Hacker Cinema
High Fidelity
2000 · Film · 113 min
Directed by Stephen Frears
After his long-time girlfriend dumps him, a thirty-year-old record store owner seeks to understand why he is unlucky in love while recounting his "top five breakups of all time".
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The book is competing with Nick Hornby's High Fidelity for the book I've re-read the most times. I absolutely love it.
And, I agree: the plot is barely worth mentioning. In fact, I once started watching the movie and stopped halfway through because it was just so banal and uninteresting. The great stuff is in all the little observations and considerations that aren't really part of the "story".
To quote from High Fidelity: "How can it be bullshit to state an opinion?" :)
FWIW I agree, I thought the movie was boring when it came out. After all there were hundreds of other cooler movies around that time. Same with the breakfast club. As an adult rewatching them I enjoyed them more.
I’ve noticed a thing common to most retail shops that are not clothing-based.
Bicycle shops attract employees who are really into bicycles. Computer stores pick up folks who are really into computers. Book stores, comic book stores, record stores… you get it.
None of these types of shops select for "people skills." Insider knowledge is valued, the ability to have a conversation and not make a customer feel like shit is not. It's so bad that archetypes like Comic Book Guy from _The Simpsons_ and the bestselling novel & movie _High Fidelity_ got written and became cultural archetypes.
All of which is a long-winded way to say: bicycle shop employees can be incredible, intolerable jerks.
I'm not sure why clothes seem to be an exception… perhaps because the merchandise is curated by buyers, so rather than hiring experts, they can hire exclusively based on people skills? Or maybe clothes just attract people with more empathy, I'm not sure.
Anyway, when you find a bicycle shop that isn't staffed by troglodytes: make friends. Be loyal. Spend.
> As Stephen Frears, the director of High Fidelity, worked to translate the best moments of the Nick Hornby novel on which the movie was based, he found to his surprise that the best moments were the voice-overs, especially the direct speeches of Rob Gordon (John Cusack) to the camera.
> Frears said, “What we realized was that the novel was a machine to get to twelve crucial speeches in the book about romance and art and music and list-making and masculine distance and the masculine drive for art and the masculine difficulty with intimacy.”
> This is the case for most novels: you have to read seven hundred pages to get the handful of insights that were the reason the book was written, and the apparatus of the novel is there as a huge, elaborate, overbuilt stage set.
How would I know if it is harder for me to enjoy movies than for somebody else?
I don't like "music movies" such as High Fidelity, 8 Mile, School of Rock, Blues Brothers. They are just average comedy/drama flicks for me. Maybe normal people like them more?
For a while if someone asked me what music I like, I replied film music. I do enjoy film music but maybe just because the music makes me remember the movie?
I'm definitely affected by the music. Maybe music can still emphasize emotions for a musical anhedonic and it just that music in itself does not do much?
Nick Hornby wrote about the essentially sad nature of pop music in his novel "High Fidelity" (1995):
"What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"
The movie was good, the book is amazing.
Teenage tragedy songs from the 50s or 60s are quite depressing (though the scenarios are pretty maudlin): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_tragedy_song
Just finished reading The Loser by Thomas Bernhard. Cruel, repetitive, ironic... effing brilliant. It's about three pianists - one of them it's Glenn Gould, and how meeting him ruined the life of the other two. Currently reading High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. I can't be objetive about him, I simple love it. (The movie is great, also)
"I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like... Books, records, films - these things matter."
--Rob (John Cusack) in High Fidelity
Even if you didn't care about learning business through film, I would recommend these. Most are classics and highly enjoyable. I left out the great ones already mentioned.
Risky Business - going from idea to execution in a very short time
High Fidelity - small business, vertical expansion, labor relations
There Will Be Blood - "I have a competition in me."
Office Space - process reengineering, efficiency, employee motivation
It's A Wonderful Life - customer service, community building, ethics
The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit - work life balance
The Player - handling office and industry politics
Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room - ethics (and the catastrophe that befalls those without them)