Ebert On Why (90's) Reality Bites

Did the girl pick the wrong guy?

Yeah, but it’s ok. It’s been 30 years and I think I’m finally old enough to be over it. Because choices can be temporary, if not down right fictitious, but Roger Ebert reviews are forever.

Reality Bites is a slacker love story. I’ve long been as fascinated by the behind the scenes details (like Ethan Hawke launching Lisa Loeb into the stratosphere with a reworking of a song she intended to pitch to Daryl Hall), as I have been by Ebert’s movie review.

But, why?

The truth is, it’s one of the first times I remember getting p****ed about the starving artist mythos and it’s stark realities. That’s really what this post is about. And because of that p.o.’ed-ness, 1994’s Reality Bites has remained a reliable conversation-starter for people I meet of a certain page for the bulk of my life.

Some obligatory plot background first, in case you don’t know…

Reality Bites is a classic love triangle. Or at least, a classic mid-90s teen heartache Sophie’s Choice in dramatics if not in actual stakes. Winona Ryder is the casual film-making female lead (Lelaina), Ben Stiller is the nerdy-but early 90s TV business savvy boyfriend (Michael), and Ethan Hawke is the emotionally brooding, and intentionally unemployed, starving artist of a slacker heartthrob (Troy).

Stiller’s character takes some of Ryder’s video footage to his business-minded people, they make it “corporatey,” which Ryder and Hawke fall in love over mutually hating on because “art” (Lebowski voice) “man.” And that’s fine, but it feels wrong too, and not for any good reasons.

Roger Ebert sees through this on a number of levels, and wastes little time cutting straight to the heart of the matter. It’s best if we just let him say it (I’d add emphasis but this whole passage would be highlighted):

What interested me about the film, which was directed by Stiller and written by Helen Childress, is how blind it is to its own realities. We are expected to accept Lelaina, I guess, as a committed cinema verite documentarian in the tradition of Frederick Wiseman; Michael (Stiller) as a crass corporate monster; and Troy as a rebel who sees through phoniness. This is all wrong. On the basis of the footage we are allowed to see, Lelaina is not a filmmaker but simply someone who plays with a video camera. Nor are the friends she photographs especially interesting. What Michael’s people in New York do to the footage is an improvement. And Troy is a self-centered prig who is not half as clever as he thinks he is.

But of course these observations go against the deep-seated prejudices of the movie, which are that anyone who shoots documentary video footage of friends is a genius; anyone who is pushing 30 and has a good job has sold out; and anyone who is simultaneously unemployed and hostile is a reservoir of truth.

This is what feels wrong. The prejudices of of the movie, arguably what the audience wants, don’t match the authenticity of what the director and writer are/should be doing.

Do they genuinely believe in the character that gets the girl?

OR, do they see and embrace this in some self-loathing way… (this is Ebert again):

What strange force locks filmmakers into cliches and conventions? What unwritten law prevented the makers of “Reality Bites” from observing that their heroine can’t shoot video worth a damn, that their hero is a jerk, and that their villain is the most interesting person in the movie? The problem, I think, is that movies like this aren’t made up from scratch; they’re fabricated out of other movies, and out of old and shopworn conventions.

The conversation-starting question is, “Do you think she ended up with the wrong guy at the end of Reality Bites?”

But the follow-up, if you say “yes” is, “How do you make art your profession and not your hobby, and still feel good about it?”

We can talk about selling out from there, if you want. But this all matters.

And Roger Ebert wrote one hell of a critical piece, on multiple levels, for it to be so compelling all these years later too. Bravo.