When you think of who would direct a FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH remake, Eli Roth is presumably not very high on your list. I mean, sure, his films more or less revolve around fairly youthful characters, and there’s certainly been no shortage of sex or sex-related talk in his oeuvre, but he’s firmly remained in the genre camp, at least so far. The idea of him directing a live-read of the original script by Cameron Crowe is a little bizarre.
But when Roth was approached to close out this year’s L.A. Film Festival with a public live-read in the tradition of the series Jason Reitman and Elvis Mitchell incepted at LACMA, FAST TIMES was the film he chose to reenact. When he introduced it last night, he mentioned that he considered Amy Heckerling’s original film to be more of a drama than a comedy, albeit a “funny as fuck” drama. And following suit, the following two hours of actors reading the original, iconic parts was a more bittersweet, somber performance than you might imagine, especially without the benefit of the film’s rockin’ soundtrack and its flashy, memorable visual moments. There’s a lot of ugliness and sadness in Crowe’s script (which was based on his own book), particularly in the draft Roth used for the read, and such, it was a little tricky to find a tone. These events are usually at their best when the actors are allowed to get loose and go for the occasional big laugh, but FAST TIMES is a little too honest and depressing for that (well, except Spicoli, but we’ll get to that later). It’s stronger as a reflection of the misery and angst of teendom than it is the highs and hilarity of it, and you could feel the wavering energy of the crowd during the frank examinations of sexual anxiety, abortion, and the lonely confusion of being young.
I would’ve assumed that Roth, with his dozen-plus acting appearances (including a legit supporting role in the Academy Award-winning INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS) and larger-than-life personality, would fit into the impresario role with nary a hitch, but that wasn’t quite the case. Eli seemed a little nervous and tripped over much of the stage direction he was tasked to read, especially early on. Reitman, the P.T. Barnum of this format, has always had a certain relaxed cadence when overseeing these shows, and the guest directors that have sometimes been employed (Patton Oswalt, Evan Goldberg, and Joe Manganiello being some of them) have plundered through admirably, but Roth struggled to maintain a steady rhythm, sometimes at the cost of the energy that was just starting to build in the room. I don’t blame him; those guys make it look easy, and I appreciated, more than ever, Manganiello’s inspired decision to have his MAJOR LEAGUE read narrated by sportscaster Rich Eisen. It really helps to have someone used to spouting out lines of direction with a clipped, concise patter, and Roth unfortunately wasn’t quite able to get in that groove.
However, the main job of whomever “directs” these things isn’t to read the directions (again, Manganiello relented completely), but to find the right people to play the roles. Like most of the casts tasked with reading a known script (often for the first time) aloud to an audience, some were able to do more with their roles than others, whether due to the way the role was written or to a particular kinship they struck with it:
LILY COLLINS AS STACY HAMILTON: This character’s a tricky one to pull off. Over the course of the film, Stacy goes from curious, wide-eyed youngster to sex-hungry and all the way back around to a mature girl ready for a real relationship, and Jennifer Jason Leigh kicked off her incredible career with her brave, painfully vulnerable performance in the original film. One of the bigger names on the stage last night, Collins seemed to be more dedicated to the performance than in working the crowd, which was appropriate when emulating the immersed-to-a-fault Leigh. She covered Stacy’s wide range of emotions with gusto, capturing both her teasey, aggressive sexuality and her wounded insecurity, particularly during the section where she deals with her pregnancy. During the “blowjob lesson” scene, she seemed genuinely nervous, letting out a “Sorry, Mom” before gorging on the strawberries co-star Lorenza Izzo brought in lieu of the original’s carrots. Ultimately, because she wasn’t afforded the lingering gaze of director Amy Heckerling’s camera, Collins’ Stacy didn’t quite come off as the lead the way Leigh did in the original, but her rendition remained the dramatic centerpiece of the whole story, and felt like the closest thing to an actual stage performance.
LOGAN PAUL AS JEFF SPICOLI: One of the two social media icons Roth assigned for the live-read (the other being Nik “BigNik” Keswani), Vine star Logan’s non-acting had a quality that must’ve seemed right on paper, but constantly misfired in execution. Going completely against the grain of Sean Penn’s original, iconic performance, Paul undersold all of his lines, muttering them with the same half-interested daze of a real stoner. He didn’t enunciate well, his timing was off, and he let nearly all of Spicoli’s memorable lines off without the energy necessary to make them land. I give him credit for not going the obvious route and hamming to the crowd, but with his shirtless getup, showy body language, and mussed blonde hair, he seemed to be trying for a charm and comedic impact that he never really achieved. His best scene was his big climactic moment with Mr. Hand; Paul’s presence was so casual and lackadaisical that him pulling it together and reciting Hand’s lesson back to him (in his own parlance, of course) felt like an actual victory instead of a mandatory plot point. He also had a funny rapport with Keswani as Spicoli’s little brother, Curtis, in those scenes where he’d have to do the move many high schoolers are familiar with: telling the little brother/sister to appreciate his stuff and/or fuck off out of his room. I get that these social media stars hit a nerve with young folk who could care less about traditional, experienced actors, but Roth’s gamble in giving two-time Oscar-winner Sean Penn’s breakout role to a total newbie didn’t quite pay off in the way fans of the original might’ve hoped for.
DARYL SABARA AND KUMAIL NANJIANI AS MARK “RAT” RATNER AND MIKE DAMONE: This was a risky call that ended up working. Conventional tastes would probably reverse these roles, with Nanjiani playing the stammering, good-natured Mark and Sabara (also seen in Roth’s THE GREEN INFERNO) as the wise-talking, but obviously full of shit Damone, but by flipping what we’d expect, Roth created the most interesting interplay of the night. While Robert Romanus (already in his mid-20s at the time of shooting, even older than Judge Reinhold) emanated a certain inherent confidence behind his uncertain, amoral snakiness, the SILICON VALLEY actor highlighted how dumb and uninformed Damone comes off on the page. During the scenes where Damone flips second-hand tickets to his peers, Nanjiani’s phoniness when switching cadences from customer to customer was a tad arch, but consistently funny. We all knew guys who had the world on a string and we all knew those who didn’t, but made a damned valiant play at seeming like they did, and Nanjiani went for the latter. The numerous scenes where Damone coaches Rat on how to schmooze with girls, as well as the drawn-out love scene between him and Stacy, had an extra dollop of awkwardness that came the closest the show ever got to feeling like a genuine teen sex comedy.
Sabara, on the other hand, made The Rat into an even more hopeless and pathetic figure than Brian Backer’s turn in the original. As dumb as Nanjiani’s Mark seemed, Sabara’s Mark ate every morsel of it up, as wide-eyed and impressionable as all of us were as lovelorn teenagers. When he first hits on Stacy, the stage directions emphasizing his awkward body language incentivized Sabara to go into full squeaky-voiced dork mode, and his clumsiness was more laugh-out-loud funny than the cringeworthy interaction in the film. The scene where Stacy invites him into her bedroom and fails to seduce him made Mark look even more like a pussy with the directions, as it’s supposed to be made abundantly clear that he’s chickening out and not going soft or premature ejaculating or anything like that. I always thought The Rat was sort of the de facto male lead of FAST TIMES, with his attempts to land the leading lady and his own emotional arc, but as Sabara played him, he's another of the story's lost souls, unsure of himself, what he wants, and how to interact with those he cares about.
Nanjiani and Sabara sat next to each other on the right of the stage (audience right), and achieved an interplay during those great scenes where Damone uses, then abuses, Mark’s admiration for him, like the missing wallet scene (which originally took place at a seafood place, not a schnitzel joint), Damone’s explanation of his “five-point plan”, and their final make-up scene. When Damone would go on about “the attitude,” Kumail and Daryl would snap their fingers with every utterance of “attitude,” clearly poking fun at the anachronistic ideas of ‘80s cool, but also highlighting how empty and contrived Damone’s advice actually is. The Rat and Damone’s friendship is one of the things that gives FAST TIMES its beating heart, and Sabara and Nanjiani did that thing you always hope for at these live reads: they made it their own.
HALEY JOEL OSMENT AS BRAD HAMILTON: This was more on-the-nose than say, Kumail Nanjiani as Mike Damone. Osment, at this stage, possesses that same amiability and lack of self-awareness that made Judge Reinhold’s turn as the character so winning, and he did a great job as the de facto straight man of FAST TIMES. Though Osment doesn’t have that same lanky, deep-voiced appeal of Reinhold, he evoked his everyman quality as Brad tries to navigate his numerous jobs and impress chicks during his last year of high school. Those moments where Brad acts as big brother to Stacy showed off how much Osment has grown up since his glory days as a child star, and he was able to show even more of a nurturing, caring side than Reinhold’s original turn. Every time Brad says something about how he’s a “single, successful guy” due to his counter job at McDonalds, Osment delivered the lines just as straight and cluelessly as a real guy uttering that nonsense, allowing the audience to pick up on the humor in them (which they did, repeatedly). However, without the benefit of action, his two big climactic scenes (throwing his fast-food uniform out the car window and taking down an attempted mugger) were robbed of their finality, and in turn somewhat robbed Brad of his more overt heroism. Here, he was defined by his general good nature (if somewhat self-satisfied and complacent) and his warm, protective relationship with his sister, and Oscar-nominee Osment did it and made it look easy.
Reinhold himself made a surprise appearance at the start of Brad’s whack-off scene, via a pre-taped video seemingly shot at the same exact location (or a markedly similar one) that they filmed the original scene. He slid that tiny window open, and said some weird stuff into the camera with wide eyes and a creepy smile before closing it again. It was a welcome presence, the only time anyone associated with the original made an appearance that night. Who doesn’t love Judge Reinhold (hell, both CLERKS: THE ANIMATED SERIES and ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT trotted out the joke of making him Judge Judge Reinhold)?
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LORENZA IZZO AS LINDA BARRETT: Izzo has been in Roth’s last two pictures (and the Roth-produced AFTERSHOCK), as well as being his wife, so her presence wasn’t much of a surprise, and her talents were well-suited for Stacy. Phoebe Cates take isn’t a huge part of the film, and Linda doesn’t have that much to do, but her alpha-female, sex-savvy hottie is as closely linked with FAST TIMES as any other individual element (largely due to that pool scene). Lorenza didn’t do a radically different take on the character, but she showed the energy and spunk to pull it off. Like I mentioned, she broke out strawberries for the scene where Linda teaches Stacy the ways of fellatio, and tried (possibly at Roth’s request) to inject the iconic imagery of that scene into the live-read. She leaned into Linda’s sex talk and musings about her fiancee in Chicago with more knowingness and comic energy than Cates, making laugh lines out of what were originally the only real character details we had for her character. When she went off on Damone after he stands up Stacy, Izzo leaned into every utterance of the word “prick” more and more, crescendoing with great energy and doing what that scene did in the original, which was diffuse the emotional rawness of the abortion scene for the comic montage that followed of Damone trying to cover-up Linda’s aggressive revenge attempts. It’s tough to make an impression in this role without taking your top off to “Moving In Stereo” while glistening in morning dew, but Izzo was able to find an appropriate register for Linda and made it work regardless.
COURTNEY LOVE AS MR. HAND: “Aloha, my name is Mr. Hand.” Even disregarding the gender change, Courtney Love is probably not the first person many would pick to play the hardassed-to-a-fault Global History teacher. Obviously, Roth was playing up the contrast between the role and Love’s media persona, and while I wouldn’t say the move was “inspired,” she certainly did more with the role than I would’ve expected. As an actress, I usually associate Love with wild characters not that dissimilar to how she came off in her Hole days, like PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT or even her recent stretch on EMPIRE, but she didn’t yell, swear, or slur her words once (though she missed a couple of her cues for the side characters Roth has assigned to her). She also didn’t soften up Mr. Hand, or make him more paternal/maternal. Instead, she cooled Ray Walston’s sharp delivery down to a seething menace, creating the image of a more believable, fed up high school teacher. Without Walston’s slightly over-the-top acting, we kinda side with Hand; these kids may not all be “on dope,” but they certainly have their heads at least partially up their asses, and they really do not have an inkling of interest in anything he has to teach them. Because Paul’s Spicoli came off as more of a selfish stoner asshole, and less of a jaunty comic figure, it seems less abrasive for Hand to steal his pizza away, or to show up at his house to make sure he got the mere minimum out of his lessons, and more like the behavior of a concerned, if overly thorough teacher. I would have never painted Love as an authority figure, but against my expectations, she did come off as such, and if Roth had to come up with something that would compete with Walston’s original take, he coulda done a lot worse.
AARON BURNS AND NIK KESWANI AS CHARLES JEFFERSON AND JEFFERSON’S BROTHER: These guys didn’t have nearly as much to do as the rest of the cast, but they both got in good lines as the handful of bit players they took on. Burns, a VFX guy (and Austinite) who appeared in Roth’s last two films, certainly had the imposing build of Forest Whitaker (save for that perfect left eye of his), and played his handful of lines (“Don’t fuck with it.”) with a more directly intimidating cadence than Whitaker’s inherent soft-spokenness. He also was appropriately assholish and self-righteous as Brad Hamilton’s two fast-food bosses.
Keswani (apparently known as “BigNik” on Vine) was, as Roth mentioned, the only cast member who was actually high-school aged, and the self-described aspiring actor seemed more energetic and professional than the similarly snatched-from-social-media Paul. As the little brothers of both Jefferson and Spicoli, Keswani gave those scenes life as he sparred with Logan (“First he’s gonna shit, then he’s gonna kill us!” remains a popper of a line, and he did it justice). As with Paul, my out-of-touch ass was completely unaware of his “work”, but he showed a good sense of timing and personality in his bit parts.
The draft Roth used was dated sometime in ’81, and contains some differences, both big and small, that end up changing the overall feel in surprising ways. First off, there are way more real-life brand names used: Brad initially works at McDonalds instead of “All-American Burger,” and ends the film working at a 7-11 instead of “MI-T-MART”. There are repeated references to how most young high schoolers have a “dope-smoking phase”, including a warning from Linda to Stacy about Mark’s possible reasons for being as nervous as he is. The latter was probably taken out to avoid having a studio movie that validates underclassman trying out pot, and both seem like part of Crowe’s attempt to make the film feel close to the actual experiences of high-schoolers doing that time (kids tend to talk a lot about stuff they buy and places they go).
Other stuff fleshes out the emotional background of the movie. When the boys come to hang out with Stacy and Linda by the pool, there are more overt notes in the script that Stacy is already falling for Damone’s big, brash charm over Rat’s unabashed sincerity. She even rubs his leg under the water in the hot tub, right under Rat’s nose, which sorta gives her sudden sexual attraction to Damone a little more context, and also makes it a little sadder. When Damone stands her up on the day of her abortion, Stacy and Linda have a powerful, somber exchange (which I’m paraphrasing):
STACY: You didn’t tell me.
LINDA: Tell you what?
STACY: That boys act all mature and caring at the start, but after they get laid, they turn into 5-year-old boys.
LINDA: You're right…I didn’t tell you that.
It’s one of the few moments Linda gets real and vulnerable in the script, and the surprise of the deleted exchange mixed with Izzo and Collins’ toned-down delivery created a nice, quiet impact in the audience.
There’s also a little structural rejiggering: the convenience store robbery comes before the prom and the Rat/Stacy mall scene in this version, which puts their relationship more front-and-center at the end. This allows for a cool moment at the prom where Spicoli takes the time to salute Brad for his bravery during the attempted robbery; a cool, touching moment that creates a sorta kinship between the two characters, even if Spicoli’s reverence was already succinctly evoked with his earlier, “Awesome, totally awesome! Way to go, Hamilton!” And there are none of those goofy titles at the end, with Spicoli saving Brooke Shields and whatnot.
There’s an additional exchange between Rat and Damone during the prom scene after the latter apologizes for his sexual indiscretion. I always felt the film ended up shortchanging their make up, squeezing it into an already busy music-heavy sequence, but by giving them a little more time (and Damone a chance to show that he hasn’t really learned thatmuch: he hits on a girl who gives him the cold shoulder before giving out a, “Still got it!”), their relationship seems more like the heart of the story than ever.
A weird thing that was actually added for the movie was during the phone conversation between Spicoli and his bud, played by Eric Stoltz (“That was my skull…I’m so wasted!”). In the script, we only see Spicoli’s side of the exchange, interrupted by his little brother (“I don’t hear you unless you knock!”), but in the film, we see Stoltz and his long red hair chatting in his prom duds on the other side of the line. I wonder if the opposite of his BACK TO THE FUTURE fate happened here, where they liked him so much in the character that they actually beefed it up a little bit! Though I do wonder why that wouldn’t have happened with Nicolas Cage (then Coppola)…
Since I first saw it as a kid, I’ve been aware that FAST TIMES didn’t really deserve its reputation as a sex-and-titties teen comedy, and that it was something more brutal and unflinching than we usually get from youth-skewing movies. Roth showed a lot of bravery in choosing it, beyond his own inexperience in the genre; even scripts that LACMA has put on like SIDEWAYS and THE GRADUATE have big comic moments and snappy energy, and the energy these live-reads always have at the outset (mostly due to the love for the original film and the name actors on stage) maybe can’t withstand FAST TIMES’ dips into human tragedy and the sometimes ugly nature of its relationships (L.A. types are not exactly known for lingering on the depressing side of humanity).
It pains me to say that the show was less than the sum of its parts. Reitman always opens with a warning that, “We’re figuring this out as we go,” and I never got the feeling that Roth & co. had settled into a comfortable rhythm that could sustain itself until the end. I sympathize; it was his first time trying this format out, and the venue (the premiere screen at Regal’s L.A. Live Theater, complete with studio seating) was more awkward than the usual Bing and Ace Theater stages.
But for the most part, he took on the challenge of recasting these memorable roles, that kicked off each actors’ respective careers, and they did well in replicating or, all too seldomly, accentuating the key moments in the script. I cannot give Roth a pass for casting Paul; there was little-to-no evidence that the Vine star would be able to exhibit the charisma or comic timing of Sean Penn, and Eli should know better than to cast a personality over an actor in such a crucial part. Plus, it’s unlikely that the kids who like him typically have the patience to sit through one of these anyway, let alone care enough about this 30-plus-year-old movie to bother. Still, his other actors settled comfortably in their individual parts, and Nanjiani and Sabara created a surprisingly comfortable interplay that was the highlight of the performance for me. If the comedy was somewhat muted, the pathos and humanity of Crowe’s FAST TIMES script still shined through, and made me appreciate the unique, only-that-time-and-place kismit of Heckerling’s original film.
The next season of the LACMA live-reads starts in the fall, and if they again employ Roth as a guest director, I hope he comes back a little less nervous and a little more savvy in regards to his casting choices. These things can sing when executed correctly, and I think Roth will be able to pull it off on his next, or following, attempt.
