STACK #152 Jun 2017

EXTRAS FEATURE

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of the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive proved that Johnson had been lying to them. As a direct consequence, this led to strong domestic opposition to the US involvement in the VietnamWar. Soon after, a haggard-looking Johnson announced that he would not run for presidential re-election. Violent anti-war and anti- racism protests increased across the country, with bloody battles fought with police on the streets of Chicago and at various State Universities. And then, just two months after King was murdered, so too was the new Democratic frontrunner, Bobby Kennedy. The young New York senator was shot just moments after claiming victory in the California primary. Assassination and anarchy now seemed to be part of American political life. The US burgeoning youth population found themselves increasingly at odds with the established social and conventional political order that appeared to Bonnie & Clyde was the most profitable film of 1967-68, and The Graduate became one of the top five box office hits of the decade. With the scrapping of the strict Motion Picture Production Code, Hollywood was at long last free to explore controversial subject matter in more mature films. Time magazine ran a cover story describing Bonnie & Clyde as the beginning of a new American cinema, influenced by the European Nouvelle Vague . The article was headlined “Violence... Sex... Art, a new freedom of filmmaking combining commercial success with critical controversy”. 
The following year saw the release of a movie about two disillusioned, drug-addled bikers. Alienated from society, they take to the road to find the real America, only to die in the process. Easy Rider (1969), a satire on the American dream, perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the late 1960s. Accompanied by a groundbreaking hard rock soundtrack, the film became a cinematic phenomenon. Independently financed but released through Columbia Pictures, it was made on a budget of less than $400,000 but returned over $19 million in domestic rentals. Easy Rider, brought youngsters flocking back to theatres [ Easy Rider ] was made on a budget of less than $400,000 but returned over $19 million be coming apart at the seams. Two films that had tapped into America’s youth counterculture won Oscars at the 40th Academy Awards ceremony.

HOLLYWOOD'S SECOND GOLDEN AGE 1968-1974

Part 3: Political Turmoil and the Rise of the Movie Brats

A classic scene from Easy Rider with actor/director Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, with Luke Askew riding pillion

T he 40th Academy Awards, honouring film achievements for 1967, had been originally scheduled for 8th April 1968. But the ceremony was postponed for two days out of deep respect for the leader of the Civil Rights Movement, Dr Martin Luther King Jr., who had been assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. 
1968 is considered to be one of the most turbulent and divisive twelve months in American history, where the country’s image as

a place of freedom and true democracy was severely damaged. A cascade of dramatic and tragic events shocked American society through pervasive coverage by the media. TV newscasts beamed pictures into American homes of hand-to-hand combat between American soldiers and Communist Viet Cong – within the confines of the US embassy in Saigon! President Lyndon B. Johnson had continuously promised the American people that victory in Vietnam was close at hand. But the carnage

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JUNE 2017

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