MovieChat Forums > SubUrbia (1997) Discussion > the (new version)

the (new version)

posted 15 years ago by alexander_chaparro
3 replies | jump to latest

i have been looking for the book/screenplay. i loved the movie. i only found this "new version"--- B&N says: "his rewrites—for a world seeped in cell phones, hip-hop, and a new political context—render the piece “an American anyplace where everything, yet nothing, has changed”

how are these "rewrites"?? any chance in finding the original..

i feel mucho more identified with then genX youth. and i think it fits better with the discourse of a nihilistic youth perspective of the future- conventional success vs. freedom, etc. -- which i think is the main core of this movie.. much more than "people being bored with their small town lifes".. if the main character were suze, that's what this movie would be about... but its jeff... one of the most interesting and complex representations of this inner debate of our generation.

got off track there for a second.. anybody know where to find the original book or has read the "new version"

[–] LiquidDrainerFilms 15 years ago

I have not read the "new version," but I just directed a student production of SubUrbia (from the original text), and we only had to change maybe half a dozen lines very slightly: replace the word "pager" with the word "cell phone," replace "VCR cathode ray tubes" with "internet," and change the genocides that Jeff lists off to more current genocides ("Darfur! Sudan! Rwanda! You ever watch the news, Buffman?!"). Most of the music and pop culture references have remained relevant enough- I know many people like the characters in the play (I am one of them), and we still listen to Sonic Youth.

That was just a few words that we changed, and we felt that everything else was still completely relevant.

[–] woodyallex 15 years ago

have not heard of the new version but totally agree with with what alexander_chaparro 's saying....

Suburbia is timeless. I just have to think about the fact that Eric Bogosian wrote it in an effort to represent his youth in the seventies, and how well it encapsulated my youth in the 90's... and there's not much more to say. It englobes all thinking persons with a conscience who were raised in a relatively well off civilized part of the world. Why should I worry about getting a job when my pizza could feed a half-dead family from bengladesh?

Why should i try to "make" it? Why would it be important and why would I be happy that a bunch of people I don't know or probably wouldn't like if I knew like my "art"...

I think when Jeff asks : "What's your goal, to be on the cover of somme glossy magazine?", that little question alone totally undermines the whole celebrity culture.

My job does not define me. Anyway, getting off topic here but I just love this movie so much and when the #@$@#%$@# is a DVD coming out?

[–] maturity 8 years ago

There is an unofficial DVD on eBay. They claim the movie is public domain because it has never been released on DVD after like 20 years. I don't know...