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Introduction to Fast Times at Ridgemont High
(original book)
For seven years I wrote articles for a youth culture magazine, and perhaps not a day went by when this term wasn't used -"the kids." Editors assigned certain articles for "the kids." Music and film executives were constantly discussing whether a product appealed "to the kids." Rock stars spoke of commercial concessions made "for the kids." Kids were discussed as if they were some huge whale, to be harpooned and brought to shore.
It began to fascinate me, the idea of The Kids. They were everywhere, standing on street corners in their Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirts, in cars, in the 7-Eleven. Somehow this grand constituency controlled almost every adult's fate, yet no adult really knew what it was nowadays - to be a kid.
In the summer of '79, I had just turned 22. I discussed the idea for this book with my New York publisher. Go back to high school, he said, and find out what's really going on in there with the kids. I thought about it over the weekend, and took the project.
I had attended Ridgemont Senior High in Redondo Beach, California, for a summer session seven years earlier, and those eight weeks had been sublime and forbidden days, even if it did mean going to a school in the summer. I normally attended a rather strict Catholic school, and there were many of us who believed that all our problems would be solved, all our dreams within reach if we just went to Ridgemont public high school.
In the fall of '79 I walked into the office of Principal William Gray and told him the plan. I wanted to attend classes at Ridgemont and remain an inconspicuous presence for the full length of the school year. The object, I told him, was to write a book about real, contemporary life in high school.
Principal Gray was a careful man with probing eyes. He was wary of the entire plan, and he wanted to know what I had written before. I explained that I had authored a number of magazine profiles of people in the public eye.
Producer Ian Bryce adds, "Obviously, this is a very personal movie to Cameron, but I think it is a story with which we can all empathize. The music and the period will appeal to anyone, whether you were there or not; these are legendary rock titles that people are still listening to today. And we all have personal memories about being 15. The coming-of-age story of this kid, his relationship with the band, his first journey away from home, his first love ... these are timeless elements."
"Like who?" he asked.
I named a few. A president's son. A few rock stars. A few actors. My last article had been on songwriter-actor Kris Kristofferson.
Principal Gray eased back in his chair. "You know Kris Kristofferson?"
"Sure. I spent a few weeks on tour with him."
"Hell," said the principal. "What's he like?"
"A great guy." I told him a few Kris stories.
"Well now,” said Principal Gray, "I think I can trust you. Maybe this can be worked out."
It was. Principal Gray called in to an English teacher, Mrs. George, and gave me a homeroom for the year. Four other teachers were also informed. I started school the next week as a seventeen-year-old senior named Dave Cameron.
Walking the halls of Ridgemont was at first an unnerving experience. I wore standard Southern California attire--tennis shoes, t-shirt, and backpack, but as I pushed past the other students, I began to wonder. Was I walking too much like an adult? Was there some kind of neon light blinking on me--Imposter?
I was never found suspicious. In fact, for the first month, I was completely ignored at Ridgemont. I eavesdropped on conversations around me, made copious notes, winked at the teachers who knew, and made my way. I began to feel like a third-rate spy.
One day after school I wandered into journalism class and saw a girl I'd noticed before but had not met. She was hunting-and-pecking on the typewriter, looking caught in the midst of writer's block.
"Sorry to bother you," I said.
"You're not bothering me," she responded. She switched off her typewriter. "I've seen you before. Who are you?"
"Dave Cameron," I told her. "This is my first year here."
Her name was Linda Barrett, and she began asking rapid-fire questions, as if she was making a mental computer card out for me. Do you have a girlfriend? Where do you work? Who's your favorite teacher?
We talked until the janitors kicked us out, and then we sat in her car in the parking lot. She began pointing out campus notables through her windshield. She knew them all, and they knew her. Linda Barrett worked in the local mall, at a popular ice cream parlor.
I soon realized what a valuable friend I had made. Through Linda Barrett I met her best friend Stacy, Stacy's brother, Brad, and many others. It was the beginning of my social acceptance at Ridgemont High. As the year progressed, they became my group, and they were the characters I spent most of my days with. They were my friends.
As it happens with any writer, the temptation was to continue the research forever. My entire lifestyle changed that year. I went to malls, to slumber parties, to beaches, to countless fast-food stands. I can't remember all the times I left situations "to go to the bathroom" and furiously scribble notes on conversations and facts I'd just heard. Back at Ridgemont, no doubt, some still remember Dave Cameron as the guy with the bad bladder.
I found it was all too easy to recapture one's adolescence. The hard part was growing up again. I would return to my home in Los Angeles to visit former cohorts and old friends more and more infrequently. Their look was distant and puzzled.
"Still alive?" they'd ask. "Still writing?"
(Magazine journalists, like P.O.W.'s and Turkish drug prisoners, are presumed dead if not heard from over two major holidays).
Even my own mother looked at me sadly as I passed through the living room one day.
If McDormand lent Elaine a certain veracity, it was because the actress viewed her quirks as something beyond eccentric. "I didn't think of Elaine as eccentric. Maybe it's because I'm eccentric, or at least people think I am. Rather, I think she is an original. Other people might think of her as a little too rigid or too preoccupied with her children, but my take on her is that she is a woman who is raising her kids on her own the only way she knows how," McDormand comments.
"You used to be such a mature person,” she said. “I remember when things like cars and the prom didn't mean anything to you." She shook her head. "You've changed. What happened to you?"
By the end of the school year I had become so accepted that even Principal Gray had forgotten about my project. I attended the prom and passed by his table near the entrance, where he sat with Mrs. Gray, greeting students and introducing them to his wife. When he saw me, a fleeting look of panic crossed his face. Nine months later it was as if he couldn't recall my name or where he knew me from.
"Cameron," I helped him.
"Yes," he said. "Cameron! Meet my wife, Ruth. Cameron here is one of our outstanding journalism students!" He seemed pleased with himself, and I didn't spoil it.
I returned to a prom table with a group of Ridgemont students and began to think. I had developed close friends and had come to follow their thoughts and movements so carefully, that I wondered exactly how important my own undercover scheme really was. I did not want to become yet another adult writing about adolescence and kids from an adult perspective. This story, I felt, belonged to the kids themselves.
Over the next summer I visited many of the students I'd lived with that school year. I told them the story of Dave Cameron, of my project. Their reaction was almost always the same.
"A book?" they said. "About Ridgemont?"
I later interviewed the main characters extensively, corroborating stories and notes from the previous year. I have tried to capture the flow of day-to-day high school life, as well as the life that begins as soon as the last bell rings. It was my intention to write of the entire business--from academic competition to the sexual blunders--of teenage adulthood. In all cases the people I have written about have been given names other than their own. I have taken the liberty of changing superficial identifying characteristics, but all the incidents are true.
It was an experience that will forever change the way I perceive the word kids. The only time these students acted like kids was when they were around adults. What follows is a year in the life of Ridgemont High.
- Cameron Crowe
February, 1981
FAST TIMES EXCERPT -- ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN PLAYBOY
In the fall of 1979, the author returned to a high school he had attended briefly some years back. He registered as a student under an assumed name with the cooperation of the principal, who was the only one to know the secret. Because of his youthful appearance, he was never under suspicion and was able to mingle freely in the classrooms, the schoolyard, the students' homes and the fast-food parlors that were the focus of the lives of the kids in a typical town in California. The author has changed the name of the school, its location and the names of the students and teachers with whom he lived. The events and the dialog, however, are real.
MR. HAND
Stacy Hamilton took her seat in U.S. history on the first day of school. The third and final attendance bell rang.
The teacher came barreling down the aisle, then made a double-speed step to the green metal front door of the U.S. history bungalow. He kicked the door shut and locked it with the dead bolt. The windows rattled in their frames. This man knew how to take the front of a classroom.
"Aloha," he said. "The name is Mr. Hand."
There was a lasting silence. He wrote his name on the blackboard. Every letter was a small explosion of chalk.
"I have but one question for you on our first morning together," the man said. "Can you attend my class?"
He scanned the classroom full of curious sophomores, all of them with roughly the same look on their faces-- there goes another summer.
Mr. Hand let his students take a good long look at him. In high school, where such crucial matters as confidence and social status can shift daily, there is one thing a student can depend on. Most people in high school look like their names. Mr. Hand was a perfect example. He had a porous, oblong face, just like a thumbprint. His stiff black hair rose up off his forehead like that of a late-night television evangelist. Even at eight in the morning, his yellow Van Heusen shirt was soaked at the armpits.
And he was not Hawaiian.
The strange saga of Mr. Hand had been passed down to Stacy Hamilton by her older brother Brad. Arnold Hand, Ridgemont's U.S. history instructor, was one of those teachers. His was a special brand of eccentricity, the kind preserved only through California state seniority laws. Mr. Hand had been at Ridgemont High for years, waging his highly theatrical battle against what he saw as the greatest threat to the youth of this land--truancy.
Mr. Hand's other favorite activity was hailing the virtues of the three-bell system. At Ridgemont, the short first bell meant a student had three minutes to prepare for the end of the class. The long second bell dismissed the class. Then there were exactly seven minutes- and Mr. Hand claimed that he personally fought the Education Center for those seven minutes-before the third and last attendance bell. If you did not have the ability to obey the three-bell system, Mr. Hand would say, then it was aloha time for you. You simply would not function in life.
"And functioning in life," Mr. Hand said grandly on that first morning, "is the hidden postulate of education."
At the age of 58, Mr. Hand had no intention of leaving Ridgemont. Why, in the past ten years, be had just begun to hit his stride. He had found one man, that one man who embodied all the proper authority and power to exist "in the jungle." It didn't bother him that his role model happened to be none other than Steve McGarrett, the humorless chief detective of Hawaii Five-0.
First-year U.S. history students, sensing something slightly odd about the man, would inch up to Mr. Hand a few days into the semester. "Mr. Hand," they would ask timidly, "how come you act like that guy on Hawaii Five-0?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
It was, of course, much too obvious for his considerable pride to admit. But Mr. Hand pursued his students as tirelessly as McGarrett pursued his weekly criminals, with cast-iron emotions and a paucity of words. Substitute truancy for drug traffic, missed tests for robbery, U.S. history for Hawaii, and you had a class with Mr. Hand. Little by little, his protean personality had been taken over by McGarrett. He became possessed by Five-O. He even got out of his Oldsmobile sedan in the mornings at full stand, whipping his head both ways, like McGarrett.
"History," Mr. Hand had barked on that first morning, "U.S. or otherwise, has proved one thing to us. Man does not do anything that is not for his own good. It is for your own good that you attend my class. And if you cant make it ... I can make you."
An impatient knock began at the front door of the bungalow, but Mr. Hand ignored it.
"There will be tests in this class," he said immediately. "We have a twenty-question quiz every Friday. It will cover all the material we've dealt with during the week. There will be no make-up exams. You can see it's important that you have your Land of Truth and Liberty textbook by Wednesday at the latest."
The knock continued.
"Your grade in this class is the average of all your quizzes, plus the mid-term and the final, which counts for one third." The door knocker now sounded a lazy calypso beat. No one dared mention it.
"Also. There will be no eating in this class. I want you to get used to doing your business on your time. That's one demand I make. You do your business on your time, and I do my business on my time. I don't like staying after class with you on detention. That's my time. Just like you wouldn't want me to come to your house some evening and discuss U.S. history with you on your time. Pakalo?"
Mr. Hand finally turned, as if he had just noticed the sound at the door, and began to approach the green metal barrier between him and his mystery truant. He opened the door only an inch.
"Yes?"
Griffith recalls, "On our initial scout, Cameron said, 'I remember this lobby being bigger.' So, we asked the hotel for the original floor plans, and discovered that in 1973 there was a big staircase in the corner of the lobby where a big wall now stood. We convinced the hotel owners to let us to knock it down, and lo and behold, there was the original marble terrazzo staircase."
"Yes?"
"Yeah," said the student, a surfer. "I'm registered for this class."
"Really?" Mr. Hand appeared enthralled.
"Yeah," said the student, holding his allimportant red add card up to the crack in the door. "This is U.S. history, right? I saw the globe in the window."
Jeff Spicoli, a Ridgemont legend since third grade, lounged against the doorframe. His long dirty-blond hair was parted exactly in the middle. He spoke thickly, like molasses pouring from ajar. Most every school morning, Spicoli awoke before dawn, smoked three bowls of marijuana from a small steel bong, put on his wet suit and surfed before school. He was never at school on Fridays, and on Mondays only when he could handle it. He leaned a little into the room, red eyes glistening. His long hair was still wet, dampening the back of his white peasant shirt.
"May I come in?"
"Oh, please," replied Mr. Hand. "I get so lonely when that third attendance bell rings and I don't see all my kids here."
The surfer laughed-he was the only one-and handed over his red add card. "Sorry I'm late. This new schedule is totally confusing."
Mr. Hand read the card aloud with utter fascination in his voice. "Mr. Spicoli?"
"Yes, sir. That's the name they gave me."
Mr. Hand slowly tore the red add card into little pieces, effectively destroying the very existence of Jeffrey Spicoli, 15, in the Redondo school system. Mr. Hand sprinkled the little pieces over his wastebasket.
It took a moment for the words to work their way out of Spicoli's mouth.
"You dick."
Mr. Hand cocked his head. He appeared poised on the edge of incredible violence. There was a sudden silence while the class wondered exactly what he might do to the surfer. Deck him? Throw him out of Ridgemont? Shoot him at sunrise?
But Mr. Hand simply turned away from Spicoli as if the kid had just ceased to exist. Small potatoes. Mr. Hand simply continued with his first-day lecture.
"I've taken the trouble," he said, "to print up a complete schedule of class quizzes and the chapters they cover. Please pass them to all the desks behind you."
Spicoli remained at the front of the class, his face flushed, still trying to sort out what had happened. Mr. Hand coolly counted out stacks of his purple mimeographed assignment sheets. After a time, Spicoli fished a few bits of his red add card out of the wastebasket and huffed out of the room.
"So," said Mr. Hand just before the last bell, "let's recap. First test on Friday. Be there. Aloha."
A BITCHIN' DREAM
Jeff Spicoli had been having a dream. A totally bitchin' dream.
He had been standing in a deep, dark void. Then he detected a sliver of light in the distance. A cold hand pushed him toward the light. He was being led to something important. That much he knew.
As Spicoli drew closer, the curtains suddenly opened and a floodlit vision was revealed to him. It was a wildly cheering studio audience-for him!-and there, applauding from his Tonight Show desk, was Johnny Carson.
Because it was the right thing to do, and because it was a dream, anyway, Spicoli gave the band a signal and launched into a cocktail rendition of AC/DC's Highway to Hell. When it was over, he took a seat next to Carson.
"How are ya?" said Johnny, lightly touching Spicoli's arm.
"Bitchin', Johnny. Nice to be here. I feel great."
"I was going to say," said Carson, "your eyes look a little red."
"I've been swimming, Johnny."
The audience laughed. It was a famous Spicoli line.
"Swimming? In the winter?"
"Yes," said Spicoli, "and may a swimming beaver make love to your masticating sister."
That broke Johnny up. Spicoli recrossed his legs and smiled serenely. "Seriously Johnny, business is good. I was thinking about picking up some hash this weekend, maybe go up to the mountains."
"I want to talk a little bit about school, said Carson.
"School. " Spicoli sighed. "School is no problem. All you have to do is go, to get the grades. And if you know anything, all you have to do is go half the time."
"How often do you go?"
"I don't go at all," said Spicoli.
The audience howled again. He is Carson's favorite guest.
"I hear you brought a film dip with You. said Carson. "Do you want to set it up for us?"
"Well, it pretty much speaks for itself said Spicoli. "Freddie, you want to run with it?"
The film clip begins. It is a mammoth wave cresting against the blue sky.
“Johnny," continued Spicoli. "this is the action down at Sunset Cliffs at about six in the morning."
"Amazing."
A tiny figure appears in the foot of the wave.
"That's me" said Spicoli.
The audience gasped.
“You're not going to ride that wave, are you, Jeff?”
"You got it," said Spicoli.
He catches the perfect wave and it hurtles him through a turquoise tube of water.
"What's going through your mind right here. Jeff % The danger of it all "
"Johnny;" said Spicoli. "I'm thinking here that I (ail have about four good hours of surfing left before all those little clowns from Paul Revere Junior High start showing up with their boogie boards."
The audience howled once again, and then Spicoli's brother-that little fucker-woke him up.
A LATE – NIGHT PHONE CONVERSATION
"There's one thing you didn't tell me about guys." said Stacy. "You didn't tell me that they can be so nice, so great ... but then you sleep with them and they start acting like they're about five years old."
"You're right," said Linda. I didn't tell you about that."
ALOHA MR. HAND
It was nearly the end of the line. The awards were about to be announced, mimeographed caps-and-gowns information had gone out to the seniors along with Grad Nite tickets. The annuals were almost ready: Spicoli was counting the hours.
Since Spicoli was a sophomore, an underclassman, there weren't many graduation functions he could attend. Tonight was one of the few, and he wasn't about to miss it. It was the Ditch Day party, the evening blowout of the day that underclassmen secretly selected toward the end of the year to ditch en masse. Spicoli hadn't been at school all day, and now he was just about ready to leave the house for the party out in Del Mar. He hadn't eaten all day: He wanted the full effect of the hallucinogenic mushrooms he'd procured just for the poor man's Grad Nite-Ditch Night.
Spicoli had taken just a little bit of one mushroom, just to check the potency. He could feel it coming on now as he sat in his room surrounded by his harem of naked women and surf posters. It was just a slight buzz, like a few hits off the bong. Spicoli knew they were good mushrooms. But if he didn't leave soon. he might be too high to drive before he reached the party. One had to craft his buzz, Spicoli was fond of saying.
Downstairs the doorbell rang. There was an unusual commotion in the living room.
"Who is it, Mom?"
"You've got company, Jeffrey! He's coming up the stairs right now. I can't stop him!"
There was a brief knock at the door. "Come in."
The door opened and Spicoli stood in stoned shock. There before him was The Man.
"Mr.... Mr. Hand."
"That's right, Jeff. Mind if I come in? Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Spicoli," Mr. Hand called back down the stairs. He took off his suit jacket and laid it on the chair. "Were you going somewhere tonight, Jeff?"
"Ditch Night! I've gotta go to Ditch Night!"
"I'm afraid we've got some things to discuss, Jeff."
There were some things you just didn't see very often, Spicoli was thinking. You didn't see black surfers, for example. And you didn't see Baja Riders for less than $20 a pair. And you sure didn't see Mr. Fucking Hand sitting in your room.
"Did I do something, Mr. Hand?"
Mr. Hand opened his briefcase and began taking out lecture notes. He laid them out for himself on Spicoli's desk. "Are you going to be sitting there?"
"I don't know. I guess so."
"Fine. You sit right there on your bed. I'll use the chair here." Mr. Hand stopped to stare down last month's Playmate. "Tonight is a special night, Jeff. As I explained to your parents just a moment ago, and to you many times since the very beginning of the year, I don't like to spend my time waiting for students in detention. I'd rather be preparing the lesson.
"According to my calculations, Mr. Spicoli, you wasted a total of eight hours of my time this year. And rest assured that is a kind estimate.
"But now Spicoli, comes a rare moment for me. Now I have the unique pleasure of squaring our accounts. Tonight, you and I are going to talk in great detail about the David Amendment.... Now if you can turn to chapter forty-seven of Land of Truth and Liberty...."
"Would you like an iced tea, Mr. Hand?" Mrs. Spicoli called through the door.
Jeff was still orienting himself to what was happening. Was he too high? Was this real? He was not going to Ditch Night. That was it. He was going to stay in his room tonight with Mr. Hand ... to talk about the David Amendment.
"I'd love some iced tea," said Mr. Hand. "Whenever you get the time...."
Now, Mr. Hand had said they'd be there all night, but at 7:45 he wound up with the battle of Saratoga and started packing up.
"Is that it?"
"I think I've made my point with you, Jeff"
"You mean I can go to Ditch Night after all?"
"I don't care what you do with your time, Mr. Spicoli."
Spicoli jumped up and reached to shake Mr. Hand's hand.
"Hey, Mr. Hand," said Spicoli, "can I ask you a question?"
"What's that?"
"Do you have a guy like me every year? A guy to ... I don't know, make a show of. Teach the other kids lessons and stuff?"
Mr. Hand finished packing and looked at the surfer who'd hounded him all year long. "Well," he said, "why don't you come back next year and find out?"
"No way," said Spicoli. "I'm not going to be like those guys who come back and hang around your classroom. I'm not even coming over to your side of the building. When I pass, I'm outa there."
"If you pass."
Spicoli was taken aback. Not pass? No thumbing up the Coast, meeting ladies and going to Hawaii for the dyno lobster season? Summer school? "Not passing?" he said.
Mr. Hand broke into the nearest thing to a grin, for him. It wasn't much, of course, but it was noticeable to Jeff. His lips crinkled at the ends. That was plenty for Mr. Hand.
"Don't worry Spicoli," said Mr. Hand. "You'll probably squeak by. "
"All right!"
"Aloha, Spicoli."
"Aloha, Mr. Hand."
Mr. Hand descended the stairway of the Spicoli home, went out the door and on to his car, which he had parked just around the corner-always use the element of surprise. Mr. Hand knew one day next year he would look to that green metal door and it would be Spicoli standing there. He'd act like he had a million other things to do, and then he'd probably stay all day. All his boys came back sooner or later.
Mr. Hand drove back to his small apartment in Richard's Bay to turn on his television and catch the evening's Five-O rerun.
-- Courtesy of Playboy - September, 1981 & Fast Times - A True Story - Cameron Crowe
(original book)
For seven years I wrote articles for a youth culture magazine, and perhaps not a day went by when this term wasn't used -"the kids." Editors assigned certain articles for "the kids." Music and film executives were constantly discussing whether a product appealed "to the kids." Rock stars spoke of commercial concessions made "for the kids." Kids were discussed as if they were some huge whale, to be harpooned and brought to shore.
It began to fascinate me, the idea of The Kids. They were everywhere, standing on street corners in their Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirts, in cars, in the 7-Eleven. Somehow this grand constituency controlled almost every adult's fate, yet no adult really knew what it was nowadays - to be a kid.
In the summer of '79, I had just turned 22. I discussed the idea for this book with my New York publisher. Go back to high school, he said, and find out what's really going on in there with the kids. I thought about it over the weekend, and took the project.
I had attended Ridgemont Senior High in Redondo Beach, California, for a summer session seven years earlier, and those eight weeks had been sublime and forbidden days, even if it did mean going to a school in the summer. I normally attended a rather strict Catholic school, and there were many of us who believed that all our problems would be solved, all our dreams within reach if we just went to Ridgemont public high school.
In the fall of '79 I walked into the office of Principal William Gray and told him the plan. I wanted to attend classes at Ridgemont and remain an inconspicuous presence for the full length of the school year. The object, I told him, was to write a book about real, contemporary life in high school.
Principal Gray was a careful man with probing eyes. He was wary of the entire plan, and he wanted to know what I had written before. I explained that I had authored a number of magazine profiles of people in the public eye.
Producer Ian Bryce adds, "Obviously, this is a very personal movie to Cameron, but I think it is a story with which we can all empathize. The music and the period will appeal to anyone, whether you were there or not; these are legendary rock titles that people are still listening to today. And we all have personal memories about being 15. The coming-of-age story of this kid, his relationship with the band, his first journey away from home, his first love ... these are timeless elements."
"Like who?" he asked.
I named a few. A president's son. A few rock stars. A few actors. My last article had been on songwriter-actor Kris Kristofferson.
Principal Gray eased back in his chair. "You know Kris Kristofferson?"
"Sure. I spent a few weeks on tour with him."
"Hell," said the principal. "What's he like?"
"A great guy." I told him a few Kris stories.
"Well now,” said Principal Gray, "I think I can trust you. Maybe this can be worked out."
It was. Principal Gray called in to an English teacher, Mrs. George, and gave me a homeroom for the year. Four other teachers were also informed. I started school the next week as a seventeen-year-old senior named Dave Cameron.
Walking the halls of Ridgemont was at first an unnerving experience. I wore standard Southern California attire--tennis shoes, t-shirt, and backpack, but as I pushed past the other students, I began to wonder. Was I walking too much like an adult? Was there some kind of neon light blinking on me--Imposter?
I was never found suspicious. In fact, for the first month, I was completely ignored at Ridgemont. I eavesdropped on conversations around me, made copious notes, winked at the teachers who knew, and made my way. I began to feel like a third-rate spy.
One day after school I wandered into journalism class and saw a girl I'd noticed before but had not met. She was hunting-and-pecking on the typewriter, looking caught in the midst of writer's block.
"Sorry to bother you," I said.
"You're not bothering me," she responded. She switched off her typewriter. "I've seen you before. Who are you?"
"Dave Cameron," I told her. "This is my first year here."
Her name was Linda Barrett, and she began asking rapid-fire questions, as if she was making a mental computer card out for me. Do you have a girlfriend? Where do you work? Who's your favorite teacher?
We talked until the janitors kicked us out, and then we sat in her car in the parking lot. She began pointing out campus notables through her windshield. She knew them all, and they knew her. Linda Barrett worked in the local mall, at a popular ice cream parlor.
I soon realized what a valuable friend I had made. Through Linda Barrett I met her best friend Stacy, Stacy's brother, Brad, and many others. It was the beginning of my social acceptance at Ridgemont High. As the year progressed, they became my group, and they were the characters I spent most of my days with. They were my friends.
As it happens with any writer, the temptation was to continue the research forever. My entire lifestyle changed that year. I went to malls, to slumber parties, to beaches, to countless fast-food stands. I can't remember all the times I left situations "to go to the bathroom" and furiously scribble notes on conversations and facts I'd just heard. Back at Ridgemont, no doubt, some still remember Dave Cameron as the guy with the bad bladder.
I found it was all too easy to recapture one's adolescence. The hard part was growing up again. I would return to my home in Los Angeles to visit former cohorts and old friends more and more infrequently. Their look was distant and puzzled.
"Still alive?" they'd ask. "Still writing?"
(Magazine journalists, like P.O.W.'s and Turkish drug prisoners, are presumed dead if not heard from over two major holidays).
Even my own mother looked at me sadly as I passed through the living room one day.
If McDormand lent Elaine a certain veracity, it was because the actress viewed her quirks as something beyond eccentric. "I didn't think of Elaine as eccentric. Maybe it's because I'm eccentric, or at least people think I am. Rather, I think she is an original. Other people might think of her as a little too rigid or too preoccupied with her children, but my take on her is that she is a woman who is raising her kids on her own the only way she knows how," McDormand comments.
"You used to be such a mature person,” she said. “I remember when things like cars and the prom didn't mean anything to you." She shook her head. "You've changed. What happened to you?"
By the end of the school year I had become so accepted that even Principal Gray had forgotten about my project. I attended the prom and passed by his table near the entrance, where he sat with Mrs. Gray, greeting students and introducing them to his wife. When he saw me, a fleeting look of panic crossed his face. Nine months later it was as if he couldn't recall my name or where he knew me from.
"Cameron," I helped him.
"Yes," he said. "Cameron! Meet my wife, Ruth. Cameron here is one of our outstanding journalism students!" He seemed pleased with himself, and I didn't spoil it.
I returned to a prom table with a group of Ridgemont students and began to think. I had developed close friends and had come to follow their thoughts and movements so carefully, that I wondered exactly how important my own undercover scheme really was. I did not want to become yet another adult writing about adolescence and kids from an adult perspective. This story, I felt, belonged to the kids themselves.
Over the next summer I visited many of the students I'd lived with that school year. I told them the story of Dave Cameron, of my project. Their reaction was almost always the same.
"A book?" they said. "About Ridgemont?"
I later interviewed the main characters extensively, corroborating stories and notes from the previous year. I have tried to capture the flow of day-to-day high school life, as well as the life that begins as soon as the last bell rings. It was my intention to write of the entire business--from academic competition to the sexual blunders--of teenage adulthood. In all cases the people I have written about have been given names other than their own. I have taken the liberty of changing superficial identifying characteristics, but all the incidents are true.
It was an experience that will forever change the way I perceive the word kids. The only time these students acted like kids was when they were around adults. What follows is a year in the life of Ridgemont High.
- Cameron Crowe
February, 1981
FAST TIMES EXCERPT -- ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN PLAYBOY
In the fall of 1979, the author returned to a high school he had attended briefly some years back. He registered as a student under an assumed name with the cooperation of the principal, who was the only one to know the secret. Because of his youthful appearance, he was never under suspicion and was able to mingle freely in the classrooms, the schoolyard, the students' homes and the fast-food parlors that were the focus of the lives of the kids in a typical town in California. The author has changed the name of the school, its location and the names of the students and teachers with whom he lived. The events and the dialog, however, are real.
MR. HAND
Stacy Hamilton took her seat in U.S. history on the first day of school. The third and final attendance bell rang.
The teacher came barreling down the aisle, then made a double-speed step to the green metal front door of the U.S. history bungalow. He kicked the door shut and locked it with the dead bolt. The windows rattled in their frames. This man knew how to take the front of a classroom.
"Aloha," he said. "The name is Mr. Hand."
There was a lasting silence. He wrote his name on the blackboard. Every letter was a small explosion of chalk.
"I have but one question for you on our first morning together," the man said. "Can you attend my class?"
He scanned the classroom full of curious sophomores, all of them with roughly the same look on their faces-- there goes another summer.
Mr. Hand let his students take a good long look at him. In high school, where such crucial matters as confidence and social status can shift daily, there is one thing a student can depend on. Most people in high school look like their names. Mr. Hand was a perfect example. He had a porous, oblong face, just like a thumbprint. His stiff black hair rose up off his forehead like that of a late-night television evangelist. Even at eight in the morning, his yellow Van Heusen shirt was soaked at the armpits.
And he was not Hawaiian.
The strange saga of Mr. Hand had been passed down to Stacy Hamilton by her older brother Brad. Arnold Hand, Ridgemont's U.S. history instructor, was one of those teachers. His was a special brand of eccentricity, the kind preserved only through California state seniority laws. Mr. Hand had been at Ridgemont High for years, waging his highly theatrical battle against what he saw as the greatest threat to the youth of this land--truancy.
Mr. Hand's other favorite activity was hailing the virtues of the three-bell system. At Ridgemont, the short first bell meant a student had three minutes to prepare for the end of the class. The long second bell dismissed the class. Then there were exactly seven minutes- and Mr. Hand claimed that he personally fought the Education Center for those seven minutes-before the third and last attendance bell. If you did not have the ability to obey the three-bell system, Mr. Hand would say, then it was aloha time for you. You simply would not function in life.
"And functioning in life," Mr. Hand said grandly on that first morning, "is the hidden postulate of education."
At the age of 58, Mr. Hand had no intention of leaving Ridgemont. Why, in the past ten years, be had just begun to hit his stride. He had found one man, that one man who embodied all the proper authority and power to exist "in the jungle." It didn't bother him that his role model happened to be none other than Steve McGarrett, the humorless chief detective of Hawaii Five-0.
First-year U.S. history students, sensing something slightly odd about the man, would inch up to Mr. Hand a few days into the semester. "Mr. Hand," they would ask timidly, "how come you act like that guy on Hawaii Five-0?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
It was, of course, much too obvious for his considerable pride to admit. But Mr. Hand pursued his students as tirelessly as McGarrett pursued his weekly criminals, with cast-iron emotions and a paucity of words. Substitute truancy for drug traffic, missed tests for robbery, U.S. history for Hawaii, and you had a class with Mr. Hand. Little by little, his protean personality had been taken over by McGarrett. He became possessed by Five-O. He even got out of his Oldsmobile sedan in the mornings at full stand, whipping his head both ways, like McGarrett.
"History," Mr. Hand had barked on that first morning, "U.S. or otherwise, has proved one thing to us. Man does not do anything that is not for his own good. It is for your own good that you attend my class. And if you cant make it ... I can make you."
An impatient knock began at the front door of the bungalow, but Mr. Hand ignored it.
"There will be tests in this class," he said immediately. "We have a twenty-question quiz every Friday. It will cover all the material we've dealt with during the week. There will be no make-up exams. You can see it's important that you have your Land of Truth and Liberty textbook by Wednesday at the latest."
The knock continued.
"Your grade in this class is the average of all your quizzes, plus the mid-term and the final, which counts for one third." The door knocker now sounded a lazy calypso beat. No one dared mention it.
"Also. There will be no eating in this class. I want you to get used to doing your business on your time. That's one demand I make. You do your business on your time, and I do my business on my time. I don't like staying after class with you on detention. That's my time. Just like you wouldn't want me to come to your house some evening and discuss U.S. history with you on your time. Pakalo?"
Mr. Hand finally turned, as if he had just noticed the sound at the door, and began to approach the green metal barrier between him and his mystery truant. He opened the door only an inch.
"Yes?"
Griffith recalls, "On our initial scout, Cameron said, 'I remember this lobby being bigger.' So, we asked the hotel for the original floor plans, and discovered that in 1973 there was a big staircase in the corner of the lobby where a big wall now stood. We convinced the hotel owners to let us to knock it down, and lo and behold, there was the original marble terrazzo staircase."
"Yes?"
"Yeah," said the student, a surfer. "I'm registered for this class."
"Really?" Mr. Hand appeared enthralled.
"Yeah," said the student, holding his allimportant red add card up to the crack in the door. "This is U.S. history, right? I saw the globe in the window."
Jeff Spicoli, a Ridgemont legend since third grade, lounged against the doorframe. His long dirty-blond hair was parted exactly in the middle. He spoke thickly, like molasses pouring from ajar. Most every school morning, Spicoli awoke before dawn, smoked three bowls of marijuana from a small steel bong, put on his wet suit and surfed before school. He was never at school on Fridays, and on Mondays only when he could handle it. He leaned a little into the room, red eyes glistening. His long hair was still wet, dampening the back of his white peasant shirt.
"May I come in?"
"Oh, please," replied Mr. Hand. "I get so lonely when that third attendance bell rings and I don't see all my kids here."
The surfer laughed-he was the only one-and handed over his red add card. "Sorry I'm late. This new schedule is totally confusing."
Mr. Hand read the card aloud with utter fascination in his voice. "Mr. Spicoli?"
"Yes, sir. That's the name they gave me."
Mr. Hand slowly tore the red add card into little pieces, effectively destroying the very existence of Jeffrey Spicoli, 15, in the Redondo school system. Mr. Hand sprinkled the little pieces over his wastebasket.
It took a moment for the words to work their way out of Spicoli's mouth.
"You dick."
Mr. Hand cocked his head. He appeared poised on the edge of incredible violence. There was a sudden silence while the class wondered exactly what he might do to the surfer. Deck him? Throw him out of Ridgemont? Shoot him at sunrise?
But Mr. Hand simply turned away from Spicoli as if the kid had just ceased to exist. Small potatoes. Mr. Hand simply continued with his first-day lecture.
"I've taken the trouble," he said, "to print up a complete schedule of class quizzes and the chapters they cover. Please pass them to all the desks behind you."
Spicoli remained at the front of the class, his face flushed, still trying to sort out what had happened. Mr. Hand coolly counted out stacks of his purple mimeographed assignment sheets. After a time, Spicoli fished a few bits of his red add card out of the wastebasket and huffed out of the room.
"So," said Mr. Hand just before the last bell, "let's recap. First test on Friday. Be there. Aloha."
A BITCHIN' DREAM
Jeff Spicoli had been having a dream. A totally bitchin' dream.
He had been standing in a deep, dark void. Then he detected a sliver of light in the distance. A cold hand pushed him toward the light. He was being led to something important. That much he knew.
As Spicoli drew closer, the curtains suddenly opened and a floodlit vision was revealed to him. It was a wildly cheering studio audience-for him!-and there, applauding from his Tonight Show desk, was Johnny Carson.
Because it was the right thing to do, and because it was a dream, anyway, Spicoli gave the band a signal and launched into a cocktail rendition of AC/DC's Highway to Hell. When it was over, he took a seat next to Carson.
"How are ya?" said Johnny, lightly touching Spicoli's arm.
"Bitchin', Johnny. Nice to be here. I feel great."
"I was going to say," said Carson, "your eyes look a little red."
"I've been swimming, Johnny."
The audience laughed. It was a famous Spicoli line.
"Swimming? In the winter?"
"Yes," said Spicoli, "and may a swimming beaver make love to your masticating sister."
That broke Johnny up. Spicoli recrossed his legs and smiled serenely. "Seriously Johnny, business is good. I was thinking about picking up some hash this weekend, maybe go up to the mountains."
"I want to talk a little bit about school, said Carson.
"School. " Spicoli sighed. "School is no problem. All you have to do is go, to get the grades. And if you know anything, all you have to do is go half the time."
"How often do you go?"
"I don't go at all," said Spicoli.
The audience howled again. He is Carson's favorite guest.
"I hear you brought a film dip with You. said Carson. "Do you want to set it up for us?"
"Well, it pretty much speaks for itself said Spicoli. "Freddie, you want to run with it?"
The film clip begins. It is a mammoth wave cresting against the blue sky.
“Johnny," continued Spicoli. "this is the action down at Sunset Cliffs at about six in the morning."
"Amazing."
A tiny figure appears in the foot of the wave.
"That's me" said Spicoli.
The audience gasped.
“You're not going to ride that wave, are you, Jeff?”
"You got it," said Spicoli.
He catches the perfect wave and it hurtles him through a turquoise tube of water.
"What's going through your mind right here. Jeff % The danger of it all "
"Johnny;" said Spicoli. "I'm thinking here that I (ail have about four good hours of surfing left before all those little clowns from Paul Revere Junior High start showing up with their boogie boards."
The audience howled once again, and then Spicoli's brother-that little fucker-woke him up.
A LATE – NIGHT PHONE CONVERSATION
"There's one thing you didn't tell me about guys." said Stacy. "You didn't tell me that they can be so nice, so great ... but then you sleep with them and they start acting like they're about five years old."
"You're right," said Linda. I didn't tell you about that."
ALOHA MR. HAND
It was nearly the end of the line. The awards were about to be announced, mimeographed caps-and-gowns information had gone out to the seniors along with Grad Nite tickets. The annuals were almost ready: Spicoli was counting the hours.
Since Spicoli was a sophomore, an underclassman, there weren't many graduation functions he could attend. Tonight was one of the few, and he wasn't about to miss it. It was the Ditch Day party, the evening blowout of the day that underclassmen secretly selected toward the end of the year to ditch en masse. Spicoli hadn't been at school all day, and now he was just about ready to leave the house for the party out in Del Mar. He hadn't eaten all day: He wanted the full effect of the hallucinogenic mushrooms he'd procured just for the poor man's Grad Nite-Ditch Night.
Spicoli had taken just a little bit of one mushroom, just to check the potency. He could feel it coming on now as he sat in his room surrounded by his harem of naked women and surf posters. It was just a slight buzz, like a few hits off the bong. Spicoli knew they were good mushrooms. But if he didn't leave soon. he might be too high to drive before he reached the party. One had to craft his buzz, Spicoli was fond of saying.
Downstairs the doorbell rang. There was an unusual commotion in the living room.
"Who is it, Mom?"
"You've got company, Jeffrey! He's coming up the stairs right now. I can't stop him!"
There was a brief knock at the door. "Come in."
The door opened and Spicoli stood in stoned shock. There before him was The Man.
"Mr.... Mr. Hand."
"That's right, Jeff. Mind if I come in? Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Spicoli," Mr. Hand called back down the stairs. He took off his suit jacket and laid it on the chair. "Were you going somewhere tonight, Jeff?"
"Ditch Night! I've gotta go to Ditch Night!"
"I'm afraid we've got some things to discuss, Jeff."
There were some things you just didn't see very often, Spicoli was thinking. You didn't see black surfers, for example. And you didn't see Baja Riders for less than $20 a pair. And you sure didn't see Mr. Fucking Hand sitting in your room.
"Did I do something, Mr. Hand?"
Mr. Hand opened his briefcase and began taking out lecture notes. He laid them out for himself on Spicoli's desk. "Are you going to be sitting there?"
"I don't know. I guess so."
"Fine. You sit right there on your bed. I'll use the chair here." Mr. Hand stopped to stare down last month's Playmate. "Tonight is a special night, Jeff. As I explained to your parents just a moment ago, and to you many times since the very beginning of the year, I don't like to spend my time waiting for students in detention. I'd rather be preparing the lesson.
"According to my calculations, Mr. Spicoli, you wasted a total of eight hours of my time this year. And rest assured that is a kind estimate.
"But now Spicoli, comes a rare moment for me. Now I have the unique pleasure of squaring our accounts. Tonight, you and I are going to talk in great detail about the David Amendment.... Now if you can turn to chapter forty-seven of Land of Truth and Liberty...."
"Would you like an iced tea, Mr. Hand?" Mrs. Spicoli called through the door.
Jeff was still orienting himself to what was happening. Was he too high? Was this real? He was not going to Ditch Night. That was it. He was going to stay in his room tonight with Mr. Hand ... to talk about the David Amendment.
"I'd love some iced tea," said Mr. Hand. "Whenever you get the time...."
Now, Mr. Hand had said they'd be there all night, but at 7:45 he wound up with the battle of Saratoga and started packing up.
"Is that it?"
"I think I've made my point with you, Jeff"
"You mean I can go to Ditch Night after all?"
"I don't care what you do with your time, Mr. Spicoli."
Spicoli jumped up and reached to shake Mr. Hand's hand.
"Hey, Mr. Hand," said Spicoli, "can I ask you a question?"
"What's that?"
"Do you have a guy like me every year? A guy to ... I don't know, make a show of. Teach the other kids lessons and stuff?"
Mr. Hand finished packing and looked at the surfer who'd hounded him all year long. "Well," he said, "why don't you come back next year and find out?"
"No way," said Spicoli. "I'm not going to be like those guys who come back and hang around your classroom. I'm not even coming over to your side of the building. When I pass, I'm outa there."
"If you pass."
Spicoli was taken aback. Not pass? No thumbing up the Coast, meeting ladies and going to Hawaii for the dyno lobster season? Summer school? "Not passing?" he said.
Mr. Hand broke into the nearest thing to a grin, for him. It wasn't much, of course, but it was noticeable to Jeff. His lips crinkled at the ends. That was plenty for Mr. Hand.
"Don't worry Spicoli," said Mr. Hand. "You'll probably squeak by. "
"All right!"
"Aloha, Spicoli."
"Aloha, Mr. Hand."
Mr. Hand descended the stairway of the Spicoli home, went out the door and on to his car, which he had parked just around the corner-always use the element of surprise. Mr. Hand knew one day next year he would look to that green metal door and it would be Spicoli standing there. He'd act like he had a million other things to do, and then he'd probably stay all day. All his boys came back sooner or later.
Mr. Hand drove back to his small apartment in Richard's Bay to turn on his television and catch the evening's Five-O rerun.
-- Courtesy of Playboy - September, 1981 & Fast Times - A True Story - Cameron Crowe
