Prince-P

Terrence Malick wrote and directed "Badlands" in 1973. Although the film was not a big success at the box office, it was still highly rated by a unanimous body of critics. Despite this, Malick had difficulty finding anyone willing to finance his next project. It was only when producer Bert Schneider guaranteed that he would personally cover all overages that Paramount Pictures was prepared to invest in the production. And with that, "Days of Heaven" was on its way.

John Travolta was initially supposed to play the lead role, but ABC refused to release him from his contract for the television series "Welcome Back, Kotter" (this was more than a year before "Saturday Night Fever" made Travolta an international star). Instead, Malick hired some young, unknown actors for the main parts. Richard Gere and Brooke Adams would play the lovers who travel to the Texas Panhandle for work, and dramatist Sam Shepard the wealthy landowner who hired them.

Terrence Malick started work on "Days of Heaven" in July 1976. For economic reasons, however, the movie was not made in Texas but in Alberta, Canada. Early on, the director realized that his screenplay wouldn't work as intended. So, when he saw the first dailies, he simply discarded the script altogether. In collaboration with Oscar-winning cinematographer Néstor Almendros he then decided to shoot miles and miles of film, hoping to solve the problems in the editing room.

That turned out to be easier said than done. Notoriously indecisive, Malick spent almost two years molding his movie into shape - using most of that time whittling away on the original script. Finally, the director had removed so much material that he had to insert a voice-over to make sense of the story. Unfortunately, few moviegoers cared anyway. "Days of Heaven" performed so poorly at the box office that the producer, Bert Schneider, went bankrupt. And Terrence Malick himself had to move to France to find work. It would be almost 20 years before he made another film.

In several interviews, Alfred Hitchcock has mentioned that "Vertigo" was a personal favorite among his own works. So, it must have been depressing for the director when that particular picture became such a disappointment at the box office. But persistence is the key to success. Hitchcock immediately began preparing for a new production. And this time, he planned to return to a plotline that had worked for him so often before. Hitchcock's new film would deal with the desperate journey a wronged man is forced to make, pursued by various spies and government agents.

James Stewart, who had played the male lead in "Vertigo", was apparently expecting to be in Hitchcock's new movie as well. But as the director prepared to begin "North by Northwest," he declared that the actor was too old for the picture. Hitchcock then gave the starring role to Cary Grant, despite Grant being four years older than Stewart. Something that led many punters to believe that the two men must have had some altercation during their work together.

Alfred Hitchcock usually preferred to make his films on one of Hollywood's primary sound stages. The so-called "Master of Suspense" was something of a perfectionist and, therefore, wanted complete control over his productions. But obviously, the sequence where a single-engine airplane chases Cary Grant over a barren cornfield was impossible to shoot back in the studio. Hitchcock, therefore, had no choice but to take his entire crew with him and go outdoors.

To Alfred Hitchcock's undisguised delight, "North by Northwest" became a smash hit with the audience. Which wasn't really surprising. In the film, the director had been able to utilize his full arsenal of studio trickery. With Cary Grant in the lead role, he also had access to the number-one box office star of the time. However, after "North by Northwest," the master of suspense wanted to take his career in a whole new direction. And he sure did. Hitchcock's next film was "Psycho."

Cameron Crowe was only 16 when he started working for Rolling Stone magazine (he was their youngest-ever contributor). Crowe wrote mainly about the heavy-metal bands the older journalist despised. In 1977, when the paper moved its offices from San Francisco to New York, Crowe chose to remain in California. There, the young man told publishing house Simon & Schuster that he could go undercover as a high school student and write about his experiences. After a year at Clairemont High School in San Diego, Crowe completed the novel "Fast Times at Ridgemont High".

Before the book was even published, Universal Studios secured the movie rights. Their executives had initially intended for David Lynch to direct, but when he passed on the possibility, Cameron Crowe suggested Amy Heckerling instead. At that point, she had only made music videos and short student films, but at an earlier meeting the two had successfully brainstormed new ideas together. Crowe was therefore convinced that Heckerling would be precisely the right woman for the job.

But it was never going to be an easy picture to make. For one thing, Amy Heckerling had never directed a feature film before. And Nicolas Cage, Eric Stoltz and Forest Whitaker were also relative newcomers to the movie business. In addition, Heckerling's crew worked under constant time pressure. The Sherman Oaks Galleria in the San Fernando Valley, which was an absolutely crucial part of the story, was only available for a short, limited time.

Like "American Graffiti" of earlier years, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" only contains a few adult characters (parents are almost entirely absent). And where most teenage movies portray a life of affluence and joy, this film delves into a world of run-down apartments and low-paying jobs. But somehow it worked, anyway. Despite receiving mixed reviews, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" defied expectations and became a massive hit among its target audience.