Valley Girl

Valley Girl

Special guest: Pre-screening conversation with director Martha Coolidge.

Martha Coolidge’s second feature, Valley Girl, is a perfect ’80s version of Romeo & Juliet, reimagined, in which its “Romeo” is a nonchalant punk from Hollywood and “Juliet” is a Valley girl from an encapsulating, pink-clad world in the suburbs of LA’s San Fernando Valley. Coolidge’s endearing rom-com, starring a 17-year-old Nicolas Cage and Deborah Foreman, is a timeless classic, tying the two colliding worlds of these young lovers somewhere between the Sherman Oaks Galleria in the Valley and The Central (later The Viper Room) in Hollywood, garnished with tireless making-out, gossip, and house parties.

DIRECTED BY: Martha Coolidge. WRITTEN BY: Andrew Lane, Wayne Crawford. WITH: Nicolas Cage, Deborah Foreman, Elizabeth Daily, Michael Bowen. 1983. 99 min. USA. Color. English. Rated R. DCP.

Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation. 

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