As if?!
Words by Alim Kheraj
From the editors of HelloGiggles
It’s shocking to hear it, but according to Alicia Silverstone the iconic movie Clueless nearly never got made, and, once that’s sunk in, just think about how different life would be if we’d never had Cher and the gang in our lives.
Of course, we got *so* much from Clueless. From the slang and vernacular from the movie, to the now iconic fashion (even if Silverstone wasn’t too keen on all the clothes and actually GAVE THEM ALL AWAY!) it’s not only a movie that has stood the test of time, but sparked off a whole new style of teen movies. Without Clueless we wouldn’t have Mean Girls or American Pie or 10 Things I Hate About You. Imagine that…
Yet, in a new interview with Variety, Alicia Silverstone has shared how the movie almost didn’t get made, and AS IF?!
The 40-year-old actor shared how, essentially, studios weren’t convinced that audiences would want to see a movie about a teenage girl (ugh!).
“One studio said no to it,” she recalled, saying that she was in Paris shooting The New World when she had a fax (!) saying that movie might not go ahead. “Those people now kick themselves that they were not part of that film. They were like, ‘We don’t think anybody is going to care. It’s not going to sell tickets.’”
Luckily, producer Scott Rudin saved the picture from being scrapped by Fox, and set it up at Paramount Pictures. The rest, as they say, is history.
Silverstone went on to say how, after a recent screening of the movie at a cemetery in L.A., she realised how incredibly proud she was of what Clueless has become.
“We were laying under the stars,” she said. “Seeing it on the screen like that was an incredible thing to share with my son and go, ‘Wow I’m really proud of that.’ I’m proud of all the work on the screen, all the different artists who created that. Super proud.”
While the story of studios not believing that female-fronted movies and teen movies will perform well at the box office is something that is still prevalent, without Clueless we’re pretty sure that things would be even worse, and we’ll always be grateful to all those involved for getting the movie made.
It truly is an iconic piece of cinema.