Amy Heckerling facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Amy Heckerling
Photo by Bruce Guthrie, May 2017
Born	(1954-05-07) May 7, 1954 (age 69) New York City, New York, U.S.
Education	New York University (BA) AFI Conservatory (MFA)
Occupation	Director producer writer
Years active	1977–present
Spouse(s)	David Brandt ​ ​ (m. 1981; div. 1983)​ Neal Israel ​ ​ (m. 1984; div. 1990)​
Children	1

Amy Heckerling (born May 7, 1954) is an American filmmaker. An alumna of both New York University and the American Film Institute, she directed the films Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985), Look Who's Talking (1989), and Clueless (1995).

Heckerling is a recipient of AFI's Franklin J. Schaffner Alumni Medal celebrating her creative talents and artistic achievements.

Early life and education

Heckerling was born on May 7, 1954 in The Bronx, New York City, to a bookkeeper mother and an accountant father. She had a Jewish upbringing. Both of her parents worked full-time, so she frequently moved back and forth from her home in the Bronx, where Heckerling claims she was a latchkey kid sitting at home all day watching television, to her grandmother's home in Brooklyn which she enjoyed much better. Here, she frequented Coney Island and stayed up watching films all night with her grandmother. At this time Heckerling loved television, where she watched numerous cartoons and old black and white movies. Her favorites were gangster movies, musicals and comedies. She had a particular fondness for James Cagney.

After her father passed his CPA exam, the family became more financially stable and moved to Queens, where Heckerling felt more out of place than ever. She did not get along with other kids in her school there, nor did she want to continue to be classmates with them through high school, so she enrolled at the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan. On her first day of school there, Heckerling realized that she wanted to be a film director. During their first assignment, writing about what they wanted to do in life, Heckerling wrote that she wanted to be a writer or artist for Mad. She noticed that a boy next to her, that she claimed copied from her papers later on, wrote that he wanted to be a film director.

She graduated from high school in 1970, focused on directing and studying film at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Her father made just slightly over the cut-off for financial aid for the school, so Heckerling had to take out a large loan to cover her expenses. She claims this caused considerable stress in her life, and she was unable to pay them off until the end of her twenties. When Heckerling was in high school and focused on directing, her father was opposed to the idea, wishing that she had chosen a more practical aspiration. Despite this, he gave her Parker Tyler's book Classics of the Foreign Film: A Pictorial Legacy. Heckerling pored over the book, marking off films that she had seen until she had eventually watched most of them. She claims that by the time she got to NYU, because of this book, she had seen almost all of the films that they had to watch in her classes. Though Heckerling considered her time at NYU to be a great time where she learned a lot and made great connections, such as Martin Brest and noted screenwriter and satirist Terry Southern who was one of her professors, she later reflects on her time at the school as sloppy and unprofessional, claiming that she used very low-quality equipment and had a lot of technical problems.

During her time at NYU, Heckerling was making mostly musicals.

Career

After graduating from NYU, Heckerling decided that she wanted to follow her friend Martin Brest to the American Film Institute in Los Angeles where she felt there would be more opportunities to break into the business. Heckerling experienced severe culture shock upon moving to LA from NYC, especially because NYC's public transportation had made it unnecessary for her to learn to drive. When she did eventually learn, she adjusted to LA life and started working. Her first studio job was lip-syncing dailies for a television show, where she started making connections in the business.

During her second year at AFI, Heckerling made her first short film, Getting it Over With.

Heckerling's first feature was Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), based on the non-fiction account of a year in the life of California high school students as observed by undercover Rolling Stone journalist Cameron Crowe. Upon its release, the film was a huge success so the studio quickly opened it at theaters around the country. It became an instant hit right out of the gate, eventually going on to become a pop culture touchstone. The film earned $27,092,880 at the box office in the USA. It also spawned a short-lived series on CBS called Fast Times, with Heckerling writing, directing and producing.

In 1985, she directed National Lampoon's European Vacation with Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo, a sequel to the popular National Lampoon's Vacation. With it, Heckerling scored her second solid hit, earning $74,964,621 at the box office. The film, like many of Heckerling's films, received poor reviews from critics but proved to be very popular with audiences who just wanted to watch a funny movie. Heckerling, despite being well educated and loving the work of such intellectual writers as Franz Kafka admits that she loves "silly things", which has proven to make her commercially successful in the comedy genre.

In 1989, Heckerling had her biggest success with Look Who's Talking, starring John Travolta, Kirstie Alley and a baby voiced by Bruce Willis. The film has been Heckerling's highest-grossing film to date, earning $296,999,813.

Two Look Who's Talking sequels would follow—1990's Look Who's Talking Too—also directed by Heckerling and co-written with her then-husband Neal Israel. The film added another baby to storyline and was a moderate success. Heckerling then produced, but did not direct, the third and final sequel, Look Who's Talking Now—a flop. The films also spawned a brief television show called Baby Talk that was largely written by Heckerling.

In 1995, she wrote and directed Clueless, reworking and updating Jane Austen's Emma as a 1990s teen comedy about wealthy teenagers living in Beverly Hills. The film went on to gross $56,631,572 and helped launch the careers of most of the cast, including Alicia Silverstone, Brittany Murphy, Paul Rudd, Donald Faison, Breckin Meyer, and Stacey Dash. It was spun off into a moderately successful TV series, with Heckerling penning the pilot, as well as directing several episodes from the first season. Heckerling describes the show as basically the same as the film, only cleaner, and says that she still loves the characters.

Heckerling directed and produced Loser (2000), a romantic college comedy with Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari. The film was not a critical or commercial success. After a break, Heckerling's romantic comedy I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007), starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Paul Rudd, never opened in theaters; rather, it received a direct-to-video release domestically, despite fairly good notices. In 2011, Heckerling directed the horror-comedy film Vamps with Sigourney Weaver, Alicia Silverstone and Krysten Ritter, about two vampires living in New York City as best friends and roommates. The film was released to theatres on November 2, 2012, followed by a DVD release on November 13.

In July 2017, a musical version of Clueless helmed by Tony nominee Kristin Hanggi received a developmental lab in New York City.

Personal life

Heckerling dated friend and fellow film director Martin Brest briefly when she first moved to Los Angeles. Though they later broke up, they remained good friends. Heckerling's first marriage was to David Brandt, from 1981 to 1983. In 1984, Heckerling married director Neal Israel, but divorced in 1990.

The couple's daughter, Mollie Israel, was born in 1985. Mollie was led to believe Israel was her biological father until 2004, when it was revealed to her that in fact Harold Ramis was her biological father. Heckerling has included Mollie in some of her films in bit parts, including Look Who's Talking and Loser, though Heckerling claims that her daughter never wanted to be a "girly girl" and distanced herself from much of her work, never adding any input to the lives of characters such as those in Clueless. Despite this, the two get along very well and Mollie frequently introduces her mother to new music, such as OK Go and films. Today Mollie sings in the band The Lost Patrol.

Heckerling lives in both Los Angeles and New York and continues to make films.

Awards and nominations

In 1995, Heckerling won the National Society of Film Critics Best Screenplay award and was nominated for the Writers Guild of America award for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for her screenplay, Clueless. In 1998, she received the Franklin J. Schaffner Medal from the American Film Institute. In 1999, she received the Women in Film Crystal Award for outstanding women who, through endurance and excellence, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry.

Filmography

Television

Film work

Television work

See also

In Spanish: Amy Heckerling para niños

• List of New York University people