October 26, 2024 • 24 mins
Pop Culture Historian Scott Ryan Explores 1990s Cinematic Gems in The Last Decade of Cinema, discussing iconic films, unpacking cultural impact and nostalgia for film enthusiasts everywhere.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is What's at Risk with Mike Christian on WBZ
Boston's news Radio. Hi, Mike Christian. Here of What's at Risk.
First up on tonight's show, we have an encore edition
of What's at Risk with pop culture historian Scott Ryan.
He explores nineteen ninety cinematic gems in his book The
(00:23):
Last Decade of Cinema, discussing iconic films, unpacking cultural impact
and nostalgia for film enthusiasts everywhere. And in our second segment,
we welcome Mariano Sigma, world renowned leader in cognitive neuroscience
and author of the new book The Power of Words,
(00:43):
How to Speak, Listen, and Think Better. Marianna discusses about
how to leverage language to edit our memories and cover
who we truly are. Scott Ryan is a television historian,
pop culture and entertainment industry tree expert, author and publisher.
His latest book, The Last Decade of Cinema explores fifty
(01:07):
five movies from the nineties, offering an analysis of their
impact on pop culture, both at the time of their
release and their lasting significance today. With a keen eye
for detail, Ryan covers a decade that commenced with classics
like Goodfellows and concluded with the enigmatic Magnolia. Among the
(01:28):
featured films are beloved titles such as Malcolm X, Before
Sunrise and Clueless, each contributing to nineties cinema culture. Ryan's
previous works include Moonlighting and Oral History, where he unveils
the untold story behind the groundbreaking TV series, and thirty
Something at thirty and Oral History, alongside the Last Days
(01:52):
of Letterman, which chronicles the end of an era in
late night television. As the managing editor of The Blue
Rose mag magazine and co founder of Fayetteville Mafia Press,
Ryan has solidified his position as a raw and honest
pop culture storyteller. With all this, it still burns him
(02:13):
that he never won Employee of the Month at Video Time,
where he learned to love film by stealing VHS tapes
and movie posters. Our guest today is pop culture historian
and entertainment industry expert Scott Ryan, author of the Last
(02:37):
Decade of Cinema, a nostalgic journey through the vibrant landscape
of nineteen ninety cinema. Scott, thanks so much for being
with us today.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Thanks for having me it's exciting.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Talk a little bit about your background to so our
listeners know who you are and which you've been up to.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, I've been covering pop culture for about fifteen years
through the Red Room podcast, and then I started magazine
about Twin Peaks and David Lynch called The Blue Rose Magazine,
written books on David Letterman, Moonlighting, Twin Peaks, thirty something,
and now I'm doing nineties cinema. I can't get out
(03:15):
of the nineties.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
There you go. Sometimes I feel the same way. So
you're obviously a film buffer and an expert. Why this
particular era of film? There have been other good eras
of film, but why this one?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Well, I think the idea that really struck me was
in the nineties we had good technology, so the movies
still look good. Like if you go back to the
seventies or the sixties, or even back to the forties,
it's not that the stories aren't good, but they didn't
have the greatest camera, they didn't have lighting down. If
(03:52):
they wanted to have a monster, it was probably a
guy in a suit. Where in the nineties you started
to bring in computer technical but you still had this
high peak of story, which I think has faded away
in the new millennium. I think, now you have all
this technology, but you don't always have the characters and
(04:12):
the stories to back it up.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Now, the book kicks off with a reference to the
time of video rentals, which I remember well, and choosing
a movie was like browsing for books or albums, all
the things that we've lost now, those wonderful nostalgic things
that we've lost. Do you think that creates nostalgia more
or enhances their nostalgia for these films just because of
(04:38):
that era and that's how we watch movies then.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
I mean I would if you could find those in
that way, but you can't even you know, you got
to scroll to find a movie. And ugh, is there
a worse word than scrolling? I mean, who wants to
scroll to find art? It's just an ugly, ugly word.
But yeah, back in this time, you were standing in
(05:02):
a room with strangers, and you might be holding Before
Sunrise in your hand, and the person next to you
that you don't even know, says, oh, that movie's so good,
you should get that, and it would influence us, you know,
these strangers just talking to us. And I love that.
I worked at a video store in the early part
(05:23):
of the nineties, and that sort of started me on
this path.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
I totally relate to that, and I think of it
from an album standpoint. Music the same difference, I think definitely.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I mean, I am a vinyl collector and I won't
buy vinyls online. I go to my local record shop
because I don't want them to go the way of
the video store.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Well, you're lucky to have a local record shop, I
think so. Pretty Woman, Pulp Fiction, Prince of Tides, Goodfellows, Magnolia,
Malcolm X shawsh Ank, Redemption. That's just some of the
movies that you picked. Why was there so much inspiration
and quality and film in that that particular era, do you.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Think, Well, I think that it was just a strange
time where the audience was demanding something they hadn't seen before.
The most incredible part of going through the nineties is
the lack of superhero films. The only franchise that is
having sequels is Batman, but it wasn't born in the nineties.
(06:23):
It was actually born in the eighties. So a nineteen
eighty nine Batman came out. In two thousand and two,
Spider Man came out. But in the nineties it was
not just sequel, sequel, sequel superhero. People wanted to go
see unique ideas they hadn't seen before, and so yes,
(06:45):
studios were making them, but also people were going to
see those types of movies and it was like, that's
what we wanted at that point.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
And what made these films so great was the storytelling,
the cinematography, the acting, the directing, combination of all those.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Well, what I really noticed is that in most of
these movies, the actual plot doesn't start until fifteen to
twenty minutes into the film, and they spent the first
time of us getting to know the character. And that
is why I think we bond with them so much.
We care about Kevin Costner's character and nance's with wolves
(07:25):
long before he gets to the camp that he takes over.
There's a whole backstory of him fighting and trying to
kill himself and trying to get there. The movie Awakenings,
before Robin Williams works with Robert de Niro, you got
Robin Williams story of where he was before he came
to the hospital, and that has sort of faded away
(07:48):
now people are like, get to it. We'll just tell
you what this character is about, but in the nineties
they showed us what the character was about.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yeah, that's a really interesting observation. You're more film buff
than I am. And maybe that's been made by others.
I guess always in every era, people copy each other
just because it's a successful formula. Do you think that
was part of it?
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Well? I think a big part of that comes to
Quentin Tarantino. I mean people tried to copy him, and
there were some that were successful, like Usual Suspects and
Out of Sight, our movies that are certainly born out
of pulp fiction, but not everyone could be Quinton Tarantino.
And that's the thing. You got these directors who were
(08:30):
being themselves in the nineties. They weren't trying to be
someone else. I mean, it breaks my heart that the
director of Barbie, you know, had these original ideas, but
now she's she's going to do an ip project. And
that's what sort of happens. They take these people that
have a success and then they push them to a
(08:53):
project you already know about, instead of letting them develop
like Paul Thomas Anderson did, or Richard Lincoln or Quentin
Tarantino got to do.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
So Besides Tarantino, who were your favorite filmmakers directors from
the nineties.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Well, I absolutely love Spike Lee's movies. I cover Malcolm X.
One of my rules was to only cover one film
per director because I wanted to show the uniqueness and
how there were many people. But Spike Lee's catalog in
the nineties is so incredible. I mean, he did No
Better Blues, which is just a great film. And I
(09:32):
don't know, I feel like all these films are personal
to the director. Yes, they went on to make money.
Studios always wanted to make money, and they made money,
but there was a there was just like a piece
of their soul in it. And also they were funny
and dramatic. That's the other thing that's different about nineties movies.
(09:53):
The Shawshank Redemption is a very serious movie, but you
will laugh out loud while you watch it.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Yeah, for sure, there were a lot of great movies
in the nineties, for sure, And even more than what
the ones that you picked, what was your criteria for
picking them?
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Well, and that was really hard. I had a list
of one hundred and sixty movies because I basically went
through IMDb and just wrote, you know, just went through
lists and lists of movies that were made in the nineties,
and I wrote down one hundred and sixty of them
to sample, and then from that I said, what can
I write about? You know, you don't want to get
(10:28):
in this place where you're writing and you're just saying
it's so funny. Wasn't that funny? Like you know, you
can't no one wants to read that. There had to
be something to write about, and that was sort of
became my criteria. These are not my favorite movies. These
are the movies that inspired me to take a look
at them and then sort of point them into how
(10:51):
they would be reflected today and why we need to
have these kind of films and think about them.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
You talked a little before our era today or the
era today of sequel after sequel and just over made
the Marvel films. It must be two two hundred and
fifty of them or something, but stounding on many of
those films, I can't watch them because they're so redundant.
After a while, you know, there's only so many heroes
journeys that you that you can watch. But what was
(11:19):
the magic of the nineties. We certainly have lost what
you've been talking about with that's the appeal of these films,
but are there just too many options the technologies? Do
people fall in love with the technology and what they
can do with films? What are your thoughts around that?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Well, there's it's sort of a twofold answer. The first
thing that I and this is something I did not know.
This was something I discovered in doing my research. In
nineteen ninety nine, George Lucas released Star Wars phanom Menace
and it was shot on thirty five millimeter. All these
films in my book were shot on thirty five milimeter.
(11:56):
But he told movie theaters that if you wanted to
play the sequel to that Attacked to the Clones in
two thousand and two, you had to have a digital projector.
So all these theaters had three years to buy a
digital projector and they threw away the thirty five millimeter
projectors and replace them. Now what do you think they
(12:17):
wanted to replace those movies with. They had just spent
all this money on digital film that was going to
create more characters like jar Jar Binks that were digital
and in a digital world. So I think that had
a really big part to do with it. The second
thing is I think in the nineties a director wasn't
(12:39):
judged personally for what his characters did. No one would
have thought that. And the example I love to give
for that is Unforgiven, which is directed by Clint Eastwood. Well,
you know there's a sheriff in that movie played by
Gene Hackman that bans guns from his town, and that
(13:00):
it sets up the whole story for what happens today.
If a director made a movie about a character back
in the West that banned guns, you better believe that
director would be canceled in a second and people would
be targeting him. No one thought Clint Eastwood was making
a statement about guns in the nineties. It was just
(13:21):
a store. It was a Western and you were kind
of allowed to do that in the nineties, and now
you're not. We don't separate the artist from politics.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, so you do feel and I guess that makes
complete sense that politics really impacts the way filmmakers make
films today and how they present things.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yeah. My last essay in the book is called Fear
Conquerors Art, and I really think when nine to eleven happened,
they just got scared and nobody wanted to be blamed.
No corporation wanted to sign off on anything that was
going to upset anyone. They just want to make you calm,
buy popcorn, buy whatever ads we put in, and don't
(14:05):
think where. In the nineties, a lot of these movies
make you uncomfortable. Again, going back to Spike Lee, he
makes you so uncomfortable and it's I love it, It's glorious.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Is anybody doing that today? Is there is there anybody
on the edge that's making us uncomfortable, that's sort of
bucking the system.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
I don't know. I don't really have an answer for that,
because honestly, I'm not watching these movies anymore because I've
just given up on them, which is probably my fault.
I think there. I'm sure there are in the independent world.
But what I'm saying in this book is that these
were playing at your local mall. These were all films
(14:44):
that came to my small town in maslen Ohio, and
I could see that is certainly not happening. There's no
one that is making you uncomfortable on a big budget
movie that's playing everywhere.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
And when I think back on Meyer, I'm older. I
think back on the sixties and we had The Great
Escape and Butch Cassidy in the Longest Day, Heat of
the Night, you know, Mary Poppins, those types of movies, Bullet,
don't you think that every era has some nostalgia for
everybody has nostalgia for the era that they grow up
in and the formative and their formative years. What do
(15:19):
you think about other eras of film making? You clearly
have said what you make when you think about the
current eras. What do you think about those eras as
compared to the nineties, right.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
I mean, I think what everybody says is those directors
from the nineties, especially Paul Thomas, Anderson Quintin and Spike,
and I think Richard Linkletter too, they were totally inspired
by the bravery of the seventies, which was sort of
modeled after how America felt about Watergate. You know, the
(15:57):
movies in the sixties, I think they were not as
dark as the seventies films were. I mean, it was
sort of a lighter decade, which is how the eighties were.
I mean, the eighties everything has a happy ending. I
challenge someone to bring me a movie in the eighties
that doesn't punish the bad guy and have a moral ending. So,
(16:18):
I mean, I definitely there are decades that have feels
to them, But I would never say that the sixties
and seventies didn't have great movies, and the eighties as well.
I mean, all those decades did, and there's certainly every
once in a while a good movie. Now I'm not
saying they're all horrible, but they aren't taking the risks
(16:39):
that a train spotting or birdcage or two girls and
a guy were taking. There were risks that and that's
what's gone. And the nice thing is Martin Scorsese himself
says that, and I quote him in the front of
my book as I say, Hey, if I'm on Martin
Scorsese's side, I'm doing pretty good for sure.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
So your book include his interviews with Natasha Wagner, Alexander Payne,
Helen Childress, Tiger Williams, Patricia Arquette. What were their observations
about the era and how did that enhance what you
were talking about or not enhance what you were talking about?
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Well, I mean it definitely helped that. What made me
feel so gratified is that they echoed what I felt
and they feel that way as well, that they've been
kind of trapped in Now, Alexander Payne is still making films.
I mean he just made The Leftovers with Paul Giamatti,
(17:38):
who was just nominated for an Oscar, So I mean
they're doing it. But he did say he shot it
on digital. He's not shooting on thirty five millimeters anymore.
And you've got to keep that budget way down because
they're not giving millions and millions of dollars to those
kind of small pictures that they were in the nineties.
(17:58):
Helen Childress talks in the book about how no one
told her to change what she was writing. There was
no executives worried about the things that she said, and
she even calls out a very famous pizza place for
supporting different political things, and no one was like, you
(18:20):
can't say that, you know what I mean, Like, I
don't think people were thinking that way in the nineties.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yeah, that's probably exactly right now, just to shifting gears
a little bit. You're also the author and you referenced
this at the beginning, the author of the Last Days
of Letterman and Moonlighting and Oral History. What mode motivated
all those other books and inspired you? You've got you
clearly have an interest in this area.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
It's always funny because it's always a question. There's a
question I had. And with Letterman, when I watched his
last show, there was a montage of all of Dave's
twenty eight years, but it was set to a live
performance by the Foo Fighters, and I thought, how do
you set a montage that's cut to music and do
(19:05):
a live performance? And I just wanted to know how
they did it. So I kept bothering Barbara Gaines, who
is Dave's executive producer, for many, many years to find
out that answer. And then when I finally got that interview,
she said, well, you got to talk to this person,
and that person said you got to talk to this person,
And before you knew it, I had a book. And
(19:26):
that's you know, that's sort of how my books happen,
is I get an interview and then I, you know,
it leads me to something else. And with Moonlighting, everyone
always said that show was no good. Once the two
main characters played by Bruce Willison Sybil Shepherd, once they
consummated their relationship, everyone said the show was no good.
(19:48):
And I thought, it has to be more complex than that,
and so I started interviewing the writers and what I
found out was at the same time that those characters
got together, Bruce Willis was cast in die Hard and
Sybil Shepherd got pregnant with twins, and that had more
effect on the show behind the scenes than the characters
(20:11):
having sex on screen. So there's always a question that
I have that I try to get the answer to
that sort of leads me to uncovering these books.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
I will say the consummation of that relationship did take
a lot of the edginess of the show, though.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
I think well, but also Sybil was put on bed
rest right after that, and the characters were not on
screen together for ten months, so how and Bruce was
making die Hard? So how do we really know it
was because they got together that took away. Whether they
(20:47):
had that scene or not, they weren't going to be
on screen together. I think the show would have crumbled
either way, because you can't do a romantic comedy where
you don't have your two leads on screen together for
ten months. That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
That's totally true. And I think I forgot that boy.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
I don't think anyone knew it, Like even I sort
of uncovered it, and it was about because I found
someone who had the dates of how they had the
film Sybil versus Bruce, because she had to do all
her scenes right away before she started to show, and
then she was put on bed rest, and then Bruce
had to leave to film die Hard and couldn't film
(21:24):
for four months. Then he had to film his half,
so they had to write scripts knowing they weren't going
to be on screen together. I don't think any other
show had that. The backstory of Moonlighting is absolutely insane.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Particularly with the two characters of the lead characters for sure,
the actors in the lead character.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, I mean there were a lot of things in
that show, and none of those people had given interviews
before about it, so that was very gratifying to me.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
So do you have a hope that we'll have another
golden air of filmmaking coming up here at any time soon?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
You know, I don't know how it's going to happen,
because I do think that young people, like you just said,
like everyone has nostalgia for that generation. So all of
these up and coming artists, they're watching what's being put
out now and that's inspiring them. Are they going back
and finding these films? Because now if a film doesn't
(22:17):
stream on Netflix, you know, it almost doesn't exist. And
a lot of these films don't stream. I watched them
because I still own the DVDs that I bought back
in the nineties. If you can imagine such a thing,
I have a DVD player? How old am I?
Speaker 1 (22:35):
How do you keep it going? You can't find anybody
to fix it if it breaks down?
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Okay, Luckily it's still going. And a lot of these films,
I went and just went to my closet, pulled out Magnolia,
popped it in and watched it. And it also looks
so much better because streaming, while it's kind of good,
there's still pixelizations when it's a really dark scene and
(22:58):
stuff like that. I don't know, I think all those
things matter. But I might be the only one who
still cares, but I care.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
I don't think you're the only one. I think there's
many of us that would wish for that era again.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
I mean, everything comes back around, So of course there's
an artist out there that's trying to break through. I
think it's a little bit harder, but it was always
hard to break through.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Yeah, no things going cycles, There's no question in the
next cycle is usually in reaction to the.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Current cycle, and I think we've seen it a little bit,
the fact that Barbie and Oppenheimer made such a splash
and everybody was going to see them both. It can happen.
I think it's just harder.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
The last question, Scott, what's next for you?
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I am actually working on a book about the music
of Twin Peaks. So I've been interviewing the band members
and how the directors put it on screen, how they
collected all that, And it's really fascinating because I think
that was a television show that of course changed TV
(24:09):
for a lot of reasons, but I think people have
forgotten how Bland scores were on television before the music
of Twin Peaks, no question. So that's what I'm working
on right now.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Good luck with that. We've been speaking with Scott Ryan,
the author of the Last Decade of Cinema. Scott, thanks
so much, really enjoyable conversation. Thank you for.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Joining us, Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
We'll be right back after the news at the bottom
of the hour.
This is What's at Risk with Mike Christian on WBZ
Boston's news Radio. Hi, Mike Christian. Here of What's at Risk.
First up on tonight's show, we have an encore edition
of What's at Risk with pop culture historian Scott Ryan.
He explores nineteen ninety cinematic gems in his book The
(00:23):
Last Decade of Cinema, discussing iconic films, unpacking cultural impact
and nostalgia for film enthusiasts everywhere. And in our second segment,
we welcome Mariano Sigma, world renowned leader in cognitive neuroscience
and author of the new book The Power of Words,
(00:43):
How to Speak, Listen, and Think Better. Marianna discusses about
how to leverage language to edit our memories and cover
who we truly are. Scott Ryan is a television historian,
pop culture and entertainment industry tree expert, author and publisher.
His latest book, The Last Decade of Cinema explores fifty
(01:07):
five movies from the nineties, offering an analysis of their
impact on pop culture, both at the time of their
release and their lasting significance today. With a keen eye
for detail, Ryan covers a decade that commenced with classics
like Goodfellows and concluded with the enigmatic Magnolia. Among the
(01:28):
featured films are beloved titles such as Malcolm X, Before
Sunrise and Clueless, each contributing to nineties cinema culture. Ryan's
previous works include Moonlighting and Oral History, where he unveils
the untold story behind the groundbreaking TV series, and thirty
Something at thirty and Oral History, alongside the Last Days
(01:52):
of Letterman, which chronicles the end of an era in
late night television. As the managing editor of The Blue
Rose mag magazine and co founder of Fayetteville Mafia Press,
Ryan has solidified his position as a raw and honest
pop culture storyteller. With all this, it still burns him
(02:13):
that he never won Employee of the Month at Video Time,
where he learned to love film by stealing VHS tapes
and movie posters. Our guest today is pop culture historian
and entertainment industry expert Scott Ryan, author of the Last
(02:37):
Decade of Cinema, a nostalgic journey through the vibrant landscape
of nineteen ninety cinema. Scott, thanks so much for being
with us today.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Thanks for having me it's exciting.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Talk a little bit about your background to so our
listeners know who you are and which you've been up to.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, I've been covering pop culture for about fifteen years
through the Red Room podcast, and then I started magazine
about Twin Peaks and David Lynch called The Blue Rose Magazine,
written books on David Letterman, Moonlighting, Twin Peaks, thirty something,
and now I'm doing nineties cinema. I can't get out
(03:15):
of the nineties.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
There you go. Sometimes I feel the same way. So
you're obviously a film buffer and an expert. Why this
particular era of film? There have been other good eras
of film, but why this one?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Well, I think the idea that really struck me was
in the nineties we had good technology, so the movies
still look good. Like if you go back to the
seventies or the sixties, or even back to the forties,
it's not that the stories aren't good, but they didn't
have the greatest camera, they didn't have lighting down. If
(03:52):
they wanted to have a monster, it was probably a
guy in a suit. Where in the nineties you started
to bring in computer technical but you still had this
high peak of story, which I think has faded away
in the new millennium. I think, now you have all
this technology, but you don't always have the characters and
(04:12):
the stories to back it up.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Now, the book kicks off with a reference to the
time of video rentals, which I remember well, and choosing
a movie was like browsing for books or albums, all
the things that we've lost now, those wonderful nostalgic things
that we've lost. Do you think that creates nostalgia more
or enhances their nostalgia for these films just because of
(04:38):
that era and that's how we watch movies then.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
I mean I would if you could find those in
that way, but you can't even you know, you got
to scroll to find a movie. And ugh, is there
a worse word than scrolling? I mean, who wants to
scroll to find art? It's just an ugly, ugly word.
But yeah, back in this time, you were standing in
(05:02):
a room with strangers, and you might be holding Before
Sunrise in your hand, and the person next to you
that you don't even know, says, oh, that movie's so good,
you should get that, and it would influence us, you know,
these strangers just talking to us. And I love that.
I worked at a video store in the early part
(05:23):
of the nineties, and that sort of started me on
this path.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
I totally relate to that, and I think of it
from an album standpoint. Music the same difference, I think definitely.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I mean, I am a vinyl collector and I won't
buy vinyls online. I go to my local record shop
because I don't want them to go the way of
the video store.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Well, you're lucky to have a local record shop, I
think so. Pretty Woman, Pulp Fiction, Prince of Tides, Goodfellows, Magnolia,
Malcolm X shawsh Ank, Redemption. That's just some of the
movies that you picked. Why was there so much inspiration
and quality and film in that that particular era, do you.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Think, Well, I think that it was just a strange
time where the audience was demanding something they hadn't seen before.
The most incredible part of going through the nineties is
the lack of superhero films. The only franchise that is
having sequels is Batman, but it wasn't born in the nineties.
(06:23):
It was actually born in the eighties. So a nineteen
eighty nine Batman came out. In two thousand and two,
Spider Man came out. But in the nineties it was
not just sequel, sequel, sequel superhero. People wanted to go
see unique ideas they hadn't seen before, and so yes,
(06:45):
studios were making them, but also people were going to
see those types of movies and it was like, that's
what we wanted at that point.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
And what made these films so great was the storytelling,
the cinematography, the acting, the directing, combination of all those.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Well, what I really noticed is that in most of
these movies, the actual plot doesn't start until fifteen to
twenty minutes into the film, and they spent the first
time of us getting to know the character. And that
is why I think we bond with them so much.
We care about Kevin Costner's character and nance's with wolves
(07:25):
long before he gets to the camp that he takes over.
There's a whole backstory of him fighting and trying to
kill himself and trying to get there. The movie Awakenings,
before Robin Williams works with Robert de Niro, you got
Robin Williams story of where he was before he came
to the hospital, and that has sort of faded away
(07:48):
now people are like, get to it. We'll just tell
you what this character is about, but in the nineties
they showed us what the character was about.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yeah, that's a really interesting observation. You're more film buff
than I am. And maybe that's been made by others.
I guess always in every era, people copy each other
just because it's a successful formula. Do you think that
was part of it?
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Well? I think a big part of that comes to
Quentin Tarantino. I mean people tried to copy him, and
there were some that were successful, like Usual Suspects and
Out of Sight, our movies that are certainly born out
of pulp fiction, but not everyone could be Quinton Tarantino.
And that's the thing. You got these directors who were
(08:30):
being themselves in the nineties. They weren't trying to be
someone else. I mean, it breaks my heart that the
director of Barbie, you know, had these original ideas, but
now she's she's going to do an ip project. And
that's what sort of happens. They take these people that
have a success and then they push them to a
(08:53):
project you already know about, instead of letting them develop
like Paul Thomas Anderson did, or Richard Lincoln or Quentin
Tarantino got to do.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
So Besides Tarantino, who were your favorite filmmakers directors from
the nineties.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Well, I absolutely love Spike Lee's movies. I cover Malcolm X.
One of my rules was to only cover one film
per director because I wanted to show the uniqueness and
how there were many people. But Spike Lee's catalog in
the nineties is so incredible. I mean, he did No
Better Blues, which is just a great film. And I
(09:32):
don't know, I feel like all these films are personal
to the director. Yes, they went on to make money.
Studios always wanted to make money, and they made money,
but there was a there was just like a piece
of their soul in it. And also they were funny
and dramatic. That's the other thing that's different about nineties movies.
(09:53):
The Shawshank Redemption is a very serious movie, but you
will laugh out loud while you watch it.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Yeah, for sure, there were a lot of great movies
in the nineties, for sure, And even more than what
the ones that you picked, what was your criteria for
picking them?
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Well, and that was really hard. I had a list
of one hundred and sixty movies because I basically went
through IMDb and just wrote, you know, just went through
lists and lists of movies that were made in the nineties,
and I wrote down one hundred and sixty of them
to sample, and then from that I said, what can
I write about? You know, you don't want to get
(10:28):
in this place where you're writing and you're just saying
it's so funny. Wasn't that funny? Like you know, you
can't no one wants to read that. There had to
be something to write about, and that was sort of
became my criteria. These are not my favorite movies. These
are the movies that inspired me to take a look
at them and then sort of point them into how
(10:51):
they would be reflected today and why we need to
have these kind of films and think about them.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
You talked a little before our era today or the
era today of sequel after sequel and just over made
the Marvel films. It must be two two hundred and
fifty of them or something, but stounding on many of
those films, I can't watch them because they're so redundant.
After a while, you know, there's only so many heroes
journeys that you that you can watch. But what was
(11:19):
the magic of the nineties. We certainly have lost what
you've been talking about with that's the appeal of these films,
but are there just too many options the technologies? Do
people fall in love with the technology and what they
can do with films? What are your thoughts around that?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Well, there's it's sort of a twofold answer. The first
thing that I and this is something I did not know.
This was something I discovered in doing my research. In
nineteen ninety nine, George Lucas released Star Wars phanom Menace
and it was shot on thirty five millimeter. All these
films in my book were shot on thirty five milimeter.
(11:56):
But he told movie theaters that if you wanted to
play the sequel to that Attacked to the Clones in
two thousand and two, you had to have a digital projector.
So all these theaters had three years to buy a
digital projector and they threw away the thirty five millimeter
projectors and replace them. Now what do you think they
(12:17):
wanted to replace those movies with. They had just spent
all this money on digital film that was going to
create more characters like jar Jar Binks that were digital
and in a digital world. So I think that had
a really big part to do with it. The second
thing is I think in the nineties a director wasn't
(12:39):
judged personally for what his characters did. No one would
have thought that. And the example I love to give
for that is Unforgiven, which is directed by Clint Eastwood. Well,
you know there's a sheriff in that movie played by
Gene Hackman that bans guns from his town, and that
(13:00):
it sets up the whole story for what happens today.
If a director made a movie about a character back
in the West that banned guns, you better believe that
director would be canceled in a second and people would
be targeting him. No one thought Clint Eastwood was making
a statement about guns in the nineties. It was just
(13:21):
a store. It was a Western and you were kind
of allowed to do that in the nineties, and now
you're not. We don't separate the artist from politics.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, so you do feel and I guess that makes
complete sense that politics really impacts the way filmmakers make
films today and how they present things.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yeah. My last essay in the book is called Fear
Conquerors Art, and I really think when nine to eleven happened,
they just got scared and nobody wanted to be blamed.
No corporation wanted to sign off on anything that was
going to upset anyone. They just want to make you calm,
buy popcorn, buy whatever ads we put in, and don't
(14:05):
think where. In the nineties, a lot of these movies
make you uncomfortable. Again, going back to Spike Lee, he
makes you so uncomfortable and it's I love it, It's glorious.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Is anybody doing that today? Is there is there anybody
on the edge that's making us uncomfortable, that's sort of
bucking the system.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
I don't know. I don't really have an answer for that,
because honestly, I'm not watching these movies anymore because I've
just given up on them, which is probably my fault.
I think there. I'm sure there are in the independent world.
But what I'm saying in this book is that these
were playing at your local mall. These were all films
(14:44):
that came to my small town in maslen Ohio, and
I could see that is certainly not happening. There's no
one that is making you uncomfortable on a big budget
movie that's playing everywhere.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
And when I think back on Meyer, I'm older. I
think back on the sixties and we had The Great
Escape and Butch Cassidy in the Longest Day, Heat of
the Night, you know, Mary Poppins, those types of movies, Bullet,
don't you think that every era has some nostalgia for
everybody has nostalgia for the era that they grow up
in and the formative and their formative years. What do
(15:19):
you think about other eras of film making? You clearly
have said what you make when you think about the
current eras. What do you think about those eras as
compared to the nineties, right.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
I mean, I think what everybody says is those directors
from the nineties, especially Paul Thomas, Anderson Quintin and Spike,
and I think Richard Linkletter too, they were totally inspired
by the bravery of the seventies, which was sort of
modeled after how America felt about Watergate. You know, the
(15:57):
movies in the sixties, I think they were not as
dark as the seventies films were. I mean, it was
sort of a lighter decade, which is how the eighties were.
I mean, the eighties everything has a happy ending. I
challenge someone to bring me a movie in the eighties
that doesn't punish the bad guy and have a moral ending. So,
(16:18):
I mean, I definitely there are decades that have feels
to them, But I would never say that the sixties
and seventies didn't have great movies, and the eighties as well.
I mean, all those decades did, and there's certainly every
once in a while a good movie. Now I'm not
saying they're all horrible, but they aren't taking the risks
(16:39):
that a train spotting or birdcage or two girls and
a guy were taking. There were risks that and that's
what's gone. And the nice thing is Martin Scorsese himself
says that, and I quote him in the front of
my book as I say, Hey, if I'm on Martin
Scorsese's side, I'm doing pretty good for sure.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
So your book include his interviews with Natasha Wagner, Alexander Payne,
Helen Childress, Tiger Williams, Patricia Arquette. What were their observations
about the era and how did that enhance what you
were talking about or not enhance what you were talking about?
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Well, I mean it definitely helped that. What made me
feel so gratified is that they echoed what I felt
and they feel that way as well, that they've been
kind of trapped in Now, Alexander Payne is still making films.
I mean he just made The Leftovers with Paul Giamatti,
(17:38):
who was just nominated for an Oscar, So I mean
they're doing it. But he did say he shot it
on digital. He's not shooting on thirty five millimeters anymore.
And you've got to keep that budget way down because
they're not giving millions and millions of dollars to those
kind of small pictures that they were in the nineties.
(17:58):
Helen Childress talks in the book about how no one
told her to change what she was writing. There was
no executives worried about the things that she said, and
she even calls out a very famous pizza place for
supporting different political things, and no one was like, you
(18:20):
can't say that, you know what I mean, Like, I
don't think people were thinking that way in the nineties.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yeah, that's probably exactly right now, just to shifting gears
a little bit. You're also the author and you referenced
this at the beginning, the author of the Last Days
of Letterman and Moonlighting and Oral History. What mode motivated
all those other books and inspired you? You've got you
clearly have an interest in this area.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
It's always funny because it's always a question. There's a
question I had. And with Letterman, when I watched his
last show, there was a montage of all of Dave's
twenty eight years, but it was set to a live
performance by the Foo Fighters, and I thought, how do
you set a montage that's cut to music and do
(19:05):
a live performance? And I just wanted to know how
they did it. So I kept bothering Barbara Gaines, who
is Dave's executive producer, for many, many years to find
out that answer. And then when I finally got that interview,
she said, well, you got to talk to this person,
and that person said you got to talk to this person,
And before you knew it, I had a book. And
(19:26):
that's you know, that's sort of how my books happen,
is I get an interview and then I, you know,
it leads me to something else. And with Moonlighting, everyone
always said that show was no good. Once the two
main characters played by Bruce Willison Sybil Shepherd, once they
consummated their relationship, everyone said the show was no good.
(19:48):
And I thought, it has to be more complex than that,
and so I started interviewing the writers and what I
found out was at the same time that those characters
got together, Bruce Willis was cast in die Hard and
Sybil Shepherd got pregnant with twins, and that had more
effect on the show behind the scenes than the characters
(20:11):
having sex on screen. So there's always a question that
I have that I try to get the answer to
that sort of leads me to uncovering these books.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
I will say the consummation of that relationship did take
a lot of the edginess of the show, though.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
I think well, but also Sybil was put on bed
rest right after that, and the characters were not on
screen together for ten months, so how and Bruce was
making die Hard? So how do we really know it
was because they got together that took away. Whether they
(20:47):
had that scene or not, they weren't going to be
on screen together. I think the show would have crumbled
either way, because you can't do a romantic comedy where
you don't have your two leads on screen together for
ten months. That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
That's totally true. And I think I forgot that boy.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
I don't think anyone knew it, Like even I sort
of uncovered it, and it was about because I found
someone who had the dates of how they had the
film Sybil versus Bruce, because she had to do all
her scenes right away before she started to show, and
then she was put on bed rest, and then Bruce
had to leave to film die Hard and couldn't film
(21:24):
for four months. Then he had to film his half,
so they had to write scripts knowing they weren't going
to be on screen together. I don't think any other
show had that. The backstory of Moonlighting is absolutely insane.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Particularly with the two characters of the lead characters for sure,
the actors in the lead character.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, I mean there were a lot of things in
that show, and none of those people had given interviews
before about it, so that was very gratifying to me.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
So do you have a hope that we'll have another
golden air of filmmaking coming up here at any time soon?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
You know, I don't know how it's going to happen,
because I do think that young people, like you just said,
like everyone has nostalgia for that generation. So all of
these up and coming artists, they're watching what's being put
out now and that's inspiring them. Are they going back
and finding these films? Because now if a film doesn't
(22:17):
stream on Netflix, you know, it almost doesn't exist. And
a lot of these films don't stream. I watched them
because I still own the DVDs that I bought back
in the nineties. If you can imagine such a thing,
I have a DVD player? How old am I?
Speaker 1 (22:35):
How do you keep it going? You can't find anybody
to fix it if it breaks down?
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Okay, Luckily it's still going. And a lot of these films,
I went and just went to my closet, pulled out Magnolia,
popped it in and watched it. And it also looks
so much better because streaming, while it's kind of good,
there's still pixelizations when it's a really dark scene and
(22:58):
stuff like that. I don't know, I think all those
things matter. But I might be the only one who
still cares, but I care.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
I don't think you're the only one. I think there's
many of us that would wish for that era again.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
I mean, everything comes back around, So of course there's
an artist out there that's trying to break through. I
think it's a little bit harder, but it was always
hard to break through.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Yeah, no things going cycles, There's no question in the
next cycle is usually in reaction to the.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Current cycle, and I think we've seen it a little bit,
the fact that Barbie and Oppenheimer made such a splash
and everybody was going to see them both. It can happen.
I think it's just harder.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
The last question, Scott, what's next for you?
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I am actually working on a book about the music
of Twin Peaks. So I've been interviewing the band members
and how the directors put it on screen, how they
collected all that, And it's really fascinating because I think
that was a television show that of course changed TV
(24:09):
for a lot of reasons, but I think people have
forgotten how Bland scores were on television before the music
of Twin Peaks, no question. So that's what I'm working
on right now.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Good luck with that. We've been speaking with Scott Ryan,
the author of the Last Decade of Cinema. Scott, thanks
so much, really enjoyable conversation. Thank you for.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Joining us, Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
We'll be right back after the news at the bottom
of the hour.
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