DC Film Society: Adam's Rib September 2025

Modern Classics: High Fidelity

High Fidelity, 2000 – Directed by Stephen Frears. Written by D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink, John Cusack, and Scott Rosenberg; based on the book by Nick Hornby. Produced by Tim Bevan, Liza Chasin, John Cusack, D.V. DeVincentis, David S. Grant, Alan Greenspan, Peter Neil, Mike Newell, Steve Pink, and Rudd Simmons. Key Cast: John Cusack, Iben Hjejle, Jack Black, Todd Louiso, Lisa Bonet, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lili Taylor, Joan Cusack, Tim Robbins, Chris Rehmann, Ben Carr, Joelle Carter, Alex Désert, Sara Gilbert, Natasha Gregson Wagner, and Bruce Springsteen.

Early in High Fidelity, Rob Gordon tells his friend and employee Dick that he’s reorganizing his massive record collection. Dick asks “Chronological? Definitely not alphabetical.” Rob replies “Autobiographical.” To figure out where a record is, Rob will need to remember what he was going through when he bought it. I could not organize many of my DVDs/Blu-Rays that way, but I could for High Fidelity. The film came at a critical part of my life. It spoke to who I was and who I wanted to be at the time. I’ve seen High Fidelity several times since then, including a few years ago at the Warner Theater in Washington DC, with writer-producer-star John Cusack answering questions afterwards. For the film’s 25th anniversary, I went back yet again. Re-watching it was fun, as it’s an incredible film, but it was also sobering, as I realized that I may have learned the wrong lessons.

When the opening credits rolled, I felt an enormous surge of comfort. Quentin Tarantino once said that “There are certain movies that you hang out with the characters so much that they actually become your friends ... where you actually feel that you know the person and you like them.” On a logical level this makes no sense since these characters do not actually exist, but feelings can overcome logic. Along with The Big Lebowski and Dazed and Confused, High Fidelity serves as my ultimate hangout film, and seeing it again seemed like reconnecting with old friends.

A great “hangout” movie does not happen by accident. It starts with the writing, in this case with Nick Hornby’s seminal novel. Hornby had hung out in London record stores often as a young man, and had many friends who worked there. These friends would sometimes make “Top Five” lists of favorite songs, records, and other things. Hornby was also very familiar with London’s underground music scene. All of this made it into the book, for which Hornby used first-person, with its protagonist Rob Fleming (later changed to Rob Gordon for the film) explaining his life, musical tastes, and heartache.

While High Fidelity earned critical raves and was a best-seller in the United Kingdom and Europe, success in the U.S. came slowly. Eventually the book developed a cult following and talk turned to a film adaptation. Top Five: How High Fidelity Found Its Rhythm and Became a Cult Movie Classic (an excellent book and one of my key resources for this column) describes some of the struggles in turning a first-person story featuring many internal monologues into a filmable script. Finally, D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink and John Cusack, long-time friends who had co-written Grosse Point Blank, got the rights and figured out how to make the story work as a film.

Cusack’s team made key decisions that were risky but paid off handsomely. First, they moved the setting from London to Chicago. They grew up in the Chicago area and were as knowledgeable about the Windy City’s music scene as Hornby was with London. Hornby, to his credit, encouraged this change and was not possessive at all about his original story. Cusack said he and his colleagues mined their own record collections for much of the film’s soundtrack. That level of authenticity shows. Even though I have only been to Chicago a handful of times and know nothing about its music venues, High Fidelity features so many details that I feel like I’ve been there. Paradoxically, a film with a specific sense of place can inspire such a connection, even with people unfamiliar with that place, that it can become universal. When a film tries to connect with everyone by making the place generic, it can have the opposite effect.

The writers also took a chance by sticking with the book’s use of first-person narration. So often narration can backfire, by relying on telling the audience what’s going on rather than showing it. High Fidelity avoids this trap by having Cusack as Rob talk to the camera, breaking the fourth wall. Cusack feels so relatable, so natural, that Rob becomes a close friend confiding in you.

Arguably the best decision the producers made was hiring Stephen Frears to direct. On the surface, Frears would appear to be all wrong for the film. He’s British, and the film was trying to make a British story more American. Frears was also a generation older than Cusack and his contemporaries, telling a story about thirty-somethings. But Cusack had acted for Frears a decade earlier in The Grifters, and knew that he was a “very intense, creative guy.” I’ve always seen Frears as a modern-day Howard Hawks. Like Hawks, Frears has a long, distinguished career, but has never garnered the acclaim he deserved. Hawks mastered multiple genres and so has Frears, who has directed period pieces, political dramas, thrillers, comedies, a Western, and a neo-noir. Frears may have lacked a distinct personal style, as he focuses on simply telling the story well. He also excels at working with actors, having directed seven of them to Oscar nominations (with Helen Mirren winning for The Queen).

Together, Frears and Cusack’s team cast High Fidelity perfectly. Frears found Iben Hjejle at the Berlin Film Festival and saw something in this Danish actress to decide that she could play the very American Laura. She combines intelligence with charm and vulnerability and has vibrant chemistry with Cusack. Jack Black had played a musical force of nature in Tenacious D, and it’s hard to see anyone else embodying the lovably snobbish Barry. This role launched Black as a movie star, and he built on it for 2003’s School of Rock. Todd Louiso as the mild-mannered, but also lovably snobbish Dick fits as the yin to Black’s Yang. Seeing them go back-and-forth is a hilarious delight. Getting Catherine Zeta-Jones, one of Hollywood’s biggest stars at the time, was a major coup. She’s instantly credible as Rob’s way-out-of-his-league ex-girlfriend. No one looked like he was having as much fun as Tim Robbins, hamming it up as Laura’s odious new boyfriend Ian.

High Fidelity has some flaws, such as over relying on rain to emphasize Rob’s hopelessness, but the seamlessness and the humor more than make up for them. Cusack took a shot in the dark by asking Bruce Springsteen to film a cameo, but the Boss said yes, and who else could be Rob’s spirit guide? The film uses Robbins going so over-the-top to play into Rob’s anger and fear. The sex scene between Ian and Laura, playing entirely in Rob’s mind, is one of the most ridiculous ever filmed. But the highlight is Rob and Ian’s confrontation in the record store. The film gives you the movie version, the elevated movie version, and then what we would really do in Rob’s shoes.

While rewatching the movie, the old pleasures still stood out, much of which I described earlier. When I first saw the movie, I focused more on the interplay among Rob, Barry and Dick. Rob’s love life, not so much, as I had never been in a relationship. Now, having been married for 14 years, the relationship scenes resonate a bit more. But my main realization came when Rob says “what really matters is what you like, not what you are like.” In 2000, I was at a low point in my life, with my career stuck and my graduate school dreams faded. In that frame of mind, Rob’s declaration became my rallying cry. To be fair, Rob, Barry and Dick would laugh at, or be disgusted by, my basic classic rock music taste. Rather, my film taste became my calling card.

By this time, I had already educated myself on classic studio films, the lesser-known indies and the greats from international film masters. Once I got a DVD player I became a collector, buying several films a month, sometimes several films a week. My big reorganization was not to chronological like Rob, but to sort my movies by director, as I’d heard the more high-end rental stores did. My roommate Jim and I held regular Underexposed Film Festivals, where we screened for our friends movies we loved that we thought did not garner proper recognition. Together we hung out with local film critics Bill Henry and Joe Barber. We did not lord our film knowledge over others in as brazen a way that Barry and Dick would, but we certainly considered ourselves the educated, the cultured. At the Cinema Lounge film discussion group then run by Brian Niemiec, we did our own Top 5 lists just like Rob and his friends. In a way, I wanted to be Rob Gordon.

Looking back on that time in my life now, I wonder if I was like one of the financial bros who told Michael Douglas that Gordon Gekko from Wall Street was their role model. Did I miss the point of the movie? Rob Gordon refers to himself as an a—hole. His ex-girlfriends and his friend Liz say the same. We see him treat women badly, and much of his behavior toward Laura that may have seemed lovesick at the time feels much creepier in this post-#MeToo climate. Another Rob quote that perhaps should have stuck with me then definitely sticks with me now: “I’ve been listening to my gut since I was 14 years old, and frankly speaking, I’ve come to the conclusion that my guts have sh-t for brains.” I feel that way more often as I get older.

Of course, I’m in a very different stage of my life now than I was when I first saw High Fidelity. My DVD, and now Blu-Ray collecting became more sporadic. Bill Henry, Joe Barber and Jim Shippey are all gone. I’m married and my wife and I have a foster son. They are my priority now, probably not enough, but I’m trying. My wife likes movies too, but it certainly wasn’t my film expertise that mattered to her. Only Jurassic Park in my movie collection would interest my four-year-old boy because none of my other films have dinosaurs (In fairness, he has liked some of the Pixar films). They love me for who I am, not my taste.

Part of me misses the days when I could focus more on movies. Ask my wife and she will tell you that I still do this too much, but it’s definitely not what it was. Like Rob Gordon, I had to shift my priorities. By the film’s end Rob finally commits to Laura. Now I see that High Fidelity is about becoming a better person, which is much more difficult than writing Top 5 lists. In the end it matters what you are like, not what you like. Well ... maybe 90%-10%? 80%-20%? Anyway, you get the idea.

Adam Spector
September 1, 2025