What '90s indie film changed your life the most?
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This week, Ted Hope, the co-founder of Good Machine, joined me for one of my artist-on-artist conversations - to discuss the possibility of a new revolution in cinema (you can read it here). Good Machine was a key player in the Nineties indie film movement in America, responsible for such classics as The Wedding Banquet (1993), The Brothers McMullen (1995), Happiness (1998), The Tao of Steve (2000), In the Bedroom (2001), and American Splendor (2003), so I thought I’d use this chat as inspiration for my weekly question:
What '90s indie film changed your life the most (and why)?
For me, it’s a difficult question. There are so many contenders, from the obvious such as Pulp Fiction (1994) to others that spoke to me so intimately they genuinely rewired how I thought about my own existence and human interaction in general - like Before Sunrise (1995). Swingers (1996) inspired me to move to Los Angeles. Being John Malkovich (1999) probably gave me more permission than any other title to trust my own insane, incredibly specific instincts. But if I’m honest with myself — a Midwestern kid from a no-consequence town and absolutely no privilege — if I look at this era and try to pinpoint the film that convinced me, “You can do this, too,” it was Clerks (1994), written and directed by Kevin Smith.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it and Pulp Fiction were both released at the same time in ’94, shortly after I graduated high school, but I saw Clerks first. It was about lovable losers, videots like me, and shot on a shoestring budget that seemed conceivable to someone born into the life I was. I wanted to do that.
And then I promptly didn’t, but that’s a story for another day. The impulse, as largely unsatisfied as it remained for many years, nonetheless informed decisions I made for almost as long.
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