FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH

FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH

SPOILER ALERT

The third and final film in this series is Fast Times at Ridgemont High which came out in 1982.  It is similar to Valley Girl (1983) and The Last American Virgin (1982) in that the story has both teenage shenanigans and a love triangle that are backed by a good soundtrack.  The girl of interest in the film is Stacy Hamilton (Jennifer Jason Leigh) a fifteen-year-old who is on a quest to become sexually experienced.  For guidance she turns to her eighteen-year-old friend, coworker, and classmate, Linda Barrett (Phoebe Cates), who sees herself as a sexpert (my word, not hers) because she lost her virginity at the age of thirteen.   The girls work the counter at Perry’s Pizza, which Linda assures Stacy is the best job at the Ridgemont Mall. 

Another popular place for kids to work is the movie theater which is located across the food court from Perry’s. Mark ‘Rat’ Ratner (Brian Backer), one of the ushers there, likes the job for a lot of reasons, but mostly because he can stand out front and crush on Stacy, the girl of his dreams.  Rat’s best friend is Mike Damone, (Robert Romanus), the Casanova of Ridgemont High who most people simply call Damone.  He likes Rat’s workplace because he can scalp concert tickets at outrageous prices to the kids who come to see movies.  Stacy’s brother, Brad Hamilton (Judge Reinhold), who is a senior at Ridgemont High, is also employed at the mall.  He is the Assistant to the Assistant Manager of All-American Burger where his girlfriend Lisa (Amanda Weiss) works as a waitress.  The other center of activity for Ridgemont teens is the high school where students toilet paper the building without fear of retribution, Brad enjoys a lot of female attention thanks to his 1960 Buick LeSabre; stoner Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) does as he damned well pleases, and uber strict History teacher Mr. Hand metes out various forms of punishment to students who either show up late or try to eat in class.

When the story opens, Linda is tutoring Stacy on how to get Ron (D.W. Brown), a twenty-six-year-old music salesman, to ask her out.  At the same time, Rat is standing in the theater lobby admiring her from afar; Damone is smooth talking some kids into buying concert tickets at more than twice their value; and Brad is trying to figure out how to tell Lisa that he wants to break up so he can be free his last year of high school.  Stacy finally gets up the nerve to flirt with Ron and succeeds in getting him to ask her out.  That night, after her parents go to bed, she crawls through her bedroom window to meet him.  He drives to The Point, the spot where kids in town go to make out, grabs a blanket, and escorts her to some abandoned benches for privacy.  After Stacy assures him that she is nineteen, he has sex with her then he takes her home. 

The next day Ron sends Stacy a bouquet of flowers, but he doesn’t contact her again.  Unaware that the girl he adores is interested in someone else, Rat asks her out to dinner, and she accepts his invitation.  They go to an Italian restaurant and everything goes smoothly until the bill comes and Rat discovers that he left his wallet at home.  He calls Damone and asks him to go by his house to get the money and bring it to the restaurant.  Damone agrees but says Rat will owe him a big favor for doing it.  When Rat’s friend shows up acting confident and cool, Stacy is noticeably impressed.

After dinner, Rat takes Stacy home and she invites him in; unaware that her family is not there, he accepts the invitation.   She has him unzip her dress so she can change into something more comfortable and comes back a minute later wearing a bathrobe.  They go into her room where she coaxes him to sit on her bed and she begins to kiss him.  When Rat senses that things are going a little fast, however, he chickens out and leaves.  The next day Stacy tells Linda what happened, and Linda advises her to find someone else…quick.

A couple of days later, Rat and Damone stop by Stacy’s house and the three of them play in the pool.  Although she doesn’t noticeably favor either boy right then, the next day at school she chases Damone down in the hall to flirt with him.  He tries to do the right thing by saying that Rat really likes her, but Stacy responds that she is actually attracted to him.  Instead of respecting his best friend’s feelings, Damone walks Stacy home and manipulates her into inviting him to go swimming.  When he says he doesn’t have any trunks, she takes him into the pool house where the family keeps extra swimwear.  Once inside, she closes the door and begins to undress; rather than begging off, which he knows he should do, Damone takes advantage of the situation and has sex with her.  As soon as he is done, Damone tells Stacy that he has to go and leaves.  The next day she sees him in the hall at school and tries to talk to him, but he blows her off. 

A month later, Stacy tracks Damone down to tell him she’s pregnant and he coldly replies that she should just get an abortion which is “no big deal.”  She tells him she has an appointment to do just that but needs for him to give her a ride to the clinic and pay half of the $150 fee.  Although he agrees to do both, he stands her up because he doesn’t have the money.  Desperate, Stacy catches Brad as he is pulling out of the drive and asks him to take her to the bowling alley, which is directly across the street from the clinic.  Brad senses that something is not right and after dropping her off, he watches in his rearview mirror to find out what his little sister is up to.  When he sees her run across the street, he doesn’t have to be a genius to figure out what’s going.  After the procedure, the clinic refuses to let Stacy leave if she doesn’t have a ride, so she convincingly lies that her boyfriend is taking her home.  To her surprise, when she walks out the door Brad is standing by his car, waiting. 

Of course, the first thing Stacy does when she gets home is tell Linda what Damone did, and in retaliation Linda paints the word “Prick” on his car door and “Little Prick” on his school locker.  Rat sees it and confronts Damone, demanding to know what went on between him and Stacy.  Unable to hide his betrayal any longer, Damone admits that they had sex, but instead of accepting any responsibility, he blames Stacy by claiming that she is a very aggressive girl.  Enraged, Rat says he’s done with their friendship and starts a fight which the principal quickly breaks up.

Every spring the students of Ridgemont High throw a big end-of-the-year dance.  Damone and Rat, who have both gone stag, run into each other, and for the first time since their argument, they talk.  Damone apologizes and admits that he is to blame for betraying their friendship and Rat, being a great guy, accepts the apology.  As they are making up, Stacy walks by and makes a point of saying hello to Rat.   Later at the pizza parlor, she tells Linda that it isn’t sex, but romance that she really wants.  To prove it, she spots Rat staring at her, waves him over, and asks whether she’ll see him in the summer.  Still upset about what happened between her and Damone, Rat answers that he will be too busy traveling.  Not to be dissuaded, however, Stacy hands him her picture and says she hopes he’ll call her.  It’s a really good portrait of her, and after Rat looks at it, he says he will probably have time to read her letters if she wants to write. 

The film ends with a summary of what became of the main characters.  Brad got a job in a Mi T Mart convenient store, stopped a robbery by throwing hot coffee on the thief, and was made store manager; Damone got busted for scalping tickets; Linda went to college and began an affair with her Abnormal Psychology professor; Spicoli saved Brooke Shields from drowning, but blew his reward hiring Nirvana for his birthday  party; and Stacy and Rat started dating but hadn’t yet had sex.

I didn’t go into the silly events, like Mr. Hand kicking Spicoli out of class for being tardy or Brad losing jobs due to his temper, because they didn’t add anything to what happens between Stacy, Rat, and Damone.  I do, however, want to spend some time comparing the characters who make up the love triangles in these movies.  The most notable similarity between these groups is that they are all about attractive girls who invariably choose bad boys over good guys, which I classify according to the way they treat people, especially females.  The triangles consist of:  Valley Girl which has Julie with Tommy as the bad boy and Randy as the good guy; The Last American Virgin which has Karen with Rick as the bad boy and Gary as the good guy; and Fast Times at Ridgemont High which has Stacy with Damone as the bad boy and Rat as the good guy.   

Starting with the bad boys, I noticed the following.  Tommy is a terrible person.  He leaves Julie sitting home waiting for him to call, callously uses Loryn for sex to get back at Julie for dumping him, and secretly plots to take Julie to a hotel after the prom.  He is also a coward who uses his gang of privileged athletes to help him beat up Randy.  Rick is even more morally bankrupt than Tommy. He cheats on Karen with Ruby (the hooker) and Carmen (Gary’s customer) while at the same time conniving with the conscience of a grifter to take Karen’s virginity.  Then, when she gets pregnant, he dumps her and justifies this by inferring that she is a slut who is carrying someone else’s kid.  Damone also displays egregious character flaws.  He betrays Rat by having sex with Stacy, and when she gets pregnant, he promises to help her, then leaves her hanging.  The overall message in these films is that bad boys are liars, cowards, con artists, and bullies who betray their friends and disrespect women.

Among the good guys, I found these similarities.  Although he looks rough around the edges, Randy is decent and mature.  He never pressures Julie about having sex and shows respect to her father by formally introducing himself and offering to shake hands.  Gary is loyal and kind.  Even though he would do anything to be Karen’s boyfriend, he keeps Rick’s secrets from her, and when she gets pregnant, he pays for her abortion and takes care of her after the procedure.  Rat respects women and has a forgiving nature.  When Stacy tries to have sex with him on their first date, instead of taking advantage of her, he leaves.  Later, when he finds out she had sex with Damone, he refrains from spreading rumors about her or saying unkind things to her.  The overall message in the three movies is that good guys don’t betray their friends or take advantage of girls they like, even if the girls don’t like them back.    

While the bad boys and good guys in the three films behave very similarly, the girls differ in some interesting ways.   Julie, who has been raised to think for herself, repeatedly foils Tommy’s attempts to get into her pants, then dumps Randy because her girlfriends tell her it’s him or them.  It is hard to become well-acquainted with Karen because she doesn’t have much to say.  She lets Rose speak for her and allows Rick or Gary, depending on the situation, to drag her around like a pull toy.  When she ends up choosing Rick over Gary at the end, however, you can’t help but suspect that she is a bit of social climber who knows she will get more mileage by being with Rick who is better looking and more popular than Gary.  Because Stacy is intentionally promiscuous, it is easy to come away thinking that it was only a matter of time before someone treated her the way Damone did, but that doesn’t take into account how young she is or  that she’s getting really bad advice from an older more experienced friend whom she idolizes.  When you look at Stacy more closely, however, you see a girl who believes her curiosity about sex is natural and learns to pay heed when her experiments end in disaster. 

The most troubling aspect in the movies, is how all the boys treat girls like possessions rather than people.  When Julie dumps Randy, he does really creepy stuff like sleeping under her bedroom window and stalking her.  When that doesn’t work, he lies in wait at the high school prom, sucker punches her date, drags her (albeit willingly) to the limo, and tells the driver to take them to the hotel where he undoubtedly expects to have sex.  Rather than warning Karen that his friend is a cad, Gary strives to win her love by out maneuvering him.   Rather than refusing to let Rick take Karen to his grandmother’s house, Gary says he lost the key.  Rather than borrowing the car from his boss so Rick can make out with Karen while Gary entertains Rose, he lies and says his boss wouldn’t let him have it.  The dispute between Rat and Damone is the most senseless because Damone doesn’t even like Stacy.  He never asks her out or shows any interest in her; he just takes advantage of the fact that she is willing to have sex with him.  In fact, Rat would never have even known what happened between them had Damone not bailed on Stacy when she got pregnant. The most troubling aspect, however, is that in all three movies the bad boys and the good guys get into physical altercations over the girls, acting like drug dealers fighting over territory. 

Of the bad guys, I think Rick is the worst because he treats Karen so callously when she gets pregnant, and swoops in to reclaim her after Gary takes care of her abortion.  Of the good guys, I most like Rat because he wins Stacy by just being himself, rather than stalking her like Randy does Julie, or letting himself be made a fool of like Gary.  As to the girls, my least favorite is Karen because she is an idiot, and my most favorite is Stacy because, at the end of the day, she learns that the best voice to listen to is her own.

Fast Times At Ridgemont High can be found on Starz if you have a membership or rented on services like redbox, Google, Apple TV and Fandango for $3 or $4.  You can buy it digitally on Amazon Prime, but if you prefer a DVD, one can be found for $8 to $15 at Best Buy, eBay, and Amazon.  Since you don’t eat it or wipe your ass with it, I see no reason why it would be in short supply.  Next, I am going to discuss two of my favorite John Cusack movies, Say Anything and Better Off Dead, before launching into a comparison of coming-of-age movies from different decades.    Until then, chill out with a cold beer (a form of alcohol that stores do have) and watch some good flicks.