A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Amy Heckerling, 1982)

Jennifer Jason Leigh and Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Jeff Spicoli: Sean Penn
Stacy Hamilton: Jennifer Jason Leigh
Brad Hamilton: Judge Reinhold
Mike Damone: Robert Romanus
Mark "Rat" Ratner: Brian Backer
Linda Barrett: Phoebe Cates
Mr. Hand: Ray Walston
Mr. Vargas: Vincent Schiavelli
Charles Jefferson: Forest Whitaker

Director: Amy Heckerling
Screenplay: Cameron Crowe
Based on a book by Cameron Crowe
Cinematography: Matthew F. Leonetti
Art director: Daniel A. Lomino

Of the few standouts in the teen comedy genre, Fast Times at Ridgemont High is the one most beloved of that pig in the python, the Baby Boomers. It's not as nostalgic as the granddaddy of the genre, American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973), or as smart as Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993), or as savagely witty as Tina Fey's Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2004). It's not even as cleverly conceived as director Amy Heckerling's other major outing in the genre, Clueless (1995). But it is the one most frank about teenage sexuality, especially in the relationship between Jennifer Jason Leigh's Stacy and Phoebe Cates's Linda, in which the supposedly "experienced" Linda serves as the virginal Stacy's mentor. The film also admirably confronts the question of abortion straightforwardly: Stacy has one and suffers no lasting trauma. Instead the condemnation lands on the guy, Mike Damone, whose callous treatment of Stacy is devastatingly portrayed. Otherwise, Fast Times is best seen as a landmark in the careers of future Oscar winners Sean Penn, Forest Whittaker, and Nicolas Cage (who has a small part billed as "Brad's Bud" under the name Nicolas Coppola), and as a demonstration of the skill of someone who has always deserved the Oscar she hasn't won, namely Jennifer Jason Leigh. The cast also features future big names like Eric Stolz and Anthony Edwards in small roles, and gave a brief boost to the career of Judge Reinhold that flared in the mid-1980s and then fizzled. But while Fast Times at Ridgemont High is never quite the "scuz-pit" that Roger Ebert, on an off night, saw it as, it hasn't worn very well. The acting is sometimes just this side of amateurish and the blend of the seriousness of Stacy's scenes with the more familiar classroom comedy involving Spicoli and Mr. Hand lacks finesse. While the movie has a slight feminist edge in its treatment of sex, it also involves some gratuitous breast-baring on the part of Leigh and Cates.

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