What Fame Means To Me By Liz Nimoy:
My name is Liz. I am
sixteen years old, and I have no idea how I would have made it through the past
few years of my life had I never discovered Fame.
For me, Fame has
always been something to identify with. Not that I’m extraordinarily talented
in any areas of the performing arts, though I do enjoy them. I’m a
less-than-graceful dancer, a forgetful actress. The only type of performing art
worth mentioning that I have participated in has been my singing. I’m a
mediocre guitarist, but I have a decent enough soprano voice that I have gotten
several awards for it. However, severe stage fright often keeps me from
indulging in much performance outside of my high school’s choir.
When I first
discovered Fame, it was the year 2009 and I was only fourteen years old. I’ll
never forget the night my mother came home from grocery shopping and handed me
the DVD, the original 1980 film. The idea of a school set especially apart for
kids talented in the performing arts fascinated me, and I fell in love before I
even put the DVD in the DVD player.
Goosebumps sparkled
over my body from beginning to end. At every clip, I was thinking, “That’s me.
That’s how I feel.” Doris’s stage fright and wavering, shy voice during her
audition brought me humbly back to my first voice test in chorus, to determine
whether my voice was alto or soprano. Another area of identification with Doris
was her crush on an upperclassman, Michael, often resulting in embarrassing
herself. If there’s one thing I’m guilty of, it’s of ending up hopelessly
smitten with an upperclassman that was kind to me, and embarrassing myself
later when I talk to him again. I did that when I was in the seventh grade, finally
scrounging up the courage to talk to my crush, who was a bit older than me, and
I always talked to him about the most unimportant, dumb things, or I’d take any
opportunity to talk to him. Later I’d always feel so embarrassed or stupid
about it.
While there were
other several small identifications, I cannot think of anything that I
indentified with more than Bruno Martelli. I’m no keyboard prodigy, nor am I
much of a composer, but nearly every word that came out of his mouth was
something I had once said myself. I recall a conversation between Bruno and
Angelo, his father, in the cab, that still brings eerie goosebumps to me
because it not only felt like a conversation I had had with my mother once, but
it felt like conflicting thoughts I have had in my own mind. I remember it
going a bit like this…
Bruno: Not my age,
nobody’s my age! Maybe I’m ahead of my time. Maybe I don’t think people will
like my stuff.
Angelo: Hey. How do
you know what people will like, huh? How do they know if they don’t hear it?
Bruno, how can they recognize your talent, give you scholarships, and record
contracts, son, and awards?
Bruno: Maybe they
don’t, maybe I die and get discovered and my ghost gets the Grammy.
It’s hard to
describe just how eerie this scene always is for me, because of how my mom has
always told me that I can’t afford to be so shy about sharing my musical work
with people if I want to be a performer at all, and how I don’t feel that my
music is the kind of thing people will want to hear, but then there’s that little
voice in my head that tells me, “Well, you know, if no one hears it…” Later,
when I started watching the TV series, I also felt a strong identification with
Bruno’s disgust with contemporary pop music and how its lyrics often hold very
little emotional meaning.
With this film, I
remember always being fascinated with the raw realism of it, how they
sugarcoated nothing and left almost no issues unaddressed. I felt that I had
been changed forever by those few hours.
A few short weeks
after seeing Fame for the first time, I had a very real experience that now
reminds me more of Fame than it did at the time. I had my second solo/ensemble
vocal contest, in which I had a solo to sing. I was very excited, and not
nervous in the least, because I had done one the previous year and scored a
perfect 1, which is the highest available score. However, I was almost late,
and my solo room was on the top floor, and I ran up the steps, in heels. I made
it to the performance room in just enough time, but I was panting for breath.
The judge told me to take my time catching my breath before I performed, but, I
only gave myself about a minute to catch my breath, feeling as if I was waiting
too long. So, I started my solo partially out of breath. The first verse went
well, and I remembered all the techniques Mr. O (nickname for my choir
director) had taught me. Then I waited through the piano’s part between verses,
and took a breath to come in, but the words didn’t come to me. I had forgotten
the entire second verse. My eyes widened and I brought my finger nervously to
my mouth and chewed at my fingernail, feeling my face turn bright red. My
accompanist even played the second verse intro twice waiting for me to come in,
and I didn’t, until the pick-up for the last verse, which went fine, but I was
absolutely mortified.
The judge spoke to
me afterward, which he technically wasn’t supposed to, to calm me down, because
I was very rattled over the whole deal, and didn’t even want to return later to
sing in my group ensemble. My parents took me out of the building to talk with
me, calm me down, convince me it was no big deal. Once I had calmed down a
little, I began to relate my situation to Fame, remembering the beginning scene
where Montgomery forgets the rest of his monologue. I also recall Ralph
screwing up his stand-up act near the end of the movie, and what Montgomery
told him, about how performers will always have tough breaks and that life goes
on and there are always other chances. This encouraged me to go back to the
building for my ensemble, which, I am proud to say, scored a 1, which, despite
my faux pas, so did my solo.
When I started to
watch the Fame TV series, just this past fall, around September or October
2011, by chance of finding the DVDs at a local general store, I fell in love
with Fame all over again. Sure, there were different characters and some of the
characters I had grown to adore in the movie (like Ralph Garci) were either not
there at all anymore or weren’t important, but it still held the same messages
and still had what was most important for me, Bruno Martelli. As silly as it
may sound, he was one of my main reasons for watching it, because I got such a
kick out of his character.
For me, Fame is a
place to feel at home, to feel like I could identify with someone, even if that
someone wasn’t someone I knew personally.
