British director Adrian Lyne made his feature debut with Foxes, an American coming-of-age drama, starring Jodie Foster.
The film also stars Scott Baio, Sally Kellerman, Randy Quaid, and Cherie Currie, in her acting debut.
Written by Gerald Ayres, it revolves around a group of teenage girls coming of age in suburban Los Angeles at the end of the disco era.
A group of four teenage girls in the San Fernando Valley have painful emotional troubles.
Deirdre is a disco queen who is fascinated by her sexuality, likes boys and has many relationship troubles.
Madge is unhappily overweight and upset that she is still a virgin.
Her parents are overprotective, and she has an annoying younger sister. Annie is a teenage runaway who drinks, uses drugs, and runs away from her abusive police officer father.
Jeanie feels she has to take care of them all, is fighting with her divorced mother who cycles through different boyfriends and is yearning for closer relationship with her distant father, a tour manager for the rock band Angel.
The girls believe school is a waste of time, their boyfriends are immature, and that they are alienated from the adults in their lives.
All four seem immersed in the decadence of the late 1970s. The only way for them to loosen up and forget the bad things in their lives is to party and have fun. Annie is the least responsible, while Jeanie is ready to grow up and wants to stop acting like a child.
Annie’s unstable behavior keeps everyone on edge, and finally leads to her death in an automobile accident.
Annie’s death brings changes for the rest of the girls. Madge marries Jay, older man who deflowered her; Deirdre no longer acts boy crazy; and Jeanie graduates from high school and is about to head off to college. After Madge and Jay’s wedding, Jeanie visits Annie’s grave and smokes a cigarette.
She muses that Annie wanted to be buried under a pear tree, “not in a box or anything”, so that each year her friends could come by, have a pear and say, “Annie’s tastin’ good this year, huh?”
The film was based on a script by Gerald Ayers, a producer of The Last Detail and Cisco Pike. He penned what would become Rich and Famous (George Cukor’s last film, 1981) before writing Foxes.
Ayers was intrigued by the question “what would happen if you dropped Louisa May Alcott into the San Fernando Valley today? She would have a different story to tell.” “It isn’t so much a duplication of the characters in Alcott as it is suggested by them,” said Ayers.
The film was Foster’s penultimate feature before taking sabbatical from acting to attend Yale University.
Foxes grossed $7.5 million in North America and earned a cult following.
Cast
Jodie Foster as Jeanie
Scott Baio as Brad
Randy Quaid as Jay Thompson
Sally Kellerman as Mary
Cherie Currie as Annie Mallick
Marilyn Kagan as Madge Axman
Kandice Stroh as Deirdre Tompkins
Lois Smith as Mrs. Axman
Roger Bowen as Counselor (Mr. Simmons)
Laura Dern as Debbie
Robert Romanus as Scott
Adam Faith as Bryan
