BEFORE: Winona Ryder carries over from "Autumn in New York". I didn't have much luck with "The Big Chill", so let's try another relationship ensemble film from about a decade later. Will I identify with these people more, or will I hate them too?
It's the next-to-last day of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" marathon - and the focus is on China ("The Good Earth"), Japan ("Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo") and Hawaii ("From Here to Eternity", "Tora! Tora! Tora!"). I've seen those last two, so I'm good. Gotta get my numbers down.
THE PLOT: Generation X Graduates face life after college with a filmmaker looking for work and love in Houston.
AFTER: I suppose this should resonate more with me, since I got out of college in 1989 and found work in the NY independent film "scene". I was reminded of the early days last weekend when I was on the way to the beer festival, and passed a building that used to house a sound stage, where I frequently worked as a P.A. on music videos and short film projects. There were days in the early 90's when I would arrive there before the sun came up, do odd jobs until wrap, and leave after sunset - and it would feel like I missed a whole day. Eventually I got steadier work and got on a more consistent schedule.
But you rarely see films that focus on people with crappy film jobs - case in point, "Reality Bites", where Winona Ryder plays a wanna-be documentary filmmaker. Of course, she thinks that the banal things and cool little quips that her slacker friends say just NEED to be captured on camera. How freakin' arrogant, to think that your petty problems would be of any interest to the world at large. It's that sense of entitlement that really sticks in my craw.
The film attempts to capture a moment in time, one that it hopes will resonate with the audience - unfortunately, the moment it's chosen to capture seems to coincide with the start of the hipster movement (or is it non-movement?) as well as the birth of reality TV. So how sad is it when her engaging oh-so-meaningful documentary footage gets cut to pieces by a cable network, who only wants to show the insights in fragments? Yeah, my heart really bleeds. Why are you so surprised that a big corporate network doesn't "get" the ideas of youth, or cut a piece of "art" into shreds? Isn't that why you slackers are so anti-establishment in the first place?
Behind the retro-based slacker jargon, there is a basic love triangle set up here - Ryder's character has to choose between the slick, yet sincere TV producer and the slacker deadbeat roommate, who always needs to act like he's above it all. Oh, and he's in a band, and he can't seem to hold down a job or a steady relationship, and she fights with him all the time - so, what were his good points, again? I get that it's a love-hate relationship, but the film didn't do much to explain how love wins over hate.
Working at the GAP, getting tested for AIDS, coming out to one's parents. Were we all this self-absorbed in the early 90's? The storylines just seemed like they were pandering - and trying to hit cultural touchstones that would appeal to the Gen X crowd. I guess every movie has to try and grab the audience with familiar stuff, but it's just so much more obvious here.
The baby-boomers grew up in the free-love 60's, and had no problem with bed-hopping, as seen in "The Big Chill" - but to these Gen-Xers, sex became serious again due to AIDS - I can't tell if that's depicted here as a step forward or a step backward. Also, the previous generation was the first to grow up in a world with television - and when their lives and marriages turned out to be not as perfect as the ones seen on TV, it led to dissatisfaction, divorce, etc. But when MY generation got upset when our lives didn't look like TV shows, we made the TV shows look more like our lives. That's my theory behind reality TV, anyway.
The name of the phony band seen in this film - it was hard for me to understand what they were saying, but the name is "Hey, That's My Bike". Which is OK, I guess, it's sure miles above "Sex Bob-omb". But we play a game at work where we call "dibs" on great band names that come up in casual conversations, or (even better) unusual ones. Not that any of us will ever start a real band, but maybe someday one of us will write a screenplay that features a fictional one. I currently have claims on two band names: "Endless Taco Party" and "Back-Alley Eye Exams". They're killer, right?
NITPICK POINT: If a character is the valedictorian of her college class, I expect that person to be a hard worker, someone with tenacity and drive. So how come she's not motivated to get a job or earn money? After just three interviews, she's basically on to scamming money from her dad.
NITPICK POINT #2: If a producer is planning to air documentary footage on a TV show, he'd know that he has to get a signed release from everyone seen in the footage - so why does he go out of his way to pick a fight with someone in the show? I realize that they're really fighting over the girl, but I still think a producer would have found a way to be more diplomatic about it, at least until the release got signed.
Also starring Ethan Hawke (last seen in "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead"), Ben Stiller (last seen in "Zoolander"), Janeane Garofalo (last seen in "The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle"), Steve Zahn (last seen in "Forces of Nature"), with cameos from Swoosie Kurtz, Joe Don Baker, John Mahoney (last seen in "Dan in Real Life"), Andy Dick, Keith David (last heard in "The Princess and the Frog"), Anne Meara, David Spade (last seen in "Grown Ups").
RATING: 4 out of 10 folded sweaters
Haw! When I commented on "Big Chill" and cited "Reality Bites" as another example of the lame "Nobody understands us and our wonderful lives are sooooooooo hard!" genre, I should have guessed you were rolling on a theme.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I hated this frickin' film even when it was first released. These were supposedly people of my own generation, in a movie that was pandering to people just like me. And I couldn't stand anybody in this flick.
So Winona Ryder is supposed to go with Ethan Hawke, despite the fact that he has such a multitude of despicable traits, because he's, you know, brooding and genuine and passionate about his art, eh? This would be the art at which we never see him actually working?
And Ben Stiller is clearly the devil because he has a job and feels as though he has certain responsibilities to his employers?
What rubbish.
I can't stand the common movie trope where people do random things without any real focus or effort and they call themselves Artists (also see: "Rent"). What Winona is doing is shooting home movies. That's not art. That's what is known as "being the annoying uncle at a family Christmas party."
But if she shoots lots and lots and lots of footage, she might begin to see patterns and themes develop. She can then choose a theme and then focus on it, deciding on events she needs to shoot and interviews that she needs to conduct in order to complete her story. Then, she needs to edit ruthlessly, revise endlessly, and accept criticism with humility.
But that would be work! No, just hand over the crate of cassettes to a man who'll give you lots of money for them and then you should throw a nutty when he turns your miles of random stock footage into something comprehensible.
Oh, look! Ethan Hawke is troubled and pouting again! *SWOON!!!*
Oy. Her sense of entitlement is infuriating. "But I was voted the smartest and prettiest and oh-so-cleverest in my class! I'm not supposed to be working in a store...I'm supposed to be doing something that isn't very challenging, for which I'm paid a fortune and constantly told how smart and pretty I am!"
This movie was supposed to speak to our generation? At the time, I and all of my friends were holding down multiple jobs and working very, very hard. We all knew that if you loaf around all day smoking pot and waiting for your life to happen, your life will obligingly take the form of loafing all day and smoking pot.
It reminds me of the recent documentary about George Harrison. He talks about the time he went to San Francisco during the Summer of Love. He was hoping and expecting to encounter people his age who were working towards enlightment for themselves and peace for the world. Instead, he was repulsed. It was just people who wanted to get high all day long.
Harrison was only 26 at the time. Yet he'd spent the last eight or nine years as a driven, motivated hard worker. No wonder he turned right around and flew back home almost immediately.
I understand that "Reality Bites" represents truth in fiction. The screenwriter was 20 years old or something and wrote a crummy, self-absorbed and unfilmable script. But it caught the right eyes and was shepherded by the studio, who paid her a lot of money for it and got her to make the changes that were necessary to give it the shape of a movie and give it a chance in hell of making money.