Joe Roth, who ended up becoming president of 20th Century Fox, he was the producer of Our Winning Season. This was one of his first movies. It's just a really great, great little film, a lot of good people in it. I don't know whatever happened to that movie, and why it didn't get the success it deserves.
P. J. SolesThe Ramones were a great bunch of guys. They were very quiet, very shy. They were a little in awe of the filmmaking process, probably because we started at 7 a.m. I do remember the very first day of shooting, I met them and did the scene in the bedroom where Joey sings to me, and they were all scattered around my bedroom in my little fantasy scene. That was the first scene we shot of the movie. That scene is kind of a strange way to start a movie. "Okay, get undressed, and these weird guys in leather jackets and ripped jeans are going to sing to you."
P. J. SolesCarrie was a pretty big-budget movie at a real studio, with a director that had already done a bunch of things and had some notoriety, and Stephen King was the writer. He was banned from the set, but that was kind of an A-plus production. So that was my first experience.
P. J. SolesIt was always fun auditioning for commercials, because that was the beginning of my career, and me figuring out how I was going to portray myself as an actress vs. a model, because models were very different back then in the early '70s. They didn't usually hire models for acting. But I acted first in commercials and then I did modeling, so it was a little different.
P. J. SolesWe were lucky if we got two takes out of a scene in the Rock 'N' Roll High School. But the Ramones did get a lot of material cut out. I think Marky Ramone calls Mr. McGree "Mr. McGlube." But that was sort of endearing and charming, and made you just love the Ramones even more. Sometimes those flubs work in favor of the filmmakers. They just couldn't get out more than one sentence in a row. It was just kind of weird. I think they were just nervous.
P. J. SolesI had been listening to Jackson Browne, The Eagles, and Linda Ronstadt. Ramones was not my kind of music. Now, I'm a huge fan and I get it. I wasn't initially a punk-rock fan. Now, I can appreciate what they stood for and who they were.
P. J. SolesFor Coca-Cola, they wanted a hippie-looking girl to walk around the city with a bucket of chicken sitting in Central Park, sitting on Central Park South, walking along all these different areas of New York that people are familiar with, and just eating this bucket of chicken. I got that commercial too. I think it was just part of my personality that was different from just a regular, nice-looking girl that was more of a model-y type. I injected a little more energy into everything I did.
P. J. Soles