Script To Screen: “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”

A memorable scene from the 1982 comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High, written by Cameron Crowe.

Here Mr. Hand (Ray Walston) does battle with Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) over a popular adolescent food item.

Here is the scene in the movie:

The scene plays out pretty much as written with the ending less random and more of a slap in Spicoli’s face, especially when Mr. Hand himself chows down on a slice.

One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a Go Into The Story series where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

For more articles in the Script To Screen series, go here.