Home School: New Hollywood

The late 60s and early 70s was a wild time in the world of film. All the original studio bosses were dead and their studios were now in the hands of corporations who knew absolutely nothing about filmmaking. Add to this the fact that "traditional" genres like musicals and the westerns were on their last legs as the younger more radical yearned for films that spoke to them. In desperation, the powers that be gave a bunch of young filmmakers the keys to the kingdom, and nothing was ever the same again. This is the era that gave us Scorsese, Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas, et al and boy has it been thoroughly documented!

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Making Waves: New Cinemas of the 1960s by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith gives a great look at what was going on in the rest of the cinema world during these heady times. America was actually pretty late to the game. Learn about the films and filmmakers that inspired our revolution.

Many of the greatest filmmakers of the so-called "New Hollywood" got their start making cheap genre pictures for legendary producer Roger Corman. Check out his autobiography How I Made A Hundred Movies In Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime for a look at some of the down and dirty techniques imparted by Corman to his young proteges. There's also a great documentary available called Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel which features some amazing interviews with the likes of the late Dennis Hopper and an emotional Jack Nicholson.

Mark Harris' Pictures At A Revolution: Five Movies And The Birth Of The New Hollywood gives a fascinating look at the precise moment when the lunatics took over the asylum by following each of the five  films which were up for best picture 1967 as they made their way from script to screen. Quite a diverse slate: In The Heat Of The Night, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate and...Dr. Doolittle.

The Dream Life: Movies, Media, And The Mythology Of The Sixties by J. Hoberman is a thoroughly engrossing and well-researched examination of the ways in which politics influenced media and vice versa. I'm really eager to check out the prequel he recently published on film and politics in the 1950s.

Probably the most essential book on the period is Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How The Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. Though many involved have taken issue with Biskind's tendency to linger on who was screwing whom while on what, the book itself is still a treasure trove of insight into what made these young guns so great, and what eventually brought some of them crashing down. A documentary of the same name was made and is worth a watch, but it is by no means the definitive document that the book is.

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If you want the definitive documentary on the era, look no further than Ted Demme and Richard LaGravenese's three-hour opus, A Decade Under The Influence: The 70's Films That Changed Everything. So many great interviews and film clips. This is one of those films that will cause you to max out your Netflix queue.

Xan Cassavetes' Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession is also an amazing chronicle of this era shrunk down into the microcosm of one man, the cable channel he programmed and his descent into madness. It's so good I even reviewed it a while back.

Though it's a bit more expensive than anything else on this list, I highly recommend you pick up the Criterion boxed-set America Lost And Found: The BBS Story. In addition to the 7 wonderful films included, this set also features a treasure trove of interviews and commentaries with seminal figures of the time including the awesome Bob Rafelson. The booklet that comes with the box is also invaluable featuring essays by the likes of J. Hoberman and Kent Jones.

Lastly, let me end this post the way that the era ended, with Heaven's Gate. Michael Cimino's epic western went so far over budget that United Artists went belly-up effectively ending the era of the director in America. For insight into how such a debacle could happen, please check out either Stephen Bach's book Final Cut: Art, Money, And Ego In The Making Of Heaven's Gate, The Film That Sank United Artists or the documentary adaptation that is available on Youtube. Sadly this doc will not be included with the upcoming Criterion release of the film which seems intent on glossing over the films notorious legacy.