Ah, right! Another tiny part for Cage. He had a tiny part in Back to School, too.
Back to the OP, I don’t remember any homophobia or rapey/molestation/harassment scenes, like you have in Porky’s and Animal House. I don’t remember any subtle or not-so-subtle racism like in Animal House.
I credit a lot of that to Amy Heckerling’s direction.
Yes, I was thinking the same thing. Also may be why the abortion is shown as basically no big deal, just something she had to get done.
So, it was never a standard Hollywood teen sex comedy, ala Porkys, et al.
Also notice that Heckerling chose to film sex scenes where the male partner is shown in a less than flattering light. Stacy losing her virginity isn’t shown at all (other than a long shot of the dugout). But her hook-up with Damone is shown in embarrassing (to him!) detail. Brad gets walked in on by Linda to his mortification, while her topless scene is filmed as if it were a cinematic Botticelli. The female eye makes a big difference.
In less time than it’s taken to get opinions from strangers, you could’ve watched the whole movie and made your own.
But if you don’t want to do that, I’ll chime in with “NOT a tasteless Porky’s-type ‘comedy’, but a fairly amusing look at that time period.”
DO see it and let us know what you thought.
Cage was listed by his original name “Nicolas Coppola” in the credits as well.
Spicoli does have this exchange in a dream sequence:
“You know, a lot of people expected maybe Mark “Cutback” Davis or Bob “Jungle Death” Gerrard would take the honors this year.”
[laughs incredulously] “Those guys are f–s!”
That exchange made it into the documentary The Celluloid Closet as an example of Hollywood’s casual homophobia.
That is period correct use of a slur to refer to people that may or may not be gay. The homophobia may not be “they’re gay, so are bad,” but rather “I don’t like them, so I’m going to call them gay, because being gay is a bad thing.”
Definitely homophobic, but I think both the movie using it and the character in the movie using it are a reflection of society’s acceptance of casual homophobia at the time. That was a very common slur to use in the 80s.
Yeah, I made the mistake of adding Ben Stein as well. The teacher, Mr Hand, was the great Ray Walston.
It came out when I was in high school, so I was the target audience. Last rewatch was in 2002. At that time it held up pretty well, other than the already mentioned death of mall culture. Biggest revelation on that watch was “Hey, that’s Forest Whitaker from The Crying Game”. I still got confused in his big scene - it felt like it was way too late in the school year for a football playoff game.
The casual drug use was very obviously pre-Just Say No era, but the pendulum on pot has swung back to acceptance and those scenes would play normally today. Damone’s customer talking shit about Cheap Trick was still the most offensive part of the movie to me. Sure, the early 80s weren’t kind to them, but they rule!
Pheobe Cates coming out the pool still holds up. To this day I cannot hear Moving in Stereo without an immediate mental flashback.
We saw it on the big screen a few years ago, along with a bunch of other old fogies. The audience gave out a few big laughs, but mostly it was like “We used to think it was really funny.” The movie is kind of choppy, like a bunch of scenes strung together. It replays better when you play it back in your mind.
The casual sex doesn’t seem exploitive since there are “consequences”, as @silenus said. The ending is actually sweet with the new boyfriend and Stacy not rushing into having sex.
One way it aged was when Mr. Hand hands out the ditto sheets and everyone holds them up to their face and takes a deep sniff. In my Introduction to Computers class, which often had older adult students, I showed the clip (because it talks about what a syllabus is) and told my students that I could tell how old they were if they laughed remembering that distinctive aroma.
You’re absolutely right because these days it’s usually something cheap like Taco Bell delivered by GrubHub/Uber Eats/DoorDash. The Dasher drops the food off at the front desk and the student is called up to collect it.
cite: am a teacher of teenagers and father of same. My own kids and my students report this phenomena is so common to be completely unremarkable.
Our students have been advised that doing something like that will just feed the gate security people.
Well, it’s a very small sample size but I did ask my friend who teaches high school about getting a pizza delivery to class. His school is so rural that there’s only one pizza place nearby and it’s not open during school hours, but he did say it would be impossible.
Anyway, I do definitively plan to watch the film tomorrow morning as I do need some mindless entertainment. I’ve been trying to watch a lot of these 1980s films to see how they hold up, there’s an entertaining podcast that I enjoy which does the same thing
Food delivered to a school??!?!. Color this fogey’s mind utterly blown. In either the 1980s or the 2020s.
“remembering that distinctive aroma.”
Oh it’s not just the aroma…kids would catch a buzz off of it if they got to it soon enough.
The book is long out of print and is quite pricey on the second hand market ($450 on Amazon). Cameron Crowe has said that this is deliberate, that he is proud of the book and enjoys it being an aspirational experience that must be deliberately sought out to be enjoyed.
Which kinda annoys me, because I would love to read it but I’m not going to pay a couple hundred bucks for it.
With an account you can check it out at the Internet Archive : Fast times at Ridgemont High : a true story : Crowe, Cameron, 1957- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Ah, yes. The alternate world version where Ray Walston as the teacher panics, thinking it’s a crazed gunman, and empties a clip into Taylor Negron as the delivery guy.
Then Sean Penn pipes up: “Nice one, Dirty Harry!”