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If movies are based on something, it’s usually books, plays or magazine articles, but VALLEY GIRL was inspired by a song.

Although VALLEY’S inspiration was Frank & Moon Unit Zappa’s 1982 record “Valley Girl,” it wasn’t actually based on it because Zappa wouldn’t let a teen exploitation film be made about his song’s valley girl craze. Zappa reportedly had already explored a Hollywood spin-off deal for  “Valley Girl” without getting anywhere.

When production began on the teen rom-com, directed by Martha Coolidge and co-written & co-produced by Wayne Crawford & Andrew Lane, Zappa sued to stop it, citing trademark infringement. That turned out to be a big mistake. VALLEY, which cost just $350,000 to produce, opened Apr. 29, 1983 and wound up doing a very profitable $17.3M in domestic theatres.

Zappa’s legal action made headlines. Daily Variety reported in January 1983 that his $100,000 lawsuit asked for an injunction to stop the movie’s release. The trade paper said Zappa was claiming, “false designation of origin, unfair competition, and dilution of trademark.” The song recorded by Zappa’s daughter, Moon Unit, was also a track on his 1982 album “Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch.”

Zappa’s lawsuit didn’t go well. An L.A. Times article in May 1983 said a court ruling against Zappa had determined “there would be no confusion in the public’s mind between the song and the film.”

What VALLEY actually was loosely based on was Shakespeare’s long in the public domain tragedy ROMEO AND JULIET. The movie’s star-crossed lovers are a Valley girl (Deborah Foreman) and a city punk (Nicolas Cage). This was the first film where the young actor had billing as Nicolas Cage rather than as Nicolas Coppola. His father, literature professor August Coppola, was the brother of Oscar winning director Francis Ford Coppola (THE GODFATHER).

What initially helped, but later hurt, Cage & Foreman’s onscreen relationship was that he started out with a serious crush on her. It became a problem later on when Cage & Foreman were dating and suddenly had to shoot a big breakup scene. After several bad takes, Martha Coolidge suggested Foreman try picturing a past boyfriend with whom she’d had a nasty breakup.

Coolidge really wasn’t an experienced director back then as VALLEY was her first “big” movie, after an obscure 1976 drama. To help get her cast ready for action, she had the great idea of sending them to high school in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley — a.k.a. ”The Valley” — so they could hear  teens talking in “Val Speak.”

Although many moviegoers thought the bustling VALLEY shopping mall where the kids hung out was the popular Sherman Oaks Galleria, those scenes were actually shot miles away in Torrance at the very non-Valley-like Del Amo Fashion Center.