Besides Donna Summer, the raver girl was my favorite part of this movie. I was so surprised! She was a genuine raver, and to a somewhat lesser extent, a candy-kid. And absolutely hilarious. I had no idea ravers were borne from the disco era, but maybe I just watched 24-hour Party People too much.
That character was way ahead of her time.
A great singer.
sharePeople have been swallowing drugs and attending dance clubs for like 40 years now!
shareThere's a little bit of history being seen here though. I am speaking specifically, not arbitrarily. A film made in the disco era where ravers are beginning to emerge, and portrayed accurately and without explanation. I am aware that people have been swallowing drugs and going to dance clubs for, well, perhaps like hundreds of years now (think tribes on psilocybin...) However, the dance club patrons specific looks have changed. Namely, the 60s clubbers don't look the same as those of the 80s, 2000s, etc. The look evolves, incorporating whatever is in (with disco it was glitter, flash, with the 80s it was cyberpunk, and now steampunk, but the root is always rave...well it's really swesome to see one of the first portrayals of today's rave and candy-kid culture in a film in an authentic way-- meaning, made in the time it takes place (unlike 24-Hour Party People, Better Living through Chemistry, Go, etc). Everyone knows about disco, but what makes this film exceptional for me was that it accurately showed the *other* clubbers of that time, if only as tokens... Punk was taking hold, along with new wave, and both were stifling disco, and house music has it's roots in disco, and ravers and candy kids have their roots in the happier areas of music, like house and disco.
That character was full on raver girl to the max, and funny, but she wasn't with a posse or anything. Eerily similar to the first time I saw a raver. I was at a posh club in Miami, I saw her, and thought "What the heck is that?". That was late 90s, and then I move to the West coast in the late 90s and boom, candy kids and ravers were exploding everywhere, adorning you with light-shows and beaded elastic bracelets, and looking exactly like the raver in a movie that was over 20 years old. And this is before the beginning of BM, or the (supposed) death of disco, and also countless electronic music festivals. Truthfully, if the movie were made in the UK I wouldn't be surprised, but it's Americana.
And when it came to rave patrons, the cinema and film of the 70s era never showed them, so I was a) unaware they existed until the mid-late 80s, and b) pretty happy to see one in Thank God It's Friday, looking exactly like her counterparts today, who are on average 15-20 years old, not old enough to have seen this film for the most part.
What character are you talking about?
shareFrom what I can garner, I believe it was the character "Jackie", but it's been so long that I don't remember her name in the film. Wikipedia describes her as "Jackie (Mews Small) - dental hygienist by day, drugged-out disco freak by night." Sounds about right.
shareI agree that the character was way ahead of her time, but I wonder how likely you would be to find such a person in discos in 1978. I suspect she was more a creation of the filmmakers, and the character turned out to be prophetic.
Certainly discos attracted all kinds of colorful characters in the late '70s -- visionaries as well as wannabes, and there were probably a few young people who wore Day-Glo wigs and elastic bracelets while popping various pharmaceuticals, but the fact that there's only one in this film suggests to me this is license on the part of the filmmakers. The club kids tended to hang out in a pack, didn't they? Similarly, the "leather man" appeared to be wearing brown suede, which doesn't strike me as authentic.
I'm a bit too young to have experienced the scene firsthand, but I think the filmmakers just happened to predict a trend here, and what a prediction it was! But I'm willing to be proved wrong if someone who went to clubs in the late '70s can weigh in.
This movie was actually fairly accurate. I started going to Odyssey Disco in June 1979. It was down the street from where this was filmed. The crowds at Odyssey were very similar.
I actually had a couple of friends who were dancers and extras in TGIF. At Odyssey you would see upscale older well dressed people, young punks, Disco heads you name it, it was very diverse. This movie stood out for me for the diversity of the crowd. It is really sad they tore down that building, it was a mid century masterpiece. Especially considering the god awful ugly building that replaced it.
Thanks for your recollections. I'm glad to hear that this film wasn't just Hollywood fiction. The music was a true equalizer in those days, and it seems like society is just too segmented now to accommodate such a diverse mixture of colorful characters under one roof.
I wonder: Did Odyssey of "Native New Yorker" fame ever play at Odyssey?
Also want to add that out of Techno emerged the more soothing sounds of Trance and Chill which sparked a fusion with ambient (New Age) music because of the meditative similarities.
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It wasn't called raving in the seventies, but yeah raving was born from the underground parties held at late night Disco clubs.
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She's awesome
shareI just watched this movie for the first time. Jackie is in the set up montage in her dental office at work in her hygienist uniform. It's quittin' time and she pulls the red wig out of the cupboard, puts it on in the mirror, and takes a hit of gas off of the mask. When we see her again she's at the disco.
I've heard people talk about Studio 54 and other big discos who say that the best part of it all was the diversity of the crowd. The ages, classes, races, gay, straight, everybody was accepted. One of the characters, the young woman who is with the clumsy lady, even says that you can be anything or look any way in a disco.