Reality Bites (Because Life Can Be so Tasty)

Roseanne Arnold's (not the bald one, the fat one) criticism of Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List is the "League of Their Own" ending, where the actual people behind the characters are brought out so we can see the actors and actresses are playing real people.

In the case of Schindler's List, this criticism is not fair. The documentary style of the movie, the very point seems to be to emphasize that this was an actual event, one we should never be allowed to forget. When we see the survivors, the people that endured the tragedy, the point is driven home in such a powerful way, that the emotion from the rest of the movie turns from depressing to uplifting. We leave the theater marveling at the resiliency of the human spirit. Like all good movies, we are enlightened, and the moment one steps from the darkness into the light, the whole experience of time stopping for the past few hours, is magically enforced.

Spielberg took a huge risk ending the movie this way. If the rest of the movie didn't depict the horrors of the Holocaust in an honest way, the ending would have seemed cheap and undeserved. Thus, he set himself up for failure by having to live up to such a horrible moment of history in a fictional setting. That the ending works, that the blending of fiction and reality comes through in a powerful way, speaks volumes for the movie.

Another of our directors has addressed this very issue, combining fiction with reality, fact with emotion, in two of his recent projects. James Brooks' Broadcast News and I'll Do Anything ask related questions about the way the media and Hollywood depict and cheapen real human events and emotions. In Broadcast News, the story revolves around whether or not a network news anchor crossed the line that exists between acting and the news, whether or not he faked a tear after hearing a woman's story about being raped.

In I'll Do Anything the fulcrum balances on whether or not a little girl can learn to cry on cue for the camera in a TV sitcom. "I don't like that word," she says to her father when he asks whether or not she is sad. In this, Brooks' latest effort, the wasteland of American culture is called into question as to whether it is causing the decay and the deadening of people being able to feel their feelings or whether or not we've reached the point where everyone is sort of faking the feeling and justifying it in their heads at a later point. Self help and instant analysis in the form of mixing modern day psychiatry, poetry, music and the media. One of the characters in the movie is on so many antidepressant drugs that a side effect is she can't lie. The mixture of medicine is acting as a truth serum. Her honesty in confronting people is seen as refreshing and the irony is one knows such straightforward answers wouldn't work in today's society, it makes us all too uncomfortable -the feeling to be avoided at all costs.

The most gripping scene in I'll Do Anything involves a group of smug, young, upcoming casting people making cruel remarks on the physical shortcomings of many of today's actors. The main character, Nick Nolte takes offense to the lack of human decency these people are displaying yet at the same time, he throws his hands up realizing how common it is for people to have contempt for the ones they have power over. (Note: Christian Laettner should be forced to view this scene over and over until he understands that decency is one of human nature's saving graces.)

Unfortunately, Brooks fails in both of these movies because he betrays himself with their endings. Broadcast News commits a sin worse

than a League of Their Own ending. Instead of being true to the rest of the movie, Brooks tacks on one of those deadly "ten years later" endings where we see how the characters changed yet remained the same. The story of Broadcast News was crying out for uncertainty. News, and dare we say life, rarely wraps itself up in neat little packages. Any journalist knows to call a piece of journalism a "story" is a misnomer since one of the qualifications for most stories is a beginning, middle and end -something news rarely has.

The story to I'll Do Anything is even more of a sell out. Originally intended as a musical, Brooks cut out the musical numbers after the picture didn't test well with audiences. Since much of the movie is about Hollywood and a director who makes "popcorn" movies to please his audience, Brooks' decision becomes even more bizarre. It would have been interesting to see the original version to see how the combination worked (or didn't). To incorporate music into a story generally means you have to suspend the line that exists between what is "real" in a movie and what is "fantasy". It would have been fascinating to see the mix. After having enjoyed most of the rest of the movie, I felt cheated as if Brooks didn't believe the message of his own film. Yet the message did stick with me. I left the dark warmth of the movie theater and walked into an open parking ramp. The light dilated the old pupils as the wind caused the snow on the roof of the ramp to swirl down in a magical sunlit way. Indeed I felt like breaking into a song.

Suffering in the name of art. And the girl always ends up with the wrong guy. Winona Ryder sure did in Reality Bites, the latest in the line of generation angst pictures, movies about alienation and disillusioned youth. Rebel Without a Cause, The Graduate, The Rivers Edge, growing up can be hard to do. Looking at my generation, dubbed "Generation X" by either Billy Idol or Douglas Copeland, it is becoming clear that the more we try to state our independence and our differences from previous generations, the more we become like them, and the more confused we all become. This isn't the way it's supposed to be even for a kid from the suburbs. It's like we feel like we were promised more, deserve more than we are getting. The norm is to function dysfunctionally; broken homes are more prevalent than broken phones. Coffee too often substitutes for actual sleep. You can be a stripper or you can be a performance artist extraordinaire at Solid Gold. Wear a tie instead of a hat. Sit with someone or sit in the same room. Same difference.

Winona is such a convincing actress and in Reality Bites her character remains likable while being frustratingly directionless. The mark we leave. She has a sunny disposition that suffers from an occasional eclipse. He likes to moon people. Her life is full of familiar scenes and people. But she ends up with the wrong guy. I've seen that guy up close and personal and the other one too. We are, after all, who we are with. It's easy to brand another as a sell out, or try to remain true while sitting on the couch and groaning, moaning about how life sucks and how futile it is to try and play by their rules, to compromise one's integrity by taking a nine to five, and working those forty hours needed to pay the rent and miss the car payment while calling the psychic hotline looking for answers. It's harder to do something about it.

In Reality Bites the alternative is a yuppie, who wears fancy suits but doesn't mean it, who destroys Winona's documentary, prostitutes her statement and still doesn't get it. But at least he tries. His is an encouraging spirit who cares about people and decency (see I'll Do Anything, Nick Nolte) whereas the guy she ends up with, the artist has long passed skepticism into cynicism. He sees the joke in life but he stopped laughing long ago. That Ben Stiller is the director and plays the yucky yuppie says that while this movie is making a statement for its generation, it's a generation that better clue itself in. And fast. We are after all, what we make ourselves to be. Maybe the rebellion doesn't work, and it's time to acknowledge this era's act , the most abused drug/escape of all, is what it is: make believe.