70s Movies: Golden Era

Am I really the only cranky bastard out here who's willing to admit that movies completely suck syphilitic elephant dicks nowadays? Once a veritable Temple Of Revelation in The Quiet and The Dark, the medium of Film Am I really the only cranky bastard out here who's willing to admit that movies completely suck syphilitic elephant dicks nowadays? Once a veritable Temple Of Revelation in The Quiet and The Dark, the medium of Film --as served to the masses at least--has deteriorated to such an insulting level that I'd hardly deem to consider it in the same phylum of distraction anymore. There was a time not so long ago when popular cinema could not only absorb forever another 2 hours of precious life but actually offer something of value for the price of admission. It was within my own lifetime that culture for the man on the street presumed the movie goer possessed a reasonable degree of intellectual development and genuine life experience; that they were actually capable of tolerating perhaps Ambiguity and Complex Character and enjoyed Spiritual Provocation as opposed to the pathetic pandering and catering to sleepwalking idiot homunculi who desire nothing more than the tickling of bigger explosions, louder crashes, easier to follow storylines, gravity defying tits (ok, I'll bite) and prettier leads i.e. harmless looking lads with leaner abs can we even seriously call these fruitcakes men? Only if you're a 12 year old girl. Which one of these transparently submissive one-dimensional jack offs desperately trying to carry a picture today be considered even of the same species as a Steve McQueen, a Roy Scheider, a Clint Eastwood?
Is the only reason I return again and again to viewing flics that were made during my childhood (1967-1980) Nostalgia? Surely, that is a great lure. For example, I love seeing New York City say in Midnight Cowboy or The French Connection or Cruising, when it was still gritty and seedy and sexy and dangerous--the place where things happened like nowhere else in the world. In the celluloid of yesteryear are preserved images of The City that I remember from my youth, albeit idealistically. Just over the GWB. Anonymous indulgence, ReInvention of the Self. Art and Crime. Street Life. The perverted glories of the Deuce. Flamboyant Greenwich Village post-Stonewall. The scary ass drug supermarkets of Washington Heights and East Harlem and Alphabet City. Abandoned buildings and freaks galore. The Mafia of Little Italy and the Ghost Shadows of Chinatown. Central Park After Dark. Rich Bitch Swells, fashions of 5th Ave. Ubiquitous cheap SRO hotels for junk shooting and hooker fucking and hiding out in soothing solitude for as long as you needed. When neighborhoods still existed as communities instead of real estate products. Shit was messy. Ultimate Culture from the highest to the lowest. The clean, safe jive ass city of today has been stripped of all the unique character and weirdness that pulled me and countless other misfits and dreamers so inevitably here many years ago. All but vanquished by a critical mass of douche-bags.
Another tangential charm is by association of that bygone era the ancient memory of the ritual of going to the movies before VHS/DVDs and On Demand and Netflix. Mysterious and special. Especially the thrill of seeing R rated motion pictures i.e. no one under 17 admitted without a parent or guardian. It was a naked glimpse into the unbridled adult world. Clues to guide my future behavoir and illuminate my imagination. My father took me to see Dog Day Afternoon when it came out. I was 7 or 8 years old. Although I was already happily using the word fuck on a daily basis, it was extra delightful to hear it aloud in a public theatre. The transexual bit was confusing at that age less so when he brought me to see Brian dePalma's Dressed To Kill a few years later. By the way, the real life Elizabeth Eden looks hotter than Chris Sarandon did as Leon. Although apparently he took issue with many details of the film, the real Sonny, John Wojtowicz strongly approved of the movie's portrayal of their relationship.
Pictures like Taxi Driver and Five Easy Pieces and The Gambler perfectly capture the plight of the deeply troubled protagonist desperately at war with the world and cobbling together arguably misguided strategies for existence nonetheless infinitely more acceptable than those conventions preferred by the establishment. God's Lonely Man.
It continues to appeal to me because I'm a dinosaur compelled to wallow in the echoing fantasies of my childhood before it all went wrong, before I blew it, as Peter Fonda says to Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider. Rejection of the status quo, no longer necessary now that everyone can assume their niche in society and be comfortable playing ball with the Man, since the annihilation of any underground or a counter culture has been embraced. While the people grow fat and stoopid, the machine exponentially improves its savvy. Cool has been a meaningless word for a looong time now. Individuality can be purchased online. Personal integrity is easily devoured now that there's enough air time for everybody. The MegaloMedia 1000 channels of cable plus Paris Hilton times You Tube equals 15 minutes of Fame for absolutely anybody who wants it enough. Tattoos and piercings are mainstream accessories not just for sailors, streetwalkers and outlaw bikers anymore. The budding drug abuser is no longer required to brave the slums to score coke and dope are easily delivered via cell phone communications. Graffiti is incorporated. Gangsta rap is heavy rotation. The Global Village ensures that idiosyncracies are squashed immediately, distinctive regional styles are vanquished. Plus, everything is disposable, as we plunge toward the Singularity. There is no need for the Anti-Hero anymore. The People are satisfied. Video games are spectacular.

There's something specific about the quality of the film stock, a color and texture identifiable from that decade. I suppose everything takes on a quality in film that makes it seem appealing. Perhaps it's the voyeurism. Mundane tasks become significant when scrutinized. The unseen eye of another world observing our daily rituals somehow has the power to lift the banal into the realm of the glorious. By freezing ephemera in a photograph becomes the fleeting shadows metamorph into monoliths. Yet another manifestation of the immortality project. With repeated viewings, the photons build up and become solid objects. Stealthily the thief crosses the bridge, with hands full, between Dream and Reality. An arrow to The Eternal Recurrence. Or conversely, with repeated viewings, intended meaning slips away completely, like saying a word over and over again. The familiar turns alien. New connections are made. A world turns upside down and becomes a play of surfaces. There is the humor of the Absurd then. The Tragic lens pulls out to the scale of the Comic. My brother and I can work ourselves into frenzy habitually goofing on all the lines and gestures of our favorite scenes. All that hard work and honed craft reduced to the irreverent tomfoolery of knuckleheads at play.

Let me shoot out a quick list of favorites a.k.a. Must See Flics, and you go on and consider their appeal in comparison to the rancid box office tripe force fed and heartily contributing to perpetuating the Idiocracy today.

01.Taxi Driver
02.French Connection
03.Seven Ups
04.Bullit
05.Midnight Cowboy
06.Marathon Man
07.Dog Day Afternoon
08.The Conversation
09.Carnal Knowledge
10.The Gambler
11.King Of Marvin Gardens
12.Apocalypse Now
13.Midnight Express
14.Five Easy Pieces
15.The Graduate
16.Parallax View
17.Sorceror
18.Panic In Needle Park
19.One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest
20.Network
21.Deer Hunter
22.Straw Dogs
23.Deliverance
24.Cruising
25.Easy Rider

Final images: The Conversation---Gene Hackman tearing apart his entire apartment searching for a bug, even rips up the floorboards with a crowbar, then sits amongst the rubble blowing saxophone.
The Graduate--back of the bus---the "now what" look that drops on their faces after the grand giddy melee escape
Five Easy Pieces---long shot of Nicholson climbing into the cab of the logging truck, --gonna be awfully cold where we're goin'...
The Gambler---Axel staring in the mirror at the fresh slash on his face and smirks now that he's really playing for keeps
Carnal Knowledge---"it's up!"--cut to flashback of ice skater & music

Classic lines: "I'm walkin' here!"
"You talkin' to me?"
"Attica, Attica!..."
"I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!"

More obscure: "You see THIS sign?!" and then JN smashes all the plates and glasses to the floor in one sweeping gesture.
"Smells like a coffin in here!"

Obsessive trivia: Q. In Taxi Driver; Travis has a transaction with the porno theatre concession stand girl (i.e. "Royal Crown cola is all we have, "etc..) What's the title of the magazine article she's reading? A: "How You Spend Your Money Affects Your Sex Life"

Notes: Love those shots in Taxi Driver when Scorcese has the camera give us an overhead POV of the desks and counters and so forth--opening scene in taxi garage office, campaign hq with Betsy ("I see all these phones...on this desk and it means nothing."), the porno theatre concession (noted above), in the cafeteria when Travis spaces out on fizzing Alka-Seltzer camera zooms in tight on bubbles...