Ooh, my little pretty one…who was really going to be somebody by age 23
On today’s episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t, Tracie revisits the film of Generation X: Reality Bites. Despite passing the Bechdel test with flying colors, the story of documentary filmmaker Lelaina (played by Winona Ryder) not only seems to present the audience with a choice between selling out and suffering (while being insulted by Ethan Hawke), but it also has erased the authorship of the film’s writer, filmmaker Helen Childress, by attributing her choices to director Ben Stiller.
Listen in as we turn up the volume and dance in the gas station mini mart along with Lelaina, Vickie, Sammy!
Mentioned in this episode:
The Atlantic's look back at Reality Bites
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
Ooh, my little pretty one…who was really going to be somebody by age 23
On today’s episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t, Tracie revisits the film of Generation X: Reality Bites. Despite passing the Bechdel test with flying colors, the story of documentary filmmaker Lelaina (played by Winona Ryder) not only seems to present the audience with a choice between selling out and suffering (while being insulted by Ethan Hawke), but it also has erased the authorship of the film’s writer, filmmaker Helen Childress, by attributing her choices to director Ben Stiller.
Listen in as we turn up the volume and dance in the gas station mini mart along with Lelaina, Vickie, Sammy!
Mentioned in this episode:
The Atlantic's look back at Reality Bites
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
This is Tracy Guy-Dekker and you're listening to Deep Thoughts about Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? Today I'll be sharing my deep thoughts about the 1994 film Reality Bites with my sister, emily Guy Berkin, and with you. Let's dive in. Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture, what others might deem stupid shit? You know matters, you know it's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come over, think with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit. Okay, so I know you remember the movie, because we just did a little huddle up right before we hit record. But remind me what you remember about this movie and how you first encountered it. If you remember, I think you do.
Speaker 2:So I believe the first time I saw it was when Ed surgery on my feet when I was 15. I'm one foot than the other. It was minor skin surgery but still I couldn't walk, so I would have been in 1994. It was like sometime around August 1994 and I remember that you got this movie and a couple others from Blunt Buster and we set up the TV and VCR in my bedroom and we laid on my bed and watched it together and, as I recall, you and I both liked it so much we watched it more than once during that recovery period.
Speaker 2:So I had a similar relationship to this movie as I did to the breakfast club, in that it was about people who were a little bit older than I was and I took it to mean that this is what I had to look forward to. So that's what I thought being in my 20s was going to be like. When I was 15. Looking forward, I remember that I loved the love story and in my early 20s, sometime in the early 2000s, around 2001-2002, friend of mine said, yeah, that movie is proof that the asshole always gets the girl and I was like what are you talking about? My friend, having said that, made me kind of reevaluate the love triangle in the story. I don't know if that's when I first started, but like it got me thinking about how often stories present the brooding jerk as like the romantic hero and how much I have been like funnelled into believing that that's, you know, I can make him happy. So that was something that's kind of left a bad taste in my mouth and I don't think that I have revisited the film since then. So that would have been about 20 years ago or a little more.
Speaker 2:And then there are a couple of things that stand out from that film, most obviously the Mascherona scene. It just feels it's iconic. It's an iconic scene and it feels very Gen X in a way that makes me feel like I was born in 1979, so I'm very much on the cusp of Gen X and Millennials. I self-identify as Gen X and that scene is one of the things that makes me like proud to be a Gen Xer, even though I have a relatively loose claim on it. So tell us, why are we talking about this?
Speaker 1:film today. Yeah, so if we watched it in August of 94, that was like right before I went away to college. And this film, it's funny. I agree with you that this sits in a similar spot to the Breakfast Club, which is the last movie that I brought to you, and I think that's probably why I put them in succession like this, in my own kind of exploration. And there's nine years between them, and so I was closer to the age of reality bites than I was to the kids in Breakfast Club, at least when it was released initially. But I think, like you, they were sort of more like. This is what it's going to be like and very close for me for Reality Bites, and more so than the Breakfast Club. Like in the Breakfast Club we talked about the fact that I didn't, there wasn't a character with whom I was like that's me.
Speaker 1:I so completely identified with Winona Ryder's Lilaina that in my mind, like Winona Ryder, was my Hollywood persona you know she was like if I was ever, if there was ever a movie in my life, winona was gonna play me. You know, like she was the polished, prettier version of me, and so there was this self-identification that actually became completely divorced from the movie itself in some ways well, not completely, because I still understood that Reality Bites like but it was what it got built up to in my brain. Now that I've just rewatched it in order to prepare to talk to you, they weren't the same. They weren't like in the 30 years or however like it definitely like evolved in my brain.
Speaker 1:I don't even know if I remembered the character's name prior to rewatching it. I didn't, but there was something like deeply self-identified in this movie. So what we're missing in Breakfast Club was the overachieving kind of nerdy, if you will. Female character Lilaina is the valedictorian of her graduating class in college and at one point when she's feeling down on herself because she thought she was gonna do something by the time she was 23 which, looking back and I'm like, oh honey, but that was real.
Speaker 2:Yes, I felt that at 15. That was real and yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's why I wanted to talk about it. That was this like formative character that I really self-identified with and aspired to in a certain way. And so, you know, thinking about our project, I wanted to go back and look at like, what are those building blocks that I was putting into my aspirations, that I was seeing myself resonance in? And your friend was right like it's, I don't love it. Looking back on it, I do not love it. You know, when I'm a writer adorable, in fact, I was I felt validated. I was in the middle of the film and my spouse walked in and was like, oh, she's like a younger version of you, and I was like, oh yeah, I think so too, I'm gonna urge you for this very moment.
Speaker 1:Right, but Lilaina makes some really poor choices and she's just, completely predictably, 47 year old. Tracy does not think that 23 year old Lilaina has things together as much as 18 year old Tracy thought Lilaina had things together. Yeah, yeah, so and that's you know, that's okay, but I'd like to, I'd like to dig into it a little bit. So there there are some surface level things that in the intervening 30 years, like just kind of are unpleasant on screen, that I'll name.
Speaker 1:And then there are two kind of big things that I want to unpack in the movie, and that's sort of the idea of selling out versus like being pure to your artistic vision and the love triangle that you identified between Ethan Hawkes-Troy and Ben Stiller's Michael. And then, in a meta level, I want to talk about the erasure of female creators a little bit, especially as it comes to actually that, my sharonasine. So those are the things that I'm I'm gonna get into, but first let me give a quick recap of the plot such as it is. It's not huge, like not a lot happens. It's kind of a slice of life sort of a little bit.
Speaker 2:I mean, there is some plot.
Speaker 1:But so we meet Lilaina and her friends. Lilaina what on a writer's character is an aspiring documentarian and so the very first thing we see, we see we are very clearly shown that this is a videotape. Like we see the word vcr and it's kind of grainy and it's her giving the valedictorian speech. She is missing a card and so like the punchline is missing from her speech and then we see them, kind of her and her friends, kind of goofing off. So it's when on a writer's Lilaina. Then there's Janine Graffalo's Vicki, ethan Hawkes-Troy and then Steve Zahn's Sammy. Those are sort of the core friend group that we follow, partially from behind Lainey's camera and partially sort of in the like third person omniscient movie. So we immediately learn that Lainey's parents are divorced and there's a lot of tension. They're all out to dinner. Ethan Hawkes-Troy is a best friend but not a boyfriend.
Speaker 1:Lainey works for a morning show with the guy that played the dad from Frasier as the the morning show host. He's a dick but he plays this like very charming, like guy on on the show. It's Lainey's job to write his script on little no cards, kind of like the ones she used on her speech. And there's some tension there because like he thinks she should be like also making his coffee, which she doesn't want to do. So we get a little bit of like discomfort there. Vicki works at the gap, troy works in a little like newsstand. Troy immediately gets fired for stealing his knickers and moves in with Lainey and Vicki. Lilaina and Vicki are out in the car and had this little meet cute with Ben Stiller's Michael, because Lilaina throws a lit cigarette out the window, it lands in his convertible and sort of starts a fire like smoking on something that's on his passenger seat and he ends up hitting her car, which was a hand me down from her stepmother.
Speaker 2:Oh, and her father gives her a gas credit card in that first scene, doesn't?
Speaker 1:he.
Speaker 2:Yes, he does, so that her gas is covered for the for the year.
Speaker 1:A year? Yes, exactly. So we meet Michael. He's about their age, a little bit older, but not much, just still mid 20s, and he has kind of a high power job at an MTV like network called In your Face, and we are shown pretty early how ridiculous this network is when there's a, an influencer personality who Lainey's watching it on the TV and she's doing an ad for this like designer scarf that has the colors of the bloods and the crypts and it's only $75. I mean, it's just absolutely ridiculous and it's so memorable that part okay, it's like 30 seconds.
Speaker 1:The point was to sort of lampoon this this network, this MTV style network.
Speaker 1:Okay, lainey's immediate boss we don't actually get to know this person, but he shows the host of the show, lainey's documentary footage and says I think she's really talented. Lainey's out, you know, just outside listening, so she's eavesdropping on this. The immediate boss is like I think she's really talented, I'd love to show this. And the guy's like no, I don't know, we only do sunny stuff, not this broody shit. And I don't, I would. I want you to get rid of her. I don't like her pointy face. And he insults her Complete dick, yeah, yeah, she can. She can hear him. He doesn't know she can hear him. So she ends up sort of retaliating by putting since she writes his cards for his script, he doesn't review them in advance. So he goes on camera and says I've always liked very, very young girls, cause that's what it says on his card. And then he's like uh, and he flips to the next card and he's he's talking to an author at this point and he says being a total prick. So so Lainey loses her job. Yeah, as she should. So she has a little bit of a crisis. Ethan Hawks, troy, kind of tries to comfort her cause. He's been fired from like 13 jobs or something. And this is all we need, lainey, a couple of cigarettes, good conversation in you and me. And then he tries to kiss her. She's like, no, I can't do this cause I can't lose you. And then he gives her the cold shoulder.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile, uh, she starts dating Michael Ben Stiller's Michael and Michael is a little awkward, a little silly, but like a nice guy they have a nice time together. He clearly really really likes her. We get a line in their first date that at the time in 94, I thought was hilarious. It's not that funny now. But they're talking and he says something like you're really beautiful. Like really, really, I can't believe how, like some, like he's falling over himself about how good looking she is and she's uncomfortable. So, to change the subject, she's like are you religious or at all? Which feels like a really weird non sequitur. Looking back on it, he says, oh well, I guess you could say I'm a non practicing Jew. And she says, well, I guess you could say I'm a non practicing virgin. And then they just look at each other and like uncomfortable awkwardness. So the rivalry between Michael, who is emotionally available, has a steady job, doesn't mind telling her that he. I mean, at one point he actually says he loves her and then it's like oh wait, what You're amazing. Like, in the same breath he says I think you're amazing and I love you, whereas Ethan Hawks, troy, like, at one point is like I'm totally in love with you. That's what you want me to say, isn't it? Don't flatter yourself Like. He's so mean to her over and over and over again. He's so mean to her.
Speaker 1:The real day new mall if there is one is that Michael shows Lainey's videos to his bosses and they like it, they want to buy it. And she was just about to sell plasma. You know, like she's like has no money. In fact, the gas card comes back because she can't pay rent. And so she her dad had given her a gas card.
Speaker 1:She tries, she tries to get a job. Lots of different places is told she's over qualified, she can't find a job. She even tries to get a job at like Wiener Schnitzel, like a drive through hot dog place, and the, you know, the manager is like there's a reason I've been here six months. She can't get a job at a hot dog place and she asks each of her parents for a loan. Both of them deny her. So she starts using the gas card creatively and like paying for people's gas and they give her cash.
Speaker 1:And then Michael says he can sell her video and or her movie to his people and they're and to make a show out of it. And she's super excited and it's amazing. And then they go to the movie. There's some, you know, growling at one another between Ethan Hawke and Ben Stiller, but they go to the premiere. He says I haven't seen it yet, she hasn't seen their edits. And they show the edits and we've been watching the documentary footage throughout and it's like grainy and not particularly well composed and brooding and very serious and it has been spliced up MPV style with lots of animation and like quick cuts and I kind of remember there being like sound effects, to like spying type sound effects.
Speaker 2:Am I misremembering that or?
Speaker 1:There was a soundtrack, I don't. Oh, okay, okay. And there was product placement.
Speaker 1:So like at one point from the raw footage they were like pizza, pizza is a good idea. And so it's like all of them like quick cuts, pizza, pizza, pizza. And then you see, like pizza hut and it's like animated with, like not drawn but like cutouts, and yeah, okay, yeah. And she is just devastated by this, like this is not mine, and runs away. And Michael is like I didn't know they would do it, I didn't see it, I'll make them take the pizza bit out. And we're meant to think that he just doesn't get it Right. So she's really devastated by this.
Speaker 1:Just having a moment when Troy comes upon, her kind of wallowing. And that's when she says I really thought that I was going to do something by the time I was 23. They finally do get together. They have sex. The sex scene is like real close up of their faces and sort of like we could have been doing this all along, like you're my best friend. But then he bails super early in the morning, like just runs away. So the next day he's in a band called hey, that's my bike. Oh, that's right, yes.
Speaker 1:So the next day or a couple of days later they're at the bar where hey, that's my bike performs and Michael shows up and he has two tickets, two plane tickets to go to New York. He wants her to go with him to pitch her show the way she wants to do it to his bosses. And Troy is, you know, growling and jealous and Lainey kind of pulls Troy aside and is like what is happening? You ran away. And he is like you know, sometimes I'm going to do things that you don't like and that's just how it is. And she runs away from both of them. They have a moment in the streets where Ben Stiller says you know, you're like the court juster, and you know Hamlet finds his skull and he died alone and like yeah, people say yeah, he was funny. But Troy says everybody dies alone. Michael says if you really believe that, who are you looking for out here? Michael throws down the plane tickets into the street and then the next scene.
Speaker 1:We see Troy getting on a plane, and so initially you're almost thinking like he took the tickets off the street. But no, it turns out his father died and he went home, to wherever home is, for the funeral. He was fairly estranged from his dad and Lilaina is just missing him. He's just absolutely pining for him and is just about to run out of her apartment to go look for him. She's Sammy, tells her that he went home, so she's just about to try and like I don't know but go look for him and a cab pulls up and drops him off and they, you know, apologize and the movie ends with them in each other's arms. So that's the basic plot. So the quick things Bechtel test, yes, flying colors.
Speaker 1:Lilaina and Vicky talk about lots of stuff, not just boys race. I counted two black actors in the whole movie. There's the author that the dick boss is talking to when he gets the cards, and then when Lani is trying to get a job she's trying, she starts with radio and the would be boss is a black man who says I trust my gut and my gut says this is a bad fit and that's it. And there's also you sort of surface level. Like the characters, like all of them smoke like chimneys, which is really oh gosh, I had no memory of that. Yeah, Like there's, Lani always has a cigarette in her hand.
Speaker 2:Okay, I kind of remembered that Ethan Hawks smoked, but I did not remember.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's how she meets Michael, because she like flicks her.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's right, that's right. That's right, that's right, okay yeah. And then he hit her car. That's all I remember about it. Yeah, okay yeah.
Speaker 1:And in fact they show the passage of time with the cigarette butts building up in the ashtray at one point Okay. Okay. Which is like really, it's just what's the word? It's surprising because TV today you really don't see cigarettes at all, yeah, or movies, or very rarely.
Speaker 2:Unless they're set in a specific time period. But even then, like I was, I just recently watched Chinatown again with my husband and I was thinking about how many cigarettes there are, which is perfectly in keeping with the time that it's set in. But it also felt like a different choice, like they would have had cigarettes once in a while if they made it now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So anyway, go ahead. And then the other thing that stood out to me in this rewatch is the frequency and casual ness with which they use the ableist R word. It just shows up again and again. So those are a couple of like surface things that you know kind of well that I noticed, just easy to check off quickly. Also, queer representation.
Speaker 1:So we have Scammy, who's like a part of the friend group but not like he is and isn't, and there is actually some not insignificant amount of screen time devoted to his coming out or why he's still in the closet and those sorts of things about his relationship with his family, which is which is actually for 30 years ago. I think was well done. The two big things that I want to talk about are related. So let's talk about selling out. First, at one point when she's she's trying to Lane, is trying to get a job at a newspaper because she's like you know, I'm a journalist, so like, and the woman who is her would be boss is like I just don't see it. And then the woman she says define irony and Lainey can't. And then she comes to a diner and finds Troy, and he does without hesitation, which is another way that the movie makers prove to us that he's smart. But there's something like I'm not sure irony is the right word.
Speaker 1:It's almost like hypocrisy about this movie that there's some weird tension. For me it's all about lampooning sellouts from a major motion picture, you know, from a major motion picture from a major house. Like it's not like this was in. It was like they wanted it to feel indie but it wasn't. And there's something like alive in that tension that feels actually like the tension of Gen X. There are folks, like you, identify this as a Gen X movie. I think you're right. Like this is a solidly Gen X. It could only have been written by a Gen Xer you know.
Speaker 2:So just this morning I was asked to answer some questions for an article or for somebody coming out, because I wrote an article about Gen X retirements, and so they reached out to me said, will you answer some questions? And so I did a little bit of research and like when you type in Gen X retirements, one of the articles that I pulled up for research, the image they had was from reality bites.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Well. I was reading this morning like I don't even think we had that term yet when this movie was made. They were still calling us baby busters because there were so few of us.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, I had forgotten that, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So there's something like complicated and it feels potentially toxic when I look back on it this lampooning of selling out being sold to me in this major motion picture that had a lot of product placement, which maybe was ironic. Maybe, I don't. I mean, it was certainly meant to be. It was very obvious within the MTV version or the In your Face version of Leni's video, but it's throughout the movie Like she talks about how important a big gulp is to her and Troy says like quarter pounders are something worth getting up for.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah, there's McDonald's, there's Diet Coke, there's a lot of like product placement in this movie and it just feels potentially toxic or easily twisted in a way that actually feels very similar to and is related, it's resonant, with the so-called choice between these two men. So Michael represents selling out and Troy represents saying true to your so-called artistic vision and the filmmakers I mean you and I both, and I think, a lot of us watching we got the message. Ethan Hawke was the guy, he was the one she chose correctly, but did she?
Speaker 1:I mean this dude was mean to her, which he suggests is him being true to his artistic vision, like him being true to himself, somehow being mean to her. Unpredictable, unreliable, no job, no ambition or afraid of ambition, like. There is this judgment of materialism which gets completed with a judgment of anything other than sitting around and brooding. And what's interesting within the universe of the movie is Michael knows it, he's trying to convince Lainey that he's not materialistic, he doesn't care that much about stuff and she's like look at you, give your designer suits or whatever.
Speaker 2:Couple of things that I think are interesting here. One is I feel like Gen X as a generation, as a group of people, is uniquely concerned about selling out, like I think that happened in earlier generations. I think I'm sure it's happened in later generations. I have a theory as to why that is, and it's the 80s being Gen X's formative years, where everything was slick and money and sell, sell, sell and create as good and all of that, and so that's like the rejection of that culture. So I think that that's really interesting. The issue is that there is no actual alternative. It's you either sell out or you stay true to your artistic vision. But what does that mean? How do you get your art to the people who will appreciate it? Because there is no alternative offered, and that is what I mean. That's the way madness lies. And then that also means you get people who just sit around brooding without actually writing something or creating something or doing anything.
Speaker 1:I think I'd push it even further. The alternative that's offered is suffering, and if you're not suffering you're somehow not Then you're selling out. It's suffer or sell out, and what a shitty choice. And that is the choice that Laney's given suffer with this good-looking friend who treats you badly. Yeah, or sell out with this guy who actually cares about you, can say he cares about you, has money, has a job, is reliable, and we're told clearly that the suffering is the right choice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know something else that just came up to me that I mentioned last night when we were talking. For all of my life I've had this sense there's a ticking clock that I have to do or create something remarkable when I am young and until recently I had never really wrestled with it or examined it. It just was. And I realized that that ticking clock was about my own attractiveness and my sense that I can only do or create something remarkable while I am conventionally attractive. And to further, because the people who decide that something remarkable has been done are men and wow, that's F-dub. I mean, I'm really not OK with that being in my head. However, Laney saying I thought I'd be somebody by the time I was 23 fits in with that. That's the part of the reason why that resonated with me is because, even as a 15-year-old watching this movie, I felt that ticking clock because I need to do this when I am some pretty young thing. And having that in my head and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has that in my head, I have it in that very specific way, but I didn't know it was there until I really wrestled with it makes Michael's offer at the end feel a little different in that Like, just objectively, if we take how women are socialized in 20th century and now 21st century America out of it. If this is just aliens, obviously Michael's the right choice In this context. I know I would feel awkward about the fact that I got my big break because I was sleeping with a guy. There's so much tangled up in there, and then it's also the fact that I can say that I feel weird about it. But the thing is that's how things work. You know people. You know people who know people and they're like hey, I can get this to my boss and that's how it works. And she was doing that with her boss at the morning show. So I don't know if Laney would have a problem with it. I would, and all of that. I wonder how much art we've missed out on because people aren't willing to sell out.
Speaker 2:Like my writing career. When I first started it, I started freelancing just to get some money coming in and I just happened to get a money blog, as one of my first clients who liked my work passed my name along to friends. You know, eight months later, 10 months later, I'm getting to be known as a money writer and was invited to a financial media conference and I almost didn't go Because I was like, well, I don't want to be a money. I mean I'm supposed to be a novelist, like I'm supposed to be a real writer. And about six weeks before the conference I woke up in the middle of the night going like people want to pay me to write.
Speaker 2:What is wrong with me? Like why am I saying no to this? And like, what vision am I hewing to that I can do more easily by not embracing this opportunity. And so that's this really weird push pull. That, I think, is not. It's not just this movie. This movie describes it, but I think that that is mean. What was the name of the author? Helen Children Children. She experienced it. I mean, this is something that is common in our generation. But, wow, I feel like there's a lot that we've missed out on because people are like, well, no, no, no, that's not pure enough, that would be selling out.
Speaker 1:It's interesting that irony. So just define irony? She can't, but she knows it when she sees it she has to try to define it. He says it's when the true meaning is the exact opposite of the literal meaning. I think that actually was a big old clue. That's a piece of exposition, I think, in the In Childress's script. Here that is related to what you're talking about, because so, vicky, we see one of our first introductions to Vicky is a man sneaking out of her bedroom trying not to wake her. She was pretending to be asleep. The moment he's gone, she pulls out this little notebook and she writes down the date and his name with a question mark. She's not 100% sure she remembers it. He's number 66.
Speaker 1:In this book of lovers, yeah, yeah. And there's a conversation that she and Leni have later where you know she says they run away immediately, like I'm not the kind of girl who has a relationship. That's, those aren't her words, I'm paraphrasing, you know. And Leni's like what are you talking about? You're out the door before he even takes the condom off. And it's made clear in that moment, like she says something, like I'm just doing it before they do it to me. You know so the irony of you know this casual sex, and that that's what she wants is casual sex. What she really wants is relationship. But then there's this fear. It's this fear, this resistance to selling out, is like a fear of success, and it's. I think that part of what is uncomfortable to me watching this movie now, 30 years later, is that I'm like, oh, that fear of success is so old I don't even recognize it and I put the clothes on it of I'm not selling out, I'm not gonna sell out, you know, and that's just like I mean.
Speaker 2:I guess I'm glad I know it's in my head, but you know this, and I do think it's telling that Helen Childress, you know, was herself a filmmaker and she based this.
Speaker 1:This is very autobiographical. Yes, yes, In fact there's actually a man named Troy Dyer who sued her for using his tape. Apparently he's more like the Michael character, but it's settled out of court.
Speaker 2:I find it telling because, like you know, a lot of this is about the pain of being a creator, because what you're able to actually put on the page or on the screen never fits what's in your head. So there's already this like pain of selling out just in the act of creation. And I can recall I think it was something Elizabeth Gilbert was writing about, where she was talking about how she written this piece short fiction and it was not long, it was like 5,000 words and it was something prestigious said we'll take it, but you need to get it down to like under 2,000 words, which is like so the bulk of the story. And she was just like I've never treated my story so roughly, and she was mentioning this to I think it was a boyfriend of hers or something who was like oh, I would never do that, I would never Like, because Elizabeth Gilbert is not above petty, she's like, and he's never been published.
Speaker 2:But that is like this film has like made that, that fear of creation, fear of success, because it's not the ideal that we want. It's made it real in a way that resonates with people who aren't creators as well. Yeah, in some ways, that's a shame. In some ways I think that's just, that's partially like, that's human nature and then in some ways I think, like I said, I think Gen X was primed to reject the values and the materialism and the expectations of the previous generation, particularly because it lived through the 80s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, speaking of creators and that gap between what's in your head and what gets put on the screen, something really interesting happened with this movie that you named that my Charona scene. So there's a scene there in the gas station. My Charona comes on the radio. Vicky says oh, turn it up, you won't be sorry, the gas station is tender. Turns it up. It's my Charona and Vicky and Lilaina and Sammy all dance and Troy just smirks and then you kind of the camera cuts to outside. You can still hear the music and it's like this beautiful sunset and they're dancing. It's a really visually beautiful scene.
Speaker 1:And looking back on it, looking back on the movie, the 25th anniversary like people were talking about that and I don't remember who, but one of the producers was like, yeah, that was really Ben's vision. Ben Stiller was the director of this movie, in addition to playing Michael, and Childress wrote that scene exactly. In the script it says you know, and then pan out and the whatever. And I read this, and there's an article in the Atlantic about the movie that I'll link to in the show notes, although it is behind the paywall, so sorry, but the author points out that this female creator who wrote a story about her life, had to prove that she wrote it, that it was hers. She had to prove that it was hers. You know, because people are giving Ben Stiller the credit for this scene, which is sort of the iconic scene of this or an iconic scene from this iconic Gen X movie. The Childress had to be like no, I wrote that, that was mine.
Speaker 1:Like she had to pull up the script book to be like that's not Ben, that's me, and there's something like so quintessential of that need to reclaim.
Speaker 1:I mean, this is an autobiographical film that she had to prove was hers, at least for the moment that captured culture's imagination and there's something like that just further layers the problematics and the awkwardness and the pressure on this notion of selling out and artistic vision and being true to one's identity when you layer that piece of it onto it as well, Right, and it's like there's all these layers of meta, right Cause one of the things that Lainey says that she wants, that she's doing, that she wants to do, is she's telling these stories about her friends who are trying to find their own identities without real role models or heroes. Like that's what she says about herself and her friends. And so this notion of like trying to find your identity and then also needing to defend it, being afraid of it. Being afraid of it also like needing to pay rent.
Speaker 2:You know it's interesting. The erasure of Helen Childress is like creation of that iconic moment, which is horrifying. But I feel like that gets to something I mentioned last week, which is that when it comes to like iconic women and non-men creators, we have this tendency to act like they have no influences, and then one of the ways that we do that is by erasing the women from the stuff that they did so like. Oh yeah, that's Ben's movie. Now, I probably knew at some point that Ben Stiller directed this. Like. It was one of those like. I read it this morning and I wasn't surprised it was his first direct real debut.
Speaker 2:And so like I knew it at some point, but it's not. I don't associate Like to me. This is when I think about it. It's Winona Ryder and Jeanine Garofalo's movie and that's what I remember from that scene. That was also. That's not the first time I heard my Cherona, but that was that movie's how I learned to appreciate that song. But that is like I know. Sammy is there also dancing, and Troy is there and not dancing, but in my head what I remember are the two women dancing together. And so like this scene written by a woman in a song about a woman, because Cherona's a real person with like two iconic Gen X women actors dancing and they go yeah, that's Ben, that's. That's effing infuriating, because one of the reasons why that scene is remembered and why it's iconic is because it gave me the sense that joy is always available, even among these extremely stressful situations.
Speaker 1:Yes, and also there's because of Troy Smirk and the boomer attendant who actually did the turning up of the volume, who's just like giving them like this it's. It's not exactly judgmental, like he's not like, but it is judgmental. But you know, sort of what are you doing as opposed to. It's one of the kids these days, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and not, and not a. Not an anger, I guess, is what I'm trying to say, but just a like a lack of understanding. Yeah, and I think that subversion of decorum, as if you need to have decorum in a food mart, at a gas station but still they are in public and then and they just, you know, break out dancing.
Speaker 1:So joy is always available, even in sort of stressful times, and also, like that, the notion of decorum in public, if joy is on the table, it is is rejected, and I and I think that's also a piece of that that is beautiful.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's the other thing that I appreciate about it is that it pushes back against the choice of the world, who think that optimism and hope and joy are uncool.
Speaker 1:Yes, Because there is nobody cooler than Vicki and Lilena when they're dancing to my show.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah For that. That interview I did this morning. One of the things I said. What I love about Gen X is also what people are critical of Gen X about, especially when when they were in teens and twenties is they're disaffected. It's like disinfected youth and so like. What that means is they are not looking to anything, any institutions, to take care of them or protect them or save them. That leads to, like you know, incredible independence. I mean, like this is a latchkey generation. The visual of Vicki using toilet paper as the, as the coffee filter it was Laney actually, but yeah, that was Laney. Oh gosh, For some reason in my head it was Vicki. Well, in any case, that visual has stuck with me because it was just like oh, you find a way, you find a way to make it work. Same with her gas station scheme Like I really don't think that that was okay what she was doing, but she was providing a service, Like she wasn't just taking the money, she was pumping gas for people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she didn't steal from anybody except her dad, which wasn't wasn't exactly, I mean, like moment when he's like sorry sunshine, you're going to have to figure out your way out of this, it really yeah.
Speaker 1:Because she really. He implies that she's somehow lazy. Yes, and she has been. I mean, it was maybe not the wisest thing to burn the bridge with good morning grants before she had something else lined up. She could have lined something else up and then burn the bridge. But whatever she does eventually sit on her couch and talk to the 1,900 psychic line for hours and hours and hours. But that's after both of her parents turn her down for loans and her dad. They make it clear dad's got plenty of money. It's not that he doesn't have it. He's unwilling to help. He thinks that she needs to learn a lesson or something. He's trying to teach her a lesson and we know that like she doesn't actually need that lesson. Like this kid cause she is a kid is really hardworking and trying really, really hard, maybe takes herself a little too seriously, but you know we all did when we were 23. Yeah, yeah, sort of goes with the territory of being 23.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's interesting just thinking about our Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where Willy Wonka, where Charlie is seen to be pure part because he gives the everlasting gov stopper back and like that's what I am bribed and I very much like I'm a black and white thinker and you know I'm a rule follower so like even watching it it made me uncomfortable that she did that to her dad's money, but at the same time I was also just like man, that guy sucks, and like I admired the hustle, I admired the creativity of it Because, in addition, like that's, since they were doing their grocery shopping at the gas station because she had the gas card, so like I admired the creativity of that because that was not what her dad intended it to do, that was, she was being a subversive bitch. For those who don't know, the greatest compliment Tracy ever gave me was telling me I was a subversive bitch.
Speaker 1:She wants it on her gravestone. I do, I do.
Speaker 2:I'm notorious EGB subversive bitch, so like I really admire that, I also considering that level of self actualization, like creativity, DIY, like the like. All right, I'm counting on myself. I also comprehend not trusting Michael's offer. Yeah, In that I would have made the exact same decision at 23. Yeah, probably Even without having seen this movie or you know whatever. But just like I'm sorry, you want to do what now? With how much money? That can't be right.
Speaker 1:What's the catch? Okay, One final tidbit and then I'm going to. I'm going to try and wrap us up. So the other thing that I think is really interesting within the context of the conversation about the difference between selling out and artistic vision reality bites doesn't mean what we think. It means Like we all think. It means reality sucks. That's not what she meant. That was the time of when we were first starting to talk about sound bites. She meant bite sized pieces of reality. Your face, you should close your mouth. You're going to catch some flies. I read it this morning. You just blew my mind.
Speaker 1:Right, I read it this morning in that Atlantic article that Childress was like yeah, it was, we had sound bites. Was it like a new concept in, you know, in the early nineties? And that's what I was thinking of. Like that's what the MTV thing turns it into. Is like reality, reality yeah as opposed to yeah it's, it's a, it's a noun, it's not a verb, wow, and reality is an adjective, anyway. So that's just a little tidbit actually that I wanted to make sure that I shared, because I read it this morning I was like oh huh, nope, it's become a thing. You know, she was interviewed for this Atlantic article and she was saying like yeah, I just saw it like on CNN, like reality bites, trump, or reality bites, you know, like it's like a thing, it's like it's like a Trumpy phrase that we use, but it's the way she interpreted it.
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting because that also changes in some ways the like, the meaning of the movie Cause if it ends with the idea that you sell out or you suffer, like well, in reality, in reality, in reality, bites yeah.
Speaker 1:No, it was a descriptor of what she was giving us. Yeah, wow, okay, so I'm going to. We've been talking for a long minute, so I'm going to try and see if I can like give the highlights. So, 1994, reality bites, passes the back tail test, no problem, very little racial diversity. The ultimate duality that we are given, which has multiple layers, is between selling out and suffering, and suffering is made to be appealing, because that is being true, that's being pure to who you are and to your art. And these 30 years later, I question the dichotomy at all. I think there are more options and also, even within the dichotomy, I question whether or not suffering is actually the right choice.
Speaker 2:It. Also, it makes a suggestion that the artist is solitary because, like then, editing would be selling out, like the story told about Elizabeth Gilbert, like the idea that, like you, have one singular vision and know how dare anyone question it, which is very damaging. It's a very damaging view of art.
Speaker 1:Right, it leads to within the movie, and I think you know the ripple effect it leads us. Leads to us being dishonest with ourselves about what we actually want in a protective move. So we are there. There's a fear of failure which actually becomes a fear of success.
Speaker 2:It's a fear of vulnerability, kind of, yeah, I think all of us. Yeah, you have to be vulnerable to fail, and you can't succeed unless you are vulnerable.
Speaker 1:The relation between the art and romantic entanglements is. It's there in this film over and over and over again, but there's a, there's a romantic metaphor perhaps between between those things, and we see it in Michael and Troy, but we also see it in Vicki's constant sleep, her promosquuity, if I may call it that, that she doesn't make her happy. It doesn't make her happy at all, and she uses it as a way to avoid the fear of rejection that is driving, driving her. We also talked at this sort of meta level about the. You know, this film gave us the strong female protagonists who I very much identified with, with whom I very much identified, and that makes sense because it came from a female creator who herself then becomes erased when her creation becomes beloved by lots of people. So in that sense, the lampooning of selling out is sort of accurate, right, because she, once she, sold out, it's not that she lost her vision, she lost her identity as its creator, which is like blowing my mind a little bit. I blame that on sexism, not on selling out, though.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, that's sexism, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So those are the big pieces that I hope that we kind of covered. Did I miss anything that you want to make sure that you name?
Speaker 2:One thing we talked about before we started recording was with the raw footage, and how a lot of Lainey's footage that we see does not seem that compelling. And looking back on it and again, I haven't seen it since I myself was probably 23, but looking back on it it really feels like she thinks she has to be complete at age 23. And so and she thinks that her art is at its pinnacle when she's still very much a zygote, an artistic zygote. And so there's some of the footage. There's two scenes in particular that we talk about. There's one where Vicki is getting her test results for an AIDS test and it's devastating, it's just devastating. And, if I recall correctly, isn't Vicki like and she doesn't get a negative test result, she does, with the waiting. I mean, yeah, I mean she doesn't get a positive test result, yeah, she's gonna positive, but the waiting is the devastating part.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at one point she says here I am maybe probably dying of AIDS like she's. She's terrified, she's terrified.
Speaker 2:Yeah, terrified and like that's.
Speaker 2:When I say that, seen as devastating, is like I just feeling for that character and, layered on top of the, the way that she conducts her romantic life, being because of a fear of rejection, and like it's just it's and it's, it's amazing it's.
Speaker 2:It's fantastic filmmaking and fantastic Documentary making in context. The other one is Sammy is thinking of coming out to his parents and and so he talks to Vicki as if Vicki is his mother, like they do a role play of how it would go, and that is another Lovely scene where Vicki puts on this funny, like midwestern, like oh, my child, I love you, I will join P flag, and what really stuck with me about that scene is that it's showing his friends are supporting him by doing this, like this role play, because it's got to be terrifying to do that, especially in the early mid 90s, but also goofing around a little bit. So, like it's just it's, it's such good friendship right there it does speak to Laney's skill as a Documentarian and tells me that, like you know, 15 years, 20 years, in the future, she'd be making amazing films, but she needs to cook a little longer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe. I mean I think it really all of the friendships in this, the friendships in this film feel real. Yeah, they fight and they make up and they they feel real and genuine and like authentic Connections. I say maybe about Laney's filmmaking. Roger Ebert in his contemporaneous review was like she's not a good filmmaker. The composition is bad, the pacing is wrong, like he really didn't like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he would know, yeah, and so that's why I hesitate, like I don't watch nearly as many films as Roger Ebert did. We also have very different perspectives about what we care about, so there's that, but I do think there's. Well, it just took itself too seriously, I think which again 23. So yeah yeah, okay. So Wow, we've been talking a long time.
Speaker 2:So next time now? I know we usually go back and forth, but I'm I'm going to be doing a bonus episode about back to the future, so you are coming back for our next regular episode. What do you have for me next time?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am going to bring you Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Speaker 2:Oh, Like the night to think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you have reader comments for us today, do? I do have a couple of reader comments.
Speaker 2:Here we go. So got a couple of comments about Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory from Kiara. She said I think Timothy Chalamet's Wonka had the same joy and energy of Wilders and I think it's an instant classic addition to the story. So, and she, she recommended that we go see it. So I was like, okay, that makes me feel good.
Speaker 2:Just his Johnny Depp's Wonka left such a bad taste in my mouth, although I was thinking about the fact that, like, if you think about it in some ways, johnny Depp was really just showing what Was screwed up about this character. It's just like is that why we go to the movies? I don't know. And Then David said, in response to my saying come with me and you'll be in a world of capitalistic monopolies Regulated monopolies, is what how I put it. So I posted that and David said aren't we already? I'm like yeah, I break down the five. And then I have one more from Lisa on Clue, who said that to this day, whenever my family members are angry, we yell flames. Side of my face, madeline Conn style.
Speaker 1:Because iconic. Well, listener, if you have deep thoughts From our deep thoughts, we would love to hear them for reals. So you can Click the link in our show notes to go to our listener forum to share them with us. Email us at guygirlsmedia at Gmail dot com, or find us on socials and let us know there.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1:All right until next time. Till next time, do you like stickers? Sure, we all do. If you head over to guygirlsmediacom, slash, sign up and share your address with us. We'll send you a sticker. It really is that easy, but don't wait, there's a limited quantity. Thanks for listening. Our theme music is professor umlaut by Kevin McLeod from incompetechcom. Find full music credits in the show notes. Until next time, remember, pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head?