Film on the Radio

11 Dec 2019

Reality Bites – Transcript

CARLA: Hello and welcome, I’m Carla Donnelly and this is Film on the Radio – your weekly deep dive into the scores and soundtracks of the films we love. Thanks to Little Pod of Joy for bringing us in and catching us up with the best stories of the week. Remember when we’d make mixtapes? They’d surround a certain mood, subject or love interest… showing off your taste and music prowess. Do soundtracks fill the void? A Spotify playlist just isn’t the same. I believe soundtracks have become more important as time goes by, as beyond the algorithm, it’s the only engagement with mixtapes we get. Do you listen to soundtracks anymore? I’d love to hear from you if you do, please contact us with your faves filmontheradio@joy.org.au or find us on Facebook and Twitter @filmontheradio. Adding music to film, it couldn’t get more powerful in terms of direction, navigating us through moods and memories, guiding us into the place the director exactly wants us to be. It also works in reverse, thinking of the films you love… you could more than likely pick out a scene that has changed the meaning of a song forever (I’m looking at you Trainspotting). Whenever you hear that song the image of the scene is present in your mind and the feelings you felt whilst watching come back… the marriage of music to images is a perfect vehicle for encoding into your memory.. sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. On that note can you pick which soundtrack we’ll be discussing today?

MUSIC: My Sharona – The Knack

CARLA: You’re on Joy 94.9 and this is Film on the Radio. And yes, you may have guessed today we are discussing the 1994 soundtrack to Reality Bites. That was My Sharona by The Knack. Who can forget that iconic scene with main characters Sammy, Lelaina, Troy and Vicky dancing wildly in the convenience store… so emblematic of the films themes overall.. a lost generation finding pleasure wherever they can get it… for free… Karyn Rachtman was the music supervisor for Reality Bites and is known as one of the “most influential music supervisors of all time” her soundtracks have sold over 75 million copies worldwide… I get the feeling we will discuss her time and again on this show. During the time of Reality Bites she was also supervising the Pulp Fiction soundtrack and entered into a competition of sorts as to who would license the song. From Rolling Stone magazine:

“The script dictates that the music playing during the rape of Marsellus is “The Judds, singing in harmony.” But Tarantino never intended to use the country-music family: he had gotten wise to the notion that if he specified the song he really wanted on the soundtrack, whoever controlled the rights would charge him extra, so he would plant false musical cues. The track he actually planned to use? The Knack’s No. 1 New Wave single from 1979, “My Sharona.” (Tarantino said that the song “has a really good sodomy beat to it. I thought, oh, God, this is just too funny not to use.”) Unfortunately, the 1994 Gen-X rom-com Reality Bites also wanted it for a scene where Winona Ryder, Janeane Garofalo, and Steve Zahn dance in a convenience store, and the licensing people chose Pringles over sexual assault. Tarantino said that ultimately he was glad he couldn’t go with “My Sharona”: “It would have been too cutely comic. I like using stuff for comic effect, but I don’t want it to be har, har, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, you know?” Instead, he picked “Comanche,” a 1961 song by the surf band the Revels.” This cuts deep to the heart of music in film for me. Not knowing what was the alternative for the Food Mart scene I now, naturally, implant My Sharona onto the gimp scene and the film is changed forever. I’m sorry if this has now happened to you to.

Reality Bites, held as the totem for all Generation X slacker movies, was written by Helen Childress and directed by Ben Stiller (who also plays Ethan Hawkes love rival for Lelaina’s affections, Michael). It’s described as a Gen-X comedy of manners, which I think is actually kinda perfect. At the time I remember feeling so validated by this movie, and rewatching it was really interesting, I strongly suggest it. I don’t want to delve too deep into generational politics but it’s quite shocking how little has changed, that we keep getting more and more educated for less and less suitable work. But there is one noticeable change, the world now seems so much freer with gender and sex. Vickys HIV scare feels pretty slut shamey… and thankfully feels extremely outdated, as does Sammy’s slightly wrought coming out subplit. We thankfully live in a much more liberated era, but also I feel like so many of my friends are still living these exact same lives, this film could be shot in Brunswick today.

MUSIC: Locked Out – Crowded House

CARLA: You’re on Joy 9.49 and this is Film on the Radio. That was Crowded House with the song Locked Out from the 1994 Reality Bites soundtrack. A soundtrack no doubt some of you are very familiar with as it sold a whopping 1.2 million copies. To put that into perspective it would be the 6^th highest selling record of 2019. Which is just such a phenomenal statistic for a soundtrack. Reality Bites was just as wildly successful making 3 times its budget at the box office, earning over 33 million dollars worldwide. I wonder if there’s a correlation between soundtrack sales and a movies success… anecdotally I think through the course of this show we might see. If you haven’t seen the film this synopsis from IMDB sums it up well “In this study of Generation X manners, Lelaina (played by Winona Ryder) is the valedictorian of her college class and camcords her friends in a mock documentary of post-education life. Troy (Ethan Hawke) is her best friend, a perpetually unemployed musical slacker. Vickie (Janine Garafalo) is a manager at The Gap who worries about the results of an AIDS test, while Sammy (Steve Zahn) has problems grappling with his sexuality. When Lelaina meets Michael (Ben Stiller), an earnest video executive who takes her homemade video to his MTV-like station, she must decide what she values–the materialism of yuppie Michael or the philosophical musings of Troy.” Oh yes, the eternal selling out conundrum. Remember when we had something to sell? It feels overbearingly earnest and twee now.

Interestingly Parker Posey, Anne Heche, and Gwyneth Paltrow were all up for the role of Vicky… The studio wanted Paltrow, but Ryder championed Garofolo, who at that time had one ever had one line in a film. Both wild things to think about considering Paltrows future career. Again, it’s one of those films where everything works so perfectly together, I can’t imagine any of these other actresses in that role. And I feel that way about the music in this film, perfectly balanced and executed. I hope one day they do the full soundtrack as it had a whopping 34 songs – I can only imagine it was a balance of budget and willingness by the artists for what made it onto the soundtrack. Here’s one of my favourites that is not on the soundtrack but in the trailer – Young Americans by David Bowie.

MUSIC: Young Americans – David Bowie, Spinning Around – Lenny Kravitz

CARLA: Tat was David Bowie with Young Americans and Spinning Around by Lenny Kravitz… (not Kylie). This is Film on the Radio and today we are discussing the 1994 Gen X slacker film hit Reality Bites. So far we’ve covered the overall synopsis and some of the history of the music direction by Karyn Rachtman. What is mind blowing to many of us of a certain age is that the film enjoyed its 25^th anniversary earlier in the year. The Tribecca film festival held a Q&A after a screening with the whole cast and some of the creatives. Listen to them discuss the soundtrack, in particular how Lisa Loeb’s Stay came to be on included.

CLIP: Tribecca Film Festival

CARLA: This is Film on the Radio and that was an interview with the cast and creatives of Reality Bites at the 25^th anniversary screening earlier in the year. The whole interview is available on the Tribeca Film Festivals Facebook page, which is linked on our showpage. If you love this movie you should absolutely check it out. There’s much more gold to be uncovered there, not to mention that absolutely wild statistic that Lisa Loeb was the first unsigned artist to go to number one on the Billboard charts… which remained unreplicated until 2013 with Macklemore’s “Thriftshop”. Charmingly at the credit role of the 25^th Anniversary screening Lisa Loeb came on stage and played Stay, talking about the iconic marriage of music to film. She still sounds so good after all these years.

MUSIC: Stay (Live) – Lisa Loeb, Tempted, Squeeze

CARLA: That was the live version of Stay by Lisa Loeb – performed at the 25^th anniversary of Reality Bites earlier in the year. And Squeeze – Tempted. You’re listening to Film on the Radio and tonight we’re deep diving on Reality Bites. Remember when we’d get different releases to other countries? The Australian release only ran for 94 minutes, in comparison to the general release of 99 minutes. Most notably actors Kevin Pollack and Jeanne Tripplehorn are not in our version. I thought my memory was just faded but there you go, I must have re-watched the US version. If you haven’t seen the film or would like a refresh on its Gen X angst and clarity here is one of the most iconic scenes, Lelaina’s valedictorian speech.

CLIP: Graduation speech

MUSIC: Rock ‘n’ Roll II – Gary Glitter

CARLA: That was convicted pedophile Gary Glitter with Rock n Roll part 2 which you may be wondering why play him at all? But I am a completist, so before the break you may have heard the wonderful graduation speech in Reality Bites which this song then backs on from. This is Film on the Radio and this week’s deep dive is on Reality Bites. I’d like to wrap up with some of the incredible bits of trivia I learned in my research for this episode. From the Tribecca Film Festival Q&A, as told through Vanity Fair magazine, the question was posed what the actors thought would have happened to the characters after the movie “Ryder always thought her Lelaina would end up in a lesbian relationship with Garofalo’s Vickie after Troy’s novelty faded” UM YES I ALWAYS THOUGHT THIS, I actually thought this was going to be the end of the movie. The links to all material that was used in research for this episode are in the show notes or on our website www.joy.org.au/filmontheradio. What are your memories of Reality Bites? Were you around when it first came out, or discovered it at a later time? Message us on our facebook and twitter pages @filmonontheradio, or email to filmontheradio@joy.org.au. Shoot through your favourite soundtracks and scores while you’re at it! Coming up next is Word for Word with Lisa Daniel but before I go I’ll leave you with this last bit of information from the writer of Reality Bites Helen Childress, as reported in the Atlantic “By the way, the words don’t mean what most people think they do. “Reality bites” wasn’t meant to be “reality sucks,” though it’s usually defined that way. In the summer of 1992, ahead of the U.S. presidential election, Childress kept hearing references to “sound bites,” which made her think of Lelaina’s recorded vignettes of her friends—“little bites of reality,” Childress calls them. Now the phrase is everywhere—and of course it’s everywhere wrong, because that’s the Gen-X plight: to be sold out. “There are so many things I would change,” Childress said of Reality Bites. “But in a way, what’s great is, I don’t think that movie could have been written by a 30-year-old who knew better.”

MUSIC: All I Want Is You – U2