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'Best. Movie. Year. Ever" an affectionate look back at a perfect year of movies

'Best. Movie. Year. Ever" an affectionate look back at a perfect year of movies

In December 1999, the question of the day and sleepless middle of the night was: Will it be the end of the world as we know it?


"BEST. MOVIE. YEAR. EVER. HOW 1999 BLEW UP THE BIG SCREEN"
By Brian Raftery
Simon & Schuster ($28.99).

Y2K was looming, and everyone worried that computers wouldn’t be able to recognize the year 2000 and society would be rocketed back to the Stone Age. That didn’t happen, of course, but it overshadowed recognition that 1999 had been one heckuva year at the movies.

Brian Raftery remedies that with a new book called “Best. Movie. Year. Ever.” It’s subtitled “How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen.” The title is a takeoff on what he calls the internet’s “preemptive critics, who would look at a lone leaked costume photo or read a secondhand review of a trailer and immediately declare BEST. MOVIE. EVER.” Or worst, also in all caps.

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It was the year of “The Blair Witch Project,” “Run Lola Run,” “Office Space,” “The Matrix,” “Varsity Blues,” “Election,” “Rushmore,” “The Iron Giant,” “Eyes Wide Shut,” “The Sixth Sense,” “The Best Man,” “The Wood,” “American Beauty,” “Fight Club,” “Being John Malkovich,” “Three Kings,” “The Insider,” “Boys Don’t Cry,” “Magnolia” and “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace,” plus many others.

Although you could argue that other years were greater (in December writers at The Washington Post variously made cases for 2007, 1982, 1974, 1955, 1946 and 1939 along with 1999), Raftery lays out his evidence like a lawyer delivering unassailable closing arguments.

He calls 1999 “the most unruly, influential, and unrepentantly pleasurable film year of all time.” Movies, made by returning masters or upstarts, were audacious and redefined genres and storytelling.

They forced moviegoers to consider questions of identity and destiny, and even the films that quickly fell from box-office grace found new life on home video or cable.

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Raftery, a nationally known writer who covers film, television and internet culture, doesn’t just recap the movies or rely solely on previously published pieces meticulously acknowledged in endnotes. He conducted 130-plus new interviews with actors, directors, writers and crew members, and the distance allows reflection and freedom to relive jubilation, anxiety or disappointment.

I’m not sure why “Toy Story 2” doesn’t get a shoutout, but “Best” bursts with behind-the-scenes details about near-bankruptcies, role rejections, encouraging phone calls, screen saviors, and Bruce Willis’ sixth sense that M. Night Shyamalan was making something remarkable.

Bill Murray, for instance, so believed in “Rushmore” that he took a massive pay cut and later signed a blank check in case the studio wouldn’t pay for an expensive shot. A producer recalls the actor said, “If it costs 40 grand and you’ve got to get it — get it.” The check was never cashed.

Michael Jackson lobbied unsuccessfully to play Jar Jar Binks in “The Phantom Menace,” a role that triggered internet attacks, death threats and even suicidal thoughts for actor Ahmed Best. “Blair Witch” actress Heather Donahue remembers, “I had people coming up to me on the street, mad at me for being alive” and not dead, as hoodwinked watchers believed.

Hatred of his lucrative day job writing for TV’s “Cybill” proved golden for Alan Ball. “I was so disgusted with myself, because I felt like such a whore,” so he poured his rage into his “American Beauty” screenplay.

During a costume fitting for “Boys Don’t Cry,” actress Hilary Swank asked if she could bring her dog to her trailer. Turned out there were no trailers and pay of just $75 a day. She and director Kimberly Peirce weathered some tension, including over Swank’s request that her then-husband come to Texas to lend moral support. The filmmaker was scared that might take Swank out of character. Chad Lowe arrived, and Swank ultimately won an Academy Award.

That was nothing compared to George Clooney and director David O. Russell during the final days of “Three Kings.” A Warner Bros. executive received a call: “We’ve got a problem. George is trying to pound David, and David is choking George.”

The book underscores how one festival’s downcast filmmaker can be another year’s darling. In 1999, Christopher Nolan’s “Following” played at the Slamdance Film Festival, but all anyone talked about was “Blair Witch” at nearby Sundance. Nolan would prove his brilliance and staying power with such motion pictures as “Memento,” “Inception,” “Dunkirk” and the Dark Knight trilogy.

The author acknowledges despicable developments such as charges against Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey and how television “has become a place for deeply imaginative, often completely unrestricted ideas — the kind that used to be found mostly at the movies.”

“Best. Movie. Year. Ever,” is a chance to revisit films you loved or loathed, a guide for what to stream, and a reminder that movies were written off once before and then the lights went down and 1999 came up.

Barbara Vancheri is former movie editor of the Post-Gazette.

First Published: April 13, 2019, 2:00 p.m.

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"Best. Movie. Year. Ever. : How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen," by Brian Raftery.
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