Films are something that we all look towards for escapism – the action, the humour, the romance, the animation. Sometimes these can hold so much more meaning then just an image on a screen and create narratives and memories in our own lives. Welcome to the sister article to Music Memories where we take a look at some of these personal stories attached to films.

Film: American Pie
Original Release Date: 1999

It is a film that probably will be looked at now as sexist, politically incorrect and out of date but if you were a kid or a teen in the early noughties / late nineties, it was a film that was really part of that generation and led to lots of other films trying to follow it’s success.

It was a film at the time that everyone talked about – I only saw it for the first time on ITV when a handful of years after it was released as I was not aware of it until I went to high school in the early noughties. I found it a really random film. The comedy of the film was very on trend for that era – to me it sort of made me believe that American High School was exactly like that. Films like She’s All That etc also made me believe this was the way of high school in the USA . When you live in the UK and see this you always had a sense of jealously that school was not as crazy or as fun as theirs and it felt like you were missing out.

In 2010 I went to an American House party of an American college guy that I knew when I lived in New York. It had elements of these parties I had witnessed on the films – beer pong, all the guys deciding to do a naked mile around the neighbourhood (!). Even though there was elements of ‘wildness’ about it, the party was not as I had expected. Me and the only other English girl there were really bored and this came on really early that we ended up finding an empty room, putting on the television and spent the night watching Jackass.

The apple pie scene was definitely a big talking part across our school. The other one was Stifler’s mum and I am sure this brought on a lot of the mum jokes at school that guys would say about peoples mothers.

I think the film definitely filtered into our school culture at some points. One thing that stuck with me was the soundtrack – I listened to it a lot as it had so many great songs on it.

Facts about American Pie

• The line, “Say my name, bitch,” from the scene between Jason and Michelle was ad-libbed on the spot by Alyson Hannigan. The director and producer found it so amusing that it was kept in the final cut.
• Seann William Scott was paid $8,000 for this role as Steve Stifler, his first role in a feature-length film.
• Members of the California punk band Blink-182 are shown during the Internet broadcast scene. Their song “Mutt” is playing in the background.
• The official website referred to Jim’s Dad as Eugene, named after Eugene Levy himself. However, his name was revealed to be Noah in later installments.

Thank you again for all your support in reading and engaging with the website.

If you want to help support the website then you can! You can buy Holly a cup of tea (and a biscuit!)