As If!: The Oral History of Clueless as Told by Amy Heckerling and the Cast and Crew by Jen Chaney

Author:Jen Chaney [Chaney, Jen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 2015-07-07T07:00:00+00:00

The Mugging of Cher Horowitz

Oh no, you don’t understand. This is an Alaïa.

—CHER

An a-what-a?

—MUGGER

Production info: The central portion of this sequence—which involves an argument between Cher and Elton, followed by Cher being held up at gunpoint—was shot on the evenings of Wednesday, December 14, and Thursday, December 15, 1994, days sixteen and seventeen of production, in the parking lot of Circus Liquor, 5600 Vineland Avenue, in North Hollywood. The portion of the sequence in which we see Josh and Heather’s date interrupted by Cher’s phone call was shot in a dorm room at Occidental College on Thursday, January 5, 1995, day thirty of the shoot.18

What happens in this scene, CliffsNotes version: After brutally rebuffing Elton, Cher gets ditched in a liquor store parking lot. She’s then held up at gunpoint while wearing a dress by a totally important designer, then forced to call Josh and ask him to pick her up; she does so by using some weird contraption called a pay phone.

Amy Heckerling, writer-director: I remember what the inspiration was for [that scene]. I was having dinner with some agents. I think [Ken] Stovitz was there. And they were telling me about this other agent they knew, who used to be a big slob and then got married and this woman did a makeover on him and got him all these nice suits. He had an Armani suit. He gets held up and the [robber] tells him to get on the ground. He’s like: I can’t, this is Armani. Because he’s so afraid of his wife—that if he messed up the suit, she would be mad at him. The idea that you’re more worried about, in this case, it was his wife, than being shot—it reminded me of that old Jack Benny joke: “Your money or your life?” Then there’s the longest pause ever on radio . . . and he goes, “I’m thinking.” I liked the idea that you could be threatened with something so drastic, and something so stupid would mean more to you. So that was where that [scene] came from.

Mona May, costume designer: I think this is the most sophisticated and dressed-up that we see [Cher] in the film. . . . I think it again lent itself to the scene. It really was important when [the mugger] makes her go down [on the ground], that this is a very important designer. An international designer: somebody from Paris. Not just anything you get at the mall. . . . At the time, he was one of the top people working out of Paris.

It really was silk: sexy, but in a very Cher high school way, even though Alaïa—probably at the time, the dress was $2,500 or $3,000, which translates to $5,000 or more now.

Amy Heckerling: Mona made [the jacket]. So the dress was the Alaïa and the jacket was Mona.

Nina Paskowitz, lead hairstylist: I just love the palm fronds, all the feathers on her. We just wanted something fun and playful and up, but I don’t like hairdos that look done, so it’s very deconstructed at the same time.

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