In Fast Times at Ridgemont High Stacy Hamilton tells Mike Damone he made her pregnant and she needs an abortion.
But wait a minute. She had also recently had sex with stereo salesman and future U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (JK). Johnson lost interest in her and disappeared. How do we know it wasn’t him that made her pregnant?
I believe the answer lies in “the attitude”
One thing about Fast Times is that it’s hard to know in exactly what part of the calendar year things take place. Is it a bunch of events all taking place within a week or two? Or is it a collection of vignettes from throughout the school year?
I kind of lean towards the latter, going from memory. We know that part of the movie takes place at the very beginning of the school year, then during “football season” at some point, then more at the end of the school year. There’s no holiday stuff I can recall, even in the background (e.g. no decorations, trick or treating, Christmas lights, etc.).
So, conceivably – and again, I’m going from memory – the Ron Johnson and Mike Damone hookups could have taken place months apart. Or no? I’d really have to rewatch it and try to work it out.
It is 100% this.
That’s even more apparent in the book based more or less on the true experiences of Cameron Crowe as an undercover journalist.
Absolutely. From football season to the last day of school (when Mr. Hand gets his time back from Spicoli)
You’ve got both “cheerleaders tugging off wool gloves” and “laying by the pool catching rays (and Brad!).” So totally “all year.”
“People on 'ludes should not drive!”
Now that I purused through the flick in bits I’ve decided the masses are correct. It covers an entire year.
This is incorrect and provieds the clincher. there is a Christmas scene at the mall. Stacy makes a claim that Ron hasn’t called her since November and this is before Rat even asks her for her number.
[https://youtu.be/B9h9SltCkhs?si=DCSToAepsidSvpJN]
There is a deleted scene where Linda Barrett gives another girl advice about birth control. Should have done the same for Stacy.
What I find most disturbing is that I knew what this was about from the subject alone. Surely my aging brain has better uses for its limited and dwindling storage!
Play the Cars’ “Moving in Stereo” and ask any middle-aged man what comes to mind…
(“doesn’t anyone f#cking knock anymore”)
I lock the bathroom door if I’m just doing my regular business. I don’t know what he was thinking. Distracted, I guess.
It’s not even left vague how much time passes. The movie is a school year from start to finish. The stereo salesman was too long before to be the Dad.
Damone: Now this is most important, Ratt. When it comes down to making out, put on side one of Led Zeppelin IV
CUT TO
Stacy and Mark Rattner in his sister’s car. Led Zepellin’s KASHMIR playing on car stereo
I haven’t seen the movie in a long while, but I assume that the Cameron Crowe equivalent does not appear on camera? (Unlike Almost Famous, in which the Cameron Crowe equivalent is the main character.)
I can’t believe I forgot about that part. Thanks — ignorance fought 
Nope, and not unlike the book where there is no real first person “I talked to Stacy or Brad” and of course all the names were changed. As I recall he was on close friendly terms with the Linda Barret / Phoebe Cates character and at some point he let on to some of them who he was and what he was doing (in posing as a High School student at the age of 22). I don’t know if he told them he had gone on tour with the Allman Brothers, the Eagles and Led Zeppelin because who would ever believe that?
His girlfriend at the time, Nancy Wilson of Heart, plays “Beautiful girl in car”.
Oh yeah - missed the edit window: He did get the princiPAL (and superintendant Chalmers I guess) of the High School’s prior okay on what he was doing so it wasn’t all entirely undercover or whatever. And maybe in that case he did say “Call up Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine” or maybe they recognized him as that 17 year old who toured with the Allmans, etc…