Go at 20 – How this teen movie cap­tured LA rave cul­ture at its best

A Day-Glo curio that skirt­ed around the teen movie tidal wave of 1999, Doug Liman’s Go cap­tured LA rave cul­ture at its zenith, when young peo­ple in buck­et hats and space buns would escape to far away ware­hous­es and expe­ri­ence an ulti­mate EDM-induced euphoria.

Fea­tur­ing Tim­o­thy Olyphant as a Pete David­son-esque drug deal­er, Melis­sa McCarthy in her big screen debut and Katie Holmes going full anti-Joey at the peak of Dawson’s Creek, Go was Liman’s fol­low-up to indie hit Swingers, and a con­scious step away from the com­mer­cial com­e­dy projects that fell into his lap as a result of the film’s sur­prise success.

Despite warn­ings that Go would stunt Liman’s tra­jec­to­ry from his agent (they needn’t have wor­ried – he went on to direct The Bourne Iden­ti­ty, Mr & Mrs Smith and Edge of Tomor­row), the direc­tor saw no fun in easy mon­ey, and set to work bring­ing his Christ­mas rave-fuelled fairy tale to the screen.

Upon release the film drew inevitable com­par­isons to Pulp Fic­tion with its three inter­lac­ing sto­ry­lines – here piv­ot­ing on a botched ecsta­sy heist – but the sim­i­lar­i­ties also stretched to the mélange of odd­ball char­ac­ters that pep­per Go: Jane Krakows­ki as the hyper-sex­u­alised wife to William Fichtner’s clos­et­ed police­man; a pair of secret­ly gay soap stars played by Par­ty of Five’s Scott Wolf and Jer­ry Maguire’s Jay Mohr, a baby-faced Breckin Meyer’s insist­ing to a weary Taye Dig­gs that his ​“mother’s mother’s moth­er was black,” secur­ing him as prob­a­bly the worst of the bunch.

Liman makes no excus­es for his rab­ble of unlike­able play­ers; if any­thing he rev­els in the authen­tic­i­ty of their ruth­less­ness. Devoid of loy­al­ty and fuelled by greed and/​or des­per­a­tion, his char­ac­ters are giv­en count­less oppor­tu­ni­ties to turn back or choose a pur­er path, only for them to stray fur­ther into trou­ble every time.

Where Go shows its true edge is in its total lack of con­se­quence for this sin­ful ensem­ble. Light pun­ish­ments are doled out in the form of iodine poi­son­ing and death threats from a tele­path­ic cat, but oth­er­wise char­ac­ters emerge (most­ly) unscathed and unchanged from their col­lec­tive experience.

“So, what are we doing for New Year?” is the final line of the film.

To keep with­in the film’s $3.5 mil­lion bud­get, Liman took on the role of cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er on top of direct­ing duties, and ran a small but hec­tic shoot that trans­lates direct­ly to the screen. Splic­ing the Colum­bia Pic­tures logo card with flash­ing images of kids flail­ing against neon lights and thick, smoky air, Liman instant­ly applies his gran­u­lar, noc­tur­nal aes­thet­ic to Go, that cli­max­es in Mary X‑Mas Super Fest; a cav­ernous rave that spread by word-of-mouth and print­ed flyers.

By the late ​’90s, rave cul­ture had offi­cial­ly set­tled into Los Ange­les and was thriv­ing on account of its lack of com­mer­cial­ism; a grass­roots move­ment that the main­stream music indus­try couldn’t bottle.

Music was essen­tial both to Go’s ver­i­ties, and super­vi­sor Julianne Jor­dan – who has since worked on every­thing from The OC to A Star is Born – assem­bled emerg­ing DJs on top of house­hold names like Fat­boy Slim, Air and Moby for the film, while per­suad­ing a top-of-their-game No Doubt to record an orig­i­nal song for the clos­ing credits.

It would be a broth­er-sis­ter duo from Toron­to how­ev­er that would bring the most mem­o­rable track to the movie. Len’s ​‘Steal My Sun­shine’ would be the only hit that the band would pro­duce, but its cute melodies and catchy sam­ples made it a quin­tes­sen­tial anthem of the ​’90s, and was released to coin­cide with the Go’s open­ing weekend.

The film enjoyed large­ly pos­i­tive reviews upon its release, but its dis­tinc­tive voice made it dif­fi­cult to place with audi­ences, and nev­er quite hit that Swingers mark. With­out ful­ly com­mit­ting to the tropes of the teen movie, instead opt­ing for a dark­er shade of com­e­dy to what the likes of the Far­rel­ly broth­ers were offer­ing at the time, Go seemed to be a film that set out only to prove some­thing to itself.

Twen­ty years lat­er, it exists as a per­fect time cap­sule of young LA at the end of a decade. Its lack of real suc­cess upon release has nev­er­the­less been fol­lowed by stand­out careers for Sarah Pol­ley, Olyphant, and McCarthy – who is prob­a­bly the most prof­itable of the lot despite her tiny role – and Liman claims it’s his favourite film to date.

To watch it back, there’s an unde­ni­able scrap­pi­ness to Go as an unpol­ished but con­fi­dent entry in the 1999 can­non. Like the under­ground cul­ture of the time, the film has an ener­gy you sim­ply can’t bot­tle; at once a heist film, road trip movie and a Christ­mas com­e­dy with­out ever ful­ly being one or the oth­er. It’s a sprawl­ing, chaot­ic ode to a time and a place, and it’s nev­er bor­ing even for a second.