‘FAST TIMES’ CHANGES PACE FOR TV

Ridgemont High is back in session.

The fictional Southern California adolescent oasis, which was memorialized in the celebrated teen film “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” has sprung back to life as a CBS-TV comedy airing Wednesdays at 8 p.m.

Sean Penn (who played Spicoli, the school’s notorious surf cadet in the film) is gone, replaced by newcomer Dean Cameron. The references to drugs and sex have disappeared too.

But is network TV ready for a sassy, affectionate look at high school, full of real-life dilemmas instead of cardboard caricatures?

“It’s been a major concern, because it’s scary doing network TV,” explained executive producer Allen Rucker, a former producer of “SCTV” who was also at the helm of the recent Martin Mull cable specials “The History of White People in America, Parts I and II.”

“Too often in network TV everything gets so watered down that you lose any singular vision. But CBS has basically had a hands-off attitude with us, largely because I think we’ve given them a set of 3-D, human characters who aren’t just teen stereotypes.”

The show made a lackluster debut last week, placing a distant second in its time slot to NBC’s “Highway to Heaven.” However, CBS has given the show a wide berth, perhaps because it brings to the network a wealth of Hollywood talent.

Amy Heckerling, who directed the film, is back, directing many of the episodes and serving as a supervising producer. Jonathan Roberts, co-author of the breezy Hollywood comedy “The Sure Thing,” is also on board as a producer. Original cast members Ray Walston (as Mr. Hand) and Vincent Schiavelli (as Mr. Vargas) are back too.

With an eye on school-locker realism, the show’s producers hired “Valley Girl” Moon Zappa, first as a script consultant and now as a continuing character in the series. They’ve also scrapped the customary network laugh track, borrowed some ideas from a recent documentary, “All-American High School” (which profiled Torrance High School) and encouraged suggestions from youthful cast members.

The program has been shooting on location several days each week at a vacant junior high in La Crescenta. The facility has the ragtag air of a real school, with surfer vans in the parking lot and such colorful corridor graffiti as “Get Tubed” and “What Does Mr. Hand Do With His Hand?,” a reference to the show’s stern instructor.

On a recent afternoon, the producers were filming a talent show scene that could only happen at Ridgemont, a school where students cruise into class on skateboards.

A quartet of raucous co-eds who call themselves the Material Girls bounced around the stage, lip-syncing the lyrics to a Madonna song. The emcee, Mark (The Rat) Ratner, impersonated Woody Allen, saying, “I haven’t had this much fun since my last anxiety attack.”

Spicoli even got into the act, performing a wobbly duet of Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” with pal Surfer Bud.

Watching Heckerling direct the action, Rucker credited her involvement with easing any potential network anxieties. “When she came in, it was ‘Thank you . . . ‘ time,” he said. “Even the network execs began to relax, because they knew she could handle the characters.”

Rucker laughed. “What’s so great about Amy is that her heart’s still in high school. She loves the kids and hates the teachers. Whenever we get too adult, she’ll say, ‘Nah, the kids will hate that stuff.’ ”

Heckerling often jokes that the two biggest influences on her life have been “Dobie Gillis” and Franz Kafka. Watching her on the “Fast Times” set, clowning around with the cast, it’s easy to figure out where “Dobie Gillis” fits in.

As she cheerily acknowledged, “Everything in TV is 10 times as fast as film, which I like, ‘cause I have such a short attention span. I grew up on TV. In fact, I grew up waiting for MTV, so I always want to go on to the next thing right away.

“Also, I just feel comfortable around kids. I guess I didn’t grow up. The problem is that things get too scary when you grow up.”

Heckerling’s husband, writer-director Neal Israel, who’s also directing a couple of “Fast Times” episodes, explained, “Amy has a real feeling for being 17. It was a very significant time of change for her, full of vivid memories. She remembers stuff like unrequited love like it was yesterday. Growing up can be a very painful experience, when you’re not always able to express yourself, and Amy really knows how to tap into those feelings. She knows when young actors are being natural, not just being theatrical.”

Working in Hollywood can also be a painful, perhaps even Kafka-esque experience. Heckerling is certainly in no rush to return to feature films, especially after her unsatisfying experiences directing “Johnny Dangerously” and “National Lampoon’s European Vacation.”

“This has been a lot more fun for me,” she said, taking a break on the set. “I’d had a couple of crummy years making movies. I was really unhappy--I used to start the day feeling like I was going to throw up. I almost feel as if I’m cheating or something now, because I don’t feel really horrible.

“I just didn’t relate to the direction Hollywood movies were going. I hate the ‘wise-guy movies’ and the ‘let’s kill the gooks’ movies. And I finally said, ‘If that’s what they want, then I’ll go back to high school and deal with kids who have real lives.’ ”

She shrugged. “I’d forgot that the actual business of writing and directing can be fun. I mean, it’s not necessarily part of the job to get ulcers and be unhappy. Here I can do all sorts of wacky things and no one bothers me. On a movie, when you think of something new, there’s 100 people who have an opinion about it.

“I felt totally up against the wall. You just couldn’t be creative in an atmosphere where you had to worry about what everybody--the studio and the stars--thought about every little thing. It’s like trying to sing when someone’s strangling you.”

Heckerling has no problem with the network restrictions on “Fast Times”’ portrayal of teen sex and drug use. “The lack of explicitness works in our favor,” she said. “It lets us explore relationships and allows the characters to develop more slowly.

“When I was young, I’d play with little cut-out dolls--you know, I’d give them little stories to act out. But in the movies, you fall in love with your characters and then they’re gone. Here, we get to take them in different directions. We’ve got nine major characters, so it’s a constant challenge for us to find ways for them to interact that are real, not fake.”

Heckerling isn’t the only staffer on the show who’s concerned with capturing a hefty dose of reality. “Fast Times” staff writers Marc Warren and Dennis Rinsler are former New York schoolteachers who’ve been doing their homework for the show by hanging out in area malls, the cultural center of teen life.

“The kids in the cast aren’t afraid to tell us when we’re way off the mark,” Warren explained. “But the mall culture has spread all the way across America. Let’s face it; there are Foot Lockers everywhere.”

According to producer Jonathan Roberts, the biggest challenge isn’t just keeping up to date with the latest rock patois, but capturing the indirectness of teen talk, the way that kids never actually say what’s on their minds.

“It’s almost as if they talk in a secret code,” Roberts noted. “When our characters patch up a quarrel in the girls’ room, they never discuss the fact that they’ve had a fight or that they’re even making up. It’s all left unsaid.

“Since we can’t have kids using four-letter words, we look in other directions to make the language sound authentic. If you’re writing sonnets, it forces you to work in a specified type of language. And the restrictions of TV force you to find new ways to create realism.”

Of course, it wouldn’t be TV if the producers didn’t gripe about a few minor annoyances. “We’ve had to take the phone numbers off the locker-room graffiti,” Roberts explained. “Though I’m not sure if the network was bothered by the fact that we were being sexually suggestive or that we’d written down real numbers.

“Our time slot is a problem too. Sometimes it just kills you to see some of the stuff they’re able to say on ‘Golden Girls,’ because it’s on later at night.”

On the other hand, the producers insist they’ve won a few battles too. “Right now,” Rucker said with a grin, “we’re pretty excited about getting ‘frigid’ by the censors.”