1999: The Podcast

Released December 25th, Christmas Day, Julie Taymor's debut feature Titus was 187th-highest grossing movie of the year, going on to gross just about three million dollars worldwide on an 18 million dollar budget.

Titus, adapted from the Shakespeare (or possibly not Shakespeare) play came on the heels of Taymor hitting the cultural spotlight with her enormous Broadway success The Lion King. Titus makes great use of her maxilamist sensibilities, given that it is Shakespeare's most violent, sensationalist play - which also explains why it is among his least-popular, and generally considered one of the worst not titled Henry VIII.

With an incredible cast and eye-catching style, and with Shakespeare adaptations as popular as ever, many assumed Titus would ride a wave of critical success and award accolades to boost its box office, but it was not meant to be.

Beautiful, violent, over-long, absurd, inspired, and tonally inconsistent, Titus is more a curiosity now than a classic.

This week, we talked about it with film critic Carmen Paddock, who, in her own words, "specializes in changing distribution methods and cross-media adaptations, where the limitations of film, literature, music, and time are explored and exploited to reveal new sides to old narratives."

Find Carmen on Bluesky @carmenchloieReleased December 25th, Christmas Day, Julie Taymor's debut feature Titus was 187th-highest grossing movie of the year, going on to gross just about three million dollars worldwide on an 18 million dollar budget.

Titus, adapted from the Shakespeare (or possibly not Shakespeare) play came on the heels of Taymor hitting the cultural spotlight with her enormous Broadway success The Lion King. Titus makes great use of her maxilamist sensibilities, given that it is Shakespeare's most violent, sensationalist play - which also explains why it is among his least-popular, and generally considered one of the worst not titled Henry VIII.

With an incredible cast and eye-catching style, and with Shakespeare adaptations as popular as ever, many assumed Titus would ride a wave of critical success and award accolades to boost its box office, but it was not meant to be.

Beautiful, violent, over-long, absurd, inspired, and tonally inconsistent, Titus is more a curiosity now than a classic.

This week, we talked about it with film critic Carmen Paddock, who, in her own words, "specializes in changing distribution methods and cross-media adaptations, where the limitations of film, literature, music, and time are explored and exploited to reveal new sides to old narratives."

Find Carmen on Bluesky @carmenchloie

Girl, Interrupted was the 70th-highest grossing movie of 1999, released in a very limited run just before Christmas to make it eligible for awards season. It would ultimately go on to earn $48 million worldwide on a $40 million budget.

Directed and co-written by Copland director James Mangold from the memoir "Girl, Interrupted" by Susanna Kaysen, the film was a longtime dream project for star Winona Ryder, who fought hard for years to get it made. It was presented as obvious Oscar bait, but the film had a mixed response from audiences and critics, who found it uneven and lacking a narrative core.

Still, Girl, Interrupted earned universal praise for its performances, including the breakthrough one from Angeline Jolie, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as the sociopathic Lisa.

It was also praised for what at the time was an unusually nuanced and sensitive portrayal of mental health disorders. But how has Girl, Interrupted aged? Was it too ahead of its time, or is it too of its time to stand on its own today?

John and Julia welcomed Film Twitter superstar Jane Altoids for her take.

Jane is on Twitter @staticbluebat

If there was a surprise critical and commercial failure for the year, it was Forman’s highly anticipated, Oscar-baiting Andy Kauffman biopic, Man on the Moon.

Among other things, Man on the Moon was touted as a second chance for Carrey to nab a best actor Oscar, following what had roundly been seen as an epic snub for his denial of the award for The Truman Show. 

It had a lot going for it - an exploration of the tragic and mysterious life of an obscure but beloved cultural figure, directed by the Oscar-winning director of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus. Forman had just come off the critical and commercial success of The People Vs. Larry Flynt, written as well by Alexander and Karaszewski, who, with that film and 1994’s Ed Wood had developed a reputation as having cracked the elusive biopic formula, which they described as the “anti-biopic".

Unfortunately, while it did earn his his second consecutive Golden Globe, Man on the Moon was shut out from the Oscars, and the film seemed to find some way to disappoint basically everyone, even those who loved it.

This week, we invited cultural critic and giant Man on the Moon fan Sean Malin to talk about Carrey, Kaufman, and that most uneven of genres, the biopic.

Sean is on Twitter @cinemalins

Payback was something of a surprise - and largely forgotten - minor hit, riding mostly on the coattails of Mel Gibson at the height of his popularity and box office appeal, having come off a string of hits, including 1994’s Maverick, 1995’s Oscar-winning Braveheart, 1996’s Ransom, and 1997’s Conspiracy Theory, as well as the prestige of Brian Helgeland, who had just won an avalanche awards, including the Oscar, for writing LA Confidential as well as the aforementioned Conspiracy Theory.

But the production of Payback also opened a window to some of the personal and professional issues surrounding Gibson that would become increasingly apparent in the years leading up to his career crash in the mid-2000s.

Unhappy with the direction of the film Helgeland wrote and director, Gibson had Helgeland fired and reworked and reshot much of the movie, adding Kristofferson's character to the story and changing much of the tone and arc of the main character Porter.

As a result, Payback is actually two movies - the theatrically-released Gibson vision released in 1999 and the Helgeland cut, released on Blu-ray 7 years later, officially titled Payback: Straight Up.

We had writer and Payback superfan Jim Woods on to talk about both!

You can find out everything you need to know about Jim on his website: Jim Woods Writes

It's a big September 1999 episode, featuring the one and only Dan Colón!

In September, we head into the final quarter of the year and welcome some landmark moments in pop culture, with the arrivals of:

Plus Chris Cornell, Martin Lawrence, earthquakes, Y2K, and more!

Find Dan on Twitter @DanColon

Spike Lee's Summer of Sam should have been the perfect 1999 movie.

After Lee’s breakthrough 1989 film Do the Right Thing, he was on a roll in the 90s, giving us 1990s’ Mo Better Blues, 1991’s Jungle Fever, 1992’s Malcolm X, 1994’s Crooklyn, 1995’s Clockers, 1996’s Get on the Bus, and 1998’s He Got Game.

And so a gritty, Scorsese-esque New York crime like Summer of Sam headlined by the rising star Brody and Leguizamo at his most popular seemed like a no-brainer. And maybe because its nearly two and a half hour run time just didn’t appeal to audiences in the middle of summer, for some reason SoS (which served as a near-perfect metaphor for the anxiety of pre-Y2K America) just never caught on with critics or at the box office.

But has our equally volatile (and true crime obsessed) 2024 America made the film newly relevant? And where does it stand in Spike Lee's oeuvre?

To discuss, John welcomed back film and culture writer and frequent guest Julia Sirmons to the show.

Late August is often called the Dog Days of Summer and...boy, did the end of August 1999 every live up that reputation!

August 16-31 was something of a drag. After a summer filled with huge moments in entertainment, culture, and news, suddenly, for a couple weeks, not much happened.

But not nothing! We still got the requisite end of summer bad movie dump, featuring:

Plus chart-topping albums from Christina Aguilera, The (Dixie) Chicks, and Lou Bega! Plus, pop singer Vitamin C drops the album that would give us 2000's graduation anthem "Graduation (Friends Forever)"!

Plus, Regis Philbin for the first time asks America, "Is that your FINAL ANSWER?"

Also...East Timor begins its journey to becoming a new country!

This week, John is joined by good friend of the show Julia Sirmons for the most boring two weeks (but a fun episode of) 99@25!

For an end-of-summer special, Dan Colón, of CageClub's very own The Monsters That Made Us podcast, joins John to talk about the greed, mayhem, and madness that defined Woodstock 99.

The Woodstock that was just so great that it convinced everybody to never Woodstock again, 1999's 30th anniversary festival (inspired by the relative success of the 25th anniversary Woodstock 94) was...a lot of things. But mostly it was an epic disaster that somehow managed to take bad situations and terrible ideas and make them much worse.

What went wrong?? Well, aside from everything, John and Dan explore some of the specific problems that sent Woodstock 99 into a fiery tailspin, and discuss why this is such and important milestone in how our culture got to where it is today.

We're nearing the end of summer, and this time we take a look back at a very entertaining first half of August, 1999.

August 1-15 gave us:

This week, John is joined by friend of the show Tyler Birth (with a brief appearance from his new mouse friend!) as they take a look at a little bit of Monica, Jessica, Sandra, Rita, and everything else that mamboed our way in the beginning of August!

But, to make up for it, we have the delightful and hilarious Jacki Krestel (@zombie_jacki) to join John in a walk down 1999 memory lane!

July 1999 included:

Plus, join John and Jenn next week for a more in-depth look at what is universally agreed to be the best Woodstock in another summer special episode.