Reality Bites

Year: 1994 - Jersey Films
Director: Ben Stiller
Screenplay: Helen Childress
Starring: Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Steve Zahn, Joe Don Baker, and David Spade

"He will turn this place into a Den of Slack!"

In Ben Stiller's 1994 film, Reality Bites, Winona Ryder plays a recent graduate majoring in Film who aspires to be a serious documentary film maker. Her character, Lelaina Pierce, sees herself as a driven, uncompromising realist. Through the course of the film she finds out how naive she actually is. Lelaina works as an intern for a local morning talk show. She is frustrated with her job because it consists mostly of grunt work, like getting the host his coffee and queue cards in order; and not doing what she was trained to do in school. On her own she is working on a film project. The film consists basically of interviews of her two roommates and a friend. They talk about how they view their lives in the present, and the hopes and dreams they have for the future. When the morning talk show host fails to see the merit in her film, she sabotages his show and gets fired.

Lelaina's two roommates are her university chums, Vickie and Sammy (Steve Zahn). Sammy is gay and that is about all. Zahn has very little to do in the movie, which is a shame, and a waste of his talents. Garofalo is cast to type as the witty, self-defacing Vickie. Vickie has low self-esteem and seems intent on sleeping with as many men as possible; even keeping a journal of her sexual exploits. The one bright spot in her life is how great she is doing at her job at the Gap. Ethan Hawke plays Troy Dyer, the third subject in Lelaina's film; a cynical philosophy major drop-out, rock musician, and all around slacker. Lelaina finds Troy attractive, although she does not really respect him because of his lack of initiative. He has a big crush on her, but feels she is selling herself short and selling herself out. The romance in the film is pretty standard Hollywood fare. Initial attraction, outward hostility, and final reconciliation. The love story moves the plot along, but it is not the main reason the watch this film.

What is entertaining is watching Lelaina's downward spiral as she is confronted with reality. After losing her job, she finds that nobody is really interested in hiring her, because of her lack of experience. Experience she would have gotten if she would have just toughed it out as an intern on the morning talk show. At each interview, she sets her sights a little lower. A very funny scene is where David Spade plays a fast food assistant manager who doubts if Lelaina has the right stuff to cut it in the food service industry. Unlike her college years, her parents won't write her a blank check to bail her out of trouble. Unable to find work she lays on the couch all day in her apartment, running up an incredible phone bill talking to the Psychic hotline. Vickie, whose own career in retail sales is progressing nicely, having been promoted to manager at the Gap, offers Lelaina a job. When Lelaina turns down the job as being beneath her, Vickie sees how snobbish Lelaina really is. Unable to pay her bills, she resorts to stealing from her father using his gas card (this may seem novel to young viewers, but fans of I Love Lucy will recall Lucy doing the same thing with buying groceries on credit and selling the food to the neighbors for cash).

Lelaina eventually meets Michael Grates, an MTV-like executive at an MTV-like network. He offers to pitch her short film to his network. He does this because he is obviously attracted to her. She goes out with him, because she thinks he can help her career. Ben Stiller is terrific as the un-hip producer vice-president of visual programming. He refuses to make his character a one-dimensional stereotype. Scenes between Hawke and Ryder are what most teenage girls will remember. However, the scenes between Stiller and Ryder are the film's best. Lelaina's relationship with Grates, outrages Troy. Grate's bumbling confrontation with the arrogant Troy is great. Stiller plays the scene so that you actually feel sorry for him. His character knows that no matter how nice or successful he is, he still can't compete with the cool, outlaw types like Troy when it comes to attracting women.

What Lelaina does not realize about her film that Gates submits to the network, is that it is pretty tame fare. In an era where Jerry Springer and MTV's the Real World are popular, her interviews are not intrusive enough. She accompanies Vickie to an AIDS clinic, but is too respectful to film the dramatic moment when they draw blood out of Vickie's arm, or when she gets the results of the AIDS test from the medical staff. She talks to Sammy before and after he comes out about being gay to his mother, but she doesn't bring the camera into his mother's living room for the dramatic confrontation. Not surprising, the network takes her film and decides to 'punch it up a bit', ala MTV, with rock music drop-ins and out-of-sequence editing, like in the Real World. Unwilling to sell out, Lelaina walks away from the project in disgust, dumps Grates, and chases after the suddenly vanished Troy, who she realizes she really loves.

Childress does not have another screenwriter credit to her name; which seems odd after the commercial success of Reality Bites. Overall, this film is not great cinema, but not bad either. It does an effective job of showing some of the anxieties of Generation X'ers (though I bet that when some of those X'ers are older they will be laughing at themselves in retrospect). What is a little disappointing about the film is that although it has several original and funny scenes, it degenerates into the same old girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl hangs around until boy shows up again movie.