The Cinema of Generation X

A Critical Study of Films and Directors

by Peter Hanson

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Hanson, Peter, 1969–

The cinema of Generation X: a critical study of films and directors / by
Peter Hanson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7864-1334-4
1. Motion pictures—United States—History. 2. Motion picture
producers and directors—United States—Biography. 3. Generation
X. I. Title.
PN1993.5.U6H34 2002
791.43'75'097309049—dc21 2001008469

British Library cataloguing data are available

©2002 Peter Hanson. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by

any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.

Cover photograph: Steven Soderbergh directing the 2000 film Erin

Brockovich

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
 Acknowledgments

For her patience, support, insight, and clear-headed reactions throughout the
various stages of this book’s development, I am indebted to Leslie S.
Connor, to whom this book is dedicated. Thanks also are due to Margaret
Eck, Joe Masucci, Frank Mouris, the Clan Swierzewski, Frank Mouris the
New York State Archives Partnership Trust, the New York State Writers
Institute, and the management of Hoyts Crossgates Cinemas and the
Spectrum 7 Theatres, both in Albany, New York.
 Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface
1. The Arrival
2. Born in the U.S.A.
3. Culture Vultures
4. Growing Pains
5. To Slack or Not to Slack
6. Take This McJob and Shove It
7. From Romance to Rape
8. Uncomfortably Numb
9. Out for Blood
10. Touchy Subjects
11. Worlds Beyond Worlds
12. Where Do We Go from Here?
Appendix One: Key Generation X Filmmakers
Appendix Two: Notable Generation X Films
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Terms
 Preface

Youth isn’t always wasted on the young.

Beginning in the late 1980s and continuing through to the present day, a
wave of youthful filmmakers—working in modalities ranging from the
brazen to the austere—has infused both mainstream and independent
American films with the vigor, the promise, the possibility, and even the
foolhardiness of youth. And while it sometimes seems there is little order
and unity among these wildly diverse artists, one essential fact joins them:
They all are members of Generation X.

The tones wrought by Gen-X filmmakers are as varied as the directors

themselves: Steven Soderbergh’s provocative postmodernism, Quentin
Tarantino’s swaggering violence, Kevin Smith’s philosophical ribaldry,
David Fincher’s seductive nihilism. And even individual directors from this
unpredictable group have surprises up their sleeve: Soderbergh followed the
straightforward drama Erin Brockovich with an experimental examination
of America’s war on drugs, Traffic, and a glossy caper film populated by
several of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Ocean’s Eleven. Just as no one
description captures the entirety of the cinema of Generation X, no one
description captures the entirety of an important Gen-X filmmaker’s body
of work.

The reasons why directors born in the 1960s and 1970s are so hard to nail
down are many and fascinating, but the enigma of the cinema of Generation
X revolves around a few key facts: Gen Xers grew up during one of the
most tumultuous periods of American history, were inundated with popular
culture to an unprecedented degree, suffered through social changes such as
a rash of divorces, and then created a youth culture anchored in irony,
apathy, and disenfranchisement. Is it any wonder that the filmmakers who
belong to this group send mixed messages?

This book explores how a difficult transition from childhood to maturity

colored the sensibilities of Gen Xers who became filmmakers, andfurther
details how those sensibilities inform such intriguing Gen-X commonalties
as the obsession with pop-culture references, the willingness to embrace
postmodern narrative techniques, and the telling aversion to moral
absolutes. It says everything about the cinema of Generation X to note that
this generation has produced such unconventional movies as sex, lies, and
videotape, Pi, Fight Club, and Memento.

Yet Gen Xers also create unthreatening escapism, whether it’s the
superheroic action of X-Men or the supernatural adventure of The Mummy
Returns. These pictures, and others like them, are as reflective of the
character of Generation X as any others, however, for it follows that a
generation raised on shallow popular culture would create their own
disposable entertainment given the chance.

The disparities between the serious artists of this generation and their
crowd-pleasing counterparts are important, but so too are the instances in
which many facets of this peculiar generation’s identity converge: Consider
Larry and Andy Wachowski’s The Matrix, a testosterone-laden action
movie that’s also a mind-bending exploration of whether the concept of
reality still holds its meaning in an age defined by technology.

The hero of The Matrix is a definitive Gen-X figure, because like countless
members of the generation to which the Wachowksi brothers belong, the
hero is overwhelmed by the onslaught of sensation and information and
misinformation that is life in the modern world. He is lost, and only others
like him can help him find his way. Not all Gen Xers are lost, of course, but
nearly all Gen-X filmmakers are on a quest not unlike that pursued by the
hero of The Matrix. They want to make sense of a senseless world.

To understand how these directors use their work to further this quest is to
gain insight into the collective soul of a generation, and to more deeply
understand why the cinematic creations of that generation are far more than
just movies. Taken together, they provide an illuminating interpretation of
the culture in which we live.
 1
The Arrival

In the last summer-movie orgy of the 1980s, Hollywood’s propensity for

high concepts and higher budgets reached an apex that epitomized the
excesses of Greed Decade blockbusters, but also redefined the earning
potential of such films. On June 23, 1989, months of savvy advertising and
priceless word-of-mouth helped give the superhero adventure Batman a
monstrous opening weekend, underlining mainstream Hollywood’s ability to
spin a masterful marketing campaign around a simplistic, youth-oriented
idea.

Although critics were almost universally enthusiastic about the picture’s

state-of-the-art visuals and the appeal of director Tim Burton’s dark wit, the
movie’s hackneyed story left all but the most undemanding viewers
disappointed. So for observers who had lamented the steady evolution of the
action-oriented blockbuster since Steven Spielberg’s Jaws and George
Lucas’s Star Wars earned unheard-of revenues in the mid–1970s, the record-
setting conquest of Batman was a nail in the grave of quality cinema. After
all, Batman was merely the victor in a high-concept sweepstakes whose
other entrants included Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the third
installment in Spielberg’s nostalgic adventure series; Ghostbusters II, a
follow-up to the popular supernatural comedy starring Bill Murray; Honey, I
Shrunk the Kids, a Disney-produced family adventure with a science-fiction
premise; and The Abyss, director James Cameron’s epic underwater drama.

Before the summer of 1989 drew to a close, however, a film hit theaters that
had neither a high concept nor easily marketable youth appeal. The picture
was psychological and erotic, making it a distinct alternative to the simple-
minded, neutered entertainment of the year’s blockbusters. And while the
summer’s big flicks all had some form of brand-name appeal—the Batman
character had been popular, in various mediums, since before World War II;
Indiana Jones and Ghostbusters were sequels; and so on—the dark-horse
movie that opened on August 2 was the first-time directorial effort of a little-
known film editor, and it was released by a New York City–based boutique
distributor best known for bringing European pictures to America. The
movie’s meatiest credentials, in fact, were a Palme d’Or prize from the
Cannes Film Festival and a warm reception at the Sundance Film Festival. It
hardly had the makings of a pop-culture sensation.

Yet as summer drifted into fall, that’s exactly what sex, lies, and videotape
became, in the process spurring a boom period for Miramax Films and
launching the career of writer-director Steven Soderbergh.

sex, lies, and videotape wasn’t a blockbuster on the order of Batman—the

box-office take of Soderbergh’s picture was smaller than the budget of
Burton’s—but the film’s impact was, in a way, more powerful. For while
Batman’s huge returns set the course for the next several years’ worth of
high-concept entertainment, the surprising manner in which sex, lies, and
videotape escaped the art-house ghetto and found a niche in the nation’s
multiplexes reminded jaded cinephiles that bold cinema could still attract
sizable audiences.

Boldness, though, wasn’t the quality that made sex, lies unique; Spike Lee’s
controversial race-relations drama Do the Right Thing, released in that same
eventful summer of 1989, had more brazen attitude in its libidinous, hiphop-
driven opening sequence than Soderbergh packed into his entire debut
feature.

So if sex, lies didn’t make its mark by earning huge revenues or by filling the
screen with unprecedented content, what made the picture so special? Was it
the offbeat plot, about an impotent drifter who videotapes women discussing
their sex lives so he can masturbate while watching the tapes? Was it the
surprisingly mature performance by model-turned-actor Andie MacDowell,
who just four years previous was humiliated by having her dialogue in
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes overdubbed by Glenn
Close? Was it the film’s thoughtful approach to sensuality, in which
shattering intimacy was communicated without the glamorously
photographed nudity and histrionics of such 1980s sexfests as 9½ Weeks and
Fatal Attraction?
To understand what made sex, lies, and videotape significant, it’s necessary
to look back twenty years, to July 14, 1969. In the last days of the studios’
tightfisted control over Hollywood’s output, old-fashioned ideas about
mainstream cinematic entertainment were being challenged by new voices.
The studios were still manufacturing insipid comedies, bloated musicals, and
formulaic star vehicles—1969’s two biggest box-office hits were The Love
Bug, a farce starring a car, and Funny Girl, an adaptation of a Broadway hit
—but the influence of the baby boomer–driven counterculture was seen in
such progressive late–1960s films as The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, and
2001: A Space Odyssey. By comparison to the movie that hit screens on July
14, however, the aforementioned pictures offered mere glimmers of
counterculture attitude, for Easy Rider was a hippie film from top to bottom,
oozing youthful style in everything from its sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll
story line to its brashly off-the-cuff cinematography.

The counterculture had made notable appearances on American screens prior

to Easy Rider’s opening, but the arrival of the Dennis Hopper–directed
motorcycle drama was an unmistakable omen that the filmmaking
establishment was about to experience an upheaval as extreme as those
shaking every other facet of American culture at the time. Despite its myriad
flaws, Easy Rider symbolized the cinematic coming-of-age of a new
generation.

Twenty years later, the arrival of Soderbergh’s sexual-dysfunction drama

symbolized the coming-of-age of another generation. The debut of
Soderbergh’s movie ushered in the cinema of Generation X.

Ennui Shall Overcome

Although Generation X has a soundbite-ready name—appropriated from the

title of Canadian author Douglas Coupland’s irony-laden 1991 novel about
aimless, jaded youth, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture—the
exact parameters of the generation are elusive. Pundits generally agree that
Generation X succeeded the baby boomers. Admitting that setting such
chronological borders is an inexact science, here are the dates that will be
used to inform this book: Gen-X filmmakers are those directors born
between 1961 and 1971, a ten-year period that falls well within the range
given by most sociologists seeking to identify when Generation X was born.
While ten years of births can’t encompass an entire generation, the
filmmakers born in these years were exposed to key social, political, and
cultural factors. Therefore, their collective body of work can be analyzed as
a reaction to the forces that shaped their generation as a whole.

Because setting the boundaries of a generation is an imperfect science, some

might quibble with the dates chosen for this book, and with good reason:
David O. Russell, the brash filmmaker behind Three Kings, has a distinctly
Gen-X approach to cinema, but he’s not included in this book’s study group
because he was born in 1958. Yet the giants of Gen-X cinema—including
Soderbergh, born in 1963—are. So the filmmakers in this book are a
representative sampling, not an inclusive roster. In this case, however, a
representative sampling is the best that one can offer: Given the youth of
Generation X, many important filmmakers from this age group probably
have yet to emerge or artistically mature. The youngest filmmaker included
in this book is Sofia Coppola, who was born in 1971 and made her feature-
film directorial debut with 2000’s The Virgin Suicides, yet filmmakers
younger than her surely will emerge in the coming years and still be
legitimate representatives of Generation X. This book’s scope falls short of
prognostication.
Auteur de force: Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh, arguably
the most important Gen-X filmmaker, contemplates a scene on the set of
The Limey (Artisan Entertainment).

Well within this book’s scope, however, is the spiritual wanderlust that
defines the cinema of Generation X, a body of work that includes such
landmarks of contemporary filmmaking as sex, lies, and videotape, Pulp
Fiction, The Usual Suspects, The Sixth Sense, and American Beauty. The
great theme that permeates this body of work is one of the most basic
questions of human existence: “Who am I, and where do I belong?” Whether
it’s a would-be filmmaker asking her friends where their lives are going in
Reality Bites, passionately political lovers debating the best way to serve the
human community in Waking the Dead, a troubled youth confronting her
choice to commit herself to a psychiatric hospital in Girl, Interrupted, or a
hacker risking his sanity by asking the question “What is the Matrix?” in The
Matrix, nearly every protagonist in a notable Gen-X movie is on a quest to
understand the meaning of his or her existence.
Similar quests appear to motivate the most interesting Gen-X filmmakers,
suggesting that the members of this generation who express themselves
cinematically use their work to ask the questions that mean most to them and
their chronological peers. These searchers use a broad spectrum of
characters as their onscreen alter egos, so while the protagonists in some
Gen-X movies actually belong to other generations (such as Kevin Spacey’s
baby-boomer character in American Beauty), others personify the
quintessential Gen-X archetype, the slacker.

In some pictures, the mystery of existence is explored through questions of

work, love, and family, as in Reality Bites and American Beauty. In others, a
statement about contemporary society is made by depicting how criminals
interact with other segments of the population, as in the movies of Quentin
Tarantino, including Pulp Fiction. And in some extreme cases, the
disharmonies of modern life are exaggerated to hyperbolic and even
nonsensical proportions, as in the anarchistic Fight Club and the surreal
Being John Malkovich. These skewed fantasies are among the most telling
Gen-X movies, because they illustrate that Gen Xers inherited a damaged
society from those who came before.

And in The Matrix, arguably the ultimate expression of Generation X’s

collective identity, the abstract question of what makes today’s society so
disorienting is given a concrete, cynical answer. That picture dramatizes the
disturbing concept that the cities and towns and patterns of modern life are
just an illusion created by machines to placate humans, who are employed
by the machines as soulless energy sources. If films such as Reality Bites ask
how Gen Xers can find their way in a world that is not their own, The Matrix
poses an even bigger question: How can Gen Xers overthrow the powers that
be, then remake the world in their own image?

This book is an attempt to catalog the myriad ways in which Gen-X

filmmakers illustrate their roles in society, their attempts to reshape society,
and—particularly in the case of slackers—their frequent choice to drop out
of society altogether. The foundation of this study will be a mixture of social
and cinematic history, as well as close examinations of dozens of movies
directed by Gen Xers. American filmmakers, ranging from Hollywood
insiders to indie-cinema outsiders, comprise most of the group under
examination; to keep the parameters of this study workable, and also to
focus on the influence of several important evolutions in American culture,
filmmakers born within this book’s range of birth years but whose work has
primarily been in non–English-language movies have been excluded.

It would be presumptuous to offer a single answer to the question burning in

the hearts of this generation’s filmmakers—“Who am I, and where do I
belong?” Certainly one of the richest lessons gleaned from studying the
cinema of Generation X is how inclusive a body of work it is: There are as
many ideas about what role Gen Xers play in modern life as there are Gen-X
filmmakers. But perhaps the act of identifying the question that motivates
these directors, and of examining the tools they use to seek answers to that
question, can give shape to the seemingly formless spiritual and societal
malaise underlying some of the most exciting cinematic experimentation of
the late twentieth century and the early twenty-first.

Based on the intriguing movies that Gen Xers already have made, and the
promise of the ones that they have yet to make, the movement that reached
prominence with the arrival of Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape
promises to be one of the most revolutionary chapters in the history of
American film. The story of that movement is the story of this book.
 2
Born in the U.S.A.

Because Generation X grew up during a period of great tumult in American

society, movies made by Gen Xers are filled with ambiguity and
ambivalence. These directors use their work to look for a place of their own
in a world defined by the preceding generation, and the frustrations,
disappointments, and epiphanies inherent to such a quest provide the drama
inherent to the best Gen-X movies.

In the early-to-mid–1970s, when the first wave of Gen-X filmmakers passed

through or approached puberty, America suffered two of the most divisive
upheavals in its history: the anticlimactic conclusion of the Vietnam War, the
first major military action in United States history to end without any
semblance of victory, and the unprecedented downfall of Richard Nixon, the
first and, to date, only president to resign from the highest office in the land.
The escalation of the Vietnam War had sparked years of fierce social unrest,
which was matched by violent civil disobedience and police actions
connected to the civil-rights movement.

Against the backdrop of Vietnam, Watergate, and civil-rights conflicts, the

women’s movement took center stage in the mid–1970s; combined with the
ongoing sexual revolution and an astronomical rise in divorce rates, the
gender-equality debate of the 1970s led to a new morality far different from
that of the era during which the baby boom occurred. The fuzzy parameters
of this new morality contributed to the confusing social climate into which
Gen Xers were born, and goes a long way to explaining why so many Gen-X
filmmakers seem obsessed with amorality—as seen in the senseless violence
committed by characters in Seven, Pulp Fiction, and numerous other
pictures.

The tragedy of America’s losses in Vietnam, the shock of discovering that a

sitting president was a criminal, and the drug-related deaths of such cultural
icons as Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Lenny Bruce, and Elvis
Presley all cast dark shadows across the idealism of the 1960s, and there was
more darkness to come. As the first waves of Gen Xers entered their college
years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, reports of ugly violence filled the
airwaves: a cult’s mass suicide in Guyana, the murder of rock and roll poet
John Lennon, madmen’s attempts to assassinate President Ronald Reagan
and Pope John Paul II, the incomprehensible brutality of the Khmer Rouge
in Cambodia. Suddenly, the air was thick with the stench of death, and there
wasn’t anything that a protest or a love-in could do to stem the devastating
tide.

Shadows and light: The stylish films of David Fincher, seen lining up a
shot on the set of Seven, are filled with such morbid themes as alienation
and martyrdom (New Line Cinema).

As countless observers have noted, a sizable contingent of boomers

responded to the darkening of modern society by retreating into the same
consumerist cocoons that had given their parents comfort; Lawrence Kasdan
named this shift with the title of his poignant movie about 1960s youths
selling out their ideals, The Big Chill. And if the generation that defined the
1960s felt the big chill, then it only follows that the next generation
experienced the after-effects of that chill. By the time the blights of AIDS,
the Iran-Contra scandal, and the collapse of family farms and savings-and-
loan institutions arrived in the mid–1980s—the same time at which the first
waves of Gen Xers reached adulthood—the chill had become a killing frost.

Furthermore, America was fast becoming a place in which the gap between
the haves and the have-nots seemed almost insurmountable. Director Oliver
Stone, that uncompromising and sometimes infuriating voice of 1960s-style
idealism, captured the bleak mood perfectly with a line in his 1987 stock-
exchange drama, Wall Street: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”
That the line was uttered by the film’s villain hardly seemed to matter. The
point was made, with painful clarity, that the country’s priorities had
reverted back to what they were before the counterculture tried to force
change.

Although this sketch of the 1970s and 1980s is necessarily oversimplified, it

offers a rough picture of the forces at work during the years when
Generation X came of age. Even the youngest Gen Xers were born too late
to participate in the historical social unrest that reached its twilight in the
mid–1970s, so all Gen Xers grew up in the aftermath of a beautiful but
unrealized dream, and this sad fact informs their sensibility. Some wear this
hand-me-down ennui as anger, some as cynicism, some as apathy. But all
who belong to Generation X feel the after-effects of the big chill.

On a more immediate level, Gen Xers felt the repercussions of the

dissipation of the American family. From 1965 to 1985, the number of U.S.
divorces exploded from just over 300,000 to nearly 1.2 million, so an
estimated 40 percent of Gen Xers are children of divorce, compared to 11
percent of boomers.1 The rupture of home life was exacerbated by countless
other travails, as author Geoffrey T. Holtz noted in his book Welcome to the
Jungle: The Why Behind “Generation X.” When boomers who spent their
adolescence and young adulthood defying the values of their parents became
parents themselves, they embraced laissez-faire ideas about parenting and
education, forcing nascent Gen Xers to at least take an unprecedented role in
their upbringing, and at worst parent themselves. The changing dynamics of
American family life led vast numbers of Gen Xers into poverty, owing to
such factors as the small percentage of fathers who fulfilled child-support
commitments following divorces.

So in addition to seeing the previous generation’s dream of a better world

give way to cynicism and materialism, Gen Xers were, to varying degrees,
given less support by parents and educators than any previous generation of
American children. Cut from the tethers that grounded their predecessors to
ideas of societal and familial security, these youths became adults who,
unsurprisingly, question the virtue of pursuing traditional goals—and seethe
with the frustration and resentment of the disenfranchised. These violent
emotions don’t fuel every member of Generation X, of course, but the
quantity of disaffected characters in Gen-X movies strongly suggests that the
filmmakers born in America between 1961 and 1971 bear the scars of
collective separation trauma.

Reflecting the clash of idealism and cynicism that filled the popular culture
of their youth, the cinema of Generation X is mired in mixed messages,
undefined anger, inarticulate declarations, and visceral impact. While certain
Gen-X filmmakers adhere closely enough to Hollywood traditions that their
movies make social statements within the context of accessible narratives,
others have tried—as did the most adventurous filmmakers of the previous
generation—to find a cinematic equivalent to the punch-in-the-gut intensity
of a great rock and roll song.

Pumping Irony

The most rebellious Gen-X filmmakers, provocateurs such as Darren

Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream) and Neil LaBute (In the Company of
Men), make movies that shock viewers with explicit language, startling
imagery, and scorching satire. At the other extreme are mainstream
entertainers including Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor) and M. Night Shyamalan
(Unbreakable), both of whom make slick, violent thrill rides. There’s even
room in the mix for filmmakers such as Edward Burns (The Brothers
McMullen), whose character-driven pictures are so old-fashioned that they
could have been made in the 1950s.
The filmmakers whose work is most reflective of their generation’s
collective identity, however, work neither on the fringes of the industry nor
squarely within its mainstream. Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction), Kevin
Smith (Dogma), David Fincher (Fight Club), and Paul Thomas Anderson
(Magnolia) stand alongside Steven Soderbergh as the most important
filmmakers of their generation because they rarely homogenize their pictures
to appease audiences or assault viewers so aggressively that their work is
marginalized. By employing such devices as fractured narratives, ironic
humor, coarse language, bracing violence, and heated discourse about social
issues, these directors make extreme cinematic statements while addressing
topics that are crucial to their chronological peers.

Yet the significance of Gen-X filmmakers disseminating their generational

identity through motion pictures is more than a historical footnote about
people capturing their collective experience on celluloid. Soderbergh and his
contemporaries stand to replace the movie brats of the 1970s (and the empty
stylists of the 1980s) as the world’s most prominent filmmakers during the
early decades of the twenty-first century. For while the careers of such 1970s
wunderkinds as Spielberg and Lucas are still thriving, they and their peers
slipped into the safe cocoon of respectability many years ago. Only Martin
Scorsese, the most consistently experimental of the movie brats, still has a
semblance of the youthful zest that made his early pictures so fresh and
exciting.

The ascension of Gen Xers to dominance of the film industry is not entirely
as promising, however, as was the process by which the movie brats brought
their counterculture sensibility to Hollywood.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, youth-oriented films such as Bonnie and
Clyde, The Graduate, and Easy Rider gave a moribund art form a slap in the
face. The intense violence and bleak morality of Scorsese’s early movies,
notably Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, brought new vitality to cinematic
portrayals of urban life; similarly, Francis Ford Coppola’s revisionist
Godfather movies added bloody authenticity to crime films and depicted
gangsters as living, breathing human beings. Cutting-edge filmmakers such
as Hopper, Bob Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces), and Mike Nichols (Catch-22)
explored topics pertaining to the counterculture, while classicists such as
Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show) melded youth-oriented themes
with old-fashioned style. Collectively, the movie brats injected
unprecedented realism, social consciousness, and invention into their work,
thereby shaking American cinema free from the stifling constraints of the
dying studio system.

Bedside manner: Brash director Paul Thomas Anderson, who uses his
films to explore the lives of lost souls, works with the late Jason Robards
on the set of Magnolia (New Line Cinema).

Gen-X directors, however, seem more concerned with blending layers of

fiction than with pursuing realism, and this tendency to employ ironic
storytelling has everything to do with how Gen Xers have been bombarded
with incessant information since their youth. The explosion of mass media in
the 1980s, in addition to the emergence of around-the-clock news coverage,
resulted in a new entity called “infotainment,” which is alternately defined as
news packaged as entertainment or entertainment packaged as news.
Whatever the definition, the existence of infotainment reflects how the line
separating reality and fiction blurred in the 1980s, and that blurred line
crosses straight through the cinema of Generation X.

Characters in Tarantino’s films often bond by discussing the ephemera of

pop culture, as in the Reservoir Dogs scene of several crooks sitting around a
diner table and discussing their varied interpretations of Madonna’s song
“Like a Virgin.” In addition to forming a link between characters, such
scenes gently reach through the “fourth wall” separating fiction from reality
by forming a link between the characters and viewers from Tarantino’s age
group. Gen Xers who grew up listening to Madonna are intimately familiar
with her work, so when it’s debated onscreen, it’s a conversation in which
Gen-X audience members could easily participate. The insertion of pop-
culture references into movie scenes was the logical next step from the way
baby-boomer filmmakers used rock and roll to score films; it’s a simple
matter of speaking to viewers in their own idiom.

In actor-comedian Ben Stiller’s first directorial effort, Reality Bites, he plays

Michael, an ambitious professional who courts a woman named Lelaina
(Winona Ryder). His competitor is Lelaina’s ne’er-do-well friend Troy
(Ethan Hawke), a young adult so aimless and unmotivated that Lelaina
describes him as a master of “time suckage.” In a crucial scene, Michael
picks up Lelaina for a date while several of her friends, including Troy,
watch a rerun of the 1970s program Good Times and challenge each other to
remember sitcom arcana. When Michael tries to edge his way into the
conversation by mentioning a Good Times episode costarring diminutive
actor Gary Coleman, Troy rudely tells Michael that they’ve already been
there, done that. At the end of the scene, Michael is embarrassed, Troy
smugly triumphant. The content of the scene is traditional—two suitors clash
in the presence of the woman for whose affections they are competing—but
the idiom of the scene is pure Generation X. It is also, not coincidentally,
purely superficial.

Unambitious, jaded layabouts like Troy recur throughout the cinema of

Generation X. In the most pervasive stereotype, these “slackers” are the
Gen-X equivalent of hippies: They withdraw from the rat race as a half-
assed rebellion against dehumanizing cultural forces. Yet slackers seek no
revolutionary means for overturning or even healing the culture that appalls
them. Rebellious boomers hit the streets to demonstrate against misguided
military actions, repressive politics, and other such ills, while slackers echo
the previous generation’s discontentment but have neither clearly defined
antagonizing forces nor clearly defined reactions to such forces.

The nebulous ennui that informs the slacker stereotype is a powerful force in
the cinema of Generation X. Tarantino, Smith, and other key filmmakers
address this spiritual sadness directly through sociocultural dialogue
exchanges and the portrayal of slacker characters, and indirectly by
employing narrative structures that both reflect and deconstruct the
conventions of mainstream cinema. These structures regard classic
Hollywood through the same informed, skeptical gaze through which
slackers regard American culture. The combination of pop-culture
references, unconventional narrative structures, and the cynical, know-it-all
posture that many Gen Xers wear as a status symbol produces a peculiar
brand of reflective postmodernism, and this postmodernism is the modus
operandi of many important Gen-X filmmakers.

The principal manifestation of Tarantino’s postmodernism, for instance, is

his affection for nonlinear storytelling. He deconstructs the timelines of story
events so thoroughly that viewers often don’t know how all the characters
and events in a given movie relate to each other until well after the picture is
over, by which point they’ve been able to reorder scenes in their minds. One
possible explanation of why this kind of storytelling fascinates Gen-X
directors is that because they’ve been exposed to junk narrative all their lives
—via copycat movies, endlessly rerun sitcoms, and moronic music videos—
conventional storytelling strikes them as mundane. They long for fresh ideas
but habitually settle for clever spins on old ones.

Tarantino, Stiller, and many others deal with metafiction—fiction about

fiction—while the more socially alert of their peers use postmodern
approaches to dig beneath superficiality. Fincher’s Fight Club, worlds
removed from the sitcom-influenced cuteness of Stiller’s debut feature, is an
abrasive parable about young men waking themselves from society-induced
slumber by using violence as a narcotic. The film is subversive on myriad
levels: Gleaming actor Brad Pitt undercuts his heartthrob image by playing a
slovenly anarchist; the principal characters express their hatred of consumer
culture by blowing up buildings; and the picture depicts a twisted semi-
reality in which neither characters within the movie nor viewers watching it
can be absolutely sure what is supposed to be “real” and what is meant to be
perceived as an artificial construct.

The picture’s most audacious device is to suggest that Pitt’s messianic

character, Tyler Durden, may be a figment of another character’s
imagination. Because Tyler represents the psychological and sociological
liberation of the character whom we’re told may have imagined Tyler, the
suggestion that he’s not real implies that Gen Xers’ boldest rebellions occur
in their imaginations, not their lives. This provocative concept positions
Tyler as a perfect symbol for a generation widely accused of political apathy:
He represents the nihilistic social action that Gen Xers might take if they
bothered to put down the remote control and get up off the couch.

Mixed Messages

Clever narrative structures, pop-culture references, and Fight Club–style

edginess aren’t the only tools that Gen-X directors have at their disposal.
Texas-based filmmaker Richard Linklater, a crucial but comparatively
obscure figure in the Gen-X firmament, scrupulously avoided such devices
when he and Kim Krizan wrote Before Sunrise, a wonderfully thoughtful
romance composed almost entirely of a single, far-reaching conversation. In
the film, listless American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) meets a beautiful French
student named Céline (Julie Delpy) on the last day of his trip through
Europe. Jesse convinces Céline to explore Vienna with him, and during the
course of a long day and evening, they chat, commiserate, debate, and,
finally, become lovers.

By focusing on the way young people talk to each other—sometimes in

grand, sweeping terms bloated by postadolescent arrogance, sometimes in
fearful awe informed by the looming specter of adulthood—Linklater
captured a vivid snapshot of the inspiring, terrifying transition made by
young people on their way to becoming grownups. And even though Jesse is
unmistakably a slacker with his fashionably trimmed goatee, shaggy hair,
laundry-day wardrobe, and prematurely jaded attitude, he isn’t limited by his
generational identity. Other characters in slacker-themed movies—such as
the one Hawke played in Reality Bites—are constructs used to represent
Generation X as a whole. Jesse is a believable, complex character who
happens to belong to Generation X.

The irony that one of the most mature Gen-X movies is about immaturity
sends a mixed message that is typical of the murky sensibility shared by
Generation X’s most important cinematic representatives.

In the decade following Soderbergh’s arrival on the scene, he and his peers
made everything from vitriolic tracts to easygoing satires to old-fashioned
character studies. But the most intriguing Gen-X movies are the hardest to
categorize: What, for instance, is the best way to describe Pulp Fiction or
Fight Club, two complex mixtures of action, comedy, sex, and violence? At
the risk of being flip, the best way to define these pictures is to call them
exercises in Gen-X style, because the speed and irony with which their
makers blend pop culture, traditional narrative ideas, and postmodern
storytelling is totally informed by the attitudes, experiences, and cultural
savviness shared by Pulp Fiction’s Tarantino, Fight Club’s Fincher, and their
myriad peers.

Although each Gen-X director has taken a different approach to content and
style, the attributes that bind them are telling. Just as the tuned-in films of
the late 1960s and early 1970s captured the identity of that era’s
counterculture, the Gen-X films of the 1990s and beyond reveal several
intriguing things about their makers. Among the insights: Slackers do, in
fact, perceive an antagonistic force in their lives, albeit an amorphous one;
some Gen Xers carry the activism torch passed to them by the previous
generation; and postmodern style, as practiced by Gen-X directors, is not
style for style’s sake, but rather a spirited, if not always prudent, attempt to
seek new means of conveying thematic material.
 3
Culture Vultures

Only slightly more than a decade has passed since sex, lies, and videotape
hit theaters, so it’s necessary to regard the cinema of Generation X as a work
in progress. Even though certain Gen-X filmmakers have earned grown-up
accolades—including Soderbergh’s 2001 Oscar for directing Traffic,
following his historic twin nominations for Traffic and Erin Brockovich—the
generation as a whole is far from reaching artistic maturity.

For that reason, this book is structured to reflect the different stages of
Generation X’s maturation. Beginning with the next chapter, this book will
trace how Gen-X directors have documented their collective growth process:
Chapter 4 deals with issues such as education and family; Chapter 5
examines topics related to work; and so on until the penultimate chapter,
which deals in part with how Gen-X directors envision the future. Yet before
any such issues can be explored, it’s necessary to learn the language in
which they are discussed.

As noted earlier, the idiom of Generation X is deeply informed by popular

culture. While not every filmmaker born between 1961 and 1971 was raised
in the same environment, pervasive social patterns during and after that
period allow for some generalizations that will accurately characterize the
upbringing of a large segment, if not a majority, of such filmmakers. The
most important of these generalizations involves television. For the
adolescents and preadolescents of the 1970s, television was a ubiquitous
presence: part baby-sitter, part surrogate community, part entertainment.
(The Internet appears to serve a similar role for Generation Y, which
comprises youths born in the 1980s and 1990s.)

The role of television in American life changed dramatically during the

period when Gen Xers were growing up. The Vietnam conflict, for instance,
was called “the living-room war” because haunting combat stories were
broadcast into American homes every day. And the explosion of cable vastly
increased the number of channels that reached American homes. Previously,
daytime and late-night television were ghettos for niche programming such
as soap operas and rerun movies, respectively. But cable paved the way for
competitive broadcasting around the clock. And while not every Gen-X
filmmaker was raised with television as a constant companion, enough were
—and enough have celebrated their relationship with television in their work
—that it’s informative to note the symbiotic relationship between 1970s
youths and the boob tube.

As mentioned earlier, one important corollary of Gen Xers’ bond with

television is the emergence of infotainment. Movie fans have always
enjoyed hearing about Hollywood’s behind-the-scenes machinations, but the
public’s access to such information increased dramatically during the period
of Gen Xers’ youth and adolescence. In 1980, for instance, the nightly
“news” program Entertainment Tonight emerged to satiate the public thirst
for Hollywood gossip and trade secrets. The infotainment explosion is a
crucial parallel to Gen Xers’ television addiction, because in addition to
being exposed to nonstop junk culture, Gen Xers were given countless
opportunities to peer behind the curtain of said junk culture.

These opportunities helped produce unprecedented media-related savviness,

which often manifests as cynicism (a been-there, done-that attitude toward
entertainment) and/or fascination (an endless appetite for behind-the-scenes
information). In fact, an ambivalent mixture of cynicism and fascination
probably is the most prevalent attitude toward pop culture reflected in Gen-
X cinema.

Hollywood was not the only subject area dissected in the mass media during
the youth of Generation X, of course; the rise of entertainment-as-news
dovetailed the rise of news-as-entertainment. Previously, news reports
appeared on radio and television only in measured doses, or in rare wall-to-
wall coverage of breaking stories. But with the emergence of Cable News
Network (CNN), broadcast news became a nonstop enterprise. Suddenly,
anyone interested in world events could tune into them at will and explore
them in (comparative) depth, instead of waiting for a carefully doled-out
soundbite on the evening news. CNN and the news-gathering organizations
it influenced changed public discourse about world events, because the
public went from receiving daily updates of important stories to receiving
hourly updates of important—and not-so-important—stories. Just as the
national conversation about entertainment was accelerated and deepened by
the rise of entertainment-as-news, the national conversation about world
events was changed by the rise of news-as-entertainment.

The relationship between Gen Xers and television grew even more symbiotic
with the emergence of videocassette recorders, the importance of which to
Gen-X filmmakers is monumental. Previous generations of would-be
directors learned about movies by seeing them in theaters, catching them on
television, or viewing them in film schools. Gen Xers grew up with the
ability to study movies with the assistance of fast-forward, rewind, and
pause buttons. Combined with their access to behind-the-scenes information,
courtesy of outlets such as Entertainment Tonight, Gen Xers’ VCR usage
made them more knowledgeable about the elements of film than any
previous generation. Christopher Nolan, director of the video-age mystery
Memento, noted some after-effects of viewers’ ability to take unprecedented
control of the movie-watching experience.

As soon as you can stop [a film] and control the timeline, then it
becomes like a book on some level. People are more accepting of
the idea of jumping around and putting the story together in a fresh
way. The supreme example of that is the trailer: You take different
scenes, chop them up, stick them together, and allow the audience
to reassemble the linear narrative.1

The downside, of course, was that people other than would-be filmmakers
became just as knowledgeable: Heightened audience awareness of how films
are made led to heightened expectations on the part of general audiences.
With everybody peering behind Hollywood’s curtain, cinematic illusions had
to become more and more elaborate.

A final noteworthy aspect of this generation’s relationship with television

involves a specific channel: Music Television, the music-video outlet
launched in 1981.

During the many years in which its programming was dominated by music
videos, MTV offered a huge exhibition venue for short films, similar to the
venue offered by commercials but with greater opportunities for creative
freedom. Just as commercials bred important directors in the previous
generation—Brits Ridley Scott (Blade Runner) and Adrian Lyne (Fatal
Attraction), among myriad others, cut their teeth filming TV spots—videos
made for MTV comprise the apprenticeship of several important Gen-X
directors. David Fincher helmed memorable, award-winning clips for artists
including Madonna and Aerosmith prior to making feature films; Spike
Jonze, the wizard behind Being John Malkovich, first made his mark with
irreverent clips for the Beastie Boys and other artists.

However, the MTV aesthetic of quick cuts, flashy lighting, and sped-up
narrative became a cliché so quickly that by the late 1980s, it was an insult
to refer to a film’s “MTV-style editing”—shorthand for style over substance.
Nonetheless, Fincher, Jonze, and others have proven that directors can use
MTV, commercials, and other nontheatrical venues as an extension of, or an
alternative to, film school.

Yet the employment opportunities created by MTV’s existence are of

secondary importance to the channel’s stylistic influence. The
aforementioned MTV-style editing had a noticeable effect on audiences
when it appeared in mainstream films of the 1980s, such as Flashdance and
Top Gun. Filmmakers discovered that viewers were able to digest visual
information more quickly than ever before. This paralleled a resurgence in
the popularity of action films, so by the late 1980s, the ideal studio film was
a fast-moving, violent thrill ride, preferably modeled on the hugely
successful Die Hard.

All of these factors—Gen Xers’ relationship with television; the emergence

of VCRs, infotainment, CNN, and MTV; the speeding-up of cinematic
storytelling—defined what Gen Xers brought to the table when they arrived
in Hollywood. Baby-boom directors came to Tinseltown eager to update
classical cinematic style. Gen Xers headed to Hollywood eager to replace
classical cinematic style with something faster and fresher. That something,
by and large, was cinematic postmodernism.

Postmodern Problems
Postmodernism itself, of course, is nothing new. Coined to define an
architectural movement in the 1970s, and later appropriated as a catchall
term for movements in other creative fields, postmodernism is loosely
defined as the attempt to meld classicism with modernism; modernism, in
turn, is the catchall term for expressionism, cubism, and other bracing art
movements of the early twentieth century. Because cinematic
postmodernism is such an abstract concept, however, it’s difficult to pinpoint
just when it began to manifest. Certainly the movies of David Lynch,
particularly Eraserhead (1977) and Blue Velvet (1986), match the definition
of postmodernism: Their stories are classical in structure, but their style is
contemporary. Yet the fact that Lynch gained his greatest notoriety in 1986—
just three years before Soderbergh entered the scene—is an indication of
how closely the manifestation of cinematic postmodernism coincided with
the arrival of Gen-X cinema.

The sticking point here, of course, is that postmodernism existed before it

actually had a name. Since the expressionist movies of such 1920s German
auteurs as F. W. Murnau (Nosferatu) are clearly modernist, aren’t the avant-
garde movies of 1960s French filmmakers including François Truffaut
(Breathless) clearly postmodern? The answer is “yes,” but that doesn’t
lessen the important connection between postmodernism and

Gen-X cinema. The American filmmakers of the baby-boom generation

appropriated some of the French New Wave’s postmodern style—as seen,
especially, in the most vital work of Scorsese and Coppola—but they also
were deeply influenced by the Hollywood studio system. Scorsese’s Taxi
Driver, for instance, can rightly be described as having myriad postmodern
elements, but its narrative structure is too classic for the film to be rightly
described as pure postmodernism.

So if cinematic postmodernism in its purest form only entered the

mainstream consciousness with the arrival of films such as Lynch’s Blue
Velvet—admittedly, an arguable assertion—then the crop of postmodern
films that flourished in Blue Velvet’s wake could be described as the first
mainstream American postmodernist films. These are fine, and perhaps even
nitpicking, distinctions, but there’s a reason for them. Blue Velvet was
embraced by the public as a novelty. sex, lies, and videotape was embraced
not as a novelty, but as a popular entertainment. It took Lynch, Scorsese, and
others to prepare the public for serious cinematic postmodernism, so when
Soderbergh, Tarantino and other Gen Xers began to employ postmodern
techniques on a regular basis, audiences were receptive to such narrative
experimentation. The important connection between Gen Xers and
postmodernism, then, is that they took the stylistic movement out of the
arthouse and into the multiplex.

That said, sex, lies, and videotape features only the most accessible kind of
cinematic postmodernism: a fragmented narrative. The story begins in
spurts, with active shots of handsome drifter Graham (James Spader) woven
in with static images of housewife Ann (Andie MacDowell). Soderbergh,
who edited the picture in addition to writing and directing it, weaves the
lives of his four principal characters together so that audiences see
connections of which the characters might not be aware. While at first
glance his intercutting may seem nothing more than simple parallel action—
the idea, developed by cinematic pioneer Edwin S. Porter (1869–1941), of
shifting back and forth between related actions—Soderbergh’s intercutting
actually is more sublime.

He layers Ann’s narration over shots of Graham driving in his car, so our
curiosity about Graham is increased when we learn that Ann is anxious
about his arrival. She’s nervous because the current endeavors of Graham, a
college chum of her husband’s, are shrouded in mystery. Instead of simply
defining the relationship between disparate images, Soderbergh defines the
relationship and also provides its subtext. That he additionally takes us
inside each of the characters—by showing that Ann’s narration is part of a
therapy session, and by showing the simplicity of Graham’s rootless lifestyle
—accelerates the speed of his storytelling.

Such intricate juggling certainly had been done in previous films, but the
significant aspect of Soderbergh’s nonlinear approach is his presumption that
viewers can and will play along with his narrative game. He backs off a bit
from his aggressive editing during certain extended dialogue scenes, but the
concepts of layered narration and complex intercutting are crucial to the
film’s climax, during which Soderbergh also brings in the thorny issue of
reality being witnessed through the remove of artifice.
Seeing is believing: The narrative trickery of Steven Soderbergh’s sex,
lies, and videotape, with Andie MacDowell as a woman who discovers
her husband’s adultery, exemplifies the use of postmodern concepts in
Gen-X storytelling (Miramax Films).

The climax involves Ann’s philandering husband, John (Peter Gallagher),

viewing a videotape that Graham made of Ann. On it, she explains the void
in her marriage, then prepares to consummate her flirtation with Graham.
Soderbergh begins Ann’s confessional by showing it as a grainy image on
the video screen in front of John, then cuts to a clear film image, as if the
scene is happening in the present. Then, to exit the confessional, Soderbergh
cuts back to the grainy image on the video screen, allowing him to bring us
back into the true present, so we can see John’s reaction to the videotape.
Combined with the narrative game he began in the first scene, the temporal
shifts involved in the confession scene reveal that the idiom of the film is
inherently, not superficially, postmodern.
sex, lies, and videotape did exceptionally well for an unheralded art film, but
it never achieved blockbuster status, and scored only a token Academy
Award nomination, for Best Original Screenplay. Yet just eleven years later,
Soderbergh released a film as layered as sex, lies, and videotape: Traffic, his
epic about America’s war on drugs. The latter picture enjoyed tremendous
box-office success and received a slew of Oscar nominations, including one
for Best Picture. Soderbergh certainly evolved in the intervening period (so
much so that his other 2000 film, Erin Brockovich, was as conventional as
Traffic was unconventional), yet his evolution is an insufficient explanation
for why Traffic enjoyed greater public acceptance than sex, lies. Perhaps the
real reason behind the shift is that American audiences matured in step with
Soderbergh: Viewers became acclimated to techniques that seemed bold or
even off-putting in 1989, largely because of how those techniques were
employed in successful films directed by Gen Xers.

Tom Tykwer, the young German director whose 1999 arthouse hit Run Lola
Run exuded a vivacious energy that put some of his American
contemporaries to shame, commented on the maturation of audience
sensibilities.

Everybody knows that we’re hitting the limits of traditional

filmmaking because it’s becoming so perfectionistic. You are
seeing films that are so perfect you don’t even connect to them
anymore. A film like [Being John] Malkovich is an invitation to do
something different. Even The Matrix, because it serves all of our
traditional desires in the cinema, but it plays with your mind in a
very strange way. Ten years ago, I don’t think people would have
even been ready for it.2

The Man from Knoxville

Probably the most crucial juncture during the process of familiarizing

American audiences with postmodernism was the release of Tarantino’s Pulp
Fiction in 1994. Just five years after Soderbergh’s challenging narrative
techniques paved the way, Tarantino arrived with a picture even more
disjointed than Soderbergh’s—yet Pulp Fiction became the blockbuster that
sex, lies, and videotape did not, earning over $100 million at the box office
and scoring an Oscar nod for Best Picture.

The unlikely success of Pulp Fiction made Tarantino the central figure of
Gen-X cinema for much of the 1990s. While Soderbergh’s prominence
became clear once he had achieved numerous successes, Tarantino’s became
evident immediately, because a slew of copycat movies followed in Pulp
Fiction’s wake—ironic, too-cool-for-school crime films such as Things to
Do in Denver When You’re Dead and Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag. With his
wiseass erudition, funny pop-culture references, playful narrative splintering,
and exploitation-movie sensationalism, Tarantino defined an idiom that was
revisited by many of his peers, to say nothing of many shallow imitators.

Tarantino’s personal history adds to his significance as a Gen-X exemplar,

for he was raised by his mother following his parents’ divorce. This connects
him to the shifting family dynamics that had such an unsettling effect on
Tarantino’s generation. Filmmakers from previous generations had come
from broken homes, but the issues of abandonment and gender identity
sparked by familial schisms such as that which affected Tarantino’s
household recur in myriad Gen-X films, notably Fight Club.

Tarantino and his mother relocated from his native Knoxville, Tennessee, to
Los Angeles when he was a child, and after the burgeoning filmmaker
dropped out of high school, he got a job working at a video store. The
importance of videocassettes to Gen-X filmmakers already has been noted,
and the way that Tarantino reportedly immersed himself in movies while
working at the store amplifies this point. During this ad hoc apprenticeship,
Tarantino made connections with customers who were involved in the film
business, leading to his discovery by enterprising producers. His plucked-
from-nowhere ascension became Generation X’s equivalent to the story
about starlet Lana Turner getting discovered in a Hollywood drug store:
After Tarantino hit, it became a cliché to say that tomorrow’s great
filmmakers aren’t studying at film schools, but helping customers at video
stores.

Tarantino’s intimate familiarity with a variety of film styles—and, to a

degree, the undisciplined manner in which he explored favorite genres, as
opposed to studying a well-rounded curriculum, as he might have in film
school—put him in a unique position to blaze a postmodern trail. He knew
film inside and out, so it was no big deal for him to turn film inside-out.

He first did so with his remarkable debut film, 1992’s Reservoir Dogs.
Depicting the violent and fractious events occurring before and after a heist,
the picture is as good an example of postmodern storytelling as Soderbergh’s
sex, lies. In both pictures, stories are told elliptically: Moments are plucked
out of time and place, then reordered not to represent their chronological
occurrence, but to accentuate connections that would not be clear were the
moments presented chronologically.

In some bold cases, Tarantino even blends the present and the past in a
single frame. The picture contains a bravura scene during which a robber
code-named Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) describes encountering cops and a
police dog in a bathroom while carrying drugs on his person. As the camera
makes a 360-degree circle around Orange, who is telling the tale, the
background shifts from the present to the past, so suddenly we’re in the
bathroom with Orange and the cops. Orange describes how he wriggled free
of the situation, then the scene shifts back to the “present.” Tarantino creates
this illusion with blocking and lighting, not special effects, so the scene is
postmodern in realization as well as intent: He uses classic techniques in the
service of a fresh storytelling idea.

Were this the only temporal game that Tarantino played in Reservoir Dogs, it
might be insignificant, because myriad stage and film dramatists used
similar techniques previously. But because the bathroom scene is part of a
fabric of temporal gamesmanship—a fabric so cleverly woven that the film’s
central event, the heist, is never shown—the bathroom scene identifies the
mischief inherent in Tarantino’s storytelling.
Honor among thieves: In Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, with
Harvey Keitel (standing) and Steve Buscemi, an offbeat story structure
is used to dramatize the tale of a heist gone wrong (Miramax Films).

Pulp Fiction is even more brazen than Tarantino’s debut film. The picture
doesn’t contain a traditional narrative, per se, but rather three interconnected
narratives. An ambitious blend of gutter-level violence, witty romance,
salacious humor, aching pathos, and macho posturing, the film thrives on the
same confidence that powered sex, lies, and videotape. Tarantino doesn’t
spoon-feed his offbeat tale to viewers, but instead presumes that viewers
have been exposed to enough of the same narrative as him that they can
digest information in the disjointed way that he delivers it. It helps, of
course, that he’s an exquisite writer capable of making long stretches of
dialogue as entertaining as fast-moving screen action, and it helps that he’s a
fine director with an eye for pleasing compositions and great taste in actors.
Yet no matter how easily Tarantino’s film goes down, it’s still a bracing dose
of experimentalism.

In a typically confrontational directorial choice, Tarantino puts a distracting

postmodern touch into an important taxicab scene involving past-his-prime
boxer Butch (Bruce Willis). Echoing the way he didn’t show the heist in
Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino shows us a prelude to Butch’s big match, in
which the boxer is told to throw the fight, but doesn’t show the match.
Instead, Tarantino cuts straight to the taxicab, in which Butch is driven by
Esmeralda (Angela Jones). During their conversation, we learn that Butch
not only reneged on his promise to throw the fight, but killed his opponent.

While viewers receive this startling information, however, some notice that
the background of the scene seems odd. Although the scene is filmed in
color, the rear projection illustrating the street behind the taxi is filmed in
black-and-white. Is Tarantino winkingly reminding viewers that the story
they’re hearing is at least as old as the black-and-white boxing pictures of
the 1930s? Or is he making a blunt, expressionistic statement about Butch’s
world not being “black and white” in moral terms? In a sense, this
ambiguous imagery is one of Tarantino’s most postmodern touches, for
while he ties up most of his narrative threads in classical style, he allows
viewers to interpret details such as the black-and-white background as they
will. His style puts modernism and classicism side-by-side, pulling liberally
from each school.

Violence is as important to Tarantino’s movies as postmodernism, and

there’s a peculiar tension in the audience during a Tarantino movie. As an
onscreen character slowly pulls out a knife—or a sword, or a syringe—
viewers don’t want to see the bloodshed that’s coming, but they don’t want
to look away from the screen. Even when he’s grossing viewers out,
Tarantino provides surprising, magnetic drama that feels like nothing ever
seen before.

It’s only after one of his movies is over that it becomes clear how familiar
the content really is, because Tarantino recycles plots and situations from
countless B-movies and crime novels. He’s not merely derivative, however,
for he filters this second-hand narrative material through a distinct
worldview. Lance (Eric Stoltz), the drug dealer in Pulp Fiction, is yet
another onscreen dope-peddler, but Tarantino portrays him as an amiable
slacker watching cartoons in his bathrobe, thereby humanizing an over-
familiar archetype and adding gravity and credibility to Lance’s scenes.

Another example of Tarantino grounding an audacious scene with real-life

details involves Jules, the Bible-quoting hit man played by Samuel L.
Jackson in Pulp Fiction. After surviving a near-death experience, Jules
announces that he’s having “what alcoholics refer to as ‘a moment of
clarity’,” then vaults into a remarkable speech analyzing the pros and cons of
his violent existence. In Tarantino’s perspective, real life and reel life are so
entwined that it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins,
which is why he often is called the director who most epitomizes his
generation.

Once they achieved prominence, Tarantino and Soderbergh drew from the
postmodern well again and again. Tarantino’s charming crime film Jackie
Brown employed the same kind of temporal patchwork he used in his first
two features, and Soderbergh played games with time and place in The
Underneath, Out of Sight, The Limey, and Traffic. Yet these two are hardly
the only Gen-X directors who use narrative trickery to amplify narrative
content. David Fincher’s Fight Club features not only a disjointed timeline,
but also scenes that subversively blend reality, fantasy, and delusion; and
Doug Liman’s Go is the most entertaining of countless Tarantino homages.

Liman’s breakthrough film, Swingers, contains overt references to Tarantino

and his influence. In one scene, a Reservoir Dogs poster is visible; in
another, dialogue about how Tarantino’s style is ripped off from Martin
Scorsese’s is followed by a coy rip-off of a famous slow-motion shot from
Reservoir Dogs, accompanied by the 1970s pop hit “Pick Up the Pieces”—a
musical counterpoint that underlines how self-conscious an act pop-culture
recycling has become. Swingers, while highly enjoyable and occasionally
affecting, straddles the line separating pop-culture send-ups from pop-
culture artifacts, because even while the film’s young men on the prowl for
sexual partners steep themselves in borrowed style—Rat Pack-style suits and
decades-old swing music—they issue freshly minted catch phrases like the
oft-quoted “You’re money, baby.” What’s more, it’s possible to see echoes of
Swingers’ pop-culture recycling in other Gen-X movies. When one Swingers
character compliments another’s suaveness by saying “That was like the Jedi
mind shit!,” it recalls similar Star Wars references in Kevin Smith’s
Mallrats. And when a Swingers scene of a man charming a woman is
underscored by the 1970s song “Magic Man,” it resembles the use of the
same song, for an almost identical effect, in Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin
Suicides.
Poker faces: Nineties attitude and sixties style intersect in Doug Liman’s
Swingers, which features (from left) Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, and
Patrick Van Horn as buddies on the prowl for “beautiful babies”
(Miramax Films).

The manner in which the hip postmodernism of Gen-X directors punctures

sanctimonious ideas about society and storytelling contributes to the widely
held sentiment that members of this generation hold nothing sacred, but
author Geoffrey T. Holtz made a good point about the Gen-X predilection
for black comedy:

Satire and self-aware irony have replaced slapstick. Rather than

using humor to escape the inanity and desperation that runs
through so many aspects of late-twentieth-century America, [Gen
Xers] often use it to confront these problems. Homelessness,
suicide, murder, unemployment, even AIDS—all serious issues,
but fodder for humor among a generation so well versed in societal
problems large and small.3

Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich is perhaps the most breathlessly

postmodern Gen-X film yet. The outrageous story, about a puppeteer who
finds a portal leading to the inside of real-life actor John Malkovich’s brain,
has as much fantastic invention as The Wizard of Oz, yet it is designed to
deliver not a moral homily, but a scathing commentary on contemporary
America’s obsession with celebrity.

The Fame Game

Gen Xers’ fascination with celebrity culture is an outgrowth of their

immersion in pop culture. Their exposure to the infotainment explosion was
explored earlier, but certain aspects of that explosion are worth highlighting.
During the 1990s, when vast numbers of Gen-X directors began working
steadily, the focus of American celebrity culture shifted from such traditional
entertainment figures as musicians and actors to everyday people enjoying
what Andy Warhol termed their “fifteen minutes” of notoriety. Confessional
television and literature, as exemplified by talk shows such as The Jerry
Springer Show and an endless parade of books about dysfunctional families,
gave average Americans a chance to enjoy the spotlight of celebrity in
exchange for sharing their tragedies, peccadilloes, and personal soap operas.

Some of these insta-celebrities were innocuous figures trying to spread

socially significant messages, such as young men and women explaining
how difficult it is to reveal one’s homosexuality. Yet some insta-celebrities
were marginal figures exploited for sensational appeal. In a notorious
incident that underlined the lurid appeal of confessional talk shows, a group
of white supremacists appearing on Geraldo Rivera’s program got involved
in a violent brawl with audience members. Rivera himself was wounded in
the fray, and he played up the drama of his injury as if he had been on the
front line of a war. Viewers ate up such brawls, which occurred on virtually
every episode of Jerry Springer’s program, and Americans’ morbid
fascination with the dark aspects of human behavior reached an apex with
the so-called “trial of the century.”

In 1994, former football star O. J. Simpson was accused of murdering his

wife and a male friend of hers. Prime-time viewers were treated to an aerial
shot of Simpson’s Ford Bronco crawling down a California highway, with
police in slow pursuit, and the Bronco chase was played for sensational
spectacle, because newscasters prepared viewers for several possible
outcomes: Simpson might kill himself, they said, or he might be struck by
police gunfire. The Simpson drama continued when his case went to trial,
and the televised announcement of his not guilty verdict scored ratings that
rivaled prime-time programming.

Other trials, such as that of the murderous Menendez brothers, received

similar front-page treatment. In the 1990s, notoriety and fame became
interchangeable concepts, and this social shift was reflected in films made by
Gen Xers.

Being John Malkovich is the wittiest such reflection. Through the fanciful
premise of the portal into Malkovich’s head, the filmmakers allow their
characters to take celebrity worship to its logical extreme: The characters
become celebrities not because of accomplishment, but because they invade
an established celebrity’s physical being. Given that Hollywood-related
reportage has long lent the private lives of famous people at least as much
import as their actual work, the conceit at the heart of Being John Malkovich
seems a rational response to the public’s appetite for gossip. If reading about
stars’ sex lives is exciting, the movie ponders, wouldn’t it be doubly exciting
to participate in such a sex life? The characters in Being John Malkovich are
psychic stalkers who would rather have sex as Malkovich than have sex with
Malkovich, because Malkovich—or any other celebrity—is interesting for
his social stature, not for his identity as an individual.

Director Spike Jonze, writer Charlie Kaufman, and their cohorts take this
whimsical vision of vicarious experience to a comical extreme by having
characters sell rides through Malkovich’s brain like rides on a roller coaster.
Then the filmmakers put a jovially postmodern twist on the material by
having the “real” Malkovich enter the portal, thereby penetrating his own
mind as a stranger. Once he’s inside himself, Malkovich experiences a
nightmare of celebrity narcissism—from his self-as-self perspective, every
person he sees has his own face, and the only word they say is his name.
Predictably, the visit to the land of unrestrained self-love is maddening.
Almost famous: The whimsical fantasy Being John Malkovich satirizes
America’s obsession with celebrity by penetrating the mind of actor
John Malkovich, seen receiving instruction from director Spike Jonze
before filming a unique point-of-view shot (USA Films/Gramercy
Pictures).

The film backs off a bit from its celebrity commentary by revealing that the
portal is part of a sci-fi scheme cooked up by folks seeking eternal life. But
even relegated to the backseat during the story’s conclusion, the film’s
entertainment-industry satire lingers after the movie’s conclusion with a
bitter, true resonance. As screenwriter Charlie Kaufman noted:
 A lot of it comes from the idea of not wanting to be yourself and
being envious of other people. There is for sure the idea of looking
out in the world and feeling you don’t deserve to be there. How do
you come to feel that you have as much right as anyone else to be
on this planet, when you have a barrage of information telling you
that you don’t have a right to be here, or that you have to change
yourself to be allowed to be here? I took each character and on an
instinctive level explored how they would react to that anxiety.4

Other films imagined by Gen Xers deal with the very 1990s idea of
achieving celebrity for something other than talent. Natural Born Killers,
which controversy-magnet Oliver Stone adapted from a screenplay by
Tarantino, shows a pair of serial killers who become popular celebrities;
while basically a modernization of ideas seen in 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde,
1973’s Badlands, and other films, Natural Born Killers features a
contemporary element in the figure of a sensationalistic TV broadcaster who
exploits the killers’ lives for his own gain. And The Truman Show, a
poignant drama written by Gen Xer Andrew Niccol, depicts an innocent who
doesn’t realize that his entire life is a fabrication broadcast into millions of
homes as a nonstop reality-TV program. In a quintessential bit of Gen-X
irony, Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey), is the star of his own top-rated show,
but he’s the only person who isn’t in on the joke.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling Boogie Nights tracks the rise and fall of
Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg), an otherwise average young man who
achieves fame in the porn-movie industry because of his enormous penis.
The film’s sad commentary on exploitation is best summed up by its perfect
final image: Dirk stands before a mirror, with his face hidden by the camera
angle, then unzips his pants and reveals, for the first time, his mammoth
member. “I am a star. I’m a big bright shining star,” he says—ostensibly to
himself, but really to his phallus. The idea that audiences have celebrated not
whole people but just facets of them says volumes about how fame is
achieved America today. Just as patrons line up to be Malkovich, and just as
violence-hungry viewers make two natural born killers into media figures,
porn fans deify Dirk not for his charm or personality, but for his abnormal
appendage. The freak show must go on.
Another layer of Gen Xers’ attitude toward celebrity is seen in Ben Stiller’s
underrated satire, The Cable Guy, and Neil LaBute’s overrated fable, Nurse
Betty. In Stiller’s film, the titular cable-television installer (Jim Carrey) is
such a TV addict that his entire personality is a composite of fictional
personalities from sitcoms and other programs; in LaBute’s movie, a
waitress (Renée Zellweger) detaches from reality after witnessing her
husband’s murder, then ventures from Kansas to California so she can hook
up with the fictional soap-opera doctor she adores. Both movies make
obvious but poignant statements about the dangers of replacing reality with
fiction.

It Pays to Recycle

There’s a world of difference between the characters in Being John

Malkovich, who risk everything to escape reality, and those in Reality Bites,
who merely comment that, well, reality bites. The scene from Ben Stiller’s
film in which two characters duel over sitcom trivia said something about
the history the characters share. It also reflected a commonplace
screenwriting tack, which is to mask the true intentions of a scene by having
characters talk around said intentions. So even though the dialogue is about
which episode of Good Times featured Gary Coleman, viewers understand
that the real meat of the scene is two men sparring over a woman.

Helen Childress’s script for Reality Bites features numerous such pop-culture
references, such as when Michael (Ben Stiller) woos Lelaina (Winona
Ryder) while they listen to Frampton Comes Alive, a rock album that was
popular when the characters were children. These references—as well as
those in Tarantino’s films, such as the Madonna-related conversation in
Reservoir Dogs—are effective because they ground the cinematic characters
in a reality that exists beyond the screen. But sometimes the pop-culture
references obscure the weight of a scene, and drag movies into the morass of
boob-tube superficiality that colors the shallowest conversations among real-
life Gen Xers. Consider this scene from Reality Bites, in which Lelaina tries
to comfort her friend Vickie (Janeane Garofalo), who believes she might
have contracted AIDS.
 VICKIE: You don’t understand—every day, all day, it’s all that I
think about. Every time I sneeze, it’s like I’m four sneezes away
from the hospice. And it’s like it’s not even happening to me. It’s
like I’m watching it on some crappy show like Melrose Place or
some shit, right? And I’m like the new character: I’m the
HIV/AIDS character and I live in the building and I teach
everybody that it’s okay to be near me, it’s okay to talk to me, and
then I die. And there’s everybody at my funeral, wearing halter
tops or chokers or some shit like that.

LELAINA: …You’re freaking out. And you know what? You’re

gonna have to deal with the results whatever they are…. It’s gonna
be okay. [Pause.] Melrose Place is a really good show.

Tarantino uses pop-culture references so masterfully that they are virtually

his trademark. Viewers watching Pulp Fiction related to the way that hit man
Vincent Vega (John Travolta) described his experience of eating a Quarter
Pounder sandwich in France, where it is called a “Royale with Cheese”; the
McDonald’s product is such a ubiquitous item in American life that when
viewers learn Vincent is a Quarter Pounder eater, they accept him as one of
their real-life number.

Even films that Tarantino wrote but did not direct are filled with effective
pop-culture references. In the crime story True Romance, a shy
twentysomething courts a young woman by taking her to a comic-book store
and offering to show her a vintage copy of Spider-Man’s first issue; in the
submarine thriller Crimson Tide, to which Tarantino made uncredited
screenplay contributions, two characters connect by discussing a comic titled
The Silver Surfer. The specifics of these references are lost on viewers
unfamiliar with comic books, but the thrust of the references—the scenes
beneath the scenes—resonate with the credibility created by Tarantino’s
allusions to real life.

Again, the danger with excessive pop-culture referencing is that the real
content of a scene can get buried beneath the ephemera. Tarantino generally
is disciplined enough to avoid this trap, but he fell right into it during a
notorious cameo appearance in the 1994 romantic comedy Sleep With Me.
Re-creating a bit with which he reportedly entertains friends, Tarantino
identifies why he believes the ultra-macho action movie Top Gun is filled
with veiled homoerotica. His proof is little more than dialogue such as
“Watch my tail, Maverick!” (which sounds provocative when taken out of
context), but his enthusiasm and conviction are persuasive. The trouble is
that Tarantino’s scene stops the movie dead, setting narrative thrust aside for
the cheap thrill of a hipster’s entertaining self-indulgence.

It is possible, however, to be self-indulgent and still propel narrative. Kevin

Smith—the verbose, crude, and occasionally brilliant writer-director of
Clerks—has declared on many occasions that the Star Wars films were a
crucial influence on his creative life. He reveals the depth of his affection for
George Lucas’s space opera in a Clerks scene featuring convenience-store
cashier Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and video-store clerk Randal (Jeff
Anderson).

Killing time between customers, the two debate the relative virtues of The
Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, the second and third Star Wars
flicks. At one point, Randal fires off a rant about Jedi, explaining that he
dislikes how the film’s heroes destroyed their enemies’ incomplete space
station oblivious to the possibility that “contractors” might be aboard the
station. While the moment at first sounds like unrestrained geekiness, the
sort of talk one might overhear at a Star Wars convention, the conversation
actually reveals something about Randal. Despite the cynicism he displays
throughout the movie, he has a conscience as well as social consciousness;
the fact that these qualities primarily manifest when describing lightweight
entertainment tells us, additionally, that Randal lacks the ambition to do
much with his admirable qualities. This very funny scene allows Smith to
vent his aggression about Jedi through Randal, but also to make insightful
observations about the sort of person whom Randal represents.

Just as Tarantino did, however, Smith eventually fell off the high wire of
pop-culture referencing. His follow-up to Clerks, the amateurish Mallrats,
drowns in cheeky allusions to comic books and Star Wars. While the
romantic story lines that ostensibly drive the movie are underdeveloped to
the point of anemia, Smith devotes endless screen time to vignettes in which
the character Silent Bob (played by Smith himself) attempts to master the
“Jedi mind trick” that figures prominently in Star Wars mythology. The
closest that Smith comes in Mallrats to balancing narrative concerns with
pop-culture self-indulgence is giving a voice-of-reason cameo to comic-book
titan Stan Lee. Lee’s presence and some of his lines are inside jokes, but his
role at least serves a significant dramatic purpose.

While using cameos such as Lee’s to wink at audiences is nothing new—the

technique dates back at least to Alfred Hitchcock’s appearances in his own
films—Gen-X directors often cast major roles ironically. Tarantino’s casting
of John Travolta in Pulp Fiction is the most successful example. The actor-
dancer was in a career slump, having wasted the opportunities won by past
successes, but Tarantino felt Travolta had lost none of the charm, swagger,
and charisma he brought to such Me Decade hits as Saturday Night Fever.
The director has said he wrote the Vincent Vega role as a tribute to the
actor’s past accomplishments, and Tarantino included actions, such as
dancing, that echoed Travolta’s previous screen appearances. So even though
Vincent was a new screen commodity, he felt like an old one. The gimmick
worked beautifully, adding a pop-culture echo to Travolta’s performance—
and, incidentally, spurring the most lucrative period of Travolta’s career.

Tarantino tried the same trick by casting two other 1970s figures—
blaxploitation star Pam Grier and B-movie regular Robert Forster—in Jackie
Brown, but this time the gimmick worked half as well. Grier and Forster
brought a wealth of experience to the movie, and gave gorgeously fresh
performances, but because they never had been as familiar as Travolta, they
didn’t bring the same entertaining baggage. Viewers who knew the
performers’ histories got the joke; viewers who didn’t merely discovered
Grier and Forster as if they were new actors.

Making sure audiences are in on pop-culture jokes is a delicate art at which

only a few filmmakers excel. Kevin Williamson showed his mastery in the
script for Scream, a 1996 horror satire directed by slasher-flick veteran Wes
Craven. Williamson brought a young, snide sensibility to the script, which
simultaneously sent up and adhered to conventions of the then-tired serial-
killer genre. Characters in Scream talked about having seen so many horror
movies—Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and so on
—that the narrative devices used in those films were clichés. Yet the
characters tolerated the clichés as they might the bad table manners of a
favorite uncle. So when a real killer starts stalking the characters, à la the
murderers in slasher movies, the movie-savvy characters ironically telegraph
their own demises.

Scream and its inferior sequels probably represent the apex of pop-culture
referencing, because they are nothing but pop-culture referencing. The first
film’s nods to the audience include a cameo by 1970s TV star Henry
Winkler as a high school principal, and, for those paying close attention, the
behind-the-camera presence of Craven, director of the aforementioned
Nightmare on Elm Street. Yet the speed with which the Scream series ran out
of steam revealed the dryness of the well from which pop-culture references
are drawn.

An interesting offshoot of Scream’s success was that it sparked a new cycle

of slasher movies, including the Williamson-scripted I Know What You Did
Last Summer. These movies offered exactly the kind of formulaic, insipid
escapism that Scream satirized. So if the smothering irony of Scream was a
kind of postmodernism, then the irony-free horror movies it inspired were a
kind of post-postmodernism. The mere citation of such an unwieldy term
reveals why the cycle of pop-culture referencing and re-referencing grew so
dizzying during the 1990s.

The success of Scream redoubled Hollywood studios’ efforts to court the

youth market, and also revealed that enough new moviegoers had entered the
marketplace that even very recent trends could be recycled. Therefore, a new
wave of teen comedies appeared in tandem with the revived slasher genre.
Inspired by the lascivious coming-of-age comedies (Fast Times at
Ridgemont High, Porky’s) and teen-empowerment dramedies (Sixteen
Candles, The Breakfast Club) that flourished in the early 1980s, the new teen
comedies included such Gen-X directed pictures as Can’t Hardly Wait and
American Pie. While these pictures possess a certain unpretentious charm,
their fixation on breasts and bodily fluids mostly reflects the immaturity of
their makers—and offers proof that the desire for friendship and fornication
is universal to the adolescents of every generation.

The ’70s Connection

The irreverent manner in which pop culture is used as a kind of shorthand in
Gen-X flicks, however, isn’t the most interesting manifestation of this
generation’s infatuation with mass media. By casting actors who achieved
iconic status in the 1970s, revisiting themes that suffused the cinema of that
era, and aping stylistic touches perfected by the movie brats, Gen-X
directors built a crucial connection to the previous cinematic generation.

This connection can be seen most clearly in Gen-X films about the 1970s.
Sofia Coppola’s dreamlike tale about a group of sisters doomed to die at
their own hands, The Virgin Suicides, is set in an affluent Michigan suburb
circa the mid–1970s, so the film’s costumes feature polyester pants and
hippie-ish dresses. The clothing is complemented by subtler visual signifiers:
Coppola’s film is shot in a soft camera style that approximates the feel of
natural light, recalling the self-consciously unvarnished photography of the
movie brats’ movies. Amplifying these connections is the fact that the Virgin
Suicides director is the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, whose Godfather
pictures featured scenes so underlit that actors’ eyes were hidden in shadow.

Other Gen-X pictures set in the 1970s include Dazed and Confused, Richard
Linklater’s shaggy comedy about drug-addled high schoolers; Waking the
Dead, Keith Gordon’s heartfelt exploration of the relationship between
activism and politics; and 54, Mark Christopher’s inept attempt to re-create
the heyday of New York City’s most infamous discotheque/pleasure palace,
Studio 54. The connection Gen-X directors feel to the 1970s is about more
than respect for previous filmmakers, of course: For the segment of
Generation X under discussion in this book, the 1970s were a time of
adolescence and childhood. Their nostalgia for the period, therefore, is both
personal and professional.

A handful of Gen-X films echo 1970s style without actually being set in the
period. Steven Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich, a rabble-rousing drama about
a law-firm secretary trying to expose corporate-sanctioned pollution, has the
same scrappy, procedural feel as Norma Rae and The China Syndrome, two
earlier films about crusading women. 8mm, a gruesome story about snuff
films that was written by Gen Xer Andrew Kevin Walker, is a sister film to
Hardcore, the porn-industry drama written and directed by 1970s stalwart
Paul Schrader. Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown
all feature music and actors from the 1970s, as well as stylistic touches
recalling crime films of the period.

Some Gen-X films have a 1970s feel that can’t be traced to a particular
influence. The Yards, James Gray’s unoriginal but engrossing drama about
corruption among contractors serving New York City’s subway system, has
photography as dark and moody as The Godfather’s, features a story line as
intimate and oppressive as any that Martin Scorsese ever directed, and
includes performances by three 1970s giants: Faye Dunaway, James Caan,
and Ellen Burstyn. Burstyn also appears in Darren Aronofsky’s viscerally
overwhelming Requiem for a Dream, a painful parable about drug use.
Aronofsky, incidentally, is such a child of the 1970s that when he was hired
in 2000 to reinvigorate the moribund Batman franchise, he told interviewers
that he wanted to set his Bat-flick in the 1970s, and give it the gritty,
documentary-style feel of William Friedkin’s 1971 Oscar-winner, The
French Connection.

Ultimately, finding connections to The French Connection and other films is

just a parlor game unless a deeper reason than nostalgia can be found for
links between Gen Xers’ work and the culture of their youth. That deeper
reason has to do with what the arrival of baby boomers meant in Hollywood.
As noted earlier, the studio system was dying when counterculture hits such
as Easy Rider revealed the earning potential of catering to the youth market.
Writ large, the studios gave the keys to their kids, and for a handful of
glorious years, the kids took their beloved medium for a wild ride.

By the end of the 1970s, the ride was mostly over, because the success of
mass-appeal hits such as Jaws and Star Wars gave the studios a new formula
to copy. So when Gen Xers began to enter the film industry en masse in the
late 1980s and early 1990s, mainstream American cinema had become
almost as stagnant as it was when the boomers arrived.

It took them a few years to do it, but by 1999, Gen Xers shook up the
industry as greatly as their predecessors had. That year, the irreverent
domestic drama American Beauty, the startling no-budget horror movie The
Blair Witch Project, the playful freakout Being John Malkovich, the
ambitious multi-character story Magnolia, and the masterfully constructed
ghost story The Sixth Sense—all directed by Gen Xers—proved that there
was room in cineplexes for bold, brash ideas as well as corporate product.

Therefore, the deeper connection between the 1970s and Gen-X directors is
that the brash auteurs of the Me Decade blazed the trail that Gen Xers
followed. Just as the activists of the earlier generation proved that it was
possible to force sweeping social change, the filmmakers of that generation
proved that it was possible to force sweeping artistic change.

Biting the Hand That Feeds

A final level to this long discussion of Gen Xers’ relationship with pop
culture has to do with their most insular storytelling habit: making movies
about movies. Because of the reasons cited earlier (television, infotainment,
and so on), Generation X grew up with a greater awareness about how
entertainment is made than any previous generation. This perhaps explains
their interest in subject matter that has marginal appeal to those outside
Hollywood.

Paul Thomas Anderson veiled his movie about movies, Boogie Nights, by
telling a story not about mainstream filmmaking, but about the porn industry.
His picture addresses issues such as the inherent artifice of motion pictures,
the dichotomy between screen personas and the actors who create them, and
the intoxicating appeal of fame. Yet because he deals with a marginal
subdivision of the film industry, his picture doesn’t have the narcissistic feel
of a movie that is only about Hollywood. Watching Boogie Nights, viewers
learn about cinema while taking an anthropological journey into a
subculture.

Phil Joanou, a former Spielberg protégé whose films are flashy to a fault,
took a more direct approach in his movie about movies, Entropy. The picture
is unwatchable for several reasons, but it’s fascinating to see how a
filmmaker who once was handed a career on a silver platter chose to
fictionalize his professional life.
After making a slick thesis film at the University of Southern California,
Joanou was recruited by Steven Spielberg to direct an episode of the short-
lived anthology series Amazing Stories. Joanou graduated to features with
Three O’Clock High, a stylish but empty blend of High Noon and high
school. He then directed State of Grace, a drama about the Irish mob in New
York City. Featuring powerhouse actors Sean Penn and Gary Oldman, plus a
violent script in the style of The Godfather, the film was rife with
possibilities for memorable drama and visual action. Joanou quickly
established a signature style with an MTV feel, so he became the symbol of
a new wave of film-school brats—moviemakers whose only frame of
reference is movies. The same criticism had been leveled at Lucas and his
peers, but at least the movie brats of the 1970s were weaned on classic
cinema. The movie brats of the late 1980s and early 1990s, critics crowed,
were weaned on junk.

Joanou validated many criticisms of his work with the enervated Entropy,
the story of a young director, Jake (Stephen Dorff), given the job of directing
a multimillion-dollar period picture. Jake threatens to halt production when
his backers strong-arm him into including gratuitous nudity, and while the
character’s essential dilemma of balancing art and commerce is a valid topic
for discussion, Jake is presented as such a vapid sort that his thoughts on art
—and, by extension, Joanou’s—lack credibility. Entropy is the worst kind of
self-reflexive filmmaking, because it’s metafiction that talks the talk of
introspection, but doesn’t walk the walk.

Kevin Smith had the savvy to wrap his exercise in cinematic self-indulgence,
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, in the kind of sexual and scatological humor
that guaranteed at least a lucrative opening weekend for comedies early in
the twenty-first century. The picture, a silly gaze behind the bright lights of
the movie industry, concerns New Jersey marijuana dealers Jay (Jason
Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith), who appeared in all of the director’s
previous films. They discover that a movie is to be made from Bluntman and
Chronic, the pot-themed comic book for which they were the inspiration.

The duo set out to derail the production, and amid myriad gross references to
bodily functions and oral sex, Smith lets loose several cutting jokes at the
expense of notable filmmakers and studios. Gus Van Sant, a director who
shifted from independent films to studio projects, plays himself as being too
busy counting money to actually direct; a gag about Miramax states that the
company known for distributing arthouse movies went downhill after
releasing the teen comedy She’s All That; and Jay and Silent Bob beat the tar
out of a detractor whose online handle is “Magnolia fan,” a device that
allows Smith to spew venom at the Paul Thomas Anderson film of which he
is a vocal critic. Jay and Silent Bob suggests that Smith wants it both ways:
He wants viewers to accompany him on the ride of his movie, but he wants
them to step outside the movie to laugh at the ludicrous aspects of
filmmaking. This is Gen-X irony at its most mundane.

Alter egomaniac: Writer-director-actor Kevin Smith’s weakness for

lowbrow irony led him to make the farcical Jay and Silent Bob Strike
Back, featuring Smith (with beard) and Jason Mewes (Dimension
Films).

Only slightly more ambitious is Josie and the Pussycats, Harry Elfont’s and
Deborah Kaplan’s tedious update of the 1970s cartoon show. The picture
fails on nearly every level, but the filmmakers’ apparent lifelong immersion
in popular culture led them to create a funny story line about subliminal
messages being placed in songs, movies, and television shows. The film’s
villains insert the illicit advertising without informing the entertainers they
manage, then kill singers and actors who get wise to the scheme. When
Elfont and Kaplan concentrate on imagining how peer pressure and
salesmanship intersect in hidden slogans, the movie generates pointed
laughter, but this choice material is accompanied by paper-thin characters,
horrible dialogue, and a laborious narrative. Josie and the Pussycats suffers
from the same problem as Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back: The people
behind both films want to be taken seriously while doing exactly the thing
they’re satirizing, but they spend so much time winking at the audience that
they often forget to entertain.

While not primarily concerned with filmmaking, Pulp Fiction and Wes
Anderson’s wryly satirical Rushmore both offer commentary that puts the
weak efforts of Joanou, Smith, and others to shame. In Pulp Fiction,
gangster’s moll Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) entertainingly recounts her
experience of acting in the pilot for a TV series; in Rushmore, overachieving
teenager Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) mounts preposterous stage
versions of films such as Serpico. The Tarantino bit is like a casual
acknowledgment that entertainment is all around us, and the Anderson bit is
a winking jab at excess in entertainment. Yet even while providing amusing,
insidery moments, these scenes run dangerously close to the nether world of
movies that only make sense in the context of other movies.

At their best, Gen Xers create interesting new artifacts of pop culture. At
their worst, they create disposable artifacts about pop culture. Because this is
a trap into which so many of their number fall, it’s heartening to note the
power of the entertainment that Gen Xers create when they set popular
culture aside and tell stories about genuine culture—specifically, the
American society that bred them.
 4
Growing Pains

Although it has been rightly criticized as the truest evidence of their

collective inclination toward superficiality, Generation X’s obsession with
popular culture, at least as seen in films made by members of their number,
really is a manifestation of the great theme that runs through the cinema of
Generation X. Knowing some of the economic and cultural factors that make
these people feel disconnected from society, it follows that they might feel a
collective desire for escape into a made-up society of their own—hence the
use of pop-culture references as a coded form of language. Because Gen
Xers, speaking in the most general terms, aren’t tethered to family and other
institutions in the ways that their predecessors were, they create a comforting
cocoon of artifice.

They also, interestingly, create other replacements for the warmth and
security of family life, even as they exhibit deep ambivalence for the
traditional concept of what an American household should look like.
Specifically, Gen-X filmmakers have made a handful of disturbing
observations about the dynamics of American families, with a particular
concentration on what happens in the nation’s suburbs. The fixation on the
’burbs is telling, because a fair number of this generation’s filmmakers seem
to have emerged from the affluent milieu of America’s middle class. Just as
they sometimes display an insular affection for pop culture, they sometimes
betray a sheltered perspective of what constitutes hardship.

The characters in Sam Mendes’s American Beauty, for instance, have it

rough not because they’re poor, starving, or diseased, but because they’re
not “fulfilled.” While it would be wrong to belittle the need for personal
fulfillment, creative release, and professional satisfaction, the manner in
which some Gen-X filmmakers treat the petty crises of the privileged as high
drama is occasionally distasteful. (This trend reached an apex in The Game,
David Fincher’s movie about a rich man who gets thrown into a life-or-death
role-playing game because his brother thinks the protagonist needs to be
shaken free of his constricting lifestyle.) Given the depth of need in
countless parts of America and the rest of the world, films that portray
comfortable, affluent lifestyles as oppressive are themselves oppressive,
because of their tunnel-visioned perspectives.

Several interesting ideas emerge in these navel-gazing studies of suburbia,

but some of the most resonant Gen-X films about family involve characters
from further down the economic ladder. For instance, Jodie Foster—the
exquisite screen actress who has been a familiar presence in American
cinemas for so long that it seems odd to include her in a group so new to
sociological discourse as Generation X, but who nonetheless fits in with that
group chronologically—directed two thoughtful films about the issues facing
blue-collar families. Her directorial debut, Little Man Tate, explored the
peculiar quandaries facing the working-class mother of a genius child, and
her follow-up, the mostly disappointing Home for the Holidays, looked at a
less unusual, but more dysfunctional, nuclear family.

Both films make statements about the power of individualism and the need
for family members to help loved ones unfurl their wings instead of clipping
them, but perhaps the most important link between the movies is Foster’s
strong assertion that family takes many forms: The unit formed by the genius
and his mother in Little Man Tate is as enduring as that formed by the
extended nuclear family in Home for the Holidays.

The ability to draw strength from unconventional family units is a key topic
for Gen-X filmmakers. This is unsurprising, given the number of Gen Xers
whose homes were cleaved by divorce, and given how many were raised by
two working parents—meaning that as children, these Gen Xers often were
left to fend for themselves or commiserate with peers while mom and dad
were at the office. Sometimes, the shift from the traditional family unit is
depicted as a tragedy (the protagonist of Fight Club suggests that men raised
by women are by definition emasculated), and sometimes, the shift is
reflected hopefully, as in stories about surrogate families. Such tales
illustrate that love can create bonds as deep as those created by blood.

All Gen-X stories about family, however, need to be examined through the
prism of the question that drives the generation: “Who am I, and where do I
belong?” As so many societal factors made vast numbers of Gen Xers feel
unwanted—they were abandoned, actually or metaphorically, by parents
who left the home following a divorce; changes in schools and the
workplace forced them to grow up fast, in effect truncating their childhoods;
the corporatization of America made huge numbers of workers feel
disposable; and so on—the ache that drives many Gen-X stories about
family is poignant and sometimes heartbreaking.

The caveat to all this talk of profundity, of course, is that family is one of the
basic themes of American popular culture, particularly television. Even if
attention is focused solely on movies and TV shows of the 1970s, for
instance, there is plenty of iconography related to that most crucial of issues,
divorce. The Brady Bunch depicted a “blended” family created by the second
marriages of a father and a mother; Alice, and the movie from which the
sitcom was derived, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, showed a woman and
her young son venturing out into the world following a failed marriage; the
acclaimed feature Kramer vs. Kramer dramatized the effect that a divorce
and its pursuant squabbles has on a young boy. This body of films and TV
shows about new types of American families represented a substantial leap
from the happy homes portrayed in such 1950s sitcoms as Father Knows
Best and Leave It to Beaver. However, allowing that Generation X’s
exploration of family isn’t an unprecedented foray into a new social frontier
doesn’t diminish what the filmmakers belonging to this generation have to
say. Quite to the contrary, this contextualization allows viewers to see how
Gen-X movies about family deepen the discourse that came before.

Love the Ones You’re With

Offering a tonal contrast to the cynicism that oozes through his films, Paul
Thomas Anderson uses hopeful surrogate-family imagery to great effect in
Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, and Magnolia. In Hard Eight, ne’er-do-well
John (John C. Reilly) gets taken under the wing of veteran gambler Sydney
(Philip Baker Hall); Sydney steers John through dangerous adventures in a
casino and even facilitates his young charge’s romance with waitress
Clementine (Gwyneth Paltrow). The older man’s altruism seems at odds
with his hardened character, so it’s no great surprise at the end of the film to
learn that Sydney actually is John’s father, protecting the younger man to
atone for abandoning him years before. In this case, what seems to be a
surrogate family is revealed to be an actual family, suggesting that fate
sometimes offers opportunities for the rebuilding of severed bonds. This
material is especially poignant for Gen Xers raised by “deadbeat dads,”
fathers who mostly avoided their parental chores following divorces.

Severed bonds are a recurring theme in Magnolia, Anderson’s multi-

character epic about people suffering from emotional, mental, and physical
decay in contemporary Los Angeles. In one story line, a dying patriarch
(Jason Robards) is brought together with the estranged son (Tom Cruise)
who despises him; in another, a lonely policeman (John C. Reilly) stumbles
into a haphazard romance with a drug abuser (Melora Waters); in a third, a
pathetic former quiz-show champ (William H. Macy) timidly courts a studly,
unreceptive bartender. These plot lines, and the others with which they
intertwine, all dramatize the human need for connection, so the very fact that
Anderson connects them as intricately as he does is a statement in itself:
These people who crave connection are tethered to others, even if they don’t
realize it.

Magnolia offers a complex vision of family, because it shows that traditional

bonds can be infuriating—the patriarch’s trophy wife (Julianne Moore)
numbs herself with sex and drugs to wash away the taste of marrying for
money—while showing that nontraditional bonds can be empowering. The
patriarch’s male nurse (Philip Seymour Hoffman) feels such empathy for his
dying charge that he runs a gauntlet of red tape to arrange the father-son
reunion. Magnolia is filled with little epiphanies and catastrophes, and the
cycle of recrimination and redemption seems endless until a supernatural
occurrence forces the characters to step out of their bubbles—in Gen-X
terms, their insular perspectives—and see what’s right in front of them. The
narrative problem with Anderson’s approach, and the aspect of the film that
made it a love-hate proposition for audiences, is that the supernatural
occurrence—a Biblical shower of frogs cascading down from the sky—is so
freakish that it clashes with the intense credibility created by Anderson’s
mesmerizing dialogue and forceful camerawork, and the luminous
contributions of his actors. Still, Anderson’s point about the way people
simultaneously crave and repel inclusion in the human community is
touchingly made.

A similar statement is presented in Boogie Nights, the most accomplished of

Anderson’s early films. A sprawling epic about two decades of pornographic
filmmaking, Boogie Nights depicts how well-endowed Dirk Diggler (Mark
Wahlberg) gets taken under the wing of skin-flick mogul Jack Horner (Burt
Reynolds)—shades of the patriarchal altruism in Hard Eight. Dirk is
accepted into the community that makes Jack’s films, which includes the
director’s coke-addicted wife, Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), seemingly
airheaded starlet Rollergirl (Heather Graham), ambitious porn actor Reed
Rothchild (John C. Reilly), and others. The ironies of this family portrait are
myriad. First, and most obvious, is that these people converge not to create
real emotional intimacy, but to fabricate and exploit sexual intimacy: They
are bonded not by love, but by lovemaking in its crudest incarnation.
Another layer of irony is that people in this clique, excepting the technicians,
are accepted not for their personalities but for their physicality: Dirk fits into
the group because his large penis makes him a valuable commodity,
Rollergirl fits in because her girl-next-door looks enable her to enact
widespread sexual fantasies, and so on.

The horrific obstacles he lays in front of his Magnolia characters comprise a

kind of narrative overkill, but Anderson lets a sensible, if hyperbolic,
narrative guide his hand in Boogie Nights. Cultural shifts such as the
transition in the porn industry from shooting on film to shooting on video
force characters to adjust their trajectories, which allows Anderson to
illustrate how this particular “family” reacts to hardship. The Dirk character
is used to dramatize the journey undertaken by nearly every adolescent who
breaks from his or her family to pursue an individual path, only to find that
walking away from “home” leads to loneliness. Even worse, in Dirk’s case,
leaving the nest leads to impotence. His virility stems from the connection
he feels to his surrogate family.

The surrogate family also cushions the blow that Amber feels when she fails
to win visitation rights to her actual child. The powerful sequence depicting
Amber’s courtroom hearing and its aftermath adds another layer of irony to
the film, for while Amber comfortably inhabits her role as a “mother” to the
members of the filmmaking collective, she’s unable to mother her true
offspring.

The final level of irony to Boogie Nights is seen in context of Anderson’s

career, because he employs the same actors from film to film: His movies
about surrogate families are made by a surrogate family. Yet while he has
run further with this particular subject matter than any other of his peers,
Anderson isn’t the only Gen Xer to illustrate the poignancy of people
simulating familial love instead of inheriting it.

Morgan J. Freeman’s affecting Desert Blue depicts how the denizens of a

tiny desert town in California bond with a father and daughter from Los
Angeles who get stranded in the town. Echoing the lyrical tone of Scottish
director Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero, Freeman’s movie uses oddball scenes and
unexpected conversations to show that people have the ability to connect
with strangers when their souls are in sync even if their lifestyles are not.
The movie ultimately is as bright as Anderson’s are dark, so its mellow tone
might be an acquired taste, but the message of inclusion and open-
mindedness that Freeman puts across is universal.

The movie begins with cable-TV starlet Skye (Kate Hudson) reluctantly
touring remote regions with her dad (John Heard), a professor who studies
kitschy roadside attractions. They hit the town of Baxter to see the world’s
largest ice-cream cone, but get stuck there when a chemical spill outside
town forces a quarantine. As hesitantly as she accompanied her father to
Baxter, Skye befriends young townies including Blue (Brendan Sexton III),
a shy, haunted sort trying to realize the dreams of his late father; Ely
(Christina Ricci), a doom-and-gloom type who gets her kicks by setting
explosions; and all-terrain-vehicle nut Pete (Casey Affleck), whose prizes in
local races make him the town hotshot.
Adventures in the skin trade: Gen-X movies such as Paul Thomas
Anderson’s Boogie Nights, with Mark Wahlberg (left) and Burt
Reynolds as partners in pornography, depict characters from disparate
backgrounds forming surrogate families (New Line Cinema).

These characters comprise a surrogate family demonized by Empire Cola, a

conglomerate that built an ugly factory outside of Baxter but didn’t hire any
locals to work there. Prior to the factory’s construction, Blue’s father tried to
develop Baxter as a tourist destination by constructing an “ocean park” with
water from an aqueduct that runs through town, but when water was
appropriated for the Empire factory, construction of the park stopped. This
turn of events led, in part, to the demise of Blue’s father, and one of the most
resonant aspects of the film is the way that Blue’s friends nurture him
through the pain, confusion, and angst that have consumed him since his
tragedy. This familial imagery is a powerful representation of the manner in
which Gen Xers often became each other’s stand-in relatives during times
when parents were nowhere to be found and educators failed to provide
adequate guidance.

Moreover, Desert Blue is a celebration of Generation X’s inclusive attitude

toward different ethnicities, sexual preferences, and religions. Minorities,
both racial and sexual, made tremendous progress toward gaining public
acceptance during the years when Generation X matured, so the various
Gen-X movies in which surrogate families are melting pots of different
personality types reflect the tolerance that, while not reflected in every
member of the generation, is one of Generation X’s most progressive
attitudes. Desert Blue illustrates the ability that people have to see past how
others present themselves—the townies, for instance, see the soulful person
beneath Skye’s bitchy facade—so by the end of the film, even seemingly
demented characters are sympathetic because we see the pain in their souls,
their deep connection to other people, or both.

The surrogate-family imagery of Desert Blue and Anderson’s films recurs in

various Gen-X movies, from Reality Bites (about a clique of
twentysomethings joined by their postadolescent malaise) to Reservoir Dogs
(in which hoods played by Harvey Keitel and Tim Roth develop something
akin to the bond between a father and son) to X-Men (about freakish
“mutants,” cast out by society, forming a team to serve the greater good) to
Girl, Interrupted (in which the female patients in a psychiatric-care ward
bond by sharing their dysfunctions).

One interesting twist on the prevalent surrogate-family imagery is found in

You Can Count on Me, Kenneth Lonergan’s Oscar-nominated directorial
debut. The film explores the relationship between Sammy Prescott (Laura
Linney), a single mother living with her son in a small town, and Terry
Prescott (Mark Ruffalo), her directionless brother. The two were orphaned
during childhood when their parents died in an auto accident, so they have a
special link: Notwithstanding Sammy’s son, they are each other’s only
family. So when Terry drifts into his hometown for an extended visit with his
sister, only to reveal that he’s caught in a cycle of self-destructive behavior,
Lonergan makes some pointed statements about the ways in which a
surrogate family can be deficient.
Sammy is the authority figure in this relationship because her life is on track,
but her authority is diminished by her failures (including her marriage), and
by the fact that she’s Terry’s sibling, not his parent. Terry resents her
attempts at control and guidance, and dislikes that she judges him, so the
sibling rivalry between the characters is exacerbated by Sammy’s endeavors
to take on the surrogate-parent role. Yet for all his angst, Terry musters the
strength at the end of the movie to declare what his sister’s love means to
him: “It’s always really good to know that wherever I am, whatever stupid
shit I’m doing, you’re back at home, rooting for me.” This confused young
man has serious issues with the hand life dealt him, but in one of his clearest
moments, he acknowledges that a having a surrogate family is better than
having none at all.

Nuclear Meltdowns

One of the key factors behind Generation X’s collective makeup is the
transformation of the traditional American family, and the ennui that
consumed the millions of children who grew up feeling abandoned by their
parents—and, by extension—by society at large. This ennui is given form in
a memorable speech from Helen Childress’s script of Reality Bites, as
spoken by quintessential slacker Troy (Ethan Hawke):

TROY: My parents got divorced when I was five years old, and I
saw my father about three times a year after that. And when he
found out that he had cancer, he decided to bring me here [to
Texas], and he gives me this big pink sea shell, and he says to me
“Son, the answers are all inside of this.” And I’m, like, “What?”
And then I realize … the shell is empty. There’s no point to any of
this. It’s all just a random lottery of meaningless tragedy, and a
series of near-escapes. So I take pleasure in the details: a Quarter-
Pounder with cheese … the sky … and I sit back and I smoke my
Camel straights and I ride my own mount.

As Troy’s lament suggests, the dominant tone in Gen-X discussions of

traditional families is cynicism, and the dominant family model featured in
Gen-X movies is the dysfunctional nuclear clan infested with bitterness and
resentment. The overrated, but nonetheless significant, American Beauty
features perhaps the quintessential example of this skewed portrayal of
family life in the United States.

Much of the attention earned by this Oscar-winning film was heaped on

director Sam Mendes, a wunderkind Brit who secured his reputation with
successful stage productions of Cabaret and The Blue Room. Both were
sexed-up controversy magnets, and The Blue Room became a sensation in
part because star Nicole Kidman briefly flashed her naked figure during each
performance. Mendes therefore brought familiarity with handling stars and
conjuring sensationalism to American Beauty, which was written by former
sitcom scribe Alan Ball. Fitting his past employment, Ball brought
superficiality and a penchant for one-liners. Together, the men crafted a
breezily entertaining but insultingly obvious parable about the American
middle class.

The story’s central character is Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), who loathes
his job as a writer for Media Monthly magazine, and who is so devoid of
hope that his long marriage to Carolyn (Annette Bening) will find new life
that he masturbates in the shower every morning instead of trying to get
intimate with his wife. Lester feels humiliated by everything about his
existence, and wants badly to recover the hopefulness of his youth. He finds
a possible mechanism for that recovery when he meets Angela Hayes (Mena
Suvari), a pretty cheerleader friend of Lester’s daughter, Jane (Thora Birch).
Emboldened by his flirtation with the precocious teenager, Lester quits his
job, blackmails his employer, and even starts buying pot from Ricky Fitts
(Wes Bentley), the haunted boy who lives next door. Meanwhile, Carolyn
finds liberation of her own. Her career as a real-estate agent is stagnant, so
she asks smooth-talking, handsome, successful homeseller Buddy Kane
(Peter Gallagher) for advice. Her request eventually leads to a wild
lovemaking session in a hotel room with her would-be mentor.

All of the story’s elements are clichés familiar from decades of soap operas,
pulp novels, and disposable films: Lester pursues the tired mid-life fantasy
of courting a cheerleader, then turns out to have a stronger conscience than
expected; his would-be lover talks a tough line about sexual experience, but
actually is a virgin; the pot dealer seems to be a burnout, but is in reality a
soulful artist who finds transcendent beauty in the way a plastic bag gets
caught in the wind. And Ricky’s father (Chris Cooper) is portrayed as a
militaristic dictator with violent homophobia, so, naturally, he’s later
revealed as a closeted homosexual.

Ball’s script deals almost exclusively in archetypes, then twists the

archetypes predictably. The film’s limp message seems to be that true beauty
is found in unexpected places, and that the sterile comforts of the American
suburban lifestyle are truly ugly. The film’s final twist is that Lester, after
throwing off his societal shackles and then proving his moral integrity by
refusing to consummate his relationship with the Lolita cheerleader, gets
killed by the homophobe whose same-sex advances he spurned. Lester isn’t
punished for anything he did, but for something he didn’t do. The gimmick
of the movie, which was used much more strikingly in David Lynch’s Blue
Velvet, is peeling back the plastic surface of suburbia to reveal festering
dysfunction, but everything the film reveals is familiar and tame.

American Beauty is worth discussing in detail not because it makes a

powerful statement about American life, but because it has been celebrated
for doing so when in fact it does exactly the opposite. Ironically, the least
profound of the Gen-X films that depict family issues has a reputation as the
most profound.
Dysfunction junction: An illusion of happy domesticity is shattered in
Sam Mendes’s American Beauty, with (from left) Annette Bening, Thora
Birch, and Kevin Spacey (DreamWorks Pictures).

Troy’s Reality Bites monologue about his father is not the only poignant
commentary on nuclear families in the film about disaffected
twentysomethings. A fair amount of discussion in the film is devoted to how
shy homosexual Sammy Gray (Steve Zahn) will reveal his sexual identity to
his conservative mother, a quandary faced by vast numbers of Gen Xers who
tested their parents’ acceptance of alternative lifestyles. Viewers don’t see
the revelation scene, but they do see its aftermath: Sammy speaks directly to
the camera, which director Ben Stiller uses to represent the camera of
fledgling documentarian Lelaina (Winona Ryder), and nervously explains
that his announcement was met with anger, not acceptance.

SAMMY: I came out to her. She’s still a little bit upset. But you
know, I think the real reason I’ve been celibate for so long isn’t
really because I’m that terrified of the big “A” [AIDS]. I can’t
really start my life without being honest about who I am…. I want
to feel miserable and happy and I mean and I want—I want to be
let back in the house.

Sammy is shunned because he’s different, and his pain echoes the feelings of
abandonment that any child distanced from his or her parent feels. This
feeling of familial disenfranchisement reverberates throughout Jodie Foster’s
Little Man Tate, during which a genius child is separated from his mother,
and Home for the Holidays, which depicts a gay character as the black sheep
of his family. Films such as Foster’s and Reality Bites explore what happens
when a child is cleaved from his or her family, and generally offer the
homily that perseverance and love can nurture acceptance. For all their
images of dysfunction, these films convey a vision of familial love
conquering all—or at least surmounting the biggest obstacles separating
relatives.

Stephen Soderbergh offered a unique take on the forces that bind and sever
family members in his gorgeously realized period piece, King of the Hill.
Adapted from A. E. Hotchner’s memoir of growing up in Depression-era St.
Louis, the picture concerns a resourceful youth named Aaron Kurlander
(Jesse Bradford). In quick succession, his tight but struggling family is
divided: His mother (Lisa Eichorn), develops tuberculosis and is sent to
higher ground for a cure; his younger brother (Cameron Boyd) is sent to live
with relatives because the family can’t afford to feed two children; and
finally his father (Jeroen Krabbé) departs to work as a traveling salesman.
Aaron’s reaction upon being left alone is utterly credible: He approaches his
solitude as an adventure, even as sadness about being abandoned rises in his
soul.

Joining forces with his older friend, Lester (Adrien Brody), Aaron enjoys a
series of exploits that make him feel like a young outlaw, but soon even
Lester is separated from Aaron. While these events are germane within the
Depression-era story line—and are in fact fictionalizations of Hotchner’s
own youth—they have a special meaning within the context of Gen-X
cinema. The rifts that split Aaron’s family have the same effect that divorce,
war deaths, and other misfortunes had on families throughout the 1960s and
1970s, so Aaron’s reactions resonate with the unwelcome leaps into maturity
that so many Gen Xers were forced to take during their youths. Little short
of death and disease makes a kid grow up faster than a divorce, because the
shock of losing the security of family, combined with the horror of seeing
parents fight, often forcibly transforms children from the nurtured to the
nurturing.

Therefore, the manner in which Aaron becomes his own parent, albeit only
for a time, can be seen as a metaphor for any child shunted into premature
adulthood. Accordingly, the ingenuity that he displays in bringing his family
back together at the end of the film is a powerful illustration of how even the
youngest members of a family can have a potent effect on their home
environment. The fact that Aaron never truly entertains notions of living on
his own, but rather keeps his eyes on the prize of rebuilding his nuclear
family, accentuates the timeless concept that individuals draw their strength
from the warmth of family. The film also speaks to the essential Gen-X
concept of the importance of surrogate families. During the stretch of the
picture that Aaron spends totally separated from his real family, he develops
a support group including Lester, a sympathetic teacher, and colorful
neighbors living in his building.
King of the Hill is about family, but even more than that, it’s about
imagination. The film’s first image shows Aaron spinning a fantastic tale
about a friendship with legendary aviator Charles Lindbergh. His deadpan
fabrication flies over the heads of his classmates, but enchants his teacher;
later, Aaron’s ability to imagine a world that’s brighter and more comforting
than the real one is the skill that helps him survive his darkest moments. Key
scenes show that his mother nurtures Aaron’s imagination by listening to
stories he makes up at night, and this idea—of how children, and by
extension adults, grow by applying their creativity to work, play, and life in
general—is another one that has received memorable treatment by Gen-X
directors.

Themes pertaining to the family have received significant treatment in

numerous other Gen-X films, of course. Edward Burns’s gentle character
pictures, including the well-received indie film The Brothers McMullen, are
old-fashioned stories revolving around the trials and tribulations of such
conventional units as an Irish-Catholic family. Ted Demme’s Beautiful Girls
depicts how a young adult raised among blue-collar friends reacts to his old
gang when he returns to his hometown older and wiser. John Singleton’s
morality tale about life in South Central Los Angeles, Boyz N the Hood,
shows a character caught between the conflicting guidance of a strong father
and the surrogate unit comprising his friends.

Despite the turmoil that beset the family throughout Generation X’s
formative years, some filmmakers from this generation have made loving
odes to the power of blood ties: Robert Rodriguez’s popular fantasy Spy
Kids, about a pair of preteens who use James Bond-style gadgets to rescue
their loving parents from a criminal mastermind, puts forth such an
unquestioning picture of familial devotion that it’s a bracing alternative to
the pain that characterizes most Gen-X depictions of home life.

School Daze

Movies about education become cloying when filmmakers hammer viewers

with the same lessons that characters in the picture are learning, and an
example of this pitfall is John Singleton’s ambitious sophomore film, Higher
Learning. After making a splash with Boyz N the Hood, a smartly
constructed parable, the gifted young director tackled the amorphous subject
of the changes people experience in college. While his choice to treat the
subject matter seriously was a welcome change of pace after years of
insulting Animal House knock-offs, Singleton filled Higher Learning with
suffocating piousness.
All by myself: Given the number of Gen Xers touched by divorce,
movies such as Steven Soderbergh’s King of the Hill, with Jesse
Bradford as a Depression-era youth who has to fend for himself, are
especially poignant (Gramercy Pictures).

The picture follows three archetypal undergraduates during their first year at
college, when each encounters a crisis. The black track star (Omar Epps)
discovers that African-American athletes are treated like commodities by
college sports programs; the pretty blonde from the suburbs (Kristy
Swanson) dabbles in sexual experimentation with male and female partners;
the impressionable white misfit (Michael Rappaport) gets recruited into a
group of racist skinheads. In some of the story lines, an adult mentor
provides portentous commentary at various steps along the journey; in
others, contemporaries speak with precocious maturity. All of the vignettes
are weighted down with the maddeningly obvious assertion that true learning
often occurs outside the classroom, as well as the message that learning
tolerance is among the most important steps in becoming a responsible adult.

A more effective movie about education, Jodie Foster’s Little Man Tate,
depicts a troubled time in the relationship between young genius Fred Tate
(Adam Hann-Byrd) and his working-class mother, Dede Tate (played by
Foster). The third important figure in this dynamic is educator Jane Grierson
(Dianne Wiest), who persuades Dede that her son should be put in a special
environment that stimulates his precocious intellect. The most heartbreaking
stretch of the film occurs when Fred moves in with his educational
benefactor, leaving his mother alone; the subtext to this sequence is that Jane
thinks Dede isn’t intelligent enough to guide a genius’s education. Despite
Jane’s valiant attempt to provide a comfortable home for her young charge,
she only knows how to nurture the boy’s brain, not his heart. The separation
wreaks havoc on the boy, who intentionally subverts his education to force a
reunion with his mother, so the film’s ultimate message is that a loving
environment stimulates greater growth than a purely intellectual one. (The
film also is a rare example of a Gen-X director depicting a failed attempt to
create a surrogate family.)

A similar message is put across in Good Will Hunting, written by and

starring Gen Xers Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. The Oscar-winning picture
follows Will Hunting (Damon), an angry, working-class Boston youth,
through the journey that begins when Harvard math professor Gerald
Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgård) discovers the boy’s mathematical genius. The
prodigy just wants to enjoy an average life with his drinking buddies, but
trouble with the law forces him to accept Gerald’s tutelage—and to undergo
therapy sessions with gruff but empathetic shrink Sean Maguire (Robin
Williams). The entertaining, sentimental picture examines whether Will is
better served by a life of the mind or the humbler life he desires, and after
much onscreen soul-searching, Will makes a choice that echoes the end of
Little Man Tate: He abandons a lucrative opportunity to exploit his
intelligence, instead choosing to pursue human warmth, specifically the love
of a pretty Harvard coed.

Both Little Man Tate and Good Will Hunting offer the crowd-pleasing idea
that love has a stronger pull than intellectualism, and though Tate tries to
present a balance in which the title character is nurtured both emotionally
and intellectually, the films can be read broadly as criticisms of excessive
education. While neither picture goes so far as to say that education harms
people, both make the somewhat obvious assertion that people need to find
which level of education suits them as individuals. This assertion is
interesting for two reasons.

First is the fact that Gen Xers are often referred to as a generation with too
much education in impractical matters and not enough in practical ones. This
widespread stereotype is rooted in facts that bear upon only an affluent,
entitled segment of Generation X—those members of the generation who
can spend several comfortable years in the womb of college because they
don’t need to hurry into the workplace—but it is propagated by the images
of Gen Xers shown in films and television. These fictional Gen Xers speak,
as has been shown, in an idiom informed by over-saturation in popular
culture, a form of excessive education.
All about my mother: Celebrated actress Jodie Foster’s directorial
efforts include Little Man Tate, featuring Foster as the mother of a
young genius (Adam Hann-Byrd) (Orion Pictures).

Therefore, if Gen Xers Foster, Damon, and Affleck indeed meant to put
across a cautionary message about education, that message could be
interpreted as a reaction to the information with which Gen Xers have been
bombarded since youth. In that case, the message common to Little Man
Tate and Good Will Hunting is more interesting than a knee-jerk
condemnation of soul-numbing educators and soulless educational
institutions. It is a pained cry for relief from the hurricane of soundbites,
infotainment, and junk culture in which Gen Xers have been swept up since
childhood.

Interestingly, author Geoffrey T. Holtz noted that educational standards

suffered a marked decline during key years of Generation X’s youth. In
Welcome to the Jungle, he reported that experiments with hands-off teaching
(in which students were given greater authority to determine their own
curriculum) and changes in grading policies (in which failing grades were
eliminated, or at least used sparingly, to nurture students’ feelings of self-
worth) compromised the quality of schooling that Gen Xers received.
Additionally, Holtz noted, the parents of Gen Xers experienced a dangerous
shift in attitudes that led them to fight school funding more vigorously in the
1970s and beyond than in any previous time. As Holtz wrote:

One paradox of stressing self-esteem came to light in an

international math test given to thirteen-year-olds in 1988.
American students were dead last among the nations who took the
test, yet they led the pack in considering themselves “good at
mathematics.” Korean children, only 23 percent of whom judged
themselves good math students, also happened to be the highest-
scoring students. [Gen Xers] may have developed some of that
high self-esteem—perhaps arrogance is a more appropriate term—
in school. Unfortunately, what they needed to learn may have been
a little humility, and a lot more math.1

Such trends created an atmosphere in which respect for schools was greatly
lessened, as seen in the contempt for educators and educational institutions
that permeates such youth films as Animal House, Fast Times at Ridgemont
High, The Breakfast Club, and Revenge of the Nerds, all of which became
hits thanks to the buying power of Gen-X moviegoers. The anti-teacher
attitude also appeared in such popular rock songs as Alice Cooper’s
“School’s Out” and Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall,” both of which
were radio staples during Generation X’s youth. This metaphor of
classroom-as-battleground was the inspiration for several Gen-X pictures,
beginning with Keith Gordon’s 1988 drama The Chocolate War, in which a
strong-willed student and the inflexible headmaster of a private school
challenged each other throughout a vigorous battle for dominance over their
shared environs.

Probably the most entertaining Gen-X spin on educational issues is Wes

Anderson’s Rushmore, a satire so cheeky that it almost drowns in its own
self-satisfied wit. Set at the prestigious Rushmore Academy, the picture
tracks the exploits of one Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman), a parody of
every overachiever ever encountered in fiction and reality. The high schooler
participates in a ridiculous number of extracurricular activities, but not
because he excels in them; in fact, he’s stretched so far past his intellectual
capacity that he’s in danger of flunking out of school.

Max isn’t daunted by his academic problems, however. During the course of
the movie, he plunges deep into work with groups including the Max Fischer
Players, a pompously named theater troupe that makes overblown stage
productions such as a Vietnam drama complete with faux helicopters and
explosions. Max also attempts to spark a romance with a pretty young
teacher, Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams). His rival for her affections is
Herman Blume (Bill Murray), a school benefactor as cynical as Max is
optimistic. Just as Max lives beyond his means academically and artistically,
he tries to inhabit a romantic identity beyond his years. He overreaches in
every possible way, and his occasional successes owe more to perseverance
and dirty tricks than aptitude.

Therefore, it’s possible to interpret Max as the ultimate manifestation of the

animosity toward education that recurs in several Gen-X films. Max benefits
not from traditional education, but from creating his own educational
opportunities. Seen through conventional eyes, Max is a failure: His grades
are poor, he doesn’t blend into the mainstream of the student body, and he
doesn’t respect authority. But from a nonconventional standpoint, Max is a
smashing success: He expresses himself without inhibition, is on his way to
becoming a fully realized individual, and thinks for himself. Like the
geniuses in Little Man Tate and Good Will Hunting, faux genius Max defies
the stagnant, cold ideals of traditional education and makes his own path.

Yet on a poignant level, Max’s academic shortcomings amplify the danger of

unchecked freethinking: By choosing to disregard the mainstream, Max
diminishes his social opportunities and alienates many of his peers. The
price for his individualism is isolation. The makers of Rushmore find a way
to let Max have his cake and eat it too, albeit with a bittersweet aftertaste:
Max loses Rosemary to Herman, but forms a romantic bond with a geeky
schoolmate, essentially lowering his expectations sufficiently to embrace
reality.

Max closely resembles another memorable Gen-X protagonist, Nebraska

high schooler Tracy Flick, played to perfection by Reese Witherspoon in
Alexander Payne’s scathing Election. Tracy is an intense overachiever who
joins every organization, has an answer for every question in every class,
and, despite being almost pathologically upbeat, never seems to have any
fun. Most of the people in Tracy’s school pay her no mind, accepting her as
part of the scenery. But one of her teachers, Jim McAllister (Matthew
Broderick), finds her relentless ambition distasteful. And when it seems that
Tracy is poised to coast past another obstacle by running unopposed for
student-body president, he decides to take her down a peg—a biting
dramatization of the antagonism that many Gen Xers perceive in their
relationship with educators.

Payne uses a fittingly brash storytelling style throughout Election. During

Tracy’s first scene, he freezes a close-up so that her face is contorted in mid-
speech, then leaves the unflattering shot onscreen while Jim’s voice-over
describes Tracy’s history. The director’s funniest touch is employing tribal
voices as a musical leitmotif whenever Tracy fears that events are spinning
beyond her control, a neat trick revealing the animal instincts burning
beneath her cool demeanor. Tracy represents ambition unaccompanied by
compassion (and, by extension, education unaccompanied by compassion),
so she’s part of the wonderfully dark skewering of “heartland values” that
distinguishes Omaha-born Payne’s work.

A final, albeit much more superficial, Gen-X reaction to education is seen in

the films written and/or directed by Kevin Williamson. In The Faculty,
which Williamson wrote, and Teaching Mrs. Tingle, which he wrote and
directed, high school educators are depicted as monstrous villains. Both are
escapist fantasies designed to help youths purge the angst they feel about
their daily “tormentors,” and both are aftershocks of the high school films
that were popular in the 1980s. Unfortunately, The Faculty and Teaching
Mrs. Tingle are silly, bloody thrill rides, featuring little of lasting substance.
 5
To Slack or Not to Slack

Although the word slacker was around long before the first members of
Generation X were born—it was used primarily to describe soldiers who put
forth the minimum acceptable effort or conspired to do even less than that,
like classic comic-strip character Beetle Bailey—the emergence of a
generation inclined toward epic sloth provided a new application for an old
word.

At some point in the late 1980s or early 1990s, when people first began
identifying and studying Generation X, the popular stereotype of the
contemporary slacker emerged. As depicted in entertainment and news,
slackers were educated youths weaned on popular culture and
disenfranchised from mainstream American because of social, familial, and
economic reasons. These pseudo-existentialists were different from
commonplace layabouts, the stereotype established, because they extracted
themselves from mainstream society not out of laziness but to stay true to a
philosophical idea. That idea went something like this: Contemporary
American society had become so dehumanized, corporatized, and
homogenized that to participate in it was to contribute to dehumanization,
corporatization, and homogenization. Or something like that. The forces
against which slackers rebelled were so numerous and nebulous that to list
just a few of them does a disservice to the vastness of the ennui that
prompted the emergence of slackerdom.

Gen Xers were not the first filmmakers to put slackers, or slacker-like
characters, onscreen. As far back as the early 1980s, well before slacker
entered common parlance, Cameron Crowe devoted himself to
understanding the issues of confused modern youths. (Born in 1957, Crowe
is either a very young boomer or a very old Gen Xer, depending on which
parameters are used.) The 1982 comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High,
which Crowe wrote but did not direct, gave viewers a beloved “stoner” icon
named Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn), whose fun-before-responsibility attitude can
be read as a precursor to slackerdom. Crowe’s directorial debut, the 1989
romantic comedy Say Anything…, introduced a quintessential Gen-X
character named Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack), who tries to decide what path
to take after graduating from high school. This young man’s singular attitude
is captured in this monologue, prompted when the father of his girlfriend
asks Lloyd about his plans for the future:

LLOYD: I’ve thought about this quite a bit, sir, and considering
what’s waiting out there for me, I don’t want to sell anything, buy
anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t sell anything
bought or processed or buy anything sold or processed or process
anything sold, bought or processed or … My father’s in the Army.
He wants me to join, but I can’t work for that corporation. Um, so
what I’ve been doing lately is kickboxing…. I don’t know. I can’t
figure it all out tonight, sir. I’m just kinda hangin’ with your
daughter.

Crowe’s films are the most articulate of many pictures made by non-Gen
Xers that address important Gen-X issues, and the dreams and desires of this
generation also have been addressed on television, particularly on the
popular sitcom Friends. Yet in most Hollywood stories about Gen Xers but
not by Gen Xers, a happy glow is cast upon young characters that isn’t
present in real life: The titular characters of Friends, for instance, get
through all their travails by relying on humor and the bond created by their
unshakable surrogate family. Notwithstanding Crowe’s sensitive portrayals,
the bogus nature of Hollywood’s take on Generation X—and particularly the
most misunderstood segment of that generation, slackers— underscores why
it’s crucial to look at stories of these people, by these people, and for these
people. As Edward Norton, star of the Gen-X film Fight Club and a
promising director in his own right, said:

So much of what’s been represented about my generation has been

done by the baby boomers. They dismiss us: the word slacker, the
oversimplification of the Gen-X mentality as one of hesitancy or
negativity. It isn’t just aimlessness we feel; it’s deep skepticism.
It’s not slackerdom; it’s profound cynicism, even despair, even
 paralysis, in the face of an onslaught of information and
technology.1

Masters of Time Suckage

Three years before slackers received the glossy Hollywood treatment in Ben
Stiller’s Reality Bites, Richard Linklater presented a movie that was pure
Generation X in style as well as content. For while Stiller effectively
employed conventional narrative devices and appealing actors to make Gen-
X issues accessible to both youthful and older audiences, it could be argued
that using slick storytelling to discuss slackers was as crass as, say, making
an expensive movie about hippies. Stiller’s best defenses to such criticisms
probably are that he belongs to the generation that Reality Bites is about, and
that even within the confines of a slick story, Reality Bites has plenty of
loose, seemingly off-the-cuff interaction. Nonetheless, Linklater has to be
considered the pioneer in this cinematic territory, not only because he got
there first, but because his slacker movie is fully infused with slacker spirit.

Set in Austin, Texas, Linklater’s Slacker is a simple idea dragged out to

feature length: Characters are introduced, shown moving from one place to
the next and/or interracting with other characters, and after a moment or a
few moments, the film drifts away to follow a character or characters who
have wandered into the scene. It’s like a narrative relay race, only without
any semblance of a goal or of dramatic tension. While the film is in many
ways affected and dull, it also is filled with provocative ideas that rise and
fall based on the strength of their execution: Linklater’s best vignettes
feature truthful acting and spot-on dialogue, and the worst suffer from
amateurism on every level. The personal quality of the film is visible from
the first frame, because the character who begins the succession of vignettes
is a laconic drifter played by Linklater himself.

The people of Slacker are layabouts, conspiracy theorists, media junkies,

paranoids, eccentrics, lost souls, and so on. The only ones who seem the
least bit fulfilled are those who have replaced conventional goals with their
own strange pursuits, such as a cheerful anarchist and a demented fellow
whose cramped apartment is filled with stolen televisions. Most of the
characters are given opportunities to explain themselves, and most of the
explanations say something about the generation to which their intellectually
curious creator belongs. Consider, for instance, these words spoken by a
philosopher (Brecht Andersch) in a coffee shop: “Who’s ever written a great
work about the immense effort required not to create? … The obsessiveness
of the utterly passive. And could it be that in this passivity, I shall find my
freedom?”

Even more telling is a presumably autobiographical essay written by a

fellow named Paul on a series of postcards, then discovered by his
roommates after Paul inexplicably disappears from his apartment:

All his days are about the same. He wakes up at 11 or 12, eats
cereal or toast, reads the newspaper or looks out the front door,
takes a walk, goes to a movie matinee, listens to the radio, watches
sitcom reruns till 1, and usually falls asleep around 2. He likes to
sleep. Sometimes he has good dreams.

That this monologue is read aloud at a snail’s pace, with only the images on
successive postcards providing visual interest, indicates why Slacker is a
tough sell for viewers indoctrinated into the cult of narrative momentum:
Literary and languid and self-indulgent, the movie doesn’t have a point, per
se, and therefore doesn’t make haste to get there. In a word, the movie
slacks. Linklater casually introduces such peculiar characters as a young
woman trying to sell a pap smear containing biological residue from pop star
Madonna, and as an “anti-artist” whose creative expression is destroying and
belittling things created by others, before the film trudges to a halt with final
vignettes including a scene of an old man (Joseph Jones) walking down the
street and speaking his thoughts into a tape recorder. His words echo the
vibrant spirit burning within the seemingly disenchanted soul of Generation
X: “The more the pain grows, the more the instinct for life somehow asserts
itself.”

The most fundamental disparity between Slacker and Reality Bites grows out
of their stylistic differences. The vignettes in Linklater’s picture accumulate
into a statement from which viewers can choose to extract meaning if they
so desire. Conversely, the very nature of Stiller’s film is about putting across
a point, in the moralistic sense of the word: While not an outright homily, the
movie uses a conventional Hollywood narrative storytelling model, in which
experiences hammer at a protagonist until he or she is forced to undergo a
change or make a difficult choice.

The choice in this instance is made by Lelaina, who has to decide whether to
pursue careerism, as represented by ambitious suitor Michael (Stiller), or
individualism, as represented by unabashed slacker Troy (Ethan Hawke). In
the muddy logic of Hollywood films created for mass consumption, Lelaina
elects a compromise—she accepts Troy as her lover, thereby embracing
slackerdom, but remains devoted to her career, thereby embracing traditional
goals. The point is that Lelaina finds a way to grow up without totally
betraying her generational identity.

Yet the presence of a moral lesson weakens Reality Bites’s credibility as a

slacker film. One truth that binds vast segments of Generation X is the idea
that youths who don’t trust institutions lack the spiritual security that
previous generations drew from their belief in God, country, or whatever.
Furthermore, the idea of Gen Xers drawing strength from generational
identity is laughable: People who don’t believe in societal movements or
institutions don’t necessarily believe in each other. So saying in 1994 that
different segments of Generation X can learn from and love each other, as
Reality Bites did, is as wide-eyed as suggesting in 1969 that the hawks and
doves of the Vietnam era could live in peace. It wasn’t accidental that the
finale of Easy Rider, in which rednecks cheerfully assassinated hippies,
caught the zeitgeist of the day. During times of generational upheaval, the
tectonic plates of society clash before they merge.
Junk food and junk culture: A trip to a convenience store turns into a
frivolous adventure in Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites, with (from left) Ethan
Hawke, Winona Ryder, Janeane Garofalo, and Steve Zahn (Universal
Pictures).

Another factor worth considering is that Reality Bites was an attempt to

document a generation that had yet to mature. In that light, it makes sense
that some conjecture was required, and that some wishful thinking
manifested onscreen. Just as Linklater walked on virgin terrain in 1991 when
he made Slacker, Stiller and his collaborators had to think ahead of societal
curves in order to give their story closure. And who knows? When Reality
Bites celebrates its twentieth anniversary in 2014, perhaps the film’s vision
of a tentative solidarity among the divergent factions of Generation X will
seem prescient.
Setting the issue of its larger statements aside, it’s enjoyable to revisit the
details that Stiller’s movie got right. The language of the movie captures a
moment when a TV generation developed its own vernacular, as seen in a
vivid moment involving Lelaina and Troy. The slacker seductively invites
his female friend to sit with him on the couch—for TV babies, the adult
equivalent of a womb. But he isn’t motivated by the desire for a little hanky-
panky. Instead, he wants company while he channel-surfs. Lelaina declines,
warning that her day will disappear if she parks next to Troy, whom she calls
a “master of time suckage.”

Another memorable bit of slackage in Reality Bites is the scene in which

Lelaina and three friends venture from their living room to a convenience
store so they can stock up on junk food with the credit card Lelaina just
received from her dad. As the quartet of twentysomethings gather Pringles
and Diet Coke and other goodies, they hear the Knack’s nonsense song “My
Sharona,” which would have been a hit when these characters were children,
on the radio to which the store clerk is listening. Lelaina and Vickie (Janeane
Garofalo) pester the clerk to turn up the radio, promising that he “won’t be
sorry,” then reward him by dancing foolishly to the amped-up rock music.
The moment is a celebration of doing nothing—the characters bond over
disposable pop culture, and turn a functional trip to a bland destination into
an effervescent adventure. The vaguely depressing implication of the scene
is that acting like idiots in a convenience store might end up being the
highlight of the characters’ evening, but such are the delights of slackers.

Linklater elevated slackerdom to poetry in Before Sunrise, his glorious

romance about American twentysomething Jesse (Ethan Hawke), who meets
young Frenchwoman Céline (Julie Delpy) on the last day of his trip through
Europe. As noted earlier, Jesse is an unusual Gen-X protagonist in that he
superficially resembles a slacker, but has a timeless quality seen in his
refusal to spout cheap pop-culture references and his disdain for societal
institutions.

Jesse is more representative of a moment common to every young life than

one common exclusively to youths of his generation. The moment isn’t
exactly a coming-of-age, and it certainly isn’t a loss of innocence, but it has
elements of both of those landmark experiences. The moment that Jesse
finds himself in during Before Sunrise is the frightening, intoxicating
surprise of his first mature relationship. That the relationship begins and
ends in the course of one day is among the several subtle nuances that make
Jesse a quintessential Gen Xer; just as others of his generation rush through
life on warp speed because of their short attention spans and/or abilities to
process information briskly, Jesse has an Information Age epiphany through
his love affair with Céline.

And while it’s true that countless previous fictional characters have
undergone major psychological changes because of brief encounters, the
combination of the brevity of Jesse’s affair with Céline, their over-
intellectualized discourse, and the hesitancy that they both exhibit about
becoming grown-ups brands the characters as youths on the verge of joining
a society they don’t understand. As Linklater’s Before Sunrise cowriter, Kim
Krizan, noted:

Ours is certainly a disillusioned generation. Born into the slow-

motion explosion of everything our parents believed in, we found
ourselves coming of age in the social wreckage, then trying to
transcend that dark mire by laughing at all things sacred. It seems
that we’ve all nearly succeeded in postponing maturity, extending
adolescence, and giving ourselves over to cynicism and
detachment—a very romantic pose, really…. Ultimately, love is an
exquisite mess, one that is safer to avoid than to indulge in. So
what? Dive in anyway.2

If Jesse and Céline are symbolic of their generation, the actions they take
also are symbolic, and one such action is among the first to bond the couple.
They notice each other while seated in a train passenger car, then start
chatting because a couple near them is arguing loudly. Jesse and Céline
quickly suss out each other’s nationalities, and she asks him if he speaks
anything other than English. Jesse defensively explains that he took four
years of French lessons, but once the moment came for him to speak French
to a railway clerk in Paris, he blanked and spoke English. “No more French
for me,” he adds.

Jesse took four years of classes to learn the Gallic tongue, then tossed those
years away in the moment when he should have reaped the rewards of his
education. So Jesse apparently didn’t learn the language with the intent of
using it in later life; had that been the case, he could have cheated with a
translation guide and forced the words to come out. Instead, he learned for
the sake of learning. This passive approach to intellectual endeavor isn’t
unique to Gen Xers, of course; Beatniks and hippies predated slackers in the
far-reaching way they drank from the fountain of knowledge. But the ease
with which Jesse casually discards four years of education is a poignant
depiction of how Gen Xers deal with all that bombards them.

From birth, Americans born in the Gen-X era were subjected to nonstop
cultural and societal stimulus, and the speed with which information seeped
into their brains accelerated throughout their maturation. So in a sense, it’s
only natural that Gen Xers can toss away knowledge as if it were garbage. In
fact, doing so may be a survival skill: If Jesse and his peers don’t shed the
knowledge they’re not going to use, they risk tumbling into madness like
computers crashing from a data overload. Still, it’s understandable that
casual observers might characterize actions like Jesse’s refusal to speak
French in France as arrogance or laziness.

The arrogance interpretation has a lot of validity, in that Gen Xers who don’t
employ their education waste a commodity that less-privileged individuals
would treasure. Yet the laziness interpretation—which is at the very heart of
how the slacker stereotype emerged—actually is false. The key? Jesse
completed his four years of French classes. He didn’t give up because the
classes were too much work or because he couldn’t grasp the concepts. He
gave up because when the moment came to speak French in France, he felt
false. His action is one of misguided integrity, not contemptuous laziness.

That distinction may, in fact, be an essential insight into the character of

Generation X, or at least into how that character is represented in cinematic
fiction. Gen Xers may seem to value nothing, including their own
generational identity, but perhaps they actually value that identity more than
they know or acknowledge. The identity that these people value is, in part, a
refusal to value anything, so the decision of whether to slack or not to slack
tests how deeply each Gen Xer subscribes to beliefs shared by peers. When
conundrums such as this one are considered, the confusion at the heart of
Generation X quickly comes into focus.
 Rebels with a Cause

Every generation’s films offer a different take on the eternal issues facing
youths who reject their parents’ values—the 1950s James Dean classic,
Rebel Without a Cause, remains the sine qua non of this genre—and the
Gen-X pictures that map this emotional terrain range from the docile to the
furious. Moreover, the turmoil within them offers yet another manifestation
of the central thrust of Gen-X cinema, the quest for meaning. As so much of
this generation’s ennui stems from the chaotic social climate they inherited
from their peers, watching Gen-X characters slam against—and burst
through—the parameters of existing society is highly informative.

On the tame end of this spectrum are pictures such as Reality Bites, in which
the schism between parents and their children is painted in broad strokes: A
son shocks his mother by revealing his homosexuality, et cetera. Pictures
that address the difference between generations timidly traffic in timeless,
universal themes, so the coming-out story line, with its variables altered,
could play in a 1950s story as viably as it does in a 1990s story line. Thus,
the most interesting pictures in this area reside on the extreme end of the
spectrum, and the most extreme is David Fincher’s Fight Club, adapted by
Jim Uhls from Chuck Palahniuk’s novel. The pitch-black comedy features
Gen Xers engaging in a violent, anarchistic revolt against contemporary
American society, particularly the numbing sameness of consumer culture.

Early in Fight Club, the nondescript office drone played by Edward Norton
(the character’s name is never revealed) retires to his nondescript apartment
after a day of nondescript work. His leisure activity is consumption. He sits
in his bathroom and flips through a mail-order catalog labeled “Fürni,” but
clearly modeled on Ikea. (“I had become a slave to the Ikea nesting instinct,”
he notes in voice-over. “I’d flip through catalogs and wonder what kind of
dining set defines me as a person.”) The character fixates on a particular dust
ruffle, then glances at a photo of an empty apartment while ordering a ruffle
over the phone. The camera tracks across the empty apartment, and Ikea-like
items appear alongside superimposed prices and product descriptions, a
catalog’s contents come to life. Then Norton’s character walks through the
scene—it turns out that we’ve been looking at his apartment, which now
seems more like a showroom than a home.
Chaos theorist: David Fincher’s provocative Fight Club stars Edward
Norton (left) as an office drone who becomes enmeshed in the life of a
charismatic anarchist (Brad Pitt) (Twentieth Century–Fox).

This arch device identifies that Norton’s character is obsessed with consumer
goods not for their utility, but because mass marketing has convinced him
that his disposable income is burning a hole in his pockets. The early scenes
of Fight Club (which depict the protagonist’s empty lifestyle) are filmed in
bleached-out color, and often feature unflattering overhead lighting, making
Norton’s character look like a bloodless cipher wandering through his half-
life.

It takes a massive shock to free this protagonist from his insular bubble, and
that shock is provided by one Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a straight-talking
soap manufacturer clothed in kitschy, thrift-store clothes. After the two men
share drinks and lament the inanity of modern existence—unsurprisingly, a
common subject of Gen-X discourse—Tyler asks Norton’s character to hit
him as hard as he can. Our “hero” protests before obliging, but soon the men
beat each other bloody. They find a release in violence akin to that found in
sex, and eventually develop a cult around Fight Club, an illegal organization
in which men escape the emasculation of consumer culture by pummeling
themselves back to “reality.” The dark edge to this metaphor—that the action
reviving these men also destroys them—is never far from the surface of the
movie, perhaps the most subversive of all Gen-X films.

The rebellion of Fight Club’s members is in several important ways a

rebellion against the people who brought Generation X into the world. Tyler,
who laments that “We’re a generation of men raised by women,” confronts
Norton’s character early in the movie with this pointed dialogue:

TYLER: Why do guys like you and I know what a duvet is? Is this
essential to our survival in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word?
No…. We are consumers. We are byproducts of a lifestyle
obsession. Murder, crime, poverty—these things don’t concern
me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with
500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear, Rogaine,
Viagra, Olestra … Fuck Martha Stewart! Martha’s polishing the
brass on the Titanic. It’s all going down…. I say “Stop being
perfect.” I say “Let’s evolve.” Things you own end up owning you.

Tyler soon welcomes Norton’s character into his dark, disturbing world.
Tyler works as a projectionist and splices frames of pornography into family
films; he waits tables and urinates into lobster bisques at lush banquets; he
lives in a condemned building where the faucets spit brown water and the
walls and furniture are coated in grease and filth. Norton’s character quickly
becomes an accomplice in such missions as stealing bags of biological waste
from dumpsters behind a liposuction clinic so it can be mixed into Tyler’s
soap. (“We were selling rich women their own fat asses back to them,”
Norton’s character observes.) Yet there’s a decidedly postmodern wrinkle to
the misadventures of these two characters, because late in the movie we
learn that Tyler (probably) is a figment of his friend’s imagination. Norton’s
character let his id manifest as a cocksure rebel so he could escape his
numbing life, and once Norton’s character realizes what he’s done, he’s
shocked to discover how deep a hole he’s dug for himself through the
actions he took as Tyler.
By the end of the movie, which loops back to the scene that opened the
story, Norton’s character is driven to kill himself as a way of stopping
Tyler’s rampage. So the last scene of the picture features Norton’s character
with a gaping wound on the side of his head reflecting his suicide attempt.
As bombs that he/Tyler set topple skyscrapers, Norton’s character holds the
hand of his demented girlfriend Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) to watch the
carnage as if it were a movie. The myriad metaphors of this moment are
composed of pure Gen-X malaise and attitude: The wound reflects either the
self-inflicted misery of modern consumer culture, or the shock needed to
extract oneself from such culture, or both; the emotional connection with
Marla suggests that people who share contempt for contemporary society
can only truly bond with their own kind; and the vision of an apocalypse as
entertainment underlines the morbid, ironic perspective through which the
most outrageous Gen-X characters watch America succumb to its excesses.

Adding extra fuel to this metaphorical fire is the fact that at the end of the
scene, the image shimmers as if the projector is breaking, and then a
subliminal cut of a shot from a porn film intrudes at lightning speed. So the
final wrinkle to Fight Club is an instruction to do what the characters in the
film do: Look for the messages beneath the messages, then do with that
information what you will. Or, as Tyler says in one of his most impassioned
monologues, delivered while watching Norton’s character writhe in pain
from a vicious chemical burn:

TYLER: Stay with the pain! … This is the greatest moment of

your life and you’re off somewhere missing it. You have to
consider the possibility that God does not like you, never wanted
you. In all probability, he hates you. It’s not the worst thing that
could happen…. We don’t need him. Fuck damnation, man. Fuck
redemption. We are God’s unwanted children—so be it…. It’s only
after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.
 6
Take This McJob and Shove It

Quentin Tarantino got his start in a video store. Kevin Smith got his in a
convenience store. Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker got his in a record
store. But the significance of this peculiar pattern is not how three famous
Gen-X filmmakers, to say nothing of others whose stories haven’t become
entertainment-industry mythology, ascended from such humble settings to
the height of success and notoriety. No, the noteworthy aspect of the
background shared by these three artists is that before they realized their
celluloid dreams, they were stuck in the drudgery of McJobs. As massive
numbers of their peers were stuck in such drudgery alongside them, and are
still to this day, it’s necessary to understand the vicious cycle of McJobs if
one is to understand the character of Generation X.

Although it’s unclear whether he coined the term, Canadian author Douglas
Coupland helped McJob penetrate popular usage by defining it in his
influential novel Generation X. A McJob, readers learned, is a soul-numbing
position with a low salary, generally in the service industry, taken by a Gen
Xer in lieu of something more demanding—so a McJob is, say, working in a
video store, a convenience store, or a record store. While Coupland wrote
that McJobs usually are held by people whose opportunities are limited by
economic factors, his definition should have been amended to acknowledge
the myriad Gen Xers who take dead-end positions to avoid the stress and
competition associated with following a traditional career trajectory.

For just as changes in education made many Gen Xers feel as if they were
products being moved through schools on an assembly line, changes in the
workplace owing to the emergence of monolithic multinational corporations
—and the emergence of machines that made some jobs obsolete and others
monotonous—made it difficult for Gen Xers entering the workplace to
develop loyalty for employers or respect for the goals that previous
generations pursued. In work, as in so many other aspects of life, Gen Xers
found themselves asking what role they were expected to play, and whether
they could invent a new role more suited to their unique generational
identity.

In Fight Club, the violent nocturnal activities of Edward Norton’s character

make it increasingly difficult for him to take his daylight hours in the
working world seriously. The more liberated he becomes by unleashing his
malevolent id during off-hours, the less concerned he becomes with hiding
his true self during work hours. He starts showing up to the office with ugly
bruises and bloodied clothes, stops wearing a tie, starts smoking at his desk,
and becomes confrontational with his coworkers. At one point, Norton’s
character is confronted by his boss, who has just connected Norton’s
character with a Fight Club flyer found in an office copier. The boss asks his
underling what should be done about the document, and Norton’s character
thinks a moment before launching into this creepy oratory:

The person who wrote that is dangerous, and this button-down,

Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap and then stalk from office to
office with an Armolite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-
automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and
coworkers. This might be someone you’ve known for years—
someone very, very close to you…. Maybe you shouldn’t just
bring me every little piece of trash you happen to pick up.

This venomous speech exemplifies Generation X’s predilection for black

humor, because while the scene is rooted in a fantasy familiar to anyone who
has ever worked for someone else—the dream of telling off an unctuous
superior—the violence suggested by the words goes way beyond pent-up
office frustration. This frightening scene also sets the tone for a handful of
bitter moments in work-related Gen-X movies. Although few other such
scenes are so edgy as to include death threats, many capture other
manifestations of the disdain felt by those who punch a time clock.

Revenge of the Drones

Office Space, the first live-action feature directed by Beavis & Butt-head
creator Mike Judge, is arguably the sharpest expression of Gen Xers’
resentment of conventional workplaces. The occasionally dry, occasionally
outrageous comedy about drones throwing off the shackles of dead-end
careerism traffics in somewhat familiar themes (comedies ranging from
1960’s The Apartment to 1980’s 9 to 5 and beyond explore the dehumanizing
nature of office politics), but Judge attacks his material with such vigor that
his film leaves a uniquely credible aftertaste. Even though the picture uses
hyperbole to inflate its principal story elements to larger-than-life
proportions, several aspects of the picture are as closely observed and true-
to-life as the details in subtle journalism.

The hero/antihero of the piece is Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston), a

technology company employee who, like Norton’s Fight Club character, is
anesthetized by the sameness of his days. He lets his job get to him so badly
that he’s on track for ulcers and heart attacks until he visits a hypnotist,
whose therapy frees Peter from his troubling concerns. At the end of the
hypnosis session, Peter has settled into such a casual come-what-may
attitude that it doesn’t faze him when the hypnotist suddenly croaks from a
heart attack.

Peter takes his new mindset out for a spin at his workplace, and in the
picture’s most arch satirical statement, his cavalier attitude is mistaken for
ruthless upward mobility. The unsubtle implication is that Peter’s employers
distinguish him from his coworkers only when he starts acting in what
appears to be a Machiavellian fashion, in effect making him more like a
member of the ruling class than one of the working class. Beneath this
misunderstanding is the sharp irony that Peter actually has become the exact
opposite of the ruling class: He’s an empowered member of the working
class. But the idea of an underling becoming empowered is so foreign to
administrators including Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole) that they see their own
heartlessness in Peter’s carefree demeanor.

In one of the movie’s funniest scenes, Peter gets called into a meeting with
two efficiency experts, both named Bob, who explain that they’re about to
lay off Peter’s closest friends in the office. They then ask him to describe an
average workday, with the underlying threat that if his description doesn’t
pass muster, his will be the next job eliminated. Embracing the fact that he
has nothing to lose, Peter launches into a monologue about corporate life as
embittered as that delivered by Norton’s character in Fight Club, but with
deadpan humor in place of the homicidal rage in Fight Club.

PETER: I come in at least fifteen minutes late. I use the side door
—that way, Lumbergh can’t see me. After that I just sort of space
out for about an hour…. I just stare at my desk, but it looks like
I’m working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too.
I’d say in a given week, I probably only do about fifteen minutes
of real, actual work…. The thing is, Bob, it’s not that I’m lazy. It’s
that I just don’t care…. It’s a problem of motivation, all right?
Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few more units, I
don’t see another dime. So where’s the motivation? … I have eight
different bosses right now, so that means when I make a mistake, I
have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That’s
my only real motivation, is to not be hassled. That and the fear of
losing my job. But you know, Bob, that’ll only make someone
work just hard enough not to get fired.

While Office Space is rewarding as a compendium of effective running gags,

it also builds to a potent climax. Peter’s freewheeling attitude makes him
something of a hero in the eyes of his coworkers, who still cower in fear of
losing their insignificant jobs, so it makes sense when he becomes the
ringleader of a gang who scheme to rip off their employer, Initech
Corporation. Their justification, which is a twisted manifestation of the
frustration to which anyone who has had McJobs can relate, is that the
company deserves to be screwed in exchange for the way it regularly screws
its employees.
Management material: Ron Livingston (left), the worry-free protagonist
of Mike Judge’s biting satire Office Space, gives a pair of efficiency
experts (John C. McGinley, center, and Paul Wilson) a piece of his mind
(Twentieth Century–Fox).

The scheme backfires, however: The friends’ cyber-age plan to drain money
via computer trickery unexpectedly pilfers a huge amount of money at once,
instead of the easily missed trickle of small amounts the crew meant to
purloin. The coworkers’ aghast reaction to their mistake is a telling comment
on modern attitudes, because the shock doesn’t make them regret their
embezzlement. Instead, it makes them regret that they didn’t come up with a
foolproof means of stealing. Their contempt for their employers is absolute,
and their respect for the employer-employee relationship is absolutely nil.

So when Peter decides to return the money and accept responsibility for
spearheading the scheme, it’s less about a criminal feeling guilty than it is
about a man throwing himself onto a grenade to protect his buddies. These
characters are in a war to save their own dignity, and if one of them has to go
down so the rest can fight another day, so be it. That Judge finds a wry way
to extricate Peter from his dire straits, while still sticking it to the inhuman
company, suggests that the director’s contempt for this sort of corporate
culture is as deeply rooted as his characters’.

Judge’s satire manifests in aspects of the film other than the main plot, often
with greater subtlety. One of the funniest subplots involves Peter’s love
interest, Joanna (Jennifer Aniston), who waits tables at a homogenized chain
eatery modeled on T.G.I. Friday’s. The uniforms of the wait staff in the
restaurant are festooned with pins that the manager (played by Judge) refers
to as “flair,” and on a couple of occasions, Joanna is criticized for not
wearing enough flair. She asks how many pins she’s supposed to wear, and is
fed a line of nonsensical corporate-speak about how the company shouldn’t
tell her what to do—instead, she should want what the company wants, even
if she’s never told what that is.

Joanna’s consternation is palpable when she tries to decipher this nonsense

(all so she can retain a job she dislikes), and the thrust of the flair debate—
that the company is forcing her to act in an individualistic fashion, then
putting incomprehensible restrictions on how her individualism should
manifest—is instantly familiar to anyone who has gotten a brainless
directive from a work superior. So it’s both amusing and poignant when,
after Peter asks for an explanation of his girlfriend’s work worries, she
makes this strained utterance: “I don’t really like to talk about my flair.”

Probably the most famous exercise in Gen-X workplace wish-fulfillment

occurs in American Beauty, during which pent-up magazine writer Lester
Burnham (Kevin Spacey) releases his tension by blackmailing his employer
with the threat of revealing the infidelity and embezzlement of one of his
superiors.

Lester is so empowered by his devious activities that he bleats the acclaimed

film’s oft-cited soundbite: “I rule!” Aside from providing the cheap laugh of
a grown man speaking in youthful vernacular, the line puts across an idea
that’s essential to Gen-X movies about work, and Gen-X movies in general.
By saying “I rule” upon taking control of his own life, Lester underlines that
previously he didn’t rule. He neither dominated his own life nor held power
over other people. Because Gen Xers have such an acrimonious relationship
with societal institutions, the need that they and the characters they create
have to exert control over their worlds is a crucial recurring theme.

After Lester extricates himself from his job and takes with him a substantial
severance package, he gets new employment at a burger joint, explaining to
the restaurant’s befuddled manager that “I’m looking for the least possible
amount of responsibility.” These changes help Lester reclaim some of the
virility he had when he was younger, but they shock the other members of
his nuclear family, wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) and teenage daughter
Janie (Thora Birch), as seen in this pointed dinner-table exchange:

LESTER: Janie, today I quit my job and then I told my boss to go

fuck himself. Then I blackmailed him for almost $60,0000. Pass
the asparagus.

CAROLYN: Your father seems to think this kind of behavior is

something to be proud of.

LESTER: And your mother seems to prefer that I go through life

like a fucking prisoner, with my dick in a mason jar under the sink.

The idea running through all of these scenes, from Fight Club to American
Beauty and beyond, is that forcing workers to conform to dehumanized
corporate agendas stifles their souls. The edgy implication is that some
oppressed workers will snap under the pressure and become violent, while
others will subvert their oppression by taking power away from their
“captors.” This subject matter is consistent with the fact that Gen-X cinema
—and Generation X itself—are still young. Adjusting to the demands of the
workplace is an important process in the beginning of every person’s
professional life. In fact, finding a professional identity is often as trying, if
not more so, than finding a personal identity.

Entertaining evidence of how deeply personal and professional evolution can

be entwined is found in Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count on Me, which in
part tracks the workplace travails of Sammy Prescott (Laura Linney), a
single mother who works as the lending officer of a small-town bank. The
bank’s manager, Brian Everett (Matthew Broderick), is a tightly wound
company man with such a skewed idea of how to exert control that he chides
one of his employees for adding garish colors to the display of her computer
monitor. Sammy and Brian clash because she frequently leaves work during
the day to attend to her young son, but beneath their quarreling is lust, which
is consummated in a hotel-room tryst.

A matter of tryst: The intricacies of workplace relationships are

captured in Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count on Me, with Matthew
Broderick as a bank manager sleeping with one of his employees (Laura
Linney) (Paramount Classics).

Brian, who is married, predictably abandons the affair when Sammy starts to
want more than frivolous sex, and the relationship comes to a head during a
tense showdown in the bank manager’s office: Brian suggests that Sammy
should quit, and she fires back that she could easily reveal their affair and
cause much more havoc in his life than he could in hers. Sammy’s feeling of
empowerment and righteous indignation is given extra weight by Brian’s
off-handed comment as she leaves the room: “Yeah. Fine. Why don’t you
just take over the whole bank?” From the look on her face, viewers can tell
she might do that very thing.

Fringe Benefits

Reacting to the claustrophobia of life in a “cubicle farm” (the pervasive

slang term for offices comprising square cages) is a uniquely contemporary
issue. The corporate consolidation facilitated by the electronic conveyance
of information, to say nothing of deregulation of major industries and the
ascendance of monopolistic megacorporations, led to a radical shift in how
workplaces were imagined in the last part of the twentieth century. Yet the
reaction to burdensome indentured servitude also is a timeless theme,
because the frustrations felt by the characters in Fight Club, American
Beauty, and Office Space have precedents dating back at least as far as
Charles Dickens’s immortal A Christmas Carol, originally published in
1843. For isn’t Bob Crachit, the frustrated accountant whom Ebineezer
Scrooge keeps under his thumb, a precursor to the modern office drone?

An important connection shared by the drones in Fight Club, Office Space,

and American Beauty is that all have comfortable jobs. The characters
obviously are not stimulated by their work, but, excepting the waitress in
Office Space, they are white-collar workers with decent homes, decent cars,
and disposable income. So from the perspective of someone further down
the socioeconomic ladder, the claustrophobia felt by these characters might
seem petty. It’s interesting, then, to contrast the ivory-tower attitudes of
frustrated white-collar workers with the workplace experiences of less
affluent characters in Gen-X movies.

Clerks, the first picture written and directed by New Jersey-bred auteur
Kevin Smith, is among the most vivid illustrations of young people stuck in
dead-end jobs. The irony behind the film, of course, is that working a dead-
end job like the ones depicted in the movie allowed Smith to vault himself
into the ranks of internationally known filmmakers. Prior to making the
picture, Smith worked in a New Jersey convenience store, a job that gave
him two things: the chance to see people at their lazy, inconsiderate, wacky
worst; and plenty of time to talk with coworkers during lulls in customer
traffic. Following the model that worked wonders for countless indie
filmmakers in the 1990s, Smith took stock of his life and sought shortcuts
around the obstacles blocking his dreams of becoming a filmmaker. He then
decided to chronicle life in a convenience store, using the actual store in
which he worked as his primary location.

The verisimilitude of the location converged with Smith’s intimate

knowledge of his subject matter in a vibrant tone, so even though Clerks is
crude from a technical perspective and episodic from narrative perspective,
it pulses with life. More importantly, it pulses with anger at the inanity of
what some people have to do to for living. The two clerks in the movie,
reliable but caustic Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and flaky rascal Randal (Jeff
Anderson), ooze contempt for their customers because their customers,
intentionally or not, ooze contempt for them.

These clerks rudely chat with coworkers while ringing up customers’

purchases, unfailingly complain about patrons who request any degree of
assistance, and dislike their customers as much as their poor service suggests
they do. The film’s disbelief at everyday stupidity is expressed in startlingly
foul-mouthed monologues and nasty visual gags. In one bit, a woman in
Dante’s store holds up a can and asks “How much is this?,” at which point
the camera zooms back to reveal a huge sign, right behind the woman, with
the price emblazoned on it. For his part, Randal has become an artist at
dispensing bad service. He spits in a customer’s face, sells cigarettes to a
grade schooler, and, in his finest moment, closes his video store to drive
across town and rent a movie from another shop.

Typical customers in Clerks include the blowhard who storms into Dante’s
store to complain that Randal’s store is a half-hour late in opening. The guy
slams down his video and tears into Dante, fuming that he doesn’t have time
to waste, and that Dante better get the video store’s clerk to show up. The
customer storms out of Dante’s store but leaves his car keys on Dante’s
counter, so Dante discreetly drops the car keys into a garbage can.

By portraying stores as prisons from which any exit is an escape, Smith tells
us that these characters are in “retail hell”—the lead character’s name is
Dante, after all. The metaphor is overwrought, but Smith’s humor is so
gleefully black-hearted that it’s easy to allow him some self-indulgence.
Like his subsequent examinations of sexuality (in Chasing Amy) and religion
(in Dogma), Smith’s study of work ultimately favors jokes over insight, so
Clerks is best appreciated as an exhibition of Gen-X attitude. This attitude
has great credibility, because viewers believe that these blue-collar
characters could end up in meaningless jobs while they postpone their
entrance into real life. And even if the film doesn’t convey a strong sense of
the adults living inside these postadolescent clerks, the offscreen payoff of
what Smith did after his tenure in retail suggests that the wit these characters
bring to their mischief might someday be put to practical use. So in a sense,
the film suggests that these characters will be saved from servitude by the
irreverent attitude that allows them to move through their numbing workdays
without going insane. This implication, borne out by Smith’s offscreen
career trajectory, is an unusually positive celebration of Generation X’s
collective identity.

Whereas Clerks’ portrayal of the workplace plays one note again and again,
Reality Bites presents a spectrum of attitudes toward gainful employment.
The most resonant work-related vibe in the movie probably is that exuded by
Troy (Ethan Hawke), a young, educated man who willfully extracts himself
from the “rat race” not to pursue greater or more creative goals, but because
work is too damn much work. When he’s fired from a dead-end job at a
newsstand for stealing a candy bar, we see that Troy’s contempt for upward
mobility verges on the self-destructive: He’s so opposed to trying to get
ahead that he actively courts dismissal from awful jobs. Yet his investment
in his jobs is so minimal that he never feels the frustration behind the
workplace rebellions in Fight Club, Office Space, and American Beauty.

All of these characters, however, from the pent-up rebels to the laid-back
slackers, are hyperbolic. One extreme illustrates the price of caring too much
about meaningless work, and the other illustrates the price of caring too
little. Therefore, it’s heartening to note that Reality Bites also maps some of
the middle ground between these extremes.

Troy’s friend Vickie (Janeane Garofalo) talks a good game about hating
corporate culture, but nonetheless accepts a job as manager of a Gap
franchise, thereby rising within the culture she disdains and in the process
confronting the hypocrisy of her posturing. Conversely, Michael (Ben
Stiller), Troy’s opposite number and romantic rival, has the unapologetic
upward mobility of a 1980s yuppie, proving that not every cinematic Gen
Xer fits the slacker stereotype. And Lelaina (Winona Ryder), the woman torn
between Michael and Troy, represents yet another professional conundrum:
She wants to be an artist. Her ambition withstands the scrutiny of her slacker
peers, because she’s pursuing a dream instead of a paycheck. Yet she also
craves career advancement, just not as much as Michael does. Lelaina,
therefore, represents the most poignant crisis of Gen-X workers: how to
survive in a corporatized culture without sacrificing your soul.

The title character of Erin Brockovich surmounts that crisis in high style. In
a stranger-than-fiction story adapted by screenwriter Susannah Grant from
the life of the real Erin Brockovich, a former beauty queen saddled with
three young children, an embarrassing work history, and a seemingly
bottomless reservoir of bad luck, stumbles into a job as a clerk in a law firm.
Erin (Julia Roberts) uncovers information about chemical pollution in a
small California town, then juggles her parenting duties, a new relationship
with Harley-riding neighbor George (Aaron Eckhart), and the difficulty of
settling into a new office environment with her crusade to find the cause of
the pollution.

Erin becomes obsessed with work because she realizes that illegal dumping
by massive utility company Pacific Gas & Electric might have caused
horrific illnesses in a huge number of families living near a PG&E facility.
Shifting into ersatz detective mode, Erin dredges up evidence and witnesses
linking PG&E to the illnesses, thereby becoming a heroic figure to her new
friends in the small town. The price of her valor is that she loses an
enormous amount of time with her children, and dooms her affair with
George by essentially using him as a free baby-sitter.

As noble as her devotion to the victims of pollution is, what really seems to
motivate Erin is the rush she discovers when she finds a place for herself in
the world. Prior to her legal-investigation work, Erin was stuck in the
endless cycle of McJob after McJob, because she never stayed in a
workplace long enough, or committed herself sufficiently to a particular
workplace, to advance. Yet once she finds meaningful employment, Erin
directs the intense focus and deep compassion she previously had applied
only to parenting toward her professional life. The difference between her
new situation and her previous jobs is that investigating the pollution has a
use. In sharp contrast to the workers in movies ranging from Fight Club to
Clerks, Erin helps real people in a tangible way, with tangible goals in mind:
making the polluters accept responsibility, and gaining restitution for the
suffering the polluters caused.

Erin is different from the frustrated working stiffs of other Gen-X movies in
the most important regard: She draws strength from her job more than her
job draws strength from her. Yet there are myriad ironies to the significance
of this portrayal. Erin falls into her job, so instead of following the
traditional model of a logical career trajectory, she benefits from her
professional wanderlust because she ends up in the last place she ever would
have expected. Also, Erin succeeds in an office atmosphere despite having a
massive distrust of authority. And finally, she thrives in the sterile world of a
law firm despite dressing with the in-your-face sexiness of a showgirl.

Because of these delicious nuances, Erin is distinctly a Gen-X figure even

though generational identity is not presented as an important part of her
character. She thrives in corporate culture not by becoming part of the
system, but by forcing the system to make room for her.

The difficulties that Erin experiences when trying to create this niche for
herself are shown in a handful of relationships. The most entertaining of
them is her contentious interaction with her employer, lawyer Ed Masry
(Albert Finney). At first, he’s startled by this loud-mouthed, demonstrative,
voluptuous woman who manipulates her way into a job. Then he’s put off by
her confrontational attitude; when he politely suggests that miniskirts and
low-cut shirts might not be appropriate dress for a law firm, she fires back
with a barb about his tacky ties. Ed even fires Erin at one point, in part
because of a misunderstanding, but he eventually bends to her willfulness
when he sees the quality and quantity of her work. Winning Ed over is a
cakewalk, however, compared to surmounting the cattiness with which
Erin’s female coworkers cajole her.
Baby on board: The travails of Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts), an ex–
beauty queen who becomes an anti-pollution crusader in Steven
Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich, reflect Generation X’s ambivalence
about work (Universal Pictures).

The dynamic between eroticized Erin and her conservative peers is a

common one—the difficulty attractive, sexually confident women have
befriending women who perceive them as threats—but in the context of a
discussion of Gen-X portrayals of work, Erin’s conflicts with the women in
her office can be seen as a clash between old values and new ones. Her
coworkers believe in modesty, timidity, and deference to authority. Erin
believes in flaunting her assets, speaking her mind, and questioning
authority. In a way, she’s an antiestablishment figure clashing with the
Establishment represented by her old-fashioned coworkers. So when she
shows her “peers” what she’s made of, not by compromising her edginess
but by utilizing it to its full extent, the victories she enjoys—pinning
responsibility on PG&E, winning millions for the diseased townsfolk,
earning a $2 million bonus for herself—are rewards for her nonconventional
pursuit of noble goals.

A final irony to the portrayal of this brash character is that Erin Brockovich
was Soderbergh’s commercial breakthrough—and also his least
experimental film. Soderbergh pulled the reverse of Erin’s trick: Whereas
she used nonconventional means to win a place for herself in the
mainstream, Soderbergh used conventional means to achieve the same goal.
He then subverted his mainstream success by returning to nonconventional
storytelling for his follow-up film, Traffic, which built on his Erin
Brockovich momentum to become his second blockbuster in less than a year.
His incredible accomplishment also netted twin Oscar nominations for Best
Director (a feat last achieved by Michael Curtiz six decades previous) and a
win for Traffic.

Erin fought her way up the ladder, and Soderbergh charmed his way up, but
they both got to the top—a dual celebration of Generation X’s ability to find
a place in the professional world without selling its collective soul.
 Business as Unusual

Considering the whole of Gen-X cinema’s workplace commentary, a couple

of interesting commonalties come into focus. First is yet another piece of
evidence illustrating how Gen-X cinema advances the ideology of the
cinema that came before, that of the boomer directors who changed
Hollywood forever in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. The 1970s
were memorably tagged the “Me Decade” because when boomers began to
doubt that they could change the world, they redirected their energy toward
changing themselves. That focus on the self morphed into something ugly
during the 1980s, a.k.a. the “Greed Decade.”

While these are of course gross generalizations, the trajectory drawn by

numerous pundits shows boomers giving up on social change during the
1970s, then pursuing monetary wealth—the goal, ironically, that drove the
postwar boom during which they were born—in the 1980s.

Therefore, Generation X’s self-driven attitude toward work fits into the
social continuity of the last several decades. If Gen Xers were raised to
believe that work exists only to provide money, and not to run the machinery
of society or fulfill some other noble obligation, then it follows that Gen
Xers would have a negative attitude toward work. Furthermore, if Gen Xers
observed their parents drawing empty rewards from work—if they observed
their parents’ frustration at prioritizing careers over personal fulfillment—
then it makes sense that Gen Xers would pursue gratification outside of the
workplace, seeking lives more rewarding than their parents’.

Yet another wrinkle to this generational continuity is the fact that throughout
the 1970s and 1980s, members of the boomer generation migrated away
from the traditional workplace as a reaction to the frustration under
discussion here. In one extreme, hippies started back-to-nature businesses,
joined communes, and became artists. In the opposite extreme, yuppies
became independent entrepreneurs, with the most visible examples being the
technology gurus who became millionaires and billionaires by imagining
new business opportunities suited to the Information Age. Combined with
the frustration felt by those who remained in traditional career trajectories,
the exodus of boomers into nontraditional businesses sent a message that
working for someone else—“the man,” as identified in boomer-speak—is a
soul-killer. Is it any wonder, then, that Gen Xers hit adulthood with such
confusion about, and resentment of, work?

Finally, the Gen-X attitude toward work fits into the larger issue of
Generation X’s attitude toward institutions in general. Just as many members
of this group sneer when discussing big companies and traditional career
goals, they sneer when discussing politicians, television shows, and anything
else woven into the fabric of mainstream culture. The disenfranchised
members of Generation X overflow with contempt for the institutions that
they believe make modern American life impersonal and oppressive, so
communicating that contempt is a kind of code.

The code manifests in superficial things like ironic references to pop culture,
but also in more probing things such as the snide discussions of work issues
that permeate Office Space, Clerks, Reality Bites and other films. Lacking
faith in the cold parts of modern American society is a badge of honor
among certain segments of Generation X, so when one cinematic Gen Xer
expresses that mistrust to another, it’s like two members of a private club
sharing a secret handshake. Along with irony, disrespect for traditional
careerism is part of the shorthand of Generation X.
 7
From Romance to Rape

Love and sexuality may be the topics with which Gen-X directors have
grappled in the greatest variety of ways. While their films depict a dizzying
spectrum of sexual behavior—flirtation, monogamy, homosexuality,
exhibitionism, and so on—it’s comforting and even a bit endearing to note
that despite such polemical sexual content, Gen-X depictions of love often
are as starry-eyed as those in classic Hollywood films. Although Gen Xers
came of age in an era when free love gave way to sexual paranoia, they still
see a vision of commitment and devotion through the fog of deviancy and
sexual violence that fills many of their pictures.

As does any love affair or sexual relationship, this discussion of love and
sexuality begins with the delicious joy of flirting. It’s a lost art, given that
changing social mores have led to sex getting introduced into the dating
ritual earlier every generation, so the moments in Gen-X films when
characters truly attempt to know each other before heading to bed are
precious. One good example of such an attempt is Audrey Wells’s modest
directorial debut, The Truth About Cats & Dogs, in which two characters
seduce each other over the phone; this allows the female of the would-be
couple to hide her looks, about which she is insecure. A more significant
exhibition of flirting, however, appears in Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise
—ironically, a film in which two lovers have sex on their first date.

Because American slacker Jesse and French student Céline consummate

their affair with an outdoors encounter that is played offscreen, a cynical
reading of Before Sunrise is that the characters’ long, probing conversation
is merely glorified foreplay. Their mutual attraction is palpable from the
moment they meet, so there’s something to that interpretation, but a more
generous reading is that Jesse and Céline never presume their interaction
will lead to intercourse. The depth with which they explore and challenge
each other’s beliefs proves that their wandering conversation is fueled as
much by fascination as it is by arousal. They achieve true intimacy long
before they touch each other’s bodies.

For that reason, Before Sunrise towers as one of the most poignant
statements about love in all Gen-X cinema. The ambiguous note on which
the film ends only accentuates and deepens this poignancy: Jesse and Céline
head to their respective train cars and leave Vienna in separate directions, so
it’s left to viewers to imagine if love will lead them back to each other or
merely haunt their hearts. Given the Gen-X fixation on separation—from
family, from social institutions, from each other—the images that Linklater
presents of these two lovers becoming separated are heartbreaking for
reasons above and beyond their role in the narrative.

Another couple who end up apart are Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) and Max
Cherry (Robert Forster), two compelling characters in Quentin Tarantino’s
Pulp Fiction follow-up, Jackie Brown. Although ostensibly a caper flick, the
film achieves its greatest resonance as a love story involving Jackie, a
stewardess drawn to crime so she can create opportunities that evade her in
legitimate society, and Max, the bail bondsman with whom she becomes
professionally involved. Without going into the intricacies of the plot, it’s
sufficient to say that Tarantino puts these immensely likable characters
together, and ably communicates that they find their similarities (limited
options, advancing years) much more powerful than their differences (Jackie
is black, Max white).

One of the warmest moments in the film is a throwaway bit during which
Max drives in his car and teaches himself the words to a song by the
Delfonics, a soul group to whom he was introduced by Jackie. This vignette
shows a man trying to understand something about the woman to whom he’s
attracted, and it echoes how Jesse and Céline studied each other before
advancing their relationship. Both couples comprise men and women from
different worlds, and just as their eventual separations make statements
about Gen-X disenfranchisement, the couples’ sincere endeavors to bridge
their differences make statements about the best, most tolerant, most hopeful
part of Generation X’s collective soul. Connection isn’t impossible, these
relationships say; it just occurs unexpectedly.
This same statement is reiterated again and again throughout Gen-X cinema.
Look at the affection beyond reason that bonds a hit man to the wife of his
brutal employer in Pulp Fiction, a thief to a federal marshal in Out of Sight,
and a bisexual gangster’s moll to a female ex-con in Bound. These
relationships all begin with flirtation, a notable and charming instance of
characters benefiting from Generation X’s gift of gab.

Let’s Stay Together

Flirting, if the stars line up right, leads to love, and the romantic couplings in
Before Sunrise, Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction, Out of Sight, and Bound all
seem rooted in genuine love. Yet in each of these instances, the thrill is in the
hunt: We see characters circle toward each other and perhaps join briefly, but
we’re given no assurances that their relationships will survive. So it’s
interesting to contrast the flirtation-based movies with Gen-X movies that
actually depict full-blown love affairs. Looking at such films, it becomes
clear that illusion is a fundamental element in Generation X’s vision of
committed love; just as their vision of courtship manifests in old-Hollywood
innocence, their vision of love reaches the screen as a kind of ephemeral
wish-fulfillment.

For instance, look at how Baz Luhrmann filmed William Shakespeare’s

Romeo + Juliet, the brazen adaptation that boosted the careers of Leonardo
DiCaprio and Claire Danes, the actors who incarnate the bard’s star-crossed
lovers. Previous cinematic versions of the enduring tragedy earnestly
mimicked the chronological milieu of the play (as in Franco Zefferelli’s
Romeo and Juliet) or recast it in modern terms (as in West Side Story), yet
Luhrmann’s film juxtaposes the ancient and the modern in a frenetic pop-
culture hodgepodge. The language is Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter,
minus the chunks of text Luhrmann found superfluous, but the setting is
modern: Day-Glo colors, blazing guns, pounding rock music. It’s as if
Luhrmann found Shakespeare’s theme of a love more powerful than the will
to live so archaic that it needed to be presented amid other anachronisms. So
even though his picture feels sweepingly romantic, there’s an inherent
cynicism buried in its style. By putting ancient British language in the
mouths of unmistakably modern Americans, Luhrmann forced viewers to
confront the artifice of his enterprise during every scene.

Illusion also is a pervasive theme in Neil LaBute’s Nurse Betty, the

warmhearted but edgy film with which LaBute extracted himself from the
ghetto of mysoginistic social commentary. The picture’s titular character is a
small-town waitress infatuated with David Ravell, a fictional character who
appears on her favorite soap opera. Betty Sizemore (Renée Zellweger) is
stuck in a dead-end marriage to a cad, but when her husband is brutally
murdered before her eyes, the shock shunts Betty into a semipermanent
dream state. She treks from the Midwest to Hollywood so she can join David
Ravell, whom she now believes is real. George McCord (Greg Kinnear), the
actor who plays David, mistakes Betty’s affection for a Method-style
audition, so he feeds her illusion.
Victim of love: A small-town waitress (Renée Zellweger) becomes the
object of a hit man’s affection in Neil LaBute’s oddball film about
romance and illusion, Nurse Betty (USA Films/Universal Pictures).

This setup allows LaBute to mingle several varying perceptions of what is

actually occurring. In reality, Betty is a widow stalking an actor; in George’s
mind, she’s an actress stalking a part; and in Betty’s mind, she’s connecting
with her true love. Yet another layer of illusion is the pretense that George
makes of being the kind person whom Betty imagines David Ravell to be.
The stage is set for a horrific comedown, because LaBute portrays Betty as
an almost virginal innocent who deserves the happiness that awaits her only
in fiction. Yet the filmmakers contrive a way to give Betty her sanity and her
dream, a reward for her ability to imagine a world better than the real one.

A dreamer who isn’t as fortunate is Charlie (Morgan Freeman), the hit man
who kills Betty’s husband and then chases her across America because she’s
a witness who needs to be eliminated. Charlie is impressed by Betty when he
encounters her at the beginning of the movie, and he slowly gives in to the
delusion that he and Betty will run off together. If innocence is at the heart of
Betty’s fantasy, however, evil is at the heart of Charlie’s. He’s moved into
madness because of his guilt at a life spent taking life, so he fixates on Betty
as his absolution—the prize for turning his back on murder. Just as the film
spins events to give Betty the happiness she deserves, it twists to put Charlie
into his place: the grave.

The killer’s dream was tarnished because of the life he led, the movie says,
whereas Betty’s dream is as pure as her life. However, the love that Charlie
develops for Betty is the most powerful in the film, because it forces him to
evolve into a new identity. So it’s fitting that Betty ends up alone at the end
of the film. Neither George nor Charlie deserves her, but through her
experiences with the two men, she becomes a person who deserves her own
sweet company. Betty learns to love herself, so she no longer needs any
man’s love for validation.

A much darker quest for validation is depicted in Kimberly Peirce’s

shattering Boys Don’t Cry, the true-life story of a girl who masqueraded as a
boy. Teena Brandon (Hilary Swank) has such profound gender-identification
issues that she regularly risks physical danger by dressing as the opposite
sex, under the flip-flopped name Brandon Teena, and even engaging in
physical relationships with women. Teena’s affection for women is a
complex aspect of her personality, because it illustrates that she loathes her
sexuality, not her sex; the genuine love that develops between her and Lana
(Chloe Sevigny) allows Teena to be the best man she can be. Yet while Lana
finds that she can live comfortably inside her lover’s illusion—their first
sexual encounter is a touching testament to love’s ability to make the strange
seem normal—the small-minded townsfolk with whom Teena and her
girlfriend interact are shocked into violence when they discover Teena’s
ruse.

Teena is brutally raped and murdered for her illusion, which caused no harm
other than the pain of confusion and intolerant anger. That the basic facts of
this tragic figure’s life and death were extracted from reality, instead of from
some screenwriter’s imagination, affirms why some of Generation X’s
apprehensions about modern society are anything but paranoia. Betty finds
happiness by parting ways with her illusion of love, but Teena dies horribly
for refusing to relinquish hers.

Another poignant, albeit fictional, film about illusions is Keith Gordon’s

Waking the Dead, adapted by Scott Spencer from Robert Dillon’s novel. The
picture depicts the relationship between an ambitious young politician,
Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup), and the compassionate activist he loves,
Sarah Williams (Jennifer Connelly). Echoing the imagery of the Gen-X
flirtation films, Fielding and Sarah gravitate toward each other because
they’re different: They realize they can fill in the gaps in each other’s
personas and fuse into a powerful joint entity. The depth of their bond shows
in the aching performances of Crudup and Connelly, who pull off the
difficult task of making a young couple appear to share mature love. The
intensity of the characters’ bond in seen in this exchange, prompted when
Fielding is offered a political opportunity that Sarah thinks is beneath him:

SARAH: I don’t want to watch you turn into a cog in their

machine.

FIELDING: Fucking condescending. Sometimes cogs can make

machines run a little bit better….
 SARAH: Mostly they turn in circles and wear out and they get
replaced. Come work at the church with me.

FIELDING: Oh yes, don’t work for the U.S. government. Work

for the church. Work for the people who brought us the Children’s
Crusade and the Inquisition. That’s a moral step up.

SARAH: It’s so infuriating loving you sometimes.

FIELDING: Well, the feeling’s mutual.

Gordon smartly relegates the physical aspect of the characters’ relationship

to one heated sex scene, so viewers don’t see these attractive actors entwined
until the relationship has resonance. Further deepening the movie is
hindsight: The first scene shows Fielding learning that Sarah has been killed
in a terrorist bombing, so we spend the whole movie learning what he
mourns and then feeling his bereavement with him. When visions of Sarah
start invading Fielding’s consciousness as if he’s being haunted by a ghost,
we see the visions as he does: echoes of love. The visions are yet another
manifestation of the distance that defines Gen-X existence, only this time the
disconnectedness is more poignant because it’s a reminder of lost
connectedness.

Given these loaded connotations, it’s highly ironic that Waking the Dead
takes place in the 1970s and 1980s. On a subtextual level, the film is as
much a eulogy for the idealism that suffered the killing frost of the big chill
as it is a eulogy for Sarah. Therefore, it’s inspiring that Fielding eventually
makes peace with his lost lover’s memory by embracing her dream. Even
though Fielding compromised his political idealism to win a seat in
Congress, the film ends with the implication that he’ll mature into a leader of
whom Sarah could be proud.

Sometimes love takes a less direct route than it does in Boys Don’t Cry and
Waking the Dead. While the obstacles that interrupt those affairs are
relatively distinct (social intolerance, political differences), the obstacles
separating lovers in Chuck & Buck, Chasing Amy, and Keeping the Faith are
more nettlesome.
The title characters of Chuck & Buck are successful music-industry
executive Charlie “Chuck” Sitter (played by tall, dark, and handsome Chris
Weitz) and repressed man-child Buck O’Brien (played by small, pale, and
gangly Mike White). The childhood friends were once an inseparable duo
—“Chuck and Buck”—but for reasons that Charlie would rather not discuss,
the twenty-seven-year-olds haven’t seen each other since they were eleven.
When Buck’s mother dies, the men are reunited at her funeral, but it’s
immediately clear that time has done its damage: Charlie is a slick, cold
professional engaged to sophisticated beauty Carlyn (Beth Colt), while Buck
is a dim shut-in fixated on the trappings of his childhood.

At the funeral, though, we discover that Buck may not be the innocent he
seems: He downs rum with familiar ease and casually tries to grope Charlie’s
genitals. Charlie predictably flees, but Buck pursues his childhood friend
across several states to Charlie’s home in Los Angeles. Costar White, who
also wrote the movie, takes a wonderfully direct route to showing Buck’s
inner workings. His performance lets viewers see every odd thing that passes
through Buck’s brain, whether it’s pain, longing, joy, or the staticky noise of
confusion. This conveys that Buck is fueled by pure desire—not twisted
desire, but the genuine need to connect with someone who once loved him.
That someone is Charlie, with whom Buck engaged in playful sexual activity
when the two were children.

Through a believably odd series of events, Charlie and Buck find themselves
at an impasse, because Buck can’t let go of the bond connecting him to his
friend, and Charlie has spent his life forgetting that he and Buck used to
fellate and otherwise gratify each other. The characters break this impasse
through a distinctly 1990s bargain: Charlie agrees to one more night of
physical love with his friend in exchange for getting his life back so he can
marry Carlyn. Buck even attends the wedding.

Issues of sexual identity are similarly mired in Chasing Amy, about a young
man who falls in love with a lesbian while also sorting out the loving
feelings he has toward his male roommate. (A detailed examination of
Chasing Amy appears later in this chapter.)

Finally, in Keeping the Faith, a priest and a rabbi compete for the affections
of the same woman, forcing them to address their ideas about friendship,
loyalty, religious devotion, and love. They eventually find a novel solution,
because the rabbi ends up with his true love (the woman), and the priest ends
up with his (God). The theological aspects of the film are discussed in
Chapter 10, so for now it’s sufficient to note that Keeping the Faith offers
yet another example of lovers and/or would-be lovers in a Gen-X movie
wrestling with issues that affect them on both personal and spiritual levels.

In all of these films, from William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet to Keeping

the Faith, love is presented as an otherworldly force that connects people
from different worlds, sometimes softening the friction created by difference
and sometimes revealing the glory of individuality. In the most disturbing of
these films, lovers end up apart (often because of death), but their love
remains intact. And in the most comforting of these films, lovers find ways
to stay together despite the forces pulling them apart. One set of images
speaks to the ideal of love, and the other to the reality of love. That there
sometimes is but a fine line separating the ideal from the reality is what
makes Generation X’s cinematic vision of love so fresh and young: Even at
their most cynical, these filmmakers seem to believe that some emotional
bonds can’t be broken.

With This Ring

Significantly, a key issue connecting the relationships in Waking the Dead,

Chasing Amy and other Gen-X films about powerful love relationships is
that the paramours are unmarried. Reflecting how deeply divorce changed
American families during the formative years of Generation X, filmmakers
born in this era share a vision of marriage as dark as their vision of love is
bright. Statistics ratify this assertion, as the percentage of young couples
who marry dropped substantially from 1970 to 1992. Men aged twenty to
twenty-four in 1992, for instance, were exactly half as likely to marry as
their counterparts in 1970.1

The bleakness of the marital landscape, as depicted by Gen-X filmmakers, is

epitomized by the preponderance of stories about infidelity. American
Beauty hinges on two acts of adultery: Lester’s imagined dalliances with his
daughter’s young schoolmate, and the actual tryst that Lester’s wife has with
a real-estate mogul. There even is another facet to the film’s dramatization of
extramarital sex, because Lester’s married next-door neighbor, repressed
soldier Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper), makes a sexual overture to Lester.
Combined with the images of duplicity, oppression, denial, and resentment
that pepper the film, the adultery in American Beauty conveys an idea that
marriage is a trap at best and a death sentence at worst. Significantly, Frank’s
wife (Alison Janney) is depicted as a zombie-like housefrau beaten down by
fear of confrontations with her husband.

As with everything else in the film, however, American Beauty’s vision of

wedded misery is exaggerated beyond reason. So this aspect of the movie’s
thematic statement ultimately is instructive not in literal terms, but for how it
represents the extreme of pervasive Gen-X imagery.

Neil LaBute’s brutal domestic drama Your Friends and Neighbors offers as
depressing a viewpoint as American Beauty’s. The film portrays the
interaction of several young professionals, most of whom are in committed
relationships. Despite his long-term involvement with Terri (Catherine
Keener), insufferable Jerry (Ben Stiller) becomes obsessed with bedding
Mary (Amy Brenneman), the troubled wife of his friend Barry (Aaron
Eckhart). Your Friends and Neighbors shows young people circling each
other’s romantic partners like sharks closing in for the kill, which amplifies
the American Beauty assertion that marriage is worse than meaningless, that
marriage somehow encourages infidelity. The characters in these films are
filled with a profound level of bitterness, suggesting that Gen-X filmmakers
haven’t made peace with the changes that affected the institution of marriage
during their early years.

Slightly more positive imagery is put across in Alexander Payne’s Election

and Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape, both of which show
women escaping failed marriages.

In Election, schoolteacher Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) has a midlife

crisis that leads him into the bed of his best friend’s wife, who is crushed
because her husband just committed adultery with a teenaged student. Jim’s
duplicitous ways eventually ruin his relationships with his wife and his
mistress, and he even manages to lose his job. While Payne doesn’t present
this material moralistically, his choice to show Jim suffering for his sins
reflects a sense of right and wrong that’s painfully absent from American
Beauty and Your Friends and Neighbors, in which characters are trapped in
cycles of abusive and/or self-destructive behavior.

sex, lies, and videotape offers yet another view: Although the film’s first
image of extramarital sex shows philanderer John (Peter Gallagher) sleeping
with his wife’s sister, Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo), we later see John’s
wife, Ann (Andie MacDowell), cheat on John with his college friend
Graham (James Spader). While the John-Cynthia tryst is consistent with
other dark Gen-X visions of marriage—the lovers perpetuate their
relationship to compensate for shortcomings in their personalities—the Ann-
Graham encounter is an act of liberation on Ann’s part. Even though her
intercourse with Graham affirms that she’s given up on her marriage, it
signals the beginning of a new, more loving relationship. So while sex, lies,
and videotape has as hopeless a view of marriage as other Gen-X movies, it
at least has a hopeful view of other kinds of relationships. That Ann finds
her happiness by violating her marital vows, of course, dovetails the disdain
for officially sanctioned unions that pervades Gen-X films.

Change Partners

Some of the most moving love relationships depicted in Gen-X cinema

involve same-sex partners, an interesting reflection of the fact that
alternative lifestyles achieved greater acceptance, at least by young people,
during the maturation period of Generation X. Yet Gen-X portrayals of
homosexuality are not limited to doe-eyed visions of lovers finding
soulmates by looking beyond the opposite gender. Quite to the contrary, Gen
Xers often conjure some of their most polarizing material when exploring
the myriad complexities of same-sex relations.

Perhaps the most unabashedly positive homosexual relationship in all Gen-X

cinema is the love affair between Violet (Jennifer Tilly) and Corky (Gina
Gershon) in Bound, the breakthrough film from Larry and Andy Wachowski,
the writing-directing partners whose sophomore effort, The Matrix, made
them superstars.
In Bound, a stylish caper film loaded with tricky plot twists and feverish
erotic tension, Violet is the sleek girlfriend of violent gangster Cesar (Joe
Pantaliano). In an elevator one day, she catches the eye of next-door
neighbor Corky, an ex-con with an overflow of edgy attitude. When Violet
reveals that she reciprocates Corky’s attraction, it’s not immediately clear
whether her overture is genuine or a manipulation to get Corky involved in a
crooked scheme. Even after the two share powerful sexual encounters,
Corky remains unconvinced of her new lover’s devotion, but the relationship
finally is ratified when Cesar uncovers the scheme that Violet cooked up
with Corky. The lovers have to rely on each other to extricate themselves
from terrible trouble, and their shared adventure reveals the depth of their
bond.

The movie ends with Corky and Violet driving off into the metaphorical
sunset together, and the filmmakers slyly amplify that the women are joined
by several layers of rebellion: They beat the mob at its own crooked game,
they wiggled Violet free from her stifling relationship, and their love is a
celebration of the freedom to defy conventional societal expectations. So
while the Wachowskis may have presented this love affair in order to
produce lurid imagery and surprising plot developments, they also conjured
a potent testament to the power that love has to help people overcome
obstacles in order to find meaningful companionship. Bound is in some ways
a cynical movie, because it’s a dark crime picture punctuated by grotesque
violence and vicious betrayal, but it’s also an optimistic movie because of its
sweet attitude toward the commitment shared by the two women.

As noted earlier, Boys Don’t Cry also features an extremely positive vision
of same-sex love. In fact, the manner in which dreamy small-town girl Lana
embraces the confusing gender identity of her significant other conveys the
idea that love can surpass gender entirely. Intolerance intrudes on that union
to devastating effect, of course, proving that not every pocket of modern
American society has matured to the point of accepting truly unconventional
unions. Gen-X filmmakers, however, are mostly accepting of such unions, to
the extent that homophobic characters are vilified throughout their films. But
because casting aspersions on the intolerant is hardly a new idea in
American cinema, it’s more instructive to note Gen-X depictions of
homosexuality that are complicated and even contradictory.
Chuck & Buck and Chasing Amy immediately come to mind, because both
films involve romantic pursuits that are frustrated by sexual preferences.
When viewers of Chuck & Buck realize that all Buck wants to do is revisit
the only love he has known—in a sense, to validate that he can be loved—
his quest seems more innocent than salacious. By the end of the movie, Buck
seems more like a willful, self-possessed adult looking for closure than a
deranged stalker fixating on an old acquaintance. The reading of Buck as an
actualized person instead of a misguided freak is given additional credibility
by the climax of the film, when Charlie makes the offer to sleep with Buck
one last time.

The setup for the sexual encounter is painful to watch, because it seems as if
Charlie is betraying his own identity in a bitter compromise, but during the
halting overtures of the encounter that we actually see, the genuine love
between the two men is finally apparent. Buck needed this moment to
remind himself of his own worth, and Charlie needed it for the same reason:
What kind of man am I, he seems to ask, if I turn my back on such pure
devotion? So Chuck & Buck ultimately is a universal love story that happens
to involve two men. Homosexuality is embedded in the fabric of the film, so
the statement the movie makes about tolerance, understanding, and identity
is impossible to miss. But the statement is relevant to lovers of any gender or
preference.

Chasing Amy offers a more confused view of modern romance, specifically a

triangle involving two straight people and a homosexual. When appealing
lesbian Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams) catches the fancy of fellow
comic-book creator Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck), the attraction causes
complications in Holden’s relationship with his best friend, homophobic
Banky Edwards (Jason Lee). Holden falls in love with Alyssa and tries to
advance their relationship to the physical plane, but his desires are stymied
by Alyssa’s sexual preference and also, surprisingly, by the tug of Holden’s
friendship with Banky. These three characters find themselves pushed apart
by the very forces that draw them together, so their three-way interaction
leads to an impasse similar to the one reached by Charlie and Buck.
With a twist: A young lesbian (Joey Lauren Adams) questions her
identity when a fellow comic-book creator (Ben Affleck) falls in love
with her in Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy (Miramax Films).

Exasperated by his friends’ inability to get past their hang-ups about each
other, Holden stuns them to silence by suggesting that they all sleep together.
Banky meekly admits that he’s open to the idea—revealing that his anti-gay
posturing is a macho act—but Alyssa is rightly offended by the insulting
proposal. Writer-director Kevin Smith plays into a cliché by having Banky
reveal closeted homosexual inclinations, but smartly derails the
sensationalistic possibilities of the scene with Alyssa’s angry refusal.

Chasing Amy is a frustrating movie because while it seems to be a thoughtful

investigation of modern sexuality—in one bold scene, Alyssa and Banky
spout shockingly graphic dialogue while comparing notes about their
experiences with cunnilingus—it ultimately lacks the depth needed to
advance it past the level of an interesting experiment. For instance, after
Alyssa gives a stirring speech to Holden about how agreeing to sleep with
him would represent a betrayal of her identity, she inexplicably betrays her
identity by agreeing to sleep with him. Smith undoes this narrative
inconsistency by ending the movie with the lovers apart (a year after
Holden’s indecent proposal, we see that Alyssa is involved with a woman),
but his infatuation with vulgar descriptions of sexual behavior suggests that
his interest in alternative lifestyles is more puerile than intellectual.

The sexual politics created by the prevalence of open homosexuality also are
explored in such films as Boogie Nights and 54, both of which depict painful
confrontations between straight and homosexual characters. And Boogie
Nights director Paul Thomas Anderson portrayed poignant same-sex passion
again in Magnolia, through the unrequited love that a former quiz-show
champion feels for a hunky bartender. In all of these films, Gen-X directors
confront head-on the fact that the sexual landscape of the modern age is
vastly different from that inhabited by their predecessors, if only because
alternative lifestyles are discussed in full voice instead of a whisper.

That full voice, however, sometimes becomes an angry howl—for not every
member of American society has rolled with the changes in attitudes toward
sex. In Magnolia, Tom Cruise edgily satirizes his stature as an icon of male
virility by playing a self-help guru who teaches men to reclaim their roles as
the dominant members of society—with the help of his “Seduce and
Destroy” program. In harsh, lurid language, Frank T. J. Mackey (Cruise)
mesmerizes an audience of men who believe themselves emasculated by the
empowerment of women:

FRANK: Respect the cock—and tame the cunt! Tame it. Take it on
with the skills that I will teach you … and say “No! You will not
control me. No! You will not take my soul. No! You will not win
this game.” Because it is a game, guys—you want to think it’s not,
you go back to the schoolyard, you have that crush on big-titted
Mary Jane. Respect the cock. You are embedding this thought: “I
am the one who’s in charge. I am the one who says ‘Yes.’ ‘No.’
‘Now.’ ‘Here.’ ” Because it’s universal, man, it is evolutional, it is
anthropological, it is biological, it is animal. We are men!
 A Matter of Hate

Taking the sexual rage of Magnolia a step further is the most brutal scene in
Your Friends and Neighbors, an extended monologue by serial philanderer
Cary (Jason Patric). Throughout the picture, he trumpets his violently
misogynist philosophy, in which women are merely receptacles for the anger
he fires out of his body during sex like bullets from a gun. So when Cary
retires for a sauna with two male buddies, viewers are braced for another
barrage of masculine anger. Yet when the conversation turns to nostalgic
boasting—each man is asked to recall his greatest sexual rapture—Cary
unveils a secret facet of his personality that’s even more disturbing than his
predilection for shallow encounters.

With steadily building intensity, Cary recalls every loving detail of a gang
rape he participated in during his younger years. While his revelation that his
victim was a man adds shock value to the scene, his target’s gender
ultimately is immaterial: The point of the scene is that Cary experienced the
most intense orgasm of his life while brutally attacking someone. The level
of his depravity is underlined when Cary describes how he felt his victim
reciprocate the motion of his rape. This monstrous character is so drunk on
sexual power that he believes the moment when his violence took its purest
form actually was the moment when he enjoyed his truest sexual
communion.

While sexual predators such as Cary are not unique to any particular time,
the context in which viewers meet him is utterly contemporary. Cary exists
in a historical moment when changing gender roles, the growing acceptance
of homosexuality, and the deepening understanding of the relationship
between psychology and sexuality has freed sexual identity from the
shackles of traditional stereotypes. In this context, Cary’s intertwining of
violence and sexuality is a bastardization of the alternative lifestyles that
make modern society so rich. He is a horrific example of what happens when
someone with evil in his heart is cut free of traditional morals, because he
mistakes the freedom and illumination of modern society as a license to
behave not just differently, but abominably.
And while Cary could have existed at any time—as history sadly proves,
beasts of his ilk have plagued the world for centuries—the friends who listen
to the stories of his rape and other vile encounters are contemporary.
Discombobulated by shifts in mores, the friends also are exploring sexual
satisfaction through illicit means (namely infidelity), so they consider
themselves to be in no position to judge Cary. Like the one he wrote for his
disturbing debut film, In the Company of Men, LaBute’s script for Your
Friends and Neighbors portrays the modern sexual landscape as a barren
desert with precious few oases of moral certainty.

Similar thematic material appears in Boys Don’t Cry and Boogie Nights,
which depict how particular kinds of people feel threatened by particular
kinds of sexuality. The intolerant white-trash men in Boys Don’t Cry who
respond to Teena’s transvestitism by raping her, in the vilest possible way
forcing her to acknowledge her “true” gender identity, also underline their
own tenuous grasps on sexual identity. In fact, the truest sign that Teena’s
progressive persona represents a threat to these small-minded hooligans is
the coda to the rape: The attackers kill Teena, destroying that which they
can’t understand.

A similar sexual assault occurs toward the end of Boogie Nights. After
monumentally endowed Dirk Diggler’s career as a porn star has run its
course, he ends up turning tricks for money, just as he did before movies
made him famous. In a profoundly sad scene, we watch Dirk frantically
masturbate while a john waits for Dirk to conjure an erection. When he
can’t, the john explodes in homophobic anger, summoning several buddies
to help him assault the fallen star while he’s literally and figuratively
exposed.

Sex is used as a weapon in a different way in The Contender, Rod Lurie’s

political drama about a woman nominated for the office of vice president of
the United States. When Senator Laine Hansen (Joan Allen) gets the nod
from liberal Democrat President Jackson Evans (Jeff Bridges), it puts right-
wing extremists on the defensive, and the most virulent of their number,
Congressman Shelly Runyon (Gary Oldman), dredges up evidence
suggesting that Laine participated in public group sex while in college. Lurie
luridly showcases images of a young woman sandwiched between two men,
and these photographs spark a brutal debate between Laine, who refuses to
dignify the scandal by acknowledging or denying that she’s the woman in
the pictures, and Shelly, who fixates on the sex act as proof that Laine—and,
by extension, women in general—are unfit for such high office.

In one of the film’s most telling bits, Laine comes face-to-face with Shelly,
who pompously declares that the sex act depicted in the pictures is
“deviant.” She retorts by asking whose values were used to make that
determination, and he bluntly announces that his own morals are sufficient to
determine what is and isn’t acceptable. This encounter epitomizes the
slippery slope on which people with conservative values often find
themselves in contemporary society: Snap judgments and restrictive
definitions simply don’t mesh with how the parameters of socially
acceptable behavior changed at the end the of the twentieth century. One
person’s experimentation is another’s deviancy, so who’s to say what’s right
or wrong?

Characters like Shelly may see group sex as the first step down a ladder that
leads to inhuman behavior like that described by Cary in Your Friends and
Neighbors, but isn’t Shelly’s intolerance the first step down the ladder
leading to the murder of “different” people like Teena Brandon?
 8
Uncomfortably Numb

Whereas Boys Don’t Cry and Your Friends and Neighbors depict one
terrifying intersection of sexuality and criminality, a pair of powerful films
about drugs show another such intersection. In Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem
for a Dream and Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, young women strung out by
addiction trade sex for controlled substances. These desperate exchanges are
part of complex and occasionally contradictory discourse about controlled
substances that runs through Gen-X movies, reflecting how attitudes toward
drugs have changed in the lifetime of Generation X.

At the time illegal drugs became a pervasive part of youth culture in the
1960s and 1970s, the cinema had a spotty record of addressing drug use on
screen. Movies such as 1955’s The Man With the Golden Arm explored
addiction to hard drugs with almost hysterical intensity, and that particular
movie caused something of a scandal by attacking a taboo subject head-on.
Yet by the dawn of boomer-oriented cinema, controlled substances were
virtually a required narrative component: Movies from Easy Rider to The
French Connection to Lady Sings the Blues are inextricably tied to the drug
trade. And in a huge leap from the traditional, ultra-cautionary depiction of
drugs, some boomer movies depict the use of “innocent” mind-altering
substances, notably marijuana, as an innocuous form of adult recreation.
While movies of this period still cast a horrified eye on the blight of heroin
and other hard drugs, the relaxed attitude toward recreational drug use that
permeated boomer cinema was a sure sign that times had changed.

Times changed back again before Gen Xers got their first chances to explore
drug use onscreen, however, because conservative politicians of the 1980s
initiated a costly and largely ineffective war on drugs. The drug war,
accompanied by such comical spectacles as First Lady Nancy Reagan’s
pervasive “Just Say No” ad campaign, created a climate in which drug use
was demonized in public even as it was embraced in private. Cocaine in
particular become a fashionable indulgence in the 1980s, and its rise is a
critical story element in such Gen-X films as Boogie Nights and Blow.

Yet not long after America’s most powerful elected officials (and their
spouses) committed themselves to fighting drugs, a presidential candidate
danced around the facts of his own drug experimentation. In his 1991-1992
campaign, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton made headlines by
acknowledging that he had tried pot, but hadn’t “inhaled.” Opponents tried
to turn Clinton’s alleged drug use into a talking point, but by the early 1990s,
marijuana seemed so tame compared to heroin, cocaine, and other lethal
drugs that the issue became more of a joke than a controversy.

Whether he inhaled or not, Clinton became the first president to openly

admit experimenting with illegal drugs, making him symbolic of America’s
paradoxical relationship with controlled substances. The nation’s highest
official, and thus the guiding force behind America’s war on drugs, was
himself a past drug user—albeit a casual partaker given to equivocating the
nature of his experimentation. Within this context, it makes perfect sense
that Gen Xers find the demonization of drug users and peddlers highly
hypocritical and best avoided altogether. So while Gen Xers often make
powerful statements about drug-related issues, such statements are generally
devoid of moral absolutes—and instead suffused with moral uncertainty.

Generation X’s perspective on illegal drugs was informed by more than the
discourse of politicians, of course. The Pandora’s box that the boomers
opened by embracing a variety of controlled substances as recreational drugs
stayed open once the next generation came of age. Author Geoffrey T. Holtz,
in his study of the societal factors that define Generation X, reported that
alcohol and drug use increased dramatically among youths during the
generation’s formative years, and he offered some possible explanations for
the phenomenon. Reiterating the now-familiar factors that forced Gen Xers
to grow up quickly, Holtz argued that Gen Xers “simply assumed some of
the adult prerogatives that went along with their adult obligations. Just as
many adults seek relief from the stresses of life in drugs or alcohol, so did a
growing number of [Gen Xers]. They were just compelled to make these
choices at a much younger age.”1 This reality is reflected in pictures such as
Boaz Yakin’s Fresh, which tells the story of a twelve-year-old drug dealer.
Concurrent with their voluntary embrace of alcohol and illegal drugs, Gen
Xers had the unfortunate distinction of being the most medicated youths in
American history, because legal drugs such as Ritalin were widely
prescribed throughout the 1970s and beyond to curb “difficult” behavior in
children. As Holtz bitterly observed, this was one more example of adults
prioritizing convenience over the welfare of nascent Gen Xers, so the idea of
doping children who require special attention is not far removed from the
idea of refusing to fail students who do poorly in school: In both trends,
children are treated as assembly-line products to be passed into adulthood as
quickly, and with as little effort, as possible.

“Thus, for all intents and purposes,” Holtz wrote, “between 3 and 4 million
[Gen-X] children were given sedatives simply to make them more compliant
in the classroom, or because their behavior was outside of some ideal that a
particular adult desired.”2

Since they were raised in a time during which illegal drugs were openly
embraced throughout numerous pockets of mainstream culture, and during
which legal drugs were employed as an ancillary to the nurturing process, is
it any wonder that Generation X grew up poised to experiment with
controlled substances, and suspicious that anyone who told them they
shouldn’t was just another hypocrite?

Party Favors

The dangerously casual attitude toward drugs that appears in several Gen-X
movies is the most shocking aspect of Doug Liman’s Go, an exuberant
adventure that stops just short of endorsing drugs as a hobby. The fast-
moving, cheeky picture follows a handful of young characters whose lives
intersect during one wild night, and typical of the youths populating the film
is Ronna (Sarah Polley), a grocery clerk who stumbles into moonlighting as
a drug dealer. Among her adventures: She kills time at the grocery store by
smoking and doing drugs in the store’s freezer section; she leaves her friend
Claire (Katie Holmes) at the home of an edgy dealer as collateral until she
can pay off her drug debt; and she snows several gullible youths by selling
them allergy medicine and chewable aspirin while telling them the tablets
are ecstasy. Drug use is played for laughs throughout the movie—as in a
scene of stoned youth imagining that a cat projects the words “I can hear
your thoughts” into his mind through telepathy—and even the sporadic
flashes of violence in the film fail to add much gravity to the story. Go
makes selling and using drugs look like a cheap thrill with bothersome
repercussions that can be avoided with a little ingenuity and patience.

Liman’s inspiration probably was Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, which

similarly tracks several lives that intersect because of criminal activity—and
which contains perhaps the most notorious drug sequence in all Gen-X
cinema. The sequence begins when hip hit man Vincent Vega (John
Travolta) gets assigned to entertain Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) for an
evening; Mia, importantly, is the wife of Vincent’s violence-prone employer.
Before Vincent even sees her, viewers watch Mia blast a line of coke up her
nose, which explains the bouncy energy with which she enchants the
comparatively laconic Vincent. Over the course of an evening of dining and
dancing, the two bond share a string of pop-culture-laden exchanges and
sweetly intimate revelations. Mia keeps the party moving with a steady
supply of the drug that novelist Jay McInerney once described as “Bolivian
marching powder.”

But just as the pleasant evening is due to conclude, Mia discovers a bag of
white powder in Vincent’s jacket while he’s in the bathroom. Unaware that it
actually is heroin, she snorts the stuff and immediately stumbles into deadly
toxic shock. Vincent discovers her and is overwhelmed with panic that he’ll
take the blame for the death of his boss’s wife, so he rushes her to the home
of his wasteoid drug dealer, Lance (Eric Stoltz). Lance produces a monstrous
hypodermic needle filled with adrenaline, then indicates what needs to be
done, so Vincent steels his nerves to oblige—by punching the needle through
Mia’s chest and into her heart with the force of a maniac attacking a victim
with a butcher knife.

The desperate attempt succeeds, and after recovering their composure, Mia
and Vincent agree to treat the incident the way mischievous children hide
their misdeeds—they go their separate ways and swear not to tell Mia’s
husband about what happened. While this scene has an undeniable
cautionary aspect, it also uses drugs to elevate the bond between two
characters. Their shared adventure is precious because it was illegal and
nearly fatal—making the bond between Mia and Vincent the same that joins
the characters in Go, who walk away unscathed after sharing a thrilling
misadventure.

The cautionary aspect of Generation X’s depiction of drugs is more

prominent in Boogie Nights, which shows characters destroying their lives
through the use of controlled substances. Amber Waves (Julianne Moore),
the matriarch of the movie’s surrogate family of porn stars and filmmakers,
has a debilitating cocaine addiction that fits perfectly with the narrative’s
time frame, because she’s at the forefront of hedonistic culture in the 1970s
and 1980s, the period during which cocaine’s popularity surged.

In a key scene, she sits around snorting coke with Rollergirl (Heather
Graham), the damaged young woman who has become a star in the skin
flicks made by Amber’s companion, director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds).
As the distraught Amber gets more and more jazzed by the dope in her
system, she laments that she’s separated from Andrew, the child of her
previous relationship. Amber says that if she isn’t a mother, she’s nothing, so
Rollergirl picks up the mood by asking Amber to be her “mom.”

Just a few scenes later, Amber goes court for custody of Andrew, and loses
her case because she’s a porn star with a long arrest record stemming from
her involvement in drugs and prostitution. Perhaps the saddest instant in the
short, painful hearing scene is when Amber sincerely declares that she
doesn’t do drugs, even though we saw her fill her nose with coke just a few
screen minutes previous.

Later in the movie, drugs cost a character more than visitation rights. The
film’s protagonist is porn star Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg), who by the
mid–’80s finds his career prospects so limited that he segues from acting to
dealing drugs. Dirk and a buddy hook up with edgy crook Todd Parker
(Thomas Jane), who involves them in a deal to sell drugs to a manic playboy
named Rahad Jackson (Alfred Molina). Even worse, Todd persuades them to
substitute innocuous white powder for the dope, meaning they have to grab
Rahad’s cash and flee before he discovers their ruse. The would-be players
arrive at Rahad’s home to find him wired on freebased coke, and the
situation goes south when Todd tries to turn the deal into an armed robbery.
Shots are fired and Todd gets killed, but Dirk escapes with his life and the
realization that compared to selling drugs, sleeping with women on film is a
safe way to make a living.

Amber’s legal defeat and Dirk’s near-death experience both underline how
the drug trade became a more serious business in the late 1970s and early
1980s, and how the wise figured out that it was time to get out of the game.
Ted Demme explored the root causes of this shift in Blow, his glossy biopic
of George Jung, the American dealer who helped bring South American
cocaine to the United States in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In fact,
Demme’s film is a travelogue of young America’s relationship with drugs
that spans most of the counterculture era.

Early in the movie, George (Johnny Depp) moves from the Northeast to
California and hooks up with a flamboyant pot supplier, Derek Foreal (Paul
Reubens). Fueled by his enthusiasm for grass and his burning ambition to
make a quick buck, George quickly becomes a successful dealer on the West
Coast, then strikes upon the idea of sending dope back home to the
Northeast. His enterprise eventually grows to include illicit flights from
Mexico, where George scores huge mounds of pot that he then sells in
America, and everything seems to go swimmingly until George gets busted.

In prison, however, the dope mogul is tossed in a cell with Colombian drug
peddler Diego Delgado (Jordi Mollà), who fatefully introduces George to
infamous Colombian drug czar Pablo Escobar (Cliff Curtis). Undeterred by
his stint in prison and the violence of which he knows Pablo is capable,
George becomes Pablo’s American connection—and such a powerful
supplier of cocaine that he claims at one point to import nearly all of the
coke used in the United States at the height of the drug’s popularity.
Taking a powder: One of several Gen-X movies about illegal drugs, Ted
Demme’s Blow stars Johnny Depp (left, with Jordi Mollà) as a rich
cocaine dealer (New Line Cinema).

In keeping with the cautionary but not necessarily moralistic depiction of

drugs in other Gen-X movies, George pays for his hubris by losing his
relationship with a beautiful Colombian woman, and by getting separated
from his beloved daughter. At the end of the movie, an unrepentant George
rots in jail as a lonely old man who has been betrayed or abandoned by
almost everyone he ever loved. Yet he doesn’t seem to regret the life he
chose or the damage he wrought by choosing that life—instead, he regrets
getting caught.

This distinction feels especially murky because Demme and his

collaborators mostly gloss over the effects of George’s smuggling. Blow
focuses obsessively on George’s trajectory, so we don’t see the countless
lives that were ruined because of how George and his cronies made an
enticing drug readily available, and we don’t see much of the violence that
punctuates the relationships between drug suppliers, peddlers, and users. In
fact, it’s easy to walk out of Blow with the impression that George is some
kind of tragic figure doomed by foolish choices that resulted from a
tumultuous childhood. That whitewash approach tarnishes the whole film,
turning what could have been a powerful historical snapshot into a
dangerously naive love letter to a scumbag.

Casualties of War

Whereas Demme’s Blow misses the mark by taking a microcosmic view of a

massive societal ill, Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic achieves the opposite result
by taking the opposite tack. A sprawling, multi-character epic adapted from
a British miniseries called Traffik, and written for the screen by recovering
drug addict Steven Gaghan (who won an Oscar for his endeavors),
Soderbergh’s movie encompasses a dizzying number of perspectives to show
that everyone involved in the drug trade—manufacturers, sellers, users, even
soldiers in the so-called war on drugs—wrestles with the same thorny issues.
Soderbergh also puts across the powerful argument that the war on drugs is
destined for failure, not just because the enemy has deeper pockets and
fewer scruples, but because fighting drug manufacturers and sellers in effect
translates to fighting drug users—whom, the movie argues, are victims as
well as culprits.

Soderbergh democratically doles out screen time to all of his memorable

characters, but two particular figures occupy the heart of the story. The
traditional hero is Ohio Supreme Court Judge Robert Wakefield (Michael
Douglas), recently appointed as America’s new drug czar. He represents
America as a babe in the woods: Even though he talks a hard line about
arresting the flow of illegal drugs into the country, he’s oblivious to the
deadly drug use taking place under his roof. His willful teenage daughter,
Caroline (Erika Christensen), regularly snorts and smokes and shoots drugs
with her idly rich prep-school friends. The metaphor that America, as
personified by Robert, is ignorant of internal problems but quick to blame
other countries, specifically Mexico, is among the film’s most heavy-handed
elements—but also among its most crucial statements.

The other key character is a small-time, corrupt Mexican state policeman,

Javier Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro). At the beginning of the story, he’s
content exploiting the drug trade for a payoff here, a payoff there; as one
character says, “Law enforcement in Mexico is an entrepreneurial
enterprise.” But when Javier gets caught up in a complex intrigue involving
his country’s leading anti-drug warrior and a pair of warring cocaine cartels,
the policeman realizes the human cost of helping to maintain the status quo.

Robert’s journey slams home a damning point about America’s ass-

backwards approach to drugs, but Javier’s has tremendous impact on a
human level. These stories—and others involving a blithe rich wife
(Catherine Zeta-Jones) whose husband is busted for smuggling dope, and a
pair of casually competent FBI agents (Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman)
assigned to snare and then protect a key witness—were designed to make
viewers consider drugs in a new way. The filmmakers lay out reasons why
politics, corruption, and money make even the United States’ most valiant
efforts to stem drug traffic laughably insufficient, then try to show that
compassion and intervention can cure more ills than seizures and arrests.

After the film was released, Gaghan explained in an interview why his own
experiences with drugs informed his decision to write the Americanized
version of the story:

Part of the recovery process is a commitment to truth, and I began

to feel that I was not being truthful. The stigma and shame of drug
addiction is part of what makes it difficult for people to raise their
hand and ask for help, and I felt that by not being completely
honest I was, in a way, perpetuating that stigma…. If there is a
message to the movie, I guess it’s that drugs should be a health
care issue rather than a criminal issue.3

Interestingly, the most powerful Gen-X movie about drugs also is in some
ways the most traditional. For while the style of Aronofsky’s Requiem for a
Dream is utterly contemporary—certain aspects of the director’s frenetic
storytelling are even ahead of their time—the content of the film is an
intense morality tale almost in the mode of such antiquated films as The Man
With the Golden Arm.

Caught in the crossfire: Catherine Zeta-Jones plays a pampered

socialite who discovers her husband is a drug dealer in Traffic, for
which Steven Soderbergh won a Best Director Oscar (USA Films).

Writ large, the movie simply says that drugs will kill or nearly kill you, but
the devil here is very much in the details. Adapted from a novel by Hubert
Selby, Jr., the movie explores the impact of both legal and illegal drugs on a
spectrum of characters, and the delicate way that Aronofsky balances scenes
showing his characters’ complicity in their own fates with scenes suggesting
that the characters are doomed by social factors adds layers of complexity to
his generally straightforward narrative. More importantly, the power of
Aronofsky’s filmmaking and the unflinching bleakness of Selby’s story
converge in a cinematic assault that’s painful to experience.
Requiem for a Dream is a symphony of despair: Characters spiral downward
because of their addictions to street and prescription drugs, descending into
degradation, madness, and physical deterioration. The movie features d.t.’s,
infected veins, drug-induced hypertension, sex traded for money, and
terrifying hallucinations, all of which are made even more intense by
Aronofsky’s signature “hiphop montages,” super-quick sequences that slam
images and sounds at viewers with the force and momentum of aggressive
music. The director also employs sped-up camerawork, ultra-fast editing,
and disassociated images, all of which make the storytelling confusing and
abrasive.

Despite—or, more likely, because of—the director’s confrontational

approach, Requiem for a Dream often has the impact of a fist to the face.
The most arresting story line involves urban widow Sara Goldfarb (Ellen
Burstyn), a virtual shut-in who becomes obsessed with appearing on her
favorite game show. She starts using diet pills to slim her aging figure for the
television appearance, but careless doctors overprescribe the drugs—and
then over-prescribe drugs meant to bring her down from the diet pills. Sara
becomes shaky, paranoid, delusional, and deranged, all in hopeless solitude
because her beloved son (Jared Leto) is caught in his own cycle of drug
abuse. In her darkest moment, she’s a frazzled, emaciated asylum inmate
getting blasted with electroshock therapy—at roughly the same time that her
dear son has a drug-destroyed arm amputated. Showing the pain experienced
by Sara, a comparative innocent, puts the rigors of life among drug dealers
such as her son in a new context: All are damned to horrific fates because
they use drugs as a short cut on their journeys toward humble dreams.

The gap between drug scenes played for thrills, like Mia’s overdose in Pulp
Fiction, and those played for chills, like Sara’s psychological derailment, is
huge—and indicative of how hard it sometimes is for Gen-X directors to
find a clear path in the wilds of contemporary culture. Just when it seems
that an answer presents itself, as in the Traffic assertion that treatment is
more humane than arresting drug users, an opposing view emerges. For
surely aggressive means are required to help the victims of Requiem of a
Dream, at least one of whom gets her fix not from a street pusher, but from a
neighborhood pharmacist. “What the film is about,” Aronofsky noted in an
interview, “is the lengths we will go to escape our reality.”4
Given that the central theme of the cinema of Generation X is the question of
how a generation raised amid historical turmoil can find a place for itself in a
vastly changed society, the simplicity of Aronofsky’s comment speaks
volumes. In the context of other Gen-X movies, the reckless dive into
oblivion made by the characters in Requiem for a Dream is a sadly
resounding extension of slackerdom, workplace rebellion, and the myriad
other means by which Gen-X characters respond to the chaos of modern
society by extracting themselves from it. The logical next step beyond hard
drugs, of course, is suicide, and statistics bear out that vast numbers of Gen
Xers have made that final leap.

The Final Farewell

Suicide is not a prevalent theme in Gen-X cinema, but a few pointed

depictions reflect the dark fact that suicide has been a fact of life for
American teenagers throughout the years of Generation X’s existence. In
fact, the numbers of youths who choose this unreversable solution to their
problems has steadily increased since the early 1960s, when the first Gen
Xers were born. In 1960, 10 of every 100,000 American men between the
ages of twenty and twenty-four took their lives; by 1980, that number had
more than doubled to 25 of every 100,000 men in this age group.5

David Fincher and Paul Thomas Anderson have featured suicide in at least
two films each. Fincher’s debut feature, the third installment of the popular
sci-fi/horror Alien series, memorably concluded with long-suffering
protagonist Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) throwing herself into a vat of
super-heated ore to kill the monster growing inside her body. And Fincher’s
The Game climaxed with the image of a beleaguered businessman (Michael
Douglas) throwing himself off a building because he believed he had just
killed his brother. The businessman’s death was prevented with an airbag,
and the brother’s death had been faked, but the shock of the imagery
resonanted. (Whether it manifests as suicide or otherwise, martyrdom is a
recurring theme in Fincher’s work: The death of his young wife prompts a
principled cop to become a killer in Seven, and the death of a beloved
colleague prompts a cult to new levels of violent anarchy in Fight Club.)
In Boogie Nights, Anderson depicted a cuckolded husband (William H.
Macy) walking into a room where his wife was having sex with another
man. The husband shoots both lovers to death before putting the gun into his
own mouth and pulling the trigger. And in Anderson’s Magnolia, a
depressed trophy wife tries to deaden her pain by downing a massive amount
of prescription drugs and then settling into a car so she can choke on exhaust
fumes.

In all of these films, however, the suicide attempts are outgrowths of other
story material, so the most significant Gen-X films about characters taking
their own lives, or trying to, are those that both forefront suicide and explore
its causes. One such movie is James Mangold’s Girl, Interrupted, a sterile
but interesting adaptation of Susannah Kaysen’s memoir of her 1960s tenure
in a psychiatric ward. In the film, Susannah (Winona Ryder), is a poor little
rich girl who takes a near-fatal overdose of pills. Her parents commit her to a
mental-health facility in the hopes their her self-destructive tendencies will
be curbed. Although she is chronologically a boomer, Susannah’s journey
reflects trends that had a tremendous impact on Generation X: Her parents
essentially wash their hands of her when she becomes “difficult,” and once
Susannah is hospitalized, she’s forced to take medication that her doctors
hope will “normalize” her behavior.

During her long stay in the hospital, Susannah befriends several fellow
patients, most of whom suffer from afflictions far more crippling than her
own rampant neuroses. Mangold resorts to clichés familiar from such films
as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and generally treads so softly that
Susannah’s time at the hospital sometimes seems like a summer at camp. Yet
the film has several passages of sensitivity and power, particularly a vignette
during which Susannah and her freespiritied acquaintance Lisa (Angelina
Jolie) visit a fellow patient who was released and now lives in her own
apartment. As the passive Susannah watches, Lisa torments the fragile Daisy
(Brittany Murphy), who responds to the abuse and other factors by killing
herself while her guests sleep one floor below her.

The moment starts Susannah toward an epiphany, but in the superficial

language of the film’s narration (spoken by Ryder as Susannah), her
breakthrough comes out like this: “Seeing death—really seeing it—makes
dreaming about it fucking ridiculous.” While blunt and even a bit flip, this
line nonetheless reveals an important truth: Suicide was so familiar to youths
of the 1960s and beyond that it was possible for teenagers, and even
children, of these eras to entertain notions of taking their own lives without
any real concept of what such a choice entails. Like anything else that once
was a taboo subject, suicide lost some of its stigma when it became
commonplace, and therefore became a dangerously approachable concept.

Just as the issues about suicide that pervade Girl, Interrupted have a
significance that spans two generations, so too does the strange fact that
Susannah elects to stay hospitalized for several months after learning that
she has the option to leave whenever she wants to. In the following dialogue
spoken by one of Susannah’s psychiatrists, the no-nonsense Dr. Wick
(Vanessa Redgrave), note the echoes of behavior that is generally thought to
be the province of contemporary slackers:

DR. WICK: It’s a big question you’re faced with, Susannah. The
choice of your life. How much will you indulge in your flaws?
What are your flaws? Are there flaws? If you embrace them, will
you commit yourself to hospital for life? Big questions, big
decisions. Not surprising you profess carelessness about them.

If Girl, Interrupted suffers from flat storytelling and superficiality, it isn’t for
lack of trying on the part of producer-star Ryder, who was instrumental in
bringing the story to the screen. Like Traffic screenwriter Stephen Gaghan,
Ryder had a personal connection to the story she helped tell, and the
revelations she made when promoting Girl, Interrupted add resonance to her
portrayal even as they exemplify the painful difficulties that so many Gen
Xers have when trying to grapple with the realities of modern life.

I’ve never been a suicidal person, but there have definitely been
times when I’ve thought, I’m too sensitive for this world right
now; I just don’t belong here—it’s too fast and I don’t understand
it. Those were times when I would hibernate. And it wasn’t
healthy—I would get very lonely and very helpless…. I spent
some time in a psychiatric ward when I was nineteen. I really
thought that I was losing my mind. I’ve always been an insomniac,
and I was really, really overworked and overtired and not sleeping.
I was convinced I was having a nervous breakdown, and I checked
 myself in…. I debated whether to talk about it, but it is true, and
I’m not really ashamed of it. I think everybody goes through these
times in their lives—I think you’re very weird if you don’t.6

So far, the most evocative Gen-X expression of the formless angst that can
lead teens to end their lives was seen in Sofia Coppola’s debut film, The
Virgin Suicides—which takes a uniquely Gen-X approach to its subject
matter by preventing viewers from penetrating the psyches of its doomed
characters. Coppola shows viewers some of the external factors that make
five fictional sisters venture into oblivion, but she lets the characters retain
their mystery.

Judging from the opaque, almost dreamlike quality of the film’s storytelling,
it seems as if Coppola wanted to do more than offer a movie-of-the-week
answer to a widespread social affliction. She apparently wanted to present
suicide as part of the confusing haze of American adolescence, in which
hormones and rebellion butt against the parameters of neatly ordered
suburban life. The movie’s trancelike beauty sucks viewers into the dark
milieu of its characters, in effect drawing the audience into a deadly
emotional whirlpool.

Set in 1970s Michigan, the film begins when Cecilia Lisbon (Hanna Hall),
one of five girls living with their parents in the affluent Detroit suburb of
Grosse Pointe, tries to kill herself by slashing her wrists. The near-tragedy
piques the curiosity of a clique of neighborhood boys, who are schoolmates
of the Lisbon sisters. The film then focuses on Lux Lisbon (Kirsten Dunst)
and her relationship with the local bad-boy dreamboat, Trip Fontaine (Josh
Hartnett). After Cecelia’s second suicide attempt succeeds—she impales
herself on a fence—the Lisbon parents (James Woods and Kathleen Turner)
lock their daughters in the family’s house to prevent any further tragedy. The
plan, as the plural of the film’s title indicates, backfires terribly.

Although her direction lacks focus, often getting mired in such ethereal
images as blazing sparklers and floating balloons, the scenes that Coppola
gets right have a palpable humanity that makes the image of youths
imprisoned by their parents reflect the Gen-X idea of being both
disenfranchised from, and repressed by, institutions from which they should
rightly expect to draw comfort and support (in this case, the Lisbon parents).
In one choice scene, the neighborhood boys communicate with the “jailed”
sisters by playing records over the phone as a sort of coded conversation:
The boys throw Todd Rundgren’s “Hello, It’s Me” onto their turntable, so
the girls respond with Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again, Naturally,” and so
on.

The sequence in which the girls end their lives is played not for horror, but
for otherworldliness: In the dead of night, they simply slip from this realm to
another one. This scene is a far cry from the martyrdom of Fincher’s suicide
imagery and the shock tactics of Anderson’s. Whereas other Gen-X directors
portray the voluntary end of a life as a grand gesture or a violent surprise,
Coppola sensitively portrays it as girls like the Lisbons might live it: a poetic
expression. The mere fact that needless death can be envisioned as a creative
act is indicative of how life has been devalued in these modern times, and
this poignant connection between fiction and reality makes The Virgin
Suicides one of the most disturbing films yet created by a Gen-X director.

Todd Haynes’s Safe is disturbing in a different way because it depicts

another means of escaping contemporary society. The daring film follows
the travails of a woman named Carol (Julianne Moore), who develops a
condition called environmental sickness, victims of which have allergic
reactions to car exhaust, cosmetics, television signals, and other mainstays of
“civilized” life. In a slow-moving story told from a cold and detached
perspective, Haynes shows the various steps that Carol takes to combat her
illness: She tries psychology and medication before joining a cult-like
collective that lives in a remote area at which the members are free from the
toxins that demonize them. The possibility that Carol’s condition is
psychosomatic is tested when she develops severe physical symptoms, yet
the metaphor that she’s allergic not to her environment but to her antiseptic,
materialistic lifestyle comes through loud and clear.
Don’t dream it’s over: Doomed teen Lux Lisbon (Kirsten Dunst) enjoys
a moment of happiness in Sofia Coppola’s ethereal drama The Virgin
Suicides (Paramount Classics).

Once Carol arrives at the collective’s compound, she’s told a story by a

fellow environmental-illness sufferer named Claire (Kate McGregor-
Stewart). Claire says that when she first fled her old life for this new
existence, she hid in her “safe room” until she was able to look herself in the
mirror and say “I love you.” In addition to amplifying the idea that Claire,
Carol, and their peers are escaping not a physical condition but a
psychological one, this scene sets up the ambiguous, haunting ending of
Safe: After severing virtually every tie to her past life, and indeed virtually
every tie to society in general, Carol retires to her new living quarters, a
Spartan dome so bereft of potential toxins that it’s more like a jail cell than a
home. After clearing her throat, Carol looks herself in the mirror and forces
herself to say “I love you.” This lost soul has learned to appreciate herself,
but the cost of her actualization is that she has cleaved huge parts of herself
away from her soul. At the end of the movie, this wife and mother is reduced
to a tender wound.
 9
Out for Blood

Given the ferocity with which Gen-X directors attack such provocative
subjects as the confusion of modern gender issues, the lethal effects of drug
use, and the pervasiveness of suicide, it’s unsurprising that myriad forms of
violence play important roles in this generation’s cinematic worldview. And
while it’s tempting to look at the grisly scenes of bloodshed and
dismemberment that appear in some of the most memorable Gen-X movies,
then make a sweeping generalization about what those scenes mean, this
generation’s spin on savagery needs to be put into the context of Hollywood
history.

Violence has always been a prevalent component of mainstream American

filmmaking, which is rooted in the drama of conflict. Since violence is the
most visceral manifestation of conflict, characters in movies seem to
exchange body blows, gunfire, and psychological violence as often as they
exchange dialogue. Filmmakers have spent decades fighting for their right to
use violence as a dramatic tool, and the history of American cinema is filled
with rhetorical battles sparked when religious, political, and other groups try
to dictate what level of violence is acceptable on American screens.

One aftershock of these battles is that when old taboos about movie brutality
were swept away by a cadre of brash directors—Arthur Penn and Sam
Peckinpah with the slow-motion bullet hits of Bonnie and Clyde and The
Wild Bunch; Francis Coppola with the horse’s head in The Godfather; Martin
Scorsese with the final bloodbath in Taxi Driver; and many more—the level
of screen grisliness was raised to previously unimaginable levels. And even
though these relaxed standards have been abused by countless exploitation
filmmakers, mainstream directors are loathe to lose the ground they gained
on this freedom-of-speech issue. The idea is that in exchange for the right to
show “justifiable” gore in, say, Saving Private Ryan, it’s necessary to let
exploitive stuff though.
Therefore, the rivers of blood that flow in such Gen-X films as The Cell,
Seven, and Pulp Fiction are not necessarily indicative of a generational
predilection for gore. Instead, the bloodshed in these films represents an
ongoing maturation of American film, in which language, sexuality, and
violence all grow steadily harsher in step with a harsh culture. The eternal
question, of course, is whether the movies and other popular art forms reflect
or prod increased vulgarity, promiscuity, and violence. Because the jury is
still out on that question, it’s sufficient to leave the relationship between
screen violence and real-life brutality as a background thought during this
exploration of how Generation X treats violence cinematically.

Finally, though, figuring out how the bloodshed in Gen-X movies relates to
what came before only offers an explanation for the explicitness of the
violence: It’s the next chapter of an ongoing story. What is left unexplained,
then, is the nature of the violence—why do Gen-X directors choose to show
the kinds of violence that they show?

One very personal answer to this question was provided by Quentin

Tarantino, whose ultraviolent films sparked countless stomach-churning
copycats. Interviewed to promote the release of his third film, Jackie Brown,
the director noted an intriguing connection between himself and Ordell, the
machine-gun-loving crook played in the movie by Samuel L. Jackson:

Ordell was all my mentors as a young man growing up. Ordell was
who I could have been. It was interesting writing the film because
that all kind of came back to me, and that persona of who I could
have been at seventeen if I didn’t have artistic ambitions. That was
it. If I hadn’t wanted to make movies, I would have ended up as
Ordell. I wouldn’t have been a postman or worked at the phone
company or been a salesman or a guy selling gold by the inch. I
would have been involved in one scam after another. I would have
done something that I would have gone to jail for. But I picked my
path. and luckily, I was able to deal with all those things about me
through my work.1

While it’s unlikely that every Gen-X director prone to including violence in
his or her movies shares Tarantino’s personal connection to the criminal
milieu, the tumultuous times during which Gen Xers grew up probably are a
commonplace factor behind onscreen brutality. Just as being raised in the
shadow of Watergate, Vietnam, and the demise of the counterculture
contributed greatly to the cynicism that’s shared by so many Gen Xers, so
too did the violence filling the news and popular culture throughout this
generation’s upbringing affect their conception of violence and, most likely,
their perception of morality. Tellingly, for instance, Gen Xers seem
comfortable embracing and sympathizing with characters who make the
vigilantism of previous cinematic icons—from the gun-toting lawmen in
countless Westerns to the revenge-seekers in 1970s flicks such as Straw
Dogs and Death Wish—seem unquestionably virtuous by comparison.

Laws are made to be broken: Quentin Tarantino’s infatuation with

criminals empowers his depiction of characters such as Ordell (Samuel
L. Jackson, right, with Robert De Niro), the villain of Jackie Brown
(Miramax Films).
 Payback’s a Bitch

Hollywood movies, and, to a lesser degree, American independent films, are

plot-driven, so it makes sense that a great deal of Gen-X movie violence is
motivated by revenge, a reliable narrative device that screenwriters often use
to both propel plots and reveal characters’ motivations. Because the
mechanics of revenge stories are so familiar—and so entrenched in dramatic
ideas that predate Generation X’s arrival by several centuries—vendetta
movies made by this generation’s filmmakers are among the least instructive
in terms of generational identity. Except, of course, when the movies in
question are pictures such as Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey and
Christopher Nolan’s Memento, both of which put fresh spins on familiar
material.

The Limey stars cult-fave British actor Terence Stamp as Wilson, a career
criminal in late middle age. At the beginning of the film, he leaves an
English prison after a long term, then travels to California because his
daughter recently died there. Based on clues from her correspondence,
Wilson believes that the man responsible for her death is Terry Valentine
(Peter Fonda), a sleazy record producer. The principal thrust of the plot—
Wilson’s quest to determine Terry’s guilt or innocence, and then, if
necessary, mete out justice—is commonplace. But the tangential aspects of
the plot are not.

Playing a characteristically postmodern narrative game, Soderbergh uses two

intriguing devices to complicate The Limey. First, he jumps back and forth in
time, so viewers often see an event followed by something that happened
before it, and several important images recur even though their recurrence
adds to the disjointed nature of the film’s timeline. Second, Soderbergh
employs vintage scenes from a 1967 movie called Poor Cow, featuring a
much younger Stamp, as flashbacks that represent young Wilson. This
deepens the movie on two levels: For viewers familiar with Stamp’s younger
screen persona, an allusion is drawn between the cinematic past and the
cinematic present; and for viewers unfamiliar with the actor’s previous
work, the fact that the performer in the flashbacks is obviously the same as
the actor in the present-day scenes adds a layer of reality that couldn’t be
achieved through the use of old-age makeup or a stand-in.
These narrative devices are mostly relevant for how they relate to the
movie’s violence, of which there is a considerable amount—Wilson tends to
get information out of people by beating the hell out of them, and has no
compunctions about killing thugs who get in his way. The violence in The
Limey, and the revenge it serves, have unusual resonance because of the
devices that Soderbergh uses to tie the present to the past. Had Soderbergh
just showed a pissed-off Brit traveling to America with bloodlust in his
heart, the character would have played as a cliché. But Soderbergh adds
layer upon layer of character detail, which makes it easy to accept Wilson as
a real person, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. By doing so, the
director makes the violence feel like real violence.

The caveat to Soderbergh’s directorial ambition, of course, is that he

exhausts a tremendous amount of energy surmounting a hurdle that he put in
his own path. He chose to work in a tired genre, and the most he could do
was make something old feel new.

The same problem of surmounting genre limitations faced Christopher

Nolan when he made Memento, a tricky thriller that Soderbergh, not
coincidentally, used his high profile to promote. Nolan’s movie is a revenge
story told backwards, so it begins with the “hero” killing his adversary, then
retraces the steps that led to the killing. Yet the film doesn’t just start with its
ending, then trek immediately back to its beginning; instead, it takes baby
steps back in time so that the beginning of each scene is often the conclusion
of the next one. Viewers are fed teasing tidbits of information, and the
veracity of this information is constantly called into question by the film’s
other main device: The protagonist has short-term memory loss, so he has to
relearn his own story at the beginning of each scene. Since this complex
storytelling is a logical extension of the kind of trickery that Soderbergh has
employed throughout his career, it’s no wonder he felt drawn to Nolan’s
film.

Again, though, what matters is how the narrative devices pertain to the
movie’s violence, of which there are only a few choice bits. The diciest
thematic material in the film is the cost of violence, because while we more
or less believe that Leonard’s desire for revenge is genuine, the possibility
that he’s being exploited because of his memory problem is prominent. By
the end of the picture, Nolan even casts doubt on whether the crime
motivating Leonard’s revenge ever happened, so viewers are left untethered
to any semblance of morality or reality. Whereas The Limey’s Soderbergh
tries to justify his use of a familiar device by deepening the human reasons
behind revenge, Memento’s Nolan justifies his device by suggesting that
Memento actually isn’t a revenge flick at all—but rather a movie about a
character who only believes he’s seeking revenge. Nolan’s comments about
the games he played with perception are intriguing:

By putting the audience into the position of the protagonist, what

you wind up doing is taking a very simple story and telling it in an
incredibly complicated way. Not only do we get to experience the
frustration and confusion, but it also makes you look at the story in
different ways. It makes you uncover different things—it’s more
along the lines of interesting narrative connections between story
elements rather than complicating the story itself. It’s simple in
story terms, but because you’re looking at it backwards, you’re
looking at it in this totally sort of bizarre prismatic way, with this
incredible perceptual distortion.2

This is familiar psychological terrain for Generation X, because the same

complex web of confused perceptions, clouded motivations, paralyzing
doubts, and conflicting emotions that informs Gen-X depictions of work,
sexuality, and other issues informs how Gen-X directors approach revenge—
and violence in general. One of the best attributes of this group of directors
is that they’re all about gray areas, and one of the best windows on such gray
areas is provided by movies about violence: Even revenge, perhaps the least
complicated of motivations, is made complicated.

In Alex Proyas’s dazzling but superficial superhero adventure The Crow, a

revenge story is transmogrified by making the title character—a musician
turned undead vigilante—sexy, sympathetic, and soulful. Whereas previous
cinematic vigilantes, notably Charles Bronson’s bloodthirsty character in the
disturbing Death Wish movies, are wronged men and women who punish
evildoers with grim determination, the Crow, a.k.a. Eric Draden (Brandon
Lee), delivers retribution in high style. Thanks to a vaguely defined
supernatural phenomenon, Eric rises from the dead to avenge his murder and
that of his wife, but his mission soon extends to cleaning up the crime-
infested future city in which he lives. Clad in skintight leather and alluring
makeup, and often with a guitar slung over his shoulder, the Crow is Charles
Bronson reimagined as a rock star. But in making the character sexy, Proyas
and his collaborators also make revenge sexy.

Gen Xers are capable of playing it straight when dealing with revenge,
however. In Phil Joanou’s State of Grace and Heaven’s Prisoners—crime
flicks so old-fashioned that they almost could have been made by Warner
Bros. in the 1940s—heroes wrestle with their consciences before punishing
people who wronged them. And in The Road to Perdition, Sam Mendes’s
follow-up to American Beauty, a hit man in the 1930s avenges the death of
his wife and child with a vicious killing spree. Yet even Perdition has gray
area, because the film’s angel-of-death character is accompanied on his
revenge campaign by his surviving child—who learns a bloody lesson about
his father’s vision of right and wrong.

Holding Out for a Hero

While the avenging angels in The Crow and The Road to Perdition are
classic antiheroes, several protagonists in Gen-X films hew closer to the
traditional white-hat concept of heroism. In Kasi Lemmons’s underseen
sophomore feature, The Caveman’s Valentine, Samuel L. Jackson portrays a
deranged New York City man named Romulus Ledbetter, who lives in a
cave in a city park. He used to be a classical musician with a loving wife and
daughter, but encroaching insanity derailed his happy life. Romulus is
haunted by voices, and convinced that a power-monger named “Stuyvesant”
uses high-tech devices to spy on and control Romulus’s turbulent life.

When a young man is found frozen to death in a tree outside Romulus’s

cave, the “caveman” becomes an amateur detective obsessed with ferreting
out the truth behind the murder. Yet his quest is frequently undermined by
attacks of dementia, recalling how Leonard’s investigation in Memento is
hamstrung by mental problems. The wrinkles in Memento’s portrayal of
heroism introduce murky morality, but the twists in The Caveman’s Valentine
can be read as a comment on how modern society is suffused with
derangement: In an insane world, only an insane man can see the truth.
Lemmons certainly is after several other thematic ideas, notably the impact
that insanity—and, by extension, any “different” behavior—has on the
acquaintances of the afflicted person. But given that her plot is set in motion
by violence, at least part of her statement relates to brutality and the need
that people have to make the wrong things right, no matter how arduous the
path to justice might be.

Romulus Ledbetter is a mirror image of the traditional superhero, because

instead of having a gift that aids his righteous quest, he’s burdened by an
affliction that makes his quest especially difficult. David Dunn, the character
played by Bruce Willis in M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable, is a
superhero in the most traditional sense. His story begins with a horrific train
wreck, of which David is the only survivor. Thanks to the prodding of
obsessive art collector Elijah Price (played, coincidentally, by Samuel L.
Jackson of The Caveman’s Valentine), David realizes that he’s never been
hurt in his life—that he is, as the title says, “unbreakable.” In classic comic-
book fashion, however, he has one weakness: Water renders him mortal, so
if he’s submerged, he’ll drown like anyone else.

Elijah is interested in David’s unusual physicality because his own

physicality is unusual in the opposite extreme: His bones break incredibly
easily. For reasons that are best discovered by watching the movie, which
has a love-it-or-hate-it twist ending, Elijah encourages David to fulfill the
extraordinary destiny that the art collector believes accompanies
extraordinary blessings. David tentatively becomes a superhero, complete
with an ersatz flowing cape and a secretive modus operandi, and once he
does, he feels as if the puzzle pieces of his life have finally fallen into place.
As soon as David grows comfortable in his new (secret) identity, however,
he’s hit with a surprise that forces him to reconsider one of his most
important relationships. Viewers are left in the dark about how this change
might affect David’s career as a crimefighter, but the fact that Shyamalan
said in interviews that he envisioned Unbreakable as the first film in a
trilogy is a pretty clear indication that David’s crusade continued after what
we saw in Unbreakable, if only in Shyamalan’s imagination.

While Shyamalan tried to avoid the usual histrionics of superhero movies by

carefully etching the origin of his characters with scenes of grounded human
interaction, his film is still cut from the same cloth as Bryan Singer’s X-Men,
an adaptation of a phenomenally successful comic-book franchise that dates
back to the early 1960s. The main difference between the films is that
Shyamalan bends over backward to create a real world with a couple of
extraordinary elements, and Singer creates a fantastic world with just enough
ordinary elements that we recognize it as an exaggerated version of reality.
Unbreakable is a superhero adventure disguised as a supernatural thriller,
and X-Men is an unapologetic superhero adventure. Yet both rely on
violence to dramatize the conflict between good and evil.

The X-Men comics concern “mutants” born with superhuman powers, and
the hero of the franchise is Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), who is
dedicated to helping mutants and humans live in peace. His adversary is
concentration-camp survivor Magneto (Ian McKellen), who is bent on
helping mutants take over the world. A young girl who gets caught between
these opponents, Rogue (Anna Paquin), is depicted as a tragic figure whose
adolescence has evolved from an imagined nightmare to an actual one, and
the film’s most prominent character, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), is an
outcast who can remember only bits of what appear to be an incredibly
painful past.
You’ve got a point: Bryan Singer’s comic-book adaptation X-Men
features Hugh Jackman (center) as a superhero haunted by his
mysterious past (Twentieth Century–Fox).

While many viewers probably can watch X-Men for its spectacle and ignore
the story’s (super)human elements, it’s to Singer’s credit that he had the
temerity to include wieghty concepts in what could easily have been
lightweight fare. And while his ambition isn’t matched by discipline, he
nonetheless pumps enough blood beneath the skin of the movie that its
vision of heroism is in some ways as complex and resonant as that of the
other Gen-X pictures that explore the subject matter. For in all of these
movies, the factor that joins the heroes is that they are haunted. In the
cinema of Generation X, even righteousness is burdened by the murky
morality of modern life.
This complex take on heroism even colors Gen-X movies about stalwart
characters who don’t have superpowers with which to pursue their noble
goals. In James Mangold’s richly textured Cop Land, a small-town
policeman star-struck by New York City cops realizes that several of his
idols are corrupt, then has to make a High Noon-style stand to foil their
nefarious activities. The cost of his heroism is that he loses his innocence,
and Mangold wrings heartbreaking drama from the conflict raging within
this also-ran about whether he should do the right thing or the convenient
thing. Similarly, the protagonist of James Gray’s evocative drama The Yards
gets pulled deep into the criminal enclave from which he tried to extricate
himself, then makes the difficult choice to testify publicly about the illegal
activities of people who have been like family to him. The heroism of the
characters in Cop Land and The Yards resonates, because in order to honor
their morality, these characters have to betray parts of their humanity.

Still, the white-hat/black-hat approach to cinematic heroism is, as seen by

characters such as Unbreakable’s David Dunn, not a concept lost on Gen-X
filmmakers. Perhaps the purest vision of heroism in any Gen-X movie is,
appropriately, one extrapolated from real life: the ordeal of Carl Brashear
(Cuba Gooding, Jr.), the long-suffering protagonist of George Tillman, Jr.’s
Men of Honor. An old-fashioned, ultra-sincere biographical film dramatizing
the long road that Brashear walked while overcoming racism to become U.S.
Navy’s first African-American master diver, Men of Honor is in the classic
mode of innumerable films championing the power of the human spirit. It’s
to Tillman’s credit that he was able to get such a hopeful film made in
cynical times, and it’s to his credit that despite the inclusion of a few dubious
plot twists and plenty of overheated emotion, the picture has the power to
move—and even inspire.

Crime Time

Perhaps because they came of age in cynical times and began making films
in what has been widely described as the Age of Irony, Gen-X directors are
drawn to antiheroes more often than they are to heroes. Notwithstanding
films about revenge, the most prevalent antiheroes in Gen-X movies are
career criminals, from robbers to drug dealers to killers. Generation X’s
embrace of lawbreakers seems utterly consistent with other aspects of their
generational identity, for it follows that a group of people who, writ large,
distrust institutions and feel alienated from the ideals of the previous
generation would feel a kinship with characters who either make their own
laws or who flagrantly defy existing laws.

Rebels have long been important cinematic archetypes, of course, from the
tommy gun-toting gangsters played by Jimmy Cagney in the 1930s and
1940s to the attitudinal malcontents played by Paul Newman in the 1950s
and 1960s, but the rebels in Gen-X cinema are an unusually hard breed: The
body count accumulated by characters in movies directed by Quentin
Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, for instance, is disturbing given how
deeply the filmmakers apparently expect viewers to sympathize with these
characters.

The first significant film in this line is Tarantino’s debut, Reservoir Dogs,
which did moderate business at the box office but eventually developed such
a cult following that by 2001, nearly a decade after the picture was made, toy
figurines of the film’s murderous crooks were available. And while the
film’s longevity can be attributed in part to its ingenious structure, alarming
plot twists, and brazen content, the main reason that Reservoir Dogs has
enjoyed a long life is that it’s cool. That most ephemeral of qualities,
coolness is a crucial consideration when looking at the films of Generation
X, particularly those made by Tarantino and his acolytes. Tarantino suffuses
his movies with youthful, smart-ass attitude that manifests in funny pop-
culture references, quotable dialogue, arresting musical interludes, and odd
displays of bravado. Nothing is as cool as breaking the rules, though, so
Tarantino’s coolest characters often are his most lethal.

Reservoir Dogs tells the story of a group of thugs whose bold robbery ends
in chaos and bloodshed, and Tarantino plays games by throwing the
chronology of events out of whack and by never showing the actual robbery;
the movie is all about prelude and aftermath. In the picture’s most notorious
scene, the crook known as Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) captures a
uniformed cop and prepares to torture him. Even worse, Blonde explains that
the goal of the torture isn’t the extraction of information, but the demented
fun of inflicting pain. Tarantino drags out the tension of the scene to
unbearable lengths by having Blonde bop to a cheery ’70s song as he dances
around the cop and then slices the policeman’s ear off. The scene is loaded
with coolness, because Blonde has an Elvis-like look, confident body
language, and the hipness to groove to a funky song, but the coolness is
spiced with ferocious violence because the action that Blonde performs with
a “cool” head is torture.

Tarantino mixes savoir faire and savagery throughout Pulp Fiction, but no
more so than in the sequence involving Warner “The Wolf” Winston (Harvey
Keitel), a career criminal who specializes in cleaning up messy crime scenes
to keep fellow lawbreakers out of trouble. Gun-toting buddies Vincent (John
Travolta) and Jules (the ubiquitous Samuel L. Jackson), are in a pinch
because they accidentally shot a hostage in their car, so they high-tail their
gristle-strewn vehicle to the home of Jimmie (played by Tarantino), a
reformed crook willing to help his pal Jules, but only to a point. Jimmie’s
wife is due home from work soon, so he says that Vincent and Jules can use
his house as a cleanup site as long as they’re gone before she returns.

To ensure that the dirty job is done quickly, the crooks’ boss sends in the
Wolf, a peculiar character who does everything fast—driving, talking,
thinking—and who seems fully prepared to annihilate everyone around him
if need be. That eventuality doesn’t come to pass, because the Wolf conjures
a scheme by which the contaminated car is camouflaged well enough for it
to be driven to a junkyard where it can be destroyed, with the corpse in it.

The whole sequence is a tribute to the Wolf’s grace under pressure, and it
ends with Jules reverently acknowledging that he’s met his better: “It was a
pleasure watchin’ you work,” he tells the Wolf. Given how broadly and
passionately Pulp Fiction was embraced, a wide spectrum of viewers also
enjoyed watching the Wolf—and the movie’s myriad other crooks—do their
dastardly deeds. Why? Because Tarantino makes their crime look cool by
having his thugs swagger with the confidence and style of rock stars.

And so it goes in a number of other Gen-X movies. Rodridguez’s debut film,

an action movie set in Mexico and called El Mariachi, is beloved among
fans of Gen-X movies both for its content and its history: In addition to
featuring all the hip gunplay and slick editing that viewers can handle, the
movie was made for a reported $7,000 thanks to Rodriguez’s combination of
ingenuity and chutzpah. When the resourceful director reworked his debut
film as the English-language thriller Desperado, he retained the focus on
acrobatic fighting and dazzling camera angles; as does influential Hong
Kong director John Woo, Rodriguez uses slow motion to fetishize automatic
pistols, with spent shells cascading upward and exhausted magazines spitting
downward.

Because Rodriguez films violence so adoringly that it almost seems

pornographic, it was a natural progression for him to join forces with
Tarantino, who made a cameo in Desperado and then enlisted Rodriguez to
direct From Dusk Till Dawn, a script Tarantino wrote prior to entering the
film industry. From Dusk Till Dawn starts promisingly as a portrait of a
dysfunctional relationship between two brothers on a crime spree, then
dissolves into idiocy when the brothers and their captives encounter a
Mexican bar infested with vampires. The first half of the movie has
undeniable craft and humanity, but the second half of From Dusk Till Dawn
represents the nadir of Generation X’s adoration of “cool” violence. And the
less said about the vast numbers of Tarantino rip-offs—from Killing Zoe, an
pretentious crime flick directed by Tarantino collaborator Roger Avary, to
Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, a frenetic but shallow British film
helmed by Guy Ritchie—the better.

Another shallow, but nonetheless widely celebrated, Gen-X crime film is the
twisty thriller The Usual Suspects, which won an Oscar for Christopher
McQuarrie’s screenplay, and advanced the careers of actors Kevin Spacey
and Benicio Del Toro. With a title extracted from a line of dialogue in
Casablanca, The Usual Suspects combines elements of Alfred Hitchcock’s
thrillers and the rat-a-tat talk of 1940s crime pictures such as White Heat. It
tries to razzle, dazzle, and trick the viewer, and the accolades it receives
indicate that many viewers were in fact razzled, dazzled, and tricked.

The film’s exciting ensemble cast digs fiercely into McQuarrie’s scenes of
macho face-offs and intricate skullduggery, all of which comprise a plot
involving a gang coerced into doing a suicidally dangerous heist for a
mysterious crime lord. McQuarrie tries to emulate Hitchcock’s most famous
ploy, that of the “MacGuffin” plot device—something about which the
characters are very concerned, but which actually is of little importance
except as a motivation for action. The screenwriter employs at least a dozen
such teases: Every ten to fifteen minutes, he starts viewers down another
blind alley, thereby circumventing the need for a meaningful story line.

As do Tarantino’s films, Suspects uses a complex system of flashbacks to

show events leading up to the heist at the center of the plot. Framing these
scenes are an interrogation between a cop (Chazz Palminteri) and a crook
(Spacey), part of an investigation into the identity of crime lord Keyser Söze,
who is spoken about by other characters in hushed, fearful tones as if he’s
the Antichrist. It’s all very tense and enigmatic, but it’s all very pointless,
because the whole movie is a setup for a jokey ending. Well-crafted but
empty, The Usual Suspects is most interesting as yet another example of
Gen-X filmmakers’ morbid fascination with bloodthirsty characters.
McQuarrie offered this revealing statement when asked about the nature of
his near-mythic villain, Keyser Söze:

I don’t think he’s evil. I’m not a big believer in evil in the
conventional sense. I believe that he’s a bad guy, an unsavory
character, but my feeling is that he had no choice but to do what he
did.3
Secrets and lies: A eclectic crew of hoodlums gathers in Bryan Singer’s
acclaimed thriller The Usual Suspects, with (from left) Kevin Pollak,
Stephen Baldwin, Benicio Del Toro, Gabriel Byrne, and Kevin Spacey
(Gramercy Pictures).

Although identifying Steven Soderbergh as the exemplar of Gen-X

craftsmanship already has become a recurring theme in this book, crime
flicks are yet another genre in which he has done exceptional work. His first
attempt at a caper flick, The Underneath, is best ignored because it is his
only truly soulless movie, but then there’s Out of Sight, his thoroughly witty,
thoroughly entertaining adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s novel.

Soderbergh employs some of his trademark editing gimmicks—dialogue

overlaps, jump cuts, and the like—to give Out of Sight a brazen quality. Yet
he also employs that beloved staple of 1970s cinema, the long take. The
movie’s most famous scene depicts charismatic bank robber Jack Foley
(George Clooney) and driven federal marshal Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez)
locked in a car trunk together. During a long, flirtatious, insinuating scene,
the adversaries exchange small talk while his pelvis is pressed against her
backside because of the close quarters, so they play an erotic game of
foreplay without having any real sexual contact. Few scenes in Gen-X
cinema so blatantly display the carnal thrill associated with crime—Karen is
a straight-arrow representative of the law-enforcement community, but she
finds the danger of being in intimate contact with a swaggering lawbreaker
irresistibly seductive.

Tarantino and Rodriguez raise troubling issues about the allure of death by
building movies around cold-blooded killers, but Soderbergh plays a safer
game. His appealing protagonist is a nonviolent criminal—so nonviolent, in
fact, that he risks his life at the end of the film to save an innocent woman
from rape at the hands of his lethal compatriots. Jack Foley is worlds apart
from Pulp Fiction’s Winston Wolf and El Mariachi’s machine gun-wielding
musician, but he’s part of a line of characters who illustrate that Gen-X
directors find the wrong side of the law fascinating.

It might be a stretch to say that this generation’s filmmakers deify criminals,

but it probably is accurate to say that their infatuation with lawbreakers is a
reflection of their misgivings about social institutions, authority, and the
mores handed down to them by previous generations. From a certain
perspective, it’s not a huge leap from the social rebellion of becoming a
slacker to the social rebellion of becoming a criminal—and that perspective
is well-illustrated by Out of Sight’s Jack, whom we see making a half-
hearted attempt to join the working world before literally tossing aside a
symbol of that world (a necktie) and then reverting to his criminal ways.

Thrill of the Kill

While characters in Gen-X movies about revenge and crime all rack up
impressive body counts, death is even more fundamental in movies about
serial killers—and such characters are fundamental in Gen-X cinema. While
the serial-killer genre has ample precedent in the decades preceding
Generation X’s arrival (Peeping Tom, Psycho, In Cold Blood, Halloween), it
gained new legitimacy around the same time that Gen-X directors hit the
scene. The Silence of the Lambs, the killer thriller that set the tone for
countless imitators, was released in 1991, just two years after sex, lies, and
videotape hit theaters. Given this coincidence of timing and Generation X’s
fascination with violence, it’s appropriate that some of the most disquieting
entries in the serial-killer genre are the handiwork of Gen-X directors.

In addition to his celebrated directorial efforts, Tarantino contributed scripts

to three 1990s films concerned with violence. From Dusk Till Dawn was the
least of these, and the crime flick True Romance added a few memorable
scenes to the lexicon of quotable Tarantino moments, notably a brazen scene
in which a doomed hostage provokes his Italian-American captor by
explaining that Italians are “niggers.” (Tarantino’s obsession with that
particular word will be explored in the next chapter, which deals in part with
racial issues.) Yet the screenplay that earned Pulp Fiction’s director the
greatest notoriety was his scenario for Natural Born Killers, probably the
most infamous film ever made by controversy-magnet Oliver Stone.

In the picture, a pair of maniacal malcontents embark on that treasured

cinematic convention, a love-fueled crime spree in the spirit of Bonnie and
Clyde, The Honeymoon Killers, and Badlands. Along the way, they become
celebrities. While Stone reportedly deviated so much from Tarantino’s script
that bad blood flowed freely between Tarantino, Stone, and the film’s
producers, the film’s essential statement reached the screen undiluted: In the
sensationalistic age of Geraldo Rivera and Jerry Springer, killers could easily
earn the popularity and adoration enjoyed by movie actors and rock stars.
This assertion, which has been validated time and again in real life, also goes
a long way toward explaining the popularity of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp
Fiction, and other Gen-X pictures about charismatic murderers.

Tarantino’s involvement in Natural Born Killers is notable for several

reasons, but it ultimately is peripheral to this study because he was not the
director of the film. Even bereft of Natural Born Killers, however, the
cinema of Generation X contains several horrific takes on the subject of
natural born killers.

David Fincher’s Seven is almost without question the most probing killer
thriller yet crafted by a Gen-X director, and while Fincher’s other films
amply demonstrate how his personal fixations contributed to Seven’s
magnetism, screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker is essential to any discussion
of the film. According to the myth that quickly brewed around this cynical
scribe, he crafted Seven while working as a floor manager in a New York
City record store, a job that gave him an unvarnished view of the way
contemporary urban folks treat each other. Apparently, Walker’s frustration
about trying to start his career converged with his disgust at widespread
insensitivity to produce Seven, which is about a lunatic who perceives
himself as an avenging angel on a crusade to restore morality to modern life.
In the context of the writer’s (possibly apocryphal) experience, the killer in
Seven is a dream version of Walker himself, forcing strangers to confront
their own behavior.

The synergy between creator and creation makes Seven an intimate movie,
and the youthful arrogance inherent to the movie’s plot makes it a
quintessential Gen-X statement. As has been illustrated by numerous other
examples, Gen Xers have a contentious relationship with modern existence,
in part because of the hypocrisy that accompanied the social upheaval that
occurred during their youth. For instance, one contingent of the baby-boom
generation sought to replace outdated ideas of morality with a new vision of
equality, tolerance, and inclusiveness. Yet that noble goal was largely
superseded by the desire to assimilate into “normal” society. In the most
critical view, this transition represented an abandonment of moral idealism.
And while that generalization overlooks countless nuances, the sense of
betrayal implied by the abandonment of counterculture ideals contributed to
the bitter aftertaste left in the mouths of countless boomers and passed on to
the next generation. Speaking broadly, that bitter aftertaste is what the killer
in Seven tries to wash from his mouth by slaughtering a septet whom he feels
exemplify immorality.

Method to his madness: Detectives Somerset (Morgan Freeman, left)

and Mills (Brad Pitt) listen intently to a killer’s words in David
Fincher’s Seven, which features scathing rants about the immorality of
contemporary society (New Line Cinema).

Given this context, the scene in which killer John Doe (Kevin Spacey)
reveals his motivation to detectives David Mills (Brad Pitt) and William
Somerset (Morgan Freeman) is one of the most crucial in all of Gen-X
cinema.

JOHN DOE: I won’t deny my own personal desire to turn each sin
against the sinner.

DAVID: Wait a minute. I thought what you did was kill innocent
people.

JOHN DOE: Innocent? Is that supposed to be funny? An obese

man? A disgusting man who can barely stand up? A man who, if
you saw him on the street, you’d point him out to your friends so
that they could join you in mocking him? A man who, if you saw
him while you were eating, you wouldn’t be able to finish your
meal? And after him, I picked the lawyer, and you both must have
been secretly thanking me for that one. This is a man who
dedicated his life to making money by lying with every breath that
he could muster, to keeping murderers and rapists on the streets …
A woman so ugly on the inside that she couldn’t bear to go on
living if she couldn’t be beautiful on the outside…. And let’s not
forget the disease-spreading whore. Only in a world this shitty
could you even try to say these were innocent people and try to
keep a straight face. But that’s the point. We see a deadly sin on
every street corner, in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate
it because it’s common. It’s trivial. We tolerate it morning, noon,
and night. Well, not anymore. I’m setting the example. And what
I’ve done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed—
forever.

Amplifying how deeply this character’s twisted words reflect an anger

burning in the heart of Generation X, he is far from the only serial killer in a
Gen-X movie to murder for a “higher purpose.” The maniac in The Cell
tortures his victims to realize a complex dreamscape informed by his abusive
childhood, and he pictures himself as a vaguely godlike creature. Director
Tarsem Singh accentuates this imagery by filming the killer’s dreams as
postmodern art, with equal parts stomach-turning graphic violence and eye-
catching graphic design. Death and art also intertwine in E. Elias Merhige’s
Shadow of the Vampire, which imagines that the star of F. W. Murnau’s 1922
vampire epic, Nosferatu, actually was a vampire. In Merhige’s film,
bloodsucker Max Shreck (Willem Dafoe) and filmmaker F. W. Murnau
(John Malkovich) make a deal by which the vampire gets victims and the
director gets preternaturally convincing imagery. In both The Cell and
Shadow of the Vampire, murder serves a personal need and makes for great
imagery, so the immortality of creative expression is prioritized over the
mortality of human life.

As in so many other pictures—Tarantino’s crime pictures, The Usual

Suspects, and more—stories about serial killers reiterate that even if Gen
Xers don’t themselves embrace amorality as part of their generational
identity, their tumultuous upbringing helps them understand amoral
characters on an eerily personal level. In the most extreme reading, violence
is a key element of Generation X’s cinematic vocabulary because Gen Xers
feel that violence, albeit of a figurative nature, was committed against them
throughout their formative years.
 10
Touchy Subjects

Politics, religion, and race often are treated gingerly in Gen-X movies, which
is peculiar in light of the forward-thinking attitudes that Gen-X directors
display when exploring such polarizing topics as homosexuality and drugs.
Gen-X directors’ hesitancy to engage political issues is befuddling, for if
these filmmakers are comfortable telling stories about American characters
exercising their freedom of choice, the bedrock of the democratic ideal,
wouldn’t it follow that they would want to tell stories about how that
freedom of choice is attained and protected?

So far, though, only Alexander Payne and Rod Lurie have made politics an
important part of their oeuvres. Others, including Keith Gordon and Steven
Soderbergh, have made individual films with interesting perspectives on
specific political subjects. (Andrew Fleming entered the fray with his
whimsical comedy Dick, about two teenage girls who stumble upon Richard
Nixon’s infamous audio-taping system while visiting the White House.)
Beyond these few examples, however, most Gen-X filmmakers seem
comfortable leaving social issues in the subtexts of their films or, in some
cases, creating hyperbolic contexts that address social issues through
colorful metaphors—one example being Bryan Singer’s X-Men, which uses
the clash between normal humans and superpowered mutants to make a
statement about intolerance.

One possible explanation for why filmmakers of this generation are reluctant
to examine certain divisive social issues is that to do so would require them
to engage the institutions in which, as has been shown, their faith is limited
at best. Saying that Gen Xers are disinclined to enter into political debates
because they grew up in the shadow of Watergate is probably too
convenient, but the widely reported statistics illustrating this generation’s
apathy at the voting booth seem to support this point. So perhaps the reason
Gen-X directors feel queasy about subjects pertaining to politics (as well as
religion and race) has more to do with their approach to life than the factors
that helped form that approach.

Particularly with regard to crime and drugs, Gen-X directors frequently steer
clear of traditional notions of morality; this unwillingness to accept ethical
absolutes also is seen in Generation X’s ambivalent attitude toward work.
Therefore, it might follow that young people who don’t believe in the old
rules governing the workplace, the use of controlled substances, and other
aspects of life would find the polemics of politics, religion, and race off-
putting. In other words, Gen Xers certainly have opinions on the myriad
topics gathered beneath these broad umbrellas, but their opinions might be
so mired in ambiguity that it’s difficult for them to ally themselves with any
one side of a contentious issue.

If that’s the case, then perhaps Gen Xers avoid the vehement rhetoric
surrounding, say, abortion, by concentrating on how individual characters
make important choices. This is a hypothetical generalization, of course, but
it fits with some important patterns that have emerged in this book: If Gen
Xers are disillusioned about social institutions, it’s reasonable to assume
they would avoid becoming part of such institutions, and avoid entering into
the ideological fray created when factions of these institutions disagree.

Despite the fact that social changes and behavioral patterns seem to bind
massive segments of Generation X, perhaps the thing that binds them most
—as seen in the paucity of this generation’s filmmakers who take strong
stands on divisive issues—is a refusal to anchor themselves to the moral
absolutes that, in their cynical worldview, led American society to become
the combative arena in which they were raised.

Playing Politics

Among Gen-X movies that are unequivocally about politics, the most brazen
is Alexander Payne’s debut, Citizen Ruth. The loose, scruffy comedy centers
around Ruth Stoops (Laura Dern), who seems like pure white trash when we
meet her: She’s a scrawny, dim loudmouth who sniffs glue for fun, gets in
trouble with the law so often that she’s on a first-name basis with the cops in
her small town, and is such an unfit mother that her children were removed
from her care by government officials.

Early in the picture, she gets tossed into a cell with Gail Stoney (Mary Kay
Place), a right-to-life activist incarcerated for her part in an illegal
demonstration. Upon learning that Ruth is pregnant, her jailers encourage the
troubled woman to get an abortion, figuring it will save the unborn child
from the neglect that Ruth would surely inflict upon it. Gail sees an
propaganda opportunity and pounces. She offers to take Ruth in and pay her
expenses, provided the young woman sees her pregnancy through, in effect
hiring Ruth as an anti-abortion symbol.

Meanwhile, a group of ardent pro-choice activists seize on the idea that Ruth
also could be a symbol for their cause. A manic tussle between the warring
forces occurs, putting human faces on one of the most painful debates in
modern culture. Ruth watches the insults and speeches fly past her the way a
spectator watches the ball at a tennis match, even moving from Gail’s house
to that of the witchcraft-practicing pro-choicers so she can see who offers
her a better deal. The joke, of course, is that the person who is least invested
in the fate of Ruth’s baby seems to be Ruth. For while she appears to
genuinely listen to the arguments being put forth by both sides of the debate,
she is unmistakably seduced by how much the pro-lifers and pro-choicers
are willing to spend to secure her loyalty.

Although he mostly films events in an unintrusive, documentary-like style,

Payne exhibits palpable cynicism through his arch characterizations. He
portrays almost everyone but Ruth as a hysterical extremist, then shows a
“simpleton” playing both sides against the middle and coming out on top.
The implication is that the idealism of the various activists is married to their
vanity, so at a certain point, they become more concerned with validating
their righteousness than with helping Ruth find the path that’s right for her.
The movie is a slap in the face to people who let their devotion to political
issues cloud their view of reality, and a brutal put-down of the breed of
armchair extremists depicted throughout the movie.

Whereas the activists in Citizen Ruth are comical because they’re in over
their heads, the activist portrayed by Jennifer Connelly in Keith Gordon’s
Waking the Dead is deadly serious because she knows exactly what she’s
getting herself into at any given point. The mournful, elegant movie is a love
story with a vaguely supernatural twist, centering around the anguish
suffered by ambitious young politician Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup) when
his lover, activist Sarah Williams (Connelly), is murdered. The movie cuts
back and forth between the 1970s, the time that Fielding and Sarah spend
together, and the 1980s, when Fielding tries to find his way without his
soulmate.

At first, the couple seem oddly matched: He’s a sailor eager to do his part in
Vietnam, and she’s an impassioned antiwar crusader. They disagree about
everything except the importance of politics, although each wants to change
the world for the better. Fielding wants to make his impact within the
system; Sarah believes the system is designed to keep people like Fielding
from having an impact. Their passion for the world around them, as well as
their intense physical attraction, helps them overcome their differences and
land in each other’s arms. Yet as soon as their bond is cemented, it is shaken
by the careers they choose.
Strange bedfellows: Love bridges the differences between a headstrong
activist (Jennifer Connelly) and an ambitious would-be politician (Billy
Crudup) in Keith Gordon’s haunting drama Waking the Dead (USA
Films).

Fielding gets taken under the wing of Isaac Green (Hal Holbrook), a
seasoned politician who thinks he can turn his protégé’s idealism and good
looks into star value. Meanwhile, Sarah begins working with Father Mileski
(John Carroll Lynch), a priest who runs an inner-city shelter. The lovers
clash because Fielding compromises his ideals, while Sarah seems incapable
of compromise of any kind. In a typically heated scene, Sarah accompanies
Fielding and Isaac to a cocktail party attended by a slew of political heavy
hitters. Regarding Sarah merely as his apprentice’s arm candy, Isaac
mistakenly introduces her several times as Sarah “Wilson.” Afraid to rock
the boat, Fielding doesn’t correct the error. Her intolerance of fatuousness
surfacing, Sarah eventually snaps at Isaac, causing a minor scene and
infuriating her boyfriend. The lovers smooth each other’s bruised egos after
the party, but the issues that caused the fight remain unresolved.

By the time Father Mileski recruits Sarah for an illegal humanitarian mission
to South America, she and her companion are worlds apart: Fielding resents
that her idealism makes him self-conscious about selling out, and she’s sad
that the man she fell in love with is turning into someone else. So when she’s
killed by terrorists during the mission, Fielding is consumed by unresolved
feelings. The love affair he expected to go on forever is done, he never got a
chance to make peace with Sarah, and her memory haunts every shifty
political decision he makes. Gordon shows Fielding’s troubled state of mind
by having ghostly visions of Sarah appear everywhere around the young
politician, eventually driving him to the brink of madness. The movie plays a
sly game with Sarah’s supernatural visitations, because she could be an
actual ghost or merely a manifestation of Fielding’s pain. Either way, she
functions as a personification of his conscience, which makes the movie a
statement on baby-boomer politics.

Fielding, a boomer put onscreen by a team of Gen Xers, was literally in bed
with liberalism at the beginning of his career, but by the time he wins a
Senate seat at the end of the picture, he’s drifted so far from his ideals that
liberalism is merely a beautiful phantom hovering around the fringes of his
life. Gordon offers a moving but somewhat pat resolution to this
unresolvable conflict when letters from constituents and a final visitation
from Sarah remind Fielding that although ambition brought him to the
Senate, the needs of the people should define what he does as a
congressman. Idealism wins this round, but only after a wrenching fight.

Idealism is even more ephemeral in Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, which

features Michael Douglas as Robert Wakefield, an American judge recruited
to fight the nation’s war on drugs, but who soon learns that his own daughter
is a drug addict. Just as Fielding’s ascension into politics is haunted by the
memory of a woman who told him what politics could be, Robert’s
ascension to the position of drug czar is haunted by the knowledge that he’s
caught in the crossfire of the war he’s supposed to be waging. At the end of
Traffic, Robert falters partway through an important press conference at the
White House, then drops the mask of political resolve and says: “I can’t do
this. If there is a war on drugs, then our own families have become the
enemy. How can you wage war on your own family?”

This moment represents politics at its murkiest, when right and wrong have
blurred so completely that no moral compass can indicate a path out of
darkness. Like Waking the Dead, Traffic ends on a compassionate note—
Robert and his wife accompany their daughter to a drug-treatment session—
suggesting that humanity can heal wounds that punditry can’t.

Punditry runs rampant in the first two movies directed by Rod Lurie, a
former film critic who brought his love of words, actors, and politics to the
screen with noteworthy force in the late 1990s. His first movie, the little-
seen Deterrence, depicts an untested American president forced to handle a
major international crisis while he and his staff are snowed in at a small-
town diner. Lurie’s sophomore effort, The Contender, garnered infinitely
more attention than his first, in large part because the independent
production was picked up for distribution by DreamWorks SKG, the young
studio co-helmed by Steven Spielberg.

It’s a safe bet that the movie would have turned heads even if it was released
independently, however, because the story about a woman nominated for the
vice presidency touches on controversial issues of gender equality,
liberalism, attack politics, and sensationalism. Although Payne’s Citizen
Ruth and Election have more bite because they use satire to peer beneath the
surface of divisive debates, The Contender is unique among Gen-X movies
in that it feels like a solicitation for viewers to deepen their involvement in
the political process, so as to protect the process from abuse by characters
like the ruthless conservatives who antagonize the title character.

The Great Divide

If Gen-X filmmakers have been timid about politics, they’ve been positively
ostrich-like about racial issues, despite the fact that race-related tensions
exploded after such 1990s occurrences as the beating of Rodney King and
the riots that followed the acquittal of his police assailants. As of this
writing, John Singleton is the dominant figure among Gen-X filmmakers
whose films are primarily concerned with discussions of racial identity.
Singleton, Kasi Lemmons (who made memorable observations about race in
her first two pictures, Eve’s Bayou and The Caveman’s Valentine), and
George Tillman, Jr. (director of such crowd-pleasers as Soul Food and Men
of Honor) are African-American, which suggests that white Gen-X
filmmakers are reluctant, if not outright fearful, of addressing the great
divide in American society. Lemmons offered a possible explanation for this
phenomenon when asked about her ability to write white characters.

As a black person living in a modern world, you know all about it,
you understand the “master race.” For white people to understand
enough to write like a black person, that might be different,
because white people don’t have to understand black people. Black
people have to understand white people.1

Ironically, the Gen-X filmmaker who has most famously celebrated black
culture is a white man—even though his portrayals have split audiences
between those who find his vision of African-American culture
sensationalistic and those who find it affectionate. In both Pulp Fiction and
Jackie Brown, Quentin Tarantino displays a passion for black slang, dress,
and music that borders on the fetishistic: White and black characters alike,
for instance, use urban vernacular that could easily fit into a 1970s
blaxploitation movie or a 1990s rap song. Consider this line from Pulp
Fiction, spoken by the black character Jules: “I wouldn’t go so far as to call
the brother fat. He’s got a weight problem. What’s the nigger gonna do? He’s
Samoan.”

A great deal has been made about Tarantino’s use of the word nigger, and
black actor Denzel Washington reportedly confronted Tarantino about the
issue while Tarantino was on the set of Washington’s submarine thriller
Crimson Tide, to which Tarantino contributed dialogue; according to
accounts of the encounter, Washington was not among those who find
Tarantino’s use of the word charming.

Inarguably one of the most loaded words in the English language, nigger has
in recent years been stripped of some of its power to hurt by its use among
African-Americans as a friendly appellation: Phrases such as “Yo, nigger,
whassup?” were commonplace in black-oriented films, comedy routines, and
songs of the 1990s. Yet when the transformed word was borrowed by white
adherents of black culture, it went through another cultural change. Whether
it’s a white gangster in a Tarantino movie or a white teenager in a shopping
mall, a Caucasian shouting “Yo nigger, whassup?” or another such phrase is
a startling image, no matter if the person being addressed is white or black.

Some have argued that by appropriating loaded African-American

vernacular, Tarantino and other whites both propagate stereotypes and make
sensational associations to the most lurid aspects of black culture. That
argument is bolstered somewhat by the black characters in Tarantino’s films,
who recall the jive-talking, street-smart crooks of blaxploitation movies. So
even though the director’s affection for characters such as Jules and the
titular figure of Jackie Brown (played by black screen icon Pam Grier) is
palpable, the question arises of whether he’s performing a disservice by
showing gun-toting, streetwise blacks.

One thought worth considering when trying to answer that question is that
Tarantino raises the characters above stereotypes by giving them something
close to three-dimensional life. Another important fact is that Tarantino often
puts across images of whites and blacks coexisting harmoniously: Jules is
more or less comfortably partnered with a white hoodlum in Pulp Fiction,
Jackie Brown is receptive to the courtship of a white man, and so on. But
while the final determination of whether Tarantino is an acolyte or an
exploiter of African-American culture rests with individual viewers, the fact
remains that he consistently features black actors and black culture in his
movies—which makes him much more ethnically adventurous than most of
his white peers.

Accordingly, it has fallen to black directors to put informed images of

African-Americans onscreen, and John Singleton has faced this challenge
admirably throughout his career. He occasionally tells stories about blacks
with superheroic qualities, as in Rosewood and Shaft, but even these stories
are populated with characters who echo people from the real world.
Singleton’s celebrated debut film, Boyz N the Hood, was based on the
troubled urban milieu he observed while growing up in Los Angeles, and is
such an overt plea for an end to the madness of gang violence that the first
image is a dolly in to a “Stop” sign, preceded by a series of title cards
bearing grim statistics: “One out of every twenty-one black American males
will be murdered…. Most will die at the hands of another black male.”
Blood in the streets: Boyz N the Hood, a passionate depiction of the
factors behind gang violence, was made by John Singleton, seen in
glasses between costars Ice Cube (in driver’s seat) and Cuba Gooding,
Jr. (Columbia Pictures).

To show the human reality behind this statistic, Singleton depicts two
periods in the life of a character named Tre Styles. In an early sequence, ten-
year-old Tre (Desi Arnez Hines II) watches his father, Furious (Lawrence
Fishburne), try to shoot a home invader. When two police officers, one white
and one black, show up an hour after being called, the black officer
shockingly says to Furious: “Too bad you didn’t get him. Be one less nigger
out here in the streets we’d have to worry about.” Recalling the sad truth of
the opening titles, this moment underscores that white America’s disdain for
black America often is complemented by painful divisions within the
African-American community.
By the time Tre has grown into a young man (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), he already
has watched a friend become a hardened criminal. Shortly after completing a
stint in prison that began when he was a juvenile, Tre’s buddy Doughboy
(Ice Cube) gets mixed up in a grudge match that leads to the drive-by
execution of Doughboy’s innocent brother, Ricky (Morris Chestnut). In one
of Singleton’s characteristically heavy-handed but effective touches, viewers
learn that Ricky’s recent success on his SAT assured him a shot at a college
education—and by extension life outside the ’hood—so his tragedy is felt on
numerous levels. Yet Singleton’s clunkier touches are complemented by
potent dramatics, such as the scene in which Ricky’s mother and young wife
scream over his bloody, lifeless body while Ricky’s infant child squeals.

Despite his father’s many lessons about the need to avoid senseless violence,
Tre nearly succumbs to rage by joining Doughboy on a nighttime mission
for retribution against Ricky’s killers. After sitting in Doughboy’s car
alongside a bloodthirsty friend who’s loading a magazine into an AK-47, Tre
comes to his senses and heads home, but his departure doesn’t derail the
mission: Doughboy finds and brutally assassinates the three men responsible
for his brother’s death, in the process securing his own doomed place in a
cycle of violence and hatred. Tre, nobly trying to understand the conflicting
parts of his friend, speaks with Doughboy after the bloodshed, and all the
killer can come up with is this: “I don’t even know how I feel about it
neither, man. Shit just goes on and on, you know? Next thing you know,
somebody might try to smoke me. Don’t matter though. We all gotta go
sometime.”

This is the saddest and most important statement in Singleton’s movie—that

members of this rung of American society feel the disdain that others have
for them so deeply that their own sense of self-worth is damaged. Some
members of the South Central community know better than to drop out of a
culture that doesn’t want them, as Tre eventually proves. But for youths
raised amid rampant violence, nearly bereft of positive role models, and
lacking proper academic nurturing, the descent to a life like Doughboy’s
seems pre-ordained. And destiny is a strong element of Singleton’s
storytelling, for his movie ends with title cards indicating that Doughboy
was killed two weeks after his bloody revenge—and that Tre went on to
college.
The obvious message of Boyz N the Hood is that violence begets violence,
and the deeper one is that incessant racism can cause minorities to regard
themselves in a racist manner. This deeper message resonates with myriad
other Gen-X movies, for while the disenfranchisement of Gen Xers is a
cakewalk compared to the pain inflicted upon urban blacks, one thing binds
the experiences of these two segments of society: Like African-Americans
oppressed and changed by racism, Gen Xers are in many ways defined by
society’s attitude toward them, whether it manifests as the choices made by
parents when Gen Xers were growing up or as difficulty that employers
often have adjusting to the laid-back attitude of slackers and pseudo-
slackers.

Singleton’s work on Boyz N the Hood was so assured that he won Oscar
nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Director, the latter of
which was notable because Singleton was the youngest person ever to
receive such a nod. He seemed poised for a career spent telling relevant
stories, but Singleton’s next pictures were unfocused. Poetic Justice was a
love story involving two young, black artists, but the story was trite and
lightweight, and the inclusion of poetry by revered author Maya Angelou
seemed pretentious. Singleton’s third picture, Higher Learning, took the
moralistic qualities of Boyz N the Hood to an uncomfortable extreme, and
the movie felt more like a Sunday-morning sermon than a melodrama.

Singleton finally got back on track—and brought a bracing new energy to

his depiction of race relations—in Rosewood, his most ambitious film to
date. Based on the true story of a black-populated Southern town that was
better off than its white-populated sister town, the drama is an alternately
rousing and terrifying depiction of the moment when the whites struck out at
their neighbors by destroying the black town. The film is weakened
somewhat by the fictionalized figure of a superheroic black drifter who helps
save several Rosewood residents from the white assault, but had this
character not been included, the picture might have been oppressively sad.

One of the most striking Gen-X films about race entirely avoided the
contentious issue of relations between whites and blacks, for it depicts the
lives of young Native Americans, a population virtually invisible in
American cinema outside of stereotypical portrayals. Chris Eyre’s Smoke
Signals, about two twentysomethings who leave their reservation on a quest
that leads them to confront the repercussions of a decades-old family
tragedy, is a quick, breezy jaunt filled with funny conversations, polemical
confrontations, and, best of all, fully realized characters.

Victor (Adam Beach), a bitter loner who tries to scare away the world with
his rough manners, and Thomas (Evan Adams), a sweet nebbish who’s
continually trying to revive his childhood friendship with Victor, travel from
Spokane, Washington, to Phoenix, Arizona, when Victor’s estranged father
dies. Along the way, the two unravel the catastrophic event that shattered
both their families and sent Victor on a self-destructive spiral. (Victor’s
trajectory, incidentally, proves that fleeing from society after a familial
schism isn’t a phenomenon unique to the predominantly white slackers who
turned such escapism into an art form.) Like the best road movies, Smoke
Signals is about people traveling into their souls as much as it’s about people
visiting faraway locales.

The script, adapted by Sherman Alexie from his own novel, uses the casual
banter of longtime acquaintances to explore racial identity and personal
demons. Alexie also tosses in playful jabs at Hollywood’s image of Native
Americans: “The only thing more pathetic than Indians on TV is Indians
watching Indians on TV,” Thomas jokes at one point. Throughout the
picture, the traveling companions wrestle not with what it means to be
Indians, but what it means to be Indians in a culture dominated by Indians’
historical persecutors. This stance recalls Lemmons’s point about African-
Americans learning the ways of white people, and underlines the tragedy of
marginalizing or even destroying ethnicity.

In all of these films about race—from Boyz N the Hood to Smoke Signals—
an important recurring theme is that minorities have to rely on each other to
survive in a world that is not their own, even when members of their own
subcultures prey upon them. This idea, of relying not on larger social
institutions but on the solidarity binding a group of outsiders, connects these
films about race to a major theme running through the cinema of Generation
X: We were handed this world, these characters say, so it’s up to us to help
each other find our way in it.

Interestingly, one way that characters in Gen-X movies have found to bridge
the great divide is to trust love: Several Gen-X movies depict interracial
relationships. At their most sensationalistic, the depictions of miscegenation
play up the dangerous thrill of doing something that was once taboo, and
even illegal; a pointed scene in The Caveman’s Valentine shows the black
hero having sex with a white woman while the spirit of his (black) wife
acerbically comments that every white woman is curious to see whether
myths about black males’ sexual prowess is true. The titillating aspect of an
interracial affair also is explored in John Stockwell’s crazy/beautiful, an
intimate drama about a troubled white teen who falls in love with an
ambitious young Latino. The self-destructive white girl recalls numerous
disenfranchised Gen-X protagonists, so watching her surmount internal
obstacles while also surmounting a societal one is heartening.

It is not just the female in this movie’s romance who faces obstacles, of
course—her Latino lover wrestles with racism, the diminished expectations
that some whites have of minorities, and the pressure placed on him by his
family to succeed. That he does so is a testament to his spirit, and similar
testimony is provided in George Tillman, Jr.’s Men of Honor and Boaz
Yakin’s Remember the Titans. The former film, about a black man fighting
racism to succeed in the U.S. Navy, and the latter, about how a black coach
helps high school athletes face the problems of integration, are old-fashioned
movies about race relations in which the dignity of heroic African-American
characters forces white characters to abandon, or at least reconsider, their
prejudice.

As Faith Would Have It

Just as Gen-X directors as a group are reluctant to address racial issues, they
are loathe to court controversy by diving into the morass of religion.
Certainly Gen Xers are not alone in their timidity regarding this subject
matter; the history of cinema is littered with religious films that sidestep
thorny discussions by depicting historical figures as cardboard saints (The
Ten Commandments), and daring movies that spark vehement debates by
questioning accepted beliefs about icons (The Last Temptation of Christ).
Most filmmakers reside in the conservative middle ground between piety
and revisionism, choosing to evade religious issues altogether. Therefore, the
Gen-X aversion to such issues is less characteristic of generational identity
than par for the Hollywood course. That said, the boldness of the few Gen-X
filmmakers who have entered the fray of religious discourse is admirable.

Alexander Payne lessened the sting of his satirical portrayal of right-to-life

extremists in Citizen Ruth by also poking fun at pro-choice extremists; he’s
an equal-opportunity satirist. Similarly, Rod Lurie’s The Contender
entertains both sides of a religious debate by having a conservative right-
winger take a liberal left-winger to task over issues of sexuality. Both of
these films are only peripherally about religion, however—and in fact, it
seems that only two Gen-X movies have wholeheartedly entered the combat
zone of religious conflict. They are Edward Norton’s sweet Keeping the
Faith and Kevin Smith’s salacious Dogma. The movies couldn’t be further
apart in terms of content and style, but their thematic intentions are similar.
Through different means, each demonstrates the value—and, importantly,
the validity—of spirituality.

The plot of Keeping the Faith sounds like the setup for a bad joke: A priest
and a rabbi fall for the same girl. But the wrinkles that director-costar Norton
and his collaborators add to the material make it a touching, memorable
exploration of the role religion can play in people’s lives. The priest, Brian
Finn (Norton), and the rabbi, Jake Schram (Ben Stiller), have been friends
since childhood, and the playmate of their youth was a tomboy named Anna.
Early in the picture, she returns to the trio’s hometown, New York City, as an
adult—but the tomboy of yesteryear has become a sexy, confident
businesswoman (Jenna Elfman).

The male friends are attracted to their old pal, but their desire is problematic
because Brian is devoted to his vow of celibacy, and because Jake feels
pressured to date women who share his faith. (Anna is a Gentile.) The
romantic triangle is further complicated by misunderstandings, other women,
and, most importantly, the revelation of where Anna’s affections truly lie.
She loves both of her childhood friends, but is only in love with Jake. Yet at
the end of the film, both men are happy: Jake is involved with Anna, and
Brian strengthens his relationship with God. This payoff may sound cloying,
but a key scene between Brian and his mentor, Czechoslovakian priest
Father Havel (Milos Forman), articulates the tentative peace that can be
achieved between physical desire and religious devotion. The conversation is
sparked when Brian reveals that he tried to kiss Anna, but was rebuffed.

HAVEL: I remember I fell in love with this girl in Prague. It was

in 1968. She was beautiful. She looked like Carole Lombard. She
grabbed me. It was in the alley behind my church. She kissed me.
Whew! I felt like Richard Chamberlain in The Thorn Birds…

BRIAN: I’ll tell you something—if she had kissed me back, I

don’t think I’d be sitting here right now. I would’ve given it all
up…. I keep thinking about what you said in seminary, that the life
of a priest is hard, and if you can see yourself being happy doing
anything else, you should do that.

HAVEL: That’s my recruitment speech, which is not bad when

you’re starting out. It makes you feel like a Marine. The truth is,
you can never tell yourself that there is only one thing that you
could be. To be a priest or to marry a woman—it’s the same
challenge. You cannot make a real commitment unless you accept
that it’s a choice that you keep making again and again and again.
I’ve been a priest over forty years, and I fall in love at least once
every decade.

BRIAN: You’re not going to tell me what to do, are you?

HAVEL: No. God will give you your answer.

Keeping the Faith is filled with moments in which the clergymen question
their life choices, yet the movie also is filled with gentle humor poking fun
at the sterility of religious services. Jake tries to liven things up at temple by
working the room like a stand-up comedian, and by enlisting a black choir to
spice up a service’s musical component. This is a far cry from the hyperbole
of Hollywood’s Biblical epics of the 1950s and 1960s, and a far cry from the
satire of Citizen Ruth. Keeping the Faith may be the warmest movie yet
made by a Gen Xer, and while some might find its kindhearted message of
tolerance naive or false, the movie nonetheless offers a heartfelt alternative
to the turmoil that often characterizes Gen-X cinema.
Dogma offers an outrageous alternative to Keeping the Faith—the Kevin
Smith comedy is so polarizing that its original distributor, Miramax, was
forced to drop the picture after pressure from parent company Disney.
Whereas Keeping the Faith is a sedate romantic comedy, Dogma is a vulgar
farce. The plot, culled from the arcana of Catholic theology, is a doozy: Two
fallen angels find a loophole in God’s law that will allow them to reenter
heaven, but to do so will cause the nullification of the entire universe. So as
the former seraphim (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) make their way to a
church in New Jersey through which they plan to return to their former
home, a nonbeliever (Linda Fiorentino) is recruited to help stop them.

The movie slaughters as many sacred cows as possible. Black comedian

Chris Rock appears as a mythical “thirteenth apostle” named Rufus; God’s
right hand man is an embittered angel (Alan Rickman) who’s unimaginably
tired of immortality and who resents terribly that he wasn’t gifted with
genitalia; and God (played by rock singer Alanis Morrissette) is depicted as
a impulsive but just ruler as likely to use her celestial might to smite
wayward souls as she is to feebly attempt cartwheels on a patch of grass. In
one of the film’s most brilliant bits, a bishop (George Carlin) tries to lure
young people to the church by replacing the somber icon of a crucified Jesus
with the smiling image of “Buddy Christ”—the son of God reimagined as a
snarky Vegas lounge lizard. Smith caught heat because he freely mingled
vulgarity with spirituality, but his movie ultimately is a testament to faith
and, despite his obvious misgivings, the Catholic Church.

For even while suggesting that a black man sat at the last supper and
proposing that Jesus might want to lighten up, Smith clearly identifies which
characters in his story are amoral. The fallen angels have such compromised
souls that they’re willing to summon the apocalypse in order to realize their
selfish goals, and their accomplice is a demon complete with horns, a
deceptively charming smile, and a bad attitude. The characters pursuing
righteous goals may include a sexy stripper, but they also include a
nonbeliever who learns to acknowledge and love God. Therefore, those who
called the film anti-Catholic were at best uninformed and at worst ignorant.
As the writer-director said:

The movie’s not an attack. It’s a challenge. To me, Christ is like a

friend I’ve known my whole life. You know, the friend that doesn’t
 talk to you. But everyone tells me he said a lot of things while he
was here, so you follow what he taught. When you’ve had a friend
for twenty years, I think you’re allowed to joke around with
him…. The movie’s so pro-faith, I feel like I’m doing the Catholic
League’s job.2

Smith’s attitude is a terrific example of what Gen Xers are capable of when
they choose to fully participate in society, instead of merely sitting on the
couch and making sardonic comments about life as it passes them by. As do
Payne’s and Lurie’s movies about politics, as well as Singleton’s and
Lemmons’s movies about race, the Gen-X movies about religion prove that
Gen Xers don’t disdain social institutions because of ignorance, but because
of disagreements with what those institutions represent. Therefore, when
filmmakers risk controversy by asking provocative questions about
contemporary political, racial, and religious issues, they take a bold step
away from the apathy with which Generation X has long been associated.
They dig deep for answers to that most essential Gen-X question, “Who am
I, and where do I belong?” By doing so, they help look for means by which
people of all stripes—Republicans, Democrats, blacks, whites, Catholics,
Jews, boomers, Gen Xers—can live together if not in peace, than at least in
understanding.
 11
Worlds Beyond Worlds

One of the intriguing lessons gleaned from studying Gen-X filmmakers is

which topics they explore comfortably and which ones they explore
haltingly. In general, the most powerful statements offered by these directors
relate to issues that affect the here and now of their young lives: education,
family, work, love, sexuality, drugs. Yet when challenged to look ahead, they
seem to falter. Perhaps reflecting the collective youth of their makers, films
helmed by Gen Xers mostly shun issues of old age and the future. Given the
generational predilection toward exploring issues of life’s meaning—as seen,
particularly, in the philosophy-drenched personas of slacker characters—the
reluctance these filmmakers have about imagining what comes next in their
chronology is telling.

In the most cynical interpretation, Gen Xers don’t discuss old age and the
future because they have no optimism for what looms ahead. But perhaps the
real reason behind their reticence in these areas is that Gen Xers’
ambivalence about the present makes them dubious about prognostication:
As they have such a tentative grasp on the forces that define the present,
guessing which forces might define the future is daunting.

When the concept of aging arises in Gen-X movies, it’s usually portrayed
tragically, as in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (which depicts how
families are affected by the impending deaths of old men) and Bryan
Singer’s Apt Pupil (which shows an aging Nazi corrupting a willful youth).
To a certain degree, the fear of aging that this portrayal implies is par for the
course—by definition, the young haven’t the maturity required to understand
the old, no matter how genuinely they may respect previous generations. Yet
Generation X’s relationship to their immediate predecessors provides two
more possible explanations for Generation X’s hesitance about the future.
First and most obviously, a boomer’s vision of the future played a key role in
Generation X’s past. Star Wars became a blockbuster in 1977, and Gen Xers
comprise a huge segment of the youth audience that supported George
Lucas’s space opera. Young viewers’ infatuation with futuristic stories
continued through the late 1970s and early 1980s, yet the generation weaned
on Star Wars has been slow to imitate the popcorn fare it consumed when
young: The Matrix, The Crow, Dark City, Gattaca, and X-Men are among
the few major futuristic statements made by Gen-X filmmakers, and two of
them (The Crow and Dark City) were made by the same man, Alex Proyas.
While the paucity of Gen-X sci-fi flicks might suggest that Generation X
doesn’t share the wonderment and hopefulness (or, some might say, naiveté)
that distinguished its chronological predecessor before cynicism set in, it’s
also possible that the lack of futuristic visions can be attributed to cultural
cycles.

The popularity of science fiction tends to ebb and flow, and the box-office
success of The Matrix and Lucas’s fourth Star Wars movie, Episode One—
The Phantom Menace (both of which were released in 1999) laid the
groundwork for a new run of sci-fi flicks. Such pictures are notoriously slow
to emerge, because of the complexity involved in making them, so the
repercussions of 1999’s hits may be felt later in Generation X’s run.
Certainly the fact that Steven Soderbergh, forever the Gen-X pioneer, said in
2001 that he planned to remake an obscure Russian sci-fi movie called
Solaris proves that this group of filmmakers may yet speak to a genre that
had such a profound impact during their formative years.

Things to Come

Setting aside the reasons why they are so few, the major sci-movies directed
by Gen Xers share an important aspect: All predict a bleak future in which
the virtuous are a violently oppressed minority. The Matrix features an all-
out war against the status quo, and The Crow and X-Men feature
superpowered vigilantes as their protagonists. The heroes of Dark City and
Gattaca face omniscient authority figures in the mode of Big Brother, the
antagonist of George Orwell’s endlessly imitated novel 1984. And while it’s
true that these futuristic visions subscribe to a popular portrayal of the future
—The Crow, for instance, has production design straight out of 1982’s Blade
Runner, the seminal science-fiction thriller directed by Ridley Scott—the
similarities between Generation X’s futuristic movies may indicate
something more than just a generational affection for the same influences.

At the very least, the abject terror associated with institutionalized authority
in these movies echoes the misgivings about institutions that permeate so
many Gen-X movies. Members of this generation seem deeply fearful of
dehumanized governments and corporations, whether personified by the
humiliating workplace supervisors of Office Space or the unforgiving
overlords of Gattaca.

Because they have so many precedents in other people’s films, Alex Proyas’s
pictures are among the least unsettling of Generation X’s cautionary sci-fi
tales. The Crow, adapted from a comic book created by James O’Barr, is
essentially an extra-violent, extra-fantastic retread of Tim Burton’s Batman,
only without the colorful villain and high-tech gadgets. It’s a vigilante story
with a strong heart and a haunting backstory, both of which involve star
Brandon Lee. The son of legendary martial artist Bruce Lee, Brandon Lee
gives a sexy and soulful performance as a musician raised from the dead to
avenge an assault on his family. The poignancy of his performance is
accentuated by viewers’ knowledge that Lee was killed in an accident during
filming; this actor playing an undead avenger actually is a voice from
beyond the grave. Yet the trappings with which Proyas surrounds Lee lack
the actor’s humanity.

The ornate Gothic spires and cloud-choked skies that Proyas employs to
personify the city in which the Crow lives are familiar to anyone who has
seen Batman, Blade Runner, or Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. All of these films
imagine urban sprawl taken to its logical extreme, so the cities in these
movies are nightmares of soulless towers, rampant grime, oppressive
darkness, and pervasive smoke. They essentially are tweaked visions of
modern-day Los Angeles or New York or Hong Kong or Chicago. And
while his predecessors filled their dystopian milieus with ironic details,
Proyas fills his with obvious signifiers.
The director’s style matured somewhat in Dark City, which combined sci-fi
elements with photography and clothes straight out of a 1940s film noir—
again, à la Blade Runner. The picture, based on an original story by Proyas
and his collaborators, imagines a weird future in which extraterrestrials
control the life of the protagonist (Rufus Sewell) and other characters, taking
the paranoia of 1984 to an extreme by saying that the all-powerful force
pulling the puppet strings is genuinely otherworldly. While Dark City has
several arresting visuals, it ultimately gets bogged down in borrowed ideas
and comic-book-style action. It’s interesting in the context of a discussion of
Gen-X movies for its inescapable similarities to The Matrix, which also puts
a fanciful spin on Orwell’s familiar Big Brother imagery. The Matrix,
however, succeeds where Dark City fails because The Matrix is structured as
a classic quest story, and because the payoff at the end of the quest actually
raises the stakes of the story, instead of merely tossing viewers an ironic,
Twilight Zone-style twist.

Like The Crow, X-Men was adapted from a comic book. An exuberant
adventure that replaces Proyas’s bloodshed with tricked-up fisticuffs, the
movie is set in the realm of countless other cautionary tales: the not-too-
distant future. And like any cautionary tale worth its salt, X-Men has an
issue: intolerance. The story portrays a secret war between good and evil
“mutants,” humans born with paranormal abilities. The other participant in
this three-way aggression is ignorant humanity, as represented by McCarthy-
esque Senator Robert Kelly (Bruce Davison). He wants mutants
documented, detained, and maybe even exterminated. The intolerance that
Kelly represents causes the movie’s villain, Magneto (Ian McKellen), to lash
out against normal humans, and causes its hero, Professor Charles Xavier
(Patrick Stewart), to organize opposition against Magneto. Proyas’s futuristic
heroes resort to anarchistic violence to right the wrongs of their worlds, but
the X-Men—as Xavier’s costumed apprentices are called—practice a kind of
civil disobedience, and curb bloodshed whenever possible.

If the future is incidental to Proyas’s movies and to X-Men, however, it’s

integral to Gattaca, screenwriter Andrew Niccol’s directorial debut—and
probably the most emotionally resounding Gen-X sci-fi flick. Subtle and sad
where The Matrix is flamboyant and angry, Gattaca uses a wrenching human
drama to illustrate the unimaginable realities of an Orwellian future.
Niccol’s hauntingly paranoid movie posits a future in which a genetically
engineered master race occupies the top strata of society, while naturally
born—and therefore imperfect—people are ostracized bottom- feeders.
Given the staggering advances in medical science at the end of the twentieth
century and the beginning of the twenty-first, from successful cloning
experiments to the emergence of genetically engineered food, the science
underpinning Niccol’s fiction is utterly contemporary, so the ethical issues
he explores are uniquely relevant. It’s therefore disappointing that Gattaca
isn’t wholly effective as a drama. The minimalistic style of the movie is
intoxicating and the story line raises issues that provoke intriguing
conversations, but Niccol’s screenplay eventually drowns in pedestrian
narrative elements.

Before that happens, however, Niccol sets up a fascinating premise. In the

future world dominated by lab-perfected paragons, one of the genetically
engineered aristocrats (Jude Law) loses the use of his legs, so he sells his
identity to a man of low—read: natural—birth (Ethan Hawke). To put across
the illusion of being perfect, Hawke’s character must ensure that he leaves
no traces of his imperfect physicality anywhere, so he scrubs his skin raw in
the shower to dislodge every tiny fragment of dead skin, and panics when he
misplaces the corrective lenses that adjust his poor vision to ideal standards.
Niccol’s movie contains allusions to Nazism, of course, but also represents
an educated, cynical guess about where man’s tinkering in his own
physiology could lead: If we can get to the point of building perfect people
in a laboratory, wouldn’t our traditional disdain for the imperfect—as seen in
centuries of racial, ethnic, and religious intolerance—lead us to create a new
hierarchy meant to shun the weak, the stupid, the ugly? As he did in his
remarkable script for The Truman Show, Niccol poignantly dramatizes the
human capacity for inhumanity—a theme that not only dovetails but in some
ways encapsulates the feelings that feed into Generation X’s collective sense
of alienation.

Despite the presence of such timely subject matter, it’s impossible to discuss
Gen-X movies without considering the movies that influenced them, from
Star Wars to Blade Runner to Brazil and beyond. Great sci-fi films are few,
but each casts such a long shadow that countless subsequent pictures are
dismissed as weak imitations. Movies in other genres get put through the
contrast-and-compare wringer—Traffic gets measured against The French
Connection, the similarities between Erin Brockovich and Norma Rae are
talking points—but sci-fi movies fare particularly poorly during the
comparative process. So for some filmmakers, the better part of valor when
it comes to science fiction is avoiding the genre entirely.

It’s not so much that the genre’s possibilities have been exhausted, but that
the genre’s possibilities have been so expertly explored that it’s difficult to
imagine concepts that won’t be defined by their relationship to other ideas in
other movies. In a way, perhaps this generation’s youthful romance with
science fiction has put them too far inside the genre to get an outside view of
what colors haven’t yet been added to the painting. Having said that, one
particular science-fiction film, The Matrix, plays a crucial role in the cinema
of Generation X. For that reason, a discussion of The Matrix occurs not here
but at the end of this chapter, because the philosophical issues raised by
Larry and Andy Wachowski’s picture are so provocative that grouping it
with other science-fiction films is too limiting.

Demons and Ghosts and Witches, Oh My!

While Gen Xers have been slow to attack the science-fiction genre, they
have shown no such reluctance when embracing the related genre of fantasy
—or the even more dynamic ilk of films that play with the line separating
fantasy from reality. The savviness with which the makers of The Sixth
Sense, Being John Malkovich, The Blair Witch Project, and other films
question perceptions of actual and physical life probably has everything to
do with this generation’s relationship with cinema itself.

Generation X grew up knowing more about movies than any previous

generation, and even the voluminous amounts of filmmaking information to
which they had access as youths has been dwarfed by the avalanche of
behind-the-scenes data that’s available now, at the time when the oldest Gen
Xers have reached maturity. (One can only imagine what the next generation
of filmmakers will have to offer, given that the curtain hiding the secrets of
movie magic seems to have been completely removed.) In a very important
sense, movies such as Being John Malkovich and The Blair Witch Project are
about the role that illusion plays in filmmaking—and about the fact that
projected film images are in fact an illusion, thanks to the phenomenon
called persistence of vision.

Probably the least original Gen-X movie about illusion and reality is The
Cell, Tarsem Singh’s ultra-stylized picture about a psychiatrist who enters
the mind of a serial killer to learn the location of his victims. The picture got
some attention upon release because of its disturbing visuals, such as a shot
of a man voluntarily suspended by hooks attached to rings sewn into his
skin, or a shot of a horse cleaved into pristine sections by sheets of glass.
Critics rightly noted that the most sensationalistic visions in the picture were
borrowed from hip New York artists—continuing a tradition begun with
Alfred Hitchcock’s employment of Salvador Dalí as the designer of
Spellbound’s dream sequences—but less was made of how derivative the
movie’s central device was.

At least as far back as 1984, when a sci-fi thriller called Dreamscape was
released, filmmakers have toyed with the idea of a characters projecting
themselves into the slumbering minds of other characters. Singh tried to
make the familiar seem fresh by utilizing ornate, frightening production
design and by incorporating a pop-psychology backstory—the killer was
abused as a child, so the shrink becomes an avenging angel who destroys the
killer’s rage, thus freeing the wronged babe inside the monster—but the
movie was strangely flat and unmoving.

The first two films directed by Kasi Lemmons, Eve’s Bayou and The
Caveman’s Valentine, deal with buried emotions more interestingly.
Lemmons’s debut, Eve’s Bayou, is a strange and somewhat opaque
combination of mystery and family drama in which the death of a
philandering father may or may not have been caused by one of his
daughters, who may or may not have used a combination of psychic ability
and voodoo to avenge the sexual abuse of her sister. The qualifiers in this
description are necessary because Lemmons’s evasive narrative makes the
“truth” of her fictional events hard to grasp; as have countless movies since
Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Eve’s Bayou plays with the idea that when
numerous people view a given event subjectively, adhering to any one
objective description of the event is itself a subjective choice. The film won
many partisans, and did surprisingly strong business given the usually chilly
reception afforded serious films by and about black people, but just as its
story points out how biases and emotions color recollections of fact, the
story confounded as many viewers as it entranced. At the very least, the film
is an effective mood piece with moments of otherworldly power—an
effective conversation piece with an abundance of provocative narrative
elements.

Seductive savagery: Dream sequences in Tarsem Singh’s The Cell, which

illustrate how a killer (Vincent D’Onofrio) romanticizes himself, play a
characteristic Gen-X game of blending reality and illusion (New Line
Cinema).

The surreal imagery in Lemmons’s second film, The Caveman’s Valentine, is

less about a tumultuous past than a tumultuous present—specifically, the
troubled existence of a schizophrenic named Romulus Ledbetter (Samuel L.
Jackson). A former concert pianist living in a cave in New York City, he
springs into action when a young murder victim is found outside his cave.
Romulus becomes an ersatz private detective, but his investigation is
hampered by the same force that provokes it: His delusional belief that an
all-powerful figure called “Stuyvesant” is broadcasting “Z-rays” from the
top of the Chrysler Building to control Romulus’s life. The caveman is
motivated in part by his desire to mete out justice, and in part by his desire to
rebel against his imagined Orwellian oppressor. The Orwellian allusion, of
course, connects The Caveman’s Valentine to the myriad other Gen-X
movies that suggest omniscient overlords.

Whereas the serial killer in The Cell has dreams in which he is personified as
a glamorous demon, the hero of The Caveman’s Valentine is haunted by
demons. As we see in vivid flash cuts, he literally has bats in his belfry:
Winged creatures fly around in his mind, perhaps to symbolize the dark and
random thoughts that frequently overpower Romulus’s consciousness. The
character’s inability to restrain his id is tragic and also strangely alluring.
The obvious problem is that Romulus often erupts into seemingly
unmotivated fits of rage, so his demons make it near-impossible to fit into
“normal” society: At one point, Romulus talks his way into an elite party,
then slides into the partygoers’ confidence by playing the piano until an
unprovoked outburst reveals his emotional imbalance.

But Romulus’s fantasy life also is a benefit, because he’s haunted by a

facsimile of his estranged wife, Shiela (Tamara Tunie). She functions like a
willful sidekick, taunting Romulus when he’s about to do something stupid,
but also inspiring him to greatness. The positivity of this imagery leavens the
darkness of Romulus’s other visions, creating an intriguingly balanced
portrayal of insanity. On one level, the character’s fantasy life is totally
separate from reality, but on another level, his fantasies keep him grounded.

Fantasy and reality intertwine in a more traditional way throughout The Sixth
Sense, M. Night Shyamalan’s acclaimed and monstrously successful
breakthrough film. The moody, measured thriller depicts the extraordinary
relationship between psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) and an
eight-year-old patient named Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment). Cole is
troubled by bloody visions because, as he says in the movie’s endlessly
quoted tag line, “I see dead people.” As Malcolm soon learns, the ghosts
gravitate to Cole because he’s able to communicate with those on “the other
side.” The ghosts want the youngster’s assistance in resolving issues that
were left hanging when they died. Malcolm aids Cole in revealing the
identity of a murderer and other tasks before Shyamalan reveals his narrative
trump card: Malcolm is himself dead, and is lingering in limbo because of
unresolved issues related to his marriage.

On a narrative level, this twist of cinematic reality turns watching The Sixth
Sense into a game, because Shyamalan put clues about Malcolm’s secret into
various parts of the movie. Except in a prologue, we see none but Cole
acknowledge the psychiatrist’s presence; Malcolm wears the same clothes
throughout the movie, although the director hides this fact by having the
character wear different versions of the same outfit; and so on.

But on an emotional level, Malcolm’s secret adheres to a reality-defying idea

that gained tremendous currency at the end of the twentieth century, the idea
that souls linger on earth until they achieve “closure.” Throughout the late
1990s, psychics were ubiquitous on television, books about the afterlife
became best-sellers, and songs and movies and books featuring angel
characters were embraced by the public. It was in this context that The Sixth
Sense achieved massive success by tapping into the zeitgeist. Many pundits
attributed the sudden interest in spirituality to the arrival of the millennium,
and to the widespread superstition that the year 2000 might coincide with the
Christian vision of Armageddon, at which point all living persons would be
made to account for the virtue, or lack thereof, in their lives.

Whatever the reasons behind it, however, the mainstream acceptance of The
Sixth Sense was interesting. Many bought tickets for the movie because word
got out that it had a great twist ending, but there also must have been some
appeal to the idea that Malcolm could use his afterlife to fix what was wrong
with his actual life. As do Lemmons’s films, Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense
and Unbreakable convey the comforting idea that if people identify and
fulfill their destinies, their souls will find peace. Significantly, these films
address spiritual issues even though Gen-X filmmakers mostly avoid
depicting the formal mechanism through which most people explore their
spirituality, religion. This is yet another example of Gen Xers circumventing
an institution in their quest for meaning.

Conventional ideas about reality also get a skewering in Being John

Malkovich, which is largely informed by contemporary celebrity culture, but
which also delves into issues of spirituality. Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman
anticipated the kinds of discussions his movie would provoke, as seen in a
self-reflexive monologue spoken relatively early in the movie. The speaker
is a frustrated puppeteer named Craig (John Cusack), who has just
discovered a portal into the mind of real-life actor John Malkovich—played
in the movie, of course, by John Malkovich.

CRAIG: The point is that this is a very odd thing—supernatural,

for lack of a better word. It raises all sorts of philosophical
questions about the nature of self, about the existence of the soul.
Am I me? Is Malkovich Malkovich? Was the Buddha right, is
duality an illusion? … Do you see what a metaphysical can of
worms this portal is? I don’t think I can go on living my life as I
have lived it.

The joke behind this monologue is that it’s almost word-for-word the kind of
vague blather that a pretentious critic might write after seeing Being John
Malkovich, so it’s a discussion about a discussion about the movie. That
cheeky proposition is typical of Gen-X cinema, in part because of the
generation’s savviness about what movies are, and in part because of how
deeply postmodern conceptualizing has penetrated modern critical thinking.
Pulp Fiction, for instance, is at times a movie about watching a movie, and
The Blair Witch Project is from beginning to end a movie about watching a
movie.

No Gen-X picture has gotten more mileage from exploiting the divide
between reality and fantasy than Blair Witch, which became symbolic of the
modern independent-movie boom because it was such an inherently low-
tech proposition. Conceived as a compilation of footage recovered from a
trio of twentysomethings who disappeared in a Maryland forest while
searching for an mythical figure called the Blair Witch, the movie was shot
on grainy 16-millimeter film and equally grainy amateur-grade video.

Ironically, however, the pitching of the movie was as high-tech as its making
was low-tech. Using a heavily trafficked Web site, the filmmakers created a
complex “mythology” around their movie, and even convinced many
moviegoers that the characters and images in The Blair Witch Project were
real. So on a certain level, this black-and-white, unprofessional-looking
movie is the best example yet of how Generation X’s relationship with
technology affects their perceptions of reality: By making their film look
amateurish, and then using technological means to spread a lie about it, the
makers of The Blair Witch Project pulled the wool over the eyes of a vast
segment of a technology-savvy generation. The illusion was made even
more complete by a widely seen companion documentary, The Curse of the
Blair Witch, which was in many ways more polished and persuasive than the
actual film.

Even among those who were in on the joke, however, the interplay between
reality and fantasy in The Blair Witch Project was delicious. In the movie,
three would-be documentarians venture into a forest that, according to
legend, has for centuries been haunted by the Blair Witch, the bloodthirsty
and vengeful spirit of a woman who was shunned by ignorant locals. As the
three go deeper into the forest, they are spooked by unexplained noises and
by peculiar artifacts that appear around their campsites as if by magic. Once
they decide to flee, they realize they have lost any sense of direction—so the
movie becomes a ticking clock counting down the minutes until the Blair
Witch claims three more victims.

The slyest gimmick in the film is that the witch, presuming she “exists,” is
never shown: The biggest hint that the myth is reality is the movie’s famous
final shot, in which protagonist Heather (Heather Donahue), enters what
appears to be the witch’s lair, points her camera at the seemingly paralyzed
body of her friend, and is struck by a powerful offscreen force. After more
than eighty teasing minutes, this climax is a shattering payoff for those who
succumbed to the movie’s unusual spell.
Be afraid … be very afraid: A deft exercise in postmodern horror, the
Daniel Myrick–Eduardo Sánchez film The Blair Witch Project features
Heather Donahue as a willful college student due for a deadly
comeuppance (Artisan Entertainment).

For all of their fanciful imagining, fantasy films—whether horror shows

such as The Cell or satirical romps such as Being John Malkovich—
ultimately deal with the gap between reality and fiction in a conventional
fashion, grounding viewers in an idea of objective reality. Romulus’s visions
in The Caveman’s Valentine are obviously not real (we know they exist only
in his head); the trips into the mind of Being John Malkovich are obviously
not real (the whole context of the movie is self-consciously contrived); and
The Sixth Sense is predicated on the familiar concept of the dead being able
to communicate with the living.

Conversely, Eve’s Bayou and The Blair Witch Project leave unanswered
questions in their wake, for they portray supernatural forces that defy simple
explanations. Did the little girl in Eve’s Bayou kill her father by normal
means or by utilizing voodoo? Is the witch in The Blair Witch Project real,
or did some maniac exploit superstition? These adventurous films zero in on
an idea that’s close to the heart of Gen-X cinema’s modus operandi: Given
how familiar audiences are with the means by which filmmakers create
illusions, the illusions that have the greatest impact are the ones left
unexplained. These films, then, are as enigmatic and overwhelming as
modern life itself.

The three doomed souls wandering through Blair Witch can even be
interpreted as poignant metaphors for Generation X itself. Lost in the wilds
of contemporary existence, and with no map to guide them to safety, the
characters are beset by unseen forces over which they have no control and
about which they have terrifyingly limited knowledge. They are
disconnected from the institutions that could protect them—family,
community, authority—so is it any wonder that they are consumed by the
void?

The fear that Gen Xers are working without a net, that they are so
disconnected from other segments of society that they are at risk of being
destroyed by the unknown like the characters in The Blair Witch Project,
pervades some of Generation X’s darkest films. In David Fincher’s The
Game, a businessman is shunted into a dangerous adventure, with
mysterious assailants pursuing him for no apparent reason. The businessman
learns that his reckless brother hired a firm to chase him as part of a life-or-
death game that the brother hoped would shake the businessman free from
his soulless lifestyle. Fincher backs off from the potentialities of this story
with a cheap trick ending, but the paranoia implied by the story line
—“Everyone’s out to get me, but I don’t know why”—is telling.

Similarly, Max (Sean Gullette), the protagonist of Darren Aronofsky’s debut

film, Pi, finds himself the target of unwanted attention when he becomes
embroiled in a weird plot involving computers, arcane elements of Judaica,
and other disparate factors. Max’s brain contains esoteric knowledge that
both maddens him and sparks the interest of extremist groups, making him a
victim of his own intelligence. Aronofsky’s thriller is loaded with wild
intellectual concepts and presented as sensory bombardment, so the madness
eating at Max’s brain, for instance, is represented by a piercing noise that
Aronofsky plays at such an intense, unrelenting volume that viewers
experience almost the same discomfort as the beleaguered hero.
Max is a surpassingly brilliant mathematician who has shut out the rest of
the world to crunch numbers in his claustrophobic Manhattan apartment. He
stumbles across a 216-digit figure that crashes his supercomputer, and after
he discards his only printout of the number, extremists hunt him down
because they view the number as a key to power. Meanwhile, the
mathematician suffers from crippling migraines that occur whenever he
nears the rediscovery of the magic number. In methodical narration, Max
draws a parallel between his life-threatening quest for the number and a
childhood folly in which he defied his parents by staring into the sun, nearly
destroying his eyes in the process. At its core, Aronofsky’s story is about the
fine line between genius and madness.

It says everything about the movie that Max escapes his hellish situation by
putting an electric drill to his temple, then boring a hole through his own
brain. To stop the noises in his head, he eradicates an essential component of
his own identity. From the perspective of the most paranoid members of
Generation X, Max assassinates his uniqueness in order to live in peace with
the drones who populate modern life. Max’s shocking action, which is both
self-destruction and self-preservation, can be interpreted as a metaphor for a
Gen Xer tossing aside his or her generational identity—be it slackerdom,
antiauthoritarianism, alternative sexuality, what have you—to go with the
flow of a culture that doesn’t tolerate the new ideas of a new generation.

What Is the Matrix?

The fear of having to sacrifice personal identity in order to blend into

contemporary culture is hardly the exclusive province of Aronofsky’s work,
though. The same fear drives the anarchists in Fight Club, and, for that
matter, the post-collegiates in Reality Bites and Before Sunrise and all the
other movies about Gen Xers confronting the realities of modern society. Yet
no filmmakers have taken this anxiety to a greater extreme than Larry and
Andy Wachowski, the wunderkind filmmaking team who made their name
with the Bound and then became superstars with their sophomore effort, the
science-fiction adventure The Matrix. Because of what the Wachowskis use
their sophomore film to say and how they use the medium of film to say it,
The Matrix is, thus far, the ultimate cinematic expression of Generation X’s
collective identity.

Fittingly, the film is a dark parable about oppressive institutions, and both its
content and technique examine the dehumanizing possibilities of technology.
Yet within the darkness and technological fetishism lies wishful imagery of a
Gen-X messiah—a messiah who, importantly, bears more than a passing
resemblance to that most enduring of Gen-X icons, Star Wars protagonist
Luke Skywalker. For even while The Matrix makes a powerful statement
about what it means to live in contemporary American society, it makes an
equally powerful statement about how a youth spent at the movies taught
two members of Generation X to dream of better ways of living in
contemporary American society. The postmodern, recycled nature of the
film’s statement—which is unmistakably a modernization of a previous
film’s statement—is yet another reason why The Matrix so acutely
encapsulates the cinematic identity of Generation X.

The Wachowskis show viewers that The Matrix is something fresh right at
the beginning of the film, when a pair of government-agent types assault a
slinky computer hacker named Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss). To evade them,
Trinity leaps into the air and assumes a kung fu-style fighting pose—then
hovers in mid-air while the camera whirls around her in an impossible 360-
degree angle achieved through a technique the filmmakers call “bullet time,”
created by digitally stitching together images captured by a ring of still
cameras. This moment tells viewers that characters in The Matrix will
manifest a brand of superhuman ability never previously shown in films, but
also that the vocabulary of the movie itself will be ingrained with cutting-
edge technology. Later revelations underline that the theme and technique of
the movie are inextricably entwined.

Trinity eventually makes contact with another hacker, Neo (Keanu Reeves),
and a series of tantalizing clues suggest that she’s about to share a life-
changing secret with the reclusive computer nut. She teases Neo—and the
audience—even further with an insinuating monologue proving that she’s
privy not only to secrets that are important to Neo, but secrets about him:

TRINITY: I know what you’ve been doing. I know why you

hardly sleep at night, why you live alone, and why, night after
 night, you sit at your computer. You’re looking for him. I know
because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he
found me, he told me I wasn’t really looking for him. I was
looking for an answer. It’s the question that drives us, Neo. It’s the
question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I
did.

NEO: What is the Matrix?

TRINITY: The answer is out there, Neo. It’s looking for you. And
it will find you if you want it to.

Despite the story’s futuristic setting, the facts of Neo’s lifestyle are very
clearly extrapolated from commonplace late-twentieth-century behavior:
He’s a young, disenfranchised man who has replaced the flesh-and-blood
human community with the ones and zeros of the online community,
interacting more comfortably with technology than with people. And the
existential quality of the endeavor that links him to the rebellious, seductive
Trinity—“It’s the question that drives us”—identifies him as an archetypal
Gen-X protagonist. Other such characters pursue their search for meaning by
removing themselves from consumer-driven society to investigate questions
of inner life and spirituality, but Neo, because he’s a creature of the
Information Age, seeks the meaning of life not by discussing philosophy or
deconstructing pop culture, but by journeying through the Internet. His quest
is coldly logical and framed in the vernacular of an online culture: Surely all
the answers can be found, he thinks, if I can type the right question into my
keyboard.
Rage against the machine: Messianic hero Neo (Keanu Reeves) uses
blazing machine guns and cyber-age savvy to overthrow an Orwellian
power structure in The Matrix, a science-fiction hit created by brothers
Andy and Larry Wachowski (Warner Bros.).

Neo’s quest is given new import when he becomes the target of the same
agents who pursued Trinity at the beginning of the picture, and when the
Wachowskis stage several mind-bending sequences that call into question
whether Neo actually is being persecuted or whether he’s simply imaginative
and paranoid. After a series of harrowing close calls, Neo is brought before
an enigmatic figure named Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne), Trinity’s
mentor. In a scene that clearly echoes the Star Wars moment in which young
hero Luke Skywalker first learns of “the Force”—the energy field that binds
all characters in the Star Wars universe—Morpheus offers Neo a chance to
gain a greater understanding of his world.

MORPHEUS: You have the look of a man who accepts what he

sees because he is expecting to wake up. Ironically, that is not far
from the truth. Do you believe in fate, Neo?

NEO: No.

MORPHEUS: Why not?

NEO: Because I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my
own life.

MORPHEUS: I know exactly what you mean. Let me tell you why
you’re here: You’re here because you know … that there’s
something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but
it’s there—like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad…. Do
you know what I’m talking about?

NEO: The Matrix?

MORPHEUS: … The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us….

It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you
from the truth.
 NEO: What truth?

MORPHEUS: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you
were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell
or taste or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one
can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself….
After that, there is no turning back.

This exchange is suffused with the ennui, introspection, and existential angst
that permeate many of the best Gen-X films. The “slavery” allusion, while
literal in the context of the film, echoes figurative language that pops up
throughout Gen-X movies about work—for what are the characters in Office
Space, American Beauty, and other films if not slaves who rebel against their
captors? And the idea that the modern world is an illusion is a hyperbolic
manifestation of the disenfranchisement that drives so many Gen-X
characters away from societal institutions. Yet while other characters feel
disconnected from family, churches, governments, and other societal
bedrocks, Neo actually learns that the very fabric of his reality—the
institutions that ground him to a sense of existence—are false. Therefore, it’s
crucial to underline that Neo is poised to learn one possible answer to the
eternal question facing Generation X: “Who am I, and where do I belong?”

Morpheus reveals that in the future, man created intelligent machines that
eventually rebelled against mankind—a familiar theme in science fiction,
which perpetually returns to the Frankenstein parable about men who play
God. These future machines enslaved the human race into a massive web of
pods, in which life energy is sucked from human bodies to power machines.
To keep the humans from fighting their captivity, the machines created the
Matrix, a virtual-reality simulation of the modern world that is piped directly
into the minds of the pod-dwelling humans. So even though Neo and
millions like him believe themselves to be walking and eating and sleeping
and breathing in a physical world, they actually only are dreaming
themselves into that world at the prodding of the machines. Morpheus and
Trinity are among a tiny group of people who were freed from their pods,
and who are building an army with which to overthrow the machines and
free humanity from enslavement.
This story line is presented as pure escapism, as are stylized action scenes in
which Trinity, Morpheus, and Neo use martial arts and gunpower to fight the
computer-generated agents within the Matrix. (These scenes recall how a
human entered a video game in the early-1980s fantasy film Tron, yet
another movie whose audience included vast numbers of Gen Xers.) Beneath
the escapism, however, is a poignant expression of frustration at the
homogenization and pointlessness of a modern world in which humans
replace each other with machines, both for utilitarian tasks and, in the
Internet age, for companionship. While the use of “bullet-time” photography
and other high-tech elements prove that the Wachowski brothers and their
collaborators are fans of at least some technology, the unease they have
about humans’ ability to steer an even keel into the waters of technological
advancement is palpable.

The filmmakers’ nervousness about where modern society is headed finds its
ultimate manifestation in Neo, whom the other characters perceive as an
Information Age messiah. The miracle he performs is not rising from the
dead or turning water into wine, but reading computer code. He is the first
human who can think faster than the machines, so once he becomes
actualized, he looks at the Matrix and sees not the utterly convincing illusion
that Trinity and Morpheus see, but the ones and zeros that the machines use
to manufacture the illusion.

In the Wachowskis’ cautionary worldview, the Matrix is the anti-Force, the

benevolent collective spirituality of George Lucas’s universe reimagined as a
drug used to drown the consciousness of all humanity. Accordingly, Neo’s
first major victory against the machines—which concludes The Matrix and
sets the stage for the film’s sequels—is achieved by venturing deep into the
inner space of his own mind, a mirror image of how Luke Skywalker
achieved his greatest victory by venturing deep into outer space. What joins
both characters is that each must sublimate his own persona beneath a force
greater than any individual, giving power to the idea that collective effort is
the only truly useful tool for fighting oppression.

The Matrix is an exhibition of how the unique forces that defined Generation
X’s upbringing both help and hinder the evolution of this generation’s
filmmakers. It’s at once stimulating and superficial, intellectual and escapist.
Viewers who simply crave visual and aural stimulation can watch the fight
scenes and the trick shots and the images of sexy actors zipping around in
form-fitting clothes. Yet viewers who crave something meaningful can find
that, too: In the most generous reading of the film, Neo is the first Gen-X
protagonist to truly learn what caused his generation to be what it is, and it’s
therefore significant that he sees not the hand of God—proof of an
omniscient creator—but a wholly rational mechanism.

This is the most cynical concept buried in The Matrix, which constantly
bounds between the extremes of heroic optimism and dismal pessimism: The
meaning of life is not some ephemeral spiritual concept, but the solution to a
math problem. In this reading, The Matrix is the saddest possible proof of
how deeply Gen Xers have lost faith in societal institutions, because it
suggests that by losing faith in everything that grounds life, Gen Xers have
lost faith in the mystery of life itself.

Accordingly, as Gen-X scholar Geoffrey T. Holtz noted, the nihilistic

attitude that pervades The Matrix is far from anomalous:

In many ways [Gen Xers] have absorbed the ever-growing

fatalistic attitude of society in general. There is, to be sure, a vein
of hopelessness that runs through this generation. One college
professor who has been teaching English composition for more
than twenty years recently noted a marked difference between the
plots of her students’ fiction today and those of previous students.
In the past, she observed, “students plotted their stories so that all
kinds of terrible things would happen to their protagonists, but in
the end […] everyone, alone or together, would work their way out
of danger and get on with their lives.” Today, however, “violence
enters the story without benefit of plot, as if by metaphysical
caprice. Not a caprice of the student writers but of forces way
beyond their control.”1
 12
Where Do We Go from Here?

“Who am I, and where do I belong?”

The young adults who comprise Generation X are not the first wave of
chronological peers to collectively wrestle with this question, and they won’t
be the last. But certain aspects of Generation X’s past and present make their
quest interesting and timely. As has been noted throughout this study, Gen
Xers grew up in the shadow of one of the most discussed, celebrated, and,
arguably, self-centered generations in American history, the boomers. Like a
young child trying to declare his or her own identity while an older sibling
gets all of mom’s and dad’s attention, Gen Xers have faced an uphill battle
since birth to find a place in a world that is in many ways of, by, and for the
millions upon millions of boomers.

Moreover, the peculiar aspects of the decades during which Gen Xers came
of age colored their perspectives. The oldest members of this generation
were mature enough to at least somewhat grasp the importance of Watergate,
the end of the Vietnam War, and the countless other schisms that sliced
through American society in the 1970s. And virtually all Gen Xers were
privy (some would say victim) to the changes in education, government, and
popular culture that forced youths of the late 1960s through the early 1980s
to grow up faster than almost any of their predecessors. While it might be
overstating things to say that Gen Xers raised in a period of cynicism, self-
involvement, marital disharmony, and political upheaval lost their innocence
as quickly as they first tasted it, it’s not an overstatement to say that Gen
Xers, by and large, were faced with adult choices and quandaries well before
they became adults.

This accelerated maturation led to a severe disconnect in this generation’s

upbringing: Since Gen Xers were asked to come of age before they actually
came of age, it’s no surprise that so many of them seem to be stuck in
prolonged adolescence. They were never allowed to just be children, but
were in some cases withheld the rights and responsibilities of adults, so they
are a hybrid of different phases of human growth.

For many members of this peculiar generation, the confusion about the roles
they are supposed to play in society is exacerbated by the darkest social
factors of the periods in which they were raised. Divorce, experiments in
hands-off education, the use of medication as a parenting tool, the
corporatization of the American workplace, mixed messages from the post-
Watergate political establishment, and the homogenization of popular culture
all contributed to an environment in which young people felt at least like
cogs in some great machine and at worst like disposable accessories to their
parents’ lifestyles. While not every Gen Xer was touched by every one of
these factors (even though those who weren’t heard about the social
upheavals from friends and the media), the onslaught of changes to
American society during Generation X’s formative years led to a cheapening
of life in this country, and led countless youths to feel unwanted or even
betrayed by the institutions that comprise the bedrock of existence in the
United States.

For that reason, it makes all the sense in the world that Gen-Xers took the
“tune in, turn on, drop out” ethos of the boomers to a new, almost nihilistic
extreme. For instead of removing themselves from mainstream culture in
order to join an alternative culture fueled by new ideas of positivity and
harmony, the Gen Xers most deeply affected by social change removed
themselves from mainstream culture in order to join an alternative non-
culture fueled by disdain for everything they were expected to take seriously.
Irony and disenfranchisement and contempt combined into an all-purpose
psyche that produced its own aesthetic, language, and, to a degree, belief
system. The most cynical Gen Xers perceived society as having abandoned
them, so they fought back by abandoning society.

This led older Americans, and even members of Generation X who felt
stronger ties to conventional society, to dismiss slackers and other
disenfranchised Gen Xers as avatars of narcissism and sloth. The most
stinging accusations hurled at Gen Xers pointed out that Generation X grew
up in an era of comparative peace—notwithstanding skirmishes in Grenada,
Panama, and the Persian Gulf, there was no war during Generation X’s
youth, and there certainly was no conflict that promised to erupt into
anything as divisive and destructive as Vietnam. Furthermore, skeptics of
Generation X’s malaise noted, slackers and their ilk didn’t propose a new
societal model to replace the old one. A generation before, hippies withdrew
from polite society and tried to found a new collective called, among other
names, the Woodstock Nation. Where, doubters asked, was the grand idea of
Generation X? If the youths of the late twentieth century were so fed up with
the culture handed to them by their parents, what changes did they propose
for making the culture better?

One place in which to look for some answers to these haunting questions is
the cinema of Generation X. Even in the earliest films in this wildly varied
body of work—Steven Soderbergh’s introspective sex, lies, and videotape,
Richard Linklater’s seminal Slacker, John Singleton’s charged Boyz N the
Hood—a common theme begins to emerge. All three pictures challenge
presumptions about society.

Soderbergh’s film portrays a soulful drifter who videotapes women sharing

their most private experiences, masturbates instead of actually having
contact with women, and breaks up his friend’s marriage. Yet in the topsy-
turvy world of Gen-X cinema, this character is a sympathetic protagonist.
Linklater’s movie shows aimless youths wandering through their existences,
exploring the wilds of intellectualism and philosophy, but not really living
lives by any conventional standard. And Singleton’s picture puts human
faces on a segment of society many would rather dismiss with epithets,
thereby proving that even the most brutal gun-toting “gangsta” in South
Central Los Angeles has a story to tell. The characters around whom these
pioneering Gen-X directors chose to build their first movies are crucially
important windows into the cinema of Generation X, which is largely a
cinema of the misunderstood, the eccentric, the disenfranchised, and the lost.

As Gen-X filmmakers matured, they expanded their worldview to include

more than misfits and malcontents. So while Quentin Tarantino spent the
first few years of his career examining the psyches of criminals, Rod Lurie
used his first two films to explore issues relating to the American presidency,
surely the ultimate icon of traditional American culture. There’s room in the
Gen-X mix for angry directors, contemplative directors, ironic directors,
subversive directors. There’s room in the mix for stories about love, work,
religion, drugs, sex, and countless other topics. There’s even room for stories
about war, a subject few Gen Xers can discuss from a first-hand perspective:
Michael Bay directed the glossy epic Pearl Harbor; Keith Gordon helmed a
reflective combat film set in World War II, A Midnight Clear, as well as
thoughtful movie set partly during the Vietnam era, Waking the Dead; and
even actor-director Emilio Estevez entered the fray with a Vietnam-related
film called The War at Home.

Perhaps because war is among the most polarizing aspects of human

behavior, the messages in Gen-X war movies are among the clearest sent by
any directors of this generation: Pearl Harbor, for instance, is a jingoistic
celebration of America’s might. Gordon’s war-related films, however, are
infused with ambiguity and ambivalence. His work is far more characteristic
of Generation X than Bay’s: In films made by this generation that grew up in
confusing times, there are no easy answers, and there often are no absolute
answers at all. Traditional concepts of right and wrong became so clouded
during this generation’s youth that taking a distinct stand on any topic seems
hypocritical.

It will be interesting to see how Gen Xers react to the massive changes in the
geopolitical landscape that took shape after the devastating terrorist attacks
on New York City and Washington in 2001, and it also will be interesting to
see how youths of the next generation react to the mixed messages brought
on by the destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the
Pentagon. While some might react to these incomprehensible events by
retreating into cynicism, others might be caught up in the wave of
nationalism that was felt following the attacks. In a sad way, perhaps the
unprecedented manner in which evil was visited upon the civilian population
of the United States might help the Americans of Generation Y feel more
connected to their country than Generation X ever did during their youth.

In the few instances when a polarizing Gen-X film takes a distinct stand on a
social issue, that stand generally defies the status quo. Soderbergh’s Traffic
flat out says that America’s war on drugs is a folly that should be replaced
by intervention and treatment. Yet even this assertion is to some degree
anomalous, for directors belonging to this generation seem far more
concerned with questions than with answers. They seem driven to encourage
others to understand, and perhaps even emulate, their introspective ways.
Look at the way young characters interact with their parents in Reality Bites
and other Gen-X movies about family: The kids speak a different language
than their parents, who scratch their heads in confusion when trying to
understand their children’s refusal to embrace traditional goals. Sure,
generational clashes are nothing new, but the most peculiar aspect of how
Generation X relates to its elders is that Gen Xers don’t want to challenge
their parents’ culture in order to replace it with one of their own. In moments
like Troy’s sobering soliloquy in Reality Bites, Gen Xers challenge their
parents’ culture as a way of explaining why they don’t wish to participate in
society at all.

Sometimes, this ennui turns into positive energy: The rebel characters in The
Matrix undermine the sterile society in which they were raised, and in so
doing become actualized. Neo learns that he has spent his entire life in a tiny
pod, fed intravenously and doped into contentment by an oppressive
establishment. Isn’t that imagery a hyperbolic representation of a typical
Gen Xer languishing on a couch, loading himself with junk food, and
numbing himself with images on television? Therefore, doesn’t Neo’s choice
to free himself from his pod and fight the powers that be represent a Gen Xer
departing the couch to become involved in society, instead of just providing
commentary from the sidelines?

Gen-X directors rarely take such extreme measures to dramatize the value of
participation in society, but they often encourage social change in more
personal ways. Kimberly Peirce railed against intolerance with her
passionate story about modern gender roles, Boys Don’t Cry. Alexander
Payne and Wes Anderson skewered the notion that ambition equals spiritual
happiness by showing driven characters driving their acquaintances crazy in
Election and Rushmore. And M. Night Shyamalan offered reassuring
messages about people, both living and undead, taking control of their lives
in The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable.

Gen-X directors seem to want their audiences to participate in life, but they
take unusual routes toward dramatizing their calls to action, as if the concept
of a traditional hero has lost so much credibility that it’s no longer a
storytelling option. At the same time, heroes, albeit haunted ones, show up in
myriad Gen-X movies. In the cinema of Generation X, there are no
absolutes: Just when it seems the directors in this group have given up on
traditional ideas of good and evil, along comes a morally righteous
filmmaker such as Singleton or Shyamalan. As Charlie Kaufman, the
screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, noted:

I really don’t have any solutions and I don’t like movies that do. I
want to create situations that give people something to think about.
I hate a movie that will end by telling you that the first thing you
should do is love yourself. That is so insulting and condescending,
and so meaningless. My characters don’t learn to love each other
or themselves.1

Despite the mixed messages that permeate Gen-X movies, the filmmakers of
this generation have racked up spectacular accomplishments.

Robert Rodriguez became a folk hero for countless would-be filmmakers by

shooting his debut film, El Mariachi, for a meager $7,000. Kevin Smith
achieved similar stature by turning an amateurish story shot in a convenience
store, Clerks, into the launching pad of a celebrated career. Steven
Soderbergh was anointed the poster boy for contemporary independent
cinema when sex, lies, and videotape outperformed all expectations by
earning $28 million at the box office. A decade later, the same director won
a slot in history by earning twin Oscar nominations for helming Erin
Brockovich and Traffic. Larry and Andy Wachowski broke new cinematic
ground by integrating “bullet-time” photography into The Matrix, and the
mind-bending effect was so influential that it was mimicked in subsequent
movies ranging from Scary Movie to Charlie’s Angels to Shrek.
Still searching: Texas-based independent Richard Linklater, shown
rehearsing Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy for their roles in Before
Sunrise, is one of the many Gen-X filmmakers who build on their
success by experimenting with new storytelling techniques (Castle Rock
Entertainment).

And then there’s Tarantino. The second Gen-X director to gain notoriety as
the exemplar of a new wave of filmmakers, he introduced a pop-culture-
drenched, fast-moving, ultraviolent storytelling style that influenced
independent cinema, and even infiltrated mainstream movies, for most of the
1990s and beyond. Just as the movie brats of the previous generation had,
Tarantino slapped contemporary cinema in the face and forced it to change
with the times. Movies had been fast and violent before Reservoir Dogs and
Pulp Fiction came along, but thereafter, they had to be fast and violent and
hip and smart and ironic, or run the risk of seeming passé.

Tarantino’s influence was not entirely positive, but the best aftershock of his
gate-crashing was that it so deeply changed financiers’ and audiences’ ideas
of what good movies could look and sound like that other daring Gen Xers
—Spike Jonze, David Fincher, the Wachowski brothers, and many more—
were able to bring offbeat projects into the marketplace.

There’s much more to come, of course. Soderbergh, Linklater, Singleton,

Tarantino, though already established talents, probably have yet to make
their best movies. In 2001, Linklater released Waking Life, an experimental
movie for which shots of real actors were painted over, frame-by-frame, to
create a dreamlike brand of reality-based animation. In the same year,
Soderbergh juggled such diverse projects as an action-oriented remake of the
Rat Pack film Ocean’s Eleven, a sequel to sex, lies, and videotape, and a
remake of an obscure Russian science-fiction movie called Solaris. Even as
they secure lasting places in the cinematic firmament, these filmmakers
continue to experiment with new forms, new ideas, new subjects, and new
techniques.

And in the future, it won’t just be the established Gen-X directors who are
doing interesting work. Sofia Coppola, the youngest director discussed in
this book, has made only one feature film as of this writing, so the question
of whether she will create a body of work as lasting as that created by her
father, Francis Ford Coppola, remains unanswered. More importantly, who
knows what to expect from the numerous Gen-X filmmakers who have yet
to storm the gates of Hollywood? At the end of the twentieth century, a
revolution in filmmaking was facilitated by the emergence of affordable
digital-video cameras capable of capturing professional-quality images with
minimal investments of time, money, and personnel. Film festivals around
the world have opened their doors to digital movies, and the Internet
provides unprecedented distribution options that could democratize the film
industry. So not only have we yet to discover every Gen Xer with an
important cinematic statement to share, we have yet to discover every means
by which the wunderkinds of this and subsequent generations will share such
statements.

So far, the cinema of Generation X has been driven by a thirst for

knowledge: Characters in Gen-X movies question who they are, how the
past shaped them, what options await them in the future, and why they
should spend their time doing work of which corporations will be the
beneficiaries. The cinema of Generation X may well be a narcissistic cinema
—Gen-X characters often spend so much time analyzing their own lives and
troubles that they sometimes are blinded to the world around them—but
there’s a good reason for that focus on the self.

The members of Generation X seem bound by disappointment in the culture

that birthed them, and wary of their ability to create a culture that’s any
better. Gen Xers are on a quest for knowledge, but they’re ambivalent about
whether they really want answers to their questions. Hence the prevalence
not only of slacker characters, but of characters who numb their pain with
drugs. As Darren Aronofsky, the challenging director of Pi and Requiem for
a Dream, said: “Maybe the price of knowledge is pain.”2

James Mangold’s Girl Interrupted, a drama about a privileged young woman

who spends nearly two years in a psychiatric hospital after formless malaise
drives her to attempt suicide, attacks the quandary of young people
frightened by the roles they may be asked to play once they become adults.
Although protagonist Susannah (Winona Ryder) is shown in the early 1970s,
her nebulous angst about the modern world strongly echoes the ennui
expressed by Ryder’s character and her peers in Reality Bites. Tellingly, not
everyone has sympathy for Susannah’s plight: Long-suffering nurse Valerie
Owens (Whoopi Goldberg) has seen too many truly sick people pass through
the hospital’s doors to have patience for young people hiding from life.
“You’re a lazy, self-indulgent little girl who is driving herself crazy,” the
nurse barks.

Similar barbs have been shot at countless Gen Xers, whom skeptics believe
retreat from life because they are daunted by hard work. But as this study
has shown, Generation X’s stance is informed by much more than sloth. The
characters created by Gen-X filmmakers withdraw from society because
they want nothing to do with a society capable of untold cruelty. That,
finally, is one answer to the burning question of “Who am I, and where do I
belong?”—I am an afterthought of society, and if nothing else, I know where
I do not belong.

While poignant, this answer does not address one last question: If Gen Xers
know where they don’t belong, do they know where they do? Are the
destined to assimilate into the society about which they have such paralyzing
doubts, or will they, like the rebel heroes of The Matrix, extract themselves
from the cocoon of contemporary culture to look for a better place? The
resolution to that conundrum will be revealed in the future, so for now, it’s
best to live inside the question—to inhabit the ambiguity that suffuses the
cinema of Generation X, thereby understanding how this eclectic body of
work relates to what has come before, and what has yet to come. That said,
there could be no more appropriate parting thought than the opening scene of
Reality Bites, which dramatizes the desire for meaning that burns deep in the
heart of this confused, confusing generation.

In the scene, Lelaina (Ryder) takes the podium at a college graduation

ceremony to deliver her valedictory address. As her speech nears its
crescendo, she realizes she’s missing the card on which her closing thoughts
were written. How she chooses to disguise her error speaks volumes.

LELAINA: And they wonder why those of us in our 20s refuse to

work an 80-hour week just so we can afford to buy their BMWs.
Why we aren’t interested in the counterculture that they invented,
as if we did not seize and disembowel their revolution for a pair of
running shoes. But the question remains: What are we going to do
now? How are we going to repair all of the damage we inherited?
Fellow graduates, the answer is simple…. The answer is “I don’t
know.”
 Appendix One:
Key Generation X Filmmakers

Affleck, Ben (b. 1972) and Matt Damon (b. 1970) Affleck, who
technically is a year too young to be included in this study, and his
childhood friend Damon cowrote Good Will Hunting, the Oscar-winning
film that was a breakthrough for both of their acting careers. The in-demand
thespians have yet to write another film together or separately, although
they did assist the writer-director who won a contest called Project
Greenlight. Affleck is known for heartthrob roles in Armageddon and Pearl
Harbor, Damon for nuanced work in The Talented Mr. Ripley and Courage
Under Fire, and each has an extensive acting résumé.

FILMOGRAPHY (as screenwriters): Good Will Hunting (1997)

Anderson, Paul Thomas (b. 1970) Anderson is one of the most

sophisticated storytellers of his generation, perhaps because he grew up
close to the movies: His father worked on television as a late-night horror-
movie host called Ghoulari, and Anderson was born in Studio City,
California, right at the heart of the entertainment industry. He began his
career as a production assistant on television movies, game shows, music
videos, and small independent films, working both in Los Angeles and New
York City. His five-minute short film, Cigarettes and Coffee, won him
entrance into the Sundance Institute, at which he developed the story that
became his first feature, Hard Eight.

Anderson’s movies generally are dramas featuring dark story lines that are
deftly intertwined in a novelistic manner, and his literary bent also shows in
the torrents of words that often spew from his characters. Although
Anderson frequently gets carried away by his own audacity—the frogs that
rained from the sky at the end of Magnolia were a love-hate proposition for
audiences—his mature, knowing looks at sexuality, obsession, the quest for
fame, and the dissipation of American families have been well-served by
his bravura camerawork and dazzling editing.
FILMOGRAPHY: Hard Eight (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia
(1999), Punchdrunk Knuckle Love (2002)

Anderson, Wes (b. 1969) A bold voice whose irreverence is mostly devoid
of the mean-spirited edge that makes much ironic Gen-X cinema off-
putting, Anderson has gained the admiration of such notables as James L.
Brooks and Martin Scorsese by making offbeat movies that mix sly comedy
with gentle character insights. A Texas native, he got a degree in philosophy
from the University of Texas at Austin, at which he met writer-actor Owen
Wilson. (Wilson, born in Dallas in 1968 and known for roles in such films
as Armageddon and Meet the Parents, is Anderson’s writing partner.) With
chops honed by making numerous Super-8 movies during his youth,
Anderson was accepted into the graduate film program at Columbia
University, but opted instead to make a 1994 short film called Bottle
Rocket, which was succeeded by a feature of the same name. Like James
Mangold, Anderson seems particularly interested in misfits, and he
generally puts across a positive, if somewhat weird, worldview.

FILMOGRAPHY: Bottle Rocket (1996), Rushmore (1998), The Royal

Tenenbaums (2001)

Aronofksy, Darren (b. 1969) A provocateur of the first order, Aronofsky

filled his early films with confrontational stylistic devices that suited his
intense subject matter. After graduating from high school, the Brooklyn
native bummed around Europe briefly before entering Harvard University,
at which he studied live-action filmmaking and animation. His senior thesis
project, Supermarket Sweep, was a finalist for the 1991 Student Academy
Awards, and in 1994, he received a master’s in directing from the American
Film Institute. Aronofsky funded his challenging debut film, Pi, with $100
investments from relatives and friends. Although Pi positioned Aronofsky
as a paranoid intellectual, he quickly shunted to more accessible material,
even while retaining his tendency to make moviegoers squirm by
pummeling them with disturbing sensations and by showing characters
enduring horrific ordeals.

FILMOGRAPHY: Pi (1998), Requiem for a Dream (2000)

Arteta, Miguel (b. 1970) Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Arteta graduated
from Wesleyan University in 1989, then received an master’s from the
American Film Institute in 1993. While at AFI, Arteta made a musical short
called Every Day Is a Beautiful Day, which was nominated for a Student
Academy Award. His sensitivity and his offbeat taste in material won him a
slot in the Sundance Institute in 1996, as well as jobs writing for the
television shows Homicide: Life on the Street, Freaks and Geeks, and
Snoops.

FILMOGRAPHY: Star Maps (1997), Chuck & Buck (2000)

Avary, Roger (b. 1965) Although he won an Oscar for cowriting Pulp
Fiction with Quentin Tarantino, Avary’s solo output has been, to put it
generously, negligible: His films are at best draped in second-hand style and
at worst incomprehensible. The Canadian filmmaker met Tarantino when
they both worked at Imperial Entertainment, a Los Angeles video store.

FILMOGRAPHY: Killing Zoe (1994), Pulp Fiction (screenplay only,

1994), Mr. Stitch (1995)

Bay, Michael (b. 1965) Under the tutelage of veteran producer Jerry
Bruckheimer, music-video and TV-commercial specialist Bay became the
preeminent director of overpriced shoot-em-ups at the end of the 1990s. His
visual style, in which every image is caressed with lighting and lens filters
and special effects until it’s as pristine and attractive as a postcard, is a
shallow echo of the aesthetic perfected by British stylists of the late 1970s
and early 1980s, notably Ridley Scott and Adrian Lyne. Bay grew up with
his adoptive parents in Los Angeles, and studied film at the Art Center
College of Design, in Pasadena, California, after attending Wesleyan
University. His major student film was a faux Coca-Cola commercial,
which prophesied how deeply salesmanship and instant gratification would
permeate his features.

FILMOGRAPHY: Bad Boys (1995), The Rock (1996), Armageddon (1998),

Pearl Harbor (2001)

Black, Shane (b. 1961) Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Black
epitomized the gold-rush mentality that overtook screenwriters and would-
be screenwriters throughout America, because his scripts, although rooted
in simple- minded action concepts and jokey banter, fetched preposterous
amounts in bidding wars between studios. Lethal Weapon initiated a
lucrative franchise and provided a model for many subsequent buddy
movies, and The Last Action Hero contains some amusing attempts at self-
referential humor, even though it was an infamous flop. As of this writing,
Black has yet to venture into serious work, and the market for his brand of
zippy, grisly action has gone soft.

FILMOGRAPHY (as screenwriter): The Monster Squad (1987), Lethal

Weapon (1987), The Last Boy Scout (1991), The Last Action Hero (1993),
The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), A.W.O.L. (1999)

Burns, Edward (b. 1968) Specializing in the kind of gentle, unthreatening

interplay that often meets a warmer reception on television than it does in
film, Burns has balanced a slight career as a writer-director with acting
work in films far more visible than his own, notably Steven Spielberg’s
1998 war epic, Saving Private Ryan. Born in Queens and raised in Long
Island, Burns studied at Oneonta College and the University at Albany
before focusing on film while at New York City’s Hunter College. His
apprenticeship included making short films and working behind the scenes
of television shows, and he began writing his first feature while a
production assistant on Entertainment Tonight. Burns cocreated a TV show
called The Fighting Fitzgeralds, based loosely on characters in his debut
film.

FILMOGRAPHY: The Brothers McMullen (1995), She’s the One (1996),

No Looking Back (1998), Sidewalks of New York (2001)

Christopher, Mark (b. 1961) An Iowa native who studied film at

Columbia University and scored at festivals with gay-themed short films
including Alkali, Iowa, Christopher made an inauspicious debut with a film
about famed discotheque Studio 54. The picture featured a terrific
performance by Mike Myers, but little else in it made an impression.

FILMOGRAPHY: 54 (1998)
Coppola, Sofia (b. 1971) Before she could walk, Coppola made a
noteworthy contribution to American film by playing the child of Michael
Corleone in the baptism scene of The Godfather (1972), which was directed
by her father, Francis Ford Coppola. Her appearance in a 1990 sequel, The
Godfather, Part III, was widely slammed as a nepotistic indulgence,
because Sofia Coppola—who stepped in at the last minute to replace
Winona Ryder—was overwhelmed by the movie’s operatic style. It was
poetic justice, then, when she scored a major critical hit with the first
feature she directed, The Virgin Suicides.

Following an invaluable apprenticeship during which she traveled the globe

with her father during production of his films, Coppola studied painting in
California, then explored photography (for Details and other publications),
acting (in such projects as a Comedy Central series), and fashion (she began
her own clothing line) before risking comparisons to her father by
becoming a director. She is, incidentally, married to fellow Gen-X
filmmaker Spike Jonze.

FILMOGRAPHY: The Virgin Suicides (1999)

Damon, Matt see Affleck, Ben

Demme, Ted (b. 1964–d. 2002) The nephew of acclaimed filmmaker

Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs), Ted Demme worked steadily
as a journeyman director of comedic and dramatic films, displaying an easy
touch with comedy and a gift for capturing the interaction among blue-
collar urbanites. In addition to his features, Demme—whose real first name
was Edward—helmed numerous TV projects. Demme died of a heart attack
in January 2002 at age 38.

FILMOGRAPHY: Who’s the Man? (1993), The Ref (1994), Beautiful Girls
(1996), Life (1999), Monument Avenue (1999), Blow (2001)

Elfont, Harry (b. 1968) and Deborah Kaplan These writer-directors, who
met while studying film at New York University and work as a team,
epitomize their generation’s fixation on pop culture, particularly television
sitcoms, with their wink-laden, youth-oriented comedies.
FILMOGRAPHY: A Very Brady Sequel (screenplay only, 1996), Can’t
Hardly Wait (1998), The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (screenplay only,
2000), Josie and the Pussycats (2001)

Estevez, Emilio (b. 1962) The son of actor Martin Sheen (whose real name
is Ramon Estevez), Emilio Estevez parlayed his success as a member of the
“Brat Pack”—a group of young actors who appeared in 1980s youth-
oriented films directed by populists including John Hughes—into several
directing opportunities. His debut film was a famously overwrought
parable, but he later settled into a rhythm of directing minor efforts
featuring performances by himself and/or members of his family.

FILMOGRAPHY: Wisdom (1987), Men at Work (1990), The War at Home

(1996), Rated X (2000)

Eyre, Chris (b. 1969) Eyre earned a place in film history by directing
Smoke Signals, the first feature written and directed by Native Americans.
Of Cheyenne-Arapaho descent, Eyre was born on the Warm Springs Indian
Reservation in Oregon, then adopted by white parents and raised in
Portland. While attending New York University’s graduate film program, he
made an award-winning short called Tenacity.

FILMOGRAPHY: Bringing It All Back Home (documentary, 1997), Smoke

Signals (1998), Skins (2002)

Favreau, Jon (b. 1966) A Queens native who moved to Chicago to study
improvisational comedy and theater with the famed Second City troupe,
Favreau was discovered by director David Anspaugh, who cast him in the
ensemble cast of the football drama Rudy (1993). Favreau and another Rudy
actor, Vince Vaughn, became stars by appearing in the pop-culture-drenched
comedy Swingers, which Favreau wrote. Favreau continues to balance
writing, directing, and acting, and his notable onscreen appearances include
a recurring role on the mega-popular sitcom Friends.

FILMOGRAPHY: Swingers (screenplay only, 1996), Made (2001)

Fincher, David (b. 1962) Whereas Michael Bay utilized his background in
TV commercials and music videos solely to refine his skill for visual
trickery, David Fincher used similar experiences to refine his storytelling.
Fincher’s award-winning music videos for rock acts including Madonna,
Aerosmith, and Don Henley were memorably sensual and provocative, and
Fincher brought those same qualities to his features. While he sometimes
paints himself into corners by fixating on dank locations and despicable
characters, he has created a handful of truly haunting moments, and his
tendency to subvert audience expectations makes him one of the least
predictable artists of his generation.

A Denver native raised in Marin County, California, and inspired to become

a filmmaker, in part, by Star Wars, Fincher made movies from age eight.
During two years working at Star Wars director George Lucas’s special-
effects firm, Industrial Light and Magic, he worked on pictures including
Return of the Jedi. Fincher’s themes, which have included martyrdom,
alienation, and the dehumanization of modern culture, add to his appeal as a
serious filmmaker. Furthermore, his embrace of experimental storytelling
techniques, to say nothing of a seemingly endless vocabulary of camera
tricks and a rigorously consistent aesthetic, position him as Generation X’s
most adventurous visual stylist.

FILMOGRAPHY: Alien3 (1992), Seven (1995), The Game (1997), Fight

Club (1999), The Panic Room (2002)

Fleming, Andrew One of the few filmmakers to deliberately identify

himself as a member of Generation X, Fleming hit Hollywood at the tail
end of the 1980s horror craze, and experienced some difficulty proving that
he could handle genres other than horror. While studying film at New York
University, Fleming made award-winning shorts including Prisoner, a
clever piece about a man trapped inside a painting. He also has been active
as a screenwriter, and seems finally to have established himself as a
versatile artist, if not necessarily a distinctive one.

FILMOGRAPHY: Bad Dreams (1988), Every Breath (screenplay only,

1993), Threesome (1994), The Craft (1996), Dick (1999)

Foster, Jodie (b. 1962) After playing a series of risqué juvenile roles in the
1970s—most notoriously as a teen streetwalker in Martin Scorsese’s
legendary morality tale Taxi Driver (1976)—the woman born Alicia
Christian Foster evolved into one of the industry’s most compelling adult
actors. The precocious maturity of her youthful work led to a signature
quality of intense focus and palpable intelligence in mature parts, from the
FBI agent in The Silence of the Lambs (1990) to the scientist in Contact
(1997). Foster’s directorial efforts have not been as assured as her acting,
but in addition to the expected strengths—her attention to acting and
character are impressive—she has displayed a deep interest in familial
issues.

FILMOGRAPHY: Little Man Tate (1991), Home for the Holidays (1995)

Freeman, Morgan J. (b. 1969) Freeman, who has the misfortune of sharing
a name with a prominent actor to whom he is not related, has shown
promise and heart in small-scale films, but has yet to gain the commercial
foothold necessary to fund ambitious ventures. A native of Long Beach,
California, he studied film at the University of California at Santa Barbara
before moving to France, where he worked as a production assistant. He
returned to America to get a master’s in film from New York University,
then made several short films that were received well at festivals. He also
developed working relationships with actors including indie-film regular
Brendan Sexton III, whom Freeman met while working as an assistant
director on the indie comedy Welcome to the Dollhouse, in which Sexton
appeared. Freeman also has worked on television series including Dawson’s
Creek.

FILMOGRAPHY: Hurricane Streets (1998), Desert Blue (1999), American

Psycho II (2002)

Freundlich, Bart (b. 1970) A New York City native, Freundlich graduated
from New York University with a double major in cinema studies and
film/television production, then made a short film, Dog Race in Alaska
(1993), and a documentary, Hired Hands (1994), before venturing into
features. He also studied at Northwestern University and the British Film
Institute.

FILMOGRAPHY: The Myth of Fingerprints (1997), World Traveler (2002)

Gallo, Vincent (b. 1962) A native of Buffalo, New York, whose gaunt,
almost deathly looks made him a favorite actor in crime films and a favorite
model in ads catering to the “heroin chic” vogue of the early 1990s, Gallo
has balanced acting and directing since the beginning of his career, when he
helmed and starred in short films such as 1986’s If You Feel Froggy, Jump.
After making a splash in the mid-1990s with his acting in Abel Ferrara’s
period drama The Funeral and with his acclaimed first feature as a director,
Gallo mostly kept a low profile, appearing in limited-release films.

FILMOGRAPHY: Buffalo ’66 (1998)

Gomez, Nick (b. 1963) One of countless young filmmakers who emerged
in the mid-1990s with hard-hitting crime films that at least seemed to say
something profound about urban youths raised around violence, Gomez has
worked steadily but not built on his early acclaim. A Massachusetts native,
he graduated from the State University of New York at Purchase, then
worked in various capacities on several independent films, notably editing
Hal Hartley’s Trust and Theory of Achievement. His television work
includes episodes of the crime shows Homicide: Life on the Street, Oz, and
The Sopranos.

FILMOGRAPHY: Laws of Gravity (1992), New Jersey Drive (1995),

Illtown (1996), Drowning Mona (2000), Final Jeopardy (2001)

Gordon, Keith (b. 1961) Throughout his youth and adolescence in New
York City, Gordon immersed himself in films and acting, and his appealing
quality as a juvenile performer led to steady work on the New York stage,
as well as movie roles including an appearance in 1978’s Jaws 2. His most
visible performance was the male lead in Christine, the 1983 adaptation of
Stephen King’s book about a killer car. Concurrent with his acting, Gordon
worked in the film department of the Museum of Modern Art.

Perhaps owing to his long association with the film industry, Gordon has
been a mature and serious filmmaker for as long as he’s made features.
While his work can sometimes be a touch too earnest, his eagerness to
explore a wide variety of subjects makes him consistently interesting. He
also has directed episodes of intriguing television series, including Wild
Palms, Fallen Angels, and Homicide: Life on the Street, and he contributed
a short documentary called Jaws 2: A Portrait by Keith Gordon to the DVD
release of the horror sequel.

FILMOGRAPHY: The Chocolate War (1988), A Midnight Clear (1991),

Mother Night (1996), Waking the Dead (2000)

Gray, James (b. 1969) A Queens, New York, native who originally wanted
to be a painter, Gray studied film at the University of Southern California.
His student film Cowboys and Angels caught the eye of a producer who
encouraged Gray to write a screenplay; the resulting script became Gray’s
debut picture, Little Odessa. In just two movies, the director has established
a mournful, serious aesthetic, and displayed extraordinary taste in—and
skill with—actors.

FILMOGRAPHY: Little Odessa (1994), The Yards (2000)

Hawke, Ethan (b. 1970) Arguably the definitive screen representative of

slackerdom because of his roles in Reality Bites, Before Sunrise, and other
films, Hawke quickly evolved from a juvenile player in such films as
1985’s Explorers to the angst-ridden, youthful lead in independent (and
occasionally studio) films throughout the 1990s and beyond. By the
beginning of the twenty-first century, the seasoned actor had broadened his
reach to include work as a novelist and fledgling filmmaker.

FILMOGRAPHY: Chelsea Walls (2001)

Haynes, Todd (b. 1961) While some observers have grouped Haynes with
other progressive directors who deal with themes relating to gay life, his
provocative take on modern sexuality is just part of an expansive
worldview. He also comments on popular culture, self-destructive behavior,
and the plight of individuals who knowingly remove themselves from the
mainstream of society. His reach sometimes exceeds his grasp, but he is
nonetheless developing an oeuvre of thought-provoking films.

A California native, Haynes dabbled in filmmaking and painting during

childhood, then graduated from Brown University, where he studied art and
semiotics. After college, he moved to New York City and made a cult-
favorite short film called Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, which
employed Barbie dolls to dramatize the titular singer’s battle with an eating
disorder. The singer’s brother, pianist Richard Carpenter, sued Haynes for
illegally using the music the siblings recorded as the Carpenters, so
Superstar became a cause célèbre disseminated in bootleg form.

Subsequent Haynes pictures have sparked spirited discussions, and despite

his reluctance to be ghettoized as a gay filmmaker, his regular treatment of
gay-related themes makes him an important voice for a much-
misunderstood segment of the population. Still, his strangely alluring
movies hold pleasures for adventurous moviegoers of all stripes.

FILMOGRAPHY: Assassins: A Film Concerning Rimbaud (1985), Poison

(1991), Safe (1995), Velvet Goldmine (1998)

Jenkins, Tamara (b. 1963) An independent spirit whose first film was
praised by critics as a fresh satire, Jenkins worked extensively in theater and
performance art prior to becoming a feature director. After completing the
graduate film program at New York University, Jenkins made several
award-winning short films and won the 1995 Guggenheim Fellowship for
Filmmaking; the same year, she was accepted into the Sundance Institute, at
which she workshopped the script that became her debut feature.

FILMOGRAPHY: Slums of Beverly Hills (1998)

Jonze, Spike (b. 1969) While the path that brought Jonze to notoriety is
commonplace among Gen-X directors, the acclaim he has enjoyed at every
stage of his career is as impressive as his signature combination of wizardry
and whimsy is intriguing. Jonze (a stage name for Rockville, Maryland,
native Adam Spiegel) got his start directing documentaries and industrials,
then began a celebrated run helming commercials and music videos. His
slick ads netted awards including the Palme d’Or at the Cannes
International Advertising Film Festival, and his arresting imagery and
frenetic pacing distinguished videos for prominent musicians including
Björk, Puff Daddy, Fatboy Slim, and R.E.M. A clip for the Beastie Boys
song “Sabotage,” filmed as a cheeky spoof of 1970s cop shows, cemented
Jonze’s reputation, and paved the way for his famously weird debut film.
Jonze also is a noted photographer (for such magazines as Interview), an
accomplished actor (in such films as Three Kings), and a prankster with a
tendency to spread playful fictions about himself. He is married to fellow
Gen-X director Sofia Coppola.

FILMOGRAPHY: Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002)

Joanou, Phil (b. 1962) A visual stylist whose work suggests an insular
perspective informed by movies rather than real life, Joanou has wasted
more opportunities than most directors will ever be given. After Steven
Spielberg saw one of the student films Joanou made at the University of
Southern California, Spielberg hired him for a high-profile television job.
The young director parlayed that job into several feature-film assignments,
but his movies generally lack individuality and warmth. He’s capable of
impressive moments, such as suspense sequences, but shallowness bogs
down his fictional films, and has even affected some of his documentaries.
Joanou’s television work includes episodes of the miniseries Fallen Angels
and Wild Palms, and an expensive 3-D sequence for the sitcom 3rd Rock
From the Sun.

FILMOGRAPHY: Three O’Clock High (1987), U2: Rattle and Hum

(documentary, 1988), State of Grace (1990), Age 7 in America
(documentary, 1991), Final Analysis (1992), Heaven’s Prisoners (1996), 14
Up in America (1998), Entropy (1999)

Judge, Mike (b. 1962) Born in Ecuador and raised in New Mexico, Judge
didn’t set out for a career in the arts. He received a degree in physics from
the University of California at San Diego, then got a job working on jet
engines. Disturbed that his skills were crafting potential instruments of
death, Judge quit and began playing music for a living. A few years later, in
1990, he happened on an animation festival in Dallas, Texas, and caught the
filmmaking bug.

He bought a few supplies and taught himself the basics of animation, and
one of his first shorts, Frog Baseball, introduced a pair of snotty heavy-
metal fans named Beavis and Butt-head. The characters found a home on
MTV, and the Beavis and Butt-head series enjoyed phenomenal success
during its 200-episode run. Judge wrote, produced, and directed all of the
shows, in addition to providing voice performances. In 1995, Judge
launched another successful animated series, King of the Hill, which
featured only slightly more sophisticated artwork than the crudely rendered
Beavis and Butt-head.

All of Judge’s work rides a fine line between ironic humor and bitter
cynicism, and the edgy tension between those extremes leads to outrageous
moments that, especially when Beavis and Butt-head are involved, generate
controversy as easily as they generate laughter.

FILMOGRAPHY: Beavis and Butt-head Do America (animated, 1996),

Office Space (1999)

Kaplan, Deborah see Elfont, Harry

Kaufman, Charlie Like Andrew Kevin Walker and the Wachowski

brothers, the witty Kaufman keeps details of his biography private, but it’s a
matter of public record that prior to making his break into features, he
contributed to TV shows including The Dana Carvey Show and Get a Life
(a cult favorite featuring David Letterman crony Chris Elliot). He seems
dedicated to justifying his reputation as a postmodern rascal.

FILMOGRAPHY (as screenwriter): Being John Malkovich (1999),

Adaptation (2002)

Kusama, Karyn (b. 1968) St. Louis native Kusama studied film at New
York University, and her senior thesis film, Sleeping Beauties, received a
Mobil Award. She entered the movie industry as an assistant to acclaimed
independent filmmaker John Sayles, and Sayles helped fund Kusama’s
feature debut, which scored at festivals and with critics.

FILMOGRAPHY: Girlfight (2000)

LaBute, Neil (b. 1963) No Gen-X filmmaker has more brazenly entered the
front lines of the battle between the sexes than LaBute, whose early work
contained such violently macho male characters that the filmmaker himself
often was perceived as a misogynist. (He undercut that criticism by
featuring strong female protagonists in his third and fourth movies.) The
erudite LaBute, who was born in Detroit, Michigan, studied at Brigham
Young University and the University of Kansas before enrolling in New
York University’s graduate dramatic writing program. At the tail end of his
college career, LaBute won a fellowship to study at the Royal Court Theater
in London, and he later was admitted into the Sundance Institute.

LaBute’s extensive education shows in his startling dialogue—which ranges

from the shockingly stylized to the warmly realistic—and his unusual
characters, who often defy audience expectations by revealing hidden
qualities, both dark and light. The grand theme of LaBute’s work, at least as
seen in his early films, seems to be how people are held accountable for
their participation in society and their treatment of others. He also has a
deep interest in how people get derailed by fate and by petty desires.
LaBute’s numerous theatrical creations include a trilogy of one-acts called
bash, latterday plays, which was taped for television in 2000.

FILMOGRAPHY: In the Company of Men (1997), Your Friends and

Neighbors (1998), Nurse Betty (2000), Possession (2002)

Lemmons, Kasi (b. 1961) Lemmons studied acting at New York University
and history at the University of California at Los Angeles, but her writing
was limited to scenes that she wrote for actor friends to use at auditions.
After achieving moderate success in acting—she played the roommate of
FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) in The Silence of the Lambs—
Lemmons followed the encouragement of comedian-producer Bill Cosby
and developed her writing skills.

When she tried to set up her first feature project, Eve’s Bayou, the reception
in Hollywood for an untried black female director was predictably tentative,
so a producer suggested that Lemmons prove herself by filming part of the
script. The resulting short, Dr. Hugo, enticed actor Samuel L. Jackson to
become involved in the project, and he also starred in Lemmons’s second
movie. Her films feature exotic imagery and vivid performances, but her
interest in mysticism and dreamlike story lines has made marketing her
work to general audiences difficult.

FILMOGRAPHY: Eve’s Bayou (1997), The Caveman’s Valentine (2000)

Liman, Doug (b. 1966) A stylist with a great eye for composition and a
brisk approach to storytelling, Liman is arguably the best of the post-
Tarantino hipster directors. He made films while in high school, and studied
at both the International Center of Photography, in New York City, and
Brown University. At Brown, Liman founded a student-run TV station,
which led to his establishment of the National Association of College
Broadcasters. While studying film at the University of Southern
California’s graduate program, Liman was recruited to direct a straight-to-
video movie, which started his career in features. In addition to directing
Swingers, he photographed the film.

FILMOGRAPHY: Getting In (1994), Swingers (1996), Go (1999), The

Bourne Identity (2002)

Linklater, Richard (b. 1961) While firmly entrenched as a cult figure

regarded highly by other indie filmmakers, Linklater has steered an
unsteady course because of his erratic taste in material and his seemingly
contradictory impulses. His best films are small and iconoclastic, so The
Newton Boys, his attempt at a star-driven action vehicle, has for years been
his personal albatross.

Born in Houston, Linklater studied literature and drama in college before

dropping out, like one of his characters, then getting a job on an oil rig in
the Gulf of Mexico. Linklater became interested in film during his post-
collegiate period, and moved to Austin, where he began experimenting with
movies. The self-taught director, who founded the Austin Film Society (and
remains an influential figure in the city’s cutting-edge cinema
underground), debuted with a 1988 film shot on Super-8 and funded with a
scant $3,000.

Despite his peculiar trajectory, Linklater has retained the qualities that made
him interesting in the first place: A devotion to investigating the ideas and
emotions that fuel human relationships, and a devotion to telling stories
with a minimum of extraneous style.

FILMOGRAPHY: It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books

(1988), Slacker (1991), Dazed and Confused (1993), Before Sunrise (1995),
SubUrbia (1996), The Newton Boys (1998), Tape (2001), Waking Life
(2001)
Lonergan, Kenneth (b. 1963) Lonergan wrote one of the most celebrated
stories about Gen Xers trying to find their identities—but not as a movie.
His play This Is Our Youth, which garnered numerous awards and rave
reviews during its off-Broadway run, dramatizes a day in the lives of two
listless twentysomethings living in New York. Lonergan’s one-act play You
Can Count on Me evolved into his Oscar-nominated directorial debut,
which was coproduced by Martin Scorsese. A Bronx native, Lonergan
studied play writing at New York University, and he also has notable acting
skills: Lonergan appears as a priest in one of You Can Count on Me’s
funniest scenes.

FILMOGRAPHY: Analyze This (screenplay only, 1999), The Adventures of

Rocky & Bullwinkle (screenplay only, 2000), You Can Count on Me (2000),
Gangs of New York (screenplay only, 2002)

Luhrmann, Baz (b. 1962) A shrewd self-promoter whose pretensions

sometimes outpace his inarguable talent, Luhrmann has a theatrical
approach to filmmaking. He adores intricate sets, glamorous costumes,
romantic movement (both by characters and the camera), and brash
anachronisms. In 1986, while a student at the National Institute of Dramatic
Arts in his native Australia, Luhrmann cocreated a stage show called
Strictly Ballroom (which he later adapted into a film of the same name).
The show launched a theater career that earned Luhrmann numerous
awards, as well as a six-year tenure as artistic director of the Old Company
Theater Group. Luhrmann’s other accomplishments include directing
several acclaimed opera productions and releasing a 1999 pop album that
spawned a major novelty hit, “The Sunscreen Song.”

FILMOGRAPHY: Strictly Ballroom (1992), William Shakespeare’s Romeo

+ Juliet (1996), Moulin Rouge! (2001)

Lurie, Rod (b. 1962) Lurie is peculiar among his peers for at least two
reasons: He enjoyed a successful career as a movie critic before becoming a
director, and he has a distinct political bent. Dedicated to the kind of
humanistic governance often derided as “bleeding-heart liberalism,” Lurie
famously alienated actor Gary Oldman by painting Oldman’s character in
The Contender as a villain; the right-wing actor saw his character as hero.
Educated at West Point, Lurie spent four years in the U.S. Army before
commencing his journalistic exploits. He wrote about movies for Premiere
and Movieline, among other outlets, prior to his five-year tenure as critic,
investigative reporter, and contributing editor at Los Angeles magazine. His
next job was a four-year run hosting a top-rated Los Angeles radio show, on
which he interviewed notables including Tom Hanks and James Cameron.
Lurie’s first short film, Four Second Delay, won several awards, and he is
the author of a 1995 book called Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

FILMOGRAPHY: Deterrence (1999), The Contender (2000), The Last

Castle (2001)

Mangold, James (b. 1964) A sensitive director of actors, and a competent

visual stylist, Mangold makes films that seem out of step with
contemporary cinema, because his focus on character and story recall
American movies of the 1970s. While Mangold’s interest in misfits—and
characters who perceive themselves as misfits—is both consistent and
touching, his films rarely reach the level of emotionalism that his stories
(and his characters) deserve. Should he mature sufficiently to maximize his
skills, however, he could become a world-class filmmaker.

Mangold first gained notice while a student at the California Institute of the
Arts, in Valencia, when one of his short films was chosen as a finalist for
the 1982 Student Academy Awards. His success led to work writing TV and
theatrical films, but Mangold boldly returned to school even though he was
on the way to a steady, if unspectacular, career. In 1991, Mangold
completed his studies at Columbia University’s film school (where he was
mentored by Milos Forman) by making the thirty-minute drama Victor. He
developed his second feature, Cop Land, at the Sundance Institute.

FILMOGRAPHY: Oliver and Company (animated, screenplay only, 1989),

Heavy (1995), Cop Land (1997), Girl, Interrupted (1999), Kate & Leopold
(2001)

McQuarrie, Christopher (b. 1968) Best known for his Oscar-winning

screenplay The Usual Suspects, McQuarrie attended high school with
Suspects director Bryan Singer in Princeton Junction, New Jersey.
McQuarrie spent four years working in a detective agency prior to entering
the film world via Singer’s request that McQuarrie help write Public
Access. While clever with structure and dialogue, McQuarrie has yet to
expand upon his initial success. When he became a director, he succumbed
to pressure to helm a crime film, The Way of the Gun, an angry movie that
alienated audiences.

FILMOGRAPHY (as screenwriter): Public Access (1993), The Usual

Suspects (1995), The Way of the Gun (also director, 2000)

Mendes, Sam (b. 1965) An Englishman who scored major commercial and
critical hits in theaters on both sides of the Atlantic, Mendes drew
comparisons to Orson Welles by bringing an assured touch to his first film,
despite never having handled a camera previously. Thus far, his most visible
projects have been boosted by provocative material and outstanding
collaborators, so it remains to be seen whether Mendes can be more than
brash and bold. He was educated at Cambridge University, and after tenures
with the Chichester Festival Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company,
he became artistic director of London’s Donmar Warehouse. His stage hits
in England included a revival of Cabaret and the initial run of The Rise and
Fall of Little Voice (later adapted into a film called Little Voice); on
Broadway, his Cabaret production won four Tony awards, and his risqué
staging of The Blue Room was a cause célèbre.

FILMOGRAPHY: American Beauty (1999), The Road to Perdition (2002)

Merhige, E. Elias (b. 1964) A former special-effects cameraman who

studied film at the State University of New York at Purchase, Brooklyn-
born Merhige lingered on the fringes of the indie-cinema scene until actor
Nicolas Cage decided to co-produce Shadow of the Vampire, which was
stronger in conception than execution, notwithstanding an extraordinary
performance by Willem Dafoe.

FILMOGRAPHY: Begotten (1991), Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

Myrick, Daniel (b. 1964) and Eduardo Sánchez (b. 1969) Native Floridian
Myrick and Cuban-born Sánchez met at the University of Central Florida,
and each developed solid résumés before hitting the big time. Myrick’s
apprenticeship included work as an editor and cinematographer on several
low-budget features, and Sánchez’s included directing a feature-length
picture shot on 16-millimeter film, the unreleased Gabriel’s Dream. With
some studio tweaking and a masterful marketing campaign, their first major
collaboration became a phenomenon.

FILMOGRAPHY: The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Nelson, Tim Blake (b. 1965) Although Nelson seemed to appear from
nowhere when he costarred in the 2000 hit O Brother, Where Art Thou?,
directed by Joel Coen, the Tulsa, Oklahoma, native actually had accrued
several theatrical and film credits prior to his breakthrough role. He also
had written plays including Eye of God, the film version of which Nelson
wrote and directed to a favorable reaction at several festivals. His second
film was mired in controversy because its depiction of adolescent violence
was filmed during a period of horrific school shootings, and his third was
an adaptation of another of his plays.

FILMOGRAPHY: Eye of God (1997), O (2001), The Grey Zone (2002)

Niccol, Andrew (b. 1964) New Zealand native Niccol made his name with
a masterful screenplay, The Truman Show, and showed tremendous
ingenuity by maximizing the small budget and seemingly mundane
locations of his first directorial effort. While it’s tempting to light upon the
paranoia that pervades Niccol’s work, it’s probably more accurate to say
that he’s an adroit social commentator with a keen eye on the future and a
deep fear of dehumanizing trends in culture and science.

FILMOGRAPHY: Gattaca (1997), The Truman Show (screenplay only,

1998), Simone (2002)

Nolan, Christopher (b. 1970) A London native who began making short
films at the age of seven, Nolan studied English literature at University
College of London, where he continued making short films. One of his
shorts was shown on public television in 1989, and Nolan’s sophomore
feature, based on a story written by his brother, was a major critical hit that
also surpassed box-office expectations. Nolan’s first two features indicated
a deep devotion to noir style and intricate plotting, as well as a canny
understanding of the human capacity for duplicity and delusion.
FILMOGRAPHY: Following (1998), Memento (2000), Insomnia (2002)

Norton, Edward (b. 1970) Maryland-born Norton acted off-Broadway

before making his film debut as a disturbed murder suspect in Primal Fear
(1996), which garnered him a well-deserved Oscar nomination for Best
Supporting Actor. An unusually consistent and inventive actor, Norton has
stood his ground opposite such powerful costars as Robert De Niro and
Marlon Brando. The Columbia-educated Norton’s behind-the-scenes
inclinations became clear during a post-production squabble surrounding
the incendiary drama American History X (1998): At the behest of the
film’s producers, Norton supervised a re-edit of the film that infuriated
enfant terrible director Tony Kaye.

FILMOGRAPHY: Keeping the Faith (2000)

O’Connor, Gavin A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, O’Connor

entered the film industry as the writer and producer of The Bet, a 1992 short
directed by Ted Demme. O’Connor then directed a short called American
Standoff, which was shown on PBS, and a little-seen feature about drugs.
His breakthrough was Tumbleweeds, a well-observed drama about family
that features O’Connor in an impressive acting performance as a loutish
boyfriend.

FILMOGRAPHY: Comfortably Numb (1995), Tumbleweeds (1999)

Payne, Alexander (b. 1961) An adept observer of contemporary society,

Payne is poised to become one of the leading lights of his generation,
because he has exhibited a skillful approach to satire and an aggressive
directorial style. A native of Omaha, Nebraska, Payne studied history and
Spanish literature at Stanford University; attended the University of
Salamanca, in Spain; and received his master’s in film from the University
of California at Los Angeles. His thesis film, The Passion of Martin, was a
festival hit that paved the way for his feature career. Payne’s most important
filmmaking ally so far is screenwriter Jim Taylor, who contributed to
Payne’s first three features.

FILMOGRAPHY: Inside Out (director, “My Secret Moments” segment,

1992), Citizen Ruth (1996), Election (1999), About Schmidt (2002)
Peirce, Kimberly (b. 1967) A noted photographer who holds degrees in
English and Japanese literature (from the University of Chicago) and film
(from Columbia University), Peirce entered the film industry with an
award-winning short, 1994’s The Last Good Breath. The director, who lived
in Kobe, Japan, for two years, developed her screenplay about doomed
cross-dresser Teena Brandon while at Columbia.

FILMOGRAPHY: Boys Don’t Cry (1999)

Proyas, Alex (b. 1965) Born in Egypt but raised in Australia, Proyas is a
visual stylist with a dark vision that, while rooted in the work of many
previous filmmakers, could easily mature into something individualistic and
sharp. His features tend to have a comic-book feel, but this allows him to
employ outlandish special effects and stage outrageous action. He entered
the Australian Film and Television School at age seventeen, and one of his
early short films, Groping (1982), won a number of international awards.
For several years, Proyas worked as director-for-hire of music videos and
TV commercials, sharpening his skills for telling succinct visual stories
while also creating images that entice both the mind and the eye.

FILMOGRAPHY: Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds (1989), The

Crow (1994), Dark City (1998), Garage Days (2002)

Ratner, Brett (b. 1970) A Miami native with a crowd-pleasing comic

touch, Ratner entered New York University’s film school at age sixteen, and
won attention with his 1990 short Whatever Happened to Mason Reese?, an
odd mix of documentary and fiction about a former child actor who
appeared in TV commercials during the 1970s. Ratner established his
reputation by making industrial films, commercials, and more than 100
music videos, including an award-winning clip for Madonna’s “Beautiful
Stranger,” which features Mike Myers mugging as his character Austin
Powers. Ratner’s comedies have enjoyed tremendous financial success, due
largely to the magnetism of funnyman Chris Tucker.

FILMOGRAPHY: Money Talks (1997), Rush Hour (1998), The Family

Man (2000), Rush Hour 2 (2001), Red Dragon (2002)
Rodriguez, Robert (b. 1968) Rodriguez’s ascension is a tale of luck and
pluck. His ingenuity is legend—he shot his first feature for $7,000 by
building his script around available props, locations, and actors—and his
films generally have production values that far exceed their moderate
budgets. Yet he also has the good fortune to make connections with
powerful people, and to score a hit just when detractors think his reputation
has suffered too many body blows. Born in San Antonio, Texas, and
educated at the University of Texas at Austin, Rodriguez began making
films while a teenager, and has such an innate understanding of film
technology that he often shoots and edits his pictures.

Despite his talent and opportunities, Rodriguez has yet to make any truly
memorable films: His biggest commercial and critical hits are overpowering
spectacles in which cinematic razzle-dazzle hides thin and/or nonsensical
stories. He has been closely allied with Quentin Tarantino, and is one of the
subjects of the 1997 documentary Full Tilt Boogie, which tracks the
production of From Dusk Till Dawn. Rodriguez wrote a popular behind-the-
scenes book called Rebel Without a Crew: Or How a 23-Year-Old
Filmmaker With $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player.

FILMOGRAPHY: El Mariachi (1992), Roadracers (1994), Desperado

(1995), Four Rooms (director, “The Misbehavers” segment, 1995), From
Dusk Till Dawn (1996), The Faculty (1998), Spy Kids (2001), Once Upon a
Time in Mexico (2002), Spy Kids 2 (2002)

Rosenberg, Scott (b. 1964) A Boston native who originally wanted to be

novelist, Rosenberg moved to Los Angeles after graduating from Boston
University, then got a job as a production assistant and began writing
scripts. His benefactor was action-movie producer Joel Silver, who bought a
Rosenberg script called Love Lies Bleeding and hired the writer to work on
his Tales from the Crypt series. Like Kevin Williamson and Quentin
Tarantino, Rosenberg writes stylized, ironic, hip, super-articulate dialogue
that rarely sounds natural but is often catchy and fun. Depth is not the
quality for which he is known.

FILMOGRAPHY (as screenwriter): Things To Do in Denver When You’re

Dead (1995), Beautiful Girls (1996), Con Air (1997), Disturbing Behavior
(1998), High Fidelity (2000), Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), Highway (2001),
Impostor (2002), Down & Under (2002)

Sánchez, Eduardo see Myrick, Daniel

Schaeffer, Eric (b. 1962) A peculiar figure on the New York indie-cinema
scene who apparently fancies himself a Gen-X Woody Allen—he writes,
directs, and stars in movies about neurotic men who attract beautiful
women but have trouble relating to them—Schaeffer made several
unmemorable romantic comedies and cocreated a short-lived TV show
called Too Something. Schaeffer’s decision to also make films in which he
does not star was wise, and his stamina in the face of public indifference is
impressive.

FILMOGRAPHY: My Life’s in Turnaround (codirected with Donal Lardner

Ward, 1993), If Lucy Fell (1996), Fall (1997), Wirey Spindell (1999), Never
Again (2001)

Shyamalan, M. Night (b. 1970) If only because of his willingness to defy

the instant-gratification aesthetic slavishly adhered to by most mainstream
directors of the late twentieth century, Manoj Nelliyatta Shyamalan has
exhibited the makings of a unique, if not necessarily great, filmmaker. His
tendency in interviews to equate box-office success with artistic fulfillment,
and to boast about his ability to become the next Steven Spielberg, are
distasteful only because they reveal the crass showman lurking not very
deep beneath the surface of this talented artist.

Shyamalan was born in India and raised in a Philadelphia family dominated

by doctors, including his parents. He was expected to continue the family
tradition, but an omen that he wouldn’t was his decision, at age ten, to start
making movies with his father’s home-video camera. At age sixteen, by
which point he had forty-five shorts to his credit, he told his parents that he
planned to attend film school, not medical school. While studying at New
York University, Shyamalan wrote a picture called Praying With Anger,
which he shot, in India, as his first feature. The picture was named Debut
Film of the Year by the American Film Institute.
Shyamalan’s thematic concerns—spirituality, personal responsibility, the
supernatural—suggest that if he continues in the vein of his breakthrough
work, he will one day need to prove that he can excel without the safety net
of genre expectations.

FILMOGRAPHY: Praying With Anger (1992), Wide Awake (1998), The

Sixth Sense (1999), Stuart Little (screenplay only, 1999), Unbreakable
(2000), Signs (2002)

Singer, Bryan (b. 1966) A skillful director of actors who also has visual
flair, Singer shares with Steven Soderbergh an inclination to dramatically
shift gears between projects, which could lead to career longevity—but
which also could, in the worst possible scenario, lead to his becoming a
hack. Certainly the number of cinema purists who looked down on Singer’s
pulpy comic-book movie X-Men indicates that he’s not held in such esteem
that he’ll be forgiven for playing to the crowd when he’s capable of digging
deeper.

As a teen growing up in New Jersey (where he attended high school with

future collaborator Christopher McQuarrie), Singer made short films with
an 8-millimeter camera. He studied at the School of Visual Arts, in New
York City, then got a degree in critical studies from the University of
Southern California. An award-winning short film featuring Gen-X stalwart
Ethan Hawke, Lion’s Den, paved the way for Singer’s work in features—a
trajectory that has taken him from low-budget indies to megabudget studio
spectacles.

FILMOGRAPHY: Public Access (1993), The Usual Suspects (1995), Apt

Pupil (1998), X-Men (2000)

Singh, Tarsem (b. 1962) An Indian native whose travels brought him from
boarding school in the Himalayas to business school at Harvard to film
school at the Art Center, in Pasadena, California, Singh (who bills himself
simply as “Tarsem”) established his reputation for creating memorable
imagery by directing award-winning commercials and music videos. Some
of his ads are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art,
and his clip for R.E.M.’s song “Losing My Religion” is a widely imitated
bit of enigmatic mood-setting.
FILMOGRAPHY: The Cell (2000)

Singleton, John (b. 1968) For the time being, Singleton enjoys a place in
movie history as the youngest person ever nominated for a Best Director
Oscar. His permanent slot in history is that he was the first African-
American ever nominated for the prize. The picture that won him such
acclaim, Boyz N the Hood, remains an important cultural reference point
more than a decade after its release. If much of Singleton’s subsequent
output pales by comparison, it’s as much a reflection of Boyz N the Hood’s
significance as an indication of the other pictures’ shortcomings.

Singleton—who was born and raised in Los Angeles, and who studied film
writing at the University of Southern California—gracefully bears the
burden of being his generation’s most prominent black filmmaker, and his
explorations of race-related issues range from the provocative to the
attitudinal. In addition to his skill at handling drama, Singleton has shown
an affinity for action scenes, even going so far as to launch a possible
franchise by reimagining the 1970s movie Shaft as a twenty-first-century
shoot-em-up.

FILMOGRAPHY: Boyz N the Hood (1991), Poetic Justice (1993), Higher

Learning (1995), Rosewood (1997), Shaft (2000), Baby Boy (2001)

Smith, Kevin (b. 1970) A brash, opinionated, sometimes combative

filmmaker whose roots in independent cinema are seen in his often-risqué
subjects, his consistently amateurish visuals, and his prolix screenplays,
Smith seems utterly satisfied with his status as a cult figure, and devotes
much of his energy to communicating with his network of devoted fans. His
movies are frustrating, because while Smith is capable of riotous humor and
thought-provoking drama, he regularly succumbs to his lesser instincts. The
insouciance with which he does so, however, gives him the air of a likable
brat.

After seeing Richard Linklater’s Slacker, which opened Smith’s eyes to the
concept that scruffy and inexpensive films could affect audiences, the New
Jersey native used enterprising means to fund his debut feature. (His first
short film, 1992’s Mae Day: The Crumbling of a Documentary, was a
tongue-in-cheek record of its own making.) Having worked at a Garden
State concern called Quick Stop Groceries for about four years, he wrote a
script about a day in the life of a convenience-store clerk. Smith then signed
up for a course at the New School for Social Research in New York City in
order to get a student ID, which he used to buy 16-millimeter film at a
student discount. After making the purchase, he promptly withdrew from
the course.

Educated at Brookdale Community College, the hyper-articulate Smith also

has cultivated a career as a comic-book writer, scripting best-selling runs of
titles including Daredevil and Green Arrow. (He’s a vocal fan of the
superhero medium, and owns a comic store in New Jersey.) Smith has
appeared in all of his films as a character named Silent Bob, and the
character recurred in Clerks comic books and the short-lived Clerks
animated TV series.

FILMOGRAPHY: Clerks (1994), Mallrats (1995), Chasing Amy (1997),

Dogma (1999), Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001)

Soderbergh, Steven (b. 1963) Soderbergh has never been the flashiest
director of his generation, nor the most controversial. But by making huge
artistic leaps from picture to picture, by honing a personal style and then
setting it aside when appropriate, and by embracing a wide variety of
subjects, he quietly established himself as the most important Gen-X
filmmaker. He has said in interviews that the filmmaker whose career he
most wishes to emulate is John Huston, and given that the prolific Huston
prided himself on having a unseen directorial hand, Soderbergh seems well-
positioned to make good on his ambition.

While a great deal has been said about the director’s technical aptitude—he
has edited several of his own films, and by the end of the 1990s, he was his
own cinematographer—all of his clever intercutting and image
manipulation would be for naught if he didn’t have good story sense. He
does, and he also has a good sense of which stories will last: King of the
Hill is a timeless story about family; Schizopolis, an arthouse lark in which
the director stars as a funhouse-mirror version of himself, is a wild
experiment that can be returned to again and again; Erin Brockovich is a
crowd-pleaser with a long shelf life; and so on. Whereas other Gen-X
filmmakers have hurt themselves by clinging too tightly to particular genres
or styles, Soderbergh has moved around enough, both artistically and
thematically, that he can truly call himself a Huston-like chameleon.

Soderbergh’s father, a college professor who wrote about movies, moved

around the south throughout the director’s childhood, and the family lived
longest in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Because the young Soderbergh showed
artistic flair, his father enrolled him in an animation class at Louisiana State
University while he was still a high schooler. Soderbergh freed the camera
from the animation stand and shot live-action shorts, laying the groundwork
for his eventual move to Los Angeles. Soderbergh got work as an editor,
winning a Grammy for a concert video featuring the progressive-rock band
Yes, but while cutting other people’s projects, he wrote several screenplays
in the hopes that one would create an opportunity to direct. The script that
did it was sex, lies, and videotape.

Soderbergh published his journal about making his first movie as a book
with the same title as the film, and in 1999 published a second book, the
whimsically self-deprecating Getting Away with It or: The Further
Adventures of the Luckiest Bastard You Ever Saw. For television, he
directed a 1993 episode of the film noir anthology series Fallen Angels.

FILMOGRAPHY: sex, lies, and videotape (1989), Kafka (1991), King of

the Hill (1993), The Underneath (1995), Gray’s Anatomy (1996),
Schizopolis (1997), Nightwatch (screenplay only, 1998), Out of Sight
(1998), The Limey (1999), Erin Brockovich (2000), Traffic (2000), Ocean’s
Eleven (2001), Full Frontal (2002)

Sommers, Stephen (b. 1962) Although he was one of the first Gen Xers to
direct a feature, Sommers is among the least notable filmmakers of his
generation, not so much because he’s a style-over-substance populist, but
because he so shamelessly apes the crowd-pleasing style of Steven
Spielberg. Sommers showed flashes of wit in some of his early pictures, but
once he broke into the big time with his Mummy franchise, he became a
slave to empty spectacle. Educated at St. John’s University and the
University of Seville, in Spain, Sommers spent four years performing in
theater groups and managing rock bands in Europe. He then returned to
America, received a master’s from the University of Southern California’s
film school, and made an award-winning short film called Perfect Alibi.
FILMOGRAPHY: Terror Eyes (1987), Catch Me … If You Can (1989), The
Adventures of Huck Finn (1993), Gunmen (screenplay only, 1994), Rudyard
Kipling’s Jungle Book (1994), Tom and Huck (screenplay only, 1995), Deep
Rising (1998), The Mummy (1999), The Mummy Returns (2001), The
Scorpion King (screenplay only, 2002)

Stiller, Ben (b. 1965) The son of comics Ben Stiller and Anne Meara,
Stiller is accomplished as an actor and as a director. Onscreen, he has
perfected an offbeat mix of irony, sweetness, neurosis, and pop-culture
references that make him among the most unmistakably Gen-X talents in
Hollywood. While his comedy often is stinging—particularly when he turns
his gaze toward such easy targets as Hollywood and the fashion industry—
he generally remains likable. Some find his tic-laden performances
annoying, however, recalling how Woody Allen’s acting work is an
acquired taste.

Stiller studied film at the University of California at Los Angeles, and made
his mark in the early 1990s with The Ben Stiller Show, a short-lived but
critically adored variety show that often contained merciless satires of
movie trends. He truly arrived in 1994, with the seminal Gen-X flick
Reality Bites. He has since concentrated more on acting than directing, but
by scoring a major hit as the star of the 2000 comedy Meet the Parents, he
won himself the opportunity to develop projects he could both direct and
act in. At worst, Stiller’s comedy—whether on TV or the big screen—is a
knee-jerk response to popular culture. At best, it’s pointed and human.

FILMOGRAPHY: Reality Bites (1994), The Cable Guy (1996), Zoolander

(2001)

Stockwell, John (b. 1961) Like Keith Gordon, Stockwell has been involved
in the film industry for two decades as an actor. His screen appearances date
back to 1981, and the Texas native acted in such prominent films as Top
Gun and Nixon, not to mention a slew of rank-and-file movies. He also has
worked throughout his career as a screenwriter. Stockwell’s directing career
came of age at the beginning of the twenty-first century, first with a well-
received telefilm called Cheaters and then with a sensitive theatrical feature
about an interracial love affair between teenagers, crazy/beautiful.
FILMOGRAPHY: Dangerously Close (screenplay only, 1986), Under
Cover (1987), Breast Men (teleplay only, 1997), Cheaters (2000),
crazy/beautiful (2001), Rock Star (screenplay only, 2001)

Tarantino, Quentin (b. 1963) Knoxville, Tennessee, native Tarantino

moved to Los Angeles with his divorced mother while he was a child. A
high-school dropout, he nurtured his obsessive love of movies while
working in a video store called Imperial Entertainment, at which he became
notorious for steering customers toward obscure exploitation films and
underrated B-pictures. Connections that he made with video-store
customers who worked in the film industry led to his entrance into the
business.

Although he was trained as an actor, and had enjoyed such dubious

successes as playing an Elvis impersonator on the senior-themed sitcom
Golden Girls, Tarantino first gained notice as a writer, selling his script
True Romance while still an industry outsider. The nascent filmmaker’s
only proper education in helming movies came during a ten-day workshop
at the Sundance Institute, where he was mentored by an impressive roster of
Hollywood talents, among them Sydney Pollack and Monte Hellman (who
executive-produced Tarantino’s first movie).

Tarantino’s movies are filled with caffeinated energy, mellifluous language,

and ironic pop-culture references. His stories mix film-noir violence, old-
Hollywood romanticism, unexpected plot twists, and, often, disjointed time
into a fast-moving, smart, and euphoric kind of entertainment that
sometimes feels more substantial than it actually is. His wiseacre devices
are crutches, and his writerly affection for character and dialogue are
distinct strengths. Tarantino’s visual approach alternates between 1970s-
style realism and 1940s-style noir affection; his editing alternates between
meditative patience and full-throttle aggression.

Obsessed with crime and Hollywood’s portrayal of it, Tarantino often builds
morality tales around the price criminals pay for their lifestyles. In some
cases, criminals who adhere to their own moral code are allowed to escape
with the spoils of their lawlessness; in others, criminals who violate their
own moral code, or too carelessly violate the trust between criminals, pay
for their mistakes with their lives. Despite the incessant violence and
salacious language of his pictures, Tarantino consistently displays a strong,
if skewed, sense of right and wrong. He also allies himself strongly with
characters who have personal authenticity, putting poseurs, impostors, and
wannabes into humiliating situations.

A final note about Tarantino: As have Edward Burns, Ben Stiller, and other
Gen-X directors, Tarantino has nurtured an intriguing career as an actor in
addition to his directorial efforts, sometimes appearing as a jokey version of
himself (as in Spike Lee’s Girl 6) and sometimes giving fully rounded
performances (as in Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn.). He is one
of the subjects of a 1997 documentary called Full Tilt Boogie, which depicts
the making of From Dusk Till Dawn, and in 1995, he directed an episode of
the top-rated TV medical dramaER.

FILMOGRAPHY: Reservoir Dogs (1992), Killing Zoe (executive producer

only, 1993), True Romance (screenplay only, 1993), Natural Born Killers
(story only, 1994), Pulp Fiction (1994), Crimson Tide (uncredited
screenwriting only, 1995), Four Rooms (director, “The Man from
Hollywood” segment, 1995), From Dusk Till Dawn (executive producer,
writer, and actor only, 1996), Jackie Brown (1997)

Tillman, George Jr. After growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin—where

he made short experimental films and created a show called Spice of Life
for a public-access TV station—Tillman studied film and video at Columbia
College, in Chicago. While there, he made a thirty-minute short called
Paula, which won the Midwestern Student Academy Award. The director
built on this success by gathering $150,000 from private investors to make
his first feature, Scenes for the Soul, which was purchased by Savoy
Pictures for $1 million, but never released because Savoy went under.
Tillman, whose pictures balance accessible discussions of social issues with
crowd-pleasing entertainment, rebounded from the demise of Scenes for the
Soul by writing a script called Soul Food, then requiring that whomever
bought the screenplay would also hire him to direct. The resulting film was
the basis for a series broadcast on the Showtime cable channel.

FILMOGRAPHY: Scenes for the Soul (unreleased, 1995), Soul Food

(1997), Men of Honor (2000)
Walker, Andrew Kevin (b. 1964) A smart writer whose work seethes with
anger and violence, Walker has clouded his biography by giving cryptic
interviews and by allowing a myth to arise about how the screenplay of
Seven came to be produced. Born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and educated at
Pennsylvania State University, Walker has in the course of only a few
projects written everything from scathing social commentary to tepid
escapism. He runs the risk of getting marginalized because of his
fascination with dark subject matter, and his work seems to be degenerating
back to the level of the Tales From the Crypt episodes he wrote before
scoring with Seven. In 2001, Walker contributed scripts to a high-profile
series of Internet-only short films designed to advertise BMW vehicles.

FILMOGRAPHY (as screenwriter): Brainscan (1994), Hideaway (1995),

Seven (1995), 8mm (1999), Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Wachowski, Andy (b. 1967) and Larry Wachowski (b. 1965) Often billed
collectively as The Wachowski Brothers, this fraternal writing-directing
team has gone out of their way to withhold details of their background,
choosing instead to put the focus on their work. Their shared biography in
press materials for The Matrix, for instance, concludes with this cryptic
phrase: “Little else is known about them.” What is known about them is
that the Chicago-born brothers are deeply informed by pulpy entertainment,
from comic books to martial-arts movies to Japanese animation to Star
Wars.

While others of their generation have regurgitated similar influences as

disposable entertainment, the Wachowskis seem to have sufficient interest
in, and insight into, human relations to tell memorable stories. Their work
also is boosted by technical wizardry; an affinity for stylistic settings,
glamorous actors, and whiz-bang action; and a playful approach to issues of
morality and perception.

FILMOGRAPHY: Assassins (screenplay only, 1995), Bound (1996), The

Matrix (1999), The Matrix Reloaded (2003)

Wachowski, Larry see Wachowski, Andy

Weitz, Chris (b. 1970) and Paul Weitz (b. 1966) The writing and directing
fraternity behind American Pie, a sleeper hit filled with raunchy comedy,
the Weitz brothers have exhibited only the most rudimentary filmmaking
skills, but in a peculiar turn of events, both contributed terrific
performances to the edgy indie Chuck & Buck: Chris played Chuck, a
straightlaced professional dogged by a stalker, and Paul played an inept
actor. Their comedy is effective, but their affinity for crass sexual and
scatological jokes is a weakness. The brothers produced the 2001 sequel
American Pie 2, but did not write or direct the film.

FILMOGRAPHY: Antz (animated, screenplay only, 1998), Clockstoppers

(screenplay only, 1999), American Pie (1999), Nutty Professor II: The
Klumps (screenplay only, 2000), Down to Earth (2001)

Weitz, Paul see Weitz, Chris

Wells, Audrey (b. 1961) Wells’s output as a screenwriter has been slight but
entertaining, and it appears that her directorial output will be more
substantial, while retaining the accessible style that distinguishes her
screenplays. She seems particularly interested in how men and women
relate to each other, and revels in seeing how odd matches can produce
lasting affection. She received her master’s in film from the University of
Southern California at Los Angeles, and set out to become a documentarian.
That ambition gave way to a desire to write screenplays, but her work failed
to reach the screen until 1996; her first produced screenplay was inspired, in
part, by the three years she spent as a disc jockey in her native San
Francisco.

FILMOGRAPHY (as screenwriter): The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996),
George of the Jungle (1997), Guinevere (also director, 1999), Disney’s The
Kid (2000)

West, Simon (b. 1961) A British filmmaker who began his career as an
apprentice film editor at the BBC, West enjoyed a highly successful career
directing television commercials before graduating to features. He has so
far proven himself to be a highly capable technician, but seems utterly
without soul. His second picture, The General’s Daughter, was among the
most vile movies of the 1990s, in part because of its exploitive shots of a
woman’s naked corpse, so it was surprising that West later attached himself
to a potential franchise featuring an empowered female protagonist.

FILMOGRAPHY: Con Air (1997), The General’s Daughter (1999), Lara

Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)

Whaley, Frank (b. 1963) A charming actor from Syracuse, New York, who
played leads in pictures including a hormone-driven comedy (1991’s
Career Opportunities) and a vicious Hollywood satire (1994’s Swimming
With Sharks), Whaley showcased the sensitivity that was only rarely
utilized by his directors when he became a filmmaker himself. The
respectful reception afforded his debut suggests he made the most of
opportunities to learn from peers including Keith Gordon, for whom
Whaley acted in A Midnight Clear, and Quentin Tarantino, for whom
Whaley acted in Pulp Fiction.

FILMOGRAPHY: Joe the King (1999), The Jimmy Show (2002)

Whedon, Joss (b. 1964) Like Mike Judge and Kevin Williamson, Whedon
has enjoyed tremendous success on television in addition to his feature
work: He’s the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a cult-favorite show that
mixes supernatural action and ironic humor. The series was Whedon’s way
of correcting what he saw as another filmmaker’s mistakes, because the
Buffy character was introduced in a flop movie before she hit the small
screen. Whedon, who has directed numerous Buffy episodes but, as yet, no
features, comes from a line of writers: His grandfather penned episodes of
The Donna Reed Show and Leave It to Beaver, and his father wrote
installments of Alice and Benson. Whedon got his start in television, most
notably as a story editor and writer on the successful sitcom Roseanne, and
has balanced high-profile feature work with his deep commitment to TV.
Angel, a spin-off of Buffy, was another success.

FILMOGRAPHY (as screenwriter): Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), Toy

Story (animated, 1995), Alien Resurrection (1997), Titan: A.E. (animated,
2000), Atlantis: The Lost Empire (animated, 2001)

Williamson, Kevin (b. 1965) A native of New Bern, North Carolina,

educated in theater and film at East Carolina University, Williamson started
his career as a New York City actor, winning small roles in stage
productions and TV shows. Trying another tack, Williamson relocated to
Los Angeles and worked as an assistant to a music-video director while
developing screenplays. The first screenplay he sold, a revenge tale set in
high school and titled Killing Mrs. Tingle, got him into the door of the
industry but was not produced until years later (with the new title Teaching
Mrs. Tingle).

His first produced screenplay sparked a phenomenon. Scream appealed to

young adults who grew up watching the 1980s slasher flicks that Scream
satirized, as well as younger viewers eager to catch the new wave of horror
films. Williamson quickly became a name-brand writer stuck in the ghetto
of teen-horror films, but he branched out by creating a successful TV drama
called Dawson’s Creek, which shares with his screenplays an irreverent
attitude toward popular culture, a fixation on youthful sexuality, and
dialogue so labored and precocious that it’s like a secret language.
Williamson’s second TV series, Wasteland, did not enjoy the success of its
predecessor. His third series, Glory Days, debuted in 2002.

FILMOGRAPHY (as screenwriter): Scream (1996), I Know What You Did

Last Summer (1997), Scream 2 (1997), The Faculty (1998), Teaching Mrs.
Tingle (also director, 1999), Scream 3 (producer only, 2000)

Yakin, Boaz (b. 1966) Native New Yorker Yakin plugged away as a
screenwriter for several years before making his first film, Fresh, a hard-
hitting indie about a twelve-year-old drug runner. Whereas his screenplays
written for hire generally contain violent escapism, his directorial efforts
tackle serious subjects in an intelligent manner. His mainstream work,
however, lacks the vigor of his smaller efforts.

FILMOGRAPHY: The Punisher (screenplay only, 1989), The Rookie

(screenplay only, 1990), Fresh (1994), A Price Above Rubies (1998), From
Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (screenplay only, 1999), Remember
the Titans (2000)
 Appendix Two:
Notable Generation X Films

About Schmidt (2002) Directed by Alexander Payne. Written by Payne and

Jim Taylor.

Adaptation (2002) Directed by Spike Jonze. Written by Charlie Kaufman.

The Adventures of Huck Finn (1993) Written and directed by Stephen

Sommers. Based on the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark
Twain. 108 min.

Alien3 (1992) Directed by David Fincher. Written by Larry Ferguson, David

Giler, and Walter Hill. Story by Vincent Ward. 115 min.

American Beauty (1999) Directed by Sam Mendes. Written by Alan Ball.

122 min.

American Pie (1999) Directed by Paul Weitz. Written by Adam Herz. 96

min. (Note: Weitz did not direct 2001’s American Pie 2.)

Apt Pupil (1997) Directed by Bryan Singer. Written by Brandon Boyce.

Based on the novella by Stephen King. 111 min.

Armageddon (1998) Directed by Michael Bay. Written by J. J. Abrams,

Tony Gilroy, Jonathan Hensleigh, Robert Roy Pool, and Shane Salerno. 150
min.

Baby Boy (2001) Written and directed by John Singleton. 130 min.

Bad Boys (1995) Directed by Michael Bay. Written by Michael Barrie, Jim
Mulholland, and Doug Richardson. Story by George Gallo. 118 min.

Bad Dreams (1988) Directed by Andrew Fleming. Written by Fleming and

Steven E. de Souza. 84 min.
Before Sunrise (1995) Directed by Richard Linklater. Written by Linklater
and Kim Krizan. 101 min.

Beautiful Girls (1996) Directed by Ted Demme. Written by Scott

Rosenberg. 107 min.

Being John Malkovich (1999) Directed by Spike Jonze. Written by Charlie

Kaufman. 112 min.

Beavis & Butt-head Do America (1996) Directed by Mike Judge. Written

by Judge and Joe Stillman. 80 min.

The Blair Witch Project (1998) Written and directed by Daniel Myrick and
Eduardo Sánchez. 81 min. (Note: 2000’s Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
was not directed by Myrick and/or Sánchez.)

Blow (2001) Directed by Ted Demme. Written by Nick Cassavetes and

David McKenna. Based on the book by Bruce Porter. 124 min.

Boogie Nights (1997) Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.156

min.

Bottle Rocket (1996) Directed by Wes Anderson. Written by Anderson and

Owen Wilson. 95 min.

Bound (1996) Written and directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski. 108
min.

The Bourne Identity (2002) Directed by Doug Liman. Written by Tony

Gilroy, W. Blake Herron, and David Self. Based on the novel by Robert
Ludlum.

Boys Don’t Cry (1999) Directed by Kimberly Peirce. Written by Andy

Bienen and Peirce. 118 min.

Boyz N the Hood (1991) Written and directed by John Singleton. 112 min.

The Brothers McMullen (1995) Written and directed by Edward Burns.118

min.
Buffalo ’66 (1998) Directed by Vincent Gallo. Written by Alison Bagnall
and Gallo. 112 min.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) Directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui. Written by
Joss Whedon. 94 min.

The Cable Guy (1996) Directed by Ben Stiller. Written by Lou Holtz, Jr.96
min.

Can’t Hardly Wait (1998) Written and directed by Harry Elfont and
Deborah Kaplan. 98 min.

The Caveman’s Valentine (2001) Directed by Kasi Lemmons. Written by

George Dawes Green, from his novel. 105 min.

The Cell (2000) Directed by Tarsem Singh. Written by Mark Protosevich.

107 min.

Chasing Amy (1997) Written and directed by Kevin Smith. 111 min.

Chelsea Walls (2001) Directed by Ethan Hawke. Written by Nicole

Burdette, from her play.

The Chocolate War (1988) Written and directed by Keith Gordon. Based
on the novel by Robert Cormier. 95 min.

Chuck & Buck (2000) Directed by Miguel Arteta. Written by Mike White.
95 min.

Citizen Ruth (1996) Directed by Alexander Payne. Written by Payne and

Jim Taylor. 102 min.

Clerks (1994) Written and directed by Kevin Smith. 103 min.

Con Air (1997) Directed by Simon West. Written by Scott Rosenberg.115

min.

The Contender (2000) Written and directed by Rod Lurie. 126 min.
Cop Land (1997) Written and directed by James Mangold. 105 min.

The Craft (1996) Directed by Andrew Fleming. Written by Fleming and

Peter Pilardi. 100 min.

crazy/beautiful (2001) Directed by John Stockwell. Written by Phil Hay,

Matt Manfredi, Stockwell, and Lizzy Weiss. 95 min.

The Crow (1994) Directed by Alex Proyas. Written by David J. Schow and
John Shirley. Based on the comic book by James O’Barr. 101 min. (Note:
Proyas was not involved with spin-off properties including sequels and a
television series.)

Dark City (1998) Directed by Alex Proyas. Written by Lemm Dobbs, David
S. Goyer, and Proyas. 101 min.

Dazed and Confused (1993) Written and directed by Richard Linklater.102

min.

Deep Rising (1998) Written and directed by Stephen Sommers. 106 min.

Desert Blue (1999) Written and directed by Morgan J. Freeman. 90 min.

Desperado (1995) Written and directed by Robert Rodriguez. 105 min.

Deterrence (1999) Written and directed by Rod Lurie. 101 min.

Dick (1999) Directed by Andrew Fleming. Written by Fleming and Sheryl

Longin. 94 min.

Dogma (1999) Written and directed by Kevin Smith. 135 min.

8mm (1999) Directed by Joel Schumacher. Written by Andrew Kevin

Walker. 119 min.

Election (1999) Directed by Alexander Payne. Written by Payne and Jim

Taylor. Based on the novel by Tom Perrotta. 103 min.

El Mariachi (1992) Written and directed by Robert Rodriguez. 81 min.

Entropy (1999) Written and directed by Phil Joanou. 104 min.

Erin Brockovich (2000) Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by

Susannah Grant. 132 min.

Eve’s Bayou (1997) Written and directed by Kasi Lemmons. 108 min.

The Family Man (2000) Directed by Brett Ratner. Written by David

Diamond and David Weissman. 125 min.

The Faculty (1998) Directed by Robert Rodriguez. Written by Kevin

Williamson. Story by David Wechter, Bruce Kimmel. 102 min.

54 (1998) Written and directed by Mark Christopher. 92 min.

Fight Club (1999) Directed by David Fincher. Written by Jim Uhls. Based
on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk. 139 min.

Final Analysis (1992) Directed by Phil Joanou. Screenplay by Wesley

Strick. Story by Robert Berger and Strick. 124 min.

Four Rooms (1995) “The Man from Hollywood” segment written and
directed by Quentin Tarantino. “The Misbehavers” segment written and
directed by Robert Rodriguez. “The Missing Ingredient” segment written
and directed by Alison Anders. “The Wrong Man” segment written and
directed by Alexandre Rockwell. 97 min.

Fresh (1994) Written and directed by Boaz Yakin. 112 min.

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) Directed by Robert Rodriguez. Written by

Quentin Tarantino. Story by Robert Kurtzman. 108 min. (Note: Rodriguez
and Tarantino produced, but did not write or direct, this film’s sequels.)

Full Frontal (2002) Written and directed by Steven Soderbergh. (Note:

This film is a pseudo-sequel to Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape.)

The Game (1997) Directed by David Fincher. Written by John Brancato

and Michael Ferris. 128 min.
Garage Days (2002) Directed by Alex Proyas. Written by Proyas, Michael
Udesky, and Dave Warner.

Gattaca (1997) Written and directed by Andrew Niccol. 106 min.

The General’s Daughter (1999) Directed by Simon West. Written by

Christopher Bertolini and William Goldman. Based on the novel by Nelson
DeMille. 116 min.

Girlfight (2000) Written and directed by Karyn Kusama. 110 min.

Girl, Interrupted (1999) Directed by James Mangold. Written by Lisa

Looner, Mangold, and Anna Hamilton Phelan. Based on the memoir by
Sussanah Kaysen. 127 min.

Go (1999) Directed by Doug Liman. Written by John August. 103 min.

Good Will Hunting (1997) Directed by Gus Van Sant. Written by Ben
Affleck and Matt Damon. 126 min.

Gray’s Anatomy (1996) Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by

Spalding Gray, from his monologue. 80 min.

The Grey Zone (2002) Written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson, from his
play.

Guinevere (1999) Written and directed by Audrey Wells. 104 min.

Hard Eight (1997) Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. 101
min.

Heaven’s Prisoners (1996) Directed by Phil Joanou. Screenplay by Scott

Frank and Harley Peyton. Based on the novel by James Lee Burke. 132
min.

Heavy (1995) Written and directed by James Mangold. 103 min.

Higher Learning (1995) Written and directed by John Singleton. 127 min.
Home for the Holidays (1995) Directed by Jodie Foster. Written by W.D.
Richter. Story by Chris Radant. 103 min.

Hurricane Streets (1998) Written and directed by Morgan J. Freeman.88

min.

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) Directed by Jim Gillespie.
Written by Kevin Williamson. Based on the novel by Lois Duncan. 101
min. (Note: Williamson did not write the 1998 sequel I Still Know What You
Did Last Summer.)

Illtown (1996) Written and directed by Nick Gomez. Based on the book
The Cocaine Kids by Terry Williams. 103 min.

In the Company of Men (1997) Written and directed by Neil LaBute.97

min.

Jackie Brown (1997) Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Based on

the novel Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard. 155 min.

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) Written and directed by Kevin
Smith. 104 min.

The Jimmy Show (2002) Written and directed by Frank Whaley. Based on
the play by Jonathan Marc Sherman.

Joe the King (1999) Written and directed by Frank Whaley. 93 min.

Josie and the Pussycats (2001) Written and directed by Harry Elfont and
Deboarah Kaplan. Based on the Harvey Comics characters. 98 min.

Jungle Book see Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book

Kafka (1991) Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by Lem Dobbs.98

min.

Kate & Leopold (2001) Directed by James Mangold. Written by Andy

Fleming, Mangold, and Steven Rogers. 121 min.
Keeping the Faith (2000) Directed by Edward Norton. Written by Stuart
Blumberg. 128 min.

Killing Zoe (1993) Written and directed by Roger Avary. 96 min.

King of the Hill (1993) Written and directed by Steven Soderbergh. Based
on the memoir by A.E. Hotchner. 102 min.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) Directed by Simon West. Written by

Patrick Massett and John Zinman. Adaptation by West. Story by Michael
Colleary, Sara B. Cooper, and Mike Werb. Based on the Eidos Interactive
character. 100 min.

The Last Castle (2001) Directed by Rod Lurie. Written by David Scarpa
and Graham Yost. 131 min.

Laws of Gravity (1992) Written and directed Nick Gomez. 98 min.

The Limey (1999) Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by Lem Dobbs.

90 min.

Little Man Tate (1991) Directed by Jodie Foster. Written by Scott Frank. 99
min.

Little Odessa (1994) Written and directed by James Gray. 98 min.

Made (2001) Written and directed by Jon Favreau. 94 min.

Magnolia (1999) Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. 188 min.

Mallrats (1995) Written and directed by Kevin Smith. 108 min.

The Matrix (1999) Written and directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski.
136 min.

The Matrix Reloaded (2003) Written and directed by Andy and Larry
Wachowski.
Memento (2000) Written and directed by Christopher Nolan. Based on a
story by Jonathan Nolan. 113 min.

Men of Honor (2000) Directed by George Tillman, Jr. Written by Scott

Marshall Smith. 128 min.

A Midnight Clear (1991) Written and directed by Keith Gordon. Based on

the novel by William Wharton. 107 min.

Money Talks (1997) Directed by Brett Ratner. Written by Joel Cohen and
Alec Sokolow. 96 min.

Mother Night (1996) Directed by Keith Gordon. Written by Robert B.

Weide. Based on the novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 110 min.

Moulin Rouge! (2001) Directed by Baz Luhrmann. Written by Luhrmann

and Craig Pearce. 127 min.

The Mummy (1999) Written and directed by Stephen Sommers. 124 min.

The Mummy Returns (2001) Written and directed by Stephen Sommers.

129 min.

My Life’s in Turnaround (1993) Written and directed by Eric Schaeffer

and Donal Lardner Ward. 84 min.

The Myth of Fingerprints (1997) Written and directed by Bart Freundlich.

90 min.

New Jersey Drive (1995) Written and directed by Nick Gomez. 95 min.

The Newton Boys (1998) Directed by Richard Linklater. Screenplay by

Linklater, Claude Stanush, and Clark Lee Walker, from Stanush’s book. 122
min.

No Looking Back (1998) Written and directed by Edward Burns. 96 min.

Nurse Betty (2000) Directed by Neil LaBute. Written by James Flamberg

and John C. Richards. Story by Richards. 112 min.
O (2001) Directed by Tim Blake Nelson. Written by Brad Kaaya. Based on
the play Othello by William Shakespeare. 95 min.

Ocean’s Eleven (2001) Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by Steve

Carpenter and Ted Griffin. Based on the 1960 movie Ocean’s Eleven,
written by Harry Brown and Charles Lederer (screenplay) and George
Clayton Johnson and Jack Golden Russell (story). 116 min.

Office Space (1999) Written and directed by Mike Judge. 90 min.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2002) Written and directed by Robert

Rodriguez.

Out of Sight (1998) Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by Scott

Frank. Based on the novel by Elmore Leonard. 123 min.

The Panic Room (2002) Directed by David Fincher. Written by David

Koepp.

Pearl Harbor (2001) Directed by Michael Bay. Written by Randall Wallace.

182 min.

Pi (1998) Written and directed by Darren Aronofsky. 85 min.

Poetic Justice (1993) Written and directed by John Singleton. 109 min.

Poison (1990) Written and directed by Todd Haynes. 85 min.

Possession (2002) Directed by Neil LaBute. Written by David Henry

Hwang, Laura Jones, and LaBute. Based on the novel by A. S. Byatt.

A Price Above Rubies (1998) Written and directed by Boaz Yakin. 116 min.

Public Access (1993) Directed by Bryan Singer. Written by Michael Feit

Dougan, Christopher McQuarrie, and Singer. 87 min.

Pulp Fiction (1994) Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Stories by

Roger Avary and Tarantino. 153 min.
Punchdrunk Knuckle Love (2002) Written and directed by Paul Thomas
Anderson. 89 min.

Reality Bites (1994) Directed by Ben Stiller. Written by Helen Childress. 99

min.

Red Dragon (2002) Directed by Brett Ratner. Written by Ted Tally. Based
on the novel by Thomas Harris.

The Ref (1994) Directed by Ted Demme. Written by Richard LaGravenese

and Marie Weiss. 93 min.

Remember the Titans (2000) Directed by Boaz Yakin. Written by Gregory

Allen Howard. 113 min.

Requiem for a Dream (2000) Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Written by

Aronofsky and Hubert Selby, Jr. Based on the novel by Selby. 100 min.

Reservoir Dogs (1992) Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. 99 min.

The Road to Perdition (2002) Directed by Sam Mendes. Written by David

Self. Based on the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins, Patrick Marber, and
Richard Piers Rayner.

The Rock (1996) Directed by Michael Bay. Written by Douglas S. Cook,

Mark Rosner, and David Weisberg. 136 min.

Rosewood (1997) Directed by John Singleton. Written by Gregory Poirier.

140 min.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) Directed by Wes Anderson. Written by

Anderson and Owen Wilson. 109 min.

Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book (1994) Directed by Stephen Sommers.

Written by Mark D. Geldman, Sommers, and Ronald Yanover. Based on the
novel The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. 111 min.

Rush Hour (1998) Directed by Brett Ratner. Written by Jim Kouf and Ross
Lamanna. 98 min.
Rush Hour 2 (2001) Directed by Brett Ratner. Written by Jeff Nathanson.
Based on characters created by Ross Lamanna. 90 min.

Rushmore (1998) Directed by Wes Anderson. Written by Anderson and

Owen Wilson. 93 min.

Safe (1995) Written and directed by Todd Haynes. 118 min.

Schizopolis (1997) Written and directed by Steven Soderbergh. 96 min.

Scream (1996) Directed by Wes Craven. Written by Kevin Williamson. 110

min.

Scream 2 (1997) Directed by Wes Craven. Written by Kevin

Williamson.116 min. (Note: Williamson did not write 2000’s Scream 3.)

Seven (1995) Directed by David Fincher. Written by Andrew Kevin Walker.

127 min.

sex, lies, and videotape (1989) Written and directed by Steven Soderbergh.
100 min. (Note: This film was followed by the 2002 pseudo-sequel Full
Frontal.)

Shadow of the Vampire (2000) Directed by E. Elias Merhige. Written by

Steven Katz. 92 min.

Shaft (2000) Directed by John Singleton. Written by Richard Prince, Shane

Salerno, and Singleton. Story by Salerno and Singleton. Based on the novel
by Ernest Tidyman. 99 min.

She’s the One (1996) Written and directed by Edward Burns. 96 min.

Sidewalks of New York (2001) Written and directed by Edward Burns. 107
min.

Signs (2002) Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

Simone (2002) Written and directed by Andrew Niccol.

The Sixth Sense (1999) Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan.107
min.

Skins (2002) Directed by Chris Eyre. Based on the novel by Adrian C.

Louis.

Slacker (1991) Written and directed by Richard Linklater. 97 min.

Slums of Beverly Hills (1998) Written and directed by Tamara Jenkins.90

min.

Smoke Signals (1998) Directed by Chris Eyre. Written by Sherman Alexie,

from his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. 88 min.

Soul Food (1997) Written and directed by George Tillman, Jr. 114 min.

Spy Kids (2001) Written and directed by Robert Rodriguez. 88 min.

(Rodriguez also wrote and directed the 2002 sequel Spy Kids 2.)

Star Maps (1997) Directed by Miguel Arteta. Written by Arteta and

Matthew Greenfield. 86 min.

State of Grace (1990) Directed by Phil Joanou. Written by Dennis

McIntyre. 134 min.

Strictly Ballroom (1992) Directed by Baz Luhrmann. Written by Luhrmann

and Craig Pearce. Story by Luhrmann and Andrew Bowell, based on
Luhrmann’s stage production, which was devised by its original cast. 94
min.

SubUrbia (1996) Directed by Richard Linklater. Written by Eric Bogosian,

from his play. 121 min.

Swingers (1996) Directed by Doug Liman. Written by Jon Favreau. 96 min.

Tape (2001) Directed by Richard Linklater. Written by Stephen Belber,

from his play. 86 min.
Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999) Written and directed by Kevin Williamson. 96
min.

Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead (1995) Directed by Gary

Fleder. Written by Scott Rosenberg. 114 min.

Three O’Clock High (1987) Directed by Phil Joanou. Written by Richard

Christian Matheson and Thomas Szollosi. 101 min.

Threesome (1994) Written and directed by Andrew Fleming. 93 min.

Tomb Raider see Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

Traffic (2000) Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by Stephen Gaghan.

Based on the 1989 British miniseries Traffik, written by Simon Moore. 147
minutes.

True Romance (1993) Directed by Tony Scott. Written by Quentin

Tarantino. 119 min.

The Truman Show (1998) Directed by Peter Weir. Written by Andrew

Niccol. 103 min.

The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996) Directed by Michael Lehmann.
Written by Audrey Wells. 97 min.

Tumbleweeds (1999) Directed by Gavin O’Connor. Written by O’Connor

and Angela Shelton, from Shelton’s unpublished memoir. 102 min.

Unbreakable (2000) Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. 106

min.

The Underneath (1995) Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by Daniel

Fuchs and Sam Lowry. 100 min.

The Usual Suspects (1995) Directed by Bryan Singer. Written by

Christopher McQuarrie. 105 min.

Velvet Goldmine (1998) Written and directed by Todd Haynes. 123 min.
The Virgin Suicides (1999) Written and directed by Sofia Coppola. Based
on the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. 97 min.

Waking Life (2001) Written and directed by Richard Linklater.

Waking the Dead (2000) Directed by Keith Gordon. Written by Scott

Spencer. Based on the novel by Robert Dillon. 105 min.

The War at Home (1996) Directed by Emilio Estevez. Written by James

Duff, based on his play Homefront. 119 min.

The Way of the Gun (2000) Written and directed by Christopher

McQuarrie. 119 min.

Wide Awake (1998) Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. 88 min.

William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) Directed by Baz Luhrmann.

Written by Luhrmann and Craig Pearce. Based on the play Romeo and
Juliet by William Shakespeare. 120 min.

Wisdom (1986) Written and directed by Emilio Estevez. 109 min.

World Traveler (2002) Written and directed by Bart Freundlich. 103 min.

X-Men (2000) Directed by Bryan Singer. Screenplay by David Hayter.

Story by Tom DeSanto and Hayter. Based on the Marvel Comics characters.
104 min.

The Yards (2000) Directed by James Gray. Written by Gray and Matt
Reeves. 115 min.

You Can Count on Me (2000) Written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan.

109 min.

Your Friends and Neighbors (1998) Written and directed by Neil LaBute.
99 min.

Zoolander (2001) Directed by Ben Stiller. Written by John Hamburg, Drake

Sather, and Stiller. Story by Sather and Stiller. 89 min.
 Notes

Chapter 2

1. Geoffrey T. Holtz, Welcome to the Jungle (New York: St. Martin’s

Griffin, 1995), p. 27.

Chapter 3

1. Mark Salisbury, “Thanks for No Memories” (Premiere, April 2001), pp.

42, 46–47.

2. Jeff Gordinier, “1999: The Year That Changed Movies” (Entertainment

Weekly, November 26, 1999), pp. 38–49.

3. Geoffrey T. Holtz, Welcome to the Jungle (New York: St. Martin’s

Griffin, 1995), p. 200.

4. Michael Sragow, “Being Charlie Kaufman” (Salon.com, November 11,

1999).

Chapter 4

1. Geoffrey T. Holtz, Welcome to the Jungle (New York: St. Martin’s

Griffin, 1995), p. 114.

Chapter 5
1. Johanna Schneller, “Crunch! Pow!” (Premiere, August 1999), pp. 68–73,
100.

2. Richard Linklater and Kim Krizan, Before Sunrise (New York: St.
Martin’s Griffin, 1995), p. vi.

Chapter 7

1. Geoffrey T. Holtz, Welcome to the Jungle (New York: St. Martin’s

Griffin, 1995), p. 182.

Chapter 8

1. Geoffrey T. Holtz, Welcome to the Jungle (New York: St. Martin’s

Griffin, 1995), p. 68.

2. Ibid., p. 86.

3. Rick Lyman, “Gritty Portrayal of the Abyss from a Survivor” (New York
Times, February 5, 2001), p. E1, E3.

4. Mark Salisbury, “‘Requiem’ in Excelsis” (Premiere, October 2000), p.

54.

5. Holtz, Welcome to the Jungle, p. 77.

6. Trish Deitch Rohrer, “Two Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (Premiere,
October 1999), pp. 78–83.

Chapter 9
1. Lynn Hirschberg, “The Man Who Changed Everything” (New York Times
Magazine, November 16, 1997), pp. 112–116.

2. Gary Whitta and Chris Gore, “Leonard Shelby is the Man with the
Photographic Memory” (Total Movie, April 2001), pp. 66–69.

3. Todd Lippy, “Writing The Usual Suspects” (Scenario, Summer 1995),pp.

50–53, 191–196.

Chapter 10

1. Annie Nocenti, “Writing and Directing Eve’s Bayou” (Scenario, Summer

1998), p. 198.

2. “Vanguard Dialogue: Chris Rock & Kevin Smith” (Premiere, October

1999), p. 98.

Chapter 11

1. Geoffrey T. Holtz, Welcome to the Jungle (New York: St. Martin’s

Griffin, 1995), p. 196.

Chapter 12

1. Michael Sragow, “Being Charlie Kaufman” (Salon.com, November 11,

1999).

2. Annie Nocenti, “Writing and Directing Pi” (Scenario, Summer 1998),p.

202.
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Niccol, Andrew. The Truman Show: The Shooting Script. New York:
Newmarket (1998).

Nocenti, Annie. “Adapting Out of Sight.” Scenario. Summer 1998, 57–60,

199–202.

_____. “Steven Soderbergh on Out of Sight.” Scenario. Summer 1998, 61,

202.

_____. “Writing and Directing Eve’s Bayou.” Scenario. Summer 1998, 192–
199.

_____. “Writing and Directing Pi.” Scenario. Summer 1998, 91–95, 202–
204.

Patterson, Troy. “The Gang’s All Here.” Entertainment Weekly, July 13,
2001, 90.

Puig, Claudia. “Soderbergh Flashes Forward.” USA Today, January 2, 2001,

D1–D2

Rohrer, Trish Dietch. “Two Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Premiere,
October 1999, 78–83.

Russo, Tom. “007 (Going on Eight).” Total Movie. April 2001, 36.

Salisbury, Mark. “‘Requiem’ in Excelsis.” Premiere. October 2000, 54.

_____. “Thanks for No Memories.” Premiere. April 2001, 42, 46–47.

Schneller, Johanna. “Crunch! Pow!” Premiere. August 1999, 68–73, 100.

Soderbergh, Steven. sex, lies, and videotape. New York: Harper & Row
(1990).

Spines, Christine. “In Love and War.” Premiere. May 2001. 46–53, 106–
107.

_____. “Sofia’s Choice.” Premiere. March 2000, 90–93.

Sragow, Michael. “Being Charlie Kaufman.” Salon.com (www.salon.com).
November 11, 1999.

Sterngold, James. “Art and Reality.” New York Times. June 12, 1998, E10.

_____. “The Low-Budget Realities of Making Indie Films.” New York

Times. April 15, 1999, E1, E8.

Sullivan, Monica. VideoHound’s Independent Film Guide. Detroit,

Michigan:Visible Ink (1998).

Svetkey, Benjamin. “Blood, Sweat & Fears.” Entertainment Weekly,

October 15, 1999, 24–31.

Tarantino, Quentin. Pulp Fiction. New York: Hyperion (1994).

Thompson, Anne. “Cinema Purité.” Premiere. August 2000, 78–80, 90.

_____. “The Filmmaker Series: Steven Soderbergh.” Premiere, October

2000, 59–65.

“Vanguard Dialogue: Chris Rock & Kevin Smith.” Premiere. October 1999,
98.

“Vanguard Dialogue: Sarah Polley & Audrey Wells.” Premiere. October

1999, 94.

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HarperCollins (2000).

Whitta, Gary, and Chris Gere. “Leonard Shelby Is the Man with the
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Online Sources

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Internet Movie Data Base. www.imdb.com. October 1999–September 2001.

Supplemental Sources

In addition to sources cited in the Bibliography, press kits and official Web
sites for many of the films cited in the book were consulted, as were the
unpublished screenplays of several films.
 Index of Terms

The Abyss

Affleck, Ben

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

Alien3

American Beauty

American Pie

Anderson, Paul Thomas

Anderson, Wes

Animal House

The Apartment

Apt Pupil

Aronofsky, Darren

Avary, Roger

Badlands

Ball, Alan

Batman
Bay, Michael

Beautiful Girls

Before Sunrise

Being John Malkovich

The Big Chill

Blade Runner

The Blair Witch Project

Blow

Blue Velvet

Bogdanovich, Peter

Bonnie and Clyde

Boogie Nights

Bound

Boys Don’t Cry

Boyz N the Hood

Brazil

The Breakfast Club

Breathless

The Brothers McMullen

Burns, Edward
Burton, Tim

The Cable Guy

Cameron, James

Can’t Hardly Wait

Casablanca

Catch-22

The Caveman’s Valentine

celebrity culture

The Cell

Charlie’s Angels

Chasing Amy

Childress, Helen

The China Syndrome

The Chocolate War

Christopher, Mark

Chuck & Buck

Citizen Ruth

Clerks

CNN
The Contender

Cop Land

Coppola, Francis Ford

Coppola, Sofia

Coupland, Douglas

Craven, Wes

crazy/beautiful

crime

Crimson Tide

The Crow

Crowe, Cameron

Curtiz, Michael

Damon, Matt

Dark City

Dazed and Confused

Death Wish

Demme, Ted

Desert Blue

Desperado
Deterrence

Dick

Die Hard

divorce

Do the Right Thing

Dogma

Dreamscape

drugs

Easy Rider

education

Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag

8mm

Election

Elfont, Harry

El Mariachi

Entropy

Eraserhead

Erin Brockovich

Estevez, Emilio
Eve’s Bayou

Eyre, Chris

The Faculty

family

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Fatal Attraction

54

Fight Club

Fincher, David

Five Easy Pieces

Flashdance

Fleming, Andrew

Forsyth, Bill

Foster, Jodie

Freeman, Morgan J.

The French Connection

Fresh

Friday the 13th

Friedkin, William
From Dusk Till Dawn

Funny Girl

future, depiction of

Gaghan, Steven

The Game

Gattaca

Generation X (book)

Ghostbusters II

Gilliam, Terry

Girl, Interrupted

Go

The Godfather

Good Will Hunting

Gordon, Keith

The Graduate

Gray, James

Greystoke

Halloween
Hard Eight

Hardcore

Haynes, Todd

Heaven’s Prisoners

heroism

High Noon

Higher Learning

Hitchcock, Alfred

Holtz, Geoffrey T.

Home for the Holidays

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids

The Honeymoon Killers

Hopper, Dennis

I Know What You Did Last Summer

In Cold Blood

In the Company of Men

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

“infotainment”

irony
Jackie Brown

Jaws

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

Joanou, Phil

Jonze, Spike

Josie and the Pussycats

Judge, Mike

Kaplan, Deborah

Kasdan, Lawrence

Kaufman, Charlie

Keeping the Faith

Killing Zoe

King of the Hill

Kramer vs. Kramer

Krizan, Kim

Kurosawa, Akira

LaBute, Neil
Lady Sings the Blues

The Last Picture Show

The Last Temptation of Christ

Lee, Spike

Lemmons, Kasi

Liman, Doug

The Limey

Linklater, Richard

Little Man Tate

Local Hero

Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

Lonergan, Kenneth

The Love Bug

Lucas, George

Luhrmann, Baz

Lurie, Rod

Lynch, David

Lyne, Adrian

Magnolia
Mallrats

The Man With the Golden Arm

Mangold, James

The Matrix

McQuarrie, Christopher

Mean Streets

Memento

Men of Honor

Mendes, Sam

Merhige, E. Elias

A Midnight Clear

MTV

The Mummy Returns

Murnau, F.W.

Myrick, Daniel

Natural Born Killers

Niccol, Andrew

Nichols, Mike

A Nightmare on Elm Street

9∂ Weeks

9 to 5

Nolan, Christopher

Norma Rae

Norton, Ed

Nosferatu

Nurse Betty

Ocean’s Eleven

Office Space

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Out of Sight

Payne, Alexander

Peckinpah, Sam

Pearl Harbor

Peeping Tom

Peirce, Kimberly

Penn, Arthur

Pi
Poetic Justice

politics

Poor Cow

pop culture

Porky’s

Porter, Edwin S.

postmodernism

Proyas, Alex

Psycho

Pulp Fiction

race

Rafelson, Bob

rape

Rashomon

Reality Bites

Rebel Without a Cause

religion

Remember the Titans

Requiem for a Dream

Reservoir Dogs

revenge

Revenge of the Nerds

Ritchie, Guy

The Road to Perdition

Rodriguez, Robert

Romeo and Juliet

Rosewood

Run Lola Run

Rushmore

Russell, David O.

Safe

Sánchez, Eduardo

Saturday Night Fever

Saving Private Ryan

Say Anything …

Scary Movie

Schrader, Paul

Scorsese, Martin
Scott, Ridley

Scream

serial killers

Serpico

Seven

sex, lies, and videotape

sexuality

Shadow of the Vampire

Shaft

She’s All That

Shyamalan, M. Night

The Silence of the Lambs

Singer, Bryan

Singh, Tarsem

Singleton, John

Sixteen Candles

The Sixth Sense

Slacker

slackerdom

Sleep with Me
Smith, Kevin

Smoke Signals

Soderbergh, Steven

Solaris

Soul Food

Spellbound

Spielberg, Steven

Spy Kids

Star Wars

State of Grace

Stiller, Ben

Stockwell, John

Stone, Oliver

Straw Dogs

suicide

Swingers

Tarantino, Quentin

Taxi Driver

Teaching Mrs. Tingle

television

The Ten Commandments

Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead

Three Kings

Three O’Clock High

Tillman, George Jr.

Top Gun

Traffic

True Romance

Truffaut, François

The Truman Show

The Truth About Cats & Dogs

2001: A Space Odyssey

Tykwer, Tom

Unbreakable

The Underneath

The Usual Suspects

Van Sant, Gus

VCRs

Vietnam War

The Virgin Suicides

Wachowski, Andy and Larry

Waking Life

Waking the Dead

Walker, Andrew Kevin

Wall Street

The War at Home

Watergate

Welcome to the Jungle (book)

Wells, Audrey

West Side Story

White Heat

William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet

Williamson, Kevin

The Wizard of Oz

Woo, John

work
X-Men

Yakin, Boaz

The Yards

You Can Count on Me

Your Friends and Neighbors

Zefferelli, Franco