Why 'Reality Bites' (Kinda) Bites

There are better Gen X films

Photo by Chase Yi on Unsplash

When the Stranger Things final season aired, for some reason it suddenly clicked into the pop cultural consciousness that Winona Ryder had previously worked with Maya Hawke’s dad Ethan in the 1994 film Reality Bites (four years before young Maya was born). The memes and nostalgia went into overdrive.

Sure, fine I shrug. But am I the only X’er who did not go crazy for this movie?

Don’t get me wrong: it has charming performances, a Gen X coded central romance, a fun soundtrack.

It’s not a terrible movie. It’s at least better than the similarly so obsessed with capturing the moment it kind of stifled the moment Singles, I think?

Like Singles it also didn’t feel authentic to me on some level, even at the time. It captured some of the confused ennui filled whateverness of a college grad in that era.

But they both lacked something new or interesting to say. Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke have roles in classic Gen X films like Heathers and Before Sunrise, which felt truer to the experience of the era.

Reality Bites got the casting right, largely thanks to Winona Ryder insisting on Ethan Hawke being cast in her own contract, and lobbying for Janeane Garofalo. Hawke was in a play with Steve Zahn and recommended him when he was not on any Hollywood radars, and thus cemented the core cast .

The film was written and directed by Ben Stiller, a Gen X nepo baby who likely never would have had a film like this funded without his connections, and featured a U2 song way too prominently to be considered in any way cool by the actual youth it was trying to portray.

Thank god for Lisa Loeb - her heartfelt undiscovered song “Stay” (again included because of her friendship with Hawke) gave it enough emotional authenticity to almost make it feel less Hollywood.

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I was a freshman in college when Reality Bites came out and everyone on my dorm floor went to see this movie. I remember the former cheerleader preppy type girl on my floor being obsessed with it and singing “My Sharona” nonstop. Which obviously made my inner theatre outcast type kid feel some kind of way.

Popular girls trying to reinvent themselves as non-normies were admittedly a slight bugbear of mine in the era. They still sucked up all the air in the room. They were perhaps not the true target audience of a film like Reality Bites, but that is where we ended up.

I first fell in love with Winona Ryder in films like Lucas, Mermaids and Beetlejuice (and let’s be honest Square Dance, another discussion for another day!). I had never seen another girl like her onscreen - awkward, fragile, vulnerable, but obviously so beautiful in a slowly unfurling, swan-like way.

She rapidly aged into a total badass in Heathers, and had the most enviable boyfriends on earth at the time (Christian Slater then Johnny Depp: shut up, the 90s were a time). I always root for Winona, but of all of her films I had seen up until this point her role in this one felt the most one note.

It felt like she was just in Reality Bites because she was Winona, and that gave the film street cred. Her character Leilani is more of a foil for her f-boy friend/crush Troy, who negs her throughout the film (so that is how we know he loves her when he eventually kinda sorta admits he has feelings for her).

Troy is no heart on his sleeve Lloyd Dobler type, that’s for sure. But he was a realistic archetype that most Gen X girls came across several times over, so in a way the film performs a service.

I kind of wish Ben Stiller had not let him get the girl though. Troys rarely grow out of their self-serving douche phase that fast (if ever).

Side note - look at that swirling smoke haze in the bar! THAT takes me back.

There is nothing wrong with Reality Bites, but it is not true Gen X art, because it is not outsider art, or doesn’t manage to feel like it anyway.

It does not capture the existential suburban apathy of Kevin Smith’s Clerks. It does not possess the lo-fi charm, grit and storytelling of indie auteurs of the era such as Todd Solondz or Nicole Holofcener.

In Holofcener’s debut film Walking and Talking (1996) - a more relatable Gen X tale in my opinion, two best girlfriends drift apart slowly and painfully when one of them falls in love (I would bet good money that Greta Gerwig got some of the idea for Frances Ha here).

The film is deeply cringe-inducing and genuinely hilarious. Catherine Keener is a self-absorbed, not traditionally likeable heroine, but she and her experience feels real, unencumbered by trying to woo a mass audience.

This trailer is dreadful btw, but the film itself is on YouTube in its entirety for the curious.

This kind of cynical, anti-hero type character would be leaned into harder in the late 90s/early aughts. But it became a lazy cliché: a cheap comedic filler as opposed to the fully fleshed out characters of the 90s peak. For a moment in time there were tons of films being made where the characters actually felt real and not written to cater to a specific target audience.

I recently watched a Parker Posey indie that had passed me by: Broken English (2007). I was shocked this film came out when it did. It definitely feels like it is trying to capture/preserve some of the low budget charm of many 90s indie films that starred Posey herself (notably Party Girl, The House of Yes, Clockwatchers, The Daytrippers (and that list goes on and on before we even get into her influential work in the Christopher Guest mockumentary films).

Directed by Zoe Cassavetes (yes daughter of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands, who co-stars as Posey’s mother in the film, natch), Broken English is a diverting enough slice of life.

It is perhaps too meandering (and I like a meander) and not particularly dynamic. But it has a deeply vulnerable central performance from Posey, who has a sparkly chemistry with her French love interest (Melvil Poupaud), and that authentic Hal Hartley/Jim Jarmusch-ian streets of New York lens/feeling that is all but gone from modern cinema.

It feels real, at least in part. It reminds me of New York as I knew it. And that makes me more inclined to rewatch it than the supposedly nostalgic Reality Bites, which I almost never think about.

Yes, that is Adriana from The Sopranos (Drea De Matteo), slightly miscast. And here is yet another terrible 90’s trailer that tries to make the film look much jazzier (to its detriment) than it is.

Instead of leaning into what actually makes it good: the slow pacing and character development, we get a studio (Miramax) sheen. Like many indie film fairy tales, this film was produced with a low budget but became a hit at Sundance.

Oh shit I think I turned into a milkmaid.

Maybe it’s because I once worked in a small town convenience store (including after I graduated from college, because unlike Leilani and crew I had to save money to move back into the big city), but Clerks spoke to me in a way that Reality Bites never did.

Sometimes I get annoyed with Gen Z’s seeming lack of personality but the truth is young Gen X were just as self-absorbed and obnoxious in our own way. We just shit talked to each other instead of the internet.

Of course, we also felt isolated and alienated at times, especially in school. Christian Slater’s characters had a lot to say about teenage depression in both Heathers and Pump Up the Volume.

There is nothing wrong with Reality Bites, but I fear it has unfairly become some sort of lazy fallback of what is considered the most accurate encapsulating of the youthful experience of the era. To me it is more of a simulation type feeling when I watch clips of it now.

I could even watch Reservoir Dogs or Office Space and be met with more specific emotions/feelings of the time. Their edge and caustic bite is less smooth, more bleak and hilarious. Maybe that’s my problem with Reality Bites? It’s really not funny in any memorable sort of way.

The lesser known Parker Posey film Clockwatchers (on Amazon Prime in the UK last time I checked) is an apathetic yet oddly existential Gen X workplace comedy that also stars Lisa Kudrow and Toni Collette. It captures a surreal vision of the weird workplace vibes that some X’ers might have experienced at the time. I remember having to kill large swaths of empty time at several spots when I was a temp anyway! We don’t have the Criterion Channel in the UK so I cleave to these buried treasures when they appear.

Whit Stillman is perhaps another discussion for another day, but it is well worth seeking out his late 80s-90s trilogy Metropolitan, Barcelona, and Last Days of Disco for another unique perspective of the era.

His films are disarmingly dystopian, heavily packed with whip smart quips and dense dialogue, most expertly delivered by Chris Eigeman as his primary anti-hero. Eigeman was perfect in these roles and stood apart from some of his peers in his ability to portray Stillman’s largely overprivileged brats with serious doses of charm.

Obviously it’s ok to like Reality Bites, it’s fine. I just wanted to say there are plenty of other indie or lesser known films in the era that deliver a similiar vibe, arguably in a superior cinematic package.

Anyway I feel old now thinking about how old these movies are. I hope you watch one of them someday or whatever. 😉

Do you have a favorite unsung 80s or 90s film?

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