it seems strange to me. I think the movie wouldn't really have changed if he were just a family friend or something. I think the ex step siblings thing made their relationships a little weird(I know they were not related), for no reason.
shareIts not like they were blood relatives I think it was just fine. I guess it would have worked perfectly if Josh was a family friend like you said.
shareCher mentioned that her father was only married to his mother a short time.
I think part of it was to show another dimension to the father character. He was supposed to be a "scary, hard" type of guy. But he still allowed his former step-son to treat the house as his home. So how "bad" could he really be?
Clueless is a modern retelling of Emma by Jane Austen, and Josh is based on Mr. Knightley, who in the book is the brother of Emma's sister's husband (Confusing, yes. Basically their brother and sister married each other, so in some ways they are brother and sister-in-law). Because of this familial connection, Mr. Knightley is often at Emma's home, chatting with her father and annoying her with his judgmental commentary on her snobbery. It is definitely a weird take on it to make Josh her ex-stepbrother, as that is way weirder than simply being her brother-in-law by their siblings' marriage. But I think it was just a way to have Josh be close to her dad and "family" enough to hang out and sleep at her house without actually being any blood relation.
shareYeah, exactly. I posted about this topic a little while ago and will add what I put there, that having him be a close friend of the family would make it kind of obvious that they'd end up together in this type of movie. Emma kind of kept you guessing. Emma kept me guessing and I thought she'd end up with Frank Churchill for like most of the book.
shareI heard that Amy Heckerling was told by 20th Century Fox, who were initially going to distribute the film, to make Josh Cher's neighbor instead, because of obviously, having him be her ex-stepbrother/potential love interest was too squicky sounding.
shareThey had to find a way so that they could have him hang out around her house all the time without it being weird that he's there.
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