Fast Times At Ridgemont High - Special Edition

Comedy, Drama, Romance

Brian Backer	Mark Ratner
Phoebe Cates	Linda Barrett
Sean Penn	Jeff Spicoli
Judge Reinhold	Brad Hamilton
Robert Romanus	Mike Damone
Jennifer Jason Leigh	Stacy Hamilton
Vincent Schiavelli	Mr. Vargas
Scott Thomson	Arnold
Ray Walston	Mr. Hand
Amanda Wyss	Lisa

Director	Amy Heckerling
Producer	Irving Azoff; Art Linson; C.O. Erickson
Writer	Cameron Crowe
Cinematography	Matthew F. Leonetti
User Credit 1	Eric Jenkins
User Credit 2	Marilyn Vance

This hilarious comedy depicts the life and times of several high school students as they struggle their way through the year having to deal with a variety of situations: working, relationships, academics, sex, popularity, and friendship. Brad (Judge Reinhold) and Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) are siblings who must work through relationship and popularity issues. Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) plays a wannabe surfer who is trying to coast through school to try and make the next big wave. Mr. Hand (Ray Walston) is the hard-core teacher who is hell-bent on getting his students to learn. Throw them all together into one big school, and you'll definitely get some Fast Times At Ridgemont High.

Before he became an overrated filmmaker, Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire) was a reporter for Rolling Stone who was so youthful looking that he could go undercover for a year at a California high school and write a book about it. He wrote the script for this film, based on that book, and it launched the careers of several young actors, including Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, and, above all, Sean Penn. The story line is episodic, dealing with the lives of iconic teen types: one of the school's cool kids, a nerd, a teen queen, and, most enjoyably, the class stoner (Penn), who finds himself at odds with a strict history teacher (a wonderfully spiky Ray Walston). This is not a great movie but very entertaining and, for a certain age group, a seminal movie experience. --Marshall Fine