Hacker Cinema
Falling Down
1993 · Film · 113 min
Directed by Joel Schumacher
An ordinary man frustrated with the various flaws he sees in society begins to psychotically and violently lash out against them.
7 positive3 negative22 neutralfrom 32 commenters
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36 comments on Hacker News
I meant to write quite a long response to your comment, but let me just bring it down to a single question: How is your feeling different from melancholia?
There is and always will be mainstream, niche, the unknown and everything in between. There was always very little new material and a lot of works just gained recognition when their zeitgeist was long overdue, too. I think experimentation is hard, and it's even harder to justify experimentation in the evolving economic climate.
Genres are meant to be collapsed, or rather they should blend and dissolve into each other. The earlier (and good) seasons of The Simpsons are a poster child when it comes "flattening and duplicating old material". Almost every episode cites a movie or work of literature, and there was nothing wrong with it! It's part of why I understand the 90s as a cultural era of citations, and I had to grow up with that sentiment. It took me quite some time to understand that we moved past it.
Nowadays, we are fortunate enough that a lot of things from the past 10 decades have been digitized and are readily available on demand. That's amazing! Nothing is stopping me from asking myself some naive questions, like "What makes a good drama?" or "If Die Hard is considered to be a Christmas movie, why isn't Falling Down considered to be a summer movie?". I think there is still stuff to explore.
I'll just leave this unfinished thought with a recommendation to a niche movie I discovered recently: Sleep Has Her House (2017)[0]
[0]: https://scottbarley.com/Sleep-Has-Her-House
It could be to reduce discrepancy (and the disappointment) between marketing and reality.
Reminds me of this monologue from the 1993 movie Falling Down [1]:
> See, this is what I'm talking about. Look at that. See what I mean? It's plump, juicy, three inches thick. Look at this sorry, miserable, squashed thing. Can anybody tell me what's wrong with this picture?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciG8AKdp-GM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_Down. It was the #1 movie in the U.S. for a couple weeks after release, made for $25M and grossed $96M.
Falling Down is a brilliant film. I think Duvall’s sober, gentle, unfazed detective is exactly what makes it work.
The entire movie D-FENS is running into people who trigger him or push back and justify his rage. So the whole time you’re rooting for him. He’s the protagonist! And then you get to the end and the detective just doesn’t give him the same response. But you never worry that Duvall is about to be a victim. And I think it’s very difficult to portray a character who is seasoned, gentle, grandfatherly, but doesn’t come off in the slightest as prey.
The movie is a bit of a gut punch because I think it does encourage you to cheer for him sticking it to The Man and the Nazis and the corporations, only to realize ,alongside Douglas, that “I’m the bad guy?”
He was very underrated in Falling Down, a sleeper of a film everyone should see at least once.
I appreciate you taking the time to explain it to me. I think I'm just a little fed up about the whole concept since a lot of series are just like this. Making fun of stupid people is an honest thing I guess, but mostly it just seems kind of forced.
Me having just seen 5 minutes of it, could be wrong, but the impression I got was that the satire wasn't social criticism or directed towards the powers at be, as I think satire should be, but towards the little guy. Which I just don't think is that funny.
You mention the movie Falling Down, but at no time during this, did I feel anything but sympathy for the main character. In contrast to The Chair Company, which made me develop a real antipathy for the main character in just the first 5 minutes.
I’m reminded of the film Falling Down but I’ve given you an Internet point (upvote) for fighting the good fight. If good people do nothing, evil will triumph. In Ireland, we don’t (yet?) have such devilish instruments of torture but I imagine my cortisol levels would be through the roof if I had to deal with them.
Already there bro.
Engineering is traditionally boom/bust. The baller tech dudes in 1973 were designing parts for F-15’s and making bank. By 1993 the movie “Falling Down” had come out and thousands of those folks were discarded. A big feel good stories were a bunch of aerospace engineers who applied their skills to designing low flow toilets.
It happens today in tech. How many high dollar Storage Administrators are deployed in your company? The highest paid contractors in many companies were the high priests of the SAN.
The vicious cycle in tech is you get trapped in a bad specialty or pulled up into middle management and purged. It mostly timing and luck. Nobody gives a shit that you were the man with some old semiconductor process. Likewise, nobody is going to pay a premium for some dude whose been a manager for a decade to sling Java.
For some reason my brain thought you meant Falling Down with Michael Douglas (which also feels pretty apt for the situation)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106856/
Sideways
Back To The Future
Cinema Paradiso
Spaceballs
Up In Smoke (Cheech & Chong)
The Incredibles
Indiana Jones 1-3
Indiana Jones: Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (Rifftrax only)
Falling Down
Office Space
Man Bites Dog
Nothing To Lose
Idiocracy
Space Mutiny (MST3k)
Goodfellas
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Groundhog Day
Barbie
Full Metal Jacket
Mallrats
Flight Of The Navigator
The Founder
One Hour Photo
---
I'm pretty certain I've rewatched Sideways more than any other film.
Fwiw.. High Rise does a nice job of describing a smooth, continuous, piecewise-imperceptible transition from sanity to insanity. (As does Cronenberg's film Dead Ringers. In contrast to the film Falling Down, which coughs up an insanity hairball in the encounter with the Korean shopkeeper, eliding the need for a lot of character development.)
Actually I've watched much more, be it movies, or TV-Series. It's just that the ones I've listed above left a more lasting impression on me, than some blockbusters I didn't mention, or that I'd consider them 'rewatchable' (Which I rarely (want to) do anyways).
Let's take Breaking Bad for instance, I did binge-watch that (while being stoned) and remember it as cringe-worthy. Nope, won't watch again. Then there was Continuum, which I know I've watched in full(sober, this time) and I can't even remember anything. Had to be too generic for me, I think?
What else, the Sarah Connor Chronicles. Mostly boring, except the scene where some hispanic Chica outstared her, and she learned that from her. That was funny for me :-)
Oh, one more, because I sometimes felt like that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_Down
Nurses already do this in a hospital setting.
They need to arbitrate the sometimes conflicting orders from various doctors, and actually deliver care to the patients. It’s a job that if anything will be more in demand and is fungible. As a nurse you’re not trapped in a geographical area or employer, and have a wide variety of career paths.
Engineering is a feast and famine business. Once growth slows, engineers get devalued. If AI is a thing, most of the full stack engineers, front end people and SREs will experience an implosion in demand and salary. No more massages and $500k compensation. See the early 90s movie “Falling Down”.
If nursing is an interest and you’re starting out, it’s a much better career in 2023 than software stuff.
“Falling Down” was a reference to the movie by the same name.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a threat of violence from the enforcement of a contract. There’s a reason why we tend to give the monopoly of (non-self-defense) violence to the government.
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your list, even though some of those are mediocre at best, but yeah I did mean per year, and limited to Hollywood (Parasite for instance not counting). And no, ok, I will also straight up disagree with the second Knives out Movie which I thought was absolute trash. A perfect example of poor storytelling and the form over substance of modern cinema.
But just taking say 1992 you have Last of the Mohicans, The Unforgiven, My Cousin Vinny, Malcolm X, Bad Lieutenant, Scent of a Woman, Reservoir Dogs, Dracula, Chaplin.
And then a bunch of fun schlomp like Arizona Dream, Basic Instinct, Sister Act, Army of Darkness, Home Alone 2, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Mighty Ducks, Wayne’s World.
These are all undoubtedly great movies.
And then another huge bunch of watchable stuff easily comparable to some of your mentions like Watcher or High Life.
And 1992 is not an outlier.
In 1993 you have Jurrasic Park, Groundhog Day, Whats Eating Gilbert Grape, Scindlers List, Meanace 2 Society, Alive, Dazed and Confused, Falling Down, In The Name of The Father, True Romance, Demolition Man, Carlitos Way, The Secret Garden, Philadelphia, A Perfect Workd, Cool Runnings, Short Cuts.
In 1991 Silence of The Lambs, Ternimator 2, JFK, Point Break, Thelma and Louise, Boyz in the Hood, The Doors, My Own Private Idaho, Barton Fink, The Fisher King, Naked Lunch.
In 1990 Goodfellas, Hunt for Red October, Total Recall, Edward Scissorhands, Home Alone, Godfather 3, Dances with Wolves, Tremors, Back to the Future 3, Awakenings, The Witches, Wild at Heart, Jacobs Ladder, Nikita, Slacker, Millers Crossing.
And the quality difference is massive too, not just somewhat better. Like just Millers Crossing is miles better than anything that has been made in the last 5 years, and I’m picking at random.
In 1994 Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Speed, Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, Stargate, Natural Born Killers, The Crow, Clercs, Maverick, Ed Wood, In the Mouth of Madness, Interview With The Vampire.
I could go on.
And this is not even talking about how the 80s is a better decade for cinema, or how the 70s is the peak of the power of the author with far more experimental, artistic, and substantial productions.
Has quality declined? Yes. Massively. Humongously. Stupendously.
I found this video, "Edgelord Movies and the Men who Love Them " [1] by sociologist F.D Signifier, to be a particularly interesting exploration of this specific disappointment. His thesis is that young white men are more attracted to edgelord movies like Joker, Falling Down, American Psycho, or Fight Club that portray a sudden violent break from social norms because they start with an elevated expectation of how society will cater to them that gets shattered one day. The idea of a protagonist that lashes out and punishes "the system" through stochastic violence is very attractive.
Young non-white men are less likely to be under the impression that society is looking out for them in the first place, so their choice of anti-social entertainment looks very different. It's more about detachment and the use of violence for personal enrichment because the social system doesn't matter.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_--JOjsTHjo
That's pretty horrible list if it's missing Heat, Fight Club and Falling Down from 90s, also no Jagten from newer movies.
> They ripped-up the PERFECTLY GOOD sidewalks and rebuilt them.
If you haven't already, watch a movie called Falling Down. There's a scene about this.
this should be top comment
though honestly I was more influenced by movies than books, I guess strongest influence on hour I vote the world around me had Fight Club, Falling Down and American Beauty plus the car speech in Se7en and Collateral as well, Taxi Driver as well
TLDW crap movies teach us crap lessons
I skimmed through the video which it seems to use as example 4-5 crap movies
I'd like to see this video using Falling down, American beauty, Fight club, Se7en as examples, the first three among the movies which formed me the most and taught me valuable lessons.
I was about to point out the fact that all this guy's motivations seem to be mental illness YOLO and that it seems he recently lost his job. Kind of like the movie "falling down" but even more petty somehow
The, "Could not be made today," line of thinking is overblown. I predicted around 2015 that a movie in the style of "Falling Down" could never be made with a black lead. Less than 2 years later, Get Out was released. And as far as scandal-worthiness goes, I think if Sorry To Bother You got past the salacity filter, we're doing pretty good.
Falling Down.
I grew up in fundamentalist cults and lived in a rural area favored by the antisocial. This film was the indulgent catharsis of reactionary Luddism, anticulture, bigotry, and social paranoia I was immersed in. A naked display of antisocial fantasies. I couldn't have avoided watching it. Everyone I knew watched it over and over, feeding antisocial yearnings. I took away a sharp new perspective on my world which formed the tip of the wedge that separated me from those communities.
Correct - I remember the MagiCan promotion. At the time (1990), a $1 can of Coke would be far above the norm.
(Later, in 1993, being charged the princely sum of $0.85 for a can of Coke triggered Michael Douglas' breakdown in the the movie "Falling Down", as it didn't leave enough change from a dollar for him to use the payphone. The past truly is a foreign country.)
It was still a dumb promotion. I was packing a can of coke with my lunch pretty much every day at the time, and if I'd opened one at the jobsite and discovered nothing drinkable, just a dollar (and no easy way to spend that dollar to buy a new coke), I'd have had some harsh words for the coca-cola company.
The algorithm is just astonishing. A while back I (and many others) got recommended https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLmuF-0P4tk (climatic scene of Falling Down) with the category "Music". It seems everyone expected some mashup of the movie with Billie Eilish, but we got trolled by the algorithm instead.
This is a very well considered comment. I identify a lot with this.
Modern society is a very abstract place in which people find it difficult to meaningfully trade favour. In cities at least, a whole bunch of stuff is out of the control of individuals and in the control of a bureaucracy.
Wanting to escape that I don't see as being foreign at all.
Makes me think of the movie Falling Down. There are certainly times that I enter some sort of internal monologue and just think - look, I'm here, open and kind; perhaps not always, but in this moment I am. And others are here acting as obstacles... because it's "their job", or whatever.
The movie "Falling Down" notwithstanding, "angry white man" isn't a pernicious stereotype, and "angry black man" is. I'm neighbors with more than one professional black man who has told me they have to be extra careful in the workplace, because any frustration they express will be amplified by the perception of their (overwhelmingly white) coworkers. The first time I heard this, I didn't understand and had to have it explained to me. It's a thing.
There is this movie called 'Falling Down', when I heard about what happened to Ian I immediately associated it with the patterns in that movie. Very sad and it is a real pity that we lose these wonderful people to momentary lapses of judgment or a cascade of misery starting with some innocent little thing.
There isn't a day that I get by without using software influenced by Ian and his role in all this is hard to overstate.
The article implies that it's solely the woman's decision to marry, but the reality is more complicated. Many men are choosing not to marry since it is fraught with economic risk to do so. This has been building for a generation.
> “You don’t want to marry a man who is in all likelihood not economically viable, because it’s not a free lunch,” Autor said.
"Not economically viable" is the exact phrase used in the movie "Falling Down" by the man who was denied a loan by a bank and was arrested while the Michael Douglas character looks on sympathetically. His wife ditched him, too.
The author and some comments tend to confuse skills, success, and intelligence. I think the author describes successful and skillful software engineers who are far from being highly intelligent. It just happened that their skills of constructing program is highly valuable in the current market conditions. Which feeds their arrogance and leads to all kinds of ugly consequences. The hardware engineers of the 20-th century had the same issues. The main hero of the movie Falling Down is an excellent example of such guy.
Yeah I stopped reading there, too.
Somebody should fork their site and edit out all the Falling Down (1993 film) moments.
Too late by then.
There's a good documentary about this period called Falling Down, by the way.
This reminded me of the hamburger scene in the movie "Falling Down" with Michael Douglas: [1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJs9p-VNORw
If you squint, "Falling Down" is sort of this movie, where ordinary guy loses his shit because of forces beyond his control.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106856/
> it doesn't translate very well to portable use :)
Of course it does: you just need a proper bag like the guy in the Falling Down movie.
I don't think it has anything to do with economics.
The passages that strike me as somehow right have very little to do with economics, more with ecology and ethics.
What makes the Unabomber a scary individual is that he's a reasonably smart guy.
I don't know if this rings a bell or not but there is a movie called 'falling down', I have the exact same feeling about the main character in that movie. Of course then they have to graft on some typical hollywood ending and spoil it all, but roughly 3/4 of the movie you totally sympathize with the guy. (or at least I did).