HOW IT CAME TO BE

A former Columbia Studios executive was thinking about Louisa May Alcott. Gerald Ayres was a had been the Vice President of Creative Affairs at Columbia and left the studio with a three-picture deal. After completing Cisco Peak and The Last Detail, he had a notion: "What would happen if you dropped Louisa May Alcott into the San Fernando Valley today?”

A creative exec at 20th Century Fox greenlit the film over lunch. Ayers casually told David Begelman about a conversation he'd had with his 14-year-old daughter, Liz. He was shocked at how wild teens were. According to his autobiography "Everywhere Hollywood," Ayers conversation with Begelman went like this:

Ayers: One is having an abortion. One is being kept by a wealthy man and it's cool because they really are in love and she seldom goes home which is okay with mama because the girl has money and starts paying her rent.

Begelman: How old is the girl?

Ayers: What does it matter? It's true love.

Begelman: Yeah, go on.

Ayers: Then there's all sorts of drugs bought at the school. It's a real problem for one friend who crashed her father's car which he let her drive even though she didn't have a license. You know, Daddy was guilty for never being around cause he's shacked up with his own hot little ticket.

Begelman: I get the idea.

Ayers: Every chance they get, these girls race off to Hollywood Boulevard to get a true taste of what life is about. This all came from my daughter's mouth. She claimed she only went down to the boulevard to rescue her closest friend who was being stashed away somewhere by a pimp in a rabbit fur hat. I wonder what would Louisa May Alcott write about if she were dropped in the San Fernando Valley today?"

Begelman: Why don't you write about it?

Ayers: About these girls?

Begelman: Little Women in the Valley. I could get Fox to sign on to that.

Foxes is "Little Women" in the 1970s. So, Ayres started drafting a script based on his 14-year-old daughter Liz and three of her friends, melding them in the framework of the characters from "Little Women," although switching up characteristics and story beats. The Alcott names were kept in place through many drafts, but eventually "Jo" became "Jeannie," "Meg" became "Madge," "Beth" became "Dierdre," and "Amy" became "Annie." 

Ayres did research by hanging out with his teen daughter and her friends. He spent five months observing and interviewing students at North Hollywood High. He writes that he was allowed to sit in on classes and the girls at the school befriended him: "They had my phone number and one in particular called me nightly to complain about her parents and dish her classmates. I would listen sympathetically and write notes as fast as I could."

Twentieth-Century Fox developed the script and called it Twentieth Century Foxes. Eventually, 20th Century Fox wanted to abandon the "Little Women" adaptation, feeling connecting to a 100-year-old literary classic would be off-putting to modern teens. The first draft was complete at the end of 1977.

Bugsy Malone executive producer David Puttnam took to the script. Ayers' longtime collaborator and one-time lover (the one who introduced him to homosexuality, according to his autobiography) Jacques Demy handed the script to British producer David Puttnam when they were seated next to each other on a long flight. Puttnam sparked to the concept because, according to AFI Catalog, it reminded him of the "privileged children who grew up in Beverly Hills." 

Fox is out, but Puttnam convinces Casablanca Records to take over. In 1977, former Columbia Studios exec Peter Guber started Filmworks, a motion picture subsidiary of Casablanca Records. The concept was to make movies to feature Casablanca recording artists and fuel popularity and sales. This is pre-MTV but promotional videos were beginning to make a positive impact in creating hits, particularly Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" in 1975, in addition to a history of successful music movies from the Beatles and TV shows like "The Monkees" and "The Partridge Family." Casablanca Records + Filmworks experienced initial success with The Deep (1977) and Midnight Express (1978). They also suffered a flop with Thank God It's Friday (1978), but the film won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a Grammy, and a couple of American Music Awards for Donna Summer's Last Dance -- so, the film was a success in the eyes of the studio.

Title changes. Well, obviously the title Twentieth Century Foxes was out once the film was not going to be produced at the studio who carries that name, so Ayres has to abandon his title. Ladies of the Valley becomes the new title until it's agreed to just settle on the simple: Foxes, a term of the era that meant "hot."

Commercial director Adrian Lyne is hired to direct. One problem. Ayers was already promised he could direct his script. David Puttnam brought in a fellow Brit and fellow ad man (Puttnam also started in advertising) to give him his first shot at a feature film. Lyne was in Palmdale, Calif, shooting a Levi's commercial when Puttnam, a professional acquaintance, met with him about the film. In the book "Film Directors on Directing," Lyne told author John A. Gallagher, "He gave me the script and said that he was sure [United Artists] would want an American director 'cause it's an American subject. I liked it quite a lot. I thought it was an honest, documentary-style look at these kids in the San Fernando Valley trying to grow up and be independent."

Ayers learned he'd been replaced from an actor who'd just been at an audition for his film. Ayers wrote that an actor he knew -- "one of the flock who partied around gay West Hollywood hoping for a break" called to see if he could put in a good word for him. Ayers made an immediate call to his agent who set up a meeting with Adrian Lyne - a director Ayers would come to call "The British butcher." He was not a fan, but it was out of his hands. Lyne got the job. As a make-good, the agents at William Morris who represented Ayers, Puttnam and Lyne negotiated that Ayers would at least get a producer credit as well. "It was a mistake," Ayers wrote. "[It] was a nick in Puttnam's amour with himself. It dampened his spirits and I suspected he shifted more time focused on his upcoming Chariots of Fire."

Casablanca Records + Filmworks is out, PolyGram is in. Even though Casablanca was successful, the wild parties and high expenses were wearing away at the bottom line. PolyGram had purchased a 50% stake in Casablanca Records. When the money started drying up at the end of the decade, Casablanca shuttered their filmmaking arm. However, PolyGram moved in to take over and started PolyGram Pictures, taking over this project as their first release. Still, the soundtrack featured Casablanca artists (which was fine, since PolyGram now owned Casablanca outright).

At some point, the film the girls of the Valley became teen rockers. A musician hired for the film stated that the early drafts "centered around an all-girl rock band who was being groomed by an established female pop singer." This is why a music label would decide to get into the filmmaking business with this film. As rewrites continued, the teen band concept was eliminated.

FILMING NOTES

That's NOT improv. Several scenes have the girls bouncing off each other, particularly the breakfast table scene. It's so natural, off the cuff, and not always relevant that it seems like they could be riffing. They're not. "We met for the first time on a stage and had 2 weeks of rehearsal with the writer and director. That was quality time spent. Most of the scenes were group scenes, kitchen table, etc.," Kandice Stroh told us. "For the most part, everyone adhered to the written word. Gerald Ayers, the writer, had a pretty solid sense of the appropriate dialogue. I think the characters each actor developed, their tone, body language, choices, etc. made it seem non-scripted at time but that’s a testament to the work."

Adrian Lyne established the lighting and camera work that would become his hallmark. It may have been his first feature film, but Lyne's soft focus, light filtered, gauzy images are present. Lyne typically makes films with an erotic edge. While Foxes certainly doesn't fall into that category, Lyne's sensual camerawork makes innocent shots seems sexy. For instance, the establishing shot of four girls having a sleepover is meant to evoke the understanding of their young age to contrast with the adult conversation they'll be having soon. But, Lyne's panning over their sleeping bodies confuses the viewer who thinks there is something sexy going on (there's not). Other analysts and reviewers have also been confused by the girls cutting up to make fun of the leering boys on the way to the concert (no, there's no lesbian thing happening), when Jeannie spends the afternoon with Brad after Annie's been taken to the mental hospital, and when Jeannie is fighting for Annie (again, there's no lesbian love guys, they're just friends - this is how girls act with each other.

Jodie Foster would roll her eyes at Adrian Lyne's directorial choices. Adrian came from commercials so he would shoot endless footage of extras fooling around, inserts on make-up or on snacks being unwrapped...ambience. Things that had nothing to do with the plot but were little discoveries for him. I rolled my eyes at the time because I thought it was wasteful. But that was Adrian's directorial style emerging. He just got a kick out of being there among young people and wanted to shoot anything that moved," Foster told James King for "The Ultimate History of the '80s Teen Movie" His work always has the sparkle of mischief...just like him. He's a big kid."

Foster now believes the film succeeds because of Lyne being a newcomer to Los Angeles. "There I was working with a first-time British director doing a movie about adolescent girls in a city he barely knew. I think that's the strength of the movie, its fascination with that place and time," Foster told King. "He was an outsider who was captivated by the look, the feel, the energy of one moment in time. It was a curiosity to him. An Englishman discovers The Valley."

Producer David Puttnam said that all those background shots were a bit of a British wave. He told King you can see a similar discovery from John Schlesinger in Midnight Cowboy. "Schlesinger's view of New York -- and I remember this very vividly from when I first went there in the very early 60's -- was an outsider's view. He found it a very extraordinary place in a way that people who lived there didn't find it extraordinary at all...Coming from the outside, you do tend to have a different view. In some cases a touristic, slightly obvious view but in other cases you notice things that locals don't notice at all."

The soft focus sun-filter didn't come from Adrian Lyne. Lyne would move forward in his career using light to sexify women and scenes, but it wasn't initally his move. The gauzy look came from cinematographer Michael Seresin, the director of photography. He was also a Puttnam hire: he's worked in the London ad scene and was the DP on...you guessed it...Bugsy Malone.

Jodie Foster shut down the set when another actor acted unprofessionally.  Cherie Currie recounted a story where a male actor - it's unclear which one or it was an extra - was a little too rambunctious to the point of crossing a line. "He basically jumped on top of me -- planted a huge kiss on me, practically putting me over the back seat of the car," Currie said to E! "Jodie was furious because it really wasn't what the scene called for. She shut the set down for two hours because she just thought that was inappropriate behavior." 

All those outdoor shots? The cast was freezing. Jodie Foster recalled how cold it was during filming, "There was quite a bit of night shooting on Foxes and it was freezing cold in Los Angeles that winter. I got frostbite on my toes from wearing Candie's open platform shoes."

Laura Dern didn't understand the meaning of her dialogue. A 12-year-old Laura Dern has her first speaking role as Debbie, the classmate who keeps pushing to get into the dinner party and then advises a friend about birth control. Lyne and producer David Puttnam asked her if she was comfortable with her lines. She told New York Times Magazine in 2019 that: "...she didn’t understand what the problem was. It was just a diaphragm, right? You took a deep breath and it expanded below your rib cage? 'That’s an awkward first part' she laughed."

Robert Romanus didn't know what a "mark" was, so he didn't hit it.  Romanus told Rockerzine that Foxes was his first acting job, which was a bit of an issue on a feature film.  "I had no idea what I was doing as an actor or technically," he said. "The very first scene that I had in “Foxes” is the concert scene.  There is a crowd of about two hundred people and I have to walk down this long hallway, hit a mark and say my line to Jodie Foster.  But I didn’t know what a mark was.  It took twenty-eight takes. I put everybody on overtime. It was horrifying.  The next day the director, Adrian Lyne, came in and said, 'Listen Scott, I know you can do it.  I saw you do it yesterday.'  Then I had my second scene and it went well.  I was on my way.  Three years later I got my next job."

Jodie Foster advocated to add the climactic face off between Jeannie and Annie. Ayers wrote that Foster approached him, thinking the two best friends of the friends needed to have an argument. "The strength of their love, Jodie suggested, was always expressed in anger. It was their manner. Too suspicious of sentiment, feeling it had let them down too many times, they still need to speak their feelings. It comes out in a rant of love."

Adrian Lyne was a yeller. "Adrian was a director. He directed. He got mad, and he did all the things you think directors should be doing from having seen directors in movies," Scott Baio told AV Club decades later. "It felt like real movie making!"

Cherie Currie wasn't on drugs during the film, or at least, not much. She said to Sally Jesse Raphael, “Before I became a cocaine addict, I was a Quaalude addict because I was doing more downers when I was with the Runaways… It was not normal for me not to have cocaine on me, whether I used it or not. I did Foxes and I tried to use as little (cocaine) as possible while doing the shoot, I wanted to feel ‘responsible.’ 

Wait, do you count ampethamines as drugs? For her, Currie was clean for the start of Foxes. However, she admits she snorted Benzedrine in her autobiography "Neon Angel," "But Benzedrine was legal, so I felt that it really wasn't a drug at all. I mean, if doctors could prescribe it, how bad could it be? Okay, you weren't supposed to snort it like I did, but that's just splitting hairs. Just because it was a white powder that pumped me up didn't mean that it was anything like coke. And it wasn't as if I did it every day. Well...I did do it every day, but I only did it in the mornings."

By the end of the shoot, Cherie Currie returned to doing cocaine. Currie writes that her hair started falling out and creating red welts on her scalp. She blamed the Benzedrine. Right after she noticed the bald patches, she threw away the Benzedrine and called her coke dealer. 

Once filming began, the studio made them change the ending. Did you think Annie was suicidal? And that her car crash scene didn't match up with the rest of the film? Then you caught on. In the first scene, Diedre scoffs when Jeannie and Madge try to wake a passed out Annie, saying, "What the shit? She doesn't care if she never wakes up." That's the foreshadowing. Producer David Puttnam said in "The Ultimate History of the '80s Teen Movie" they were forced to change how Annie died: "The original script was about a girl committing suicide and the studio at the end of the day backed off of that and it had to be an accident."

Jodie Foster laughed with the girls about her crush on Scott Baio. The two had co-starred in Bugsy Malone three years prior. Marilyn Kagan said Foster was chatty with the other girls on set, including dishing on herself. "She was very open and available and talking about when she had a crush on Scott Baio years ago...they were very cute together and still good friends."

Laura Dern was also crushing on Scott Baio.  She told Entertainment Weekly how she intended to get Baio to notice her on a day they weren't filming. “I saw him from across the room and he was wearing a white leisure suit. He looked so stunning and I was so excited, and I knew I was about to make the best first impression and he would love me forever.” Dern had brought her dog with her to the meeting. “My dog got her period on his [Baio’s] pantsuit.” Dern said she “got down on my knees with a bottle of club soda and proceeded to clean the blood out of his pants. It went over really well. I’ve actually never seen him again.”

REVIEWS

While most agreed it wasn't a perfect film, Foxes was critically acclaimed for its rare authentic portrayal of teen sruggles . It has a 67 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Roger Ebert awarded it three stars and gave it a favorable review, describing it as "an ambitious movie, not an exploitation movie." The Chicago Sun-TImes critic acknowledged the film for what it was trying to achieve: "It contains the sounds and rhythms of real teen-age lives; it was written and directed after a lot of research, and is acted by kids who are to one degree or another playing themselves. The movie's a rare attempt to provide a portrait of the way teenagers really do live today in some suburban cultures."

Variety also called it "an ambitious attempt" that "ends up delivering far less than it is capable of." It goes on to say Foxes is a "depressing, one-sided and melodramatic treatise on American youth."

Macleans Lawrence O'Toole called it "teen angels with trimmed wings." Writing for the Canadian publication, O'Toole was not a fan, taking aim at what would become Adrian Lyne's signature look: "Visually, nearly every shot (underexposed to create moody, poetic effects) has to make a point—not for the pushy, full-of-holes Saturday Night Fever-ish plot contrivances, but for the filmmakers—the movie keeps saying I have gone to film school." O'Toole is now a suburban New York Realtor.