Few years can claim to mix and match and subvert their genre expectations as well as this one. How about a film that combines sci-fi and comedy and serves as a nostalgic time capsule in its own right? Hello, Galaxy Quest. A sci-fi action flick that raises questions about the nature of reality? Try The Matrix. Want a dryly funny comedy about corporate America? 1999 gives you Office Space. The story behind Blair Witch, a film produced on a $60,000 budget that defied all expectations to become one of the year’s biggest hits, sets an intriguing tone for the rest of the book, which explores films from every genre (and seemingly every well-known filmmaker) beneath the scorching Hollywood sun. Told in (mostly) chronological order, the book kicks off with the excellent Blair Witch Project, which premiered at Sundance in January of that year and soon worked its way up to a wide theatrical release. Enhanced by over a hundred interviews with both well-known and unfairly forgotten Hollywood alums, Raftery transports us back to the days of TiVo and Tony Hawk, Bill Clinton and the Backstreet Boys, to remind us what a thrilling and fertile moviemaking year it was. Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen” goes behind the camera, exploring 30 different films released during the final twelve months of the twentieth century. And now, we finally have a book to celebrate and champion the cinematic joys of that incredible year. But perhaps no single year has featured as fresh and creative and “How did that get made?” a crop as 1999. You could argue that other years featured loftier filmic peaks, or more defining examples for individual genres. No, the major game-change occurred on the silver screen, as theaters nationwide exploded with some of the most colorful and innovative films in history. Not for TV, mind you, although there were certainly some impressive TV shows to debut that year ( The Sopranos immediately springs to mind, as does a pair of other shows that I may have written a thing or two about). But spurred it was, particularly on the screen. How much the fear and panic spurred on the late-‘90s cultural revolution, we may never know. As the days shifted inexorably toward the new year – and the literal once-in-a-millennium experience of seeing all the calendar’s digits change simultaneously – fears of the Y2K bug, and how it would impact a technological culture just acclimating to the strange and mysterious force of the Internet, gnawed at many an uncertain soul. Yet despite the booming economy and a relative lack of international tension, an unconscious feeling told many Americans that something was happening. It was the final year in a relatively stable decade, one largely unmarked by war or social upheaval. To the casual nostalgic, the year 1999 may be viewed as an existential tipping point.
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