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Fast times at ridgemont high2/9/2023 The screenplay was based on Crowe’s 1981 book, “Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story,” about his experience going undercover as a high school student for one year.ĭirector Heckerling added about Universal’s distribution plan, “They were going to put it on the shelf because they didn’t see how it would make any money. We saw it as having the opportunity to do something authentic that was based on the actual experiences of the kids that Cameron chronicled for that whole year.” “We didn’t see it as this horny high school movie at all. ![]() That feeling, of course, is reminiscent of being in high school again.“We were really heartsick because somebody high up said, ‘This is pornography, and there’s no way that Universal’s going to release this movie,'” Reinhold told The Hollywood Reporter. Would this be the big one? Would this be their breakout moment? Many of them likely felt that familiar knot of anticipation as they walked onto set. So many of the people involved were fresh, at the start of their careers, with the whole world ahead of them. Is there anything more ‘80s than that?Īll that youth might be what makes Fast Times at Ridgemont High so endearing and iconic. It was Judge Reinhold’s feature debut - he landed the role of Brad because he was Heckerling’s upstairs neighbor - as well as the debut for Nicolas Cage, Forest Whitaker, Eric Stoltz, and Anthony Edwards.Įven Bruce Springsteen’s sister Pamela Springsteen has a minor role in the movie. Sean Penn, who played the unforgettable Spicoli, had been working for a few years before Fast Times, but the movie was most people’s introduction to him, and with good reason. Fast Times was Phoebe Cates’s second feature and Jennifer Jason Leigh’s fourth. (More recently, she’s directed episodes of TV, including the season finale of The Office’s first season, entitled “Hot Girl.”)Īnd the movie introduced a host of young actors who’d go on to be recognizable screen presences (and in some cases, sex symbols) well past the 1980s. It was Amy Heckerling’s directorial debut, too she’d eventually make movies like Clueless and Look Who’s Talking. This was Crowe’s feature screenwriting debut, after which he’d go on to make movies like Say Anything, Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous. Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont Highįast Times at Ridgemont High is a movie about being young in the early 1980s - an experience that applies not only to its characters, but to its creative team and cast. There are a lot of hilarious facts floating around the internet about the movie, my favorite of which is that its studio, Universal, originally wanted David Lynch to direct it - but Lynch turned down the opportunity because it wasn’t in his wheelhouse. He went undercover at San Diego’s Clairemont High School for a year and wrote a (now out-of-print) book about the experience, which he then turned into the movie. (At least until real life knocks.)īut while they all feel like slightly one-dimensional stereotypes - the nerd, the promiscuous cheerleader, the girl next door, the weird kid who always wears shades, the stoner - the kids of Ridgemont High originated from a semi-ethnographic work by Cameron Crowe, who was then just a freelance journalist for Rolling Stone. Hand), in between work and school the teenagers of Ridgemont High School drink, smoke, and screw without a care in the world. With adults almost entirely absent (except the notable exception of history teacher Mr. ![]() The true classic of American high school movies - such a classic that the Library of Congress’s Film Registry deemed it worthy of official preservation - turns 35 years old on August 13.įast Times is one of those films that seems much more important in retrospect than it possibly could have felt at its release in 1982, when Roger Ebert, who liked some of the performances, still deemed it a “scuz-pit of a movie.” ![]() The movie of the week for August 6 through 12 is Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), which is available to stream on HBO Go or digitally rent on YouTube, Amazon, Vudu, iTunes, and Google Play.įast Times at Ridgemont High is approaching middle age. What you can count on is a weekend watch that sheds new light on the week that was. Old, new, blockbuster, arthouse: They’re all fair game. Every weekend, we pick a movie you can stream that dovetails with current events.
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