As noted here, it's been thirty-five years since the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High came out. It's a generally well-respected film for, I suspect, three reasons. One was that it launched or boosted the careers of a pretty long list of actors who went on to do major roles in other films. Another is that it was so imitated…and the third is that even if it didn't do much for you when it first came out, it looked pretty good compared to the many imitations that followed.
And I guess a fourth would be that once we all got cable, it always seemed to be airing and you could tune in almost any time and hit a scene that was fun to watch on its own. Extra points if it was the one with Judge Reinhold and Phoebe Cates by the pool.
About four months before it came out, a producer friend of mine sent me to meet an attorney down on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. He represented (and I think co-owned) a film investment company. There are a lot of these outfits around and the precise way they function can vary a lot but many work like this one did: They would hire writers and develop scripts that they felt would make good movies. They would then attach "elements" — get an option on an experienced director and/or some star talent — and then approach major film studios with that package. They'd also gather investors and pledge a large percentage of what it would cost to make the film. If the studio liked what they were offering, they'd see about negotiating a deal to put up the rest of the budget and to handle distribution and marketing. A lot of movies get made this way.
The lawyer told me that Fast Times was going to be, as that clown now in the White House would say, huugggge. "In three months, the market will be glutted with this kind of script," he said. "I want something I can be shopping around in one." He had read something I'd written and liked it. He'd also been told by that producer friend that I was really, really fast. The latter qualification seemed more important than the former.
The movie had to be about kids in high school and what went on in their lives, on and off campus. They wanted the look and feel of Fast Times at Ridgemont High but completely different storylines. "I don't want anyone to read this script and say we copied any characters or plot points," the lawyer said, sounding very much like a lawyer. Having occasionally declined writing jobs where I'd be expected to dance on the thin edge of plagiarism, I liked that.
I also liked when he told me not to worry about writing for Big Stars. "Since it will be mainly about teenagers," he said, "we probably won't be casting Big Stars, though we're open to cast members from Fast Times since we think some of them will become hot when it opens." It was to have enough skin in it to qualify for an "R" rating, they didn't want much (if anything) in there about drugs, it should be something that could be scored with popular music hits of the day…and that was about it. The rest was up to me, providing I go off and come back soon with some ideas that sounded promising.
I left his office with a great feeling of elation and exhilaration. It was pretty much a wide-open invite to write anything I wanted as long as it was about high schoolers. Having been one a mere thirteen years earlier, I still had a lot of emotion and observations about those years, and I thought I had some things to say that some folks would like to hear. I also left there with a top-secret, hush-hush "don't tell anyone you have this" copy of the Fast Times shooting script and on the way home, I stopped off and bought a copy of the book by Cameron Crowe on which the movie was based. I read both and jotted down a list of storylines to avoid. It was not difficult.
Ten days later, I was back in his office, telling stories to him and several of his associates. Some were utter fiction. Some were kinda true and sorta autobiographical. Most were kinda/sorta true and sorta/kinda autobiographical up to the point where fiction kicked in. They laughed a lot and before I was done, they said the magic words: "We're going to contact your agent and make an offer."
The offer turned out to be a bump above Writers Guild scale but with a series of impressive bonuses — one if it was made at all; another, if it was made without them having to bring in another writer to sandblast and repaint my work; still another if it was made and it grossed over some certain number that seemed unreachable. A basic rule of Hollywood is to never expect anything on the back end. You might get your bonuses. You might get sizeable royalties or residuals. You might wake up on morning and discover you'd been turned into a cockroach. If you're going to do something, do it for the guaranteed up-front dollars, not for the endlessly receding horizon in the distance.
I agreed and went to work…and in two weeks, I had a first draft. The lawyer-producer read it and called me to say, "This is great. Cut ten pages and lose the tits."
I said, "I thought you wanted an 'R' rating." He said, "That was two weeks ago. The market has changed." I asked, "How much can the market change in two weeks?" He said, "Like you wouldn't believe."
So I tossed ten pages including all the nekkid scenes and he said he loved everything but the title I'd given it, which was Sky High. I had it take place at a learning establishment called Schuyler High School, see? A week later, I got paid (yay!) and an experienced director agreed to direct it if it got made. And then a week or two later, the lawyer-guy called and said he'd raised many millions of dollars, totaling about a third of the total budget. Basking in the success that seemed quite certain to him now, he said, "Every studio in town is going to want to snatch this up."
Amazingly a few weeks later, the script was unsnatched and largely unread. "We may be too late," he told me. Everybody's already got a script like this." A lot of them, he reported, didn't even want to look at mine once they heard what he was offering. With those that were willing to give it a look-see, some readers only got far enough in to mention Mr. Jesus H. Christ and moan, "Another Fast Times clone" and to then stop. I think the slowest of them figured it out about halfway through page five.
Is this the end of the story? Well, almost. The lawyer's firm gave me a quick turnaround, meaning in this case that the script reverted to me. I was free to shop it around to other producers and if one liked it and it got made, the lawyer's firm would get back what they'd paid me. My agent did find another firm that optioned it from me, only to later decide there were too many films like it starting to flood Cineplexes the length and breadth of this great land of ours. No one else ever considered filming it and when I reread it a few years ago, I was almost glad. I don't know if it was never as good as the folks who thought it was good, myself included, thought it was…or if it spoiled like year-old tapioca, lying in a dark filing cabinet for all those years.
So now is this the end of the story? I suppose so, but there's a sequel and it took place a few years later when another producer — and the folks in the Childrens Programming Division of a major TV network — began wondering: Could they possibly adapt Fast Times at Ridgemont High into a live-action situation comedy to run on Saturday mornings? I got a call and I'll tell you what happened and why this one went kablooey in Part Two. Watch for it here some time between now and Labor Day. I'm not saying Labor Day of which year but it'll be before some Labor Day.
