“I remember when you walked out of Garden State, / ‘Cause you had taste, you had taste, / You had no time to waste.”*
by chuckofish
Several weeks ago, I wrote about the experience of watching The Thomas Crown Affair, a movie that was so purely of its time (the sixties) that it actually managed to take me out of the current moment. Well, I continue to think there’s something to that. The other night, some odd flare of nostalgia inspired me to select Garden State for our night’s movie viewing.
Is there a movie more 2000s than Garden State? It showcases the manic-pixie-dream-girl love interest, an indie soundtrack, and a painfully-earnest script ready to be excerpted in quotation compilations published to Thought Catalog.
So it didn’t change our lives — it’s really pretty bad — but it was mildly captivating for a Sunday evening in quarantine. (“Mildly captivating” is my new bar for entertainment.)
Watching Garden State reminded me of another angsty early-aughts indie film, Donnie Darko, which I similarly remember primarily for its soundtrack. I might have to watch it next.
My apologies if I’ve forced you to you listen to this song and now you feel like this:
“Mad world,” indeed. Any other ideas for comfortingly era-specific films to add to our list?
*”Outlier” by Spoon
dual personalities 
Wow, those quotes in “Thought Catalog” are embarrassingly bad. Hardly even thoughts! As I have said many times before, try watching a movie that is really old, say at least 50 years old…
And the poor bud was having thoughts in that picture, sad thoughts…
It’s definitely time for something old & classic…
That Mad World video was very special though! I always liked that song.
I’m impressed with your “mildly captivating” standard. For quite a while now mine has been “I didn’t hate myself for watching it,” which no doubt says something about the quality of my viewing choices. I love that photo of WRC!
That picture kills me. Now I want to watch Garden State–it’s like when I listen to Guster and I’m like ‘I can’t believe I thought this was deep,’ you know?
Yes!!