Proposing an ethic for the AIDS era — that talk could be the new sex — this romantic comedy was made for about $1 million in the cinema outback of Baton Rouge, La. Its writer-director, first-timer Steven Soderbergh, said, “I thought the film would seem too European for an American audience and too dialogue heavy to translate in Europe. I figured ten people would go see it four times, and that would be that.” Yet, aided immeasurably by the attractive cast of James Spader, Andie MacDowell, Peter Gallagher and Laura san Giacomo, it won the Audience award at Sundance and the Palme d’Or (top prize) at Cannes, grossed $25 million domestic and launched Soderbergh on a career that alternated mainstream hits (Erin Brockovich, the Ocean’s caper series) with wayward weirdness (Schizopolis, Full Frontal, Che). Headline writers found god in the movie’s title: for a while, everything was “sex, lies and (STDs / in vitro fertilization / Monicagate).”
Just before making his first feature, Quentin Tarantino shot a long-take dialogue sequence at a Sundance workshop and showed it to three veteran directors; they all thought it stank. The next week, a new group of directors came in; this time there were raves for the same sequence. Tarantino says this taught him an important lesson: “People are gonna really like my stuff or really not, so get f—in’ used to it.” Enough people really liked Reservoir Dogs‘ crime-caper machismo — all the long coats and long takes, the ornate argot and the ear-cutting scene — to set QT on his epic Pulp Fiction, unquestionably the definitive movie of the ’90s, which grossed $100 million at home and another $100 million abroad. Not bad for a video savant.
“Hey Baby, What’s Wrong?” had that padding-it-out feeling, as if the writers were students trying to meet a ten-page term paper requirement by fiddling with the margins and the font size.
TIME remembers the legacy of Don Cornelius by looking back at the TV shows that brought — and still bring — a rich trove of music into the living rooms of America
In light of the Material Girl performing at Super Bowl XLVI, TIME takes a look at her life and career, both of which have been lived firmly in the public eye.
