Crowe - Fast times at Ridgemont High : a true story

Welcome to lunch court. Thats Spicoli over there, trying hard to unwrap a bologna sandwich. His eyes are still red-rimmed from the three bowls of dope he smoked after his morning surf. Stacy Hamilton doesnt look any different even though she finally lost her virginity last night. Linda Barrett, Stacys best bud, wants to hear all about it. After all, she gives lessons. And here comes Brad Hamilton, king of the lunch court and prince of the fast-food employee hierarchy. Brads a guy who takes pride in his fries. Mike Damone takes pride in The Attitude, which he developed in Philly, his hometown, where life is cheap. And heres that wussy Mark Ratner. Girls make him sweat. Hell do more than sweat when he turns up in the yearbook class picture with something missing.

These kids are, uh, the future of America. Cameron Crowe spent a year with them at Ridgemont High in Anytown, California, and if you cant imagine or cant remember (last week? last year? last decade?) what its like to have acne, bio lab, Saturday night car cruises, and the embarrassment of parents, Fast Times at Ridgemont High will bring it all home for you. Its tense, traumatic and marginally insaneand just like high school, its poignant, entertaining and totally true.

Copyright1981 by Cameron Crowe

Published by Simon and Schuster
A Division of Gulf & Western Corporation
Simon & Schuster Building
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10020

SIMON AND SCHUSTER and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Crowe, Cameron, date.
Fast times at Ridgemont High.

1. Title.

PS3553.R589S8 813.54 81-8945

ISBN: 0-671-25290-0
0-671-25291-7 pbk.

An excerpt from the lyrics of Watching the Detectives, by Elvis Costello, copyright 1980 Plangent Visions Music, Inc., is used by permission of Warner Bros. Music. All rights reserved.

An excerpt from the lyrics of Landslide, by Stevie Nicks, copyright 1975, is used by permission of Fleetwood Mac Music/Welsh Witch Music. All rights reserved.

For My Parents

ALL KIDS CANT GROW UP TO BE MOVIE STARS OR ROCK PERFORMERS. DONT MAKE NOT WORKING EASY FOR THEM. IF AT FIRST THEY HAVE TO SETTLE ON JOBS THAT ARENT INTELLECTUALLY FULFILLING, SO WHAT? HAS EVERY JOB YOUVE EVER HAD BEEN INTELLECTUALLY FULFILLING?

THE SURVIVAL KIT FOR PARENTS OF TEENAGERS,
by David Melton

Preface

For seven years I wrote articles for a youth culture magazine, and perhaps not a day went by when this term wasnt usedthe kids. Editors assigned certain articles for the kids. Music and film executives were constantly discussing whether a product appealed to the kids. Rock stars spoke of commercial concessions made for the kids. Kids were discussed as if they were some enormous whale, to be harpooned and brought to shore.

It began to fascinate me, the idea of The Kids. They were everywhere, standing on street corners in their Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirts, in cars, in the 7-Eleven. Somehow this grand constituency controlled almost every adults fate, yet no adult really knew what it was nowadaysto be a kid.

In the summer of 79, I had just turned twenty-two. I discussed the idea for this book with my New York publisher. Go back to high school, he said, and find out whats really going on in there with the kids. I thought about it over a weekend, and took the project.

I had attended Ridgemont Senior High School in Redondo Beach, California, for a summer session seven years earlier, and those eight weeks had been sublime and forbidden days, even if it did mean going to school in the summer. I normally attended a rather strict Catholic school, and there were many of us who believed that all our problems would be solved, all our dreams within reach if we just went to Ridgemont public high school.

In the fall of 79 I walked into the office of Principal William Gray and told him the plan. I wanted to attend classes at Ridgemont High and remain an inconspicuous presence for the full length of the school year. The object, I told him, was to write a book about real, contemporary life in high school.

Principal Gray was a careful man with probing eyes. He was wary of the entire plan, and he wanted to know what I had written before. I explained that I had authored a number of magazine profiles of people in the public eye.

Like who? he asked.

I named a few. A presidents son. A few rock stars. A few actors. My last article had been on the songwriter-actor Kris Kristofferson.

Principal Gray eased back in his chair. You know Kris Kristofferson?

Sure. I spent a few weeks on tour with him.

Hell, said the principal. Whats he like?

A great guy. I told him a few Kris stories.

Well now, said Principal Gray, I think I can trust you. Maybe this can be worked out.

It was. Principal Gray called in an English teacher, Mrs. Gina George, and gave me a homeroom for the year. Four other teachers were also informed. I started school the next week as a seventeen-year-old senior.

Walking the halls of Ridgemont was at first an unnerving experience. I wore standard Southern California attiretennis shoes, t-shirt, and backpack, but as I pushed past the other students I began to wonder. Was I walking too much like an adult? Was there some kind of neon light blinking on meImposter?

I was never found suspicious. In fact, for the first month, I was completely ignored at Ridgemont. I eavesdropped on conversations around me, made copious notes, winked at the teachers who knew, and made my way. I began to feel like a third-rate spy.

One day after school I wandered into journalism class and saw a girl Id noticed before but had not met. She was hunt-and-pecking on the typewriter, looking caught in the midst of writers block.

Sorry to bother you, I said.

Youre not bothering me, she responded. She switched off her typewriter.

Her name was Linda Barrett, and she began asking rapid-fire questions, as if she was making a mental computer card out on me. Do you have a girlfriend? Where do you work? Whos your favorite teacher?

We talked until the janitors kicked us out, and then we sat in her car in the parking lot. She began pointing out campus notables through her windshield. She knew them all, and they knew her. Linda Barrett worked in the local mall, at a popular ice cream parlor.

I soon realized what a valuable friend I had made. Through Linda Barrett I met her best friend Stacy, Stacys brother, Brad, and many others I would come to write about. It was the beginning of my social acceptance at Ridgemont High. As the year progressed, they became my group, and they were the characters I spent most of my days with. They were my friends.

As it happens with any writer, the temptation was to continue the research forever. My entire lifestyle changed that year. I went to malls, to slumber parties, to beaches, to countless fast-food stands. I cant remember all the times I left situations to go to the bathroom and furiously scribble notes on conversations and facts Id just heard. Back at Ridgemont, no doubt, some still remember me as the guy with the bad bladder.

I found it was all too easy to recapture ones adolescence. The hard part was growing up again. I would return to my home in Los Angeles to visit former cohorts and old friends more and more infrequently. Their look was distant and puzzled.