It’s the end of another tough week, so let’s exhale and escape to a world where what qualifies as a “big problem” is a missing white collarless shirt from Fred Segal. Welcome to the Clueless Friday Night Movie Club.

I’m your host, Jen Chaney ( @chaneyj). As we watch this teen classic, I’ll sprinkle in some fun facts and observations about various scenes, all of which (and more) can be found in my (here comes the plug) book As If: The Oral History of Clueless.

Ugh, I feel sad now every time I hear this Muffs cover of Kids in America. RIP, Kim Shattuck. I spoke to her for the book and she was really cool.

This all definitely looks way normal, don't you think?

The plaid ensemble, which is one of the most instantly recognizable movie costumes ever, IMO, is a Jean-Paul Gaultier. Costume designer Mona May said it was one of the few splurges in her budget.

I’d like to note how hard it was for Amy Heckerling to find a studio willing to make this movie. She shopped it all over the place. At one point, she was told that she should make it more about the guys and less female-focused. #AsIf

I love the note, “Make it less about the girl,” when it’s an adaptation of freakin’ Emma.

I love that this is the response to "Make it less about the girl" -- Cher shoving a dude out of the frame.

I think this is a widely known fact, but maybe not: the mispronunciation of Haitians was a Silverstone flub. Amy Heckerling decided not to correct her because it was funnier.

It really doesn't say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty.

That painting of Cher’s mom was painted by Victor Rinaldo, who went to high school with Heckerling. He created it using a picture of Alicia Silverstone as his guide. Last I heard, the piece was being stored in Amy’s garage.

Oh, look, it's young Paul Rudd, the same as old Paul Rudd.

The Amnesty International shirt he is wearing in this scene was Rudd’s actual shirt. He told me he wore a lot of his own clothes in the movie.

I’ve told this story on Twitter before, but I’ll tell a brief version again: Paul Rudd was going to be really hard to get for my book because a. He’s Paul Rudd, b. He was about to star in Ant-Man, c. His publicists were being extra-protective at that time.

He got wind that I was having trouble, and asked someone on his team to get my number. I gave it to this person and asked in an email, “Wait, is he calling me, like, today?” Didn’t get a response.

A few days later -- I remember it was Valentine’s Day and also a Saturday -- he called me and said, Hey, I want to help you. Let’s talk. After I took five minutes to get my notes together, he called back and we talked for almost two hours.

My husband does not get all goofy about celebs. But he was beside himself when he realized he had picked up the phone, spoken unknowingly to Paul Rudd and then handed it to me.

“Can you ask him about Anchorman? And Wet Hot American Summer?” No, I cannot! I’m just talking to him about Clueless.

Anyway, the point is: Paul Rudd is just as nice and down-to-Earth as you would expect and I am eternally grateful to him for being such a mensch and reaching out when he totally did not have to.

Let’s talk casting. In the time that Clueless was at Fox (which dropped it) and then Paramount, a TON of famous names were in the mix to play the main characters. Reese Witherspoon, Jeremy Renner (for Travis), Ben Affleck (for Josh), Lauryn Hill (for Dionne) and on and on.

My favorite piece of casting trivia is that Amy was at one point considering Dave Chappelle for Murray. Donald Faison is perfect, so it’s hard to imagine. But it would be fun to see an alt version with Chappelle doing this:

I don't know about you all, but I think this movie is excellently cast. As good as the other possibilities are, it's impossible to imagine anyone else in these roles.

Why is Cher’s last name Horowitz? It’s because Wallace Shawn improvised that name during the scene we just watched. You may notice that Cher’s report card says Cher Hamilton.

Hamilton was the name Amy gave the props department for the purposes of creating the report card. She didn’t have a last name for Cher, so she went with the last name of Brad & Stacey in her other teen classic, Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Yeah, maybe Marky Mark does want to use his celebrity for a good cause.

Not every line in this movie is quoteable, including the r-word Cher just dropped.

Elton needs to chill. Also: how does Cher *not* get that he's into her?

Oh. Right. She's Clueless.

The principal who introduced Tai? The real Mr. Hall, as in the man who inspired the name. He taught at Beverly Hills High and is a super-nice guy.

Silverstone's delivery of "Yeah, this is America" kills me every time.

Doesn't it break your heart a little every time you see Brittany Murphy? She's so charming in this and I wish she were still here, doing more work.

I mean, look at her.

Be honest: who learned the word sporadically from this movie?

Paul Rudd is about to make a sandwich in a moment. Watch closely, and we’ll discuss in the next tweet.

Rudd told me this: “I hate condiments. I can't stand mayonnaise or ketchup. So when I had to go in and make a sandwich ... I think I put mayonnaisse right on the turkey and not on the bread. That's the kind of thing that will bother me now for years.”

BTW, if you’ve never done it, I strongly recommend reading or re-reading Emma, then watching Clueless immediately so you can notice all the ways Heckerling riffs on it. Was one of my favorite parts of writing my book.

The Val party, which is coming up, is one of my favorite twists on what Austen did.

The Val Party! I first wrote about this all the way back in 2013, for this very website. Did you know that 2013 was actually a century ago? It’s actually true! https://www.vulture.com/2013/12/clueless-party-scene-oral-history-alicia-silverstone.html

The guy in the Cat in the Hat hat that was just dancing with Amber? That is Sean Holland, and he'll be shaving Murray's head momentarily. ( @donald_faison pointed that out to me.)

Sean Holland is literally in two places at once at this party. He's amazing.

In case you were wondering, and I am sure that you were, the dress Cher is wearing is really an Alaia. The jacket she wears over it at first was made by the brilliant Mona May and her costume team.

Fun story: the couple in the background, making out in the pool? They were extras that Amy chose and asked to do that. She told me she ran into them years later, on Melrose Ave., and they were engaged.

“I don’t know how that marriage worked out, but it was really sweet,” she said. I love that story and I hope they are still married.

The color in the Val Party scene is so beautiful. Heckerling and her DP, Bill Pope, basically a genius, established a different color palette for each season the movie depicts. The holidays are very red-heavy, and the costumes complement that, too.

A story about the mugger in this scene. He was originally supposed to be played by James Russo, the same actor who sticks up the 7/11 in Fast Times. For some reason he couldn’t make it to set on time.

He was replaced at the absolute 11th hour by Jace Alexander. Scott Rudin asked Jaceif he could get to Circus Liquor right away because they were going to shoot it in two hours. Jace happened to be a half mile away, by coincidence.

Obviously he did it. Want to know how much he was paid? $10,000. He said it paid for his second year of film school. As I note in the book, 10K is how much Marcia Ross, the casting director, was paid to cast the whole damn movie.

Marcia said she got a $5K bonus on top of that, but that’s still a pittance for all the work she put in and what a great job she did of casting this movie. The pay gap was real, and is real.

Has anyone ever said fecund in a sentence? Like, out loud?

The masseuse? That's costume designer Mona May!

I watched this with a reporter who was writing a piece about my book and she asked me who Luke Perry was and then I went into my backyard, dug my own grave, and buried myself in it.

Ugh, that's another RIP.

I swear, I had an instant crush on every guy in this movie.

This is all very good romantic advice that Cher is providing, take notes, everyone.

The hair clip in Cher's hair was used, years later, on Amanda Bynes in She's the Man. This has been another ... Clueless Fun Fact.

OK, so the Bosstones got very drunk while shooting this scene. They bought a big 'ol bottle of vodka and worked on it throughout the day. Watch the scene with this information in mind.

"Do you see how he's falling in love with me?"

Ummmmm...

The one adult at the party that Josh was talking to? That's the Clueless prop designer.

Yeah, that stage dive had "I'm kinda drunk" written all over it.

Gail, the stepmom on the phone, is none other than ... Amy Heckerling.

How could Josh *not* like Ren and Stimpy?

Sporadicus.

So Dionne is on the highway: her fear of it is based, at least a little, on Heckerling's fear of driving on the highway. Woman's a New Yorker through and through.

You notice how, as in the previous scene, Cher is wearing an empire waist dress? Those are sprinkled throughout the movie, a nod to the sort of dresses that would have been worn in Emma.

OMG, Snackwells. Do they still make those?

Cher's getting ready to take the driving test. I don't know about you all, but I think it's going to go really well!

As I recall, the actor who plays the drivers ed instructor -- apologies for not remembering his name rn -- had no idea they were going to actually hit that car.

His name is Ron Orbach, just to clarify.

With re: to the technology-related jokes: some of it doesn't play now the way it did in 1995. Like, a fireplace that turns on with a remote? That seemed ridiculous.

Same thing with having cellphones in school. Kids didn't have those. The idea was wild.

I can't speak for everyone but I loooove complaint rock.

"He's kind of a Baldwin."

What would be the equivalent now? "He's kind of a Chalamet?"

With all due respect to the people of Pismo Beach, I wish the Pismo Beach disaster was the biggest problem we had to deal with right now.

If more people had signed up at that Save the Earth booth, we would have solved climate change by now.

Oh shoot, I forgot to tell a good story earlier. The night before the Bosstones party, Paul Rudd was held up at gunpoint, which is so bizarre since it happens to Cher in the movie, too.

Obviously he was okay. If I remember right, he just got his backpack stolen. (He tells the story in more detail in my book.) But just the idea of Paul Rudd getting shot is something I do not like to think about.

I think they're gonna kiss, I think they're gonna kiss...

So here's another anecdote/quote from Mr. Rudd: "I remember my [then-]manager afterward, when it came out and everything, saying, 'Oh, you didn't kiss her right.' I remember him saying that. He goes, 'You should have grabbed her.'"

"For years," he said, "I was like, Oh, man. I kissed her wrong in that scene."

Quick survey: Did Josh kiss Cher wrong in that scene?

I can't believe the movie is already over. This was so much fun.

I hate to do a book promo at the end of this, but I guess I would be remiss if I didn't: if you liked the stories in this thread, check out "As If! "

And I'm on Twitter @chaneyj. Thanks again, everyone.