When David Lynch almost directed a high school sex comedy: “He was slightly perplexed”
One of the strangest ‘what ifs’ in Hollywood history easily belongs to the peculiar instance in which David Lynch was approached to direct an 1980s teen comedy. You just can’t see it, can you?
Having made his feature film debut with Eraserhead, a bizarre tale of a man who must look after his deformed alien-like baby, it boggles the mind to think that anyone could see that and then consider Lynch to make a raunchy sex comedy about high-schoolers. Eraserhead is surreal and, to many, hard to follow, with its scenes of heads rolling off and a singing woman emerging from a radiator. The fact that Lynch was even considered for something so opposite is really quite hilarious.
He’d followed Eraserhead with The Elephant Man, a moving exploration of Joseph Merrick’s battle to be seen as human despite his severe bodily deformities, which again wasn’t much in line with a sex comedy. A tear-jerkingly beautiful film, it might have been, at least structurally, more accessible than Eraserhead, but this wasn’t Lynch’s invitation to be offered more commercially appealing projects.
So, imagine his surprise when he was offered the chance to direct Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The movie was eventually directed by Amy Heckerling (who would go on to direct Clueless) with Almost Famous filmmaker Cameron Crowe having penned the script.
The young journalist had made a name for himself as a pioneering music writer in the 1970s, completing assignments for Rolling Stone when he was just 16. Yet, he then took on a project that was wildly different – he would pose as a student for a year and write a book about his findings. This would become Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story, and within a year, it had been made into a movie with Crowe adapting it into a screenplay himself.
Before Heckerling was chosen to direct the film, Lynch was strangely considered, and while he would soon reveal a knack for depicting teenagers on screen with Twin Peaks, a surreal blend of humour and tragedy, Fast Times at Ridgemont High was something different entirely. To be fair, there are some hefty topics explored in the movie, like a 15-year-old (played by a young Jennifer Jason Leigh) losing her virginity to a 26-year-old before later getting pregnant by another teen, but the movie would’ve likely taken on a much darker tone if Lynch had gotten his hands on it.
While Lynch did meet with Crowe, he soon realised this was not a movie for him by any stretch of the imagination. “I had a meeting with David Lynch,” Crowe told Variety, “He had a very wry smile on his face as I sat talking with him.”
He continued, “He went and read it. We met again. He was very, very sweet about it, but slightly perplexed we thought of him. He said this was a really nice story but ‘it’s not really the kind of thing that I do, but good luck.’ He got into the white VW bug and drove off.”
Instead, Lynch committed to a project that was another unexpected move, an adaptation of Dune, although this wasn’t exactly a success. Blue Velvet came shortly after, with the filmmaker redeeming himself, and from there, he hardly made a misstep in his career. Still, imagine a Lynchian Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Would it have actually been amazing? That’s something we’ll never know.
