PREVIEW: Moonstruck Showing with Josiah Howard
04/07 @ Proctors GE Theatre
**This article originally appeared in our April 2026 print issue**
“She has something that you can’t buy, and that's goodwill. We don't want Cher to fail. I think it's just that warmth underneath. She’s earthy. We’ve seen the challenges she’s weathered and we want her to succeed.”
It’s hard to believe there was a time when Cher wasn’t perceived as an icon. Her snappy one-liners (“My mom said to me, ‘Sweetheart, one day you should settle down and marry a rich man’ and I said, ‘Mom, I AM a rich man!’”), gorgeous dresses by famed designer Bob Mackie (remember the mohawk revenge dress she wore to the 1986 Oscars after being snubbed?), and songs so catchy they would make any bar erupt into song, would lead most to assume that life has been a perpetual success story for Cher. However, prior to her 1987 Oscar’s win for Moonstruck, that wasn’t necessarily the case.
On April 7, the GE Theater at Proctors will host a showing of Moonstruck with an introduction and Q&A session with Josiah Howard, the author of Cher’s biography, Cher: Strong Enough. Howard and I sat down to talk about the film and its place in Cher’s career.
Cher, returning to film post-Sonny and Cher, wasn’t met with love. However, there was a shift in her fortune on the horizon. “She has something that you can’t buy, and that's goodwill,” Howard explains. “[Other pop divas] don’t have it. We don't want Cher to fail. I think it's just that warmth underneath. She’s earthy. We’ve seen the challenges she’s weathered and we want her to succeed.”
Moonstruck may have just been the catapult for the general public to see that warmth. There’s just something about the film. It doesn’t necessarily sound happy — a woman cheats on her fiancé with his brother, while that fiancé is in Italy tending to their dying mother, only for him to break things off out of superstition once his mother miraculously recovers. It’s zany, it’s heartwarming, it’s beautiful… and its tone is indicative of Cher’s personal rollercoasters, reflecting something very human back at us.
“It has endured, how wonderful is that? Kids not only love it, they own it. They bought the Blu-ray because they wanted extra information about it. There's something for everybody. That's such a bold expression, but there is!” Howard says.
Moonstruck also has quite a nostalgic appeal. “It's also a travelogue of New York City in 1987. It's Lincoln Center, it's Brooklyn Heights, it's the beloved World Trade Center. Seeing those images of them talking and the World Trade Center in the background, it’s heartbreaking every time I see it. I can't believe it was captured on film so beautifully. That was New York. And the movie loves New York as much as it loves its characters.”
Ultimately, Moonstruck is, as Howard puts it, “a Cinderella story,” though unconventional. Cher thought that making it was “too easy.” “She thought, ‘Don’t you get an Oscar from crying hard and wailing?’” But maybe it’s because of its easiness and its optimism that it resonates with the public.
“When I last saw her in concert,” Howard tells me, “she said, ‘Your job is to do what you want to do and not hurt anyone. You don’t have to do it like I am, in this crazy outfit, but you have to do what you want to do.’ Uplifting things need to be heard in difficult times. Women need to be uplifted and recognized and remembered and referenced.”
Josiah Howard will be introducing Moonstruck at Proctors GE Theater on April 7, with a Q&A to follow. Copies of Cher: Strong Enough will be available for purchase. Follow him at josiahhoward.com or @josiahhoward222 on Instagram for his upcoming events on blaxploitation films.