Blog Tour: The Last Decade of Cinema by Scott Ryan #blogtour #interview #nonfiction #television #giveaway #Rabtbooktours @ScottLuckStory @RABTBookTours

Momma G 10:37 AM

Nonfiction, Television, Performing Arts

Date Published: Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Publisher: Fayetteville Mafia Press, 2024 (FMP Publishing)

“I feel like Scott Ryan could have written this directly to me and others in our generation who have basically ‘given up’ on movies. It is at once tribute and eulogy, so bittersweet.” – Screenwriter Helen Childress (Reality Bites)

“The nineties are lucky to have Scott Ryan.” – Actress Natasha Gregson Wagner (Two Girls and a Guy, Lost Highway)

Ah, the nineties. Movies were something in those days. We’re talking about a decade that began with GoodFellas and ended with Magnolia, with such films as Malcolm X, Before Sunrise, and Clueless arriving somewhere in between. Stories, characters, and writing were king; IP, franchise movies, and supersaturated superhero flicks were still years away. Or so says Scott Ryan, the iconoclastic author of The Last Days of Letterman and Moonlighting: An Oral History, who here turns his attention to The Last Decade of Cinema—the prolific 1990s. Ryan, who watched just about every film released during the decade when he was a video store clerk in a small town in Ohio, identifies twenty-five unique and varied films from the decade, including Pretty Woman, Pulp Fiction, Menace II Society, The Prince of Tides, and The Shawshank Redemption, focusing with his trademark humor and insight on what made them classics and why they could never be produced in today’s film culture. The book also includes interviews with writers, directors, and actors from the era. Go back to the time of VCR’s, DVD rentals, and movies that mattered. Turn off your streaming services, put down your phones, delete your Twitter account, and take a look back at the nineties with your Eyes Wide Shut, a White Russian in your hand, and yell “Hasta la vista, baby” to today’s meaningless entertainment. Revel in the risk-taking brilliance of Quentin Tarantino, Amy Heckerling, Spike Lee, Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson, and others in Scott Ryan’s magnum opus, The Last Decade of Cinema.

INTERVIEW

What was your main drive to write this book?

I really wanted to pay tribute to the movies that shaped me as a writer and a consumer of films. I hate that many of these movies like The Ice Storm, Two Girls and a Guy, Pump Up The Volume, or Pleasantville are being forgotten. If I can get people to take another look at some of these films, I will be very pleased

What do you hope readers will learn by reading this book?

I hope that readers will realize that the art they consume shapes them as humans. I think if we all empathize with characters who are like us and different from us, that we will learn how to be kinder to strangers when we encounter them in the real world. I think the more we understand people who are not like us, the more the world will become a nicer place. I am not sure that we can really learn about our neighbors if we are only watching superhero movies.

Did you do much research when planning this book?

? I did a lot of research. I watched 160 films, I read a ton of interviews from back in the day, I watched a lot of DVD bonus features and director's commentaries. I wanted this book to be more than my opinions. I wanted them to be fact based. I also had my song run the numbers on how many tickets were sold for superhero movies in the 90s compared with other decades. So research is always a big part of my books. Plus I interviewed screenwriters from the 90s and actors.

Did you have any main people who helped you in the process of this book or influenced you to write it?

I am always helped by so many people when I work on a book. IN this book Tyger WIlliams, Helen Childress and Alexander Payne all talked to me about their screenplays that they wrote in the 90s. I also have a wonderful editor in David Bushman. Many of my friends kept telling me movies from the 90s that I had to check out to be sure nothing was left behind.

How long did this book take you to write from initial thought to hitting publish?

I worked on it for about four years. I had to watch 160 movies, so that took some time. I also was trying to get lots of interviews and that always is difficult. The actual writing probably only took 6 months. Once I am ready to write, it usually happens quickly. It is all the planning and research that takes all the time.

Do you have plans to write more about this topic or new topics?

I don't like to do the same thing over and over. A few people have asked me if I am going to do a book about 90s music now. That isn't my specialty. I will move on and do something new. All my books have been about art and pop culture. I am sure I will continue in that area. It usually depends on who I can get an interview from and then I base a book around that topic. I really don't like repeating myself and once a book is done, I am usually really sick off that topic.

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