Kevin Tancharoen, the 25-year-old director behind the recently released remake of "Fame," wasn't even born when Alan Parker's original film stormed theaters back in 1980 and became part of the cultural conversation.
The movie, about a group of down and dirty kids struggling to make it in New York's High School for the Performing Art, was the original anti-"High School Musical." It wallowed in the grittiness of a pre-Giuliani New York, back when talented kids still dreamed of honing their craft and hoofing it on Broadway, rather than just becoming an instant YouTube celebrity. These kids faced the social ills of the day, and yet boogied resolutely to Irene Cara singing: "Fame! I wanna live forever!"
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday, October 02, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 36 words Type of Material: Correction
"Fame": An article in last Saturday's Calendar about "Fame" director Kevin Tancharoen referred to the '90s hip-hop group Kris Kross as Criss Cross. In the same story, the Swedish pop group A*Teens was misidentified as A-Teens.
So when Tancharoen was called in to discuss a remake with producer Gary Lucchesi, "My initial gut reaction was a little violent," he says. "I loved the first one a lot. I had put it on a pedestal as one of the only raw, gritty looks into being a performer. It reflected the '80s, and it was a movie that I watched almost every year."
Still, Tancharoen was intrigued with the idea of updating "Fame," telling Lucchesi he didn't envision an exact replica. "Coco, Leroy, Bruno, Ralph, you cannot cast them again," he says, reeling off the names of the first film's main characters. "If you recast them, you will already have people who hate it, and I know there will be haters no matter what. You can, however, take the original idea and core message and integrity and play it to 2009."
Just a Valley guy
On a recent afternoon just days before the release of his movie, Tancharoen was camped out in a Starbucks near his longtime home in Van Nuys, where he grew up with his mom, an artist, and his dad, a transportation coordinator for movies. Dressed in jeans, a gray, long-sleeve T-shirt and spectacles, the low-key Tancharoen could pass for a regular Valley native. In fact, he's been working in the entertainment business for more than a decade, as a dancer, choreographer, remix master, videographer and reality-show creator. At 14, he went on Britney Spears' "Oops! . . . I Did It Again" tour as a dancer for the opening act, the Swedish A-Teens. By 17, he was directing Spears' racy "Onyx Hotel" tour, as well the tour videos, and choreographing Spears' romp with Madonna in the "Me Against the Music" video.
