VH1: O.J’s Car Chase Iconic of the ’90s
LOS ANGELES – O.J. Simpson’s slow-speed police chase may be the iconic moment of the 1990s, but “Where’s Waldo?” may be the funniest ó at least according to the VH1 nostalgia series “I Love the ’90s.”
The 10-hour program, which started with two installments Monday and runs through Friday, devotes one hour to each year of the decade, chronicling all the pop culture touchstones from Sinead O’Connor to “Beverly Hills, 90210.”
Producer Karla Hidalgo said the cornerstone of the era begins in 1994, with Simpson fleeing police before his double-murder arrest.
Since the “I Love the …” series, which has also documented the 1970s and 1980s (twice), involves comedians and other pop-culture figures cracking wise about the past, the producers said they weren’t sure they wanted to include the famed double-homicide in the retrospective.
“At first we weren’t sure how to deal with that,” Hidalgo said. “But when we started talking about it with our interviewees, what they remembered was mostly watching it and their initial reaction to it, everything from disbelief to `Go, O.J., go!’ ó not really grasping exactly what had happened.”
She said one panelist described it as “the moon landing of the 1990s.”
Hidalgo said she thinks the funniest moment in the series is supplied by the puzzle book “Where’s Waldo?”
“People had fun with that book. We gave it to pretty much anyone who would participate in finding Waldo, and people could not find him. And finally when they did find him it was just this immense excitement from everybody, from J.C. Chasez the ‘N Sync guy to Wendy the Snapple lady.”
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