Fast Times at Ridgemont High

From Academic Kids

Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a 1982 American teen film directed by Amy Heckerling and written by Cameron Crowe (who wrote both the screenplay and a book of the same name which inspired the movie). Its title inspired Vernor Vinge's Hugo award-winning short story "Fast Times at Fairmont High".

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

The story is loosely inspired by the year Cameron Crowe, then in his early 20s, spent impersonating a high school student at Clairemont High School in San Diego, California. He went undercover to do research for his 1981 book Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story, about his observations of the high school and the students he befriended there.

Sophomore students Stacy Hamilton (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Mark Ratner (Brian Backer) are both looking for love, and they are helped along by their older classmates, Linda Barrett (Phoebe Cates) and Mike Damone (Robert Romanus), respectively. Another character in the film is Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn in an early film role and one for which he is still often remembered), a perpetually stoned surfer dude who faces off with history teacher Mr. Hand (Ray Walston), who is convinced that all students are on "dope." The film features small parts by many actors who later achieved some degree of fame: Anthony Edwards, Eric Stoltz, Nicholas Cage, and Forest Whitaker.

The film is most memorable to some for a nude scene fantasized by Stacy's older brother Brad (Judge Reinhold) in which Phoebe Cates' character, Linda Barrett, emerges from a swimming pool wearing a red bikini, and--in slow motion, and with constant eye-contact with the camera-- she removes her bikini top, exposing her breasts. The fantasy ends with Linda embracing Brad and kissing him. Brad masturbates in the bathroom to this mental image until Linda, in real-life, accidentally walks in on him. Disgusted and embarrassed, she flees. Upon which, Brad utters the memorable line: "Doesn't anybody ever fucking knock anymore?"

Although it is never explicitly mentioned as such in the film, Fast Times was filmed in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles and many people identify the film with that area and the teen culture that existed there, or was perceived to exist there, in the early 1980s. "Ridgemont" is a fictional name, however; there is no California community by that name. Most of the exteriors of Ridgemont High School were shot at Van Nuys High School, and other scenes were shot at Canoga Park High School. The "Ridgemont Mall" shown in the film was actually the Sherman Oaks Galleria, with its exterior shot at Santa Monica Place.

The movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High inspired a short-lived 1986 television series called Fast Times, featuring Courtney Thorne-Smith as Stacey, Wally Ward as Mark, Claudia Wells as Linda, Patrick Dempsey as Mike, Dean Cameron as Spicoli, James Nardini as Brad, and Ray Walston reprising his role as Mr. Hand.

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