PEOPLE Celebrate the 90s: 1997 Edition

“YOU’RE 35 YEARS OLD IN FRONT OF A MIRROR IN THIS OUTFIT … AND YOU GO, ‘UH-OH, WHAT AM I DOING?’”—GEORGE CLOONEY WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID IN 1997 FROM ALLY MCBEAL TO ‘ZIGAZIG AH,’ THE PEOPLE & POP CULTURE THAT MADE THE YEAR MEMORABLE PLUS COULD JACK FIT ON THE DOOR? TITANIC’S ONGOING DEBATE…

There’s much to celebrate about the 1990s, but in many ways 1997, whose 25th birthday we toast in this issue, is the ninetiest moment of all the 1990s. The year not only embodies what we love most about this crazy decade—boy bands! girl groups! Monica and Ross!—it laid the groundwork for trends that are still playing out today. Consider the singing confection called the Spice Girls. At first glance Ginger, Posh, Scary, Baby and Sporty were a fun, fizzy antidote to the early-’90s grunge sound. But the Spices also represented a bigger picture: They were intentionally different in looks, dress and archetypes long before diverse became a buzzword, and they previewed the power tipping toward women in pop and mainstream culture. Then there was the Hollywood tidal wave Titanic. At…

AH, AWARDS SEASON TO ‘SIR,’ WITH LOVE AND THE WINNER IS… TIME TO PARTY! OPENING NIGHTS ACTING LIKE CHILDREN BRING THE KIDS!…

TITANIC MAKING WAVES HOLLYWOOD EXPECTED THE STORY OF JACK, ROSE AND A BIG BOAT TO TANK AT THE BOX OFFICE. IT DIDN’T. BY DEVAN COGGAN THE HOLIDAY SEASON IS ALWAYS big for movies, and 1997 was no different. Audiences flocked to see Pierce Brosnan as Bond in Tomorrow Never Dies and the comely cast of Scream 2. They also queued up for As Good as It Gets and the sci-fi comedy Flubber. But nothing—nothing—compared to the public’s reaction to Titanic. When James Cameron’s film about an 85-year-old maritime tragedy hit theaters on Dec. 19, newspapers everywhere were already preparing their “Titanic Sinks” headlines. With its unprecedented $200 million budget—it was the most expensive movie ever made at the time—numerous delays and rumors of trouble on-set, Titanic was expected to be…

KILLING IT DRAMA TEEN ON BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, A CHEERLEADER NAILED EVIL BLOODSUCKERS AND THE HORRORS OF HIGH SCHOOL BY CHRIS NASHAWATY SOME OF THE BEST IDEAS often arrive just a few beats before we are ready for them. That was certainly the case with the 1992 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a low-budget teen comedy written by Joss Whedon about a high school cheerleader who battled the undead when she wasn’t worried about passing English. The big-screen Buffy, reviewed as good-humored but muddled, quickly vanished from theaters and memories—for all purposes, dead to the world. And there Buffy Summers would have remained if it weren’t for the fledgling network the WB. Ratings-starved and desperate to distinguish itself, the cable upstart took a flier on Whedon’s giddily subversive concept,…

SPICE GIRLS OWNED THE WORLD HIT SINGLES (AND TOWERING PLATFORMS) TOOK POSH, BABY, SCARY, GINGER, AND SPORTY TO NEW HEIGHTS BY CHRIS NASHAWATY SO TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT, what you really, really want. … Well, in 1997, it turns out what we really, really wanted was the Spice Girls—a British quintet as fizzy as a freshly popped bottle of Moët. Armed with pitch-perfect harmonies, caffeinated dance moves and nicknames that made them come across like superheroes, which, if you were a teenage girl (or the still-cool mother of one) in the summer of ’97, they kinda were, Melanie Brown (Scary Spice), Melanie Chisholm (Sporty Spice), Emma Bunton (Baby Spice), Geri Halliwell (Ginger Spice) and Victoria Adams—not yet Beckham—(Posh Spice) were a silly, sassy antidote to the fading era of…