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Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The Flaw of Ridgemont High

I could say, it'd be cool to attend this school just to be at a high school where it seems girls put out quite frequently and the belle of the ball was Phoebe Cates. On top of that, you could become best friends with Spicoli, and there'd be a point where you'd probably have to key Judge Reinhold's car for no reason other than him being a turd, no? It's even more shocking there was a time when Sean Penn was cool. Sean's got to get over his man crush on Hugo Chavez. It's like thinking Khadafi is cute because of his sunglasses.

The thing is, we all did go to this high school, and that's what makes this movie fantastic. No 80s movie better exemplifies the times and styles than this one does. It almost seems like this movie was made in the 1990s, to show what life in the early 80s was like. How bad ass would it be if girls started trying to look like Pat Benatar again? Imagine having the capabilities to go through the school's token ticket scalper to land Earth, Wind and Fire tickets?

This is all good stuff, but unfortunately, there's the fatal blunder, which I'm sure we're all aware of. It's my theory that the same crowd of people who love this movie, also love Led Zeppelin. Both require a certain amount of taste, and a certain degree of appreciation for the history of each respective genre. So when you have a character advising someone to listen to Led Zeppelin IV on a date, and then the next scene flashes to the date, and they're playing "Kashmir" which is not on Led Zeppelin IV baby, it's frustrating in the most nerdlinger of ways. My guess is they probably had to spend X amount of dollars more to get a song off IV than they would have to pay for "Kashmir", but if that was indeed the case, why not just say, "Listen to Led Zeppelin." All it would have taken was one person on the set to have just a basic knowledge of one of the best rock'n roll bands of all time, and this never would have happened.

Based on this, it's safe to assume that the entire cast didn't like Led Zeppelin. So, as hot as Phoebe Cates is, she was probably more of a disco pop music girl. Judge Reinhold was probably a big Bee Gees guy. Jeff Spicoli? Well, as stoned as he was, he was still into Van Halen, so, if you need any final confirmation that Sean Penn is a complete asshat, what more do you need?

2 comments:

  1. You've missed the point entirely. The Mark Ratner character is not COOL enough to get laid OR know the difference between the fourth album and Physical Graffiti, hence his Kashmir blunder. Believe me, Cameron Crowe, the book/movie's writer, knows the difference - he went on tour (while still a teen)with Zeppelin and wrote a Rolling Stone cover story on them for a March 1975 issue. Oh, and he used that tour (among others) as inspiration for Almost Famous. Hope that helps!

    http://www.cameroncrowe.com/eyes_ears/articles/crowe_eyesandears_journalism_led.html

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