The 12 Films Project— a year-long experiment in passing down pop culture
Take a cursory glance at the Buzzfeed sidebar these days and you’ll inevitably spot one of those ‘Wow, we are really old’ posts. My favourite bit of trivia about how old I am is the one where if ‘That 70s Show’ was filmed today, it would be ‘That 90s Show’ — which, yeah, accomplishes what the article sets out to do.
I feel… old.
Or at least I feel transported by a kind of suspended disbelief (with just a touch of morbid doom), where I’m hovering above the zeitgeist, and from my thousand-foot view I can see the world moving on, I can see me getting crow’s feet, and I’m witnessing time bracket of pop culture that uniquely belonged to me and my friends having its funeral in real time— gone and dead, finally laid to rest (and now beyond a shadow of a doubt uncool).
I just turned 36.
Tip of the spear. Edge of the knife for the millennial generation, born post-80 (or specifically the ‘Xennial’ generation if you prefer to buy into the ideal that post Gen-X’ers and pre-millennial Millennials are a thing).
Most everyone refers to anyone younger than themselves (or anyone doing anything they don’t understand) as a ‘Millennial’, but this precious group of which I am an elder member is really coming of age now. The youngest are about 19 or 20, the oldest are 36 or 37 depending where you want to put the cutoff. Let’s just leave kids under 18 out of it as they’re just a whole other confusing thing — ‘Generation Alpha’, maybe, or whatever moniker will wind up serendipitously sticking as they come into their own [I’m terrified].
Personality-wise, I’m supposed to be fairly aligned to the characterizations you get most about my generation. We’re whiny, the sometime-still-living-in-our-parents’-basements, great white [self-entitled?] hope for a new and better future.
To be fair, I don’t think we’re that bad (although you wouldn’t know it by how much we’re maligned for allegedly murdering everything wholesome, good and true). There are actually a lot of excellent things about us.
Ok we’re broke, but we’re not sitting on our asses about it. We roll deep with the side hustle and we’re super hardworking, holding down more jobs than our forebears. We’re also more educated than anyone who came before us, but we don’t brag about it because a Bachelor’s degree doesn’t seem to return much on the investment these days. All those unused bachelors degrees DO make us the most literate generation yet — and we relish our status as a voracious all-consuming monolith that gobbles up more content than any other; our noses deeply pressed against our smartphone screens, reading itty bitty type and watching tiny videos (to hell with what doing it 24/7 may or may not be evolving us into as a species).
So we watch a lot of content — we got our Netflix, we got our CraveTV, we got those cease-and-desist letters from HBO about our torrenting habits (well f*ck, it’s really hard to get Game of Thrones in Canada). Easily bored on Friday nights, with immense streaming libraries available at click, you’d think each and every one of us would be this all-knowing, all-dancing wealth of trivia information about any and all hit and cult-followed films that once made true believers out of audiences and endure on cultivated ‘bests’ lists (like the one I’m about to start).
But we’re not.
Take Liz.
Liz is awesome. She’s vivacious and fun. She’s whip smart, but still down to earth. A dog lover, a hell of a designer and creative person, and she’s 26 — a whole decade younger than me. I really get on with Liz. I like so Liz so much that I decided to start a couple of businesses with her, (including our branding and marketing consultancy, R&G Strategic Inc). I never notice the age gap between us. I mean — maybe she does, maybe to her I’m definitely getting up there. But to me, we mostly look like we could pass for being close in age, appearance-wise. We also laugh at the same punchlines, react similarly to the same news, like to workout in barre class at ungodly hours of the morning, drink craft cider, swap great recipes, want to make a real difference in the world, and jam well together on the wacky/ridiculous/ingenious projects we’re always dreaming up (this one notwithstanding).
But sometimes we get into a client meeting and there’s small talk, or we’re working on a creative project and I’m trying to explain what I think about a colour or a logo — and I drop film reference. I always assume I’m being mainstream, but more often than not, Liz has no idea what I’m talking about.
For instance, it’s surreal to me that Liz has never seen the Fifth Element. She’s never seen Mallrats. I once yelled ‘Hack the Planet!’ when we ran into trouble while working on a website build for a client and I got crickets from Liz.
“You’ve never seen Hackers? Why haven’t you seen Hackers?”
“I’m from Saskatoon, remember,” Liz laughed, but I was flabbergasted to the point of hyperventilation over the totally unacceptable situation.
I can’t rewind time and relive those amazing years where it was a gift when there was a movie presentation of ‘The Net’ starring Sandra Bullock on cable TV, or when I first saw Angelina Jolie rollerblade into frame in Hackers with that flawless pixie cut (leaving me daring to want one to this very day)…but I can run a little pop culture experiment.
The idea: 12 months, 12 films — the first of every month, Liz and I watch a flick from my ‘best’ list, then write about it.
Or at least — the films I think are on my list. I’m curious whether my incredulous over-the-top response to Liz’s not having seeing these films is warranted.
One of the great things about loving a film is that over time, the film doesn’t change, but you do. I can’t imagine having the same perspective now as I did when I was 15, 20 or even Liz’s age. You can go back and re-watch a movie to see if it truly holds up, and whether it deserves its exalted spot in your memory or if it really isn’t that great after all. Some movies will probably take on new meaning, but I expect others to remind me that it’s occasionally necessary to burn your heroes in effigy.
We’ve agreed on a couple of criteria to help narrow down to 12 essentials:
- We’re going to stick to the buffer around my formative years, between ages 12 and 19, so about 1992 to 2000.
- Wherever possible, we’ll favour movies that pass the Bechdel Test (i.e. the film should feature at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man), and avoid any film that features actors or producers who are known sexual predators (read:Harvey Weinstein).
- No impossibly-obscure indies. We’ll choose flicks that have entered the pop culture lexicon by either being hits at the time, or by developing cult followings after the fact.
- I’ll write an introduction to the film so Liz knows what to expect (or not expect, based on my memory level of fail), and we’ll both record our reactions (her first impression, my re-impression, as it were).
It’s November 10, so we have 20 days to watch and report on Film #1 - looming large on my best of the 90s list (and my best soundtracks ever list), it’s Empire Records.
