theironcupcake’s review published on Letterboxd:
A lot of people must have a lot of reasons for watching Fame, the popular dramatization of students' lives and loves at Manhattan's High School of the Performing Arts - though technically also incorporating elements of its sister school, the High School of Music & Art - which were eventually combined into one institution, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, in 1984. For me specifically, though, I had to spend the morning of June 3 in a particular, special way: watching the film for the brief appearances of its orchestral conductor, Jonathan Strasser.
Let me backtrack for a minute: I spent a significant chunk of my early life playing the violin, from ages five to twenty. Though I was always pretty hard on myself, measuring my abilities and achievements against the other kids around me who seemed much more gifted - certainly they were more driven, considering how much less time and effort I put in by comparison as I grew older - I had to had some talent, or else I never would have been able to keep up with ensembles that played at Lincoln Center and Symphony Space on numerous occasions. My three years spent with the extracurricular InterSchool Orchestras group, or ISO, from eighth through tenth grade (2005-2008) were formative, giving me opportunities to associate with both performers and faculty who demanded the best and often got it, though none more so than the organization's music director, Jonathan Strasser. He was certainly the finest conductor I ever worked with, energetic and a little on the mercurial side, but funny, so funny. I think most of us students were intimidated by Mr. Strasser; not afraid, because he was obviously a wonderful person who encouraged students to push themselves to reach potential he knew they had, but more that there is probably an instinct in all young musicians to want to impress a teacher who represents the pinnacle of artistic understanding, a mastery of every instrument (though especially the violin), creative nuance and how all those moving parts should unify.
I got into LaGuardia when I auditioned in 2005, but I ended up going to a nearer Brooklyn high school instead - and not one invested in caring about the arts, might I add. Still, I had the ISO. As I finished my third year with them and my private instructor abruptly announced that he was getting married and moving to Philadelphia, I was suddenly left without a teacher for my lessons. Well, as it turned out, my mother had become good friends with Jonathan, who often sat in on the orchestra's rehearsals and talked to Mom while watching from the auditorium seats, so I was given the most incredible opportunity: violin lessons with Jonathan Strasser himself for the next four years, until I reached the difficult and painful point of deciding that I could no longer devote myself to the degree of commitment required to continue. At my best, though, I guess I have to admit I wasn't too bad, so I really have Mr. Strasser to thank for that, more than anyone else. I may never again be as technically proficient as I was at seventeen - to my great chagrin, I found that I'd essentially forgotten how to read music when I last tried a few years ago, though I had much less trouble with the general mechanics of playing itself since my ear for music and muscle memory regarding fingering/positions are still fine - but at least I can say I reached a decent peak, once upon a time.
Jonathan Strasser was born 75 years ago today, so it felt right to celebrate the occasion by finally watching his extremely small but (at least for me) entertaining role as the Fame school's conductor, a part he was cast in because that was, in fact, his job at Music & Art for over three decades. As for the movie itself? Yeah, it's not great. I already loved Irene Cara and Michael Gore's Oscar-winning title song, but the narrative is far too epic in scope for the 134-minute runtime. There's just no way to fit so many characters into a screenplay that covers an entire four-year high school experience - MVP Barry Miller! What ever became of his career? - while Gene Anthony Ray, Lee Curreri and the last thread of Irene Cara's subplot (we never find out what happened with her directly after that horribly exploitative not-audition!) seemed particularly shortchanged. (Some of the film's same actors/characters also star in the Fame TV series, which I suppose must expand their stories.) I was never bored, though, considering how much is happening onscreen at any given moment.
Mr. Strasser passed away from cancer four years ago. I miss taking the B train to the 81st St/Museum of Natural History stop, having my weekly lessons in his rent-controlled apartment (he'd moved in back in the mid-60s) just off of Central Park West. I think of the exposed brick walls in his living room, the paintings, the rooftop garden, that the only TV show he ever watched was Judge Judy, his struggles with vertigo (always conducting with a protective barrier at the edge of a high stage; realizing after climbing a mountain in South America that he could only descend by literally scooting on his behind the whole way down), the day that he gave me a book about migraines that he bought after I told him that I'd begun to suffer from them, listening to stories about his younger brother Conrad (who was always described as the real musical genius in the family) and growing up in the Bronx.
Rereading the first paragraph of this New York Times profile from 1999 is so striking because it articulates exactly what those mornings in the brownstone were like to me: "Jonathan Strasser, music director of the InterSchool Orchestras, conductor of many a school orchestra (that was him playing himself as the wildly enthusiastic conductor at the High School of the Performing Arts in the movie Fame) speaks with such velocity and intensity that finally one collapses on the sofa of his art-filled duplex as if hit by a hurricane, begging for a break, or at least a slowdown, from the storm of words." Just about every conversation we had was like that, pitched at that level of joie de vivre. Watching Alan Parker's film doesn't show 99.999% of the world what it was like to know Jonathan Strasser, but there he is immortalized forevermore, conducting with gusto, the last image you see before the sharp cut to the end credits. How could I ask for anything better today?