So, in my first failed attempt to watch a Nicolas Cage movie, I watched a movie in which he did not appear. In my second attempt, I watched another movie in which Nicolas Cage did not appear.

A technicality perhaps, but progress was made nonetheless.

In Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Nicolas Coppola plays a bit part as “Brad’s bud” and barely has a line in the film. This is the first and last movie in which Nicolas Coppola makes an appearance but it deserves mention.

Why so? Not because Nicolas Coppola can’t handle a few lines (we know that’s not true) but because evidently having a famous uncle in Hollywood (Francis Ford Coppola) doesn’t serve an aspiring actor’s street credibility.

Because seventeen year old, Nicolas Coppola, caught a lot of flack from certain actors onset at Fast Times, he decided to transform himself into Nicolas Cage before the release of his next film, Valley Girl. He chose the name Cage because of his appreciation for Luke Cage (aka Power Man) from Marvel Comics lore and composer John Cage.

Pretty badass, right?

So when it comes to Fast Times and Nicolas Coppola’s contribution, there’s not a lot to be said. Brad’s bud is basically every bud in every party movie from the 80s, where the ultimate goal is just score-score-score–sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. Brad is just a pretty face. A faithful wing man. A reluctant fry cook. A somewhat boring backdrop to the main character, Brad, played by Judge Reinhold.

(Short aside: according to Cage, making the movie was not a pleasant experience for him because of how he was treated, e.g. the aforementioned Coppola nepotism thing, and the fact that he auditioned 10-12 times for the Brad role but was underage at the time and therefore passed for that role because he couldn’t legally work as many hours as the over-18 Reinhold.)

Based on its entertainment value alone, and not the Nicolas Cage factor, Fast Times, is an interesting period piece about the mall-ification of America. It would be a good time-capsule film to represent the free-wheeling recklessness of the early 80s, the rise of Reaganomic consumerism, the naïveté of the pre-AIDs sexual revolution (and arguable meteoric rise of teen pregnancies), and the birth of a unique post-disco Van Halen party culture. I would say that the film even sets the bar on the stoner / surfer trope (via Sean Penn‘s well played character Jeff Spicoli) who would set the stage for later surfer/stoner movies like Point Break and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and movie personalities such as Pauly Shore.

A few other random observations about the World According to Cage Fast Times:

Views on sexuality and appropriate behavior have changed quite a bit (for the better) in the four decades since the film was released. I’m not a prude, by any means, and I understand how sexually-charged and prevalent the hormones are in adolescence, but looking back on those behaviors now (as a parent of adolescent young women) I did have to cringe at some of the attitudes. Here’s a few examples:

• Brad’s friend (Nic Coppola) slapping a post-it note on the back of an unsuspecting mark that read: “I AM A HOMO.” I understand the “joke” as a product of its time, but it still doesn’t make me feel better knowing it as such and remembering throwing around the word “fag” as if it was a tennis ball.
• Linda (Phoebe Cates) persuading Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) that she’s overdue to start having sex now that she’s 15, since Linda started at 13.
• Then there’s Stacy herself (responding to this challenge) by convincing the 24 year old stereo salesmen from the mall that she was actually 19, so he would sleep with her. No one believes he didn’t know the truth (or didn’t want to know it) which makes swallowing the lie all the more creepier.

Other lighter observations…

This movie is solid gold for the game, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Although Kevin himself isn’t in it, we’ve got all those actors I’ve mentioned so far, PLUS, Eric Stoltz, Anthony Edwards (Goose), Forrest Whittaker, Amanda Weiss (Better Off Dead, A Nightmare on Elm Street), and Nancy Wilson (from Heart), to name just a few.

Spiccoli, by the end, steals the show. Watching Sean Penn in this role as the lovable stoner Jeff Spiccoli, who prefers going shirtless to getting service; who likes his pizza delivered direct to his history class (just so he won’t be late again and catch the ire of his crotchety teacher Signor Hand); and who daydreams of winning surf contests surrounded by fawning bikini clad Playboy models; is the guy we root for. It’s Spiccoli who seems most doomed to failure in the post-high school world he’s about to enter, but it’s also his sunny (if a bit over-baked) outlook in spite of it all that shines brightest and most memorably above the rest of this all-star cast.

And just so you know, mini-spoiler warning, this will not be the last time Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage cross paths on the big screen. We’ll see them again soon in Racing the Moon, in which I will seriously question whether I put my money and hours of attention on the right horse (Cage) in this race after all…

Remains to be seen. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, since we’re in this for the long haul, and this is only movie #1.

Summary: This movie was a very “fast” start to our experiment, but not all that satisfying in the further understanding of The World According to Nicolas Cage.

Let’s hope for more progress in our next installment: Valley Girl.