mid90s

Jonah Hill built his first film out of his own Los Angeles childhood and consulted Spike Jonze while writing; Jonze told him to make something personal. With cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt he chose Super 16 mm stock and a 4:3 frame, because the skate videos of that decade circulated on VHS in that shape. The set dressing runs on the same memory. Stevie’s room starts papered in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles posters and is redressed later to register the identity he is assembling. The cast put real skateboarders with little acting history alongside working actors. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross wrote the score, and the song list sets period hip hop next to Pixies, Morrissey and Bad Brains. A24 premiered it in Toronto in September 2018. The production cost $1.7 million, opened to $249,500 from 4 theatres and finished at $9.3 million. Several critics flagged the homophobic and racist slurs in the skaters’ talk; Hill answered that the point of the movie is that nothing is black or white, and that he is not a moralist. A good fit if you want a teenage summer told through changes of place, friction and imitation rather than plot. Not for anyone troubled by watching a sex scene involving the 13 year old character with no commentary attached.