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OT: Reading New Charles Taylor Book on 70's Films: "Opening Wednesday"

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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A little summer reading:

Critic Charles Taylor's book "Opening Wednesday at a Theater or Drive-In Near You: The Shadow Cinema of the 70s."

I just couldn't help myself, even as Taylor opens the book with an intro that charges right into what is either (1) The too-well-known truth or the (2) wrongful baby boomer assumption that: "the seventies was the last great era of American filmmaking" and "with Star Wars, the American movie became infantilized."

Honestly, by now we seem to have that driven into our heads, with the current Comic Hero Boom as the Living Proof.

I think we are ready for a book by...swanstep...who has made an estimable case for all sorts of great movies being made in the 80's, 90s...right through to today. Perhaps swanstep uses "foreign film"(i.e. non-American film) to make the point more strongly, but there are more than enough great American films in those years, it seems to me, plus, given international film production...is "Amadeus" an American film?

As for Mainstream Man(me), I'd count ET, Scarface, The Untouchables, Die Hard, GoodFellas, Pulp Fiction, Unforgiven, Fargo, LA Confidential, Silence of the Lambs...and on and on as giving the 70's a run for their money.

But Charles Taylor has a book to sell...

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Here are the 12 chapters, 15 films that Taylor uses to make his case for the "shadow 70's cinema" -- exploitational cult films aside from the usual "greats"(The Godfather, Chinatown, Taxi Driver.) And my personal viewing experience with each:

Prime Cut: (Saw it on release at the drive-in)
Vanishing Point: (Saw it on release, indoors)
Cisco Pike: (Saw it years later on cable)
Hickey and Boggs: (Never saw it)
Two-Lane Blacktop(saw it years later on cable)
Coffy AND Foxy Brown: (saw them decades later in wake of Jackie Brown, on cable)
Ulzana's Raid(saw it on release , indoors)
Aloha Bobby and Rose AND American Hot Wax (never saw them)
Hard Times (saw it on release, indoors)
Citizens Band(never saw it)
WinterKills (saw it years later, on cable)
Eyes of Laura Mars(never saw it)
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (saw it years later on cable)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

By my count, I've seen 10 of the 15, and I saw 4 of those 10 when the movies came out.

It makes sense that the four of them that I saw on release were action films -- Prime Cut, Vanishing Point, Ulzana's Raid(a violent Western) and Hard Times. The only action film of the group that I MISSED...and I did want to see it when it came out , was Hickey and Boggs, which starred the I Spy stars Cosby and Culp(directed by Culp, scripted by Walter Hill) in an LA-based private eye actioner determined to sell the guys as hard, mean, broken-down men rather than the fun guys they had been on TV(but I always felt they were rather hard and mean even on TV.) I read the reviews and wanted to go when Hickey and Boggs came out in '72, but it played fast and was gone. Still is gone. But I can find it, of course.

Taylor has assembled a real potpourri here, very arbitrary, and its missing some genres -- no horror(Texas Chainsaw, Halloween), no caper films(I'd count Charley Varrick there.) I was gonna say no kung fu...but these are American films set in America, I guess.

[–] swanstep (2616) 7 years ago

Taylor has assembled a real potpourri here, very arbitrary, and its missing some genres -- no horror(Texas Chainsaw, Halloween), no caper films(I'd count Charley Varrick there.) I was gonna say no kung fu...but these are American films set in America, I guess.

I guess that these are just the movies Taylor thinks that (i) he's got something novel to say about that makes them good jumping off points for discussions of the whole era, and (ii) that otherwise haven't been given their due. But, yeah, the chapter-starters include films by Peckinpah, Aldrich, Ritchie (all big names at the time), Demme, Kirshner (would be names by the '80s) so these are hardly entries in any kind of 'shadow' or 'exploitation' or 'grindhouse' cinema. A lot of the chapter-starters are broadly studio films that are doing exactly the *same* thing (often with much the same levels of stars) as some of biggest 'cool' hits of the day e.g., The Wild Bunch or Five Easy Pieces or Easy Rider or American Graffiti or Dirty Harry or Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry or Thunderbolt and Lightfoot....only without quite so much commercial success for various reasons, thereby allowing them to fall quickly to the cheapie moviehouses.

Put the other way around: What does Taylor mean by 'the usual greats'? Just the stuff that got Oscars and/or did well at the box office? Or does he include anything that critics/film buffs tended to like and that has had a following for decades now, e.g., (sticking to North American films) Harold and Maude, Badlands, Shivers, Eraserhead, Silent Running, Night Moves, Scarecrow, McCabe and Mrs Miller, Long Goodbye, Phantom of the Paradise, The Driver, Little Murders, Where's Poppa?, Pink Flamingos, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Texas Chainsaw, Hills Have Eyes, and so on. If the former then Taylor's chapters-starters seem a little arbitrary, and if the latter then lots of Taylor's choices seem like they're continuous with the hipster mainstream, albeit a *bit* more niche than say The Conversation or The Parallax View or Day of the Locust.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Put the other way around: What does Taylor mean by 'the usual greats'? Just the stuff that got Oscars and/or did well at the box office?

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Oh, I think he rather enumerates them: Both Godfathers, Chinatown, Taxi Driver...Oscar does matter, but not overtly(Patton and The Sting aren't mentioned as greats, for instance.) Its that critically acclaimed downer stuff, mainly.

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Or does he include anything that critics/film buffs tended to like and that has had a following for decades now, e.g., (sticking to North American films) Harold and Maude, Badlands, Shivers, Eraserhead, Silent Running, Night Moves, Scarecrow, McCabe and Mrs Miller, Long Goodbye, Phantom of the Paradise, The Driver, Little Murders, Where's Poppa?, Pink Flamingos, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Texas Chainsaw, Hills Have Eyes, and so on

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Your list above shows us that any number of books like this could have been written choosing any number of seventies films -- and the list above reminds me that a lot of those films were NOT box office successes.

Consequently, Taylor's list seems all the more arbitrary, except by process of elimination we get things like Blaxploitation, "Native American issues"(Ulzanas Raid), City vs Country(Prime Cut) American/Mexican issues(Alfredo Garcia), Black/white issues(Hickey and Boggs.) This is perhaps a book about American social issues as reflected in "disreputable" genres.

By the way, I've always felt that Hitchcock's Frenzy fit with these 70's movies like a glove: low budget, no stars, lurid R-rated violence, sexual/feminist issues. But, its British...still, its interesting the extent to which an "Old Hollywood Old Master" delivered a grotty and controversial seventies movie along with the rest of them.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

During my hiatus, I've looked at "Prime Cut" (1972). Quite a few times. Sometimes I get mesmerized by a movie and have to work it out of my system.

With "Prime Cut," there are both good and bad aspects to the film. Its not a classic, but its got something going on.

First of all, I remember being all excited by the print ads for Prime Cut in the summer of 1972. Lee Marvin(with a machine gun.) Gene Hackman(with a gleaming meat cleaver.) "Together they're murder in Prime Cut." The ad featured bucolic wheat fields that summoned up for me(then in Peak Hitchcock Fan Mode) "North by Northwest" and my own formative ideas for a Hitchcock type movie set entirely in the heartland (in other words, Hollywood had just MADE a movie I was only DREAMING about as a young film fan with visions of screenplays in my head.)

Prime Cut came out just about at the same time as Frenzy, so I had the thrill of a REAL Hitchcock hit in release concurrently with a "Hitchcock-like hit."

I rushed out to see Prime Cut. It was at a drive-in, and I remember being disappointed at how gritty and cheapish and "documentary-style" the movie looked versus the visions of "North by Northwest gleam" in my head. What I didn't know at the time was that this was what a 1972 movie was SUPPOSED to look like. Because it really WAS 1972, and my comparison was NXNW in 1959. All these years later, "I get it": Michael Ritchie brought the same gritty documentary style to "Prime Cut" that he brought to HIS other movie of the summer of 1972: The Candidate(with Robert Redford.)

Watching Prime Cut again recently, I brought my faded memories of seeing it in 1972: how it had a chase with a wheat thresher clearly based on the crop duster scene(but not as good); how it opened with a gangster being sent back from Kansas City to the Chicago mob as hot dogs; and a fair amount of '72 female flesh being sold up as if it were cattle (IN cattle pens.) I only vaguely recalled the action climax.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Seeing Prime Cut today with full concentration, I see the good and the bad in it.

The good: the premise remains surefire and worth pondering. The Chicago mob has been asking the Kansas City mob to send up a percentage of profits from its dope and prostitution operations. Evidently, the Kansas City mob had been paying OK for awhile...but stopped. And now the Kansas City mob owes the Chicago mob $500,000. The Chicago mob sent three different guys to collect. All three were killed. The last was sent back as hot dogs processed in the Kansas City mob's meat packing plant.

Chicago mob boss Eddie Egan(the real-life Popeye Doyle) makes an offer to hire "the best in the business" to go collect the 500K where his underlings failed. That's Lee Marvin, cooler than ever, deadpan as ever -- and sadly, just about to lose his superstardom. But Marvin delivers the goods here. Too bad he turned down Jaws and watched his career dissipate. But he didn't care. He moved to Arizona and took roles in lesser movies.

Marvin travels to Kansas City and there's a New Star waiting to confront him: Gene Hackman, looking great with longish hair and moustache and playing his "Badder Bad Guy" with a lot of flourish. Having recently seen The Conversation, where Hackman looked bald and dull and "blobbish"(Pauline Kael's description), its amazing to see him in Prime Cut looking virile and vital and ready for action.

And that's the cool core of Prime Cut: Lee Marvin shows up to demand that Gene Hackman Pay His Dues. Hackman dodges and weaves(he never says "No") but prefers to insult Marvin about his "city slicker status" versus "the Heartland." Its Two Tough Guys facing off, Two Tough Guys not backing down. And Lee Marvin's cool plays well against Hackman's good ol' boy flamboyance.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

You're just waiting, waiting, WAITING for Lee to demand the money, for Gene to say "NO!" and for the big battle to begin (Lee's brought three young Chicago mobsters with him as muscle; Gene has muscular blond farm boys with shotguns on his team.)

And that's where the movie falls apart.

Marvin and Hackman have already had a first great verbal confrontation at Hackman's ranch -- where orphan girls raised to be supplied to brothels are nude and up for sale in pens. (Marvin rescued one of them, Sissy Spacek, and gallantly keeps her protected without ever sleeping with her.)

Now, its Day Two: at the County Fair. Marvin and Hackman swap insults, as a sultry woman looks on: Hackman's wife; Marvin's ex girlfriend(so the two men have THAT between them, too.) Hackman insults Sissy Spacek. Marvin slaps the grin off Hackman's face. The sultry wife looks on in amusement: her two men are fighting. YES.

This is it. This is it. And then:

Well, its pretty lousy action really. And ridiculous. Gene Hackman basically says "Forget it. I'm not gonna pay Chicago a dime." And his goons chase Marvin and Spacek.

I mean, Lee Marvin has spent all this time threatening Hackman and when it comes down to showdown time, Marvin didn't BRING A GUN? And Marvin is reduced to RUNNING AWAY?

What ensues is so unmotivated and ridiculous that you wonder: is it that Michael Ritchie and his writer didn't think to properly set up this big confrontation? NO GUN on Lee Marvin? Or are they making fun of the whole thing? (Marvin DOES have those young Chicago guys with him, but one is killed instantly and the others just seem to disappear as Marvin and Spacek are chased into the wheat fields.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I think the issue is that, in 1972, the action film hadn't been "finely honed." Good ones by Don Siegel were made -- Dirty Harry and Charley Varrick. And Eastwood and soon Bronson would be making them a lot. But "Prime Cut" falls so totally apart in the middle -- and then falls apart some more at the end (Hackman and his brother Weenie quickly and stupidly lose the climactic gunbattle with Marvin) -- that one is left with an action movie in which the good scenes are the ones WITHOUT action.

Charles Taylor in his book pumps up Prime Cut for its Vietnam-era symbolism (a rotted Heartland; women and men as meat to be consumed or sliced up) and for its 1972 frankness on matters of sex and "appetite." And it sure is great to see the two early scenes where Marvin and Hackman trade lines of threat with each other(as in this first scene):

Hackman(about his nude women in pens): You want into this business? You wanna be my partner?
Marvin: No. You swim in your own sewer. Just give Chicago its cut.
Hackman: Its Saturday. Bank's not open.
Marvin: Banks get opened. Easy or HARD. But they get opened.

Great stuff. Muy mas macho. Too bad the movie falls apart.

But this: the film is interesting in keeping Italian-Americans Mafia out of it. Marvin is Chicago-Irish mob and Hackman seems to be some offshoot WASP country boy wannabe mobster. Hackman derisively talks of the blacks and Hispanics running new mobs in Chicago, but this movie is "white man's mafia" all the way. The Heartland.

And this: remarked about then AND now: Lee Marvin is a ruthless mob killer, but here, he's the GOOD GUY. Why? Because Gene Hackman sells nude girls in cow pens for prostitution and sends back men as hot dogs. He's a pig. Lee's a gentleman. And we just have to believe this. I mean, I'll bet they run hookers up in Chicago, too. Just not as crassly and cruelly as Hackman does.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

"Prime Cut" sure is great about half the time. Too bad its about three re-writes short of being a story that makes any sense at all. Having Lee Marvin initially presented as "the best in the business" and then turning him into a bumbling fool who didn't even bring a gun to a gunfight is...bad for business.

Like "Frenzy" of that same summer, "Prime Cut" is R-rated, sexual, violent. The films also share an emphasis on humans as FOOD. The gangster chopped into hot dogs. The woman's corpse in the potato truck. Brenda as Rusk's "meal." Sissy Spacek(in the print ads) with a "Prime Cut" stamp on her naked arm. Queasy-making. Lightly cannibalistic.

And I saw another connection in Prime Cut to North by Northwest(other than the wheat thresher/crop duster.)

In NXNW, the Professor keeps sending agents to shadow Vandamm...and they keep getting killed. And Eve WILL get killed, unless Roger stops it.

In Prime Cut, Chicago kept sending mobsters to collect the debt from Hackman...and they kept getting killed. Lee Marvin is sent for, because he's "the best," but one wonders: why did Egan keep sending one guy at a time to Kansas to get killed? Why did the Professor keep sending CIA men to THEIR deaths? (Its that Vietnam analogy again, I guess, even in NXNW: the bosses don't care who gets killed, and they keep repeating the mistake.)

And that's all on Prime Cut...