Directed by Amy Heckerling and written by Cameron Crowe. Fast Times at Ridgemont High was an unusual entry in the ‘80s teen comedy department. While many R-rated movies at the time dealt with sexual themes, they were usually exploitative and geared towards horny teenage boys. The story’s perspective included both young men and women, and Heckerling and Crowe explored funny, poignant, and even uncomfortable teen moments in its coming-of-age story. The duo wanted to show how confusing and overwhelming sex can be during one’s teen years, although the film also touched upon many other issues as well.
Girl in Corvette
A memorable moment in the movie for rock fans occurs when Judge Reinhold, portraying the older bother of Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character, is driving his old-school convertible home after working at fast food joint Captain Hook Fish & Chips. He’s still wearing his pirate hat and outfit when he pulls up alongside a beautiful blonde woman in her modern sports car. She looks over at him and smiles and giggles as he gives her flirty eyes. But he misinterprets why she is so amused.
The mysterious woman in question was none other than Heart guitarist Nancy Wilson.
In a 2007 interview with The Believer, Wilson was asked if Crowe wrote the cameo for her. She explained, “He was like, ‘Hey! Come visit the set!’ That’s how I got the chance to be ‘Girl in Corvette.’ I was really excited that I was going to be in a movie—even though I had to wake up at some ungodly hour to do the shoot.”
She continued, “The character played by Judge Reinhold has just been fired from the burger place where he worked, and he’s sitting at the stoplight when I pull up. He thinks I’m making eyes at him, but I’m actually laughing at the ridiculous burger-joint hat he’s wearing. Then I peel out. That was my big-screen moment.”
A Return Engagement
The famed guitarist actually landed a second movie moment in the next film that Crowe wrote, the Art Linson-directed, coming-of-age teen movie The Wild Life in 1984. (A film, by the way, whose score was composed and performed by Eddie Van Halen.) In one of the movie’s multiple storylines, a young woman named Anita (Lea Thompson) has a fling with a cop named David (Hart Bochner) and decides to go to where he lives. It turns out that he is married, and David’s wife (played by Wilson) answers the door. It’s an uncomfortable moment made worse because Anita also learns that Rick (presumably the cop’s partner) is actually his young son. In this 30-second scene Wilson got a little dialogue.
These two cameos were not mere coincidence. After meeting through a mutual friend, Wilson began dating Crowe in 1982 at a transitional time in both their lives. Crowe was just beginning his career while Heart’s popularity had been waning from their ‘70s peak. Private Audition (1982) and Passionworks (1983) were the first albums of their career not to be certified Gold or Platinum. But with an image and production makeover and outside songwriters brought in, Heart in 1985 sold 5 million copies, produced four Top-10 hits (including the No. 1 “These Dreams”), and became the biggest album of their career. Crowe’s career didn’t start to take off until he wrote and directed the romantic comedy Say Anything… in 1989, his first credit since The Wild Life. He and Wilson married in 1986, had two sons, and were together until 2010 when they divorced.
A Dynamic Duo
During their marriage, Wilson and Crowe collaborated more deeply on other projects together. She composed the scores for Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky, and Elizabethtown, and performed original or cover songs for Say Anything… and Singles. The biggest collab between the two artists was Almost Famous, the 2000 film which he wrote and directed. The film was inspired by Crowe’s real-life experiences as a rock journalist, including some based on time he spent with The Allman Brothers Band, and it featured a teen reporter named William Miller (Patrick Fugit) who lands the chance to go on the road with the fictional rock band Stillwater for a Rolling Stone cover feature.
Wilson wrote the Almost Famous score, encompassing a total of 21 cues. She reportedly wrote four of the six songs that Stillwater performs, while Peter Frampton tackled the other two. (Frampton also cameoed as Humble Pie’s road manager, which was a great in-joke as he co-founded that band back in the day.)
While it did not fare well at the box office, Almost Famous won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and a Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media. It remains one of the best rock movies ever made. Having a rock legend and a former rock journo join forces for the film certainly imbued it with the authenticity that so many similar films lack. It was kismet.
As Wilson told Classic Rock in 2021: “The problem with many rock movies that feature a fictional band is that the fake songs are almost always unconvincing. So we tried to be as authentic as possible. And Cameron helped write the songs too. We took the idea—and this was reflected in the film–that Stillwater was a band in the early ‘70s that was just on the cusp of breaking through really big. We were thinking of bands like Led Zeppelin, Bad Company, Cream, and wanted to create a blend of all those.”
Their approach worked like a charm.
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