Winona Ryder @50: the definitive "Reality Bites"

Team Experience is celebrating Winona Ryder this week for her 50th birthday

by Timothy Lyons

1994 was a watershed year for a young Winona Ryder. It started with her first Oscar nomination (and a Golden Globe win) for her performance in Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence and would come to a close with the Christmas release of Gillian Armstrong’s superior adaptation of Little Women with Ryder’s performance as Jo leading to her second Oscar nomination in as many years (more on that tomorrow). Sandwiched between this diptych of heavily-costumed prestige pics was the release of Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites. Here was a film that would come to define a generation (Generation X) and featured the best, most natural, and luminescent performance of Ryder’s career.

I am a huge Winona Ryder fan - let me get that out of the way before we go further. She does however have a tendency towards the fidgety, the strangely mannered and vaguely uneasy in her performances. Sometimes this can lead to her work feeling slightly blank or disengaged, but more often than not (especially when called upon to play one of many outsiders) it is just right...

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Gay Best Friend: Sammy Gray in Reality Bites (1994)

In this series by Christopher James we investigate the 'Gay Best Friend' trope in movies.

We're introduced to Sammy along with the whole crew of main characters on the roof after their college graduation, two minutes into the movie.

At last, it has come to this point. This marks the first week where I’ve covered a “first watch” for the Gay Best Friend series. Thanks go out to Julian who suggested Steve Zahn’s clean cut Sammy in Reality Bites, a 1994 Gen-X classic. As a proud, card-carrying millennial, Reality Bites had been a movie I had always meant to watch, but never gotten around to. The Winona Ryder fan in me was excited to use this column as an excuse to rectify this blind spot. Overall, the film left me a bit wanting. The characters and situations were a great encapsulation of the confusion you experiences the first years after college. It’s easy to see the lineage from this film to movies and TV shows I love and relate to (namely Girls on HBO and Frances Ha). However, the plot always felt less developed than the characters and performances. The movie exists now as a museum piece encapsulating post-grad life in the 90s. That’s not meant to be a dig. Plenty of movies from the '00s and '10s will feel the same way in 10-20 years. In fact, it speaks to why this modest love triangle from 1994 has endured for twenty-six years in the cultural conversation...

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Ethan Hawke at 50: An Appreciation

by Lynn Lee

If I had to pick one actor who most perfectly embodies the spirit of Generation X, the choice would be a no-brainer.  With all due respect to other 40 and 50something stars (Leo, Brad, Johnny, Keanu) or dead icons (River, Heath) in his peer group, it could never be anyone other than Ethan Hawke.  Not because—or not only because—of Reality Bites, which made him the poster child for cynical, disaffected (but secretly vulnerable) Gen X slackers everywhere.  Rather because his career exemplifies the quiet independence and under-the-radar achievements of that not-quite-lost, but certainly liminal, generation.  He’s been working steadily since his debut, at the age of 14, in Explorers (1985), yet like any good Gen Xer, has successfully eluded easy characterization.  He reaches the half century mark today having assembled one of the most intriguing and eclectic bodies of work of any currently living actor... 

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25th Anniversary: "Reality Bites"

by Mark Brinkerhoff

Sandwiched between (and oft-overshadowed by) the so-called Baby Boomers and Millennials, Generation X, those born between 1965-1980, seems to get little attention from Hollywood — or from anyone, really. In fact, just last month CBS infamously omitted Gen X in an otherwise comprehensive chart, “Generation Guidelines Defined by Birth Year.” For Gen Xers (of which I am one), this was generally considered as simply par for the course. Of course, of course, of course! 

But 25 years ago this week, we got our cinematic Valentine in the form of Reality Bites, the seminal film of a “forgotten” generation...

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We Got the Link

8 quick stories for you this morning

• Towleroad Yes, it's true Golden Girls action figures are coming!
• The Guardian Janeane Garofalo and Ethan Hawke share memories of Reality Bites (1994)
• The Brag I like this piece on BPM, Queer as Folk and politics on dance floors
• Playbill after four seasons Sutton Foster finally sings on Younger. On tonight's episode she's doing The Sound of Music's "Lonely Goatherd"
• The Wrap Frances Conroy and Robert DeNiro are joining Joaquin Phoenix in that ill-advised Joker origin story movie
• Filmmaker Magazine talks to Steven Soderbergh about his amazing debut sex lies and videotape (1989)
• Awards Daily a tribute to Donald Sutherland, one of the greatest actors of Hollywood 

Exit Video
The Go-Gos appeared on CBS Sunday Morning to discuss their career for the launch of the Broadway musical "Head Over Heels". ♥️ this band so much.