Reality Bites

The early to mid-1990s was a period of time when popular culture was dominated by Generation X, from films like Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1990) to Douglas Copeland’s book, Generation X to the massive popularity of Seattle music spearheaded by Nirvana. During this decade three films were made that provided a fascinating spectrum of how this generation was depicted. On one end, there was Linklater’s low-budget independent film. On the opposite end there was the glossy, studio picture Reality Bites (1993). Somewhere in between was Singles (1992) which shared the big studio backing of Reality Bites but with the authenticity of Slacker.

I can remember when I first saw Reality Bites, I hated it. I had recently seen and was blown away by Slacker which felt so authentic. In comparison, Reality Bites tried in vain to capture the essence of Gen-X, but came across more like an episode of Friends. Slacker presented everyday settings with realistic, albeit eccentric people, warts and all, while Reality Bites introduced perfect looking people with perfect problems. Now that some time has passed and the whole Gen-X thing has died down, I see Reality Bites in a different light now. When I think of the film, I think of the videos for “Stay” by Lisa Loeb and “Spin the Bottle” by Juliana Hatfield – the two big singles to come off the soundtrack album. Back in the day, it seemed like those two songs were everywhere. The film is still lightweight material but it has a more nostalgic vibe now as a dated piece of mainstream ‘90s culture. It’s a pretty decent snapshot of that time and reminds me a lot of what I liked about the decade.

Reality Bites also features one of my favorite performances of Winona Ryder’s entire career. She had just come off making several period piece films and was clearly looking to do something contemporary, something that spoke to her generation. She used her star power to pluck an unknown screenwriter out of obscurity and, with the help of Ethan Hawke, got the film made where it would normally have languished in development hell for years. However, Reality Bites was seen as and marketed as a Gen-X film and its supposed target audience wasn’t interested in seeing their lives and interests writ large in a mainstream commercial film. It underperformed at the box office but has since gone on to develop a sizable following. I don’t want to say cult following because it isn’t that kind of film but it does have its fans.

Reality Bites is about four college graduates dealing with life after school as they try to figure out what they want to do with the rest of their lives. Vickie (Janeane Garofalo) works as store manager at a local Gap. Sammy (Steve Zahn) is trying to figure out a way to tell his conservative mother that he’s gay. Troy (Ethan Hawke) is a struggling musician. Lelaina (Winona Ryder) aspires to be a filmmaker and chronicles the ups and downs of her three friends for a documentary about her generation.

Lelaina, like her friends, is a child of divorce and her parents (Swoosie Kurtz and Joe Don Baker) want her to get a regular 9-to-5 job so that she can become a productive member of society. To pay the bills, she works as an assistant/gofer for a morning television talk show called Good Morning Grant! where she caters to the whims of its obnoxious host (played with two-faced gusto by John Mahoney). She’s roommates with Vickie and their friendship is summed up rather nicely in a scene where we see them singing along to Squeeze’s “Tempted” in Lelaina’s car. Who hasn’t done that with their friend(s) at some point in their lives? I don’t mean necessarily to that song but to music in general.

One day she literally runs into Michael Grates (Ben Stiller), an executive at MTV wannabe, In Your Face TV, when they get into a minor car accident. She finds herself attracted to his inability to articulate a sentence much less a thought and he’s drawn to her nervous, awkward energy. It’s baffling what they see in each other but they’re both young and attractive and start dating. However, when Troy is fired from his day job, Vickie invites him to stay at their place (“Welcome to the maxi-pad.”) until he can find work, much to Lelaina’s chagrin (“That’s the American Dream of the ‘90s. That could take years!”). Me think she doth protest too much (“He will turn this place into a den of slack!”). See, Lelaina has a thing for Troy and he for her but they’re too busy getting on each other’s nerves in a meet-cute kinda way to do anything about it.

Lelaina’s first date with Michael has to be one of the most inarticulate ones ever put on film as they stammer their way through dinner. They each come up with some real gems to woo each other, like he tells her about how Frampton Comes Alive! changed his life while she explains why the Big Gulp is the most profound invention in her lifetime (?!). Maybe these two are really made for each other. As superficial as Lelaina comes across a lot of the time, Winona Ryder, with her adorable presence, keeps me interested and engaged. Away from Michael’s I.Q.-sucking black hole presence, Lelaina seems smarter.

When he’s not spending time pretending he can’t stand Lelaina, Troy writes awful, subpar Beck lyrics and quotes from Cool Hand Luke (1967). While he waits for her to realize that he loves her, he has sex with a succession of not-too bright groupies (one of them is a blink and you’ll miss her, Renee Zwelleger). Vickie also has a revolving door of sexual partners – so much so, that she gets an AIDS test and anxiously awaits the results – her character’s big dilemma that is resolved fairly quickly and a little too neatly.

Ben Stiller, in what was not only his first major acting gig but also his directorial debut, does a good job of portraying a guy who means well but is so clueless when it comes to things that really matter. He isn’t afraid to come off as an idiot while also hinting that underneath it all Michael does appear to have the best intentions, he just goes about articulating them in all the wrong ways. Troy, on the other hand, is mean-spirited and channels his jealously in vindictive ways, like when he pretends to tell Lelaina that he loves her. The hurt that registers on her face, especially in her eyes says it all, reminding one of how good a silent actress Ryder could have been if she had acted in another bygone era.

Ryder shows a capacity for comedy in a montage where Lelaina applies for a series of film and T.V.-related jobs featuring brief but amusing cameos by Andy Dick, Keith David, Anne Meara, and David Spade. Watching Ryder try to define irony under pressure always gives me a chuckle as does her interaction with Spade’s condescending burger jockey (“Ms. Pierce, there’s a reason I’ve been here six months.”). She was one of my earliest cinematic crushes and I know I shouldn’t like this film but dammit, she’s in vintage adorable Manic Pixie Dream Girl mode – smart and gorgeous with a vulnerable quality that I find irresistible. Sorry Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel and you other Pixie Dream Girls, Ryder is the original – accept no substitutes!

Coming from the world of stand-up comedy, Janeane Garofalo gets some of the film’s funniest lines (“I think I was conceived on an acid trip.”) and delivers them effortlessly like she was born to play Vickie. She also interacts well with Ryder and an even more interesting film would’ve been one where Vickie’s friendship with Lelaina was the focus. Obviously, others thought she had something special and for a brief while, Garofalo flirted with a mainstream film career with The Truth About Cats and Dogs (1996) and The MatchMaker (1997). Out of the four friends the one that suffers most in terms of screen time is Sammy. It often feels like his storyline was reduced so that more time could be devoted to the Michael-Lelaina-Troy love triangle. It’s a shame because Steve Zahn is such a gifted comedic actor with excellent timing and he’s given little to do in Reality Bites.

If I sound a little too harsh on Reality Bites, I don’t mean to be. The film does nail what it’s like to sit around with your friends, get high and comment ironically on old 1970s sitcoms. There is a fun bit where our four friends go out to get junk food and dance spontaneously to “My Sharona” by the Knack. It’s nice to see the normally reserved Ryder cut loose and act goofy. The film’s best scenes are the ones where all four friends are interacting with each other, bantering back and forth in a way that feels authentic and has a relaxed air that only comes from people who have known each other for some time.

In 1991, the producer of The Big Chill (1983), Michael Shamberg wanted to make a like-minded film for people in their twenties. He read Helen Childress’ Blue Bayou, a writing sample from the 23-year-old University of Southern California film school graduate. He liked it and wanted her sample to be the basis for his project. She met with him and told him about her life and friends and their struggle to find work during the recession that had hit the United States at the time. She had used her friends, their personalities and some of their experiences as the basis for her script. Shamberg, along with co-producer Stacy Sher, saw the pilot for The Ben Stiller Show and approached him to direct not act. At the time, Sher and Childress were developing the screenplay and had Lelaina and Troy figured out but couldn’t quite come up a credible character to complete the love triangle.

In February 1992, Shamberg sent Ben Stiller a copy of Childress’ script while he was editing the pilot for a show on Fox. He soon signed on to direct and worked with Childress for nine to ten months, developing her script. He suggested that he could play the third person in the love triangle. Over time, the Michael Grates character changed from a 35-year-old advertising man attempting to market Japanese candy bars in America to a twentysomething executive at a music video T.V. station. Childress and Stiller also changed the structure of the film, with the focus changing to the relationship between Lelaina and Troy while the stories about Vickie and Sammy, which were originally more fleshed out, were scaled back.

Childress and Stiller had a script that could be filmed by December 1992 and began shopping it around to various Hollywood studios all of whom turned it down because it tried to capture the Generation X market much like Singles had attempted to and failed. They finally got TriStar interested and began developing it there. The studio soon put it in turnaround. Childress, Sher and Stiller managed to convince the Film Commission of Texas to fund a location scouting trip to Houston despite no studio backing, no budget and no cast. As they arrived in the city, they got a call and learned that Winona Ryder had read Childress’ script. She wanted to do it and Universal Pictures agreed to finance the film. Coincidentally, Childress had Ryder in mind when she wrote the character of Lelaina.

The previous three films Ryder had made were period pieces and she needed a break. She wanted to do “something about people my age and in my generation growing up in today’s society.” She read Childress’ script while making The House of Spirits (1993) and it made her laugh: “It was very familiar to me – the way they talk, the attitude they have towards each other, the places they go. These were things I could relate to.” It was exactly the change of pace she wanted. At the time, Ethan Hawke’s career was in a rut after the buzz from Dead Poets Society (1989) had subsided. Up to that point, he had been known mostly for playing clean-cut characters and so the role of Troy would be something of a departure for him. Ryder was a fan of Hawke’s work and stipulated in her contract that he would co-star opposite her.

Stiller met Steve Zahn through Hawke as they were doing a play together at the time and was impressed by how funny he was. Zahn borrowed some money from his agent and went to Los Angeles to test for the film. He responded strongly to portraying a gay character coming out of the closet. Janeane Garofalo knew Stiller through their work together on his show and the producers felt that her style of comedy was perfect for the role of Vickie. According Garofalo, it came down to her, Parker Posey, Anne Heche and Gwyneth Paltrow. The studio loved and wanted Paltrow but Ryder liked Garofalo and had developed an instant connection with her.

The film received largely positive reviews among mainstream critics. In her review for The New York Times, Caryn James wrote, "Like the generation it presents so appealingly, it doesn't see any point in getting all bent out of shape and overambitious. But it knows how to hang out and have a great time." The Washington Post’s Desson Howe wrote, "By aiming specifically – and accurately – at characters in their twenties, debuting screenwriter Helen Childress and first-time director Stiller achieve something even greater: they encapsulate an era." Time magazine's Richard Schickel wrote, "The movie bobs along on this stream of funny offhandedness, never losing its balance. If it's 10 o'clock, and you want to know where your supposedly grownup children are, this is a good place to look for them.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film an “A” rating and Owen Gleiberman praised Ryder’s performance: “And Ryder, good as she was in The Age of Innocence, gives her first true star performance here. Beneath her crisp, postfeminist manner, Lelaina is bristling with confusion, and Ryder lets you read every crosscurrent of temptation and anxiety, the way her tentative search for love slowly grows into a restless hunger.” However, Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars and wrote, “What strange force locks filmmakers into clichés and conventions? What unwritten law prevented the makers of Reality Bites from observing that their heroine can't shoot video worth a damn, that their hero is a jerk, and that their villain is the most interesting person in the movie?”

Reality Bites grossed $18.3 million in six weeks. It underperformed at the box office because its target audience wasn’t interested in seeing their lives portrayed in a film by movie stars and stayed away as they did with other Gen-X films like With Honors (1994) and Threesome (1994). Universal’s vice president of marketing Bruce Feldman said at the time, “People liked the picture, but only a few went to see it.”

Ultimately, Reality Bites plays it too safe and veers dangerously close to being a feature-length sitcom by wrapping things up too conveniently. The characters often come across as superficial which tends to undercut the sincerity of the film’s message. Singles and the hilarious short-lived MTV sitcom, Austin Stories, were much more successful in documenting the trials and tribulations of Gen-X. And yet I’m oddly fascinated with Reality Bites, mostly because of Garofalo and Ryder. They play characters that deserve to be in a better film. I always thought that at the end of the film Lelaina should’ve dumped both guys and stayed single. I mean, look at her options: Michael is a clueless T.V. executive that listens to generic gangsta rap and Troy is a pretentious wannabe musician that screws around with her emotions. Hell, she should’ve hooked up with Vickie who is funny in wonderfully sarcastic way and digs ‘70s popular culture in a sincerely ironic way. Despite all of its flaws, I still enjoy watching Reality Bites when I just want to turn off my brain and let a film wash over me – junk food for the mind. Films like that have their place, too.


SOURCES

Bernstein, Jonathan. “Back to Reality.” The Face. July 1994.

Howe, Desson. “Ben Stiller Ignores the Generation Flap.” Washington Post. February 20, 1994.

Kolson, Ann. “In the Family Tradition.” Philadelphia Inquirer. February 20, 1994.

McInnis, Kathleen. "Ben Stiller Bytes." MovieMaker. March 1, 1994.

“Reality Bites: Retrospective” featurette. Director Alan Griswold. Reality Bites: 20th Anniversary Edition DVD. Universal Pictures. 2003.

Rickey, Carrie. “Generation X Turns Its Back.” Philadelphia Inquirer. April 3, 1994.

Shattered Glass

*NOTE* This post originally appeared at Film for the Soul as part of their Counting Down the Zeroes project.

For awhile The New Republic magazine had the reputation of being part of an elite class of periodical with an impeachable reputation. It boasted being the in-flight magazine of Air Force One. For a short time, its most popular contributor was Stephen Glass, a young, up-and-coming writer who wrote dynamic articles and was being courted by other well-known periodicals like George and Rolling Stone. However, an online publication discovered that one of his articles was a complete fabrication which forced The New Republic to do its own in-house investigation. When all was said and done, Glass fabricated either completely or partially 27 of the 41 pieces he wrote for the magazine. Screenwriter Billy Ray decided that Glass’ meteoric rise and fall would be the subject of his directorial debut and the result is Shattered Glass (2003), a fascinating look at contemporary journalistic attitudes and practices.

Early on in the film, Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen) sees himself as some sort of star in competition with other staff members, like in a scene where he and Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard) compare articles that they are working on. Glass initially describes his as “pretty standard stuff”: young Republicans at a conference, but then elaborates a little – these guys indulge in all sorts of felonies in their hotel rooms. When Lane compliments him, Glass returns the favor in a slightly smug, condescending way. At staff meetings, he cleverly works the room with entertaining stories of articles he’s working on. A typical pitch is all build up and hyperbole and then he ends by saying that he probably won’t finish it or that it’s “silly.” Meanwhile, Lane awkwardly has to follow Glass’ performance and comes off as apprehensive but you can tell that he’s a smart, solid writer.

The cracks in Glass’ facade first appear in an article entitled, “Hack Heaven,” about a computer hacker convention, which sends up red flags for the first time. Adam Penenberg (Steve Zahn), a writer from Forbes Digital does some digging, like simple searches on the Internet, and finds that Glass’ article is riddled with mistakes and information that appears to be fabricated. Adam and his fellow writers at Forbes do more digging and realize that they’ve latched onto an incredible story: elitist magazine The New Republic has published an article by its star writer that is completely untrue. When he finds out, Lane, now editor of the magazine, decides to do some of his own legwork and begins to suspect that something isn’t right with Glass’ article.

It’s the subtle, yet weaselly way Glass ingratiates himself with the office secretary or plays the role of the vulnerable writer who lacks confidence to two fellow staff members (Chloe Sevigny and Melanie Lynskey) that is so insidious. As portrayed by Hayden Christensen, Glass has the uncanny ability to play to people’s sympathies. He also has a tendency to throw out dorky lines, like when he asks a colleague, “If I were to throw a party where all we did was play Monopoly, would you guys come?” Some of his female co-workers find him endearing in his nerdiness. He’s evasive, like when fellow writers catch hints that he’s writing for other magazines and he shrugs it off as if he isn’t really interested. Glass always seems to be on the defensive, especially when his lies are exposed, with his favorite retort, “are you mad at me?” Christensen does a good job portraying Glass, especially once his articles get criticized and the actor accurately conveys a clammy-handed nervousness as the man’s facade begins to crumble. The actor easily turns in his best performance, playing a duplicitous figure that constantly plays the victim but is a liar of the tallest order and masterful manipulator. Christensen tends to be a blank actor, a reactive blank slate in the tradition of Keanu Reeves. Few filmmakers have found a way to use Christensen’s limited range but his blankness is actually an asset in Shattered Glass.

As depicted in the film, Chuck Lane lacks the person skills that someone like previous New Republic editor Michael Kelly (Hank Azaria), who stuck up for his writers and fostered loyalty among them as a result. There is palpable tension in the scene where Lane takes over as editor of the magazine but Ray doesn’t overdo it with melodramatic music. Peter Sarsgaard received the lion’s share of critical praise for delivering a masterfully understated performance. He doesn’t deliver any blustery, histrionic speeches and instead keeps things grounded in realism by applying restraint whenever possible. Sarsgaard doesn’t try to make his character inherently sympathetic. In fact, Lane comes off as a bit distant and humorless but he has an integrity that is admirable. Sarsgaard is an actor capable of subtle nuances that have resulted in low-key but brilliant turns in films as diverse as Garden State (2004) and Jarhead (2005). There’s a great shot in Shattered Glass of Sarsgaard’s face reacting to Glass’ fumbling attempts to provide sources for his story that shows the mounting anger and frustration barely being contained under his calm facade as he realizes that Glass is full of crap and that this could mean big trouble for the magazine.

Producer Craig Baumgarten, working with HBO executive Gaye Hirsch, optioned the September 1998 Vanity Fair article about Glass by H.G. Bissinger for an HBO original movie. They hired screenwriter Billy Ray to adapt the article into a screenplay in 1999 based on a script he had written for the TNT film Legalese. He used the Bissinger article as a starting point and it gave him a line of dialogue on which to hook the entire character of Glass, which was, “are you mad at me?” According to Ray, “you can build an entire character around that notion, and we did.” However, a sudden change in the corporate climate put the project into turnaround. Ray stuck with it because he knew Bissinger and had previously adapted his article entitled, “Friday Night Lights.” The project collected dust for two years until Cruise/Wagner Productions bought Ray’s script from HBO and took it to Lions Gate. Ray asked the studio if he could direct and amazingly they agreed.

Ray grew up with legendary reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as his heroes and went to journalism school for a year. It was his love for journalism that influenced his decision to direct Shattered Glass. In preparation for the film, Ray interviewed and re-interviewed key figures for any relevant detail. He signed some of them as paid consultants and gave several approval over the screenplay. Lions Gate lawyers asked Ray to give them an annotated script where he had to footnote every line of dialogue and every assertion and back them up with corresponding notes. The challenge for Ray was to make the subject matter watchable because according to the filmmaker, “watching people write is deadly dull ... in a film like this, dialogue is what a character is willing to reveal about himself, and the camera is there to capture everything else.” The breakthrough for him came when he realized that the film’s real protagonist was not Glass but Lane. According to Ray, “as fascinating as Stephen Glass is by the end of the movie people would want to kill themselves – you just can’t follow him all the way.”

Early on, Ray spent a considerable amount of time trying to earn the trust of the people who had worked with Glass and get them to understand that he was going to be objective with the subject matter. Upset with how he was portrayed in the Vanity Fair article, Michael Kelly refused to look at Ray’s script for two years. In fact, he threatened to sue when first contacted but when he finally read the script, he gave it his approval. Ray’s breakthrough on the project came when he convinced Lane and Kelly to cooperate. Ray also attempted to contact Glass through his lawyers for his input but did not receive a response.

The night before principal photography began in Montreal, Ray screened All the President’s Men (1976) for the cast and crew in order to give them an idea of what he was shooting for. He shot both halves of the film differently – in the first half, he used hand-held cameras whenever they were in The New Republic offices, but when the Forbes editors begin to question Glass, the camerawork is more stable. Ray’s original edit was a more straightforward account of the events but while editing the film he realized that it wasn’t good enough. He raised additional funds to shoot the high school scenes that bookend the film. These consist of a fantasy world perpetuated by Glass addressing a class of students at his old high school. Clippings of his articles appear on a wall. His former teacher claims that she was his “journalistic muse.” The students hang on his every word. In addition, Ray shows us glimpses of the elaborate fantasies Glass fabricated in his articles. These scenes demonstrate how well Glass was able to delude himself and create a fantasy world where he is loved and admired by others.

Shattered Glass received extremely positive reviews from critics. The New York Times’ A.O. Scott called the film "a serious, well-observed examination of the practice of journalism." He added, "A more showily ambitious film might have tried to delve into Glass's personal history in search of an explanation for his behavior, or to draw provocative connections between that behavior and the cultural and political climate of the times. Such a movie would also have been conventional, facile and ultimately false. Mr. Ray knows better than to sensationalize a story about the dangers of sensationalism.” Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and felt the film was well-cast and "deserves comparison with All the President’s Men among movies about journalism." Entertainment Weekly gave the film an "A" rating and praised Hayden Christensen's performance: "Right from the start, Hayden Christensen is a revelation, and not just because his performance, all mind games and subliminal facial tics, transcends the rinky-dink teen heroics of the Star Wars universe. It's because he lets us see that it's Glass himself who's playacting the role of an elite young Washington journalist.” Premiere magazine's Glenn Kenny wrote, "it’s Peter Sarsgaard, as the editor who serves Glass his just deserts, who walks away with the picture, metamorphosing his character’s stiffness into a moral indignation that’s jolting and, finally, invigorating.”

In his review for the Washington Post, Stephen Hunter wrote, "I particularly like the way Ray made no excuses for Glass and makes us see how shallow and cynical were his persistent cries of victimization. Ray makes us believe that we shouldn't care for Glass any more than he cared for his colleagues, his friendships or his profession. Which is to say, not a bit" Glass saw the film and found the experience to be “very painful for me. It was like being on a guided tour of the moments of my life I am most ashamed of.”

Glass epitomized a kind of slick superstar journalism that is short on content, long on style, or as one New Republic writer tells another, “”These guys don’t want policy pieces anymore, they want color, they want nuance, humor.” Ray has crafted one of the best journalistic exposes that deserves to be ranked up there with All the President’s Men and The Insider (1999), but unlike those films, Shattered Glass refuses to elevate its protagonist to the level of crusading hero. Lane comes across as a normal guy doing his job who had to deal with some extraordinary circumstances. It is an incredible story: how a writer was able to snowball so many prestigious publications for so long. Glass joins a rogue’s gallery with the likes of Jayson Blair and his fictional reporting for The New York Times and Sony marketing executive Matthew Cramer’s made-up movie critic David Manning who just happened to give rave reviews to every film released by the studio.

SOURCES

Bear, Linda. “Journalist as the Bad Guy.” indieWIRE. October 28, 2003.

Bowen, Peter. “Confirm or Deny.” Filmmaker. Fall 2003.

Carr, David. “The Real Star of Stephen Glass’s Movie: A Magazine.” The New York Times. October 19, 2003.

Horgan, Richard. “Glass Shards.” FilmStew. October 22, 2003.

P., Ken. “Interview: Billy Ray.” IGN. March 24, 2004.