Fast Times At Ridgemont High Behind The Scenes

Nicolas Cage actually taunted the rest of the cast of "Fast Times" by bragging about his Uncle Francis Ford Coppola- he told all the other young actors that he would be famous faster than any of them, because he had the connections. After a few weeks of this, the cast started to strike back at Nicolas by doing imitations of Robert DuVall in Apocalypse Now, which finally got Cage to stop bragging about his famous family. My brother was an extra in all the high school scenes, and saw this happen. He also said that Sean Penn was dating Pamela Springsteen and Eric Stolz was dating Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Phoebe Cates was dating Timothy Hutton who was always hanging around.

Universal Studios HATED 'Fast Times' and decided to take away the Eastern Coast theatres thinking it was going to bomb.

Judge Reinhold was the boyfriend of Amy Heckerling's best friend, who was also doing casting. He got the part anyway without the producers knowing.

The cast of the film said Nicolas Cage (Nicholas Coppola at the time) was in the film because of his uncle & some of the actors would stand outside his trailer & recite a version of Robert Duvall's famous line from Apocalypse Now "I love napalm in the morning," altering it to "I love the smell of Nicolas in the morning."

Spicolli's dream sequence was actually written and filmed after the film was wrapped. After beginning the editing process, Amy, Art and Azimoff realized how great Spicoli had been acted by Penn, and that they needed to beef up Penn's role in the film.

Penn had to fly back to LA, in between another job in Chicago. Because Cameron wrote the lines the day of the shoot, they used cue cards offscreen to help Penn. The cue cards of the infamous lines 'Those guys are fags!' hang to this day on the walls of Cameron's home.

Sean drove the cast & director Amy Heckerling crazy with only wanting to be referred to as Spicoli & staying in character even after filming. He was never Sean till filming wrapped.

The role of Mr. Hand was originally offered to Fred Gywnne, who turned it down because he was offended by the sexual content in the film.

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