On Location with FAME | Alan Parker | Irene Cara (1980)

"On Location with: Fame” is a 1980 short about the making of the original film "Fame." The short features rare behind-the scenes footage and interviews with cast and crew while filming in New York City.
Featured are Alan Parker, Irene Cara, Lee Curreri, Maureen Teefy, Antonia Franceschi, Barry Miller, Paul McCrane, Laura Dean, Gene Anthony Ray, Albert Hague, Anne Meara, Louis Falco, Karl Weber.
Written and directed by Mark Schneider.

[@lynnecrystal7845]

Love this documentary. This film captured so much of the school. The older I got the more I appreciated the experience of going there.. Some teachers were brilliant and others were wannabes. My classmates were amazing. So many decades later, my class of '72 still stays in contact with each other. It's wonderful to witness how their lives turned out.

[@kevinfitzsimons41]

Brilliant documentary. A wonderful musical.

[@manusamyn5251]

Wonderfull

[@laminage]

I had no idea that a school like this existed when I was a Kid. So much talent came from "these" schools as well as schools in Philadelphia, Pa, Baltimore, Md, and Ohio and in The UK, it's known as Stage School. Also I loved how they showed the Academic side of HSPA. Leroy was so "rude" but he's a very scared young man, he has nothing but dance to make him shine. If he didn't audition with Annette god knows what would have happened to him. Sadly he died of AIDS in real life.

[@nicoleackerman205]

He looked like he was having so much fun during the Fame song.

[@williambergmann3552]

The scene where the theme Fame is played and the students dance in the street was filmed in front of the parish house at the Church of St Mary the Virgin (Episcopal) W. 46th Street.

[@laminage]

Sadly none of the Cast Members from his Show or The TV Version found "Fame". Debbie Allen all but saved A Different World from being cancelled. Also looking back, I'm sure it was much easier to be a Gay Student there than at another High School. The Reading Scene with Miss Sherwood was heavy. He's lucky he didn't get expelled.

[@kevinfitzsimons41]

Barry Miller who plays Ralph says his character is “ talented enough to know he wants to get out of the school, and he’s talented enough to know he’s alienated’ !! Since when do you need talent to know these things????

[@alexandergraham6912]

This statement in the documentary is unfortunately compromised by an off screen questioner who was cut out of the film and would lead to his answer being taken completely out of context in terms of what and who he is actually speaking about. The ''alienation" he is mentioning is in relation to the character feeling alienated from teachers and staff who feel threatened by his disdain for the accepted belief that the school is an absolute necessity to determine his professional future as a performer. He's saying he doesn't want or need the approval of an educational institution to determine whether or not he possesses the talent to become a success in the ruthless outside world of real-life show business. He already possesses enough confidence in himself and his talent to see beyond that pretense if not outright lie. It is a refusal to accept the school as the final judge and jury of his ability to make something out of his life. The character of Ralph is an explicit roman a clef of comedian Freddie Prinze, who threatened his teachers at PA with the same instinctual rejection of their authority and was kicked out for his rebelliousness; the ultimate irony is that when he became a star, they hypocritically invited him back to school to give him his never-received graduation honors. He didn't accept them.

[@waltonwalton4309]

GREAT SHOW

[@waltonwalton4309]

MY CHILD MEM