Have you guys seen Little Monsters with Howie Mandel and Fred Savage? Or another one from 1989 called The Wizard, also with Fred Savage? They're 2 80's classics.
In case no one else said it, the girl in the corvette that Brad saw was Nancy Wilson of Heart. She was Cameron Crowe's wife at the time. He wrote the script for the movie. Also, Phoebe Cates coming out of the pool is one of the most paused/slowed down scenes of all time. VHS rentals were being worn out in just that section of tape.
Crowe wrote the screenplay based on his book, which he went undercover as a H.S. student for a full school year to write, so it represented a pretty accurate picture of teens in the late 70's/early 80's
Anthony Edwards and Eric Stoltz are Jeff Spicoli's two surfer friends. Nicolas Cage is one of the fast food workers, he went by his real name Nicholas Coppola and happens to be the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola.
A long long time ago on this very planet, copies were made with ditto machines. When the papers were fresh of the machine, they had a very distinct smell. Most teen movies in the 80's have some reference to smelling the papers.
Was 17 when this came out. I knew that smell well. My mom had her own newsletter and mimeograph machine back then. The intoxicating odor was from the duplicating fluid used to enable copies. If the fluid got low, the copies would become lighter and harder to read, so you had to freshly moisten the "wick" every few dozen copies.
Hahaha you kids don’t even know about the mimeograph paper smell! How funny and geez I’m old! Time flies, this was on hbo round the clock in the early 80s me and my wife watched it , so many great movies and memories from back then, thanks y’all !
A little background for you... - This was Cameron Crowe's first film as a screenwriter, and he became a director with movies like Jerry Maguire, Singles, Vanilla Sky, and his Oscar-winning Almost Famous. The script was based on his non-fiction novel of the same name. Before writing it, Crowe was the youngest Contributing Editor at Rolling Stone magazine, a job he has held throughout his film career. Crowe wrote the novel because a question was asked around the late 1970s, "What are the kids about today?" Crowe, who never went to college and started writing professionally as a rock journalist at age 15 (yes...see his film Almost Famous for that story), took on this challenge at age 26 to learn about "the kids" by returning to high school. He looked like he was still a teenager then, so he went to a particular high school and spent an entire year there as a student, taking notes, listening to conversations, etc. I have a copy of the novel in paperback. One day, he met Linda Barrett, the Phoebe Cates character. She introduced him to Stacy Hamilton (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Brad Hamilton (Judge Reinhold), and the connections spread from there. Everyone in the film was either a real person whose name was changed in the novel and screenplay or a combination of people. Even Ridgemont High is (or was real) and, I believe, was in San Diego, not L.A. At the end of the school year, he came clean with all of them, asked if he could use their stories, did interviews, and basically started writing the book. Some later regretted being a part of it (especially after the movie came out), and others didn't care. - Some actors have told stories about running into the characters they played. The most famous is Sean Penn, who has told stories several times about running into the real Jeff Spicolli. In the most recent time, Spicolli changed a lot, so Penn almost didn't recognize him. - The teacher Mr. Hand (played by Ray Walston) has a back story not really fleshed out in the film. The way that he acts in the classroom is mannered, and Ray Walston took his cues from the source book. Mr. Hand loved the original 1970s version of Hawaii Five-0, so much so that he started acting like the character of Steve McGarrett, played by Jack Lord. So when he snaps his fingers or says,"Aloha," Walston basically imitates Lord. Walston is a legend of film, television, and the stage with films like South Pacific, Damn Yankees (playing a role he originated on the Broadway stage and won a Tony Award for), The Apartment, Popeye, The Sting, and others. Sanka is one of the earliest decaffeinated instant coffees. It was popular at the time, and it's fairly horrid stuff! - 18:36 - Hello, Generation X here. Allow me to answer with, "No, duh!" Parents were not around very much from the late 1970s through to the mid to late 80s. I was in high school from 1986 to 1990...we got away with A LOT of shit that most kids can't do today. There was even greater freedom for many high schoolers in the early 80s when this was filmed. - 18:42-This scene was filmed with both Robert Romanus (as Damone) and Jennifer Jason Leigh in full frontal nude. Both actors were very professional about it and did the scene. Because of this, the film was slapped with an "X" rating, so they cut out Romanus's nudity for the most part. The film then received an R rating. A lot of the intimate scenes are meant to be uncomfortable. - 19:33 - The blonde is Nancy Wilson, guitarist for Heart. At the time, Crowe was dating Wilson. They married in 1986, and divorced in 2010. During that time, she wrote scores for several of his films. They also had twin sons born in 2000. - 24:30-The robber holding up Brad is James Russo. This was the first film both Russo and Judge Reinhold were in. The second was Beverly Hills Cop. Russo played Michael Tandino, Axel's friend who was killed, and Reinhold was Billy Rosewood. Another Beverly Hills Cop reference is the doctor with Mr. Vargas in the hospital morgue, which was played by Martin Breast, the director of Beverly Hills Cop. - This film launched so many careers: Nicolas Cage (who is credited as Nicholas Coppola and was almost cast as Brad), Anthony Edwards (Goose from Top Gun, one of Spicolli's stoner buds), Eric Stoltz, Forest Whitaker, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Phoebe Cates, Sean Penn, and Judge Reinhold. It was the first Amy Heckerling film to launch a ton of hot new talent. The other was Clueless.
I was 18 when Fast Times came out. This was my time. This movie is accurate. Everything in this movie was my High School and the Mall. I was the 3 main guys put together, Cool/Nerd/Stoner. I even worked as an Usher, from 1980-84. When all the cool movies came out. It was the cool job to have because kids from school would beg you to sneak them into Rated-R movies. Let a group of girls into Endless Love. Let 10 people one night into Scarface. The other Ushers and I would smoke weed in a back exit. All the Ushers dated the Candy girls. You have to watch Risky Business(1983).
@@gluecement I just rewatched it. Holds up so well! Great acting from everyone. The ways it was filmed is very unique. Another killer soundtrack too. The movie that made Tom famous.
I worked as an usher at a movie theater in 86-87. Worst paying, but most fun job I ever had. Free movies and popcorn, worked with cute girls and would throw around the Nerf football while cleaning the theaters.
Back in the day Sanka was the only decaf coffee. Ask for it in a restaurant and you would get a container of hot water and an orange colored packet of Sanka powder. It had a nasty taste. When brewed decaf came along in the 1970s it was usually distinguished from regular coffee by using a coffee pot with an orange handle. Apparently a tribute to Sanka. Hopefully auto correct will quit changing the k to a t in SanKa.
@DavidBush-wm1fe That is correct, I remember all of it, of course I'm 56yrs old and remember at say...a Denny's, the waitress would ask if you wanted coffee or Sanka with the always orange handle
As a class of '84 HS graduate, FTARH is a perfect time capsule of what being a teen in the early 80's was like. It does kind of make me wonder why so many younger generations seem so shocked by the promiscuity depicted...it was the norm back then. 40 years ago, high schoolers were thought of more as "young adults" rather than "older children".
This movie is SUCH an accurate time capsule for Gen X/80s teens. Parents? Everybody had 2 parents who worked, no cell phones, no internet, no email, no cable TV, so all of my friends were on our own all day long with nothing to do but go to the mall, work part-time jobs, and hit on girls. If someone's house had a pool we were always there. If you weren't old enough to drive, you hitched rides with friends or took the city bus by yourself. And as the movie portrays, when we got lucky with a girl, with no internet we had no idea what we were doing and it was awkward as heck. Everything that TBR thought was off about this movie was actually so, so real for our entire generation.
The stars that came out of this. Sean Penn, Forest Whitaker, Nick Cage, Anthoiny Edwards (Goose), Eric Stoltz, Phoebe Cates (married Kevin kline), Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold (Beverly Hills Cop), Vincent Schiavelli (Cuckoo's Nest and the train ghost in Ghost), Lana Clarkson (played Mrs Vargas and was murdered by Phil Spector). The robber of the convenient store at the end was James Russo who was Eddie Murphy's buddy in Beverley Hills Cop who gets killed for stealing the bonds.
Lasted for a bit longer than just Gen X. I was born in 82 and much of my early childhood was spent alone or with friends in the woods behind the apartment complex, riding bikes in construction zones (great ramp building material), etc etc. Family eventually bought a house when I was 9 and when I was 13 my parents took my younger sister to Yellowstone for a week so I stayed home by myself because I didn't want to go since I had my paper route to do and was told if something went wrong to call an aunt or uncle. Fun times.
@@pencilnecked1579 Yeah, the older half of Gen Y also experienced a free range childhood. It wasn't until the mid-90s that society started to get overprotective.
I agree 100%. I had a similar teacher in my senior year named Mr. Mazarov. He was a ex colonel in the Marine Corps and served in the Korean War as a 2nd LT.. The man was a real hardass, but he had a heart. I learned more in that class and I think in any of the other classes combined. It was the fall of 1983, everybody was all worried about tensions in the world thinking that we were about to get attacked by the Soviet Union, his comment to the class was " Well if there's a nuclear war tonight make sure that you take notes because we're going to go over it in class tomorrow" LOL
Ditto copies used a purplish-blue ink that contained various alcohols and trichlorofluoromethane. When copies were freshly printed, they had a very pleasant/intoxicating smell which students often enjoyed smelling when a fresh copy was handed to them.
This came out the year I graduated high school 1982. Good times... Also, they didn't tell Phoebe that he'd be holding a certain "item," so her look of disgust was genuine.
Oh the days of smelling the "copies," actually called mimeographs (technically called aa "sprit duplicator.") Google / Wikipedia it... I can smell it now...
I saw this when I was in high school. It was my first R-rated movie. It kind of woke me up. In the right way. I remember being so uncomfortable in the theater. But in retrospect, it really shows the power a film can have when you treat subject matter as truthfully and real as possible. The light and the dark.
My sister lived in an apartment in 1972 when she was 16 years old and still in high school. She never once went back home. She had a roommate until she was 17, at which time she was completely on her own. And today she lives in a more than half million dollar home with an in-ground pool, and she never went to college. People today are so shocked when they see movies and yearbooks and videos from the 1960s, 70s, and early 80s, because they think there’s no way they could be high school students; they look so much older. People today treat young people like four-year olds until they are 30 years old. It was very common for people 15 years of age to talk about blow jobs and to get high and to even have sex. Many people drank when they were 12 and 13 years old, and these were not bums living in the ghetto: often times they were the smart kids from wealthy families. The 60s, 70s, and early 80s were different times than today. Today, high school students look and act like they are in the fifth grade, and everyone thinks that’s normal. But people today think it’s abnormal for a high school student in the past to look like they were in their 20s or 30s.
I'd like to recommend "Better Off Dead" and "One Crazy Summer". I can't exactly call them iconic in terms of cultural impact, but they had a big impact on me in high school.
Ironically, our generation is more independent because of that now we are adults. I think Millennials had TOO much supervision and you have a generation of kids who have no street smarts in everyday life.
I was an 80’s kid and we were called latch-key kids. Meaning you came home with your key because everyone’s parents worked. You had the house to yourself so you would invite your friends over after school. No supervision, you just did what you wanted until your parents came home from work. It was a different time. Lol
What I often did as soon as I got home was hop on my bike, ride over to the nearby video store, rent a movie (usually an R rated one, since it was one of my few opportunities to watch them and the owners didn't care that I was barely even a teenager), ride back and then hopefully watch it all before my parents got home from work. I'd then hide the tape in my room and take it back the next day, sometimes renting another movie while I was there. 😄
Porky's is another classic '80s coming of age flick that's fallen by the wayside over the years. It is *way* raunchier than Fast Times, but it'll also surprise you with some of the subplots.
I started going to concerts in the mid-80s when I was a teenager and the prices are correct in this movie, I have my old ticket stubs that were like between $10 and $20, t-shirts cost more.
I saw Van Halen on their 1984 tour & I believe I paid $15 for those tickets. As far as I can recall, that was roughly the price of tickets for quite some time (through the 80’s & 90’s).
@@goldenageofdinosaurs7192I remember feeling like I really got taken advantage of when I paid a scalper $30 for tickets to a sold-out Metallica show at the beginning of 1992.
@goldenageofdinosaurs7192 l went to the 5150 tour I think it was 86. I remember the tickets were 15 bucks because my friend and I had to raise the 30 ourselves and if we did then his mom would drive us there and home. We were 14. We mowed lawns and yard work and raised 80 so we had money for tee shirt each and mc ds after paying for his mom to. Great memories and this movie reminds me of that.
So many stars in this movie. The three stoners - Sean Penn, Anthony Edwards and Eric Stoltz. Judge Reinhold, Nicolas Cage (under his real name Nicolas Coppola), Jennifer Jason Leigh, Forest Whitaker and Ray Walston.
Thanks guys, this was written by cameron crowe , he made jerry maguire and almost famous, Jennifer jason leigh and phebe cates meet during this and are still best friends, pheobe had great success, gremlins and a few other movies but she got married and had k8ds and quit acting, she married a movie star Kevin klien) Jennifer directed a movie in 2001 and pheobe was in it as her best friend, she played an actress and pheobe played a former actree who quit to have babies, movie was set at a holly housparty , ( the anniversary)
Fun fact: Phoebe Cates' reaction when she walked in on Judge Reinhold was genuine. He had a realistic-looking toy (you know what kind) in his hands. She wasn't told ahead of time & actually thought she walked in on him whacking off.
Ray Walston, the actor who played Mr. Hand, was a TV star in the 1960's with a comedy show called "My Favorite Martian". He played the titular Martian, as Uncle Martin, and he had two little antenna that came out of his head. Ray Walston was also in the movie "The Sting".
You're right about this being more of a coming-of-age film than a straight-up comedy. So many directors and studios in the 80s tried to emulate this movie but only succeeded in making sex comedies, which were just as abundant in the 80s as Slasher films were. This is a one-of-a-kind film, and I think it's far better than "Dazed and Confused" because it's set in the decade it was released. "Dazed and Confused" feels a bit forced being a period piece.
Watching you guys freak out over the ages is hysterical. Here's how we viewed sex in the 80s. "Sex is a great way to meet people ". This was definitely comedy to us in the 80s. We were dark. We didn't cringe over every minute thing in society. Movies are a reflection of their time and the actions of every character pretty much summed us up
I agree. It's almost as if they (actually it was mostly TBR, not Samantha) believe that teens are always prim and proper. I honestly don't see the shock value of this comedy the same way he does.
I’ve probably seen Fast Times a 100+ times since 1982. It’s funny and serious in a realistic way. Some of the subtle jokes are probably missed unless you were a teen back then. The uncomfortable moments hit because those things happen in real life. This and Valley Girl are two of my favorites. True classics.
Yes! Valley Girl, too! Great music in that film, plus a friend of mine from those days is in it briefly during the high school dance scene singing backgrounds on "Johnny Are You Queer" with the Josie Cotton band. Early 80's in L.A. was incredible times. I wish I could do it all again just for the fun of it!
I've always really liked the character of Mike Damone, and Robert Romanus did a wonderful job of portraying him. He is 100% all talk, and he's built his entire image around that attitude (which obviously isn't really working as Mark is his only friend). He _tries_ to do the right thing both times with Stacy, but in the end he's more afraid of blowing that image than he is of letting people who care about him down. It's a flawed character, definitely, but it is *such* a believable character in a high school setting.
"When I reached 21, I knew the time had come. I had an old rebellin' itch. Broke a little girl's heart, tore the world apart. A guitar playing sonofa . . ." -George Thorogood
Paper copies were made on mimeograph machines then (no copiers) and the ink had a smell similar to the old magic markers. We always smelled the papers! 😆 Also, the teacher said he'd switched to Sanka, this was a decaf instant coffee. Love this movie! Thx for reviewing! 😁
In the 70s and the 80s kids used to actually Go Out and Play till Sundown out on their own or with friends and All WaS Right in our world! Parents were Free to go about their day without worrying about us for the most part Without Cell Phones. We were taught to take care of ourselves and be creative doing so! Our families would come together at the Dinner Table and spend the Weekends together with each other. We hung with our friends and in a kid's life our parents were appreciated but still Supporting Cast to our daily adventures.. Teens were able to be very unsupervised in those days without getting up to much trouble.. It was definitely a different time and I'm sooo glad I grew up then!
****TBR Schmitt: In the 70's and 80's, the school paper copy machines, which we called "ditto" machines had blueish green letters, and the ink had a sweet smell to it when they were freshly printed off. So it was very common for us to sniff it.
James Russo (the store robber) also played Axel Foley's doomed friend, Mikey Tandino. Russo also played the thug rapist in "Extremities" with Farrah Fawcett on stage and screen.
Guys, believe it or not, this is how it was. No parents to be found. When I was 12 (1984) and my sister 14, my single mother went to the Caribbean for a week. We had anywhere from 5-20 kids sleeping at the house every night. Even when she was home, we left the house first thing in the morning and came home well after dark. I had my own key to our apartment, no joke, when I was 6! Hence…latchkey kids.
Cameron Crowe wrote the screenplay based on his book where, at the age of 22, he posed as a high school senior and wrote about his experiences. You mentioned Dazed and Confused a few times. The main difference between that and Fast Times at Ridgemont High is Dazed and Confused was made in 1993 and took place in 1976 while Fast Times was contemporary, made in and taking place in the early 1980's.
Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Saint Elmo’s Fire, Short Circuit, Cocoon, Goonies, Ferris Bueller’s Day off, War Games, The Lost Boys, Heathers, Stand By Me, The Great Outdoors, Spaceballs…. All great 80’s flicks. And yes, born in the 70’s, raised in the 80’s… it was EPIC!!!
The best way I can describe it is that smelled ‘purple,’ lol. I can still feel the cool, semi damp paper & that odd, wonderful smelling mimeograph ink🤣
The "Kids" in the movie were supposed to be aged between 15-18 , however, only Phoebe Cates ( who was 18) & Nicholas Cage (who was 17-18) were the correct age range at the time of shooting the movie ( this was also Nic Cage's movie debut)
This film was directed by Amy Heckerling who also wrote, produced and directed "Clueless" in 1995. Another classic from 1982 is "Diner" which has yet to be reacted to on RU-vid. Please be the first ones to do so.
"Fast Times" was a movie about the 1980s made in the 1980s. "Dazed and Confused" was a movie about the 1970s that was made in the 1990s. It's easier to rewrite history after the fact.
I've seen a lot of references to FAST TIMES down through the years, but I had never even heard of Dazed and Confused before they reacted to it. I guess because my teenage years were in the 80's I can relate to FAST TIMES.
I always loved how Demones plan he mentions playing Led Zeppelin IV and Rat plays that a Zeppelin cut from a different album. I'd like to think that was a subtle joke the Cameron Crowe, also a music journalist, threw in there.
I heard that Nicolas Cage lied about his age so that he could get a bigger part, but the producers eventually found out that he was only 17 and this was his first paid role.
They were surprisingly good about catching that back in the day. The sex scene in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2 was cut short because the producers found out the actress lied about being underage after they shot it so they had to cut the explicit footage out rather than get in trouble.
Cameron Crowe actually went undercover as a student to write the book. The characters are lossely based on kids he met while in school. This was high school back in the day!
I rented this at blockbuster in the 90s with my grandparent's because we thought it looked fun. Watching this with them as a teenage boy...My grandpa kept snickering and my grandma kept saying "oh my." I couldnt look them in the eye the whole night!
Nicolas Cage's first starring role is an '80's classic that is one of the best of the decade, Valley Girl (1983). My Bodyguard (1980) has a great concept with some serious twists and turns. The Last American Virgin (1982) is another interesting coming of age '80s movie that has some serious undertones. Three O'clock High (1987) is a lot of fun
Holy sh--- dude mine too!! They feel the most real. I saw American Graffiti in the theatre when I was 9. It was the first movie that made a big impact on me.
Fast Times is a comedy, but that’s kind of the difference between movies then and now. The great movies in the 70’s/80’s incorporated a mix of humor, drama, relatable characters and a good story. Now movies are all about wowing people with CGI or doing something edgy to shock you.
On the DVD extras the producer and director told about how VHS copies were returned broken at the same place by all the people stopping, rewinding and then replaying the pool scene with Phoebe Cates By the way she married Kevin Kline
One of my favorite movies of all time. This movie portrays the way life actually was in the 80's. If you were a teenager in the 80's like I was this is so telling of the times. It shows all the things teens back then went through good and bad.
FYI: Jennifer Jason Leigh was born in February 1962. And D.W. Brown, who played Ron the guy Stacy slept with in the dugout, was born in June 1961. So there isn't much of an age difference. (Fast Times was filmed in fall 1981, when she was 19.)
This is an interesting movie because a then young-looking Cameron Crowe originally wrote this as a book for which he went "undercover" and posed as a high school student for a year in San Diego. This film is the result of all of that work. Would be a massive controversy if someone did that today, but this is how he gathered material and shed light as to what was going on in high schools among teenagers at the time. His book and corresponding film really kicked-off the teen high school comedy/drama genre of the 80s.
❤ I grew up in the 80s and all through my high school years i was able to come and go pretty much at will. I just had to let my parents know where I waa.
Sanka was an instant decaffeinated coffee made by the chemical method. There are three methods for making coffee decaf. Chemical is just one of them. It was unhealthy to drink.
Funny thing. He tells him to be sure to put on Led Zeppelin IV…but you hear Kashmir from Physical Graffiti album. It’s actually b/c Crowe couldn’t get the rights to use a song from LZ IV, but it works well since the date doesn’t go as he wanted lol. (Another aside is that Cameron Crowe was actually close to Led Zeppelin and one of the few journos they let be around them…and that’s where a lot of the crazy rockstar excess stuff in “Almost Famous” comes from.)
I'm going to guess it's Stairway to Heaven. Almost Famous has a deleted scene where the characters analyze the song and the scene had you cue up the song accordingly.
Fast Times was a realistic look at high school in addition to being very funny. It was a mandatory movie in the early eighties and we reenacted many scenes and lines with our friends
Spicoli is the reason for a huge surge in sales of Vans shoes, especially the checkerboards. They were Sean Penn’s idea, he bought them himself at a Vans store in the Valley, and showed up on set with them. You missed Eric Stoltz as Spicoli’s bud. Check out 1987’s Some Kind of Wonderful, with Stoltz, Lea Thompson, and Mary Stuart Masterson.
This movie is SUCH an accurate time capsule for Gen X/80s teens. Parents? Everybody had 2 parents who worked, no cell phones, no internet, no email, no cable TV, so all of my friends were on our own all day long with nothing to do but go to the mall, work part-time jobs, and hit on girls. If someone's house had a pool we were always there. If you weren't old enough to drive, you hitched rides with friends or took the city bus. And as the movie portrays, when we got lucky, with no internet we had no idea what we were doing and it was awkward as heck. Everything that you guys thought was off about this movie was actually so, so real for my entire generation. You Milennials will never know
When GenXers tell you they raised themselves, we aren't exaggerating too much. There was always somebody's house to hang out at because their parents were gone. Drinking age was 19 (at least in my state) and finding an older sibling to buy alcohol was not difficult. Hell, a very hairy 15 year old could buy it. Also friends asking if they could borrow a hundred bucks to get them out of a spot wasn't that uncommon.
(Corrected comment) On the director's audio commentary for the DVD, she discussed the oversized chairs in the restaurant scene. She wanted to emphasize the youth of the 2 characters. One of the ways she did this was by making the set pieces larger than normal in order to make the characters seem more like children.
@@dan1216 Sorry I was focused on the screenwriter, Cameron Crowe, at the time I typed this, so, I got a pronoun mix-up. I have made adjustments to the initial entry to fix this. Thank you for catching this error.
The parents never being home is SO realistic for this time. Most kids had parents who both worked. We were left to our own devices. We did… bad things.
1. JAILBAIT 2. This was Forest Whitaker's (Jefferson) first roll. 3. Nicholas Cage's first gig also. 4. That table size in the restaurant was done on purpose. 5. Jefferson would have been kicked out of the game for bumping the official. 6. That pool scene when Linda comes out of the water is the most paused on VCR's in history. 7. The hot blonde in the convertible is Heart's very own Nancy Wilson. She was Cameron Crowe's squeeze at the time. 8. My first concert in 1978 was ZZ TOP and only cost $8. T-shirts were $12.🤑🤑 9. Mr. Vargas/Vincent Schiavelli played the train ghost in "Ghost" and Fredrickson in "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest". 10. They were really smoking pot in that van before the dance.😎😎😎😎 11. I liked Mr. Hand. I had one in high school. Just do what you're supposed to do, and everything will be fine. 12. My High School had a live band in the late 70s and in a smaller town. 13. Goof: There's no sausage on the double cheese and sausage pizza.
