Top Five: How ‘High Fidelity’ Found Its Rhythm and Became a Cult Movie Classic

The movie High Fidelity is sacred ground for music lovers and cinephiles alike. The story of Rob Gordon and his coterie of vinyl snobs made it cool to let your geek flag fly and embrace your irrational enthusiasm. In Top Five, journalist Andrew Buss offers a rollicking oral history of the making of the film and its continued influence on popular culture.

Usually, when a book that is as universally praised as Nick Hornby’s original novel, a film adaptation is a tricky thing. Top Five examines the difficulties that went into making it: although the book was set in London, the screenwriting team (which included star John Cusack) adapted it to fit their shared Chicago upbringing and to reflect their own experiences. As faithful as they remained to the book, the little tweaks allowed the material to feel authentic to the artists telling it. Despite the feeling that this might be an Americanized dilution of the source material, those doubts quickly subsided when fans of the book saw just how true the film stayed to Rob’s story.

Buss draws on interviews with actors like John Cusack, Jack Black, and Iben Hjejle, along with all the key principals behind the scenes, including director Stephen Frears and the movie’s screenwriter, producers, and composer. Taken together, they offer a multi-perspectival picture that captures the legacy of the film, showing how it brilliantly captured a cross-section of ‘90s culture while anticipating the current era of cultural surfeit and content overload.