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Culture reporter at The Independent, and writing about films and things at different places. Commission me please.
In 1999, a fictional pop-rock band in a straight-to-VHS Scooby-Doo movie made every queer, goth and/or weirdo child feel seen.
For her first six weeks filming Terminator: Dark Fate, Linda Hamilton was worried. "You're not sure that everyone's on the same page, and the script isn't quite finished, and you don't really love the direction it's going in," she remembers, curled up on a sofa in a London hotel suite, her boots all over the cushions and her fists clenched.
Filmmaker and musician Elizabeth Sankey grew up immersed in the romcom's golden age, an era of cinema built on Melanie Griffith's Working Girl shoulder pads and Andie MacDowell not noticing it's raining .
I wasn't conceived at Glastonbury, but for the first decade of my life I may as well have been. I was, in many respects, a Glastonbury baby. Born and raised in nearby Bristol, I first visited in 1994, aged two with potty in hand, and attended for the five years that followed.
If the moral panics of early 1990s America were driven by the perceived threat of teenage murderers, from the grimy Cinemax-primed salaciousness of Amy Fisher to the public outcry over Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers-a movie so culturally galvanizing that Bob Dole called it "a nightmare of depravity"-the second half of the decade was all about the threat of teenage sex.
"I don't know how many times I had guns pulled on me," says Jennifer Herrema, reminiscing about her early days as one half of Royal Trux, the seminal noise-rock outfit she founded with former partner Neil Hagerty. The band return this week with White Stuff , a surprise 11th studio album.
Still from Splendor "Love is a mysterious and baffling thing," says a disembodied voice at the beginning of Splendor , the 1999 polyamory rom-com from Gregg Araki that's noteworthy for never, ever being talked about. The words are are heard over lush close-ups of lips, teeth, and groping hands, all bathed in bisexual lighting and soundtracked, like so much of Araki's filmography, by Slowdive.
R.L. Stine didn't invent the teenager. But for a generation of young people coming of age in the 1990s, whose earliest scares arrived via pulpy teen horror novels you couldn't believe your parents were actually letting you borrow from the library, he basically did.
If you consumed pop culture between the years of 1997 and 2001, you inevitably had an opinion on Anne Heche. As one half of America’s first openly gay celebrity power couple, Heche dominated cultural discussion...
There’s no waiting in line, you won’t be charged for admission, and people won’t stand in front of you while you’re gazing at things. But funkiness, while not an obligation, is at least recommended. This is UnCut Funk, a digital museum founded in 2007 that has emerged as one of the most vital spaces for black pop culture history on the internet, preserving the pioneering images and icons of the 1970s and beyond.
For anyone who grew up during the era of her fame, or those who have discovered her in the favourite films of your older, 90s-inclined siblings, Brittany Murphy was one of the greats. Standing at barely five foot two inches, she was tiny but magnetic, with the rare ability to seem both completely approachable and disarmingly terrifying, personas she could switch on and off with remarkable ease.
In the winter of 1998, director David Parker was anxiously awaiting a decision on the US fate of his royal rom-com, Diana & Me. He had brought his film to LA from Australia, where it had been released several months earlier beneath a cloud of unexpected ghoulishness, and was hoping to convince a US distributor to buy it.
In an era of squeaky clean teen movies, Cruel Intentions was a sexy cinematic firebomb, one dressed up in a blood-red bustier and dripping in quasi-incestuous dirty talk. A hotbed of elegant townhouses, preppy fashions and lurid camp, Roger Kumble's Nineties classic feels both entirely of its time and yet oddly ageless.
In SZA's "Drew Barrymore", the confessional alt-R&B chanteuse pines for an estranged lover while repeatedly second-guessing her own behaviour. "I get so lonely, I forget what I'm worth. / I just need to see you. I'm sorry I'm so clingy, I don't mean to be a lot".
I meet Barry Jenkins right at the beginning of the second act of his star-is-born moment; three months after a select few people got their first glimpse at his sophomore masterpiece Moonlight; but before the global accolades and Oscar wins that have since confirmed him as a major new voice in filmmaking.
In the winter of ’96, 20 years ago this week, Scream’s blend of murder mystery, self-referential comedy and era-defining celebrities resulted in box office magic. Exceeding all expectations, director Wes Craven’s story of a masked killer stalking pop culture-savvy teens in a quiet California town became the sleeper hit of the festive period. A sequel was already in the works by March, and by May the film had grossed $100m. It remains the most successful slasher movie in history.