STACK #152 Jun 2017

FEATURE EXTRAS

at a time when cinema audiences appeared to be in terminal decline. This convinced movie producers that one did not need to spend millions of dollars to make a hit movie, especially if it was geared to the counterculture youth market. The US film industry during this period was in dire financial straits. Following the sensational box office returns for both Mary Poppins (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965), all of the major studios had heavily invested in expensive family-friendly roadshow musicals – the majority of them specifically designed to replicate the Julie Andrews extravaganzas. But Dr Doolittle , Hello Dolly! , Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Paint Your Wagon, Sweet Charity  and Star! turned out to be colossal box office flops. Consequently, by the end of 1969, practically all of the Hollywood studios were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. 
With the exception of Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox and Disney, the major film studios had been taken over by conglomerates. The old movie moguls had all been replaced production primarily as just another part of their overall investment strategy. However, these industrial businessmen knew very little about moviemaking.  The box office success of Bonnie & Clyde,The Graduate and Easy Rider had revealed 58 per cent of theatre admissions in 1968/69 were from the 16-25 age group. This encouraged the studios' new corporate managers to recruit younger filmmakers and screenwriters. Some that were hired became collectively known as “Movie Brats”. Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Paul Schrader, John Milius, Martin Scorsese and their mentor, Francis Ford Coppola, were all film school graduates, educated and steeped in cinema history. This group, along with Peter by a melange of business executives, bankers and lawyers. They saw movie

Francis Ford Coppola directing Robert De Niro in a scene from The Godfather: Part II (1974)

Peter Bogdanovich on the set of The Last Picture Show (1971)

A Martin Scorsese film – Mean Streets (1973)

during the 1970s. A resurgence of male-dominated films followed, featuring protagonists who were – much like the young audience they were aimed at – anti-authoritarian. Movies like Five Easy Pieces, Mean Streets, the two Godfather films , The Conversation, The Last Picture Show, Taxi Driver and American Graffiti also introduced to audiences an array of new, unconventional

Some [younger filmmakers and writers] that were hired became collectively known as “Movie Brats”

George Lucas directing a scene from American Graffiti (1973). Note the camera attachment to the car, very much in the style of the French Nouvelle Vague

Bogdanovich and Jonathan Demme, had served apprenticeships churning out cheap horror/exploitation movies for Roger Corman at American International Pictures. But now they were all given unprecedented creative freedom by the major studios to make movies. They swiftly developed this opportunity into an era of American auteurism, in which the director is the major creative force of a motion picture. A possessory credit at the opening of a movie declaring “A Francis Ford Coppola Film” or “A Martin Scorsese Film", became de rigueur

young modern audiences. Movies had become relevant again. But this period of innovative and thematically challenging films would only last for a few short years, due primarily to the enormous commercial success of a “summer blockbuster”. This movie released in 1975 would once again change the course of American filmmaking and remind Corporate Hollywood that it was in business to make money.

movie stars. Actors such as Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Richard Dreyfuss, Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, Harvey Keitel, Jeff Bridges and Robert Duvall looked and sounded nothing like the handsome matinee idols of Hollywood’s Classic Golden Age. However, what they brought to the screen was a refreshing new realism. The movie brats and their new young actors were able to express contemporary concerns onscreen much better than their older peers could. They did this by handcrafting visionary films that spoke for

To be continued...

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