FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH
Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a 1982 American coming-of-age comedy film directed by Amy Heckerling and written by Cameron Crowe, adapted from his 1981 book of the same name. Crowe went undercover at Clairemont High School in San Diego and wrote about his experiences. In 2005, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. (More from Wikipedia)
In his September 2000 appreciation for the Chicago Sun-Times of this film and the rest of the Cameron Crowe oeuvre – Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Jerry Maguire, and Say Anything – Jim DeRogatis allows that his favorite “music-movie pairing” in Almost Famous is: “Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs doing the chicken dance to ‘Search and Destroy’ by the Stooges”. While not taking away anything from the excellent music choices made during the film Almost Famous, the contrast could hardly be more stark between this thunderous song and the genteel sounds by the more popular 1970’s bands. This was true not just in the film but in the time period when Raw Power was released in 1973. Jim DeRogatis also wrote a biography in 2000 called Let it Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America’s Greatest Rock Critic.
(March 2017)
