Midweek Mention... Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Fast Times

Reegs: Love all that speaker noise, mic noise, that was great, wasn't it?

Sidey: that's true. Really

Reegs: Bit more.

Sidey: grinding in

Reegs: Really get it grinding in the ears.

Dan: Chris.

Cris: I can hear everyone. I also can hear the,

Reegs: hear everyone, it's like Superman!

Cris: can also hear the gurgling of your tea here.

Sidey: gurgler.

Dan: tea. Gurgler.

Cris: So I don't know if

Reegs: usually doesn't, I don't think it gets picked up, but

Cris: Let's do it. Come on.

Reegs: Well, I mean, you know, this podcast is shit, but at least the sound quality is okay.

Cris: What made you change the scenery? Was that just November and that?

Reegs: Wait, we should explain to the listeners that Dan has completely reorganized the man cave.

Dan: Well, Not

Cris: completely, but

Sidey: I think he had a Feng Shui consultant come in.

Reegs: Is that what it was?

It

Dan: It was similar to that. Yeah, I had a dream and I felt that This was the the preferred option for this coming period

What?

Reegs: you've got the gun rack on that wall and the pool table is in a

Dan: and the big stags head is on the other side I've moved that chair to a completely different wing on the other gable

Reegs: put the statue of Nick Cage riding the dinosaur?

Where is that now?

Dan: Wow, it's funny you should ask because if you look up Aha, there he is. But yeah There's a few changes and it was kind of inspired by the fact that I knew sidey was gonna turn up here a few sheets to the wind on saturday night and I thought i'll just freak him out with it all

Sidey: Was I freaked out? I can't remember. Probably, moderately?

Dan: Moderately moderate freak out.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Okay. Some people who may have freaked out were people in the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Dan: Did I

Reegs: Yeah,

I'd seen it before.

Sidey: So had I, but a long

Reegs: if you count watching a segment of this, I've probably seen it hundreds of times.

Sidey: Is it the same bit that judge Reinhold

Reegs: yeah it is, yeah,

Sidey: was particularly interested in?

Anyway, this it's an 80s thing, right? I remember that about it from when I last saw

Reegs: it. Cam and Crow. Okay. Okay.

Sidey: Did the screenplay and Amy Heckling was the director.

Reegs: It was on his novel as well. And Amy Heckling, yeah, Clueless is Amy

Sidey: you know they

Reegs: Do you know they wanted David Lynch to direct the film at one point? And they sent him the script and he said, he replied This is funny, it's not really my material.

Sidey: This is funny, it's not really my material.

Reegs: Because this is a big, like, broad American sex comedy. 80s sex comedy.

Sidey: Yeah, I didn't know that it was that funny, but there was definitely sex in it.

Dan: that funny, but there was a bit of sexiness.

Sidey: Well,

Reegs: it's sex comedy with barely sex and not a lot of comedy, is that what you're

Sidey: got a lot of famous people in it who are famous later on. This is like the earlier stages of their career.

Dan: earlier stages of their career. It's gained so much cult popularity as much as anything else. The fact that Sean Penn, Jennifer, Jason Lee, judge Reinhold Nick Cage

yeah.

Reegs: He lied about his age for

Sidey: about his age, didn't need to get the part, yeah, and, of course, it also has we also saw her in

Reegs: Jennifer Jason Leigh you're talking about, aren't

Sidey: from the

Reegs: Oh yes.

Dan: Cates. Forrest Whitaker.

Forrest

Sidey: it. So loads of people. And it starts off with

Reegs: We, it's, we've got the It's such a great tune, We Got the Beat by the Go

Sidey: Yeah, and a trip through the mall. And we get to meet all the cast and what they're doing in the mall. Some people are just there.

Some, most of 'em are working in various different places throughout the mall. Yeah. The judge won't budge. He seems to be running the show in like the hip is burger joint in town.

Reegs: You've got the guy who's gonna be Copeland in Police Gadme getting a like, milkshake thrown all over him

Sidey: That's right. Yeah.

Reegs: And there's Rat. What's his name? Mark Ratner, is it? The,

Dan: don't know if you can hear that in the back, that's just Chris. He's just gurgling. Yeah,

Sidey: Yeah, Rat

Rat is

Reegs: He's a cinema usher,

Sidey: he's an usher at the cinema, yeah. And his mate who's a bit of a sort of grifter, scalper type character Damone, he's hanging around with him a lot.

And then we get the girls all work in the cafeteria where you've got Jennifer Jason Leigh and Phoebe Cates and they're, everyone's really excited when a hot guy walks in. Yeah. And they're talking about how to approach him and who's going to get his number and all this sort

Reegs: Well, Phoebe Cates is like, constantly throughout the movie playing up this relationship with her off screen boyfriend,

Sidey: which i didn't know was just bullshit.

Reegs: Well, is it?

Yeah, I wasn't sure. I know throughout the movie it becomes like unclear exactly, like, that she's talking a load of bullshit because she seems to be, like, really sexually experienced and she's quite out front about her promiscuity, shall we say, and encouraging her 15 year old

Sidey: so this is the first like, well first of all we get some other bits in the school someone slaps a sign on the back that's like a derogatory thing about homosexuals and then we get to me when I was watching going holy shit this is like really bad now of the fella that comes into the cafeteria and they're all talking about how they're if you've seen that guy he's such a fox and Jennifer Jason's lead character goes over and introduces herself and lies about her age and says that she's 19.

And he asked for her number which she gives to him. And then she

later on says goodnight to her mother when she's at home, escapes out the window, goes and meets this guy.

Reegs: guy.

He's 26.

He's

Sidey: 26. And they fuck.

Reegs: He takes her out to the point, yeah, which is like some, it's horrific, and there's the tune playing, Somebody's Baby, I think is the tune it's playing, because it plays over two of

Sidey: And she's topless, right? So we see her tits. So we're being shown a 15 year old girl on screen and it's fucking like, what the

Dan: yeah, it's, it's a bit sort of close to the wind as far as you can, It's Do that today, but I mean, she wants to be desired and sexually experienced as their friend Linda who keeps kind of egging her on and saying, you know, I did it at 13. Everybody should be doing it by now. You

Sidey: She gives her a training course on how to give

Reegs: a carrot.

Sidey: Yeah, by sucking a

Dan: And they all get a, a round of applause from that because they're doing it in the school cafeteria. Bold

Sidey: as brass.

Bold

Dan: Bold as brass. You've got Jeff Spicoli who is our carefree, stoner slacker who

Reegs: he looked like he was method acting. You know, he's famous for being a method actor, Sean Penn, and being a stoner in this, he did look

Sidey: a method actor.

They said that when they turned up for the prom at the end in the, in the in the van, they were genuinely, they were

Reegs: He looks off his face the whole time and he's probably the movie standout character, I

Sidey: I would say so, yeah.

Reegs: The one that you still can, like, not think is probably really toxic.

Sidey: so he kind of

Reegs: so he kind of gets into this battle with Mr. Hand, who's like this really fierce history teacher, and they have like a running battle because he keeps turning up like late to the

class.

Sidey: a class and everyone's like

Dan: he is a bit of a dick

He

Reegs: really uptight

Sidey: He's uptight. We all had teachers like that But you know if you get a pizza delivered to the classroom I'd imagine any teacher of ours would have been fairly fucked off about that

Dan: But even before that, he was giving out like the, you know, F E and he was dropping it down at people. He, he was a bit of a dick, but he actually, as we know later in the film, he obviously does care about his students to the fact that he turns up at, um, Spoletsy's place, was he?

Reegs: Spicoli's

place later, yeah. One, I had a, in Han's class, I had a real nostalgic moment where he hands out the photocopied sheets of paper and everybody picks them up and sniffs them.

Do you remember that? Yeah. That was, yeah, that was a real moment of like,

Sidey: One of their other teachers is Vincent's give Ellie.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: really Vincent

Reegs: Yeah. The weird looking fella from

Sidey: like a look all of his own, yeah. And he's a like madcap, human sciences kind of teacher. In the classroom there's loads of live animals and he's, later on he's going to take them to a morgue.

Reegs: to a morgue. Yeah. To a morgue.

Dan: where they've got a real live body who's

Reegs: he's going to be pulling organs

out

Dan: well they've just taken his is kind of chest plate off so they can see all the organs and people are just walking out including Stacey who that time is comforted by an on off boyfriend.

The actually the only kid in the film that's really nice to her and

Sidey: right?

Dan: rat. He, he wants to take things slow but she's A little more experienced or a lot more experienced now because she's had a virginity taken and she wants the next guy to,

Sidey: she just has an expectation of what boys want because her only like friend who talks to her about it is just like sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. And so she just like assumes that that every relationship, that's what fellas probably want.

And, you know, teenagers, to be fair, that probably is true. 99. 9 percent of the time, but rat, he's inexperienced. And when it gets to that point, part of their relationship very quickly on the first date, I think.

Reegs: Yeah, well, he's been, he's

Sidey: kind of backs out of it.

Reegs: He was given tips by Damone, wasn't

he?

Sidey: Yeah, Damone, as it turns out, is fucking clueless. And so he gets, he gets a bit of like cold feet about it as they're about to get down to business, makes an excuse about having to give his car back to his sister and hightails it out of there.

And so that's kind of the end of that

Dan: that relationship. Leaving her with the impression that, He doesn't like her and she ends up going off with his best mate who, yeah, who, who then sort of has a, a short experience with her on, in the pool room.

Reegs: Well, she becomes utterly obsessed by him.

She's like writing their names together in their books and stuff, isn't she? And all

Dan: 15 year old girl.

That's what they do, I guess, isn't it? And, but he, he kind of feels bad in, In the sense that he knows his mate likes this girl and he's just sort of slept with her and he didn't really like her that much himself. I

Reegs: When you say slept with her,

Dan: he just did. Yeah, yeah.

Reegs: it

Dan: all over

Sidey: it was over very quickly. And I guess we're kind of bouncing from thing to thing, but the film is very loosely structured.

Reegs: It's a year in the life of these students. It's their final, you know Some of their final years some of their sophomore years.

It's just a sort of slice of life

Sidey: I think.

Dan: Well, you can see where like films like Dazed and Confused got some influence because there's no real say plot here. It's about the characters.

It's about their little events and stories that go

Reegs: the

Sidey: main characters that sort of drive it really or certainly the most memorable characters were Jennifer, Jason

Reegs: Yeah,

Stacey and Brad's relationship is the core of

Sidey: That's the most sort of wholesome

Dan: Well, you've got Brad as well with his Yeah. He, he is a brother and he,

Reegs: There's a really nice scene actually, well, nice. It's a

Sidey: he's nice to her.

Reegs: scene, yeah. Because she gets pregnant from this, like, premature ejaculation encounter she has with Damone. And you know, pretty soon she's off for an abortion and he's like, He's just horrible to her the whole way through and then he won't get any

Sidey: the whole way through And then he doesn't even meet her, lets her go

Reegs: and then but and then he doesn't even meet her He lets her go alone. So it's this 15 year old girl like and the movie treats this very matter of factly really yeah, so

Sidey: Near the place and then as he's driving off he looks and sees that she's not going bowling where she said she was going She runs across the road. So he kind of doubles back Sees where she's gone and waits for her And when she comes out of there make sure she's all right He takes her home and kind of says like we'll keep it between us.

Reegs: like, we'll keep it between us. Like the parents are out of town. It seems

Sidey: it. Like the parents are out of town. It seems like the parents are always out of town.

a dick,

Dan: Yeah,

and

And you're right. They, they treat all matter of factly.

I mean, he goes, you're going to be right. And she's like, yeah, I do it. You know, like, it's just one of those things that girls deal with almost an occupational hazard that

Sidey: But you couldn't help but think about what's going on now as well,

Dan: Yeah,

Reegs: exactly.

I know. I mean,

Sidey: well, she would have been having that baby.

Dan: Yeah,

Reegs: yeah. yeah. Voting against women's rights and pro choice and now, so.

Dan: There's a few laughs in this as well though, isn't there? Particularly with Sean Penn's character because he just gives zero fucks,

Sidey: Well I think Brad as well, the famous, so the one famous, really famous scene I think, that that I would think of when people name this movie, there's the pool party where it's Phoebe Cates is the one I'm thinking of and they're sitting there talking, and rats, and Damone turn up unannounced, go jump in the pool and blah, blah, blah.

Judge Reinhardt comes home, Brad, and he sort of leads them to her. But when he goes into the bathroom, he can just see Phoebe Cates standing by the pool, ready to jump in. And he starts having a tug.

Reegs: Yeah. And

Sidey: in his head, he imagines her emerging from the pool, like some fucking goddess taking off her bikini top and coming over to him and kissing him.

Reegs: I dunno if it was in that take, but certainly in one of the takes, he held a dildo at the last minute and she didn't know

Sidey: he was going to do it,

Reegs: So it might have been the take that made it into the movie. I'm not

Sidey: be removed as well. Well, he's imagining that while he's having a tug. She walks into the bathroom and he's like, just a minute

Reegs: It's

quite funny because we get this like really sexualized version of her emerging from the pool in slow mo.

Sidey: Yeah, she's

Reegs: sprinkler

Sidey: she's looking for a

Reegs: And then when she actually comes out, she's like flicking water out of her ear and looks a bit, you

Sidey: She's looking for a cotton

Dan: know Well, she opens up her bra and everything, doesn't

Sidey: Only in his

Reegs: his

Dan: in this dream sequence, yeah.

Reegs: Very impressive pair of boobs is what I have to

Dan: say. 17 years old, dude.

Reegs: Eighteen.

Sidey: she's a good looking girl, there's no doubt.

Reegs: let's move on from that bit.

Sidey: Yeah. It just sort of carries on and there's

Reegs: There's resolution to the Spicoli storyline, this sort of battle that he's had with Mr Hand, who turns up you know, the sort of end of it is this high school dance and, and Spicoli can't go to the dance because he owes Mr Hand eight hours of history. So they sit there and have this conversation in which Spicoli demonstrates that he has actually been listening and can impart some of the stuff that he's learned and, you know, has a bit of personal growth that way and then is allowed off

Sidey: to.

Reegs: the He goes to the prom

Sidey: goes to the prom, yeah, and he even gets up on stage, he knows one of the songs and sings that with the band and has a good time. They turn up, obviously completely baked. It's Eric Stoltz as well, isn't it, in his crew.

Reegs: Didn't Vinnie

Sidey: Didn't Vinnie

Jones do a version

of that?

Reegs: that? I'm sure

Sidey: he did. I'm sure I when I was, I meant to check because when I was listening to it, I was but yeah, there's there's

Reegs: Rat sort of gives Damone a bit, he's like,

Sidey: they've had it. They've had a ding dong in the changes

about it. And then

obviously, Desmond does feel he does feel guilty about it.

And they they sort of reconcile What

Dan: liked about a lot of these things is actually the approach that, They, they did.

I can imagine it being true, you know,

Reegs: it felt pretty authentic

Dan: like, like the brother and his his sister just had an abortion. You know, he's, he's there. He doesn't really ram it home and he goes, you're right. And she goes, yeah, that's it. That's kind of done. And very stoic kind of replies. And just of the time as well, you know, of the expectation that you just go and get that done at the clinic and you come back and

Reegs: and, and Rat as

Dan: and and and rat as well in that situation where it really did seem that his mate Realized he crossed the line and he was very sorry and you just saw these two guys going Are we gonna let this ruin?

Sidey: I think from Damone's point of view as well, he'd been giving it really big bollocks and then when it came down to it, it was not at all. And so he's like, well, if I can let my mate down, I'm not actually fucking such a big shot. Probably need to just

Reegs: more like parity in the relationship, like power, you know, right. It's got some more

power in that relationship.

Dan: And you hear the girls afterwards as well, talking about the the sexual prowess of men and how long it should be. And she's saying, Oh, well, me and Doug are normally like 30. 40 minutes and he's going, oh, well, he was only like 15 or 20 and she was saying, oh, that's not bad for a high

Sidey: I was like, am I watching? What are they doing for so long?

Dan: Yeah. But

Reegs: as it turns out, like you say, it's all

Dan: it's all bullshit. They're just kind of lying to each other

and

Reegs: Cates gets dumped, doesn't she? I'm pretty sure, by her

Sidey: Yeah. That's one If, oh, maybe it is real because she's all teary about this thing. Or maybe it was just her admitting that

Reegs: I thought she basically hasn't had it. I thought she hadn't had sex at

Sidey: I thought it was like American beauty when it turns out that she was a virgin the whole

Reegs: Yeah, that's pretty much what I assumed was, was going on there and that she was just riling up her mate. There's like a little promise of a relationship between rat and Stacy that might, you know, develop into something.

Sidey: into something.

Reegs: love, but they've

Sidey: not going to be true love, but they've got The film started so he's just stood around and she beckons him over with a She's got carries a photo of herself around gives that to him and said look just to say don't forget me and you've got to call me over the summer and he's like, okay and she like plants a kiss on him and you're like, oh, that's quite cute And then the sort of film ends.

Reegs: He's like literally the only character of the males in the movie that she interacts with apart from the brother who like respects her

Sidey: Yeah and we get a kind of an update of what's happened to everyone

Reegs: well

there is time for Spicoli to foil an armed robbery right at the close of the

Sidey: Of course, yeah, yeah, I forgot about that, yeah.

Reegs: It's I can't remember.

Sidey: No, it's Judge Reinhold does it, he pours, he chugs the coffee, the hot coffee on the

He

Reegs: distracts him, doesn't

Sidey: Yeah, yeah.

Reegs: or whatever. And it's, I can't remember who the robber is, but he's also someone famous. Look it up, you fucks.

Sidey: up, you fucks.

Reegs: No, edit that.

Dan: no, you're quite right, Simon.

Let's keep that in. One of the things that I found interesting after this and talking about the legacy of this film, there was a television spinoff, which some of the characters still, Still stayed in there wasn't saved by the bell, but there was a 2020 table read. Did you hear about this? So during around the covid

Sidey: pandemic

Dan: Not quite original you you we did have Amy Heckerling hosted a discussion about the film, but Brad Pitt played Brad, Jennifer Aniston played Linda, Julia Roberts was Stacey, Matthew McConaughey was Mike, Shia LaBeouf Spicoli

Reegs: Shia LaBeouf

Dan: yeah, yeah, and, and Sean Penn was the pizza guy, Morgan Freeman was the narrator, so they did this

Sidey: narrator.

Dan: COVID. I must have done some kind of table reading for it, you know, just as a bit of fun to go back to that. So, even as, you know, recently as then these actors and, and have remembered this film. I, I liked it back in the day. It was one of those kind of high school films that I probably shouldn't have watched when I was a bit young and, and you it was cool to, to see all these older, older students and everything.

I still enjoyed it though. I watched it last night and I still enjoyed it this time. It's not one of those films that has to say sort of a fast pace. plot and action and things like that. It's just got these characters. It's got different situations. It has you know, plenty of famous people that now you recognize as, as young kids to keep you interested as well.

But I just thought it was really kind of well written and,

Reegs: that's the Cameron Crowe part.

Sidey: I thought it was like a very very accurate But a pretty accurate like time capsule of what like college or high school life would have been like for kids in the 80s It's certainly in america.

Obviously like watching some of the bits like Early on I was like, wow, this is fucking light

Dan: But that's

Reegs: don't think the values, this, it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be for an early 80s movie, because the, the, yeah, but

people, you know, kids,

Sidey: yeah. Yeah, I know. I know

Reegs: they do.

So, it's just how horribly she's treated, but also sometimes that's like painfully realistic

Dan: as well.

Reegs: there, there is their authenticity to it and the values is not quite as bad as some, you know

Some other early 80s think, like it's equivalents this genre, like Porky's and stuff.

Sidey: Oh, it's nowhere near that. No. 90 minutes, pretty much it breezes by.

decent. It's been preserved in the, what's the American thing? The National Film Registry. Yeah.

Reegs: even Bruce Springsteen's sister, Pamela,

Sidey: Even Bruce Springsteen's sister, Pamela, is in

this.

Reegs: is?

Dan: is no he's not he's

Sidey: He crops up later

on.

Reegs: He crops up later on. I would like to see a David Indication.

Sidey: Yeah,

would be good.

I don't know about you, I enjoyed it on balance, it was decent.

Dan: Strong recommend