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March 06, 2008
Really Worth Your Time
Mark Harris' new book, Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, is one of the movie books everyone interested in the industry and how it works needs to have on their bookshelf.
I have been sitting on my thoughts about the book, which I jammed through in just a few days because I wanted to keep reading, because they have spurred some broader issues in my mind. But I haven't written that piece yet and I think the book really deserves your attention sooner than later.
I have been critical of Harris' commentaries in EW... and imagine I will continue to be so. I generally feel he suffers from New Yorkitis when it comes to perspective of the movie world and while he is surrounded with some brilliant people - starting with his husband, Tony Kushner - his ideas tend to be like a football GM talking baseball or a TV person trying to explain to a movie person how the movie deals work. He's not completely out of the park, but the blade is a bit duller than I think even he would want it to be.
And the theme of the book, as defined by is title, is also a bit soft. The book fails, by the end, to make any serious case for how and why the transition happened at the time it did. And the truth is, it had almost nothing to do with these movies and everything to do with television, the cost of production, the independence of talent, and with that, the end of the studio system.
BUT...
The coverage of the story of the five movies that ended up being the five Oscar nominees is a truly spectacular piece of research. Harris could not have picked a better year to cover. And he got to the living witnesses to these films being made just in time to catch them far enough away to tell the truth and not quite far enough away to be dead.
Bonnie & Clyde, Doctor Dolittle, The Graduate, In The Heat of The Night, and Guess Who's Coming To Dinner? are the films. The central characters are mostly still on our collective radar: Beatty, Hoffman, Nichols, Dick Zanuck, and Norman Jewison are all still busy working. Arthur Penn, Hepburn, Tracy, and the still-around but little seen Portier are legends. And there are so many more, from Steiger to Scott Wilson to Anne Bancroft to Rex Harrison to Faye Dunaway... and even guest appearances by Truffaut and Goddard.
Harris gets inside the making of these films as well as anyone ever has and as well as any writer who was not on the set ever likely could cover any film. Excellent reporting and piecing things together and creating a compelling narrative.
As I say, what the book doesn't do is to make the case for change... aside from giving you these Sterling examples. For that, buy Dunne's The Studio, buy Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade, by Puttnam's Movies & Money.
What the book really got me thinking about, however, was that we are moving into similar transitional territory right this minute. But that's another piece...
P.S. One of my first thoughts while mid-book was to see whether any of the five films were on Blu-Ray, the home ent format closest to film. None were... and finding DVDs wasn't so easy for each title. However, Bonnie & Clyde is coming to Blu-Ray later this month. And The Graduate... please... release it... release it...
Posted by poland at March 6, 2008 02:20 PM
Comments
I may be mis-remembering (what else is memory for?), but am I correct in saying that in Easy Riders/Raging Bulls, Peter Biskin claimed that 69 was the transition year (Hopper's movie and a young Jon Voight's Midnight Cowboy asking "are you telling me John Wayne's a fag..." in the same year that saw Wayne finally win his Oscar...) I don't have the book to hand right now (and to be honest, I am a little bit bored by referencing it for "quotes"). Or maybe, Biskin said it was '71 with Bogdanovich and Friedkin up against each other as the New Hollwyood.
The reason why I ask is because while I was reading the book, I seem to recall that I thought Biskind had chosen the wrong year. 1967 was the year. In so many ways.
Posted by: The Pope ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/nav-commenters.gif)
at March 7, 2008 07:39 AM
Easy there Pope, I'd be careful about bringing up Biskind - as I recall, not one of D-Po's favorite authors.
And I recently saw Bonnie & Clyde again on the big screen - what a fucking phenomenal movie. Holds up probably the best of those five.
Posted by: MarkVH at March 7, 2008 08:41 AM
MarkVH,
Absolutely agree with you about Bonnie and Clyde. The best film that year and still rips a hole throug many films of its kind made since. I saw it when I was nine years old and when they stole Gene Wilder's car and then take him and Evans Evans for a ride, and Wilder says he's an undertaker and Bonnie kicks them out... well, it was then that I got really scared for Bonnie because something told me she was going to die. I hid under the couch in terror for the rest of the picture and that scene still brings me back to that nine year old fear (saw it on TV when it was shown as a double bill with Angels with Dirty Faces... WOW!).
Posted by: The Pope at March 7, 2008 09:52 AM
Doctor Dolittle? Ugh...
Posted by: DVertino at March 7, 2008 02:33 PM
In my humble opinion, the best American film of 1967 is Point Blank.
Posted by: jeffmcm at March 7, 2008 02:40 PM
I've always had a soft spot for "Dr. Dolittle." Loved the Hugh Lofting books as a kid, and the movie was my fave rave in third grade. Hell, I even bought the soundtrack album, lol. Haven't seen it in decades, though, so I have no idea how it would look to me now. I will say that "DD" director Dick Fleischer has always been notoriously underrated. Glad to see that he's finally getting some respect from the FSLC Mafia over in New York. "Mandingo," "Violent Saturday" (always loved that title!) and "10 Rillington Place" are frigging awesome!
Bought the Harris book on Amazon, but haven't had time to read it yet.
I doubt, however, whether it could add anything significantly new to the "Dolittle"/Fox stuff in Dunne's "The Studio" which is still one of the greatest literary examinations of Hollywood ever.
Posted by: movieman at March 8, 2008 06:37 AM
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