seeing all this through Cher's eyes.
Pam: I don't think he didn't do anything wrong to Tai.
Joe: I'm saying that as villainous as Elton was in the car—prior to that, I was empathetic when he tried to step away from the Tai situation gracefully.
Hannah: No, I think he was very real, very well-written. But the way he got out of the classist, sexist argument...
Joe: Refresh my memory on that.
Pam: He's driving Cher in the car, and she's like "Don't you think Tai's so pretty?" And he's dancing around it, not saying "I'm too high class for her, she's lower class," but he's just like, "It just doesn't make sense."
Hannah: "C'mon, Cher, it doesn't make sense!"
Sam: Which is literally what Cher says to Brittany Murphy about Paul Rudd later. "I dunno, it doesn't make sense! He's in college! He's smart! You don't need him!"
Hannah: Did you buy Paul Rudd digging her? Especially you [Joe], since it was the first time you saw it.
Joe: Dating Cher?
Hannah: Yeah.
Joe: Okay, so I had the preconceived notion of it... I didn't know about the caveat of their parents having already been separated. I thought that they were living under the same roof, with their parents married. I thought it was them being stepsiblings, and then hooking up. I guess there's a little more nuance to it. But still... a little weird.
Sam: "Kissing cousins," a little bit.
Hannah: But the dad condoned it. There was the moment when Paul Rudd was like "I'm going to that party," and Cher's dad was like, "Okay."
Joe: I guess at that point, they didn't have any familial relationship. But was that ever something that made you stop short regarding their romance?
Hannah: No. Did it make you stop short?
Joe: I mean, I guess if I was in that position, I would take a minute to think about, ya know, is this weird?
Hannah: That's why he had such a hard time with it. But did you buy that he would like her? Beyond all that.
Pam: Like, did they have chemistry?
Joe: Sure. There's was definitely that sense of being buddies that may eventually lead to romance.
Hannah: I did too.
Sam: I feel like it was very earned, too. This was the third time I saw this movie, but I thought it was more of a surprise the first time I saw it. But watching it now, knowing they get together in the end... they are very overt about it in the beginning. He, like, tickles her—maybe that's still weird, but...
Joe: He was doing things I did in high school to girls that I wanted to hook up with—
Pam: With your ex-stepsister? [laughter]
Joe: No! I've never been in that specific situation. I was curious as to whether there was any Clueless porn.
Pam: Of course you were.
Joe: I didn't jerk off to any of it!
Pam: There has to be some Clueless porn.
Hannah: Do you have a computer? Let's look it up.
Joe: There wasn't, as far as I could tell. Though my search was pretty shallow.
Pam: I'm sure there was in 1995.
Hannah: But there was no Internet. Are you saying in Playboy?
Joe: The problem with my search was that "clueless" is too generic of a term. When you go to Pornhub and type in "clueless," it's all shit like, "I fucked my husband's best man, and my husband was clueless!"
Sam: "Clueless parody," maybe?
Pam: You can't type "Cher" either I guess. If you looked up "Cher," would it be gay porn? [laughter]
Joe: Maybe!
Sam: There's not a good Clueless sex pun.
Joe: You search "stacey dash" and it's a guy in a trump mask.
Pam: Ugh...
Joe: Okay. Speaking of Dion! Apparently, this year, CBS is developing a spin-off drama, starring the character of Dion—obviously not Stacey Dash—but the character of Dion, I dunno, in her first year of college or whatever? The premise is that Cher goes missing.
[laughter]
Joe: This is a CBS drama. For real!
Hannah: With the exact same characters?
Sam: In the Clueless universe?
Joe: Yes. Dion is the main character, and Cher goes missing, and Dion is doing what she can to find out where Cher went.
Hannah: This sounds... horrible.
Sam: I think it would be really funny. What a weird...
Hannah: It sounds like something you would say to try and trick us.
Joe: It's not! It's being developed by the writers of Will & Grace. Which... makes it worse in my opinion.
Pam: I think you have this written down, so I don't want to step on your toes, Joe, but wasn't there a Clueless TV show?
Hannah: There was, with the real Amber.
Sam: And Wallace Shawn, and Ms. Geist were in it.
Pam: The main girl was in a lot of other TV shows. What the heck was she in?
Joe: You're talking about Rachel Blanchard, and I personally did not recognize anything else on her IMDB. [Editor's note: I guess I should've recognized her from Fargo? Though I don't think she had a big role in that TV series.]
Pam: No? Because I feel like she might've been on other TV shows.
Sam: She played Cher?
Joe: Yes. And you were correct that a bunch of the other actors, like Wallace Shawn and Twink Caplan and Donald Faison were in it. But that was only Season 1, after that they were all cut, and it was just a bunch of scrubs in there.
Sam: ...not Donald Faison, though. [laughter]
Joe: Donald Faison was ironically the only non-scrub in Seasons 2 and 3!
Sam: I remember watching that, though.
Hannah: It was on WB, right?
Sam: I thought it was on TGIF.
Joe: It started on one of those primetime networks, and then moved to UPN. It's funny, I enjoyed reading that some of the main actors from the movie made guest appearances on the TV as completely different characters. Like, Paul Rudd made an appearance in an episode but playing a different guy.
Sam: So in the Dion spin-off, is the Clueless TV show canon? Does everything that happened on there intrude into the Dion show?
Joe: Probably! There was also recently a Clueless musical.
Hannah: That would be great.
Joe: I don't think there's much to talk about. It was a six-month thing, off-Broadway. It was a "jukebox musical," which means they just played some '90s songs.
Hannah: If it was soundtrack, that'd be great.
Joe: Okay, so let's ask the question. I'm having the previous interviewee ask the next one a question.
Sam: A new segment!
Joe: Yes. So Jim C****, who I interviewed about Rudy, asks this question—
Hannah: Did he know I was talking about Clueless?
Joe: I said, "Ask a question of Hannah about Clueless." I don't know if he's ever seen Clueless. This is the first time I'm reading the question. "If Paul Rudd could be any one of his other movie characters to replace his Clueless character, who would it be, and why?"
Sam: Like, if Antman was Cher's stepbrother?
Joe: I would assume yes, that's what he means. I cannot clarify, short of texting Jim.
Hannah: I think we need to brainstorm some Paul Rudd movies.
Sam: So he was Leslie Mann's husband in—
Pam: Knocked Up.
Sam: Both of those movies. This Is 40, or whatever. He's in Anchorman, though I forget which one he is.
Joe: He's very non-caring in Wet Hot American Summer.
Pam: He's also the surf instructor in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Hannah: So he's kind of a dick in all of these.
Joe: He's plays the dick well.
Sam: He was in that Jennifer Aniston movie, The Object of My Affection.
Pam: I don't remember that one.
Sam: It was this era of rom-com. The Wet Hot character would be funny. But it wouldn't work in this movie, because he was a jerk in that movie.
Hannah: He was the lifeguard, right?
Sam: Yes. He's the one that Katie gets with.
Pam: And also Elizabeth Banks.
Hannah: I guess if we put that character in this movie, it would completely change the movie.
Sam: The This Is 40 guy seems like he could be the same character.
Hannah: Yeah, so let's go with that. Because I wouldn't want to change the movie drastically.
Joe: But then it's a 40-year-old Paul Rudd hooking up with a sixteen-year-old Alicia Silverstone...
Hannah: I'm okay with that. [laughter]
Pam: She couldn't have been sixteen when she was playing Cher in the movie, right?
Joe: Good question.
Pam: All of them looked like they were in their 20s. [Editor's note: Looks like Silverstone was nineteen, Dash was 29, Rudd was 26, Murphy was eighteen, and Sisto, Faison, and Meyer were all 21.]
Sam: She wasn't even a senior in high school, was she? No, that's right, she graduates at the end of it.
Pam: Do they have graduation? They have the wedding at the end.
Hannah: I don't think they tell us if she is a senior or not. But that trope of "popular girl ending up with less-than-popular guy"—
Sam: Or like "smart guy" or "nerd guy" or whatever.
Hannah: Right. In that era, are there other movies that do that kind of thing?
Sam: She's All That, Ten Things I Hate About You.
Pam: The "unlikely couple."
Sam: Can't Hardly Wait is like that.
Joe: American Pie is the reverse, right? The guy tries to hook up with the "hot girl," but he ends up with the band chick?
Pam: That's true. He's not popular. He's kind of a nerd. No, he's the Dwyer. [laughter]
Sam: Don't cut that.
Pam: Right? That character, Jason Biggs, he's a pretty normal guy. Pretty Dwyer-esque.
Joe: Do we think Dwyer's ever fucked a pie? [laughter]
Hannah: Yes.
[Editor's note: Cutting an anecdote so I don't receive yet another desperate text from Dwyer about blog content. We get it, dude, you are sensitive about being talked about on this website. Go fuck another pie.]
Hannah: Sam, do you think you're a Paul Rudd?
Sam: No, I don't think I'm as handsome.
Pam: Both the guys have plaid on right now. You're both Paul Rudd.
Joe: Is that Paul Rudd-ish?
Pam: She calls him out on in, about wearing flannel. He's a sort of crunchy college guy in the '90s. Flannel was big for them.
Joe: But he's in law, though, so he's definitely more like Sam.
Hannah: But Paul Rudd was more "save the world" law.
Sam: At one point, I was like that.
Joe: Sam's saving... property.
Sam: I'm saving tax dollars for the city! [laughter]
Hannah: I feel like I wanted to be attracted to someone like that, and knew that I needed...
Sam: Not the jock?
Hannah: Someone who was probably more intellectual than me, who would make me better in those ways. That is what I found attractive.
Sam: Well that's very nice... if you're saying that I'm like Paul Rudd. [laughter] I thought it was interesting that I came away from this movie being impressed with how creative and smart Cher is. Do you find yourself being a Cher, then?
Hannah: I think when we got together, you were surprised that I would want to be with you. You said, "I never considered that you would want to be with me." That was a conversation we had.
Sam: I think "normal guys" don't think pretty girls like them.
Hannah: That's nice.
Joe: ...Backing up to... [laughter] Backing up to pre-Sam. Do you feel like you were popular in high school?
Hannah: No. I was thinking about this. My character was not really represented.
Pam: I thought you were class president?
Joe: Talk about what you thought your "character" was in high school.
Hannah: There was a group of girls that were... they could definitely brush their hair in class. Well-dressed, naturally beautiful. The popular guys were looking at them. Our group of girls—and I feel like they'll laugh if they read this—were desperately thirsty for being more than we were. We were smart, athletic, involved, definitely high-ranking in the class—I will, hand-raised, say that I was the dumbest out of all my friends. But they were all so smart. And friends with those popular girls, and with everyone, but we weren't any one trope that was represented in that movie. We wanted, desperately, to be like that. I will share one story.
Joe: Please.
Hannah: So we had places to go in the morning, before the bell rang, when you got into school. We had this little cave of lockers that we were near, and there were the popular boys in the other concave of lockers across from us. One day we were like... we had been kind of mingling with them on AIM...
Joe: AIM! [laughter]
Hannah: And some people were making connections. So we were like, "Okay, we're all going to do this thing"—and we were all known, nerdily, for wearing bows in our hair. We would all wear the same bow.
Pam: In ponytails?
Hannah: Like halfsies. Little bows, like, "Alright, we're gonna wear this bow that we got from the wholesale ribbon distributor, we're gonna wear this bow in our hair, and we're gonna go over to their side." We called it "The Merge." [laughter] Because we were going to "merge" with the popular boys. And we got really hype—everyone ate a great breakfast. Like, "We're gonna do it! We're gonna do it!" and then we got there, like, "Yes, here we go!" My friend, Mary Beth, who was so cute, and who had been chatting with one of those guys, went over. And then I went over. The rest of us went over, and we started chatting with them. And then slowly... they started to move back over to our space. [laughter] Because it was too crowded. And then didn't really want to chat with us... It was very indicative of our high school.
Pam: What grade were you in then?
Hannah: Juniors.
Sam: I dunno—
Hannah: Yeah, because you're looking from the outside in. How would you describe me and my friends from school?
Sam: I mean, I think you're accurate in assessing you guys. And I feel like wealth is not as big a factor in regional public high schools.
Joe: You're saying it was a factor in Clueless.
Sam: Yeah, and we don't know those characters from the movie. In my high school, the popular girls were the people like you guys. Like, the student council girls—
Hannah: The smart girls.
Sam: Yeah, in AP classes, those were the prettier girls. There wasn't that sort of "vapid girl" group.
Hannah: There wasn't a separate group of "hot girls"? I would say we were the "smart girls," and then there were the "hot girls."
Sam: I think the "hot girls" were the "smart girls."
Pam: Same. I think the popular girls were athletes, and got good grades, in AP classes and stuff. There were even a couple in choir, believe it or not.
Sam: I think a lot of those people were popular in middle school, and they weren't as popular in... because everything was so organizational-based. People had their cliques through sports, or through the activities they did, or the plays or whatever. People who were just "good looking" didn't have a group, because they didn't do anything.
Hannah: That's what I'm saying. The "hot girls" didn't do extracurricular activities. We were super AP, Student Council, sports, show choir for me, we were super-intense, but we were not the "popular" girls. You're saying the "hot" people did not have extracurriculars.
Sam: Right, and they were not "lauded" as "this is the top of our school."
Hannah: I'm not going to get into it, because this is going to be published, but do you feel like there is some sort of world order justification, for where everyone is today?
Joe: Like, high school reflects real life now?
Hannah: No, that it does not reflect it.
Pam: We had this same conservation in the Dazed and Confused interview. I don't think they ever discuss it in that movie's high school, but in Clueless—Mean Girls did the same thing—"these are the jocks, these are the computer nerds, these are the stoners," and here are all these separate groups. In Dazed and Confused, it was the opposite. There were no groups, everyone was meshed. We said that was more reflective of life.
Joe: Right, there were separate groups, and people who went in and out and between groups. But why do I feel like Clueless is so different than Mean Girls?
Hannah: Because the popular people were actual people in Clueless. You were rooting for the popular people because you understood where they were coming from. At the end of Mean Girls, she comes to the conclusion of "we're all in the same class, let's just have fun." And that was my high school experience, for sure.
Sam: Mine too.
Hannah: I don't mean to say that all these different groups existed and we weren't friends with those people. We were friends with the attractive people, we were friends with the band people. And in my senior year, we were all having so much fun together, and that's why senior year was so amazing for me. Yes, we were all in different groups, but we all just had so much fun. There was no rivalries.
Joe: Okay, but I'm curious. The people who you considered "popular" in high school, where did they end up? What was their endgame? Do you know?
Hannah: I do. [laughter] I think...
Sam: I can talk about mine if you don't want to talk about yours.
Hannah: This isn't your interview.
Sam: I know, but—
Joe: I guess I'm really asking because, when we talk about "popular," Cher was popular, but she was well-rounded. So when I asked you about your school, what, you were the student council president? And then had these locker room events where you did your hair and went over to talk to some boys? To me, that says you were a well-rounded person. And the people who you consider popular were the opposite. I.e., in my opinion, not well-rounded. So what's the difference?
Hannah: I don't think that's fair. I think what I would say, generally... in high school, you expect that group of people to remain friends, and all go do the same thing. Those people, whether they're the band nerds, or the popular kids, they are not necessarily friends anymore. They've all gone on to do very different. Some very successful, and some not. In any group. And, how do you define "success," by the way?
Joe: Sure.
Hannah: Having a child and being an amazing parent, and maybe not making a ton of money, that's also fucking successful. So, I guess, stereotypically, when we're in high school, we think, "Ah man, that jock's gonna go on, and play college sports," and so on. And that doesn't always happen.
Joe: And that's a mindset that I would see in Mean Girls. They made a point that these "vapid, popular girls" are really not going to do anything with their lives. Whereas, in real life, maybe the not popular girls—
Hannah: Are also not going to do anything with their lives? [laughter]
Joe: No!
Sam: I understand what you're saying, Joe. I think the perspective that, ya know, nerdy screenwriters want to convey is that the have-nots become the haves, and the haves become the have-nots. What Hannah is saying, and what I would agree with, is that people from all different groups all have varying levels of success. Some people from the popular group are really successful, and some are still living at home with their parents.
Hannah: One girl from that group is an attorney, and doing really well. There was also a band nerd who became a teacher, and very publicly was outed as having a relationship with a student.
Pam: [mumbles] Chris McBride.
Hannah: So anyone can have any outcome.
Pam: Popularity doesn't mean you're going to be successful or not successful.
Hannah: But you don't see it at the time.
Joe: But Clueless was created by someone who was looking back at her high school years, and she could see that at the time. So was it accurately portrayed?
Hannah: Yeah, but I don't know if that was the point of Clueless.
Joe: Probably not.
Hannah: What Clueless does a really good job of is humanizing a person who, in other circumstances, might have been stereotyped to be a bad person. In another film, Cher would've been the villain. Cher was well-rounded here.
Joe: She was!
Pam: There's the one part where the lawyer, who was hired by her dad, gets really angry because she highlighted the wrong thing. He calls her "stupid," and Paul Rudd defends her. That represents what people would normally think of her as, a "stupid valley girl"—doesn't he say something like, "Why don't you go back to the mall?"
Joe: And she's not!
Pam: She likes the mall, but that's not the only part of Cher that matters.
Sam: How do we feel about her "project" with Brittany Murphy?
Hannah: Her makeover project?
Sam: Yeah.
Hannah: When she says "makeovers are Cher's way of gaining control in a world of chaos"? [laughter]
Pam: Is that typical of high school girls, having a "project"?
Hannah: Do you?
Pam: I know that me and my friends were obsessed with doing makeovers. We loved that. I don't know if that was because of Clueless, or just in general. We loved doing makeup and hair and stuff like that. But also, I do remember in college, hearing that some of the sororities chose a particular girl as a pledge because she was going to be their "project." AST, in particular.
Joe: That's fucked up, in that context.
Pam: Like, "we're gonna make this girl popular!"
Joe: But I can also imagine Cher feeling good about connecting two like-minded souls, who she thought were "rejects." The two teachers. The two teachers were portrayed as ditzy, clumsy human beings, and she got them together. I know that was for the grades, but she felt good about making people feel happy. And she wanted to parlay that into another good feeling. "I feel good about this, and I want to feel good about something else." Maybe it was a misguided attempt to feel good about giving someone a makeover, but I don't think she had bad intentions.
Hannah: And with Brittany Murphy, she was hanging out with her all the time. It wasn't like she was giving her a makeover and then telling her friends, like, "Ugh, that girl."
Sam: Yeah, she genuinely care for her.
Hannah: And Brittany Murphy was being a drama queen and annoying, during that time when Cher was annoyed with her. When she was dramatizing the mall thing.
Sam: But Cher is also not able to handle not being the most popular.
Hannah: Yeah, probably.
Pam: I think that was also when Cher shifted completely. When Tai was telling everyone that story, that was when Cher was doing the beach disaster relief fund, and getting to know Travis, and seeing that he's a person too. She saw the ugly in Tai, and it made her try to be better.
Joe: And I guess Tai kind of played off of that. She saw that Cher was being nice, and she dipped her toe into the idea of being mean to Cher, and Cher was like, "Yo, why are you being mean to me?"
Pam: Because Tai started nice. It was like Cher "created a monster." They were the ones that made her over.
Joe: It was definitely... I could see a movie where they make over a nerd, and they become a monster. It was more subtle than that.
Pam: It was like Mean Girls.
Joe: It was more subtle than Mean Girls.
Sam: Brittany Murphy went back to being herself.
Joe: Brittany Murphy toed the line. Lindsay Lohan dove right in. Which I guess that did me a disservice, watching Mean Girls first. The more '90s high school movies I watch, the more I realize that Mean Girls is more of a parody. Taking these things to the extreme. I feel like it was a disservice to me, because then I watch Clueless, and assume that it's going to be a Mean Girls-type of movie.
Hannah: Is there anything in Clueless that doesn't hold up for you guys? That, in 2020, you're like, "Ooh, they would never make this today."
Joe: Turk's low pants?
Hannah: That's era though.
Sam: The "Rolling with the Homies" stuff?
Hannah: Wait, why?
Joe: Maybe it doesn't hold up that they'd all be at a party sober and dancing?
Pam: They weren't all sober. When they walked in, someone said "Let's get a beer."
Hannah: And Cher said that she was high. I don't mean any of that stuff, I mean "doesn't hold up" in terms of being offensive.
Sam: And I'm saying the "Rolling with the Homies" thing.
Hannah: And I'm saying why? Because it's a bunch of white people singing a popular song? I think you're reaching.
Sam: I don't think I am.
Pam: I guess when Murray is talking about Christian being gay doesn't hold up.
Joe: I guess we haven't talked about Christian.
Pam: When he's in the car, and he's like...
Hannah: "He's a —"
Sam: We watched the CMT censored version, so I don't know if he said anything.
Pam: There's no curses, and he doesn't say the f-word or anything, but he says...
Sam: Like "cake" something.
Pam: Yeah! "Cake boy" or something like that. But he's definitely a character who they are portraying as ignorant.
Sam: I don't get how they portrayed Christian though. Because he was the one into Cher from the beginning.
Pam: No, I think they were just friends.
Hannah: I thought that stuff was pretty clean. It easily could've not been. A lot of the movies from that time are not, with the homosexual stuff. Yeah, I dunno. If anything, it leans the other way. When Cher calls her housekeeper Mexican, she's like, "I am not a Mexican!"
Pam: "She's from Guatamala!" It's an entirely different country!
Hannah: I feel like, for its time, to make those types of jokes...
Sam: They walked the line appropriately. Except for the "Rolling with the Homies" thing!
Hannah: Okay, tell me more about this.
Sam: Here's what I don't like. It's a bunch of white people, listening to this rap song—
Pam: Isn't Dion there?
Sam: She's not a part of this.
Pam: And Murray was getting his head shaved at the time.
Sam: Right, and he's mad that she'll call his mom. [laughter] I don't know. White people listening to music outside their culture, and then taking it and making a joke out of it? It just feels not...
Hannah: Give me a popular song that you would equate to that song.
Sam: Like, the whitest white people listening to any gangster rap song, and then singing that gangster rap song?
Hannah: No, I'm asking for something specific.
Sam: You want me to name a rap song?
Hannah: I'll give you something that I feel is in the same vain—not knowing much about music. so it's not current—something like [singing] "Apple bottom jeans, boots with the fur, with the fur!" And people would sing that all the time in college.
Joe: The X-Plorettes danced to that!
Pam: What about the other—this was a huge college song—[singing] "To the window! To the wall!" And white people at frat parties would be like [singing] "Aw skeet skeet skeet skeet skeet skeet!"
Sam: I feel like those songs are made for white people, though. That Coolio song was not made for white people.
Hannah: Sam! I feel like—
Sam: You're asking me what I think is a thing that doesn't hold up well, and I feel like Brittany Murphy doing this wave motion thing—
Hannah: The song was on, and he was like, "Can you hear the song?" If the song is on—it's not like he's pulling it out of thin air. He's like, "Tell me..."
Joe: Jeremy Sisto asks, "Can you skeet skeet?"
Pam: Cher did tell him to "ask her questions," and he was like, "What's seven times seven?" She's like, "Ask her things that she knows!" [laughter]
Sam: I think this is y'all using your white privilege to say that this is not a problem—
Hannah: We get it, Sam. This is all being documented. You're going to come out on top on this one. [laughter]
Sam: I think I'll sound like I think I'm saying things that I don't really know what I'm talking about.
Hannah: But do you think those songs I named are akin to—
Sam: No, I do not. I think Lil Jon songs are club music made for white people to like.
Pam: As opposed to Coolio.
Joe: Um... I only know about the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, so... [laughter] Did Coolio have a dancer skanking on stage?
Sam: He had a bunch of people on stage, so probably.
Pam: Where is Coolio these days?
Joe: Skanking with Weird Al.
Pam: What, Weird Al because of that cover?
Sam: Yes, and Coolio hated it.
Pam: Did he?
Sam: Yes! Because he felt like it was culturally appropriating! [laughter] But Coolio was not cool about it, according to the Behind the Music I watched about Weird Al.
[Editor's note: Cutting a long Weird Al tangent. I don't know if these tend to happen more at the end of conversations because we've wrung so much out of the movie already, or that I just tend to be more liberal with my cutting by the end of a transcription, when I'm a little frazzled. Either way, we're not talking about who did and didn't go to the recent Weird Al concert! Fuck!!]
Sam: Does this movie hold up?
Joe: I'm going to frame it in a different way. Do you feel like this is something that Maggie could find on DVD, and watch, and you would have no qualms about that?
Hannah: Oh yeah, sure.
Sam: It's a pretty tame movie.
Hannah: I was wondering—because I was in sixth grade, so there were a couple things that came up where I was like... I knew what this meant, in sixth grade. You forget how advanced you were in maturity. Like the "balls fly by my nose" joke. There were things that I was like, "I guess I must've kind of knew about this?"
Sam: The virgin plotline is interesting. A seemingly unnecessary add-on that makes you think if the producers added it to get a PG-13 rating.
Hannah: No! I think that they're humanizing her.
Pam: She's "saving herself for Luke Perry!" [snaps] That doesn't hold up. When that came up, I was like, "aww."
Hannah: I had the same reaction. But generally... would you want Willow to watch it?
Joe: Sure! But—
Pam: I think Cher is a good role model. I don't think she's a bad role model.
Joe: There's some things you have to talk about, right? I guess preteens would not go into the movie with preconceived notions about popularity...
Hannah: Yes you do.
Pam: You definitely know what "popularity" means.
Sam: You understand "status" in like third grade.
Joe: I guess in that case then, I would feel uneasy about someone relating to an ultra-popular girl. Just based on statistics, based on usually the "hot, popular girls" are not the ones that you should look up to.
Pam: Typically.
Hannah: I just think anything she's going to be watching, whether it's this or Riverdale, is going to have that.
Pam: Yeah, I don't think you have to "shield" your kids from it.
Sam: As long as our kids are watching actual narratives, and not just fifteen-second TikToks.
Pam: And other kids are playing video games.
Sam: Yeah, let's say a bunch of cranky stuff that we'll feel dated about in five years. [laughter]
Pam: They also tell Tai that "drugs aren't cool." Which I respect. "Do you guys have herbal refreshments here?" "We have tea and coke." "Oh shit, you have coke?"
Sam: Which shows how naive they are.
Pam: "Yeah, this is America!"
Hannah: I felt that way in our group too, that we weren't the popular kids, but in the "hierarchy" we were definitely higher than some people, and we also didn't think drugs were cool. We would drink, but very socially. I feel lucky for that. I feel lucky that I didn't fall into that.
Sam: Yeah. I feel happy I didn't smoke weed in high school. It would not have been good.
Joe: So is Clueless the movie you feed your preteen to convince them one way or the other, or does this just have nothing to do with their choices?
Hannah: Are you asking if I'd give her this movie to show who her role models should be?
Joe: Right, you don't want Maggie to make bad choices, in general. Is Clueless the movie to convince her to not make bad choices, or is it the movie that will just give her something to think about?
Hannah: I think if I have to show her the movies from my era to convince her not to do drugs, then there's a bigger problem. [laughter] I would show her this movie to be like, "This is kind of funny, isn't it? Do you think it's funny?" It would be interesting to hear her answer.
Sam: You could be like, "Do you like Cher? Why do you like Cher?"
Hannah: [laughter] Oh my god. I'm not going to therapize her. I'm just going to be like, "This is a funny movie. Can you watch this while I'm doing the dishes?"
Pam: How do you feel about "Rolling with the Homies"? [laughter]
Hannah: "You can talk to your father about 'Rolling with the Homies' because he has really strong opinions on it."
Sam: It just made me feel bad!
Pam: Some of the jokes are so, so good in this. They land so well.
Sam: It was a little cornier than I remembered. Is Alicia Silverstone a good actress? Or is she really good at acting in this?
Pam: I don't even know what else I've seen her in.
Sam: I can only think of Blast from the Past, and the Batman movie. Batman and Robin, I think?
Hannah: Would you consider using this movie, or movie like this, to help shape Willow in her belief systems?
Joe: I would, as far as looking to Cher as someone you could be in high school. Cher obviously made some mistakes, which everyone does. But she is weirdly coming from a good place from the start of the movie. Just based on the debates. She has empathy for everyone she comes in contact with... besides Turk, I guess? But she eventually comes around.
Pam: Murray?
Joe: You know who I'm talking about! Everyone knows who I'm talking about!
Pam: She doesn't like Travis.
Sam: She's pretty mean to Travis. But she comes around on it.
Hannah: To all of them!
Joe: Hannah, do you mind if I ask if there's anything you got out of this as a child whose parents were divorced? They made it seem like it was a similar situation to divorce. I mean, I know the mom died, but the dad then got divorced a couple more times.
Hannah: He was dating other people, right?
Joe: They made it seem like it was a similar situation, in that she was in a divorce family. If you don't want to talk about it...
Hannah: No, I think in that sense, Cher had a very devoted relationship to her parents, and a different relationship with her parents than I did, growing up. So I couldn't really relate to that at all. Could you?
Joe: Nah.
Hannah: Oh, have you guys ever tried to play suck-and-blow? [laughter]
Joe: Good question! I feel like I've tried... [laughter] At parties, I tried to get it going.
Pam: I figured you'd be the person to try to get it going. You were the Elton—"Hey everybody, let's play suck-and-blow!"
Hannah: Do you think suck-and-blow was popular before this movie?
Joe: Probably not!
Hannah: I'm saying no.
Pam: I played it at a party in sixth grade. That was 1996.
Joe: There ya go. I think the point of that game is that the card is supposed to fall away, and you're supposed to make out with somebody.
Pam: Yeah, or, if you want to... I mean, obviously, Elton dropped it on purpose, he wanted to make out with Cher.
Sam: I was making dinner during that scene—do they play it with a...?
Hannah: A playing card.
Sam: Oh. What's the game with the orange? Wasn't that the game?
Hannah: That's a different thing.
Joe: That's the necking game.
Hannah: I feel like that's more elementary school, though. You can play it with a parent.
Sam: What's it called?
Hannah: "Orange Neck"? [laughter] I don't know.
Joe: Boner neck.
Hannah: The other one is spin the bottle, obviously. But I feel like the orange game is something you play in camp in like third grade.
Pam: Maybe at overnight camp.
Sam: Sexy camps.
Joe: Do you guys want to play suck-and-blow right now?
Hannah: Martha, are you in?
Pam: Martha is ready to suck on this bottle.
Hannah: Well, thank you for finding the movie that I find oh-so-dear to be more than just a teenage stereotypical bullshit.
Joe: It is! It is more than that.
Sam: It's enjoyable to watch. It's an easy movie to watch, which is to its credit. I think a lot of these types of movies would be boring.
Hannah: Sam, do you have anything to add about "Rolling with the Homies"? [laughter]
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