Beginning in the fall of 1979, a 22-year-old Cameron Crowe, who at the time already had several years of experience writing for Rolling Stone and Creem, spent a school year undercover at Clairemont High School in San Diego. He drew from the experience to write his 1981 novel Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which he adapted himself for the screen: it was his first movie credit, and the first for director Amy Heckerling. Though teenage high jinks—and insecurities—are a staple of American comedies, Fast Times stands tall among them, not just for its brisk, breezy pacing, or for the vivid quality of its characters (like Sean Penn’s glassy-eyed stoner-surfer Spicoli), but for its frankness about teenage abortion, and its refusal to address the termination of a pregnancy as a moral quandary worthy of society’s handwringing. Which is not to say that Heckerling and Crowe treat the subject lightly: when 15-year-old Stacy Hamilton—played by a very young and extremely touching Jennifer Jason Leigh—confronts the young cad who got her pregnant, Robert Romanus’ Mike Damone, he resists taking responsibility. They only “did it” once; he’s just not interested in her problems. Then, with an eye roll, he says he figures she expects him to pay for it… read more >
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