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The Cinema of Generation X - Peter Hanson
The Cinema of Generation X - Peter Hanson
by Peter Hanson
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
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 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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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 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).
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.
Mixed Messages
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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).
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.
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.
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.
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
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Casualties of War
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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: 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.
NEO: No.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
Bound (1996) Written and directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski. 108
min.
Boyz N the Hood (1991) Written and directed by John Singleton. 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.
Chasing Amy (1997) Written and directed by Kevin Smith. 111 min.
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.
The Contender (2000) Written and directed by Rod Lurie. 126 min.
Cop Land (1997) Written and directed by James Mangold. 105 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.
Deep Rising (1998) Written and directed by Stephen Sommers. 106 min.
Eve’s Bayou (1997) Written and directed by Kasi Lemmons. 108 min.
Fight Club (1999) Directed by David Fincher. Written by Jim Uhls. Based
on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk. 139 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.
Good Will Hunting (1997) Directed by Gus Van Sant. Written by Ben
Affleck and Matt Damon. 126 min.
The Grey Zone (2002) Written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson, from his
play.
Hard Eight (1997) Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. 101
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.
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.
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.
King of the Hill (1993) Written and directed by Steven Soderbergh. Based
on the memoir by A.E. Hotchner. 102 min.
The Last Castle (2001) Directed by Rod Lurie. Written by David Scarpa
and Graham Yost. 131 min.
Little Man Tate (1991) Directed by Jodie Foster. Written by Scott Frank. 99
min.
Magnolia (1999) Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. 188 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.
Money Talks (1997) Directed by Brett Ratner. Written by Joel Cohen and
Alec Sokolow. 96 min.
The Mummy (1999) Written and directed by Stephen Sommers. 124 min.
New Jersey Drive (1995) Written and directed by Nick Gomez. 95 min.
Poetic Justice (1993) Written and directed by John Singleton. 109 min.
A Price Above Rubies (1998) Written and directed by Boaz Yakin. 116 min.
Red Dragon (2002) Directed by Brett Ratner. Written by Ted Tally. Based
on the novel by Thomas Harris.
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.
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.)
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.
Soul Food (1997) Written and directed by George Tillman, Jr. 114 min.
The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996) Directed by Michael Lehmann.
Written by Audrey Wells. 97 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.
World Traveler (2002) Written and directed by Bart Freundlich. 103 min.
The Yards (2000) Directed by James Gray. Written by Gray and Matt
Reeves. 115 min.
Your Friends and Neighbors (1998) Written and directed by Neil LaBute.
99 min.
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
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
Chapter 8
2. Ibid., p. 86.
3. Rick Lyman, “Gritty Portrayal of the Abyss from a Survivor” (New York
Times, February 5, 2001), p. E1, E3.
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.
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
“The Fifty Most Important Independent Films.” Filmmaker. Fall 1996, 41–
59.
Hirschberg, Lynn. “The Man Who Changed Everything.” New York Times
Magazine. November 19, 1997, 112–116.
_____. “The Screenwriters: Shane Black and Harmony Korine.” New York
Times Magazine. November 19, 1997, 136–137.
Jensen, Jeff. “First Tango in Paris.” Entertainment Weekly. May 25, 2001,
30–39.
Katz, Ephraim. Revised by Fred Klein and Ronald Dean Nolen. The Film
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Lyman, Rick. “Gritty Portrayal of the Abyss from a Survivor.” New York
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Online Sources
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
Alien3
American Beauty
American Pie
Anderson, Wes
Animal House
The Apartment
Apt Pupil
Aronofsky, Darren
Avary, Roger
Badlands
Ball, Alan
Batman
Bay, Michael
Beautiful Girls
Before Sunrise
Blade Runner
Blow
Blue Velvet
Bogdanovich, Peter
Boogie Nights
Bound
Brazil
Breathless
Burns, Edward
Burton, Tim
Cameron, James
Casablanca
Catch-22
celebrity culture
The Cell
Charlie’s Angels
Chasing Amy
Childress, Helen
Christopher, Mark
Citizen Ruth
Clerks
CNN
The Contender
Cop Land
Coppola, Sofia
Coupland, Douglas
Craven, Wes
crazy/beautiful
crime
Crimson Tide
The Crow
Crowe, Cameron
Curtiz, Michael
Damon, Matt
Dark City
Death Wish
Demme, Ted
Desert Blue
Desperado
Deterrence
Dick
Die Hard
divorce
Dogma
Dreamscape
drugs
Easy Rider
education
8mm
Election
Elfont, Harry
El Mariachi
Entropy
Eraserhead
Erin Brockovich
Estevez, Emilio
Eve’s Bayou
Eyre, Chris
The Faculty
family
Fatal Attraction
54
Fight Club
Fincher, David
Flashdance
Fleming, Andrew
Forsyth, Bill
Foster, Jodie
Freeman, Morgan J.
Fresh
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
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.
Hopper, Dennis
In Cold Blood
“infotainment”
irony
Jackie Brown
Jaws
Joanou, Phil
Jonze, Spike
Judge, Mike
Kaplan, Deborah
Kasdan, Lawrence
Kaufman, Charlie
Killing Zoe
Krizan, Kim
Kurosawa, Akira
LaBute, Neil
Lady Sings the Blues
Lee, Spike
Lemmons, Kasi
Liman, Doug
The Limey
Linklater, Richard
Local Hero
Lonergan, Kenneth
Lucas, George
Luhrmann, Baz
Lurie, Rod
Lynch, David
Lyne, Adrian
Magnolia
Mallrats
Mangold, James
The Matrix
McQuarrie, Christopher
Mean Streets
Memento
Men of Honor
Mendes, Sam
Merhige, E. Elias
A Midnight Clear
MTV
Murnau, F.W.
Myrick, Daniel
Niccol, Andrew
Nichols, Mike
9 to 5
Nolan, Christopher
Norma Rae
Norton, Ed
Nosferatu
Nurse Betty
Ocean’s Eleven
Office Space
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
religion
revenge
Ritchie, Guy
Rodriguez, Robert
Rosewood
Rushmore
Russell, David O.
Safe
Sánchez, Eduardo
Say Anything …
Scary Movie
Schrader, Paul
Scorsese, Martin
Scott, Ridley
Scream
serial killers
Serpico
Seven
sexuality
Shaft
Shyamalan, M. Night
Singer, Bryan
Singh, Tarsem
Singleton, John
Sixteen Candles
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
Three Kings
Top Gun
Traffic
True Romance
Truffaut, François
Tykwer, Tom
Unbreakable
The Underneath
Vietnam War
Waking Life
Wall Street
Watergate
Wells, Audrey
White Heat
Williamson, Kevin
The Wizard of Oz
Woo, John
work
X-Men
Yakin, Boaz
The Yards
Zefferelli, Franco