John Hughes gets a lot of credit for creating the high school movie.

That is a complicated claim for many reasons, including that movies about high school did exist before the 1980s.

But the claim is also frustrating because Amy Heckerling wrote Fast Times at Ridgemont High in 1982, two years before 16 candles came out.

So even if we're talking about some kind of renaissance of high school movies in the 1980s,

that was led by Amy Heckerling.

And then, in 1995, Heckerling redefined the genre with her hit film Clueless, the movie we are covering today.

All of the other movies we are discussing in this mini-season happened because of Clueless.

This is not hyperbole. This is an industry fact.

You do not get Ten Things I Hate About You.

She's the Man. She's All That.

Easy A or Cruel Intentions without Clueless.

Those movies do not get Greenlit without Clueless's box office success.

The writers of Ten Things I Hate About You and She's the Man have directly cited Clueless as their inspiration.

The concept of pairing classic literature with a high school setting wouldn't have happened at all without Amy Tackling.

Clueless is based on the 1815 Jane Austen classic Emma.

High school is the new Regency era, with its social strata and ridiculous rules, and the cafeteria is now the drawing room.

Where you sit is monitored and judged closely.

Clueless stars Alicia Silverstone as Cher, the updated Emma,

and Paul Redd is given his screen debut as Josh, the updated Mr. Knightley.

Cher and Josh are ex-step siblings who are still thrown together a lot because Cher's dad, Mel, says,

You divorce wives, not children.

Cher also has a best friend, Dion, played by the great Stacey Dash, who doesn't have an exact

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