Starting in the early 1990s, artists such as Quentin Tarantino, David Foster Wallace, and Kurt Cobain contributed to a swelling cultural tide of pop postmodernism that swept through music,
film, literature, and fashion. In cinema in particular, some of the arts most fundamental aspects--stories, characters, and genres, for instance--assumed such a trite and trivialized appearance
that only rarely could they take their places on the screen without provoking an inward smirk or a wink from the audience. Out of this highly self-conscious and world-weary environment,
however, a new group of filmmakers began to develop as the decade wore on, with a new set of styles and sensibilities to match. In Post-Pop Cinema author Jesse Fox Mayshark takes us on a
film-by-film tour of the works of these filmmakers-including Wes and P. T. Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Richard Linklater, Alexander Payne, and David O. Russell-and seeks to reveal how a common
pool of styles, collaborators, and personal connections helps them to confront the unifying problem of meaning in American film.
