1999: The Podcast (John Brooks and Julia Sirmons)

When Election premiered on April 23rd, audiences, it is safe to say, did not Pick Flick. Election was a pretty giant dud. With a reported $25 million price tag, the film earned just $15 million at the box office, making it the 98th-highest grossing movie of the year. And that's despite near universal critical acclaim and a number of major awards nominations. What went wrong? A lot, including a very limited release right after Columbine and sandwiched between The Matrix and The Mummy. But Election also defies genre, and having the MTV Productions label attached to it made the movie seem like something it...wasn't. But the growing acclaim for its writer-director Alexander Payne in the years that followed made audience give it a second look, and today Election is something of a cult favorite, as well as powerful time capsule for a lot of the pre-9/11, pre-millennium, post-Clinton angst that made 1999 so unique. John and Joey invited High School Slumber Party host Brian Rodriguez on to chat about this very not-a-teen-movie high school comedy.

Former Minnesota Vikings punter and current science fiction author ("Otaku") Chris Kluwe joins us to discuss our first movie from our Essentials series - The Matrix. Released on March 31, 1999, written and directed by the Wachowskis and starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano, The Matrix was something of an unexpected hit that would go on to become a cultural phenomenon. To this day, we use terms like "glitch in the Matrix" and "red pill" in memes and casual conversation because the things the reference are nearly universally recognizable. Kluwe joined John and Joey to talk about their memories of seeing it for the first time, how well it has aged, and how it has influenced his own writing. Find John on Twitter @ProbablyRealJB Find Joey on Twitter @soulpopped Find Chris on Twitter @ChrisWarcraft For more on Chris's book Otaku: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250203939/otaku

House on Haunted Hill was a huge failure with critics, but at 50th in the 1999 box office, and having made back its budget, it was a reasonable commercial success. It opened number one during Halloween weekend, likely finding an audience in moviegoers eager for anything spooky (and it is pretty spooky...) A remake of William Castle’s 1959 film starring Vincent Price, this House on Haunted Hill was directed by William Malone with a written by Dick Beebe, who also penned Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2) with effects by the legendary Greg Nicotero and Robert Kurtzmann. With a delightfully loopy, hammy performance from Geoffrey Rush and pretty great supporting cast who all understood the assignment, House on Haunted Hill is an imperfect but genuinely enjoyable horror thrill ride. It's also a favorite of our guest Stephanie Gagnon, host of the horror book podcast Books in the Freezer, who joined us way back in Round 1 for The 6th Sense and rejoins us to talk mustaches, Chris Kattan, bad endings, and which is the best Scream movie. Check out Books in the Freezer here: https://booksinthefreezer.com/

Audition does not rank anywhere in the 1999 box office. This is largely because it had no theatrical release in 1999. Rather, Audition played a single screening at the Toronto International Film Festival that year, and would only go on to make a few hundred thousand dollars worldwide during its run. But it developed an enormous cult following since, and has become one of the most revered horror films of its time. And it's easy to see why - Audition is gruesome, inventive, and stunningly unique. And, also, due to circumstances beyond her control, Jenn couldn't watch it. So John did, shares his thoughts, and then they both discuss Penelope Spheeris's unreleased OZZFEST 99 documentary We Sold Our Souls For Rock 'N Roll, which might finally be released at some point in the near future, but, if not, is available in a fairly grainy Vimeo upload. It's great. So is Audition. Watch them both, if you can stomach the latter! If not, just listen to us talk about them!

Michael Hoffman's adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream came at the end of a big decade for Shakespeare adaptations in general. Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet starring Mel Gibson was released in 1990, and other hit adaptations would follow - notably Kenneth Branagh’s celebrated Much Ado About Nothing in 1993, Oliver Parker’s Othello, starring Branagh and Laurence Fishburne, in 1995, and Baz Luhrman’s huge hit Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in 1996, a movie that made ten times its 14 million dollar budget. So when A Midsummer Night's Dream, often cited as the most popular Shakespeare play ever, hit early in summer movie season of 1999, it was basically a sure thing, especially given its stellar cast. However, grossing just 16 million dollars, it barely made money on its 11 million dollar budget. Compare that to Romeo + Juliet or even Much Ado, which made 43 million on a less than 6 million dollar budget, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream has to be seen as a dud. It was met with a very mixed (but largely approving) critical response, but what did we think of it? This week, John and Joey welcome accomplished Shakespearean actor, director, and producer Steven Sabel to talk about it. Steven is also the host of Don't Quill the Messenger, a podcast exploring the Shakespeare authorship question.

Merry Christmas! In the spirit of the season, John and Joey asked their friend (and friend of the network) Juhi Khemani to spend 45 minutes watching the 1999 animated Christmas TV special Olive the Other Reindeer. Olive the Other Reindeer is based on the children's book of the same name by artist J. Otto Seibold and Vivian Walsh. With its unique style, an all-star voice cast, and Michael Stipe, Olive is something of a forgotten gem. And we're here to unforget it! (Except Joey and Juhi, who had never seen it at all...) Enjoy our laid-back Christmas chat and get the fireplace going as you enjoy Juhi's incredible recapping skills and sit in amazement as John regales the listeners with his incredibly random Drew Barrymore story. We hope you and yours are happy and well. Look out for frogs, and see you in 2023!

We have reached the end of Round 2, completed our list of the 18 essential movies of 1999, and it's time for a (Woody's) Roundup last nine episodes. This round saw a lot more comedies, a lot more animation, and some pretty stellar guests. We take a moment to look back at it all, discuss some of what surprised us both, offer ideas on which movies might be ready for a sequel or two, and take preview what's to come (hint: it's a lot!) The show will be back with a new round with a new theme and brand new episodes on January 9th, but in the meantime keep an eye out on your feed for a potential Christmas surprise!  

A critical and commercial failure upon its release, Drop Dead Gorgeous was the 125th-highest grossing movie of 1999. Filmed in the then still novel mockumentary style, the movie about a beauty pageant in Mount Rose, Minnesota was written by a former beauty pageant contestant from Rosemount, Minnesota, Lona Williams (also known as 1985’s Minnesota Junior Miss) and directed by former member of The State and accomplished TV director Michael Patrick Jann. And it boasts a jam-packed cast, including Kirsten Dunst, Allison Janney, Ellen Barkin, Denise Richards, and the film debut of Amy Adams. But in the years since its release, it has become an enormously popular cult favorite, with appreciative audiences finding themselves baffled over its initial critical panning. Drop Dead Gorgeous was requested by return guest Chelsey Weber-Smith, who appeared on our Blair Witch Project episode, this time joined by American Hysteria producer Miranda Zickler and This Ends at Prom co-host BJ Colangelo.

A modest success, Deep Blue Sea was the 29th-highest grossing movie of the year, putting it close the likes of Any Given Sunday, Galaxy Quest, and The Thomas Crown Affair, earning $74 million at the domestic box office on an $80ish million budget but going on to take in $165 million worldwide. Opening on July 30, Deep Blue Sea debuted in 3rd place behind the #1 opening of Runaway Bride and a still-strong Blair Witch Project coming in #2 in its third week. It would continue to stay in the top 10 for a respectable three further weeks. Writing in Wired in 2016, friend of the show and giant Deep Blue Sea fan Brian Raftery noted that it was one of the last movies of its kind, one ubiquitous in the mid-90s, “A]n R-rated B-movie, full of gore and chaos and smart-stupidness.” It felt old-fashioned and anachronistic by the eve of the 21st century, but has gone on to be celebrated as, at once, a shameless facsimile, delightful celebration, and singular exemplar of its specific subgenre. To discuss its legacy and surprising effectiveness, John and Joey invited Deep Blue Sea's most notable fan, Mark Hofmeyer, to explain why it's so great, and to settle which of the film's many doors are best. You can find Mark, and link to his many ventures, on Twitter @Mhofmeyer

Stigmata was, impressively, the 49th-highest grossing movie of 1999, finishing just ahead of House on Haunted Hill at 50th (which is upcoming in this round!) It made $50 million domestically and just shy of $90 million worldwide on a $29 million budget. Opening at #1 on September the 10th at over $18 million on a spooky box office weekend that saw The Sixth Sense take second with $16 million and ALSO opening, Stir of Echoes, debuting at $5.8 million in 3rd, the music video of a movie was directed by, appropriately, a music video director named Rupert Wainwright and cowritten by Tom Lazarus and Rick Ramage, all three of whom having very limited experience in feature films prior to Stigmata. While Stigmata was a modest box office success, it was critically derided and has been largely reduced to a memory of the late 90s. It may well be the 1999est movie we've ever covered, and it does, at the very least, attempt to say something interesting. This week, John and Jenn are joined by John's OTHER co-host at Pod Only Knows, Kelly Baker, to talk about this interesting little relic.

Disney’s Tarzan was, as the 6th-highest grossing movie of the year, a big hit. But it also had a giant budget. Made for $130 million, it grossed $171 million domestically and $448 million worldwide.  Tarzan did well with critics, as well. It was nominated for more than 2 dozen different awards, and won the Oscar and Golden Globe for best original song, Phil Collins’ “You’ll Be in My Heart”.  It holds a an 89 percent Rotten Tomatoes score with more than 100 reviews, and 79 Metacritic score with 27 reviews, putting it right in the middle of the pack of the so-called Disney Renaissance films. But, oddly, this de facto grand finale of the Disney hand-drawn era just doesn't loom as large as the like of The Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, or even Hercules. It will, however, always be in the heart (get it?) of our guest, artist and senior editor at IDW, Heather Antos. She joins John and Joey to talk about why Tarzan is great and deserves its seat in the Disney pantheon. Heather is on Twitter @HeatherAntos

Chris Smith and Sarah Price's heartfelt, quirky, and utterly original documentary American Movie was not one of 1999's major blockbuster hits. And of the 200 movies listed in Box Office Mojo's list of film grosses from that year, American Movie comes in at number 200. But it has gone on to become of the most critically successful and beloved documentaries ever made. The story of filmmaker Mark Borchardt's attempt to make his dream movie on a microbudget in his quiet midwestern town. The film ends up as something of a meditation on artistry, the American Dream, family, and the true costs of the relentless will to create. And it is now considered by many to be one of the greatest documentaries ever made, and in some way helped usher in a new era of documentaries as a commercially viable, culturally relevant genre of film. BJ Colangelo, who established herself as the expert on midwest quirkiness in our Drop Dead Gorgeous episode. rejoins us. And this time, so does Harmony Colangelo (who happen to be married and are also the co-hosts of the podcast This Ends at Prom) as we take a loving look at American Movie. Check out This Ends at Prom on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/thisendsatprom

"Dusk! With a creepy, tingling sensation, you hear the fluttering of leathery wing! BATS!" Bats. So, not every 1999 movie was a paradigm-shifting landmark. Some of them were unabashedly absurd b-movie creature features about bats. Like Bats. 1999’s 127th-highest grossing movie, Bats opened at #9 just in time for Halloween, on the weekend of October 29th. But it nearly earned back its budget in its opening week, taking in 4.7 million dollars, and going on to earn more than 10 million dollars on a US-only release. Bats is also the worst-reviewed film we’ve covered. But is the Lou Diamond Philips-led horror romp a hidden gem? Maybe! So we asked the world's #1 fan of the movie Bratz, Austin Wolf-Sothern, to go to bat for Bats, a movie Joey ended up loving and John ended up rooting for in spite of all its frustrating shortcomings. You can check out Austin's Patreon site here: The Truth About Cats and Bratz

The End of the Affair was released on Dec 3, 1999 in just 7 theaters so that it could bait some Oscars and then going wide on January 21. It would ultimately bring in just shy of 11 million dollars on 23 million dollar budget, though it did open with an astonishing $28,000 per screen average, so maybe a wider initial release would have been wise. The End of the Affair was the second 1999 film in 11 months (after January’s psychological thriller In Dream) from auteur Neil Jordan, best known for 1992’s Oscar winning film The Crying Game as well as 1994’s Interview with the Vampire. It was also the second sweeping period romance in just a couple years for star Ralph Fiennes after The English Patient, leading to many critics and audiences drawing comparisons between the two films. It was also the one film for which 1999's busiest woman, Julianne Moore, was nominated for an Oscar, despite her equal performances in A Map of the World, An Ideal Husband, and Magnolia. Joining John and Julia to talk about this second (incredibly horny) adaptation of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair is film critic, writer, and podcaster Kristin Battestella (I Think Therefore I Review) Kristin is on Bluesky @thereforereview

South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut is...very funny. It's also absurd, obscene, and one of the best movie musicals not called Moulin Rouge of the last few decades. The humor of the show and the movie, though, has always been too things - edgy (bordering on shocking) and timely. South Park the series has produced some of the smartest, most incisive satire anywhere in its 25 years of existence, but that kind of humor doesn't always age well? So how does this movie hold up in that regard? We asked someone who loved it at the time - John's friend George Freitag - if he would still rave to strangers about it at Denny's like he did 23 years ago. Blame Canada, join La Resistance, and save Terrence and Phillip as we talk about South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, a title that refers solely to the the fact that the movie is bigger and longer than an episode of the show and did not have to be edited for television! Find George on Twitter if it still exists @georgefreitag

This week, we take a look at one of 1999’s biggest surprise hits, the 38th-highest grossing movie, which took in a very impressive $103 million on a budget of just $10 million, She's All That. She's All That opened at #1 on January 29, boosted by being nicely timed around Valentine’s Day and by coming out in one of the least-competitive box office periods of the year. Directed by Robert Iscove and written by friend of the show R. Lee Fleming Jr, She's All That boasts one of the most incredibly deep casts of 1990s icons, as well as launching the career of the titular "she" Rachael Leigh Cook. It is the very definition of the nostalgic favorite, and it finds charm and humor in places not typical of the teen rom-com genre. So this week, we invited comedy writer Chase Mitchell to join us down by the broken treehouse to talk all about it, so bring your flowered hat as we see if, all these years later, this ugly duckling is still a swan. You can find Chase on Twitter @ChaseMit  

Four special guests share their fond memories of the movie that (re)started it all: Star Wars: Episode One - The Phantom Menace. This is followed by a rerelease of our Phantom Menace episode, the second in the podcast's history, with Brian Silliman and Matt Romano from the podcast RETURN OF THE POD: A Star Wars Podcast. Enjoy. And may the Force be with you, always.

Run Lola Run only technically meets the criteria of our podcast, but no discussion of the revolutionary, groundbreaking films of 1999 could really be complete without it. Because while it was released in 1998 in its native Germany, its US theatrical release came in June 18, 1999. Starring Franke Potente and Moritz Bleibtreu, Run Lola Run was the breakout feature from writer-director-composer Tom Tykwer. The style and themes of the film share a lot in common with the first film we covered on the podcast and one of your favorites, The Matrix. Beyond just the superficial, like a telephone serving as the catalyst for the plot, both films borrow as much from the kinetic pace and jump-cut editing of music videos of the era as they do from the styles and techniques of traditional filmmaking. Not surprisingly, then, Tykwer, used Run Lola Run as a springboard for much more mainstream (if still pretty avant-garde) success with his collaborations with Wachowskis in films like Cloud Atlas and the Netflix Series Sense8, as well as serving, again with Klimek, as composer for Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix Resurrections. Is the film as vital today as it was two decades ago? To find out, we asked someone who wasn't born when it was released. Jacob Meirovich is one of the editors responsible for the Run Lola Run remix Run Lola Run the Jewels Run, and he joined John and Joey to explain why this movie is one of his favorites. Find Jacob on Twitter @nerdyton Other links! https://twitter.com/exportz_ https://twitter.com/MonMovMad https://twitter.com/dvdivision https://twitter.com/MagnoliaRMSTRD https://twitter.com/SegFest https://www.twitch.tv/exportz https://www.twitch.tv/beesonehundred https://www.twitch.tv/caymanislandspublicaccess https://www.twitch.tv/mondaymoviemadness https://www.twitch.tv/dreamvideodivision https://www.twitch.tv/segfest

Being John Malkovich may well be the 1999est movie we have yet covered on the show. And the only reason it didn’t make it into the first nine (and just barely) is that 1) it really took some time to fully sink in to the culture, sort of like Fight Club, and 2) unlike Fight Club, it has largely been marginalized in recent years, due in no small part to the successive work of both Jonze and Kaufman, who produced films that would go on to greater critical and commercial success than this one did. But it explores many of the same issues that films like The Matrix and Fight Club explore, though with a much more insane glee than those films. And it comes across as the kind of movie that could only hit theaters during the year of Y2K end-times paranoia, when the whole culture sort of shared and “I dunno, fuck it!” kind of attitude. It also happens to be previous guest Brian Silliman's favorite 1999 movie, so John and Joey asked him back to take a little trip through the tunnel on floor seven-and-a-half to get inside the mind Malkovich and talk about this brilliant, groundbreaking classic. Find Brian on Twitter @BrianSilliman

South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut is...very funny. It's also absurd, obscene, and one of the best movie musicals not called Moulin Rouge of the last few decades. The humor of the show and the movie, though, has always been too things - edgy (bordering on shocking) and timely. South Park the series has produced some of the smartest, most incisive satire anywhere in its 25 years of existence, but that kind of humor doesn't always age well? So how does this movie hold up in that regard? We asked someone who loved it at the time - John's friend George Freitag - if he would still rave to strangers about it at Denny's like he did 23 years ago. Blame Canada, join La Resistance, and save Terrence and Phillip as we talk about South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, a title that refers solely to the the fact that the movie is bigger and longer than an episode of the show and did not have to be edited for television! Find George on Twitter if it still exists @georgefreitag

It's our third Christmas special, and once again we turn to the small screen for Christmas with Hallmark Hallo of Fame's One Special Night. Airing Sunday, November 28th, 1999 on CBS, One Special Night stars James Garner and Julie Andrews, alongside Patricia Charbonneau, Stewart Bick ,Stacy Grant, and Danniel Magder. Written by the highly prolific Christmas TV movie scribe Nancey Silvers and directed by accomplished TV director and Emmy winner Roger Young, One Special Night was generally praised by critics and probably beloved by our nation's grandparents at the time. It was then, however, entirely forgotten until John accidentally stumbled upon it on the internet a couple weeks ago! So Julia and John invited film critic Audrey Fox, who recently wrote about the 25 best Hallmark Christmas movies ever, to chime in with her expert opinion! Audrey is on Twitter @theaudreyfox and Bluesky @audreyfox  

At 174th place at the box office, eXistenZ was not one of the big hits of 1999, though the it has some proud company in the 170s, including The Limey, Cradle Will Rock, Princess Mononoke, and Jawbreaker It’s not clear that it ever had the makings of a runaway hit, but it can’t have helped that another heady sci-fi thriller about people who aren’t sure if the reality they exist in is real (and it isn’t) was released three weeks earlier in the form of The Matrix.  Cronenberg was hardly a bankable commercial director, either, and the gooey, heady, psychosexual horror-scifi mashup struggled to find an audience. But critics liked eXistenz. It has a 74 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and 68 Metacritic score with fairly comparable audience scores on both sites.  And, as we discover in this episode, it was oddly prescient on so many levels and way, way ahead of its time.  This week, John and Jenn welcome back Julia Sirmons, a fan of both weird Davids (Lynch and Cronenberg), as we learned in our The Straight Story episode, and friend of the network Jess Collins, who loves eXistenZ and is apparently really into movies that Sarah Polley made in 1999. 

The Rage: Carrie 2 was not a box office success, but it wasn't the disaster a lot of people remember either. Finishing at #91 for the year, just ahead of Go and (somehow) just behind the Melissa Joan Hart/Adrian Grenier vehicle Drive Me Crazy, The Rage: Carrie 2 opened in late March at an impressive #2 behind the 1999 comedy hit Analyze This. But it didn't quite make back its budget, and it as since largely been forgotten about. Which is a shame, because it has a lot to offer. While the film was initially called The Curse and had nothing to do with 1976's Carrie, the similarities led the studio to call for a retooling that set the production back a couple years. And actor Amy Irving, who played Sue Snell in the original, was called in to reprise the role. A last-minute change of director (Poison Ivy director Katt Shea) further impacted the production. But both the fact that The Rage: Carrie 2 finally hit cinemas just a few weeks before Columbine, and its use of a real-life true crime story (the notorious Spur Posse) has led to a lot of revision of its legacy in the quarter century since. As such, we invited horror fan and true crime guy Paul Haynes (collaborator on Michell McNamara's 2018 book I'll Be Gone In The Dark) to talk it out with us.

American Beauty was 1999's Best Picture winner at the Academy Awards. And it was an unstoppable behemoth when it came to end of year accolades, cleaning up as well at the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, SAG, and more. Critics practically tripped over themselves digging deep into their vocabularies to properly articulate the film's genius. And yet, 23 year later, the consensus seems to be that the film is...bad. So what happened (beyond the dark revelations of Kevin Spacey's long history of terrible, abusive behavior and sexual assault)? And is there anything left to make American Beauty a film that can still be appreciated? Is anything about American Beauty still beautiful? This week, John and Joey are joined by the Addington siblings, Aislinn and Tobin, co-hosts of CageClub's very own The Contenders podcast. They discuss their journeys from loving and then really, really hating Sam Mendes and Alan Ball's strange, misguided, ambitious, and hopelessly outdated failure.

Forces of Nature was the 44th highest-grossing movie of 1999, opening at #1 at the box office on March 19th and taking in 17 million dollars in its first week, going on to make 94 million worldwide on a budget of (somehow) 75 million dollars. Starring Sandra Bullock and Ben Affleck at a time when both actors' stars were at a high point and one of just a few features directed by accomplished television director Bronwen Hughes, Forces of Nature was the follow-up to her 1996 adaptation of Harriet the Spy, and written by Family Ties writing alum Marc Lawrence, who also wrote 1999’s The Out-of-Towners and would go on to reteam with star Sandra Bullock for Miss Congeniality 1 and 2 as well as Two Weeks Notice with Hugh Grant. Forces of Nature has a weird and very 1999 visual aesthetic that flies in the face of rom-com tradition, and it dares to at least try something unique and different instead of adhering to genre conventions. It's a stranger, surprising movie. But is it a good one? You can find Julia and her work on her website, juliasirmons.com

It is late 1998, Wild Wild West is well into its production, and things are not going well. The film has gone through a stunning roster of would-be stars - Tom Cruise, George Clooney, and Mel Gibson among them - before landing on Will Smith, who turned down the lead role in an obscure sci-fi picture called The Matrix from a couple of fringe indy filmmakers named the Wachowski siblings in order to sign on to director Barry Sonnenfeld's sci-fi/Western mashup adventure. The stars have little chemistry. None of them are happy with the material. Wild Wild West has burned through six writers and several reimaginings. Sonnenfeld - coming off a string of hits in The Addams Family, Get Shorty, and his previous team-up with Smith, Men in Black - sits at a table opposite producer Jon Peters. "I've lost control of the film," he tells Peters. "It has no story, no core, no charm - the jokes don't work and the tone is all over the place." Peters takes a deep breath. He looks down at the table and then up at Sonnenfeld. Suddenly, he slams his fist on the table, shoots up from his chair, and screams at his director. "DAMN IT! I don't care if it has no plot! I don't care if the actors hate it!! I don't care if it's miscast!!! I. ONLY. CARE. ABOUT. GIANT. METAL. SPIDERS. Get that spider onto the big screen. Nothing else matters!!" Peters takes another breath. He sits back down. He looks a startled Sonnenfeld right in the eye. "Nothing. Else. Matters." Wicky wicky wah wah. We're joined this week by Dan Cólon (@DanColon) and Mike Manzi (@the_mikestir), hosts of The Monsters That Made Us.

Never Been Kissed was the 43-rd highest grossing movie of the year, just edging out last week's Forces of Nature (though proving far more profitable) at the box office. Never Been Kissed opened April 9th, pitting it against The Matrix in its second week, but still managed to post an impressive second place finish for the week, taking in 14 million dollars. This is largely thanks to the overwhelming popularity of star Drew Barrymore, coming off consecutive romantic hits in 1998 with Ever After and The Wedding Singer. It's a strange movie with an, um, uncomfortable premise. It's part farce, part tragedy, part love story (all of which tends to be true of Shakespeare's plays, from which it draws its narrative template). Never Been Kissed also became a huge home video hit, watched a rewatched by its target demo for years after, as Barrymore's "Josie Grosie" became an Elder Gen-X/Millennial folk hero. This week, John and Jenn welcome comedians, podcasters, and, as of recently, authors Trae Crowder and Corey Ryan Forrester to talk about high school trauma, inappropriate relationships, the ethics of the 1990s, and Drew. Trae is on Twitter @traecrowder Corey is on Twitter @coreyrforrester

Charles Dickens' 1846 A Christmas Carol is one of the most adapted works of all time. And his protagonist, Ebenezer Scrooge, has been portrayed by the likes of Jim Carrey to Bill Murray, George C. Scott to Mr. Magoo, Alastair Sim to Scrooge McDuck, and Michael Caine to Will Ferrell. And spins on A Christmas Carol have appeared in everything from Beavis and Butthead to Doctor Who. But rarely have they been as faithful as the version from 1999 starring Patrick Stewart as the miserly businessman whose life changes one fateful night after a visit from three ghosts. Starring an incredible cast including Stewart, Richard E. Grant, Dominic West, Ian McNiece, Breaking Bad's Laura Fraser, and Ted Lasso's Jeremy Swift, the TNT original movie is a jewel in the vast sea of Christmas Carol adaptations. So this Christmas, we invited our friend Alex Steed back to share in the Christmas spirit...er...ghost?...as we dig in to this wonderful version of a classic story. Merry Christmas! And, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

Mystery Men was 1999's 68th-highest grossing movie, and an overall money loser. It arrived at a strange but opportune time, as it both lampooned and heralded the rebirth of the superhero genre. The early stages of its production date to the mid 1990s, when movies like 1998’s Blade, often cited as the birthplace of the modern superhero film, began preproduction. Based on the comic book series by Bob Burden, Kinka Usher's Mystery Men was first offered to Danny DeVito and Stiller, who both turned it down for personal reasons. Usher landed the movie thanks to his reputation as a great director of commercials. But the movie's massive cast of established talent and big ambitions proved too much drama for Usher, who, according to Hank Azaria, said "I'm going back to commercials when this is done. I've had enough. I'd much rather do my cool little one-minute shorts that I make than deal with all this nonsense." Mystery Men is very much a product of its time, and is now considered a cult classic. It also stars the late Paul Reubens, so we decided now was the time to talk about it, and we invited filmmaker, pop culture junky, and die-hard Mystery Men evangelist Becky Ellis to join us.

It's our first anniversary, and so we invited fellow 1999-podcaster Dahlia Balcazar to talk about her podcast, 1999 FOREVER, and her hand-picked 1999 movie: The Haunting! Dahlia tells us why she decided to make an audio essay about the year of all years, and we touch on what was going on in other areas of culture outside of the movie theater, like Y2K and The Sopranos. Dahlia's requested movie was Jan Debont's follow-up to Speed and Twister, the 2nd major...um...adaptation of Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House. Originally planned to be release with the novel's title intact, it was shortened to The Haunting to avoid confusion with another 1999 movie, The House on Haunted Hill. Starring Lily Taylor, Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Owen Wilson, The Haunting was not a disaster at the box office, cracking the top 25 for the year. But it is, nonetheless, a disaster...and not in the way it's supposed to be, like Twister. Is there any reason to watch this movie? Find out! But there are definitely reasons to listen to 1999: Forever, which you can find here! https://www.salvadordahlia.com/1999-forever

Topsy-Turvy, writer-director Mike Leigh's ambitious period musical about the creation of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado", was not a commercial hit, losing about $14 million of its $20 million budget. But like almost all of Leigh's work, it was a critical smash, remaining one of his best-reviewed movies and the recipient of a number of awards, including two Oscars, and landing on a number of year-end best-of lists in 1999. Topsy-Turvy never really had "commercial hit" written all over it, though. It offers a uniformly spectacular cast including Jim Broadbent, Timothy Spall, Kevin McKidd, Lesley Manville, and Andy Serkis, and absolutely none of them were at the time (or really are today) bankable stars. And much of its appeal depends on how you feel about (or even if you know the first thing about) the work of Gilbert and Sullivan, hardly tapping into the zeitgeist of mainstream 1999 popular culture. And Leigh's most commercially successful film had been 1994's Secrets and Lies, a runaway, word-of-mouth indy hit and critical and awards season darling. But Leigh is one of the most consistent directors alive, both in terms of the quality and very nature of his films. So in our final "hosts choice" round selection, we invited Joey's co-host on How to Win the Lottery, "Shreds", himself a giant Leigh stan, to discuss Leigh's first real dip into the waters of grand period drama.

Runaway Bride, the other 1999 Julia Roberts rom-com, was the 9th-highes grossing movie of the year, sandwiched between The Mummy at 8th and The Blair Witch Project at 10th. And while Runaway Bride did far worse with the critics to the vastly superior Notting Hill, its box office performance was likely boosted by two factors: unlike Notting Hill, it didn't open against Star Wars, and - more importantly - it was billed as a spiritual sequel to the movie that put Julia Roberts on the map, 1990's smash hit Pretty Woman, reuniting stars Roberts and Richard Gere and director Gary Marshall. Runaway Bride is a written-by-committee tonal, structural, and thematic mess. But it has its charms, and it boasts an insanely talented supporting cast (and a picturesque Maryland town) that keep the comedy and appeal afloat. Jenn's person Greg Pilgrim joins the show to talk about eggs, lamps, and the scientific term for a group of orioles.

Stanley Kubrick’s final film (and perhaps the nail in the coffin for Hollywood's most famous couple), the psychosexual thriller Eyes Wide Shut, was released on July 16th, two days after the limited release of The Blair Witch Project, and on the day that birthed a thousand QAnon conspiracy theories as John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy died in a plane crash while everyone in America kept listening to Destiny’s Child’s Bills Bills Bills. The film was, at the time, well received if not overwhelmingly praised by critics and audiences. But it’s worth noting that the critical division is unusually stark, with critics who reviewed it positively giving the film overwhelming praise and vice-versa, with very little in between (Slate’s David Edelstein called it “a somnolent load of wank,” for example). And, to be fair, many critics have given the film a second look and come to their senses. But the question now is not whether or not Eyes Wide Shut is a great film (it is) but whether or not it’s Kubrick’s greatest film. In this episode, John and Joey welcome New York Magazine feature writer Lila Shapiro, who wrote the 2019 essay What I Learned After Watching Eyes Wide Shut 100 Times for Vulture. Check out more of Lila's work here.

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.

Three to Tango was the 126th-highest grossing movie of 1999, sandwiched between two movies we have covered already, Drop Dead Gorgeous at 125, and Bats at 127. It opened in 8th place (behind Bats, which it would ultimately outgross) on the very not rom-com season of October the 22nd, going on to gross 10 and a half million dollars worldwide on a 20 million dollar budget. Three to Tango - which, we can't stress enough, features no tango or dancing of any kind - was written by Aline Brosch McKenna, who would go on to write romcoms like 27 Dresses and Laws of Attraction in addition to the likes of Morning Glory, Cruella, The Devil Wears Prada, and We Bought a Zoo, along with Rodney Patrick Vaccaro, who did not go on to write those things Starring Matthew Perry, Neve Campbell, Dylan McDermott, Oliver Platt, John C. McGinley, Bob Balaban, Deborah Rush, Kelly Rowan, and (appropriately) Sue for Swingers Patrick van Horn, Three to Tango has a stellar cast, but it was not one of the highest grossing romcoms of the year. She's All That, however, was. So we invited the writer of that movie, R. Lee Fleming Jr., to talk to us about Three to Tango. Lee is on twitter @QualityShorts

Fight Club may well have been 1999's most important box office bomb. With a budget of $65 million, the film barely made back half that at the domestic box office, and barely cleared $100 million worldwide. Yet it remains one of the cult classics of the 1990s, and people often remember it being a lot more successful than it was. A lot of that has to do with the format that would define film in the pre-streaming era of the late 90s and early 00s: DVD. Its themes of toxic masculinity, cultural decay, overbearing capitalism, fascism, and how all those things are expressed in violence seem particularly relevant today. And so this week, John and Joey invited Amanda Moore (aka Frank) - who spent a year infiltrating the world of the alt-right and neo-Nazis and has spent her time since exposing them and writing about her experience - to talk about her love of the film and how well it reflects what is happening beneath the surface of American culture today. You can find Amanda on Twitter @noturtlesoup17 and on TikTok at noturtlesoup17

We take a quick detour to discuss the 1999-adjacent Investigation Discovery series QUIET ON THE SET, which looks into the toxic, harmful atmosphere at Nickelodeon in the 90s and 2000s under showrunner Dan Schneider, as well as the subsequent instances of child sex abuse as detailed by DRAKE AND JOSH star Drake Bell. You can find Jenn's coverage of the documentary and some of its fallout on Distractify, including this breakdown of what's been going on with Dan Schneider of late: https://www.distractify.com/p/where-is-dan-schneider-now

Starring Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard as themselves – or people who happen to have their exact names – and written and directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, 1999's 10th-highest grossing film, The Blair Witch Project was produced on a budget of less than a half million dollars and grossed $248.6 million at the box office.  One of the founding films in the "found footage" genre, the film was perhaps most famous for the unprecedented marketing campaign that led up to its release. The movie made innovative use of a relatively novel outlet called "the World Wide Web" and deliberately blurred the lines between fact and fiction, giving the film an air of reality that actually fooled some its audience into believing they were watching real documentary footage. Heralded by critics for its ingenuity as well as its genuine scares, Blair Witch may well have been the buzziest of buzzy movies ever. But its legacy is slightly more complicated. While it was a huge hit with the public at the time, it is less liked by audiences now, who often complain that the movie doesn't hold up on its own, having relied too much on the multimedia "project" of which the film is merely the final ingredient. This week, we talk to Blair Witch superfan and host of American Hysteria Chelsey Weber-Smith about what made it a great movie then and why we should still love it today. Chelsey on Twitter: @AmerHysteria  

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

What better time than this, the intersection of Spooky Season and our cultural Brenaissance, to talk about the beloved Brendan Fraser vehicle, The Mummy?! The 8th-highest grossing movie of 1999, The Mummy is - there's no other way to say it - weird on a lot of levels. It feels completely out of place among its peers, embracing both state-of-the-art digital effects and very old school practical effects, it pays homage to the adventure films of the golden age of Hollywood while also somehow functioning as modern blockbuster. It's not for everyone (including, at is turns out, Joey), but it was so earnest and unexpected at the time that it still has some pretty rabid fans, including our guest for out The Matrix episode, the first movie we covered on this podcast, Chris Kluwe, who returns to talk about bugs that crawl under your skin, whether this should be compared to Indiana Jones, and whether anybody should bother with the sequels (or the Tom Cruise version!)

The 145th highest-grossing movie of the year, Dick was released on August 3rd and going on take 12th place at the box office. Through no fault of its own, it was thrown into a death slot, as the films that outgrossed it included juggernauts like The Phantom Menace, American Pie, Runaway Bride, The Blair Witch Project, and a little movie that opened at the same time and took #1, The Sixth Sense, Despite a generally warm and positive critical reception Dick would go on to make just 6.3 million dollars on a 13 million dollar budget. Which is a shame, because as part commentary on the Lewinski scandal and part parody of All The President's Men, Dick has more to say than your typical teen comedy. With two very talented stars at its core - Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams - It's more Election than American Pie, and portraying the Watergate conspirators as an insane, bumbling mess actually feels relevant. You know who loves Dick? Our guest, Alex Steed, who appeared on our episode for the 1999 movie that starred that other girl from Dawson's Creek, Go. Alex is on Bluesky @alexsteed

It's time for our Round Four recap and it's a very special one! After 40 episodes and 36 movies, and two specials...big changes are coming to 1999: The Podcast. Is it our very own Y2K?? Are we pivoting to video??? Will we both be replaced by cheaper AI alternatives????? No. But find out what IS coming following a look back a the nine movies from the round. We'll recap our favorites, our biggest surprises, our least favorites, and how Wild Wild West artificially inflates the round's total box office and lowers its overall Rotten Tomatoes score! Plus, we'll preview what's ahead for Round 5 (and, yes, there is going to be a round 5!)

Stir of Echoes was David Koepp's second directorial venture following the success of his 1996 thriller The Trigger Effect. Adapted from a lesser-known work by genre legend Richard Matheson, the film hit at a weird and perhaps unfortunate time. Just 6 years off his massive breakthrough penning Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (a film he wrote when he was not yet 30 years old), Koepp was riding high in the industry. But Stir of Echoes was a low-key ghost story thriller involving a boy who can see and talk to dead people, and, suffice to say, a lot of that oxygen had been sucked up when it arrived more than a month after the runaway hit The Sixth Sense. Still, it was a modest, fairly low-budget success that enjoyed critical admiration for the most part, especially in the form of Kevin Bacon's well-tuned performance - one that could have easily gone off the rails in the hands of a different actor. But is Stir of Echoes actually good? Is it scary?? We invited horror journalist Mary Beth McAndrews to talk to us about her experiences with the film and ask those very questions. You can learn more about her here: https://www.mbmcandrews.com/

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.  

Of the 18 movies that made our first two rounds, Office Space was far and away the most abject failure. Released in the frigid box office month of February and featuring an advertising and marketing campaign that was so bad classes should be taught about it, Office Space went on to become the year's 134th-highest grossing movie, falling short of the box office hauls for beloved, critically-acclaimed classics like Chill Factor and Wing Commander.  The live-action feature debut of Beavis and Butt-Head creator Mike Judge deserved so much better, and it would soon get it. Office Space caught on when Comedy Central began airing it (on heavy rotation) shortly after its release on home video, in August of 1999, and the movie began to develop the audience it always deserved. It was very funny then. But does it still work now? Or is its satirizing of late-90s office life lost on the audiences of 2022. We pose this question to podcaster, comedian, writer, and all-around spooktacular person Jenn Tisdale, cohost of Too Many Jennifers.

Blast from the Past was 75th highest-grossing movie of 1999, opening at #4 at the box office on Valentine’s Day weekend and going on to take in $40 million worldwide on a $35 million budget. The first of two 1999 collaborations between director Hugh Wilson and star Brendan Fraser, Blast from the Past included a stellar supporting cast, including Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek, Dave Foley, Nathan Fillion, Joey Slotnick, and the legendary Jennifer Lewis. Critics were pretty even split on it - partly because it was inevitably compared to 1998's Pleasantville - and none were especially effusive in their praise, but it went on to find a charmed audience on home video and has emerged as the quintessential "hidden gem" in the years since. One if its fans is actor Samm Levine, who graced the small screen in 1999 in the beloved (and prematurely canceled) television series Freaks and Geeks. He joined John and Jenn to talk Walken, swing dance, and his most famous creation, the beloved character Zoot Suit Ryan.

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

Our second Round 3 film, Jawbreaker, was requested by our friend and Office Space guest Jenn Tisdale. Jawbreaker was released in theatres on February 19th, making it one of the earliest 1999 films we’ve covered to date. The sophomore feature from writer Darren Stein, Jawbreaker is a John Waters-esque psychedelic high school satire. The 171st-highest grossing movie of the year, it earned 3.1 million on a 3.5 million dollar budget and was a complete failure with critics, holding just a 14% Rotten Tomatoes score and a 22 Metacritic score. The film was really intended for home video consumption, however, and it quickly became a cult classic in that form. Additionally, several critics gave the film a second look much later and came to a much different conclusion. How does it hold up? And does Jenn still love it? And what about that Marilyn Manson cameo? Find out this week!

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

The shortest-titled movie of 1999 (and among the shortest ever), Go was Doug Liman's follow-up to his 1996 debut, a collaboration with writer John Favreau, Swingers. There is some shared DNA between the two movies - both explore a very specific subculture in LA at a very specific time in the 90s, both drip with cool, and both borrow heavily from other films while creating something all their own. But they're also very different. And Go was often labeled by critics - who overwhelmingly praised the movie - as "Tarantinoesque". Of all the movies we've covered, this one is perhaps the most of its time (by design) and, weirdly, among the least aged, as Go's emphasis on clever dialogue, fast-paced storytelling, and characters that feel like real people make it a movie that is every bit as enjoyable, frantic, surprising, and oddly sweet as it was 24 years ago. John and Joey invited two giant Go fans to discuss all of this - friend of the network Jess Collins, and the co-host of the podcast You Are Good, Alex Steed. Jess is on Twitter @jayarekay_ Alex is on Twitter @alexsteed  

The Talented Mr. Ripley is one of a few movies that just barely didn't make our first 18, so we were delighted to learn the talented Bridget Todd wanted to give it a shout-out. The second motion picture adaptation of the novel by Patricia Highsmith, Ripley was released just under the wire on December 25th, going on to earn $127 million on a $40 million budget. The film stars Matt Damon, a pre-Goop Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cate Blanchett, Jack Davenport, and James Rebhorn, with music by Gabriel Yared and adapted and directed by Anthony Minghella, just a couple years of his big Oscar haul for The English Patient. Bridget joins John and Joey to argue that, far from being merely an incredible period-specific psychodrama, Ripley has a lot to say about the ways the world was changing in 1999, and is just as relevant as it was 23 years ago...and 70 some-odd years since Tom Ripley first graced the page. Find Bridget on Twitter (where you can link to the rest of her work) @BridgetMarie

Bowfinger could not have come at a better time for any of its three biggest names. In 1999, Frank Oz, who had a string of successful collaborations with Steve Martin, was coming right off the critical and commercial hit In and Out in 1997, which happened to star 1999’s most cursed star yet, one we’ve talked a lot about lately, Kevin Kline. But Martin was in need of a return to form, having come off a string of duds like A Simple Twist of Fate, Mixed Nuts (now a cult Christmas favorite), Father of the Bride 2 and the dire Sgt. Bilko and The Out-of-Towners.  And Murphy’s career had hit a similar snag before the late 90s. After a string of huge comedy hits like 48 hours, Trading Places, and Beverly Hills Cop in the early 80s, Murphy’s track record began to sour, with the diminishing returns of Another 48 Hours and Beverly Hills Cops 2 and 3, so-so comedies that never made the best of him like Distinguised Gentelman and Boomerang in the early 90s, all culminating in the legendarily terrible Vampire in Brooklyn in 1995. But Murphy had been given another shot of life with Tom Shadyac's The Nutty Professor remake in 1996. It was Bowfinger that really played to the strength of Oz, Martin, and Murphy, allowing Murphy to showcase his wild comic versatility, Martin his sharp comic writing, and Oz his ability to craft a great, quick-paced feature-length comedy. Even though Bowfinger isn't the best-known or best-remembered of any of the their work, it was a critical hit and is beloved by those in the know, including filmmaker and editor Greg MacLennan, who joined the show to talk about his love of this love-letter to scrappy filmmaking. You can learn more about Greg and his work at electricowlcreative.com

Notting Hill was the 16th-highest grossing movie of 1999, opening Memorial Day Weekend, May 28th, and in 2nd place earning $27.7 million (behind #1, The Phantom Menace, which, then in its second weekend, earned $67 million). It would go on to make $116 million domestically and $364 million worldwide on a $42 million budget. Notting Hill was the second of several successful ventures between Grant and writer (and Mr. Bean creator) Richard Curtis, following 1994’s Four Weddings and a Funeral and predating 2001’s Bridget Jones's Diary (which Curtis adapted from Helen Fielding's enormously popular novel) and 2003’s Love Actually. It has gone on to be one of the most revered and beloved romantic comedies of all time, so to kick off our round on 1999 RomComs, we give you our longest episode ever: A love letter to great comedy, peak Hugh Grant, and the joy of close friendships. John's wife Courtney joins the show for the first time, and John and Jenn also talk to a very special guest - the iconic extra who Hugh Grant refers to affectionately as Cookie Monster in the opening voiceover.

We present to you our very first Bonus Features episode, where we do a little contextual research for an upcoming episode. To start - for absolutely no reason at all, what are you even talking about? - we take a look at some of the more interesting media concerning the former Worst President of the Last 100 Years and the famous thing he did that used to pass for a scandal until *waves hands around wildly*. Julia had to endure a lot of Nixon stuff for this one, so the least you can do is make it worth her time by listening.

It's the Sarah Rose Cosmetics Mount Rose American Teen Princess Round 3 Review Show. One year and 27 movies later, we're wrapping up round 3 and previewing our fourth round - this time, it's hosts' choice, as John and Joey each pick 4 movies and one they decided on together. But before that, they are joined by their friend and #1 fan Tyler Birth to take a look back at the highs and lows of our request round. Thanks to all our guest from this round: Bridget Todd (The Talented Mr. Ripley) Jenn Tisdale (Jawbreaker) Cody and Garth from Least Haunted (Ravenous) BJ Colangelo, Chelsey Weber-Smith, and Miranda Zickler (Drop Dead Gorgeous) Mark Hofmeyer (Deep Blue Sea) Heather Antos (Tarzan) Dahlia Balcazar (The Haunting) Sebastian Major (The Messenger) and Austin Wolf-Sothern (Bats) You can find Tyler on Twitter @OhThatTyler

Boys Don’t Cry holds a 90% Rotten Tomatoes critics score and a pretty astonishing 86% Metacritic. And with scores like that, one might get the impression that was and is a universally admired classic. Billed as a dramatization of the events leading up to the 1993 rape and murder of 21-year-old trans man Brandon Teena, it was nominated for 57 major awards and won 37 of them. 14 of went to star Hilary Swank, 6 to costar Chloe Sevigny, and 8 to writer director Kimberley Peirce. And Swank of course won the Oscar for Best Actress, while Sevigny was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. But critics at the time almost always misgendered Brandon in their reviews. And the film effectively erases the trans identity of its protagonist, which some argue is the result of a conscious and unforgiveable narrative and creative decision made my Peirce, who cast a cisgendered woman to play Brandon and who shut out essentially all input and participation from anyone in the trans community.  In the 23 years since its release, Boys Don't Cry has not aged well. But this week's guest, writer and trans horror historian Logan Ashley Kisner, argues that it's not all about aging - Boys Don't Cry is a fundamentally, irredeemably transphobic film. Find Logan Ashley on Twitter @transhorrors and find links to his writing at linktr.ee/transhorror His essay on Boys Don't Cry is available here: “Boys Don’t Cry” Has Always Been Violently Transphobic Trans Rights Organization Links: Transgender Map Advocacy Page National Center for Transgender Equality Transgender Law Center Trans Justice Funding Project The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund The Trevor Project Trans Lifeline Transgender Media Portal TransAction Florida Trans Pride Initative TransOhio  

John and Joey talk to "Drop Dead Gorgeous" director and founding member of "The State" Michael Patrick Jann. Jann shares his thoughts on the film's journey from critical and commercial dud to beloved cult classic, and shares what he's been up to lately (spoiler, his second feature film is due out this year!)

A dismal critical and commercial failure that has gone on to be a genuine cult classic, Idle Hands came in at 162nd at the box office, earning less than $2 million on a $25 million budget. It probably didn't help that it was released 10 days after Columbine, and audiences maybe weren't in the mood for a high school-set slasher film. Or maybe it's that Idle Hands is a bafflingly, deliriously confused movies, with tones shifting wildly, sometimes within the same scene. But either way, it can't be accused of being lazy, and everything that makes its way to the screen is endlessly interesting (if for not always the best reasons). And it also includes some great performances, including a lot of improvised banter between Seth Green and Elden Hensen, and a tirelessly committed performance (along with some excellent physical comedy) from Devon Sawa. Plus a pre-Dark Angel Jessica Alba slinking all over the place. Joining John and Jenn this week is comedian, photographer, writer, and Idle Hands evangelist John-Michael Bond, who you can find on Twitter @BondJohnBond

Beyond the Mat is a movie that appears NOWHERE in the 1999 box office charts, mainly because it only screened once in 1999 in Los Angeles on October 22, thanks in no small part to Vince McMahon fuckery (though it did get a limited release in March of 2000). Beyond the Mat was directed by Barry Blaustein, an accomplished comedy screenwriter, and it features the real-life stories of wrestling legends Terry Funk, Mick Foley, and Jake the Snake Roberts, Though it wasn't a commercial hit, it received a mostly favorable critical response, and has gone on to become a beloved documentary, especially among wrestling fans. Joining John and Julia to discuss it is Ross Benes, author of the upcoming book 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted our Bizarre Times. His book will be available everywhere in April. You can learn more about Ross and his work on his website: www.rossbenes.com

The Sixth Sense was 1999's most unexpected phenomenon. And it really was a phenomenon. Filmed on a $40 million budget, the film made a respectable $26 million its opening weekend, but great reviews and word of mouth propelled it to a $293.5 million domestic box office gross and a worldwide gross of just shy of $673 million. It was the only movie to stay #1 for 5 weeks aside from The Phantom Menace, and, most impressively, it made at least $20 million all five weekends it was #1, making more than $29 million its final weekend. Not bad for a decidedly not-action movie centered around Bruce Willis, a year after Armageddon and then at the early stages of the waning days of his star power, and a relatively obscure child actor named Haley Joel Osment, and written and directed by an almost entirely unknown filmmaker named M. Night Shyamalan. So much of The Sixth Sense rests on its legendary plot twist, so already knowing how it ends, we invited Stephanie Gagnon, host of the horror book podcast Books in the Freezer, to join us in taking another look at the movie to see if it still holds up as a haunted horror movie. Check out Books in the Freezer here.

Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia was just his third feature film. It remains both his most beloved and most divisive. Released at the very end of 1999, Magnolia was largely lauded by critics, received a number of year-end awards and nominations, and mostly overlooked by audiences. But like Fight Club before it, it found second life on DVD and quickly found an adoring audience, in addition to the source of a number of ubiquitous pop culture references, largely due to Tom Cruise's outrageous motivational speaker character, Frank T. J. Mackey. Still, three hours of high drama, weird dramatic flourishes, multiple storylines, falling frogs, and Aimee Mann sing-a-longs doesn't exactly sound like everyone's cup of tea. But it is the cup of tea of Relevant Magazine's senior editor Tyler Huckabee, who joined John and Joey to talk all about this classic in our round one finale! Find Tyler on Twitter @TylerHuckabee

10 Things I Hate About You has become a generational favorite, joining the ranks of The Breakfast Club and Fast Times at Ridgemont High among the teen movie pantheon. Filmed on a $13 million budget, it made $38 million at the domestic box office, making it the 53rd top grossing movie of the year (one ahead of Fight Club). It would go on to break $60 million worldwide. But while it boasted a very impressive cast of very good actors, it had virtually no star power, and the central draw was a virtually unknown young actor named Heath Ledger. Neither Joseph Gordon-Levitt nor Julia Stiles were yet household names. And it was released against another big 1999 movie called The Matrix, and right in the crowded midst of the revival of the teen movie that had begun a year earlier with the release of Can’t Hardly Wait, and had already in 1999, by the time of 10 Things I Hate About You's release, seen the releases of She’s All That, Varsity Blues, Jawbreaker, and Cruel Intentions (to say nothing of the juggernaut that was American Pie, released several months later).  So why did 10 Things work so well, and find such a devout audience, that it makes it so beloved today? John and Joey invited one such devotee, author Kelly J. Baker, to tell them. Find Dr. Baker on Twitter @kelly_j_baker

The Straight Story was that other 1999 movie about someone trying to get to a place called Zion. In all seriousness, the beloved film about a man at the end of his life driving his lawnmower across the Midwest to visit his estranged brother is notable for a number of reasons. It's a rare G-rated non-aminated movie (though the rating itself is a source of some controversy). It comes from legendary weirdo auteur David Lynch, most famous for films like Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, and the TV series Twin Peaks, and yet it is astoundingly, aggressively naturalistic and warm. And it's the final film for stuntman-turned-actor Richard Farnsworth, whose performance carried the movie and whose health deteriorated as the film's shoot went on. He would die shortly after its release. And while the awards behemoth American Beauty has aged like fine milk, The Straight Story, which also featured on a ton of critics' best-of lists from 1999, has only earned more and more admirers along the way. Among them our guest today - Lynch fan and film writer Julia Sirmons, who you can learn more about here: juliasirmons.com

The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc was...big in France? Actually, The Messenger was indeed touted as "Oscar bait" prior to its release in November of 1999. Luc Besson was fresh off of his most commercially successful hit The Fifth Element, and so reteaming with Fifth Element star Milla Jovovich (who at the time was married to Besson) for a big, epic, gritty retelling of the Joan of Arc story seemed like a sure thing. Add in star power from John Malkovich, Dustin Hoffman, and how could you go wrong? Well, The Messenger goes wrong a lot of ways. But it's also not the abysmal disaster some people seem to remember. The Messenger, for all its faults, tries to do something different with the well-worn Joan of Arc story, and it has a lot to recommend it (just maybe not its run-time). This week, Our Fake History host Sebastian Major, who covered Joan in his podcast's first season, joins John and Joey to share his thoughts on the award-winning epic that wasn't.

Was 1999 the best movie year ever? We think it might be, and in this podcast we’ll be exploring the movies that made that year so memorable. Before we start, we invited journalist and author Brian Raftery, who quite literally wrote the book on the movies of 1999 — Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen — to share his thoughts on why it was such an important year for movies and for our culture. Find John on Twitter @ProbablyRealJB Find Joey on Twitter @soulpopped Find Brian on Twitter @BrianRaftery For more on the book, Brian's website is https://www.brianraftery.com/

Sleepy Hollow qualifies as one of the biggest movies of the year, and it was certainly one of the most anticipated - an expected return to form from a slumping Tim Burton. But it didn't quite work out that way. Released on November the 19th of 1999, Sleepy Hollow was one of the most expensive movies ever made at the time, with a budget of $100 million, and while it wasn't a flop, it only barely broke even. While Burton reteamed with some of his most reliable collaborators - star Johnny Depp, composer Danny Elfman, and production designer Rick Heinrichs - and while what appears onscreen is unquestionably beautiful to look at, critics and audiences found Sleepy Hollow...well, hollow. This week, Dan Colón, of CageClub's very own The Monsters That Made Us podcast guests as our old friend Becky Ellis subs in the co-host seat as we wrestle with our feelings for Tim Burton's most beautiful gorefest.

Toy Story 2 is our final film of round 2 and our final pick for the 18 essential movies of 1999. Originally conceived as a direct-to-video sequel, much in line with Disney's strategy of releasing its other sequels to blockbuster animated films like The Return of Jafar and The Lion King 2, it soon became clear that Pixar's vision for Toy Story 2 was far too big and too bold not to grace the big screen. So instead of relegating it to video, Disney triples the budget of the original Toy Story and wound up with a mammoth holiday season hit. The film went on to win a number of awards and wind up on several critics' year-end Best Of lists, and it, along with its predecessor, holds the rare honor of a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating. For this episode, film critic and Pixar enthusiast Aaron Neuwirth joined the show to talk about Toy Story 2's place in the series, where it ranks among the best of Pixar's work, and that damn Sarah McLachlan scene. Aaron is on Twitter @AaronsPS4 You can check out his website here.  

The fact that American Pie was the twentieth-highest-grossing movie of 1999 wouldn't suggest that film was a mammoth hit, but it was. American Pie made back its tiny 11 million dollar budget and then some in its opening weekend. And it went on to gross more than 100 million domestically and 235 million worldwide, making it one of the most profitable movies of the year (an honor obviously belonging to the freakishly budget-to-gross ratio obliteration machine that was The Blair Witch Project). But like 10 Things, it had almost no star power whatsoever. While much of the cast would go on to various levels of fame, the most famous cast member at the time was Alyson Hannigan, who had spent three seasons playing Willow Rosenberg on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, followed by Thomas Ian Nicholas, who had starred in a couple of popular family movies in the 1990s. American Pie was also buoyed by some surprisingly warm critical praise. But do the movie's gross-out humor and depictions of sexual angst still hold up? Find out in this episode, where John and Joey invited Tessa and Nicole from the Doom Generation podcast to talk about what happened that one time in band camp. Everything you need to know about Doom Generation you can find out here!

Opening CONFUSINGLY on February 26th on less than a thousand screens, 200 Cigarettes was the 143rd-highest grossing movie of the year, going on to make just shy of 7 million dollars on a 6 million dollar budget. Directed by first-time director and accomplished casting director Risa Bramon Garcia, written by first-and-only time screenwriter Shana Larsen, and produced by first-time producer Betsy Beers, 200 Cigarettes was panned by critics shrugged off by audiences. But over time, due in part to its compelling cast and 80s nostalgia, it developed a cult status of sorts. And, well, it's one of only a handful of New Year's Eve films that exist, and since this is something of a bummer New Year's, we thought, well, just as the characters bury their emotions in 200 cigarettes in the film, we'd do the same with 200 Cigarettes.

John and Jenn take a crack at explaining the baffling summer 2024 box office. Why did PLANER OF THE APES and FURIOSA fail where INSIDE OUT 2 succeeded? Is the summer movie season a thing of the past? And why do people seem less inclined to go to the movie theater for just ANYTHING? Covid? Prices? Capitalism? All of the above? Find out what we have to say in this special summer episode about America's increasingly, depressingly empty cinemas.

In this end--of-round recap mini episode, Joey and John share their thoughts on the first nine movies, pick a "winner" from round one, and preview what's up ahead in the second round: The Back Nine. Thanks to Brian Raftery, Chris Kluwe, Brian Silliman, Matt Romano, Lila Shapiro, Chelsey Weber-Smith, Stephanie Gagnon, Aislinn and Tobin Addington, Amanda Moore, Logan Kisner, and Tyler Huckabee for sharing their time and thoughts with us! We'll be back to on Monday, 8/22 with a new episode!

At the 1999 box office, the Dennis Rodman action vehicle Simon Sez came in at... Well, actually, we don't know, because Box Office Mojo's rankings end at #200, which was American Movie, which made $1,165,795. Simon Sez made $292,152 (somehow) on a budget of...well, quite a bit more than that, probably. You've probably never heard of Simon Sez, and we hadn't either, until Joey came upon it accidentally and it was just a movie we couldn't pass up. Simon Sez is a very strange relic of its time, a Eurotrash martial arts action movie, directed by the guy who wrote the Iron Eagle trilogy, that keeps switching genres, featuring an unbearable performance by an unbearable human being (Dane Cook) that was meant for Robert Downey Jr. It is, to use a variation of a phrase we often use on the show, a movie that could only be made at the time. But it's so bizarre and bad that it's impossible to not be fascinated by. We watched it so you don't have to, but we had a great time talking about it with filmmaker Matt Stuertz. You can find Matt on Twitter @MattStuertz

Mickey Blue Eyes was just the 61st-highest grossing movie of 1999. The only major US release of the weekend of August 20, 1999, Mickey Blue Eyes opened in third place while The Sixth Sense continued to dominate the box office. It would go on to make $54 million on a $75 million budget. Directed by Kids in the Hall alum Kelly Makin and written by Robert Kuhn and Adam Scheinmann, it was ostensibly a romcom vehicle for Hugh Grant and Jeanne Tripplehorn but works better as a romcom between Hugh Grant and James Caan. Critics were iffy, with most still praising Grant for carrying the movie with a pitch-perfect performance playing to all his strengths as both a comic and dramatic actor and acknowledging the fun of the premise as well as the strength of the jokes but faulting it for failing to carry those things through. Many also pointed to the fact that, upon release, Mickey Blue Eyes was already the inferior Hugh Grant movie after Notting Hill, and the inferior mob comedy after Analyze This. Joining John and Jenn to talk about it this week is writer Meghan Leigh Paulk. You can find out more about Meghan on her website.

Pushing Tin was the 135th-highest grossing film of the year, grossing 8.4 million dollars on a 33 million dollar budget, opening April the 23rd, 1999 as the #4 movie at the Box Office behind The Matrix, Life, and Never Been Kissed. Directed by Four Weddings and a Funeral and Donnie Brasco director Mike Newell and written by Cheers co-creators Les and Glen Charles, Pushing Tin felt like a sure thing, especially given its very of-the-moment core cast of John Cusack, Cate Blanchett, Billy Bob Thornton, and Angelina Jolie. But it never left the runway (get it) with audiences or critics. What went wrong? And is Pushing Tin a forgotten gem, or was everyone right about it 25 years ago? This week, John and Jenn are joined by comedian Joe Kwaczala to talk about this weird, uneven, confused, and very pre-9/11 romcom-dramedy thing! You can find Joe on most of the socials @joekjoek

Arlington Road was 77th highest grossing movie of 1999, released 25 years ago last week on July 9th, unfortunately crowded out by some other big releases, namely American Pie, released the same day, as well as Wild Wild West, Tarzan, and The General's Daughter, all in their second weeks. Directed by acclaimed music video director Mark Pellington (Pearl Jam's "Jeremy"), with a script from future Oscar nominee Ehren Kruger. a score by David Lynch’s personal composer Angelo Badalamenti, and starring two of the finest actors of their generation, Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins, Arlington Road has a lot going for it. 25 years later, it's also turned out to be one of the most prescient and relevant movies of the year. At times unbearably tense, deadly serious, and eye-rollingly goofy, it's ambitious, uneven, and incredibly entertaining. Lawyer, occasional movie producer, and writer Matt Belenky is probably the world's most biggest Arlington Road fan (prove us wrong!), so John and Jenn invited him on to look back on this very 1990s genre film. Find Matt on Twitter @JagrWatch68

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

Disney’s Tarzan was, as the 6th-highest grossing movie of the year, a big hit. But it also had a giant budget. Made for $130 million, it grossed $171 million domestically and $448 million worldwide.  Tarzan did well with critics, as well. It was nominated for more than 2 dozen different awards, and won the Oscar and Golden Globe for best original song, Phil Collins’ “You’ll Be in My Heart”.  It holds a an 89 percent Rotten Tomatoes score with more than 100 reviews, and 79 Metacritic score with 27 reviews, putting it right in the middle of the pack of the so-called Disney Renaissance films. But, oddly, this de facto grand finale of the Disney hand-drawn era just doesn't loom as large as the like of The Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, or even Hercules. It will, however, always be in the heart (get it?) of our guest, artist and senior editor at IDW, Heather Antos. She joins John and Joey to talk about why Tarzan is great and deserves its seat in the Disney pantheon. Heather is on Twitter @HeatherAntos

There were no movies starring the late Gene Hackman that were released in the US in 1999, but two of his films released in the US in 1998 – Tony Scott’s Enemy of the State and Robert Benton’s Twilight – were released in Europe in 1999. So because plenty has been said about the former, we are taking a look today at the latter. Directed by Kramer and Kramer writer and director Robert Benton and written by Benton and novelist Richard Russo, who also teamed up with star Paul Newman on 1994’s adaptation of Russo's Nobody's Fool, Twilight stars Newman with a supporting cast of Gene Hackman, Susan Sarandon, James Garner, Stockard Channing, Reese Witherspoon, Margo Martindale, John Spencer, Live Shrieber, the dying body of M. Emmet Walsh, and Giancarlo Esposito. Twilight was a box office failure and was met with a lukewarm reception by critics, but it is a very good case study in the question as to whether or not some actors - like Hackman - could be good in absolutely anything.

1999's 180th-highest grossing film, Antonia Bird's Ravenous never finished higher than 18th at the domestic box office, earning just over 2 millions dollars on a 12 million dollar budget. And it was never released theatrically outside North America. Ravenous was also the recipient of decidedly (often wildly) mixed critics' reviews, all of whom seem to agree that the movie shifts tones so often and dramatically that it’s hard to actually pin it to any one genre. But like our previous movie, Jawbreaker, it has since developed a loving cult following. So this week Joey and John invited back Logan Ashley-Kisner, who considers Ravenous one of his favorite movies, to help them with the intro, and then speaks to the hosts of the podcast Least Haunted, Cody and Garth, about the history and folklore that serves as the movie's inspiration, as well as a healthy debate about whether Guy Pearce is actually attractive. Logan is on Twitter @transhorrors and his Linktree is available here Check out Least Haunted at their website: https://www.leasthaunted.com/

The Phantom Menace was, at the time, universally referred to as "the most anticipated movie of all time", and it's unlikely that any movie will ever again carry that distinction. But with anticipation like that, how could it not disappoint? The movie has gone on quite a journey in the last 23 years, from "the first Star Wars movie in 22 years", to "the biggest disappointment of the summer", to "the worst Star Wars movie", to now, where it finds itself beloved by a generation of fans who grew up on it and admired by older fans who have come to overlook its obvious flaws in favor of its considerable (and many) charms. Just in time for Star Wars Day, May the Fourth, Star Wars fans (and prequel lovers) Brian Silliman and Matt Romano, the hosts of the Star Wars podcast Return of the Pod, join us to talk about all the ups and downs of The Phantom Menace, and how the film has become a nostalgic favorite and continued to find new fans two decades later. (NOTE: John keeps referring to the span between RotJ and TPM as 17 years. It was 16. John is old and time is an illusion. 1999: The Podcast regrets the error.) Check out Return of the Pod on the web. Return of the Pod on Twitter: @ReturnOfThePod Brian on Twitter: @BrianSilliman Matt on Twitter: @mattromano