'I'm proud of its wonderful teens': Amy Heckerling on how Clueless revolutionised the high-school comedy

The Jane Austen-hits-LA comedy changed fashion, language and cinema. As it turns 30 and a new stage musical version opens, its writer and director discusses why it's so personal to her.

Back in 1995, Clueless offered a cheeky update of Jane Austen's Emma in a Los Angeles high school and, without even seeming to try, revolutionised how we dress and talk. Tartan and preppy chic are still huge (note the blazer and mini-skirt wore by Taylor Swift in London last August, or the pop star's yellow-and-black combo at an MTV awards do in September). Meanwhile, "As if!", the catchphrase of its heroine Cher, which originated as a piece of Californian slang, has become ubiquitous. Will you be spared the phrase in this article? As if!

Because the film is brightly coloured and revolves around teenage girls, some critics at the time undersold the sharpness of its satire, which targets (among other things) white, west coast privilege, the plastic surgery industry, celebrity do-gooding, taboos surrounding menstruation, the cruelly low wages of teachers, and the kind of Nietzsche-reading liberal male who feels compelled to grow a goatee. 

The popularity of Clueless triggered a rash of insouciantly smart high-school-meets-classic literature movies (including 10 Things I Hate About You, Cruel Intentions, and Easy A, to name but a few). Just as importantly, it started a trend for films and TV shows that focussed on friendships between teenage girls. Thanks not only to the script but also a flawless cast and tip-top soundtrack (so much Radiohead), audiences of all ages found themselves rooting for salty protagonists, Cher, Dionne and Tai, who dominate the proceedings in a way that hadn't been seen before in a mainstream US film. Yes, there's a rom-com element to the plot, but it's the tensions between the girls that generate the most heat. Cher's complex interactions with Dionne and Tai paved the way for Buffy and Willow's textured relationship in the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Also, not to be bitchy, but without Clueless there'd be no Mean Girls. And Olivia Wilde cited it as an inspiration for her riotous directing debut, Booksmart, itself a modern teen movie classic. 

Yet 70 year-old Amy Heckerling, the film's writer-director, claims she had no idea Clueless would be a hit. "Nobody is ever sure of that," she tells the BBC. "Well, maybe some people are sure of it. Not me." Nor does she know if a new West End musical based on the film, for which she wrote the book, will click with audiences; it is currently running in previews ahead of an opening night in March. What matters, she says, is that she enjoyed working on both projects. She says of the musical, "It will either work or it won't, but I'm loving doing it." As for the film, "I have to admit, on that shoot I was happier than I've ever been. There were no big prima donnas. It was the closest I've ever come to imagining a movie in my brain and seeing it unfold exactly how I imagined."

In the last three decades there's also been a three-season Clueless TV show, a book series, and another go at a stage musical, which premiered on Broadway in 2018. Still, it's the original film we keep coming back to and that Heckerling, Zooming from her home in New York, wants to discuss. 

As in Austen's 1815 novel, the plot revolves around a self-absorbed daddy's girl. Cher (Alicia Silverstone; putty-soft and irresistible) bombs around Beverly Hills with best-friend Dionne (Stacey Dash; poised), obsessed with matchmaking and make-overs. Cher is determined to "help" a new girl at school – dishevelled New Yorker Tai (Brittany Murphy; volcanically beguiling) – and proceeds to treat Tai like a toy. That is, until Tai fights back and Cher, her mind blown, realises that Tai is her equal. Which is where Heckerling veers off from Austen (whose heroine is ultimately horrified by her protege's "notions of self-consequence"). Here's the truth about Clueless. It's not as good as Emma. It's way better. 

Heckerling suspects that the film has such a loyal following (and keeps picking up new acolytes) because its "two princesses", Cher and Dionne, are so human: "They rag on each other like real friends do." She thinks it's stayed relevant because space is given to characters who "care about the environment", including Cher's ex-step-brother, Josh, (played by sexy goofball Paul Rudd) and Cher's Greenpeace-supporting teacher, Miss Geist (a delightfully frazzled but unbowed Twink Caplan). Heckerling says, "Having those people worry about stuff like that makes the audience relate to them. Well, that's what I've always assumed. I'm not a major activist, but I care about a lot of things." Heckerling is also proud of the film's many "wonderful" teens, some of them gay – like the closeted, blazingly charismatic Christian (Justin Walker) – others broke and scruffy, like lollygagging stoner Travis (Breckin Meyer). 

Born in the Bronx, to an often cash-strapped family, the pale and petite Heckerling has never felt like a top dog and happily acknowledges that her status as an outsider bled into Clueless's sly take on class conflict. She says that when she first went to California, to attend the American Film Institute, people made fun of how she talked. "They'd go, 'Amy, you want some [she adopts a cartoonish New York accent] quawfee?' Their attitude was like, 'You're talking some old-fashioned, lower-class, New York language. What planet are you from?'" On the one hand, it was wounding. On the other hand, she wanted to find a way to fight back: "I didn't feel like I wanted to change how I spoke or who I was."

That's when she started keeping a notebook of all the new words used by her fellow students and, in the years that followed, any socio-economic tribes she encountered. She says she was especially interested in the "very" words – technically known as adverbs of degree, such as 'totally', 'majorly' and 'way' – "because those 'very' words really define who you are, where you live and what year it is". Which, of course, came in super handy for Clueless. Via the film, Heckerling demonstrates her complete mastery of LA lingo. At the same time, she finds a way to do justice to her own clique, aka earthy New Yorkers.

Clueless immortalises a whole bunch of characters who use Big Apple vocabulary and/or talk with unapologetically broad New York accents; there's Tai, but also Christian, Cher's dad Mel (Dan Hedaya), and a driving examiner (Ron Orbach). Nor is it a coincidence that we're shown a hilarious clip of a "Bronx-y" Tony Curtis, looking most uncomfortable in Spartacus (or, in Cher-speak, "Sporadicus"). According to Heckerling, Curtis delivers his lines in the way he does (ie at a snail's pace) because he's trying to appear more "classy". It's a tactic she's tried herself. "When you feel kind of insecure about your accent, you try to talk more slowly, as though that will get the Bronx out of it." The subliminal message sent by Clueless: Don't try to hide who you are. Own it. 

Some fans, however, have long believed Heckerling has herself concealed something very important about the film, namely Cher's Jewish identity. It's hard to ignore Cher's Jewish surname (Horowitz), or the mezuzah (a piece of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah) on her family's front door. Yet, until now, Heckerling has been keen to shut down theories about Cher's ethnicity, pointing out that Cher's surname was originally meant to be Hamilton, and that Horowitz came from an ad lib by Wallace Shawn (as Cher's teacher). 

Heckerling is proud of her own Jewish roots, and as well as being in love with the Yiddish language (note Dionne's use of the word kvelling), she believes representation is incredibly important. So why, when it comes to Cher, does Heckerling not want to confirm what seems obvious? Whatever Heckerling's intentions when she was writing the script, the character we see in the film is coded as Jewish. If you know what to look for, it's as plain as, well, that mezuzah. Like someone preparing to put down heavy luggage, Heckerling sighs. "I didn't want to say Cher was Jewish," she explains, because "when you're Jewish, there's always some group that's going to be mad at you". Another sigh. "So you don't want to make a big thing of it." 

Heckerling claims that the most autobiographical scene in Clueless is the one in which Dionne (who, like Cher, has a somewhat kamikaze approach to driving) suddenly finds herself on the freeway and freaks out. Heckerling says that she identifies with the feeling of "not being a very secure driver and suddenly you're in this situation where cars that are very big are coming right up and honking loudly. You're afraid to change lanes, because your car doesn't have the power to zip in and out and it's very frightening. I would often accidentally find myself on the freeway, just screaming till the exit was there!"

The image of Heckerling in her puny car, screaming her head off, is a comical one, but also feels like an apt metaphor for this film-maker's relationship with Hollywood. Pre-and-post Clueless, she was often made to feel as if she didn't belong in the big league (studios were stingy about budgets; bigwigs tried to bury her projects; she was continually messed around when it came to distribution). Which is crazy. Heckerling is actually responsible for two all-time classic films – her 1982 debut, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, launched the careers of Sean Penn and Jennifer Jason Leigh and successfully tackled taboo topics like teen abortion. On top of that, Heckerling created the massively successful franchise, Look Who's Talking (inspired by her own daughter, Mollie). The good news is that Clueless, an iconic juggernaut if ever there was one, has allowed Heckerling to keep going. Here she is, 30 years later, still holding her ground and her nerve. 

She has plenty of projects in the pipeline. She and Mollie have written a script for Look Who's Talking 4 and are now waiting for feedback. She's also researching a historical Jewish figure ("I've made a million notes"). And she would kill to work with Benedict Cumberbatch. Like her own, dearly departed mother ("the original Cumberbitch!"), Heckerling "worships" the British actor. "Whenever I'm feeling crummy I'll put on Sherlock, or the Richard III he did for The Hollow Crown [BBC series of Shakespeare history plays]," she says. "I can't stand being in the sun. Or the desert. But if he said, 'Let's do a Lawrence of Arabia remake,' I'd be there."

Serious money has been pumped into the new West End musical. In London, you can't miss the posters, which show Cher, hands on hips, in her yellow tartan suit. Heckerling is pleased with the show because it "doesn't feel like a different animal" to the film. "Some characters have a little more presence than others but, if you like the film, I think you'll feel the show is telling essentially the same story". Scottish-singer songwriter KT Tunstall, known for hits like Suddenly I See, did the score, while Glenn Slater came up with the lyrics, and their idea has been to create songs that together sound like a 90s mixtape, aping the sound of era-defining acts from Radiohead to Green Day to NSYNC. Heckerling says that she and Slater spent a lot of time working together. "Me and Glenn would go through the lyrics, with me telling him what the characters were feeling. I'd sometimes tell him, 'Woah, she wouldn't say this!' and changes were made. But, basically, I was so pleased with what he was doing." 

She's all too aware that theatre is a different medium. "In films, you get to do close-ups of people, you can get into their brains. In a musical comedy, the characters have to reach the last person in the audience with a song. Hopefully people will like the songs."

The interview is almost over. So much has changed, Heckerling confides, since she made the 1995 film. She's concerned, these days, about censorship and surveillance, "I'm worried about how much trouble you can get in to right now. It seems like Big Brother is watching everything you do." She calls out, mischievously, "Hi Big Brother! We're just talking about a silly film!" 

Memories of those "wonderful" days on the Clueless set spur her on. She says that many of her friends aren't working and "don't even want to be working". She tuts with amazement. "It seems very strange to me. I can't imagine not wanting to…" She searches for the right word, keen as ever to avoid sounding presumptuous or highfalutin. She says, "I will always want to be creating. That's why you're alive, right?"

Clueless, The Musical is London's Trafalgar Theatre until 27 September 2025.

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