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This week, DPP takes on Gen X myth-making about the city of Manchester – namely, through Michael Winterbottom's 2002 film 24 Hour Party People.

Why did Manchester explode as a Gen X-era subcultural and music mecca in the 1980s and 1990s, overtaking places more central to the boomer consciousness like Liverpool? And how did those involved in the post-punk and acid-house scenes of the era understand the sociology and economics of the epoch in retrospect?

Find out in today's episode. 

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 21 — 24 Hour Party People (2002)

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DPP journeys to the Garden State, and Chase's political domain, this week — that's right, we're covering slacker favourites Clerks (1994) and Clerks II (2006).

Directed by Kevin Smith, these films explore what it's like to spend a decade working marginal, dead-end jobs, without actively identifying oneself as marginal or a failure, because you've got your friends, pop culture, and ever-present escape routes.

Were the lifestyles exhibited in Smith’s oeuvre only possible during a brief period at the end of history?

Find out in today’s episode.

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 20 — Clerks (1994) + Clerks II (2006)

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The DPP boys head back up to Scotland (we can't keep away), in search of meaning in deindustrialised hellscapes — that's right, we're doing Trainspotting (1996) and Danny Boyle's lesser-known follow-up: T2 (2017).

Is there any compensation for the full-scale loss of meaning, association and community brought about by the offshoring of manufacturing and the rise of finance? Individualism, punk rock, raves, heroin — EU redevelopment funds?

Listen to this week's episode to find out.

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 19 — Trainspotting (1996) + T2 (2017)

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In the first of our solo episodes this season, the DPP boys sit down, shut their asses up, and listen to Gen X women in the workplace, specifically Toni Collette, Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow and Alanna Ubach in Jill Sprecher's 1997 office comedy Clockwatchers [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clockwatchers].

If Office Space, Fight Club and Falling Down express a male rage at deindustrialisation, the meaninglessness of white collar work, and arbitrary hierarchies — that is very much still with us — what does Clockwatchers have to say about the first generation of women (1965-1980) partaking equally (at least formally and legally) in the professional labour market?

Interestingly, Sprecher's female leads couldn't be further from the 'Lean In' feminism of Sheryl Sandberg that came to dominate the 2010s — and in many ways they share more with their Gen X male analogues (Tyler Durden, Peter Gibbons) than might, at first, be expected. Because, of course, everyone (no matter your identity marker) can agree that "work sucks."

Find out in today's episode.

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 18 — Clockwatchers (1997)

This week, the DPP lads are joined by David Jamieson [https://x.com/David_Jamieson7], journalist and editor of Conter Scot [https://www.conter.scot/] to discuss Mel Gibson's 1995 epic Braveheart.

What does a botched historical drama about Scotland's First War of Independence (1296-1328) by an American-Australian traditionalist Catholic tell us about the political conscioussness of Gen X and the contemporary American right? What does, and did, freedom mean to those born in the 1960s and 1970s?

Find out in today's episode.

Like, subscribe, rate, and connect with us on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod]. 

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 17 — Braveheart (1995) w/David Jamieson

This week on DPP the boys sit down with Eddie Averill, formerly of Extended Clip [https://www.patreon.com/Extended_Clip], now of Vintage Violence [https://vintageviolence.substack.com/], to investigate Paul Thomas Anderson's LA epic Magnolia (1999). Is Hollywood an American virus? Is TV the Gen-X brain bug? Dig in with Chase, Sam, and Eddie to find out.



Season 1, Gen X — Episode 16 — Magnolia (1999) w/Eddie Averill

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It's giving unemployed.

This week, DPP is joined by poet, podcaster, author, and host of Varn Vlog [https://www.youtube.com/@VarnVlog] — C. Derick Varn — to discuss Richard Linklater's non-linear, slice-of-a-generation classic, Slacker (1990) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacker_(film)].

Set in the suburbs of Austin, Texas, Slacker follows an interwoven set of 20 and 30-somethings, doing, well, not exactly much. This is pre-techlord and podcaster Austin. However, Linklater still captures glimmers of the hipster explosion that is to come in the characters of Slacker — conspiracy theorists, anarchists, conceptual artists, skaters, post-punk drummers, etc.

In 2026, we live in a world where Gen X's children across much of the western world, and increasingly the far east, are out of work, out of education and on the scrap heap (NEETs, lying flat etc). If Gen Z are structurally excluded from much of the work force, Gen X conciouslessly opted-out.

As always, like, rate, subscribe [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod] — or don't: whatever, man.

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 15 — Slacker (1990) w/C. Derick Varn

You can find our Patreon here [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod]. 

This week, the DPP lads are joined by writer, critic and marketing director at publishing house Deep Vellum (and friend of the pod) Jon Repetti [https://x.com/pourfairelevide] — to discuss Spike Lee's 1999 crime thriller Summer of Sam [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Sam].

Summer of Sam revolves around the fallout from a real-life killing spree committed by David Berkowitz between 1975 and 1977.

Lee's 1999 feature is an odd combination of 1970s nostalgia aimed at a young Gen X, combined with subcultural analysis and crime thriller tropes. The film delves into the urban psychogeography of New York City's outer boroughs and ethnic neighbourhoods — at a time when NYC was widely considered to be in decline, yet also experiencing a huge cultural flourishing of underground scenes, musical creativity, and club life.

Does Gen X's childhood fear of the city and the urban, in the 1970s, translate into today's pervasive paranoia about large American cities? Find out in today's episode.

Like, subscribe, rate, and venture over to our Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod].  

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 14 — Summer of Sam (1999) w/Jon Repetti

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This week, Chase and Sam at DPP are joined by architecture critic and writer Owen Hatherley [https://owenhatherley.co.uk/] to discuss British director Patrick Keiller’s London (1994) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxbg6QTkmUw] and Robinson in Space [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crVFU-5B6fs] (1997).

London and Robinson in Space form the first two parts of the decade-long Robinson trilogy [https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/38477]. Keiller's two essay films capture Britain during the interregnum between Thatcher and Blair — an oft-forgotten period, after the end of the Cold War, but before the short-lived ecstasies of Cool Britannia.

Keiller charts a country still very much in thrall to tradition, mediating its own decline, and with a surprisingly intact industrial base. Both films feature an unnamed narrator who journeys around England with an unseen accomplice: the titular Robinson (a permanently precarious academic). Keiller’s camera lingers over petrol stations, suburban business parks and other liminal spaces — a post-Thatcherite, globalised, netherworld of commercial utilitarianism.

Through a patched-together series of shots and reams of economic data, Keiller, arguably, makes the case that Gen X, not the boomers, were the UK's last industrial generation: squatting over the final flames of manufacturing during the rule of John Major — the infamous prime ministerial 'grey man.'

Major and Blair haunt the background of Keiller's work, bookending the period his films explore. The former is presented as a bland technocrat at the End of History, the latter a representative of American-style personality politics. Keiller's films place us in a British interregnum — and, to steal a line from Gramsci, 'morbid symptoms' are everywhere.

Hatherley is the author of several books, including Militant Modernism, Trans-Europe Express, Red Metropolis: Socialism and the Government of London, Modern Buildings in Britain: A Gazetteer and, his latest, The Alienation Effect (out now with Penguin [https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/311898/the-alienation-effect-by-hatherley-owen/9780141989778]).

Our Patreon can be found here [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod]. Like, rate and subscribe — or Sam will drag you on a 5 hour walk under Birmingham’s Spaghetti Junction in search of mutated fish.

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 13 — London (1994) + Robinson in Space (1997) w/Owen Hatherley

This week, DPP is joined by prolific podcaster and Renaissance man J.G. Michael of Parallax Views [https://parallaxviews.podbean.com/] to discuss two underappreciated gems by director Adam Rifkin [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Rifkin]: The Chase (1994) and Detroit Rock City (1999).

Rifkin, who got his start in the world of wrestling (could there be a more Gen X origin story?), has produced an oeuvre defined by Hollywood's commercial needs. Yet, in between, family-friendly forgetables like 1997's Mouse Hunt and 2007's Underdog, Rifkin has directed films that speak to the zeitgeist.

The Chase is a knowing satire on the car-chase genre combined with a deconstruction of 24/7 news and 'infotainment.' Detroit Rock City, meanwhile, is that strange Gen-X beast - a 1970s nostalgia film (think Summer of Sam, Dazed and Confused, etc.) entirely centred around the band Kiss.

It's our contention that Rifkin may well be the Gen-X Robert Zemeckis — someone who understands the median tastes of a generation forgotten about by history, and too often Hollywood.

As always, our Patreon can be found here [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod]. We'll be publishing subscriber-only episodes on everything from Trainspotting and Clockwatchers — to interviews with leading theorists of our historical moment. Subscribe. 

Season 1, Gen X — Episode 12 — The Chase (1994) + Detroit Rock City (1999) w/J.G Michael

Culture at the End of History 

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Chase Padusniak

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