Valley Girl / one sheet / USA

02.02.12

PosterPosterPosterPosterPoster
Title
Valley Girl
AKA
La ragazza di S. Diego [The girl from S. Diego] (Italy)
Year of Film
1983
Director
Martha Coolidge
Starring
Nicolas Cage, Deborah Foreman, Elizabeth Daily, Michael Bowen, Cameron Dye, Heidi Holicker, Michelle Meyrink, Tina Theberge, Lee Purcell
Origin of Film
USA
Genre(s) of Film
Comedy
Type of Poster
One sheet
Style of Poster
--
Origin of Poster
USA
Year of Poster
1983
Designer
Unknown
Artist
Birney Lettick
Size (inches)
27 1/16" x 41"
SS or DS
SS
NSS #
--
Tagline
She's cool. He's hot. She's from the Valley. He's not.

The directorial debut of Martha Coolidge and the first time Nicolas Coppola was credited as Nicolas CageValley Girl is a cult favourite in the US and was both a critical and box office success at the time of release. Loosely based on the Romeo and Juliet story (minus the tragic death) the film focuses on Julie (Deborah Foreman) a girl from the suburban, mall-filled San Fernando Valley who meets Randy (Cage) a punk from Hollywood and falls in love, much to the dismay of her shallow friends.

Valley Girl is actually a stereotype leveled at a certain class of American women who are described as colloquial speaking and materialistic. The San Fernando Valley is credited as the birthplace of this phenomenon thanks to its large number of commuter towns and middle-class suburban families. Valspeak is their unique derivation of Californian English, which was first brought to public consciousness through Frank Zappa’s collaboration with his daughter Moon Unit on the single Valley Girl. A bizarre video of Moon Unit performing the song on the TV show Solid Gold can be seen on YouTube.

Kevin Smith is a huge fan of the film and first began discussing it in Smodcast #152, in which he hilariously explained how Valley Girl had a profound effect on the way his understanding of love and relationships was formed. In the special Smoviola #1 Smith interviewed Martha Coolidge, Deborah Foreman and cinematographer Frederick Elmes to discover the story of how the film came to be.

The artwork on this poster is by the American illustrator Birney Lettick who worked on magazine covers, adverts and portraits as well as a number of movie posters. Lettick was a master at capturing star likenesses and the portrait of cage is spot-on. The artist sadly passed away in 1986. The other posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.

Notice that the Italian title for the film translates, rather bizarrely, as The Girl from San Diego.

The trailer for the film can be seen on YouTube.

Update – 25/03/2012
As Jeff points out in the comments the woman featured on the poster isn’t actually Deborah Foreman but is one of the background actresses. It’s not clear why this is the case.

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  1. Author
    Posted by J.
    Date Posted
    on 24 March 2012

    The girl isn’t Foreman. They used a background actress for the promo image, not sure why.

  2. Author
    Posted by eddie
    Date Posted
    on 25 March 2012

    Ah, good spot, thanks. It’s years since I’ve seen it and I didn’t twig. I’ve updated to reflect your comment. It’s very bizarre that they wouldn’t have used Foreman for the portrait. I’ve actually found this DVD cover where they did use her image: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3901920000/tt0086525