‘Clueless’ Success Gives Boost To Teen Movies

In the midst of a summer of mostly desultory films, along came “Clueless.” The wickedly funny farce about rich teen-age girls in Beverly Hills emerged this weekend as a sleeper hit of the summer.

“I’m blown away, especially by the great reviews,” Amy Heckerling, the film’s writer and director, said in a telephone interview. “I just wanted to do something about the teenage experience; it’s such a wonderful and horrible time of life.”

Scott Rudin, the producer who brought the movie to Paramount, said: “I thought this script was screamingly funny. It’s a touching and generous-spirited movie.”

It’s also the kind of movie that studios crave but rarely find: a very inexpensive commercial film. At $12 million, it cost about one-third of the average studio film.

The film finished the weekend as the No. 2 box office hit with between $10.5 million and $10.7 million. As early as two weeks from now, the film will probably earn a profit, which is unusual for such a short period.

In many ways, “Clueless” revives the teen-age genre that some Hollywood executives assumed had died in the mid-1980s. Although there were a handful of exceptions, studios have failed to generate the kinds of teenage movies - some of them very good, some of them awful - so popular in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Among the most successful were “American Graffiti,” “Saturday Night Fever,” “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” “Risky Business” and “Pretty in Pink.”

“Clueless” is about a rich, charming, spoiled and ditsy 16-year-old girl named Cher Horowitz (played by Alicia Silverstone), whose mother died in “a freak accident during routine liposuction.” A romantic, Cher serves as a matchmaker for her teacher, tries to control and make over her friends, and seems supremely confident until she learns that, when it comes to matters of the heart, she is the one who’s clueless.

Actually, the movie is a very loose reworking of Jane Austen’s “Emma.” Heckerling, who made her directorial debut with the 1982 hit “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and wrote and directed the comedy “Look Who’s Talking,” said: “I wanted to do something in the style of a comedy of manners. I read ‘Emma,’ and it seemed like a natural. Those were wealthy and privileged people who rode around in carriages and made calls on each other.

“I wanted to do something about a really optimistic character, a character who was so optimistic no one could burst her bubble. And by setting it in Beverly Hills, I knew we could have a lot of fun.”