Tonight, an 80's all over exclusive interview with the star of Valley Girl, better off dead and be ways big adventure. EG Daily, and now your host's Truma Weedy and Scott Weinberg. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another very special Patreon on bonus episode of 80s all over. My name is Drew McQueenie. And I am Scott Weinberg, the co-host of the show. Thank you so much for joining us. It is a genuine pleasure to have Liz with daily, eG daily with us. You probably know her best, depending on which era you are from, either as a live action mainstay in the 80s or as the voice of your childhood. So it is gonna be a delightful conversation. Thank you for joining us today. Oh, my pleasure. Nice to talk to you. For somebody my age, I was 10 and 1980. So I always think you look at the the group of people that has about five or 10 years older, you know, that's the aspirational age for you. So these high school movies in the 80s, my god, it was like programming for me. Like it just was such an aspirational and interesting thing. And in particular, seeing L.A. I think of Valley Girl when I think of L.A first. And when I moved to Los Angeles, man did it feel like Valley Girl. And that film in particular has an authenticity. It feels like it is what it felt like at that moment. Yeah, I think it really was. It really was. If there was the grungy scene and then there were the Valley Girl kids, and it definitely has a feeling a feeling about it LA and the valley there's definitely feeling about it Martha Coolidge has such a great sense of not just the young cast but the adults in that film are so well played can you talk about her as a filmmaker because I love Coolidge's voice and I think she was great with ensembles she always feels like she makes room for the actors well she's definitely an actors director. I think she was really heavily into myzner technique. A lot of the actors she worked with were really skilled actors. She was very intuitive as an actors director. Very deep connected woman. Like she wasn't a very shallow kind of lady anyway. She was very deep. And so I think she had a real big heart for all of those characters and Valley girl, as well as the vision for that movie. I mean, although none of us knew it was going to blow up like it did. And I, but I think she was just being led by something because her instincts were so good as far as like everything, as far as the way she went about casting. And we were all just like local people who walked in that office and read and she sort of matched this up and she took a risk with Nick Cage. She had a real feeling about him which was really incredible because he was so interesting and I think she just was a very strong woman and didn't allow a lot of people to discourage her from her vision which is why that movie came out so well and she said like putting together that soundtrack, you know, that soundtrack gets like monumental. Oh, it's the best. Yeah, it's the money. I'm actually going to sing a million miles away at the whiskey next Tuesday. They do like a all-star jam night. And they were like, oh, come and sing, you know, a song at the, but it songs from movies. And I picked a million miles away because I've always just thought that song was so incredible from that perspective. So again, that's all just more credit to Martha Cool as for being such a brilliant lady and listening to her instincts about what was gonna work versus what everybody was trying to make her do. She just followed herself and that's why I think it was such a success. What it joy it is to watch through the eighties and see how many cult movies an actor from the eighties would be happy to be in two or three uh... of these films that are still beloved and it must feel great that you can look at your list and say street to fire people still of it fandango definite loyal following valley girl better off dead p.u.e. of course you had good taste in scripts. Ha ha. To be honest a lot of it was just people were offering things to me and I just wanted to be busy working. You know a lot of it was I just people knew how to cast me and people would call me and to say you want to do this role, you want to do that role or once in a while I would reach for them but I think I was just really down for working. I mean, I like doing what I do and I enjoy doing different characters. And so for me, it really wasn't that I had great dates and scripts. It was really just that I was rolling with the punches. I also think you managed to not get boxed in the way a lot of young actors very quickly get put into, you can do this or you can do that. And I think you were cast in a wide range of young roles. So it was never, she plays only this. Yeah, that to me was something I never really had a lot of desire to be was this one note, Sally. I mean, I love doing characters. I love changing my looks and changing my voice and changing my wardrobe. And to me, that is like the magic of the whole thing is just changing everything up and getting to be somebody different and far different than who I am every day. And so my life is just so much more interesting because I've gotten to live like the these time caps of two from people and like recently I did do the Rob Zombie sex head and candy from Devil's Rejects but both of those movies the characters were very specific and Rob had very specific like wardrobe for me and and style they were very stylized and to me like looking at photographs and thinking, oh my god, I get to live in a different realm all the time. I get to go live in different time capsules And then I have them documented and it's just it's really a blast for me One of the things that this show does we the regular episodes we review every film from the decade We are literally month by month going by going by talking about everything. For me, I felt like I had seen most of it the first time, but there's definitely stuff I'm discovering and things that I hope people will pick up and see again that they maybe didn't see the first time or didn't know about. One of the ones that I really love that we saw on the show and reviewed was ladies and gentlemen the fabulous stains. Man does that film hold up?

That's funny because I, again, I don't know how many people got to see that movie.

That was in a very, very iconic hip-hop film.

Yeah.

It was in a little film.

It was a big film.

And then it had like, I think I remember being in Canada, filming that movie with Laura

Darn, who was probably only 14 or 15, and Diane Lane, who again was also around the same age. And you know, the plimps, I think it was Paul Cook and Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols. And I mean, it was like there we were in Canada filming this strange as movie that was so hip as far as like they were really going for the punk thing and gung-tair and I mean it was such a hip movie and again I don't know how many people got to see that film either I just know that it was a really cool experience and at the time it was like I was on a roll of just going for movie to movie but that one really stood out as far as experiencing that period in that movie. I discovered punk because of repo man. That was the film that kind of turned me on to, oh, this is happening out there, okay? I was living in I think Tampa at the time and a lot of these movies, the reason they are so beloved or they hold such a really strong spot in people's hearts is because they were our connection to things that somewhere else in the country you didn't have a connection to and fabulous stains it still feels very hip and has an attitude that feels fresh. I think that's a really timeless movie. Yeah, it really is and it's also like coming back like now you're starting to see a lot of the, you know, I just went to a club that was, it was bizarre, but it was like, oh my god, it's all just coming right back.

You know, my family was, we're now, my mom owned the anti club, which is a really popular punk club in the 80s. And we had that band's like Black Flag and X-E-N. And, you know, it was a very We have time period and we ran this little club that my sister booked the bands for and

I sang it occasionally and occasionally like celebrity bar tended and you know it was a very hip scene so it's kind of been that whole period was kind of in my blood with my family too. Well it's and then I look at fabulous stains, which is not as well known as I wish

it was, but Diane Lane in that, oh my God, super iconic and just attitude despair, like she really owns that stage, which brings us to streets of fire, which that had to be a crazy experience. I've heard about what the universe a lot was like and then covering it to turn it in night and, you know Walter Hill, I'm fascinated by just as an artist on his own.

Let's talk about... I've heard about what the universe a lot was like and then covering it to turn it in night and you know Walter Hill

I'm fascinated by just as an artist on his own

Let's talk about that experience because that sounds like it was a wild set to even be on that was actually a very massive project and Walter Hill

Was really known for these kind of action-packed kind of man, you know movies

You know or this kind of like that. I don't know it was action-packed, it was just, there was something about what Walter did that really. It's swagger. Yeah, it's to that movie. And I actually think I passed on that movie at first. They had wanted me to do that little role of Baby Doll. And I kind of was in this mode of like, I don't want to do that. I want to do something more significant. I want to do I want my character to matter more

I don't want to just be a little butterfly flitting around doing nothing in this movie. They said, no, no, no, she's going to be, we're going to have her through out and they would all end up being they expanded it and and they actually brought in a little thing for me because of that. They wrote in that whole little scene where I talked about songwriting and that that whole thing was just a little piece. They added into that movie because I had talked to Walter Hill and Joel Silver, the producer. And I was like, I don't want to be just a body in a scene. Like, I don't want that. And I thought I was going to have fired actually because I was in a place in my, in the movies that I had done where I really mattered to me that I was doing things that mattered and that I wasn't just like the boobs number three in that scene or you know the blonde in that scene. I didn't want to do any of that and so they, I thought I was going to get fired from that movie. I was quite nervous actually and, and quite the opposite. They were like go in your trailer and I walked in my trailer and was some sides there, and they had added this little scene that meant a lot to me.

You know, it meant a lot to me.

It was something I could connect to, and I got to have this little scene with Diane. That was special. And I already had a friendship with Diane from doing fabulous things. So I'd known her for so many years, and then we went back and did that movie. And then the other thing that was really interesting

about Streets of Fire was I booked another movie right

while I was on contract for Streets of Fire

because Streets of Fire went on for a long time. It was months and months and months and then I had booked a movie called Fandango with Kevin Costner, I think. And that was one of his first big movies. And then they were grace enough to let me leave while I was under contract for that movie

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