What Famous Person Do You Share a Birthday With?

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Merely a blip, I'd say. I don't remember weeks of people lining up for hours, or constant talk about it, or pop culture after-effects galore.

The first I'll grant, the other two (constant talk, pop culture after-effect) - you just didn't see it. It's all ANYONE I knew talked about for a year. I knew the entire soundtrack, including the bits of dialog that made it onto the album, before I'd even seen the movie. You couldn't turn a corner without seeing a "Bad Ass Motherfvcker" wallet hanging from a chain on someone's belt. And I don't think its affect on movie makers, and movie audiences, can be overstated. Memento doesn't get made if Pulp Fiction hadn't turned the general public on to time-out-of-joint movie telling (not that it was invented for Pulp Fiction, but PF's catapulted it from art-house device to common practice). Fight Club never gets made without Pulp Fiction paving the way for combining violence/comedy/philosophy.

Not that any of that was new at the time, but it wasn't mainstream, and Pulp Fiction, for people of my generation at least, completely altered expectations the audience had of film makers, and vice versa.

Lines and mania are not the only measure of a movie's influence.

By your definition, the Star Wars prequels have more cache than Pulp Fiction.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I'd also like to point out that all the movies you mentioned came out before you turned 30.

The question was seminal moments for people of my generation. Whether they were seminal for YOU can largely be seen as irrelevant. I would venture that, as a rule, people born in the early 40s would ascribe far less significance to Jaws and Close Encounters than you do. Doesn't make your experience of them any less valid.

[Not Afraid]

I only know of one off the top of my head - Hugh Hefner.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

What GD said about Pulp Fiction.

Also - Burton's Batman. I'll never forget that. Changed the comic book and action genres irreversibly, not to mention movie making in general. And everyone talked about it for a year solid. Even I saw it in theaters twice, and I was only 12 years old.

Along those lines...I remember when ET came out on home video and I saw it at a friend's sleepover party. As I read years later, ET was the film that set the VHS market on fire, with it's newly affordable price tag and cross-market appeal. People bought VCRs in order to own that film. All I knew at the time was that I blown away.

[innerSpaceman]

Didn't mean to imply your experience was invalid, GD ... but I just never noted any such thing about Pulp Fiction. I appreciate your providing some details, and I don't get how I missed them.

CP's reference to Batman I grok. I remember all the public hoo-ha about that. When was that released in comparison to Pulp Fiction? I wonder why I never noticed the Pulp Fiction buzz.

I may have slacked off on popular music once I got older, but one thing I've kept my finger on the pulse of is movies. To this day, I'm pretty savvy on what movies hit the zeitgeist. Though apparently, I miss some.

[Strangler Lewis]

Moviewise, at least, I think the premise is getting somewhat lost here. Would you really say that someone born in the late '80s had missed out on a historical moment because they were not around when "Pulp Fiction" or "Batman" came out. For that to be true, there has to have been significant controversy about what they accomplished. I don't think anybody rioted over these art forms the way they did about "Rites of Spring" or other avant garde endeavors in the early 20th Century.

By that standard, I would say that of the movies on ISM's list, "The Exorcist" is the most relevant. I would say that "Deep Throat" is more relevant than any of the other movies that have been talked about so far.

While the fall of the wall has been mentioned, I would think you late '70s types would say that not having lived through Reagan's presidency was a major loss.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Does something have to be contentious to be noteworthy? Have I forgotten the history chapter about the Great Bob Newhart/Mary Tyler Moore Race Wars of '73?

To me, the world was different after Pulp Fiction. There's a pretty clear dividing line in my head between "movies before Pulp Fiction" and "movies after pulp fiction", to a degree where someone who has never known a movie landscape without the influence of Pulp Fiction doesn't really know what it was like to watch movies beforehand. It's very possible (if not likely) that it was less that it directly lead to a rise in certain themes and styles in movies, and more that it made me aware of them and prompted me to seek them out. But if so, I feel pretty secure in saying I was not alone, that a LOT of people's perceptions of movies changed in '94.

Similar to me listing the VCR. It's not necessarily about some singular "I remember where I was the moment X happened" event. What often sticks in my mind are the shifts in how we consume our culture, and how our culture communicates to us. The VCR inexorably changed how we interface with media. Pulp Fiction inexorably changed the tone and style of the media we consumed. Controversial or not, it, from where I was sitting in '94, made a huge impact.

[innerSpaceman]

Well, with the exception of Jaws, I wasn't really pointing to those three movies as ones that made an impact on me and my sphere, but rather on the world at large. You could not escape news stories about The Exorcist, or the public craze over Star Wars.

I think Jaws was more of a thing in my sphere because I lived in a beach town - - where the public reluctance to go on the water was keenly felt and palpable.


I don't think movies need be controversial to make a big public splash. ET was another one, as CP pointed out, that seemed to have a big effect on the public at large. If Pulp Fiction had a similar effect, I completely missed it.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Pulp Fiction had the power to make John Travolta relevant again. 'nuff said.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Batman was 1989, and as mentioned Pulp Fiction was 1994.

Originally Posted by SL

While the fall of the wall has been mentioned, I would think you late '70s types would say that not having lived through Reagan's presidency was a major loss.

Funny gag, but having grown up in a conservative household, I was in a bit of shock when Clinton won in 1992. What would the world be like with a DEMOCRAT in the White House? How could this ever possibly happen? Wasn't it obvious that he was an adulterer? Was he going to tax and spend us all into the poor house? I was truly frightened of this brave new world.