Originally posted here.If you're me, you go into a book like Fast Times at Ridgemont High thinking "Awwww, yesssss. I can't wait to see THAT LINE in the original context!"Because this is a book that (apparently, just like me) you've seen the movie, but have been UNABLE to find a copy to read.[sidenote: What is up with everything I really want to read being out of print lately? I ONLY HAVE SO MUCH TO SPEND ON BOOKS AND RESELLERS ARE KILLING ME, MAN!]When I was a senior in high school, I'd just moved from NW Montana to SoCal. Most of my friends at my new school were ALSO new there. That was how I knew J. and his little brother C. J. and I had photography together my second semester, but after going to his house a few times after school, I realized that C. and I had a lot more in common.He showed up one day in a Beastie Boys tee shirt that made me laugh. And then he thought I was laughing at him for liking the Beastie Boys! When I tried to explain that I was laughing at the back of the shirt, he gave a bit of a giggle himself and said he thought it was funny getting away with a masturbation joke at school.It was then that I realized that he had no idea where that line had come from, or WHOSE VAN THAT WAS, so I made him watch Fast Times with me that same day.He loved it. Of course he did. He was a 90s Spicoli (but with skating instead of surfing). I sat next to him and mouthed the words to the ENTIRE MOVIE because...when I love something unabashedly, I read/watch/listen to it over and over and over again - it's a thing I have, I don't know. Shut up.Anyway.At that point in my life, I'd already seen this movie more times than I could count, and had already been searching for the book for at least five years. This was one that I first saw at a very young age with my dad, and he and I were already quoting it at each other before I was 10. Don't judge, my dad's awesome.The book was NOWHERE. I tried all kinds of interlibrary loans and searching every bookstore I EVER went to, but I couldn't manage to get my hands on it (younger readers, this was way before amazon and even THE INTERNET were household things).So, when I started to read Cameron Crowe's 'true story' yesterday, it was after 20 years of looking for a copy of the damn thing. I hoped I wouldn't be disappointed. You know, like - the movie is this ICONIC piece of the 80s for me and I just didn't want to learn that it was SHIT compared to the book.Luckily, that did not turn out to be the case.Fast Times at Ridgemont High (the film) is probably the most faithful book-to-film adaptation I've ever seen.Yes, there's more.Yes, there are characters that don't appear in the movie, and some characters have been condensed/compressed/combined into one, BUT the dialogue is effing SPOT ON.Seriously, the only thing I was expecting to read (while the movie/soundtrack were playing in my head) that I didn't find is the title of today's post. The scene below is one of my favourite in the entire movie, and while it happened, the lines here weren't in the book at all.(Relax, all right?)BUT! It was kind of no big because I was having such a FANTASTIC time with the rest of it.Is this a book I'd recommend to everyone? HELL, NO! Is it, however, a book I'd recommend to major fans of the movie? HELL, YES.Let me tell you why.There's an introduction by the author saying that he'd been an actual journalist from a young age (Seriously, he was young. See Almost Famous for more information.), and that when he was 22 he approached the principal of Ridgemont High with the idea of going to school for a year as a senior, and writing about the experience. This book was what came out of it. So, we're supposed to believe that it's all a true story, but it doesn't really come across as one. It reads like a FICTIONALIZED ACCOUNT of what happened that year, because without being psychic, there's no way that all of the details could have been filled in like they were.[ahem]Maybe this stuff is true, but if so, the details were filled in by Mr Crowe, because there's no way he could have known what SHIRT someone was wearing during a [ahem] private fantasy. I don't care WHO YOU ARE, no one is going to tell you that ish.So. Here's how you go into reading Fast Times at Ridgemont High. *You are already a fan of the movie. *You do not expect a whole lot more than just a series of DVD extras. *You pretend that this is a novel, and not a 'true story.' *You try to pretend that Spicoli was never played by Sean Penn because the real Spicoli is much younger than that, and nowhere near as awesome. *You (other than the scene mentioned above) are giddy with anticipation for reading MOAR INFORMATION about your favourite scenes that are coming up. Finally - and this only has a bit to bear on the subject at hand, really, so feel free to skip to the comments section - I mentioned in an email to Amy today (and talked about it a little bit on Em's blog a few months ago) that it's kind of sad that we don't have more books and movies today that discussed abortion in as frank a manner as this one does. Today, we only get right or left-wing political bullshit. Maybe we haven't progressed as far as we've thought in the last 30 years? I don't know.Then the conversation with Amy turned to her giving me messages from her dad about the next season of Survivor, so that has nothing to do with anything here.TL;DROnly read it if you already liked the movie. Otherwise it'll probably drive you crazy.
Still my favorite coming-of-age novel after all these years.I read this in 1981 at age 15 after reading an extended excerpt in Playboy magazine (yeah, I read Playboy at 15 for the interviews and the book extracts--wink wink). I'll never know exactly why my parents acquired the book--it wasn't a bestseller, to my knowledge, and it was kind of under the radar--but I loved the magazine excerpt, then co-opted the book and read it, and it's been a beloved part of my book collection ever since.The movie that came of the book, of course, set off a wave of similar coming-of-age movies set in suburban southern California. Fast Times is still the best of that bunch.In the late 70s, Cameron Crowe was already a veteran writer for Rolling Stone magazine and a music industry insider in his early 20s. He posed the idea of returning to high school--undercover--to observe some of the social circles and gather material for a writing project. He spent a full school year at Clairemont High School in San Diego and fit right in, gaining the confidence of his fellow students and making friendships.The novel follows a core of characters between the ages of 15 and 18--sophomore Stacy Hamilton and her worldly best friend, Linda Barrett; Stacy's older brother Brad, a senior; sophomore Mark Ratner and his cocky friend Mike Damone. And then there are various supporting characters: the stoner-surfer Jeff Spicoli (brilliantly portrayed by Sean Penn in the film), and his nemesis, history teacher and Hawaii Five-O aficionado Mr. Hand.I was lucky enough to read the book a year before the movie was made, so it gave me a background of these characters before they hit the silver screen. The novel digs a little deeper into the characters and you get a good sense of what kind of writer Cameron Crowe was, and why he's been so successful with his screenwriting and filmmaking.One of Crowe's hallmarks is his compassionate handling of his characters. His characters are multi-dimensional and worth caring about. He depicts realistic relationships between parents and kids, especially--not the stilted, often-frictional relationships so often portrayed. One of my highlights of the novel is when Stacy Hamilton opens up and tells her father a big secret that most kids wouldn't tell their parents, and her dad listens and gives advice without lecturing--showing a level of trust and between her and her dad that is lacking in a lot of fiction. It's scenes like these that give Crowe's characters depth and sets him apart from his peers.Crowe is also adept at weaving music into the narrative, so it's a very natural part of his storytelling--like Damone cutting school and playing Deep Purple and Rainbow records all day in honor of Ritchie Blackmore's birthday--a scene I wish had been in the movie.By the end of the novel, the characters are going through the normal end-of-school-year angst--reminiscing about the year behind them, exchanging yearbooks to sign, knowing it's goodbye to one part of their lives together, and not knowing what will happen going forward. It's an exciting and bittersweet time in a teenager's life, and again Crowe captures these moments with the same sensitivity and authenticity he gives all his writing.Being a teenager in southern California back in the early 80s, I loved this novel--it spoke to me far more deeply than a cynical novel like Catcher in the Rye ever could have. Fast Times at Ridgemont High was an accurate depiction of the kind of adolescence I had, because those characters were my direct peers. It's a shame the book has been out of print for so long, because I think it should be a classic--and it is, at least to me.
Do You like book Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982)?
One of my favorite books and one I felt the need to return to after being disappointed by Cameron Crowe's latest film "Aloha," what I considered to be his first real misfire in a long, illustrious career. I just needed to get back into his prose again, his attention to the characters and the details of their lives while all congealed into a bittersweet narrative about a collective of teenagers living lives that they truly are not emotionally ready to deal with yet. In fact, it made me wonder if he would ever decided to just write another novel before diving back into another movie.Even so, I do have this one...this wonderful one.
—Scott Collins
I'm of two minds about Cameron Crowe's supposedly 100% true memoir. First, only real life could be so boring. Second, either things didn't really occur as presented in the book or it's a complete fabrication, because there are many inconsistencies throughout the book. For instance, (SPOILER ALERT - although, trust me, I'm saving you several hours of your life you'll never get back) near the end of the book, Mike Damone and Mark Ratner attend the school-sanctioned Senior Night at Disneyland, which only seniors are allowed to attend. (I'm sure there are other passages in the book that confirm their senior-ness as well, but I don't remember them off the top of my head.) But then, in the last chapter, Ratner cleans out his locker and talks about getting the same locker next year. So how can both REALLY be true? If Crowe wants us to buy his story that everything happened exactly as presented, then he's still got some splainin' to do, even 30+ years later.
—Gary Anthony
So when I stumbled across this book, I didn't realize that it's pretty rare -- just knew that I had always wanted to read it. No idea why it's out of print, given that a) Cameron Crowe's only gotten more famous b) people have nostalgia for everything from the late 1970s/early 1980s and c) anything with teenagers in it seems to sell. Anyway. I've always enjoyed this movie, but the book is a tremendous improvement. A few of the characters in the movie's parts are cut down considerably, and/or simplified, so they feel more real in the book (oh wait, and they ARE REAL, as the preface makes clear). Having more of the story also explains parts of the movie that make less sense (why would Linda be friends with Stacy in the first place?). A broad range of minor characters gives it more texture. One of the most interesting things is that the movie appears to contain virtually no dialogue that is not included in the book, and until it has to wrap up with a Hollywood ending, almost no scenes that are not from the book. Another reason I liked the book better/was surprised it's out of print/am now worried they'll try to remake the movie/realize thinking about it more they definitely won't: The kids are a lot wilder in the book. Way more sex, and LOTS of drugs -- anyone who thinks today's thirteen-year-olds just discovered all this stuff and that kids were way more naive 30 years ago is in for a shock. What interested me though is that the girls are way more into this stuff than the boys -- they're light-years ahead of the male characters in terms of what they're up to, but also in terms of maturity and how they handle it all. This makes some aspects of the book more poignant, and others more surprising. Comparing it to the movie, it's interesting to see how they reverted to traditional gender roles (naive girls and manipulative boys) for the Hollywood version.The last reason I really enjoyed this book is more personal -- I didn't realize it at the time, but it turns out when I first moved to San Diego I lived down the street from "Ridgemont High" (and even nearer to a couple of the fast-food establishments where Brad Hamilton worked). Though Crowe tries to throw readers off with his broader geography of California, his description of the area is extremely specific right down to the Del Taco nearest the school. Though obviously he's a journalist and not an ethnographer, it would have been interesting to see a bit more of Crowe in the book -- he explains how he did what was more or less participant observation in the preface to the book, but then he doesn't appear anywhere else within the text. We never see characters react to him, so it's never clear what events he witnessed firsthand and which he heard about later (some are obvious, but for others who knows). In any event, that's not even a complaint, just would make the book even more interesting. As it is, it reads like a completely clear-eyed, virtually unembellished story of high school life. I wonder what the real people behind those characters think of it now.
—Tiny Pants
