Fast Times at Ridgemont High

The screenplay comes from the year Cameron Crowe spent undercover as a student at Clairemont High School in San Diego and from his 1981 book; Mark Ratner was modelled on Andy Rathbone, whom he met there. Art Linson took the script to Amy Heckerling, who until then had made only student films. Heckerling’s first contribution was not direction but location: she liked how much of the book gathered around the mall and enlarged its role. Jennifer Jason Leigh prepared by rereading her own school diaries and working three weeks in a mall pizza place. The MPAA first gave the film an X, for a long sex scene and brief male frontal nudity in the pool house. Heckerling had made that nudity even handed on purpose, since X rated films until then had mostly shown only women naked. To get the R, the scene was cut back sharply and the male shot recropped. Nicolas Cage made his feature debut here, billed as Nicolas Coppola. A good fit if you want a high school story that mocks the institutions rather than the kids, and puts an abortion decision mid plot without punishing anyone. Not for anyone who would rather teenage sexuality were not this explicit; the BBFC rated it 15 for strong language, sex, sex references, nudity and drug misuse.