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Psycho and "The Movie Star"

posted 3 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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In an OT thread called "The Number Twos," I've been reviewing how modernly, the "movie star" concept is failing. All the Marvel superheroes make big bucks for THOSE movies, but Robert Downey Jr. totally flopped with Dr. Doolittle.

In an effects-driven environment, we really don't have stars like Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant anymore...with those guys, audiences flocked to see THEM, in hopes that the story would be good. Bogart generally picked classics most of the time; Grant too often "went for the paycheck"(Kiss Them for Me, The Pride and the Passion, That Touch of Mink) but occasionally stumbled into the classic(North by Northwest, Charade.) Still, audiences came to see THEM.

Not so with Robert Downey Jr (Iron Man) or Scarlett Johannesen(Black Widow) or Mark ("The Hulk") Ruffalo. ScarJo as Janet Leigh didn't help "Hitchcock" make much money, for instance.

Back to Hitchocck, on topic:

There is a letter printed in a Hitchcock bio in which he tells a friend why he is casting Paul Newman and Julie Andrews in Torn Curtain:

"The studio wants stars this time, unlike with my last three pictures."

His last three pictures. Hmm.

Those would be Marnie (unknown Hitchcock discovery Tippi Hedren and not-yet-a-star Sean Connery.)

And The Birds(even MORE unknown Hitchcock discovery Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor)

and

Psycho.

Psycho!?

Well, yes. Its very telling that this was the billing for Hitchcock's movies from late 1956 through 1960:

Henry Fonda
Vera Miles
in Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man

James Stewart
Kim Novak
in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo

Cary Grant
Eva Marie Saint
James Mason
in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho

Starring Anthony Perkins, John Gavin Vera Miles..."And Janet Leigh as Marion Crane."

Yep, in 1960, somehow neither Anthony Perkins nor Janet Leigh(no matter how "limited on screen") was deemed worthy of above-the-title billing for Psycho. In the opening credits, the first name on screen is "Alfred Hitchcock's" (then Psycho.) I wonder who decided that?

The stars of the three movies before Psycho included (on the male side) three established Golden Era greats(Fonda, Stewart, Grant) one star level guy hovering on support(James Mason, from A Star is Born and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea).

The female stars of the three movies before Psycho included one Oscar winner(Eva Marie Saint, albeit Supporting), one newly minted Columbia sexbomb star(Kim Novak) and one woman whom Hitchcock discovered and put(prematurely?) over the title in The Wrong Man(Vera Miles.)

One turns attention to Psycho and its casting:

Anthony Perkins had had an Oscar nomination(Supporting, for Friendly Persuasion) and an overload of star roles before he did Psycho. They varied. He had second billing to JACK PALANCE of all people, in "The Lonely Man." He had been the over the title love interest of Audrey Hepburn in Green Mansions.

But came Psycho, Perkins got "good news and bad news."

The good news: he would have top billing (this, a year after he had FOURTH billing in On the Beach after Peck, Gardner,and Astaire, but at least he was above the title.)

The bad news: he would not have billing over the title.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S PSYCHO
...starring Anthony Perkins. "And Janet Leigh as Marion Crane."

Hmm. It meant something, but what?

Janet Leigh had been above the title for The Vikings and Touch of Evil. But she's not in Psycho all the way, so perhaps Hitch didn't feel she should be over the title.

And thus, Hitchcock may have surmised, Tony Perkins couldn't really be above the title "all alone."

It would seem that the billing SHOULD have been:

Anthony Perkins
Janet Leigh
in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho

co-starring Vera Miles and John Gavin

..but maybe that didn't work either. were Miles and Gavin meant to be "co-starring" actors yet?

Therefore it could have been

Anthony Perkins
Janet Leigh
Vera Miles
John Gavin

in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho

And that is probably CORRECT billing, but Hitchcock evidently did not feel inclined to add Miles (who had dropped out of Vertigo) and Gavin above the title.

There is also this:

By 1960, Alfred Hitchcock was quite the star himself. He may well have felt -- with both Psycho and The Birds - that he had not really hired the kind of major stars who should be aboe the title with him. HE was the star now -- particularly with a low budget shocker like Psycho. Only he could be above the title. Until Paul Newman and Julie Andrews came along.

For the final Hitchcocks after Torn Curtain, the actors in Topaz and Frenzy were near-unknowns, so only Hitchcock went above the title (and as big AS the title.) Family Plot had American names (Karen Black, Bruce Dern, Barbara Harris, William Devane) but not big ones. They did not end up above the title(any of them) and they don't even appear at the beginning of the film on screen.

---

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I have always rather liked , as a matter of "unintentional pattern" how Hitchocck used the end of the fifties to give three great and aging stars "their ultimate Hitchcock pictures"

Henry Fonda: The Wrong Man(well, it was his ONLY Hitchcock picture, but a great one, and he fit the role in a way that neither James Stewart nor Cary Grant would have.)

James Stewart :Vertigo (the "climax" for Stewart, standing forlorn on that bell tower rooftop. Rear Window is an honorable mention, but Stewart REALLY pulled out the stops here.)

Cary Grant: North by Northwest (the "climax" for Grant with Hitchcock, riding that honeymoon train back from Mount Rushmore. Notorious is an honorable mention, but Grant REALLY pulled out the stops here.)

In the sixties, Hitchcock evidently tried to get Cary Grant for Torn Curtain, and considered James Stewart for an unmade movie called The Blind Man but...I expect everybody knew that Vertigo and North by Northwest were as great as Grant and Stewart could ever be for Hitch. The 60's beckoned, with new, younger leading men.

I'd say that(arguably) the three top younger male stars of the 60's were Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, and Sean Connery. Hitch managed to get two of the three into his movies; he knew what was going on(even when Connery wasn't "major" yet.) Rod Taylor had his "day in the sun" (the entire 60's, from The Time Machine on), but seemed in The Birds what he was all the time: second tier.

Which brings us back to Psycho.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

As we know, structurally, the film has a real problem, leading-man wise. The lead is the VILLAIN, but we don't even know he's the villain(the killer) until the very end. Still, once Perkins buries Leigh's body and lies about the crime to the private detective, he's an accomplice, an accessory and(thought audiences at the time) likely headed for jail at film's end even in that reduced role.

The "leading man" -- the shirtless beefcake lover, the strong and handsome hero -- is: John Gavin? Look, I liked Gavin's work in this better than others(and certainly better than Viggo Mortenson in the remake) but he really wasn't much of a star. Nor was Sam Loomis a star part. As Hitchcock had done with MacDonald Carey(Shadow of a Doubt) and Farley Granger(Strangers on a Train) and Bob Cummings(Dial M for Murder), the "hero" was cast with a lesser personality than the villain, and given lower billing(save Granger.)

And there's a "bonus male lead" in Psycho: Martin Balsam as Arbogast. HIs billing is "co-starring Martin Balsam" but he's the most interesting male character in the movie other than Norman, compelling in his acting, compelling in his unforgettable death. (When William H. Macy took the role in the remake, he was moved to the main star list...though none of THEM got to be above the title this time, either.)

SO: are there any "movie stars" in Psycho?

The mythology is that when Marion Crane dies early in Psycho, "a big star gets killed by surprise." I'd say that Janet Leigh was a KNOWN star, and by 1960 had noteable roles going back to the late 40's, and -- importantly -- was in a big star marriage with Tony Curtis.

I'd say Janet Leigh was ENOUGH of a star. She wasn't Doris Day or Audrey Hepburn or Liz Taylor in 1960, but she was big enough, and qualified from her 1950 through 1963 work alone...as a star.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Was Anthony Perkins a movie star? David Thomson thought enough of Perkins to give him an entry in his "Biographical Dictionary of Film," but the praise was backhanded:

"An inconsistent worker , and far from a star, (Perkins) was a major screen personality..a gentle man....Perkins career never lived up to Psycho, perhaps it could not, for some films leave no room for development."

That's all about right. And its simpler than that in some ways. Take "Psycho" out of the mix, and Perkins was struggling with his leads in the late fifties. He looks and sounds puny and ridiculous in the Westerns The Tin Star and The Lonely Man. Though a beautiful male lead opposite Audrey Hepburn in Green Mansions, even Perkins said he looked ridiculous overpowering and killing strapping Henry Silva in that movie.

Though I have remarked on Perkins male beauty in Psycho(nowhere moreso, ironically enough, than when he talks not to Marion, but to ARBOGAST, while wearing his black crewneck sweater) others here have noted that Perkins was "too skinny" and "kind of geeky" in that role and others. True enough.

Indeed, take Psycho out of the equation and ask yourself: could Perkins have played Steve McQueen's roles in The Cincinnati Kid, Nevada Smith, and Bullitt? could Perkins have played Paul Newman's roles in Hud, Harper, and Cool Hand Luke? Could Perkins have played Sean Connery's roles in...anything?(Aw, forget that.)

No, in certain ways, Anthony Perkins was LUCKY he played Norman Bates, because it made him an icon beyond his star persona, it created the "one role" that he may have hated in some ways, but that paved the way for plenty of work from the 60's to the 90's, just not a star. And frankly, even with all that good will, Perkins rather wrecked his own star career by playing things with so many tics and stutters and giggles over time. The original Norman Bates wasn't like that.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Side-bar: given all those Paul Newman roles that Perkins could NOT play, it is interesting that Perkins said that Hitchcock TRIED to get him the lead in Torn Curtain first. Newman was(alas) a bigger star than Perkins, so he got the role, but one CAN see Perkins as a nuclear scientist and he would have been interesting(given his Psycho background) killing Gromek so clumsily(the knife blade BREAKS.) I expect Hitchcock was trying to help Perkins "escape" Norman in giving him a role with plenty of love scenes and kissing. Torn Curtain COULD have made Perkins a star...but likely not. It wasn't that good a movie.

Side-bar: I seem to recall swanstep opining one time that the star level of Anthony Perkins in 1960 was roughly that of Mark Ruffalo today. Seems about right. Respected, but not "over the title" much.

[–] mattjoes (53) 3 years ago

In an OT thread called "The Number Twos," I've been reviewing how modernly, the "movie star" concept is failing. All the Marvel superheroes make big bucks for THOSE movies, but Robert Downey Jr. totally flopped with Dr. Doolittle.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

And we're now in the era of film posters with ten-plus stars billed above the title in very small print-- see Knives Out, the Avengers films. So many names above the title, so barely readable, that it loses its charm.

---

Yes, all those "little names."

Size used to matter. The posters for Hitchcock's North by Northwest had to have Cary Grant's name as big as Eva Marie Saint's name(with more letters). So 'Cary Grant" was printed "wider" and "Eva Marie Saint" was squished.

--- They're stars, but not really.

---

Bottom line: many of them cannot carry a movie as the lead on their own.

Interesting: the Marvel movies usually cast one or two old "big names from the past": Robert Redford, Michael Douglas, Anthony Hopkins...Jeff Bridges, Kurt Russell. They support the young leads, but THOSE actors WERE stars...they made their name in vehicles that they anchored and led.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Back to Hitchcock:

I was looking at some of his movie posters, and I found this billing for Stage Fright(1950):

Jane Wyman
Marlene Dietrich
Richard Todd
Michael Wilding
in Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright

Hmm. Obviously he wasn't afraid of four names above the title there, so why not:

Anthony Perkins
Janet Leigh
Vera Miles
John Gavin
in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho

A guess: Stage Fright was made before Hitchocck became a huge TV star(all around the world) and made Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, and NXNW. By the time Psycho came along, Hitchcock could deign to be the ONLY name above the title.

Also I was wrong about something.

Paul Newman and Julie Andrews weren't the first ones "over the title" in a Hitchcock movie after Psycho.

Tippi Hedren
Sean Connery
in Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie

It just doesn't play right, does it? Hedren was STILL not yet a major star, earning above-the-title status. And Connery wasn't MUCH of a star either -- though it was coming. Hitchocck's first choices would have made much more sense:

Grace Kelly
Rock Hudson
in Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie

(Grace would have had to go first.)

Trivia

For the no-star Frenzy(1972) the leads were billed thus at the beginning of the film:

Jon Finch
Alec McCowen
Barry Foster

Foster was the "star of the show" as psycho sex killer Bob Rusk, but evidently didn't rate first billing.

However as the end credits with characters roll, Foster moves up:

Richard Blaney...Jon Finch
Robert Rusk.... Barry Foster
Inspector Oxford...Alec McCowen

...So Foster got moved up at the end. Perhaps an "in order of appeance" billing?

[–] ElizabethJoestar (943) 3 years ago

All the Marvel superheroes make big bucks for THOSE movies, but Robert Downey Jr. totally flopped with Dr. Doolittle.
--
To be fair, the trailers for DOOLITTLE looked awful. However, I do agree with your general point. I have to wonder why this has happened. Even in the 2000s, it felt like people would go see movies for the stars. I recall people going to see things because people like Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, or Angelina Jolie were in them when I was in middle school, for instance.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

To be fair, the trailers for DOOLITTLE looked awful.

--

That's true. Richest movie star in the world, and RDJ couldn't pick a good script? Wo' hoppen?

Also during the Avengers run, RDJ made an "OK" courtroom drama called The Judge, with a great cast in support: Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga. Billy Bob Thornton. This was the kind of "quality drama" that used to be the bread and butter of movie stars like Stewart and Fonda. I think this made a little money and its on cable/streaming a lot.

--

I have to wonder why this has happened.

--

You know, that's a GREAT question, isn't it? We know that is HAS happened, but why?

I suppose that once the movies moved on to the "blockbuster model," no movie star could really out-do that particular international box office win. All they could do was try to get some good "other movies" made. Will Smith made his name on Independence Day and Men in Black; struggled aside from it.

Johnny Depp had the Pirates franchise, but he WAS an interesting actor, with real star quality I think, much moreso than Matt Damon or even the Top Guy(Leo.) I certainly went to a number of Johnny Depp movies because he was in them. Ed Wood hooked me in and I stayed loyal.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Even in the 2000s, it felt like people would go see movies for the stars. I recall people going to see things because people like Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, or Angelina Jolie were in them when I was in middle school, for instance.

--

Well, the 2000s are now 20 years in...the movies are acelerating beyond the abilty to MAKE stars. And the material often isn't there. I just saw Angelina Jolie in Warner Brothers movie on HBO Max( it went to theaters too) that was like Lifetime movie quality -- it just wasn't a real movie and Jolie was called upon mainly to do action. (Those Who Wish Me Dead.)

---
In these later years of my life, I am stuggling against two things with "the movies": One is the movies themselves -- looking too "fake and acted and unreal" and why do I care about them anymore? The second IS the movie star. I know that some of them get superrich still, but maybe "star worship" is something left behind in my youth, too.

I was very excited back in 1974 when it was announced that Paul Newman AND Steve McQueen were finally going to make a movie together. (Well that had been done once before, but McQueen was 10 down the cast list from Newman. Somebody Up There Likes Me.)

This one was "The Towering Inferno" part of the "disaster movie craze" but MUCH different from the rest BECAUSE it had Newman and McQueen. The best of the best...the top of the line. Even though they were about to be replaced by Eastwood and Redford and Nicholson and Pacino and DeNiro.

It was exciting to see Paul and Steve share the frame (but not many scenes, really) AND the movie had Faye Dunaway(one of the biggest female stars of the 70's) AND William Holden(one of the biggest male stars of the 50's, recently revived with The Wild Bunch) AND Fred Astaire. That's a "classy star power movie" and I'm not sure I would be so excited these days to see a similar match-up. Leo and Brad in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood came very close, but not quite.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

CONT

I think the bottom line is that if Cary Grant or James Stewart were making the same types of movies they made back then...today...those movies would be relegated to cable or streaming with little theatrical release, so these stars couldn't make the big money so...it wouldn't work.

We must not/cannot rule out how the box office marketplace today is truly "international." This doesn't mean "foreign films" as they once were (arty, sexy, symbolic) but, as one critic noted, "for a worldwide auidence of mouth breathers" who dig action above all. Now movies can routinely earn a biliion dollars per title,but other nuances are gone.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (943) 3 years ago

In these later years of my life, I am stuggling against two things with "the movies": One is the movies themselves -- looking too "fake and acted and unreal" and why do I care about them anymore? The second IS the movie star. I know that some of them get superrich still, but maybe "star worship" is something left behind in my youth, too.
---
I have the same cynicism about most movies these days that you do. The last non-superhero Hollywood movie I thoroughly enjoyed was CAROL... but then again, that movie is homaging Douglas Sirk. The magic just isn't there. I don't treat CG like a bogeyman, but it does stun me that all Hollywood can do with a technology that allows you to do anything is create explosions.

I keep hoping against hope that soon we'll have a revival like Hollywood did in the late 1960s, but I don't think that sort of thing would happen in today's hyper-corporate Hollywood. Tbh, I'm perfectly content to avoid Hollywood from now on-- they had a good run between the 1920s and at least part of the 2010s, if I'm being generous. Indie filmmakers are making more interesting work with less money, as are filmmakers overseas (PARASITE is in my top ten of the 2010s in general).

[–] swanstep (2628) 3 years ago

I have the same cynicism about most movies these days that you do. The last non-superhero Hollywood movie I thoroughly enjoyed was CAROL.... I keep hoping against hope that soon we'll have a revival like Hollywood did in the late 1960s, but I don't think that sort of thing would happen in today's hyper-corporate Hollywood.

@Eliz. It's funny tho'. If you read Pauline Kael's books of essays and reviews, as *soon* as the '80s hits she starts moaning about how Hollywood now only makes 'movies for kids/teenagers', sfx spectacles, toy and happy-meal loss-leaders, and the like. So your basic complaint has been registered (even in the exact same key of mourning for the dearly departed era from Easy Rider to Raging Bull) since just after Raging Bull!

While true indie and truely foreign directors have, I think you are right, filled a lot of the gap for more adult film-making left by Hollywood over the last 40 years, I guess my own view is that the boundaries around what's indie and what's Hollywood (or even between what's Hollywood and what's foreign) have been blurred incredibly. You like Carol (2015) and consider that to be 'Hollywood'. But that director, Todd Haynes could hardly be more indie - his first films were things like Superstar (the Karen Carpenter Story told with Ken and Barbie Dolls) and Poison (adapting three radically queer stories by Jean Genet) and as far as I know all or almost all of his films since have been financed out of NYC (Killer Films and other companies absolutely set up specifically to support queer film) and London (Film4, etc.) with a bit of help from Paris (Canal+), and with Harvey Weinstein sometimes putting his oar in to ease US distribution.

[–] swanstep (2628) 3 years ago

(Cont'd) Yet for the most part I'm with you in thinking of Todd Haynes as Hollywood-ish or at least Hollywood-adjacent. He's worked with top actors since Safe (1995) w. Julianne Moore, he did a very successful series, Mildred Pierce w. Winslett, for HBO, and he's got lots of Oscar love since Far From Heaven (2002). Ditto for David Lynch. He's had a couple of big studio jobs, but a lot of his career has had to be pieced together with money form various sources with festival and Academy acclaim probably saving him on a few occasions. Or consider Yorgos Lanthimos. He's been working with top acting talent since The Lobster (2015), my #1 film for that year, and his The Favorite (2018), my #2 for that year but it could easily have been #1, got hordes of Oscar noms and a Best Actress win for Olivia Coleman. I'm pretty sure, once again that Lanthimos has to piece together finances from NYC, London, Paris, same as Haynes, same as Wes Anderson. Or consider one of the best films of the last year, The Father w/ two top Oscar winners Hopkins and Coleman. It's Hollywood-ish in its bones. It's similar, after all, to things like Dark Victory w/ Bette Davis and Wit (2001) w/ Emma Thompson directed by Mike Nichols, and its made about $21 million so far but it would have made much more than that without covid. Hollywood *strictly* speaking has had little to do with what's been best in film for 40 years at least. But there is a wider sense of Hollywood where all your Lynch's and Haynes' and Jonze's and Lanthimos's and Granik's and Holofcener's are in the game.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (943) 3 years ago

I suppose that once the movies moved on to the "blockbuster model," no movie star could really out-do that particular international box office win. All they could do was try to get some good "other movies" made.
---
I noticed that too. It's just weird that movie stars, a Hollywood mainstay since the 1910s, should be dwindled like that.

MCU actor Anthony Mackie was 100% correct when he said "The rise of the superhero signaled the death of the movie star." It seems like people my age (millenials) go to the movies to see new entries in the franchises we grew up with and actors, while we might favor some of them, are not enough to draw us to non-franchise films (how many people saw CHERRY because Tom Holland, the new Spider-man, was the star of the film?). I don't know why this is the case. Is it an excessive attachment to nostalgia? Possibly. I don't know if people before the 1990s were so attached to their "childhood" in the same way. However, that's more a question about franchises than about movie stars. Blockbusters and movie stars coexisted just fine for a long time, so I don't know why the former might be detrimental to the latter aside from the international box office becoming more important-- so I guess you answered my question.

As it is, I have to wonder what the future of Hollywood will even be. Though Marvel ruled the cinemas throughout the last decade, I don't feel that same buzz anymore. It used to be when a new MCU property came out, everyone was excited, from the nerds to the general audience. BLACK WIDOW has just come out yet I only heard one person at work discussing it. I don't see kids talking about it (they're all obsessed with Minecraft, Nintendo, and TikTok in my neck of the woods). I myself was disappointed with AVENGERS ENDGAME and pretty much have burned out completely on superheroes and blockbusters in general. This doesn't mean the blockbuster is destined to die out... but I doubt the MCU will be the powerhouse it was.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Briefly and with relevance to "Psycho and the Movie Star":

As it turned out, after Psycho, three of the leads in that movie did Hitchcock TV episodes: Vera Miles, Martin Balsam, John Gavin. So they were "TV people" as much as they were movie people.

Meanwhile, I checked, and in the 60s, Anthony Perkins did not appear on a single episode of episodic TV. He stuck to movies -- mainly FOREIGN movies. He did ONE thing for TV --- a TV anthology play that was part of "ABC Stage 66/67" -- a musical called Evening Primrose, in which Perkins is trapped in a department store with a female mannequin that comes to life. Hmm...seen THAT one before.

Janet Leigh did only one episode of episodic TV, in 1967: she played a psychotic assassin(who uses a knife) in a two-part episode of "The Man From UNCLE" spy show. Jack Palance was her Mafia boss who fires her saying, "you're too crazy a killer even for the Mafia." Vengeance is hers. I think this two-part episode with Leigh and Palance as guest stars became a cheapo movie release to theaters, too.

Leigh also did one anthology episode on the "Bob Hope Chrysler Playhouse" -- which was a Universal production with weekly dramas.

So I guess you could say that both Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh MAINLY kept their "movie stars bona fides" through the 60's after Psycho. But the rest of the cast? No -- except Balsam went further than any of them as a movie character man in the 60's, 70s, and 80s, along with TV work.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I have the same cynicism about most movies these days that you do. The last non-superhero Hollywood movie I thoroughly enjoyed was CAROL... but then again, that movie is homaging Douglas Sirk. The magic just isn't there. I don't treat CG like a bogeyman, but it does stun me that all Hollywood can do with a technology that allows you to do anything is create explosions.

---

One of my thoughts about CGI is that it demonstrates how -- as with so many other facets of our modern life -- Silicon Valley took over Hollywood.

Hitchcock's The Birds has two of the greatest effects shots in movie history -- the seagulls from "God's eye view" floating and diving over downtown Bodega Bay, and the final shot of hundreds of birds as far as the eye can see. But Hitchcock had no CGI available back then -- his effects people had to work with the limited resources of "movie studio technology." There were literally women PAINTING those birds into the frames. And so The Birds stands -- if nothing else --as Hitchcock's crowning technical achievement, done with what he could work with at the time.

Today...all the birds shots in The Birds would be "loaned out" to Silicon Valley and probably produced in animation centers far away from Hollywood, up in the San Francisco Bay area.

Clint Eastwood directed "Sully" a few years back and it had some great shots of jet aircraft flying and crashing(both safely on the Hudson River and , in Sully's nightmare , lethally into a skyscraper.) Eastwood was in his late 80s when he directed Sully, and the jet crash effects were impressive, but I thought: did EASTWOOD really have to DO anything with those CGI sequences? He probably just approved storyboards and then OK'ed the CGI work when it came back to him. I don't think Eastwood really directed the CGI in Sully at all.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I keep hoping against hope that soon we'll have a revival like Hollywood did in the late 1960s, but I don't think that sort of thing would happen in today's hyper-corporate Hollywood. Tbh, I'm perfectly content to avoid Hollywood from now on-- they had a good run between the 1920s and at least part of the 2010s,

---

I keep trying to extrapolate this away from "my viewpoint exclusively"(by the demographics of Hollywood studios today, I am NOT the audience they seek: I'm "old") and in terms of movie history.

And I'm pretty sure that...no, its NOT just me. The movie industry's "run" is effectively over, movie stars will earn money as place holders in "roles" in properties, but are over as fantasy role models and..the movies have become something else.

To leave the Grant/Stewart era, I'll go a little farther out in time and say that I don't think a modern actor could build the career of a Paul Newman or a Jack Nicholson now. Those men made a LOT of small-scale serious movies, and then made sure to get into a blockbuster(The Sting; The Towering Inferno; The Witches of Eastwick, Batman) to stay bankable. But Newman's career? Hud, The Hustler, Hombre, Cool Hand Luke...pretty much impossible to replicate today.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

As it is, I have to wonder what the future of Hollywood will even be. Though Marvel ruled the cinemas throughout the last decade, I don't feel that same buzz anymore. It used to be when a new MCU property came out, everyone was excited, from the nerds to the general audience.

--

Martin Scorsese and others have tried to sound the alarm about the unstoppable Marvel movies...which just may start to slow down and stop oh....any year now.

I've been thinking, and I'll offer this problem with them:

I'll use the 70's. The "blockbusters" of that decade were generally unique, separate from each other , and sometimes unexpected:

Love Story
Dirty Harry
The Godfather
The Exorcist
The Sting
Jaws
Star Wars
Close Encounters of the Third Kind

...now I think that Dirty Harry and Close Encounters were more "hits" than "blockbusters," but those other titles were HUGE. Only US box office was the marker back then; they all made close to, or over, 100 million .

Now, Love Story, The Godfather, The Exorcist and Jaws were bestselling novels first -- that's how blockbusters usually came about in those days. "Soon to be a major motion picture."

But some "originals" -- The Sting, Star Wars, maybe Close Encounters...came outta nowhere and took the world.

Compare that to "the Marvel era"(and let's throw in DC, too).

Even if Marvel only puts out two movies a year, THOSE are the blockbusters and..they are entirely predictable. There will be no surprises anymore -- no Sting, no Star Wars -- and few "stand alone blockbusters" either (which is what The Godfather and Jaws SEEMED to be on release; they got sequels, and the Jaws ones were awful.)

Summer blockbusters are now a matter of "rotating the same characters in different summers." Oh, look, here comes a new Batman movie. Next summer? A new Spider-Man movie. The summer after that? A new Superman movie.

Its just a reshuffling of the same deck...endlessly.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Its hard for me to think of a "new" blockbuster in the past decades, and the ones that immediately come to mind were from bestsellers for youth: Harry Potter and The Hunger Games.

Fair enough, I guess. Especially Potter(and I know a lot of adults who liked those.)

I guess we should add Lord of the Rings..which was around for decades and finally got the CGI it needed.

I dunno...maybe this focus on "the blockbuster" goes the wrong way. We will always have blockbusters.

But what of the movie years where you had TONS of great little, mid-range movies?

I'll offer: 1967:

Bonnie and Clyde
The Graduate
In the Heat of the Night
To Sir With Love
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
The Dirty Dozen
Wait Until Dark
Hotel
Camelot
You Only Live Twice
Hombre
El Dorado
Reflections in a Golden Eye
The War Wagon
Chuka
Point Blank
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

..I mean, not all of those movies are GREAT, but they are all GOOD and they were rolling out on a one-or-two a week basis, all year long. (And hey, Hitchcock didn't even put out a movie that year.) And no, I didn't even cover the "foreign films" that I expect swanstep knows by heart. (Was Belle de Jour out that year? I like THAT one!)

I think that kind of breadth and depth to the movies is, simply, over. Netflix movies can't cover the distance.

It sure was fun to be alive then "at the movies."

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

@Eliz. It's funny tho'. If you read Pauline Kael's books of essays and reviews, as *soon* as the '80s hits she starts moaning about how Hollywood now only makes 'movies for kids/teenagers', sfx spectacles, toy and happy-meal loss-leaders, and the like. So your basic complaint has been registered (even in the exact same key of mourning for the dearly departed era from Easy Rider to Raging Bull) since just after Raging Bull!

---

I hear you on that, swanstep.

Kael wrote an essay about how Hollywood had gone bad , in the early 80s. It was called "The Numbers" and made the same kinds of arguments that are made today. It drew fire from one studio exec who said it was "naïve and too general and uninformed" and there was an added 'sting" to it. Kael wrote it right after being fired from a worthless job at Paramount that Warren Beatty had (sadistically?) set her up with.

Kael never should have taken that job. Her "job" was to keep pitching movie properties to a REAL psycho studio boss named Don Simpson(of Simpson and Bruckheimer fame; he later died on the toilet of an overdose.) Simpson was quoted as saying "Beatty gave me a cake with a big knife to cut in with" in assigning Kael to him. Simpson simply rejected every single project Kael pitched(I wouldn't have given a project TO Kael to pitch.)

Anyway, whether for personal reasons or not, Kael was likely reacting to "the end of the 60's and 70's" in movie culture, and it is TRUE that the studios started picking up heads from the ranks of TV (Michael Eisner, Barry Diller) who proceeded to turn "movies into TV shows."

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

CONT

I recall the 80's for the Spielberg/Lucas infusion (which in Spielberg's case, meant farming out kids movies like Back to the Future and Gremlins to other directors) and for "cop movies that played like cop TV shows"(Beverly Hills Cop, Cobra, Lethal Weapon, Stakeout, hell, even the The Untouchables, which was BASED on a TV show and did it with gravitas on screen.) Not to mention "non-movie" blockbusters like Rambo: First Blood Part II(what a sucky title), Top Gun, and Crocodile Dundee.

I think we've discussed the 80's before, swanstep, and you were certainly there to correctly remind me that a lot of good "adult" films of historical value came out then. I will pick Reds and Chariots of Fire and Amadeus and Places in the Heart, and The Killing Fields and The Last Emperor but...those were still "swamped" by the more TV-driven fare.

Side-bar on the 80's: I recall that Hitchcock died, as if "right on time"...in 1980. This allowed Spielberg and Lucas to take over as the "name directors"(plus a struggling Scorsese.) And this allowed Universal to make two REALLY lousy sequels to Psycho. "Psycho" as an inferior 80's property only seemed to make Psycho 1960 shine brighter.

But also: I felt the LOSS of Hitchcock. There was really no one to replace him. Not DePalma(who made two of my favorite movies of the 80's Scarface and The Untouchables.) Not Spielberg. Certainly not Lucas. And(again) not really Scorsese.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Weirdly enough Hitchcock WAS there all through the 70's, even if he made only two movies. 1970 saw Topaz finishing its 1969 run and the announcement of Frenzy as Hitch's next film. 1971 saw the filming of Frenzy(Time magazine kept sending out photos from the work being done.) 1972 saw the release of Frenzy and the "comeback raves." Frenzy stuck around as a second feature pretty much right up to the announcement (in 1973) of The Rainbird Pattern as the next Hitchcock film...and it took until 1975 to get it filmed(as Family Plot, with lots of Time reports on the filming of THAT one; other magzines, too -- it was filmed in SoCal where they could follow Hitch around.)

Family Plot premiered at FILMEX in 1976 and while the bad reviews were as prevelant as the good ones, Hitchcock was still relevant, right up until his 1979 AFI salute...which proved he wasn't going to be with us much longer but...what a career!

And..bless his soul...Hitchcock never declared Family Plot to be his final film. He kept us hoping for one more -- in 1980 perhaps? -- and worked on a project called The Short Night. Star leads were announced -- Sean Connery, Walter Matthau, Liv Ullman OR Catherine Deneve. But it was never made.

So Hitch was there all through the 70's and then...gone by the 80s. It was a tough break-up.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Yet for the most part I'm with you in thinking of Todd Haynes as Hollywood-ish or at least Hollywood-adjacent. He's worked with top actors since Safe (1995) w. Julianne Moore, he did a very successful series, Mildred Pierce w. Winslett, for HBO, and he's got lots of Oscar love since Far From Heaven (2002). Ditto for David Lynch. He's had a couple of big studio jobs, but a lot of his career has had to be pieced together with money form various sources with festival and Academy acclaim probably saving him on a few occasions. Or consider Yorgos Lanthimos. He's been working with top acting talent since The Lobster (2015), my #1 film for that year, and his The Favorite (2018), my #2 for that year but it could easily have been #1, got hordes of Oscar noms and a Best Actress win for Olivia Coleman

---

Again, swanstep, you reveal a depth of knowledge that I do not posess(though, as usual, I have READ about all those films, and did see Safe back when I was with an indiefilm sig other). And its all true. Quality films are still being made by quality filmmakers, both in the US (where the movies began, or at least gained traction) and around the world(Parasite.)

These won't go away, and in a time where streaming has taken the place of VHS and DVD and cable...there will still be a marketplace for these films.

Still, I would say that "the mainstream is gone." Quality entertainments in the Hitchcock tradition (I would count Chinatown, LA Confidential and maybe Gone Girl in that group) are dwindling. I'm hard-pressed to name a movie with the impact of Bonnie and Clyde or The Wild Bunch or The Godfather in recent years (of that genre.)

QT -- love him or hate him or like him(me) -- has maintained a quality of his own. He works where Hitchcock did -- violent death, criminals - but in his own way. And he keeps stars starry -- both Leo and Pitt cut their $20 million salaries to work with him. But QT promises to leave the stage after one more.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I don't see kids talking about it (they're all obsessed with Minecraft, Nintendo, and TikTok in my neck of the woods).

---

This theme is being developed "out there": the movies alone aren't good enough as entertainment anymore. I have played video games with some friends (of all ages) and though they are not for me -- I get it: they are INTERACTIVE. You play them. You just WATCH a movie. You just sit there(perhaps receving joy and sustenance and meaning from the experience, but still...)

---
I myself was disappointed with AVENGERS ENDGAME and pretty much have burned out completely on superheroes and blockbusters in general. This doesn't mean the blockbuster is destined to die out... but I doubt the MCU will be the powerhouse it was.

---

People keep waiting for Marvel(and DC) to "burn out" like the Western and the 80's cop movies. I'm not sure if this ever happens. A cursory read of the Marvel movies pages shows a younger generation IS into the mythology and the box office and these movies have meaning to them.

True confession: I've seen most of the Marvel movies, which seem to start with Iron Man in 2008. RDJ and Jeff Bridges were great as hero and villain; I showed up because of them. Now, I go to Marvel movies for the same reason I went to Clint Eastwood actioners in the 70's and Lethal Weapon ripoffs(like Tango and Cash) in the 80's: mindless action entertainment. Though the Marvel movies have some of my favorite old stars in them , too (Jeff Bridges, Redford, Michael Douglas, Anthony Hopkins.)

ENDGAME left me cold for one reason: two major characters "die" and yet -- HALF THE CAST had died just one movie before, and they all "came back." Bottom line: I didn't believe that these two characters were really dead either. There is no "weight" to the deaths in Endgame(there certainly was "weight" to Janet Leigh's death in Psycho.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Here, though is what IS great in ENDGAME: That final curtain call of actors from pretty much every Marvel movie ever made. The music builds and builds and builds as some of those "old time famous faces" roll by (Redford, Michael Douglas...Michelle Pfeiffer, Sam Jackson) and then reaches a crescendo when the "main Avengers" show up and then...

...and then...

..and then...

the whole thing moves to finish with the Man Who Started It All : Robert Downey Jr. First among many stars around him in those end credits. He earned it.

I have read that packed theaters went nuts for this "curtain call," with the biggest applause reserved for RDJ. I don't recall such a crowd when I saw ENDGAME at the theater, but I can IMAGINE this.

And that's what the movies ARE about.

PS. I believe that this end credits segment can be viewed on the net somewhere.

PPS. "Endgame" my ass. You just know that they will all come back...maybe with different actors.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (943) 3 years ago

I saw ENDGAME opening night. I did indeed experience that. Even though I hated the movie, those moments were magical.

And yes, @swanstep, I am aware of Kael's comments about the end of movies in the 1980s (not a fan of hers personally, though she had her moments). Indeed, critics complained about "things not being the way they used to" even in the 1950s, looking back nostalgically to the 1920s and 1930s (Chaplin, Von Stroheim, Lubitsch, Griffith, and the like). Arguments like that are used anytime anyone seems to criticize modern Hollywood and suggest maybe there's been a dip in quality (and I get why Kael felt that way in the 1980s mind you-- and it kills me anytime I agree with her on anything!).

However, the dramatic shift away from stars and non-action blockbusters is unprecedented in Hollywood history. Yes, there were dramatic shifts in the past (shorts to features in the 1910s, silence to sound in the late 1920s, competition from TV in the 1950s, etc.), but they still had stars and the movies were not dominated by a single genre the way they seem to be now. Every attempt to make a "new" blockbuster always seems to fail (ex. JUPITER ASCENDING comes to mind), hence the endless recycling of what works.

Regarding the MCU "burning out," the fact that SPACE JAM 2-- a sequel very few even wanted-- made more bank than BLACK WIDOW suggest to me the old powerhouse is not going to be what it was. I used to hear non-fans talk about the MCU all the time. I don't anymore. And Black Widow was a character who's been in the series since 2010. How will they fare with unfamiliar characters like the Eternals? I'm skeptical.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (943) 3 years ago

PPS. "Endgame" my ass. You just know that they will all come back...maybe with different actors.
--
THIS is the main reason why I have cooled on the MCU. I know I come off as a premature curmudgeon, but I did enjoy the MCU. I got really into it, to the point where I'd have long discussions with friends over what was going to happen next-- hence my annoyance with ENDGAME, which introduced time travel, much to the detriment of the writing. The new shows like LOKI have only shown that introducing time travel and a multiverse only serve to make death inconsequential. In other words, why should I care when they can just pluck Iron Man from another universe where he didn't die? No stakes.

So yeah. Not interested in the MCU or really anything modern Hollywood has to offer.

[–] swanstep (2628) 3 years ago

The new shows like LOKI have only shown that introducing time travel and a multiverse only serve to make death inconsequential. In other words, why should I care when they can just pluck Iron Man from another universe where he didn't die? No stakes.

I agree that this sort of thing is a *big* problem. And not just for Marvel. About a year or so ago I started to watch a big-budget Netflix sci-fi show called 'Altered Carbon'. It's set about 500 years in the future where the crucial technology (along with lots of very high speed space travel and space war stuff) is 'sleeves': Human consciounesses, if you've got the money, are continually being 'resleeved' into different bodies both on Earth if you want an relatvely small upgrade (albeit one that can lead to eternal youth) or into various alien and robotic bodies if you get drafted for duty in the ongoing space wars etc.. So characters are constantly having flashbacks to previous sleeve experiences and so on. Well, I gave up on the series after about 4 eps for various reasons but above all because I found it impossible to *invest* in characters whose every twist was going to be that they literally were not who we or they thought they were (I.e. so a completely different actor takes over the role). When everyone can be revealed as just a sleeve for someone on another planet or maybe a backup copy of a 10th generation sleeve for some AI we've never heard of before it's very hard to *care*. While it's somewhat interesting to be led to reflect on how continuity of bodies, faces etc. underwrites what we ordinarily think of as character it was simply too unpleasant and tiring to have to be constantly on-guard against such discontinuities, so I was happy to give AC the chop. Marvel's recent slide into 'promiscuous realities' story-telling is definitely inviting a mass checking-out by audiences and for the same sorts of reasons.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Marvel's recent slide into 'promiscuous realities' story-telling is definitely inviting a mass checking-out by audiences and for the same sorts of reasons.

---

"Promiscuous realities" -- there's a term.

Time travel can be a fascinating topic for certain films(like The Time Machine 1960)...or it can so destroy the reality of the story that indeed, you just aren't invested anymore.

I seem to recall in Back to the Future Part II how it kept zipping around in time to the point where you never felt you were watching REAL people -- just alternative reality versions of them.

Again..no matter how much the movies are "make believe," when it comes to the serious matter of death....its better to take it seriously. What happens to Janet Leigh, Martin Balsam...Debra Winger, Jack Nicholson...in those famous movies MATTERED.

I'll here pull out a fine "little" Sam Peckinpah Western called "Ride the High Country" of 1962. Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott play old saddle buddies guarding some gold. Scott's "gone bad" and wants to steal it; McCrea is good and principled and decent.

A big shootout with bad guys happens at the end. We've only got the two stars, the two characters, and it seems "pre-ordained" that the "bad" one (Scott) will change his ways and save the day...and die.

Well, Scott DOES ride in to "save the day"...he and McCrea kill all the bad guys..but it is McCREA...the "good" one who is mortally wounded. And he gets a great, sentimental death scene with his old buddy(now turned good again.)

This was a simple decision by Peckinpah -- to kill the nicer of the two men, not the badder one -- but it was powerful stuff. "Life is unfair, being good won't save you."

I've always remembered THAT screen death...and that's why death in the movies can and should be meaningful and not "take-backable."

[–] swanstep (2628) 3 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ElizabethJoestar (943) 3 years ago

This theme is being developed "out there": the movies alone aren't good enough as entertainment anymore. I have played video games with some friends (of all ages) and though they are not for me -- I get it: they are INTERACTIVE. You play them. You just WATCH a movie. You just sit there(perhaps receving joy and sustenance and meaning from the experience, but still...)
--
I enjoy video games a lot, particularly RPGs like Final Fantasy which have stories to go along with them. They're not for everyone and they're definitely a different medium from movies and books.

I don't think kids are bored by movies though. They still enjoy cartoons and anime (soooo many children I know love the TROLLS movies... the kiddie CG one, not the weird 80s horror schlock). And they enjoyed the MCU a few years back. But there's more stuff to compete with now. Hollywood isn't the only game in town anymore.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (943) 3 years ago

Still, I would say that "the mainstream is gone." Quality entertainments in the Hitchcock tradition (I would count Chinatown, LA Confidential and maybe Gone Girl in that group) are dwindling. I'm hard-pressed to name a movie with the impact of Bonnie and Clyde or The Wild Bunch or The Godfather in recent years (of that genre.)
---
Exactly what I was saying. Yes, there is quality in the US.... OUTSIDE Hollywood. You have to dig for it. At the very least, streaming makes some of those niche areas more visible. The internet makes such material easier to come across.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I saw ENDGAME opening night. I did indeed experience that. Even though I hated the movie, those moments were magical.

---

Maybe next time, somebody should just release an "end credits curtain call."

The Oscars in the old days had an "In Memoriam" segment that built and built to the biggest star death of the year and the biggest applause. For PC reasons, the applause is cut off now. The death of showmanship.

I would like to add that I have ALWAYS liked end credits that show the actors in clips of their scenes, either building TO the biggest star...or starting with the biggest star and working down.

Examples: The Great Escape, MASH the Movie; Victor/Victoria..and yes, Spielberg's 1941(with one of John Williams' greatest themes.)

Reversibly: The Sting OPENS with the actors in clips from scenes and their names(women noisily sighed when Redford came on, smiling) . I guess this was meant to emulate old 30's movies.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

And yes, @swanstep, I am aware of Kael's comments about the end of movies in the 1980s (not a fan of hers personally, though she had her moments).

--

ecarle responds: There was a biography of Kael a few years ago - important, because movie critics aren't usually deemed important enough to MERIT biographies.

The book had a fair amount of sniping at her, including one really good spoof of her writing style ("The movie spills over you like a water balloon broken on your head and you have a fizzy feeling all over") but key points were made : (1) Kael came into power just as all that "new Golden Era" started -- indeed her defense of Bonnie and Clyde launched her, and (2) The New Yorker let her write really LONG reviews(yay)..even the best writers at Time and Newsweek were held to only a few paragraphs.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, Warren Beatty lured Kael away from the New Yorker to a Hollywood job and the studio men there(MEN) pretty much humiliated her into failure. She went back to the New Yorker rather "broken."

I like to read movie critics for the same reason I like to read moviechat: to hear what people think about movies. Good movie critics are good writers.

There aren't too many good ones, anymore.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Regarding the MCU "burning out," the fact that SPACE JAM 2-- a sequel very few even wanted-- made more bank than BLACK WIDOW suggest to me the old powerhouse is not going to be what it was. I used to hear non-fans talk about the MCU all the time. I don't anymore. And Black Widow was a character who's been in the series since 2010. How will they fare with unfamiliar characters like the Eternals? I'm skeptical.

--

Dare I offer the SPOILER (from BEFORE Black Widow)...that...

...Black Widow is one of the two who die in Endgame?

Talk about anti-climactic. A character sacrificially dies, and you are supposed to mourn her death and...she's back in her own MOVIE? (A prequel, but still.)

[–] ElizabethJoestar (943) 3 years ago

I find Kael exhausting to read and not too likeable as a person (which is why I always joke that I die inside when we agree on anything, like our shared dislike of Chaplin's LIMELIGHT, which she called "Slimelight"), but she at least had personality and her writing style was unique. It's not so much that I often disagree with her views (though I do)-- after all, Roger Ebert disliked lots of my favorite movies and loved movies I think are awful, but I still enjoy reading him-- I just don't enjoy her rather acidic style.

But still, she had her moments and I get why she appeals to others.

PS My favorite critics are probably Tim Brayton (currently writing still) and Imogen Smith.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (943) 3 years ago

But what of the movie years where you had TONS of great little, mid-range movies?
--
That's the sort of thing I miss. Even the 2000s had movies outside the blockbuster range which were successful, even though their numbers seem to have been dwindling even then. I feel like there's this "bigger is better" mentality that has robbed Hollywood of genre diversity and inventiveness. At best, horror movies can still make waves (I remember when GET OUT and DON'T BREATHE were sleeper hits a few years ago), but can you imagine a movie like CASABLANCA, which is essentially a romantic melodrama, doing big business now? It would be relegated to Netflix. It would be seen as too small.

At any rate, I have a variety of interests. I love reading and writing. I enjoy a good video game now and then. I have a handful of TV series (pretty much all anime) that I like. And of course, there are still dozens of older movies I have yet to see, in addition to some lesser known modern ones. If Hollywood just wants to peddle in nostalgia and superheroes, let 'em have at it. And good luck.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The new shows like LOKI have only shown that introducing time travel and a multiverse only serve to make death inconsequential. In other words, why should I care when they can just pluck Iron Man from another universe where he didn't die? No stakes.

--

Exactly. Look, I know that the movies are "make believe," but over the history of movies , screen deaths have been known to shock people and move people and to linger for years after you see them.

Certainly Janet Leigh's horrible death in Psycho. Leigh said that people on the street would stare at her and yell "You...you're ALIVE!" The murder of Arbogast haunted me since I first saw his shocked, bloody face in the Hitchcock/Truffaut book. And the rape and strangling of Brenda Blaney in Frenzy -- as a living breathing human being is turned into a lifeless corpse "for no reason at all" -- has stuck with me for decades. "Just make believe?" Not quite. Especially when you are young.

On the "non-shock" level, who was left unmoved when young mother Debra Winger died of cancer in Terms of Endearment...and had to say goodbye to her small children before doing so.

Or the hows and whys that bring the energetic lifeforce of Jack Nicholson to a mercy-killed death in Cuckoo's Nest. You REMEMBER him.

And I would throw in how I was surprised - and staggered -- and a bit delighted -- when a key character in LA Confidential is suddenly murdered by a "friend". He's missed for the rest of the movie.

Etc.

The Marvel universe -- I suppose in a sort of upbeat Buddhist way -- says: you don't really die. You exist somewhere, somehow...but how REAL is that existence?

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

ndeed, critics complained about "things not being the way they used to" even in the 1950s, looking back nostalgically to the 1920s and 1930s (Chaplin, Von Stroheim, Lubitsch, Griffith, and the like)

---

ON topic, this:

Two critics in particular chose to hate Hitchocck right during his "great period" from Vertigo through The Birds.

And I can remember their reviews(as I read them later):

Dwight MacDonald(The New Yorker) wrote of Psycho: "This is third-rate Hitchcock..(compared to) The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, which had humor and romance. All that remains now is the meanness.

Stanley Kauffman (on North by Northwest): After the asinine and boring Vertigo, it is clear with North by Northwest that the REAL Hitchcock has died, and an obscene ghost is continuing on in his absence. (Kauffman, too, cited The Lady Vanishes as great Htichcock.)

I guess this is like critics who liked Woody Allen's "early funny films" or Spielberg in his genre period. The artist changes, the critic does not.

Its interesting to realize that The Lady Vanishes was only 21 years older than North by Northwest. That's the distance back to, say, Gladiator today. And yet, seen side by side, The Lady Vanishes looks pretty old, and NXNW looks at least epic, still.

But the thing is this: its one thing to say "today's movies are worse than yesterday's" as a matter of personal taste.

Its another thing to say that today's movies don't EXIST in the same quantity or quality as older ones.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

At any rate, I have a variety of interests. I love reading and writing. I enjoy a good video game now and then. I have a handful of TV series (pretty much all anime) that I like. And of course, there are still dozens of older movies I have yet to see, in addition to some lesser known modern ones. If Hollywood just wants to peddle in nostalgia and superheroes, let 'em have at it. And good luck.

--
About 21 years ago, I lined up for a "studio preview" of a Tom Hanks movie called Cast Away, which was certainly not a movie for kids (oh, they could SEE it, but it might bore them.)

The guy with the clipboard asked me my age, and I gave it. He said "I'm sorry , you are too old for entrance to this preview." 21 YEARS ago! Luckily , my date was younger and she got us in. And I didn't think Cast Away was that great. And I didn't feel that old.

I could see getting turned away from "She's All That" or "Clueless" but..."Cast Away?"

My point: New Hollywood didn't think I was in a worthwhile demographic 21 years ago, I suppose they have no interest in me now.

I still have an interest in THEM...but it is seriously reduced. The movies have changed past me.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

This is a bigger problem for me right now:

I've been reading a recent biography of Cary Grant, and it is interesting how, once he decided to retire from movies at age 62, he rather turned AGAINST movies. He found them fake and false and meaningless. He noted(paraphrased): "we know how each of my movies turn out: I get the girl. We KNOW that is how it will end. Every time. Why care about them?"

Well, HOW he got the girl at the end of To Catch A Thief, Charade, and above all, North by Northwest...is the stuff of major memories and great entertainment.

But Cary was right IF he wanted to reject the fantasy, or the suspension of disbelief.

I find myself fighting that very feeling when I watch a movie these days. Even old favorites like (sigh) North by Northwest.

But unlike Cary, I don't DISLIKE those movies...they are great memories of a great time when I DID care or respond, more.

The good news is: movies still work, sometimes. I cited a perhaps mediocre Netflix movie called "I Care a Lot" of recent vintage because the truly evil lead character TRULY made my blood boil. The movie worked at that primitive level.

Well, as George Lucas said "Its easy to make an audience angry. Just strangle a kitten on screen."

I suppose that would do it too. I wouldn't watch such a film, though.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (943) 3 years ago

I can get Grant's cynicism-- he was in the machine for forty years after all. He saw all the machinations from the inside, stripped of glamor and mystique. And I think he was upset at not getting to subvert his image even though he wanted to with movies like NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART (I once heard rumors that he wanted to play the Phantom of the Opera. Imagine that!).

(Interestingly, that Grant story reminds me of the silent film director DW Griffith, who crapped on movies after he lost his career to drink and changing tastes in the early 1930s. Comes off as sour grapes there though.)

However, I guess as a writer, I sill feel there's great magic in stories, even escapist fare. Hell, right now I WANT escapist fare. I'm sick of "gritty reboots" and downers. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes that goofy dumb fluff like SPACE JAM 2 is killing BLACK WIDOW at the box office. Reality is grim enough.

And another thing about older movies: less pointless sequels. Not that they didn't exist (oh how they ran the classic FRANKENSTEIN movies into the ground by the 1940s-- we were lucky BRIDE was any good), but nowadays it feels like EVERY successful movie needs sequels. Like DON'T BREATHE, a mostly okay horror movie about three thieves who break into a blind man's house only to realize he's mentally deranged and a trained killer. Good one-movie premise.... but a sequel?? No please. (Imagine WAIT UNTIL DARK getting a sequel just because it made good money--- WAIT UNTIL DARK 2: ADVANCED DARKNESS where Roat somehow didn't die and escapes prison to get revenge. I'm breaking into hives, God....)

Anyway, I haven't given up on movies as a whole. I loved the hell out of PARASITE in 2019, as well as THE FAVOURITE. Heck, even the nostalgia bait sometimes gets me (I admit I enjoyed the SONIC THE HEDGEHOG movie, predictable as the script is). It's just Hollywood I don't like.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (943) 3 years ago

About 21 years ago, I lined up for a "studio preview" of a Tom Hanks movie called Cast Away, which was certainly not a movie for kids (oh, they could SEE it, but it might bore them.)

The guy with the clipboard asked me my age, and I gave it. He said "I'm sorry , you are too old for entrance to this preview." 21 YEARS ago! Luckily , my date was younger and she got us in. And I didn't think Cast Away was that great. And I didn't feel that old.

I could see getting turned away from "She's All That" or "Clueless" but..."Cast Away?"
--
Are you serious?????

That's... amazing.

Anthony Mackie was right. They really are only interested in teens at this point.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Are you serious?????

That's... amazing.

--

It really happened. And I was astonished. For one thing, I looked younger than my real age. Hah.

---

Anthony Mackie was right. They really are only interested in teens at this point.

--

So be it. Look, I think it is likely that all SORTS of movies -- even sexy movies with James Bond, even Psycho -- depended on a young teenage audience to make the big bucks.

The issue is letting us older ones in , too.

Here in 2021 in America, folks my age -- and much older -- are getting their revenge. They still run the big political jobs and corporations.

And a whole pack of "known" movie stars are in their sixties -- Denzel,Costner, Willis -maybe not as big as they were, but still working. Pacino and DeNiro are in their 70s.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

So yeah. Not interested in the MCU or really anything modern Hollywood has to offer.

---

I come in -- as an "older person" around here -- to again try to confront the fact that I'm not really the target audience for the MCU and it can be proven to be very meaningful to a younger generation.

Here's why:

I went to YouTube to watch that ENDGAME "end credits clip" (with ALL those actors -- hey, I forgot the luminous Marisa Tomei is in Spider-Man and Oscar winner William Hurt is here, etc) . It was meaningful on its own terms.

But the comments were sort of moving, too.

Here's one, maybe from a male:

"The MCU started when I was 7, and has ended when I was 18. That's my entire young lifetime."

Here's another, maybe in the same quote above, I can't remember:

"I am so grateful to be alive in the time when these movies were made."

SO: for some folks a few decades behind me in age -- the MCU IS the cinematic adventure of their lifetimes. And it will always mean something.

I suppose my youth was served poorly in comparison. Yes, there were Disney movies, and some I liked a lot(101 Dalmations for its Hitchcockian thriller elements; 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; In Search of the Castaways, Mary Poppins.)

But mainly my 60's youth had been seeing a lot of "ADULT" adventures and thrillers. So my MCU (at that age) included The Magnificent Seven and The Professionals, Charade and Wait Until Dark, Goldfinger and Butch Casssidy. Different era.

So I'll cede the MCU to a younger generation as its touchstone. I've gone to these movies mainly because of the stars(Marisa Tomei, YUM) but I suppose my criticisms will go nowhere with a generation that has taken all of these folks into their collective love and "friendship"(the movies have ALWAYS made friends for us on the big screen that we will never really know.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Sidebar: I forgot that along with the MCU movies -- maybe one or two a year -- the streaming services are now glutted with MCU series. At my age, that's overkill. If I were 12, maybe it would be a wonderful universe of wall-to-wall entertainment.

I want to return to this comment on the ENDGAME End Credits sequence:

"I am so grateful to be alive in the time when these movies were made."

I remember pretty much the exact same "joyous" quote...in a review in a local paper of Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom back in 1984. Except it wasn't a kid's comment -- it was the comment of a local movie reviewer(not a "big shot" reviewer). He was in his 30's I think, but his joyful paeon "I am so grateful to be alive in the time when these movies are being made"(his point was a little different than the MCU fan who thinks Endgame is the end) was meaningful to me.

Me, I thought that "Temple of Doom" really had some SILLY content; I was disappointed in Spielberg's descent into infantilism. But it surely had big action and I had a good enough time.

I guess I can say that I am grateful to have lived in a time that has Hitchcock at the beginning(mainly on TV, but that's where I found NXNW and Psycho), Spielberg(in his Jaws mode), Coppola and Peckinpah in between..then Scorsese....and Tarantino now. And I'm not done yet.

Also to have lived though the technological change. Back in the early 70's, Psycho came on TV once a year, and that was it, and if you weren't home, you didn't get to see it until NEXT year. Then came VHS and you could keep it. Then DVD and you could "jump to the shower scene." Now -- streaming(which is WORSE than DVD -- you can't jump) -- but hey, you can watch Psycho on your phone!

I guess it has been something to live through THAT.

[–] swanstep (2628) 3 years ago

@ eliz. A-ha, I guessed some anime interest from your user-name. I had Jojo’s Extraordinary Adventures recommended to me a while back and I did watch a couple of eps, but it didn’t grab me enough. A multi-generational, multi-century saga of battles between vampires and whatever the hell Jojo’s freakish physicality is supposed to be (all spread out over 50+ eps) was just too heavy a lift and too peripheral to my basic interests to keep on with it (it reminded me of the dreadful Underworld w. Kate Beckinsale movie series too although I could see that Jojo was far higher quality).

Anime series I’ve finished include Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evang., Kon Satoshi's Paranoia Agent (which I always want to call 'Paranoid Actress' because of his anime film 'Millennium Actress'), but real anime fans seem to look down on those, maybe because they’re too accessible to outsiders!