I think it started long before that. Plan Nine from Outer Space was a staple on WPIX’s Chiller Theater in the early 1960s, and the show’s original opening featured clips from movies they showed, including several from Plan Nine (most notably Bela Lugosi – or, I suspect, Wood’s wife’s chiropractor covered up tryi ng to be Lugosi – and Maina Nurmi as Vampira in a scary pose), whichm, of course, showed every week.
(This preceded the animated six-finger-hand opening by many, many years, even though the YouTube entry calls it the “original” opening:
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Although they didn’t have him at first, John Zacherle/Zacherley later emigrated to WPIX from an earlier gig on late night WCBS (and from a local Philadelphia channel before that), and he started cutting himself into the movies, in a sort of pre-MST3K way. I don’t recall if he ever did that with Plan Nine, but it wouldn’t be unusual. Certainly the constantly shuffled and re-shown flicks on Chiller Theater were getting a campy humor vibe well before the 1970s.
Not quite true. It made money & had mixed reviews. However, your basic point stands. It wasn’t nearly as critically or commercially popular in 1983 as it is today.
Rick Astley is more popular than he’s been in years (if not ever) due to rickrolls, even though the meme is premised on the lameness of the video and song.
But even before the Rickroll phenomenon, there were a number of us in the Critique of Culture field, and quite a few music archivists, who knew we were never gonna give never gonna give never gonna give him up…
I thought the movie “Office Space” was considered “meh” by audiences and critics alike, until Comedy Central started showing it periodically. Maybe it was just the end of the late 90s boom that made the cynicism more relevant and amusing.
I don’t know how on earth Parks & Recreation got renewed, even despite having producers in high places. NOBODY liked the first season (I gave it 2 episodes, and even those were unbearable to sit through), and yet I keep hearing over and over how EVERYBODY loves the show by the end of Season 2.
Bill Murray. If you look at the type of low-brow comedies he was doing in the '90s - “Kingpin,” “The Man Who Knew Too Little,” Larger than Life," etc. - you would have a hard time believing that he would go on to become a well-respected actor that renowned filmmakers clamored to work with.
How about The Room? Ignored, but now adored for its badness. IIRC it was the one billboard advertising it for its showing in one theater that got so many people in LA to start talking about it.
I came in to say Justin Timberlake. I was happy being one of the couple straight guys who liked him (probably just my inner hipster). Then it became really cool to like him.
But people don’t like that now, they just revel in the "it’s so good it’s bad"ness of it which really isn’t the same thing. It’s still considered one of the worst films ever made, whereas something like Lord of the Rings when first published was considered a terrible piece of work in an absolute sense, and is now considered a masterpiece. People don’t read Lord of the Rings out of a sense of irony.
It also known as “The Big Carnival” for a long while, including when it aired on network TV thru the 60s. I’ve heard of it. Have a copy. But that might have more to do with several relatives being extras in it. The concept of media manipulation displayed in the film was just too ahead of its time.
If you are a fan of TCM, there’s several such movies that movie buffs “get into” that weren’t very successful when they were released. E.g., The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. was considered a dud, even by it’s author Theodor Geisel aka “Dr. Seuss”. But it’s a popular example of pre-60s “psychedelia”.
Murray was a famous, established, well liked and respected actor, though. He’d had box office successes galore and was a talented actor, even if he hadn’t yet gotten an Oscar nomination.
A lot of this, I think, has to do with nostalgia. There’s something that you loved as an innocent kid, grew out of and possibly even started to hate as an angsty teenager, but then re-discovered and re-embraced once you discovered the pressures of young adult life. For a while there in the early 2000’s it seemed like lame 80’s pop culture, which most people spent the entire 90’s making fun of, was suddenly loved by everyone.
