Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

I'm Jesse Thorn, it's Bullseye.

I'm Jesse Thorn.

Brian Raftery just wrote a really interesting book.

He's a film writer, he might have seen him in GQ or Wired or Rolling Stone.

Anyway, he wrote this book, he called it Best Movie Year Ever.

And in the books 300 pages, Brian makes the case that one of the most interesting and memorable years in cinema history.

Wasn't 1939 or 1974, it was 1999.

Now before you look at your phone and start looking up the movies that came out in 1999,

I'll list off a few right now.

Office space, three kings, Rushmore, Being John Malkovich, Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia, The Matrix.

Anyway, I could do that for quite a while.

You get the point, there were a lot of groundbreaking and influential movies.

The book is meticulously researched.

It has interviews with pretty much every person who was making movies back then.

Brian not only talks about the movies themselves, but the careers that those movies launched,

the way the studios marketed them, and the impact they've had 20 years later.

I take Blair Witch Project.

It was a found footage horror movie, and it paved the way for dozens and dozens and dozens that came in its wake.

It was marketed mostly online in a campaign that blurred the lines between the film and real life.

The filmmakers really are missing, the poster said.

The footage really is all we have from them.

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