High Fidelity (2000)

Rob, a record store owner and compulsive list maker, recounts his top five breakups, including the one in progress.

Director:

Stephen Frears

Writers:

Nick Hornby (book), D.V. DeVincentis (screenplay)

Stars:

John Cusack, Iben Hjejle, Todd Louiso

Nominated for 1 Golden Globe. Another 3 wins & 21 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
John Cusack	...	Rob Gordon
Iben Hjejle	...	Laura
Todd Louiso	...	Dick
Jack Black	...	Barry Judd
Lisa Bonet	...	Marie De Salle
Catherine Zeta-Jones	...	Charlie Nicholson
Joan Cusack	...	Liz
Tim Robbins	...	Ian Raymond
Chris Rehmann	...	Vince
Ben Carr	...	Justin
Lili Taylor	...	Sarah Kendrew
Joelle Carter	...	Penny Hardwick
Natasha Gregson Wagner	...	Caroline Fortis
Shannon Stillo	...	Alison Jr. High
Drake Bell	...	Rob Jr. High

Storyline

Thirty-something Rob Gordon, a former club DJ, owns a not so lucrative used record store in Chicago. He not so much employs Barry and Dick, but rather keeps them around as they showed up at the store one day and never left. All three are vinyl and music snobs, but in different ways. Rob has a penchant for compiling top five lists. The latest of these lists is his top five break-ups, it spurred by the fact that his latest girlfriend, Laura, a lawyer, has just broken up with him. He believed that Laura would be the one who would last, partly as an expectation of where he would be at this stage in his life. Rob admits that there have been a few incidents in their relationship which in and of themselves could be grounds for her to want to break up. To his satisfaction, Laura is not on this top five list. Rob feels a need not only to review the five relationships, which go back as far as middle school when he was twelve, and try to come to terms with why the woman, or girl as the case may ...

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Plot Keywords:

employer employee relationship | two word title | record store | vinyl | thirty something | 

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Taglines:

Let's get it on. Maybe tonight.

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Genres:

Comedy | Drama | Music | Romance

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for language and some sexuality

Details

Country:

UK USA

Language:

English Danish

Release Date:

31 March 2000 (USA)

Also Known As:

Alta fidelidad

Filming Locations:

Chicago, Illinois, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$30,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$6,429,107, 2 April 2000, Wide Release

Gross USA:

$27,277,055, 10 September 2000

Company Credits

Production Co:

Touchstone Pictures, Working Title Films, Dogstar Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

113 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Cusack calls Robbins' character "lardass". A character was named "Lardass" in Stand By Me which Cusack also starred in.

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Goofs

In the opening scene, Rob is listening to the 13th Floor Elevators on his stereo via headphones. Laura walks in, leans and pulls the lead out of the stereo. This should mean the music is playing out loud, but it doesn't. After she leaves, Rob turns the music up and it plays through the normal speakers. But she never turned it down.

Just above the headphone jack connection is a knob labeled A, B, and A/B. This is a channel selector, which would have given him the option to run the headphones through A (where it is set) and external speakers through B. So the mistake may not be that she never turned it down, but that he didn't change the channel to the external speakers.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Rob: What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

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Crazy Credits

The main end credits are printed on music-type flyers posted on poles and walls.

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Alternate Versions

Beverly D'Angelo appears as a woman attempting to sell her husband's vintage record collection to John Cusack's character. The scene was deleted but included with several others on the DVD release.

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Connections

Referenced in Brief Film Reviews: (500) Days of Summer (2009)

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Soundtracks

Your Friend and Mine
Written by Arthur Lee
Performed by Love
Courtesy of Elektra Entertainment Group
By Arrangement with Warner Special Products

User Reviews

Music is the soundtrack to your life

And High Fidelity shows that this is more true for Rob Gordon (John Cusack) than most people. Rob owns Championship Vinyl, a record store where he and his two employees, Dick (Todd Louiso) and Barry (Jack Black), argue about music and insult customers. This is the background for a fantastic movie early in the year and one of the funniest movies I've seen in a while.

The movie's main plot is Rob recounting his past breakups via his favorite organizing device, the Top 5 List. He purposely excludes his most recent girlfriend, Laura, from it. He is trying to deal with her leaving him for a strange, world music-listening, martial arts-doing freak named Ian (Tim Robbins). Then he decides to look up all his old girlfriends, and in the process finds out a lot about himself.

The best scenes, however, are those in the record store - Todd Louiso and especially the utterly hilarious Jack Black steal every scene they're in. They argue over music incessantly, and anyone who knows a good deal about music will be laughing hysterically during these scenes. Dick is a quiet music geek in the classic sense of the word, while Barry is a cruel, ridiculous elitist.

In the end, High Fidelity is a wonderful, terribly funny movie with a lot of great stuff in it. See it.