Not another teen move
IN 1814, BEFORE starting work on her new novel, Emma , Jane Austen sketched the following character breakdown: “I am going to take a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like.”
Austen failed in that respect — spectacularly. Over the past two centuries, readers have consistently fallen for her happy-go-lucky matchmaker Emma Woodhouse, and none more so than an 18-year-old NYU film student named Amy Heckerling.
“I first read Emma in college,” Heckerling tells Empire four decades later. “I remember Austen had this line about how Emma thought ‘a little too well of herself’ — but I liked her! To me, she was like a little kid strutting around in her mother’s dress, like: ‘I’m an elegant woman.’ She wasn’t looking down her nose at people — she was just an adorable little girl.”
Using Austen’s 19th century story as a scaffold, Heckerling would go on to create the ultimate 1990s movie — Clueless — a riot of absurd fashion, killer one-liners and perfectly drawn high school angst. “Handsome, clever and rich”, Emma Woodhouse became the equally fortune-favoured Cher Horowitz — a relentlessly chirpy ‘valley girl’ who divided her time between playing Cupid and cleaning out the mall.
On its release in 1995, was an instant hit, not only changing the way an entire generation talked — “What-ever”, “As !” — but also single-handedly resuscitating the moribund teen movie genre. And 25 years on, it remains as beloved, esteemed and oft-quoted as
