Trivia / Fast Times at Ridgemont High

• Actor-Shared Background: Stacy works at Perry's Pizza. Jennifer Jason Leigh actually worked at Perry's Pizza for a month after she got the role of Stacy Hamilton but before filming began.
• Breakthrough Hit: For Cameron Crowe as a writer.
• Cast the Runner-Up:
  • Universal originally considered Nicolas Cage for the role of Brad, but after his audition, Amy Heckerling thought his performance was too dark and instead offered the role to Judge Reinhold. Additionally, Cage was 17 at the time, and thus he could not legally work as many hours as those for actors 18 and over.
  • Sean Penn was asked to read for the part of Brad Hamilton as well as that of Jeff Spicoli.
  • Anthony Edwards and Eric Stoltz were considered for Jeff Spicoli and ended up playing the two unnamed stoner buddies of Spicoli in the "No shirt, no shoes, no dice" scene (Edwards is the one on the left and Stoltz is the one on the right when they're sitting across from Spicoli).
• Creator Backlash: Nicolas Cage said that filming for this movie was one of his worst experiences on a film set, not only by the fact that many of the cast and crew bullied him around (he was constantly teased for being a Coppola which is what lead to changing his name to Cage) but also that most of his scenes ended up being cut in the end.
• Dawson Casting: Phoebe Cates was 18 when she appeared in this film, and she was the youngest actor in the main cast.
• Deleted Role:
  • Nicolas Cage had one of his first roles as "Brad's Bud" but nearly every one of his scenes were cut. You can still see him for a couple seconds working the grill at the American Burger, and he's also seen as one of the spectators at the Ridgemont vs. Lincoln football game, in which star player Charles Jefferson leads the Ridgemont team to a major lopsided victory as a result of channeling his anger from finding his The Precious, Precious Car being wrecked with defacement insults on it allegedly from the Lincoln players ^note In actuality, it was because Jefferson's younger brother and Spicoli had taken the car out for a joyride and wrecked it. They spray painted the slurs on to disguise their culpability..
  • Hallie Todd, back when she was known as Hallie Eckstein, had a bit part in the movie as a fellow mall employee who asks Linda for advice how to have oral sex without getting pregnant. This scene was cut from the final version, but shows up on the original network broadcast and some cable TV airings.
• Deleted Scene: Mike Damone's nude scene with Stacy that was filmed and never used was stated by director Amy Heckerling to show the natural vulnerability between two young teenagers. The intent was to show each of them undressing, and then show them standing before each other fully naked, full frontal, vulnerable, and nervous. The scene was pulled due to an impending X-rating and was stuck in Universal's vaults until it was restored on the Criterion Collection release.
  • An improvised scene at a record store where Damone tells Spicoli where to find some music was filmed but never used.
• Edited for Syndication: An unusual case — this was one of several 1980s films where a Bowdlerised cut was created for commercial television during production by shooting cleaner versions of some scenes and additional scenes to substitute for ones that would have to be completely excised. The Criterion Collection's 2021 DVD/Blu-Ray release includes this alternative cut as a bonus feature.
• I Am Not Spock:
  • Sean Penn would rather not be associated with Spicoli nowadays.
  • Subverted with Ray Walston. For a long time after the film was released, people frequently addressed him as Mr. Hand. Walston was very grateful for this because up until that time, he felt that he was too closely associated with his prior role of Uncle Martin in My Favorite Martian.
• Method Acting:
  • During shooting of the film, Sean Penn got so into character that he only answered as Spicoli. In fact, the door on his dressing room was labeled "Spicoli" instead of "Sean Penn." He even extinguished a cigarette in the palm of his hand in order to better understand his character.
  • For his masturbation scene, Judge Reinhold brought a large dildo to work with, unbeknown to the rest of the cast. Phoebe Cates' look of horror and disgust is very real.
  • The novel was a case of method writing; Cameron Crowe went to high school for a year to research the story.
• Orphaned Reference: The part of the movie where Damone tells Mark to romance Stacy by playing side one of Led Zeppelin IV and then cuts to Stacy and Mark listening to Led Zeppelin in his car, with Stacy looking slightly embarrassed, is a reference to a deleted scene where Linda warns Stacy that Mark is probably a loser metalhead who listens to Led Zeppelin. The scene is shown in the TV edit, however.
• Recycled: The Series: Fast Times, a series that aired for only seven episodes in 1986 on CBS. Produced by Amy Heckerling and with Cameron Crowe as creative consultant, only Vincent Schiavelli (Mr. Vargas) and Ray Walston (Mr. Hand) reprised their roles from the film, though it's also notable for being Patrick Dempsey's first television role.
• The Red Stapler: Sales of Vans shoes increased following the release of the movie, where Jeff Spicoli wore his Vans black-and-white checkerboard slip-on shoes.
• Referenced by...: The music video for Fountains of Wayne's "Stacy's Mom" recreates the scene of Brad daydreaming about Linda and getting caught masturbating by the real Linda walking in; the song's narrator daydreams about Stacy's mom getting out of the pool and is interrupted by Stacy.
• Romance on the Set: Sean Penn asked out Pamela Springsteen, who played Dina, on the set of the movie; she accepted.
• Self-Adaptation: Cameron Crowe adapted his own non-fiction novel.
• Sleeper Hit: Universal originally planned to only release the film in the Western part of the United States for a few weeks before sending it off to cable (regional releases were still common at this time) due to the belief that there was no audience for it. After an excellent response, the film went wide three weeks later with a big opening in the Eastern United States and had a long run in theaters.
• Star-Making Role: For Sean Penn and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
• Technology Marches On:
  • The burglar disables the gas station's security camera by spray-painting the lens as he walks in. In 1982, chances are there wasn't another camera in the store. Now, there'd almost certainly be several.
  • Linda mentions that her neighborhood doesn't even have cable TV yet.
  • Spicoli's dad is a television repairman.
• Throw It In!:
  • The scene where Spicoli is interviewed by Stu Nahan and utters the immortal line, "Hey bud, let's party!" was a last-minute addition to the movie after plans to film Spicoli singing "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC fell through (see What Could Have Been below).
  • Penn improvised during his takes and tried to find ways to aggravate actor Ray Walston, who played Mr. Hand, even off-camera. He also did things to get genuinely startled reactions from the extras who played his classmates through unexpected improvisations.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Fred Gwynne was originally offered the role of Mr. Hand, but he turned it down because he felt that the sex scenes involving Jennifer Jason Leigh were too objectionable.
  • In the novel, Spicoli dreams he's singing "Highway to Hell" on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, but Johnny Carson refused to appear in the movie, and other talk show hosts also turned it down^note David Letterman apparently was willing to do it, but his agent wouldn't let him appear in a movie where the characters did drugs. Letterman would later call it a "fine film" during Phoebe Cates' appearance while the latter was promoting Gremlins. In its place was the scene where Spicoli is interviewed by Stu Nahan, then the sports director at Los Angeles NBC O&O station KNBC.
  • The scene where Linda instructs Stacy how to give a blowjob originally took place in a hot tub with both girls naked. Both Jennifer Jason Leigh and Phoebe Cates were up for it, but it was changed to avoid getting an X rating.
  • David Lynch was originally offered the chance to direct. He turned it down saying it was a funny script, but not really his thing.
  • Jodie Foster was considered for Stacy Hamilton, but was not interested in the role due to her commitment at Yale. Ellen Barkin, Geena Davis, Diane Lane, Tatum O'Neal, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kelly Preston, Brooke Shields and Elisabeth Shue were also considered, while Diane Lane auditioned.
  • Matthew Broderick turned down the role of Brad Hamilton when his father became terminally ill. Tom Hanks was also considered.
  • Christopher Reeve was considered for Jeff Spicoli.
  • Justine Bateman was offered the role of Linda but declined. Instead, she preferred to star in Family Ties. Rosanna Arquette, Carrie Fisher, Melanie Griffith, Ally Sheedy and Meg Tilly were also considered.
  • D.B. Sweeney was considered for Ron Johnson.
  • Ralph Macchio was asked for a role, but he demanded a salary the director couldn't afford.
  • Rob Lowe wrote in his autobiography that he sought to audition for the film but was unable to get a meeting with the filmmakers.
  • According to Amy Heckerling, one of the film's producers wanted "Raised on the Radio" by the Ravyns as the opening title track because it was going to be "a big hit song". She went with her choice, "We Got the Beat" by The Go-Go's, but used the other song elsewhere.
• Write Who You Know: Mr. Vargas was based on Clairemont High School biology teacher George L. Jones, who kept many animals in class (rattlesnakes, entire beehives, bats), and would regularly take students on strange field trips, such as visiting the San Diego sewage treatment plant, or to watch surgery on pigs at the University of California, San Diego. Jones taught at Clairemont from 1962 to 1982.

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