{"id":77655,"date":"2019-01-27T14:25:55","date_gmt":"2019-01-27T19:25:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gayfriendschat.com\/socialblog\/overlooked-by-the-oscars-why-every-queer-gen-xer-should-see-jonah-hills-mid90s-watch\/"},"modified":"2019-01-27T14:25:55","modified_gmt":"2019-01-27T19:25:55","slug":"overlooked-by-the-oscars-why-every-queer-gen-xer-should-see-jonah-hills-mid90s-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gayfriendschat.com\/socialblog\/overlooked-by-the-oscars-why-every-queer-gen-xer-should-see-jonah-hills-mid90s-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"Overlooked By The Oscars: Why Every Queer Gen-Xer Should See Jonah Hill\u2019s \u2018Mid90s:\u2019 WATCH"},"content":{"rendered":"

Overlooked By The Oscars: Why Every Queer Gen-Xer Should See Jonah Hill\u2019s \u2018Mid90s:\u2019 WATCH<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t say thank you \u2014 saying thank you that means you\u2019re gay<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0Ruben snaps at a stunned Stevie early on in Jonah Hill\u2019s masterful directorial debut\u00a0Mid90s.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a painful and transformational moment in the film at a point when Stevie (played by actor\u00a0Sunny Suljic) still idolizes Ruben\u00a0(played by actor and co-writer\u00a0Gio Galicia)\u00a0so much that his perceived rejection by the older boy<\/a> is seen as an assault.<\/p>\n

Mid90s\u00a0<\/em>is easily among the best American teen<\/a> movies ever. It\u2019s so sublimely well executed that it even\u00a0feels<\/em>\u00a0vintage. The story feels personal and according to Hill it is but it\u2019s not autobiographical \u201cIt\u2019s a story I wanted to tell. I grew up skateboarding in LA in the mid-nineties.\u201d<\/p>\n

The movie has a lot to say about a lot of things but at its core is about the kind of love we have for our boyhood friends that\u2019s often not spoken of especially in the mid 1990s.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s loaded with moments of what we\u2019d call<\/a> toxic masculinity today, but having lived through the time there\u2019s a honesty and authenticity to the love and bonds formed by boys<\/a> in the skate and hip hop milieu that defies categorization.<\/p>\n

The n-word and f-word are thrown around liberally and may trigger certain people but in the words of Dave Chappelle stop \u201cbeing bitch ass<\/a> n****s\u201d and listen: the paucity of words and even the words themselves are all intentional even if they feel improvised. Hill takes the suggestion of the dialogue being improvised as a compliment but insists every word is heavy with subtext and meaning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The movie authentically represents the subculture of skateboarders in the mid-1990s by more than using \u201cskate cult\u201d shortcuts. It documents a\u00a0period when Jonah Hill was a self-described not-great skateboarder but hung out with a group of much better skateboarders. Drawing on Hill\u2019s memories the film is told from the point of view of a boy<\/a>, much like Hill, who didn\u2019t really fit in any where else, who wants to be a skateboarder and be accepted by the older skaters he admires, who takes life-threatening risks with skate tricks and stunts and spends the rest of their time smoking, drinking and trash-talking.<\/p>\n

The skaters are played by pros, but the skaters they play are unlikely to get anywhere.<\/p>\n

They have no money, no connections.<\/p>\n

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Virtually every critic has pointed to the films parallels to director Larry Clark\u2019s 1995 film\u00a0Kids\u00a0<\/em>and Hill is quick to credit its influence; with the caveat that having re-watched it recently he realizes that watching it as a teen<\/a> the HIV angle totally went over his head at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Personally I think Hill gives Clark\u2019s\u00a0Kids<\/em>\u00a0too much credit.\u00a0Kids<\/em>\u00a0even when I saw it as a teenager felt voyeuristic and sexually exploitative using HIV as a bludgeon for bad behavior among kids in 90s. Clark likes to call<\/a> it \u201cA Wake Up Call\u201d presumably because he\u2019d crafted the ultimate fear campaign for parents: a nihilistic HIV-positive boy<\/a> named Telly who tells his friend Casper that he has taken to only having sex<\/a> with virgins.<\/p>\n

Kids<\/em>\u00a0got a lot attention and generated massive controversy over it\u2019s depiction of sex<\/a> and heavy drug use that Clark shot\u00a0 to look cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9 but was in retrospect a hackneyed attempt to intentionally outrage and one that also suggested that this milieu was what comprised skate culture which didn\u2019t ring true.<\/p>\n

Clark\u2019s \u201cgreat American Teen Movie\u201d\u00a0 it was not.<\/p>\n

The other thing that Hill gets right that Clark couldn\u2019t possibly see is the intersection of hip-hop and skate culture both of whose peaks in the 1990s dovetailed. Hill brings this home towards the end of the film when the music (composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) dubbed \u201cThe Night Everything Changed\u201d by GZA from\u00a0Liquid Swords\u00a0<\/em>dictates the visual narrative \u2014and is as part of the films DNA just as a cameo by Del The Funky Homosapien as a wise junky works on its own but works on a dual level if you get the reference.<\/p>\n

The gay<\/a> thank you remark is one of many moments of emotional dysfunction that translates into pure love for boys<\/a> bereft of the language they need. A group of friends who obviously love each other and form an ersatz family but lack the ability to express that love in anything but a constant one up-ness in skating or dissing each other.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of the many moments Hill sets up and executes flawlessly and why the film reverberates on so many levels.<\/p>\n

Mid90s<\/em>\u00a0is in theaters now.<\/a><\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in Chill magazine called: \u201cWhy Jonah Hill\u2019s \u2018Mid90s\u2019 Is the Movie We Need Now\u201d\u00a0published\u00a0by\u00a0permission\u00a0of\u00a0th<\/a>e\u00a0author<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The post Overlooked By The Oscars: Why Every Queer Gen-Xer Should See Jonah Hill\u2019s \u2018Mid90s:\u2019 WATCH<\/a> appeared first on Towleroad Gay News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Overlooked By The Oscars: Why Every Queer Gen-Xer Should See Jonah Hill’s ‘Mid90s:’ WATCH<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n