The Critical and Box Office Success of Clueless
The movie was done. The soundtrack was out. The MTV promotions and various Alicia Silverstone magazine covers had been disseminated for public consumption. It was finally time to find out if moviegoers would embrace Clueless.
“If advance buzz is right, this could be one of the summer’s sleepers,” predicted a Dallas Morning News story published on July 15, 1995. Four days later, on Wednesday the nineteenth, the film opened in 1,470 theaters across America and quickly proved that the advance buzz was right: Paramount Pictures had a sleeper hit on its hands.
“Effervescent, unflappable, supremely pleased with herself, Cher (delightfully played by the much-publicized Alicia Silverstone) is the comic centerpiece of Clueless, a wickedly funny teenage farce from writer-director Amy Heckerling that, like its heroine, turns out to have more to it than anyone could anticipate.”
—KENNETH TURAN, LOS ANGELES TIMES, JULY 19, 1995
That Wednesday, Clueless brought in nearly $3 million, making it the number one movie in the country, ahead of Apollo 13. On Friday through Sunday, the movie played on more than 1,600 screens but business dipped a little, ultimately giving it a second-place finish at the weekend box office, behind the Tom Hanks NASA drama, even while playing on fewer screens than any other movie in the top ten. Within its first five days of release alone, Clueless made $15.8 million, more than enough to recoup its modest production budget and then some. It earned largely positive reviews from critics in major media outlets, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, New York magazine, USA Today, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. The months following its US release would also bring more good news, as the film began to do better-than-expected business overseas and earn some awards for Amy Heckerling.
“The movie emerges as a breath of fresh air in a summer where most of the comedy has been formulaic. Tech credits are also superb, down to the outlandish costumes, carefully chosen song score, and opulent Beverly Hills estates—gaudy enough to make even the Clampetts and the brats on 90210 eat their collective hearts out.”
—BRIAN LOWRY, VARIETY, JULY 17, 1995
All the success was a thrill for the writer-director and everyone who worked on Clueless. But after the struggles at Fox and the discouragement she faced when she tried to pitch her affectionately satirical coming-of-ager to other studios, for Heckerling, the sudden love for her Beverly Hills baby was also vindication. She had been right all along: people would love Cher and her world exactly the way she originally envisioned them. And now, it was time to celebrate.
Adam Schroeder, coproducer: We went on that Friday night. Amy and I filled up a limo and we went from theater to theater just to see, is anybody in the theater?
David Kitay, composer: Amy and everybody else [were] in one car, and Breckin Meyer and I were in another car. That’s always kind of a fun, magical thing to be able to do. When you’re sitting in the back of a theater and people are liking it and laughing and having a good time.
Amy Heckerling, writer-director: I usually do that unless I’m totally depressed about what’s going on.
David Kitay: It was great. People loved it. They laughed at all the right places, they felt in all the right places.
Dicky Barrett, front man for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones: We were on the Lollapalooza tour. We drove the bus to a theater, a multiplex at a mall. We all got out and went in and saw it. We were very nervous—it wasn’t the days of the Internet where you could just Google it or check what people were saying about it. So we sat in there and watched the movie, thinking we’re either going to go crawling out and run for our bus or do what we ended up doing, which was stand up at the end and go: “That was us. We’re the band. That was us!”
“[Silverstone’s] Cher doesn’t know the name of anything and she has an unfortunate experience explaining Haitian immigration policy to her class, but she reminds me of Judy Holliday’s blonde ditzes from forty years ago: The more she babbles, the shrewder she seems. The surprise of her character in Clueless—which is based, amazingly, on Jane Austen’s Emma—is that she’s more interested in looking great and being nice to other people than she is in her own happiness. Is there a catch somewhere? How can virtue be encased in an ethos of consumerist narcissism? But Heckerling loves Cher and her friends: Their posing conceals a small gift of poetry.”
—DAVID DENBY, NEW YORK MAGAZINE, AUGUST 7, 1995
Steven Jordan, production designer: Oh my God, I was so pleasantly surprised. [The movie] was great. And it was funny. I was working with Darren Star at the time and he came into my office—“I saw your movie this weekend. Oh, so great.” Which was nice.
Donald Faison, Murray: I always wanted to do Sixteen Candles or The Breakfast Club. I wanted to be in a movie like that. And while making it, I thought, Aw, this isn’t that. Then I saw it and was like: Holy cow. This is exactly what I wanted to do.
Stacey Dash, Dionne: We could tell that it was going to be a huge hit. We knew. Or at least I did.
Elisa Donovan, Amber: The weekend that it opened, people started recognizing me immediately, which was so bizarre. I was in the Beverly Center, taking the escalator up. I was with a friend and all these girls started crowding around at the top. They were pointing and jumping up and down. It was a huge crowd. I said, “Oh, there must be somebody famous coming up the escalator because these kids are going bananas.” And then we get to the top and I realize, Oh my God, it’s me! They all swarmed around me, and it’s so funny because people often speak to you in the third person when they recognize you. “Oh, look at her. Look—she looks so nervous!” Or, “Oh, she looks so good in person!” They’re kind of pointing at you like you’re not real. It’s so bizarre, and that was the first time I had ever had that experience. And I said, “I can’t believe this is really happening.”
Donald Faison: That was my go-to when I wanted to be with a girl. I’d say, “Come over and let’s watch Clueless.” Absolutely. Clueless was the ultimate wingman. They loved the movie. They didn’t give a shit about me being in the movie, they just loved the movie, period. I didn’t start getting girlfriends until Clueless came out. It worked well for me. It’s true. It’s because I kept it real. That’s exactly right. Because I was keepin’ it real.
“Alicia Silverstone makes a delectable teen queen in Clueless, a candy-colored, brightly satirical showcase for her decidedly visual talents. Thus far famous mostly for being famous (mostly in Aerosmith videos), Ms. Silverstone finally gives a film performance that clicks. As a pampered Beverly Hills clotheshorse, she’s mostly a one-joke princess, but the joke happens to work.”
—JANET MASLIN, THE NEW YORK TIMES, JULY 19, 1995
Paul Rudd, Josh: I had never been in a press junket or anything and we had to do a press junket. I remember I did my press junket with Stacey and Justin, so we were all in the room. Inevitably, every single critic that came in to talk to us, nine times out of ten, they started this thing with, “You know, I’ll be honest with you”—even before the camera would go on. They’d say, “I went into this thing thinking I was going to hate this movie. I had a blast.” Every critic was coming in and talking about how they expected this thing to be dumb, they didn’t want to see it, and they loved it. They thought it was really smart, really funny, really sweet. Again, not having any kind of experience with any of that before, I kind of took it all with a grain of salt.
“Clueless is a smart and funny movie, and the characters are in on the joke. Cher (Alicia Silverstone), who lives in a mansion and looks like Cybill Shepherd, is capable of lines like, “Why learn to park when every place you go has a valet?” But she puts a little satirical spin on them. She is one of the most totally self-absorbed characters in a movie since the heroes of Wayne’s World, and yet she isn’t a victim, and we get the idea she will grow up tough and clever, like her dad (Dan Hedaya).”
—ROGER EBERT, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, JULY 19, 1995
Bill Pope, director of photography: My wife and I went to a dude ranch with our daughter. There was no phone service, no nothing. We were out riding horses in Colorado or Wyoming or something. Somebody came in from the office with a fax that my agent had sent me of the New York Times review. I’d never gotten a good review or recognition for anything. And there was my name, mentioned in the New York Times. It felt good. The critics loved it. And I thought, Wow. It’s not just me that loved it. The world’s starting to recognize this movie.
Amy Heckerling: It’s not that I read all of [the reviews]. But I read enough to know that it was the first time in my life something was completely accepted all over the place. And that freaked me out and blew my mind. It’s like when you’ve been starved to death and somebody says, “Here’s some food.” And you go, “Okay, I better not have too much because this will kill me.”
Paul Rudd: Scott Rudin called me the morning it came out, and it had gotten good reviews. He said, “Congratulations. Don’t get used to this.” It was kind of a successful movie, and then Halloween 6 came out, and afterward Scott said, “Ah, yes. The actor’s nightmare.”
Adam Schroeder: We were the little movie that could, so the studio was wonderful that following week. They kept the marketing up because it was this potential sleeper. They were very dedicated to it succeeding because they knew it could succeed.
Amy Heckerling: People would say great things about Fast Times. But at the time that it opened, they didn’t even want to put it in many theaters. It was just that it did well in California, so they opened it in the rest of the country. There was no advertising. There were hardly any reviews. It wasn’t given a release like it was a real movie. And then with Look Who’s Talking, they put it on the shelf for six months. . . . It was scoring in the nineties, but they were acting like, “This movie—we can’t sell it.” And Johnny Dangerously didn’t do well at all. So I thought, I suck, but I really want to do this stuff. I got to do this one, [Clueless], that was really the closest to me. Not “me” as in who I am, but what I like to do and see. The idea that it was getting good reviews—and not [as] an afterthought, like, “Oh, this came out a couple of weeks ago, maybe we should review it”—and the marketing people were doing their job, it was too rich for me.
“Heckerling doesn’t quite pull off Cher’s character transformation. The materialism in Clueless is almost as scary as the hopelessness in Kids. Whatever. Silverstone is the babe of the moment. And she’s learned how to back up her sexy pout with shrewd comic timing. You think maybe a star in the making doesn’t count for something? As if.”
—PETER TRAVERS, ROLLING STONE, JULY 19, 1995
Twink Caplan, associate producer and Miss Geist: The critical acclaim that Clueless got actually meant more to me than anything because Amy really got her due.
Carrie Frazier, Clueless casting director while the project was at Fox: [Elizabeth Gabler at Fox] wanted it so badly and was terribly upset when it went to Paramount. Then when it became a hit, the story I heard is that she came in with the grosses, put them on the table, and said, “You idiots! What were you thinking? Look what this movie did! I told you it was going to be good!”
Gabler would not comment for this book, despite multiple attempts to set up an interview via her office and the communications department at Fox.
Adam Schroeder: Usually what happens is you get the matinee numbers from the East Coast first. And they were really, really promising. Sherry [Lansing] was just the most incredible person because she made the calls [to tell us] herself.
After that first weekend, Clueless would go on to earn $56.6 million.
Sherry Lansing, former chair and CEO of Paramount Pictures: In today’s dollars, it’s probably a lot more. Those numbers, [all] that time ago, were really great.
Amy Heckerling: Ken [Stovitz] was always calling, really excited. He was so much a part of it. He was the one that wouldn’t let it die. So it was real validation. But afterward, actually, I took my parents and my kid and my then-boyfriend, Bronson, and we all went to Europe on a vacation because they’d never done anything like that before and I wanted to take my family somewhere. When you make a movie, you spend a lot of time on it. And I had a little girl. I wanted to do something for my family and for my baby.
“No one lately has said a good movie must also be a good film. This one is best taken as a thing of bits and pieces, attitude and gestures. It’s like a restaurant where you go for the food and go back for the atmosphere. Or for the waitress. Silverstone is a giddy delight, a beguiling performer, and an icon for her generation.”
—RICHARD CORLISS, TIME, JULY 31, 1995
During the fall of 1995, Clueless began to open elsewhere around the world: in the UK, Australia, Mexico, Germany, Hong Kong, and a number of other countries. While American comedies generally do not play as well overseas as they do at home, Clueless did respectable international business. By mid-January of 1995, Variety reported that Clueless had earned $20.7 million overseas, in addition to the $56.6 million it had already made in North America. (According to IMDbPro data, Clueless has made $77.3 million worldwide, but figures for its cumulative international box office, as well as home video and DVD sales, were not available, according to a Paramount representative.)
Ken Stovitz: Every international buyer I’ve spoken to loves Clueless. I don’t know why. I don’t know how.
Amy Heckerling: Australia and Germany have been good to me over the years, for some reason. I don’t know why. Because my name is Heckerling? My family’s from Germany? Australia: I don’t know. Seems like a fun-loving country.
“Crammed with pop-culture references to everything from cellular phones to skateboarding to Starbucks (she scores one of her biggest laughs just by showing a Mentos TV commercial), Heckerling’s script has even more and better teenspeak lines than Heathers. ‘I don’t want to be a traitor to my generation, but I don’t get how boys dress these days,’ Silverstone complains, as the slo-mo camera trails a quartet of droopy-pantsed, backward-capped, tie-dye-T-shirted, goatee-chinned boys. All the girls in the preview crowd cheered.”
—JOE BROWN, WASHINGTON POST “WEEKEND” SECTION, JULY 21, 1995
In December of 1995, it was released on home video and became one of the most popular rentals in the country. In January of 1996, when a massive blizzard dumped nearly two feet of snow in many locations on the East Coast—and in some places, even more than that—Clueless even provided a sense of calm during the storm. A New York Times story reported that the Video Room, a video store in Manhattan with a clientele “whose predilections usually run to sophisticated fare,” could barely keep the high school comedy on its shelves during that winter weather event. (Within two years, Clueless would generate more than $26 million in rental revenue alone, according to figures reported by Variety.)
The winter of 1996 also brought more good Clueless news. In January, shortly after the New Year began, the National Society of Film Critics named Clueless the best screenplay of 1995. On February 8, 1996, the Writers Guild of America nominated Heckerling’s work in the best original screenplay category, alongside Woody Allen for Mighty Aphrodite, Aaron Sorkin for The American President, Randall Wallace for Braveheart, and P. J. Hogan for Muriel’s Wedding. Wallace ultimately won for Braveheart, a Paramount release that would go on to be named Best Picture at the Academy Awards. But the WGA nomination suggested that perhaps Clueless had at least a shot at an Oscar nomination for its screenplay.
“The film bobs along like a designer balloon, pumped with wry observations on Marky Mark and Mentos ads.”
—SUSAN WLOSZCZYNA, USA TODAY, JULY 19, 1995
Amy Heckerling: With the Writers Guild, I was nominated for best original screenplay. It is an original screenplay, if you consider West Side Story an original screenplay. If you’re going to say, there was Romeo and Juliet—well, [West Side Story] was a whole other world. Everything is based on some great classic or material. Unfortunately, I told people about Emma, so when it was submitted as an original, the Academy decided the category should be adapted. So that’s crazy, because then I’m competing with Sense and Sensibility that year. Usually things that are nominated by the Writers Guild, since it’s the same people voting, 99.9 percent of the time it’s exactly the same as the Academy Award nominations.25
Wallace Shawn, Mr. Hall: I think she should have won the Oscar for that screenplay, but I don’t think adapted from another medium was a fair category. Everything we write is inspired by great works of the past. Her script was inspired by Jane Austen’s book but it wasn’t what people ordinarily mean by adapted from another medium.
Arthur Cohen, former worldwide marketing chief, Paramount Pictures: Some of that goes down based on what else was going on at the studio. I don’t want to tell tales out of school here but some of the way those things resolve themselves is sometimes a little nonlinear.
Amy Heckerling: Of course I was disappointed. But what can you do?
25. The winners of the Academy Awards in the screenplay categories that year were Christopher McQuarrie’s The Usual Suspects in the original category (where it competed against Paramount’s Braveheart) and Emma Thompson’s script for Sense and Sensibility in the adapted category, where there was apparently room for only one take on a Jane Austen novel.