Can't Buy Me Love Behind The Scenes

I went to high school with Michael Swerdlick from 1971 to 1974. At least some of the characters in CBML seem to have been based on real people from our school. Cindy's character may even be based on an actual person of the same name.

"Can't Buy Me Love" was made under the working title of "Boy Rents Girl".

The movie producers donated the Tucson High School a $5,000 dance floor for the performing arts program and built a new athletic field for the school as payment for using it as a movie set.

The location manager for this movie, Anne McCaffrey, is the niece and namesake of author Anne McCaffrey, who wrote the "Dragons of Pern" series of books.

I was Patrick Dempsey's personal driver on the movie, it was my first job in movies. One thing I remember clearly was when we were shooting at Tucson High, it started to snow! It hadn't snowed in Tucson in about a decade, but there it was. Director Steve Rash, without losing a beat, said "let's shoot the Christmas scene." And that's what they did...

Patrick Dempsey obviously really enjoyed making the movie and has a great fondness for it. He has said, in interviews, that "when we were shooting it, no one expected it to do well. It turned out to be this hit cult classic. The first thing that people want me to do when they meet me is to break out into the "Ant Eater Ritual." But I never do. :)" He has also said many times over the years that the character he has identified most with in his career, was Ronald Miller. "The lesson that I learned and one that I think comes across in 'Cant Buy Me Love' is that what makes a person 'cool' is his inner strength, not the clothes he wears". CBML is also the movie he'd most like to make a sequel to... Interestingly, when asked whether he ever became romantically linked to anyone on the set of “Can't Buy Me Love”, he has replied "Ha... I have no comment on that one...."

Paula Abdul choreographed the movie's dance sequences. As she did on many other 80's classics including "Coming to America", "The Karate Kid part III" and "Big". She recently choreographed "American Beauty".

Know some good info about the making of Can't Buy Me Love?
Use our simple iRewind system to add it to this page in just a few clicks.

Click here to start...