August 5th, 1994
It seems kinda crazy now, but AIRHEADS was a movie I was excited for ahead of time. Other than a couple of bit parts, it was the first time I saw Steve Buscemi after RESERVOIR DOGS made him an icon. Adam Sandler was still on Saturday Night Live, his biggest movie role having been in THE CONEHEADS, so it seemed novel for him to be a co-star. And I wasn’t really familiar with Brendan Fraser so I hadn’t had a problem with any of his performances yet. More importantly, director Michael Lehmann’s HEATHERS is an important movie to me, he’d since done MEET THE APPLEGATES and HUDSON HAWK, both weird and interesting if not great, so he was a director I followed. And the premise of a rock band taking a radio station hostage to try to get their song played seemed like it had potential for, like, satire or something. I don’t know.
Then I saw it and forgot everything about it. I don’t think I was impressed, but I was sure now it would at least be more interesting as a time capsule. Yeah, I guess, arguably. (read the rest of this shit…)
Before I start one of these retrospectives I research the movies that came out during that summer and put together a schedule. But in the course of doing 1991 I keep stumbling across movies that seem worthy of looking at that I missed because they were limited releases, TV movies or DTV and didn’t show up on any of the release date lists I looked at. So when I realized Adam Rifkin’s THE DARK BACKWARD played on one screen starting July 26, 1991 I thought I should backtrack a little to cover it.
For those not familiar with it, it’s a forcefully weird and uncomfortable comedy that was a favorite of mine in the ‘90s, one of those movies I rented on VHS and made a dub of to show to people who had never heard of it, which was most people. It was Rifkin’s first script ever, written at age 19 after moving to L.A. to try to become a director, made when he was in his mid 20s, and it’s a sense of humor and world view that admittedly appealed to me more when I was closer to that age. But it’s such a distinct and unadulterated vision I can’t help but still kinda love it. 
In 1998, we got the first ever black Marvel super hero on film, Wesley Snipes as 
This movie is a USA Original Picture on the USA cable network. Now you may be thinking that means its not a real movie, why is vern writing about it, it doesn’t matter. Well hear me out bud. I think it does matter. Yes, I think it does matter and I am going to tell you why. Because, my friend, this is a USA Original PIcture. And what that means, in my opinion, is that they are gonna rerun this movie forever. I mean what do you think their gonna play late at night, or early in the afternoon, or at 8:00 am or pm, when they need two hours to fill. Are they gonna play Teen Wolf? Just One of the Guys? X-Man?
