Alright, I’m just going to get to the point with this one. My head fucking hurts and everything is… spinning.
There seems to have been a definite and very significant bisection in the tone and presentation of Hollywood’s output that occurred sometime in the mid to late 90’s, which seems to coincide exactly with my own “coming of age”. I was born in 1980.
It’s like… I’ve been watching clips, and full movies occasionally, on youtube lately. The earlier made films, like those produced prior to 1996, seem to have a different flavor to them. They seem more institutional. More, I guess, “studio”. More plugged in to what you might consider the traditional Hollywood way.
Those made after 1996 seem profoundly different, not necessarily in plot (though sometimes so) but in style and characterization.
I actually first noticed this change in college, without fully grasping how deep and profound the changes truly were. I remember spending many an idle afternoon back then staring at my celebrity picture collection and trying to figure out what it was that was changing things. I would go to class in the morning, get my homework out of the way by the afternoon, and try telepathically commiserating with Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie, Kirsten Dunst, Nicole Kidman et. al. about WTF was going on with Hollywood, and why everything seemed so different.
Seriously. I didn’t fucking get it. Good lord, I had no idea, and I mean no idea, WTF was going on.
I think a lot of the problem was my DID, otherwise known as multiple personality disorder. I didn’t understand because it wasn’t “me” that was changing stuff, it was the other “mes”. The other Toms. So I was utterly oblivious. Well, that, and there is the fact that I didn’t actually see a lot of these movies until just now.
I was a young college kid back then; money was scarce, film online nonexistent. Until now I didn’t have the resources to do a more complete comparison and contrast between post- and pre- me Hollywood.
Ugh, I need to stop. My head hurts too much to continue this.
Ugh, ow.
Fuck.
But look, the point is this- pretty much everything Hollywood has produced post 1997ish has been at least partially influenced by my actions, relationships and personality, it seems.
And I can say that now with quite a bit of confidence.
So, there you have it.
I hope to get into more details of this later, when my brains aren’t threatening to spill out of my ears.