I liked it. sad and beautifully filmed. my wife thinks the Scientology cult killed Hoffman for this.

^ Not afraid to say I didn't really get this.

Good theory, btw.

Someone like Tesla would be best placed to say with any authority but I'd say they're both equally subjective accounts of very contrasting areas/people. But part of the allure of 70s era NY for me is it seems ultimately a myth founded on films, books, etc. To me it'll always be a place of vigilantes, gangs dressed up like baseball players, neurotic Jewish intellectuals, and Serpico's beard. Probably nothing like the reality, but who cares, nor was the wild west.

NYC in the 70's was a direct result of the massive amount of cheap heroin imported through the CIA.

Midnight Cowboy, 69

tired of bad "indie" movies and "White People's Problems" aka "Bougie Nights"?

think 'merica didn't have its own successful stab at neorrealism?



MY BROTHER'S WEDDING - (CHARLES BURNETT, 1983).

great, funny, hilarious, etc. not as good as KILLER OF SHEEP which is one of america's best movies ever but still damn good. also comes out pretty short at 1h 17 min in the 2007 director's cut (gotta check out the original cut-- looks like it was 2 hours) so it's very accessible.

great dialog, situations, characters, etc. film exposure a bit iffy at times but works great with the subject matter. acting not so great but in the end who cares--call it brechtian and move on, dammit.

seriously check it out. but check out "killer of sheep" first though, because that movie is just incredible. seriously, if you haven't seen killer of sheep do yourself a favor and stop whatever you're doing and rent it now. a fucking masterpiece. watch it in a double feature along with WATTSTAX. holy fuck. you'll thank me later.

[note: i don't know what ever happened to charles burnett but i am beginning to suspect his career went down as he assumed ideological obligations and became preachy (he made some tv movies, etc). this 2007 disc features a newish short (post-katrina) that's just.... too contrived. a real pity.]

Alright. This is very funny. I'll give you that. But I'm reminded of that great line from Annie Hall: "I know. I'm a bigot. But for the left."

But those flicks look great. I'm looking forward to watching them with great anticipation, so thanks.

sure. look, i'm only a "bigot for the left" by necessity. if we weren't in such a conservative homogeneous media climate i'd complain less. where is today's grapes of wrath or on the waterfront? film has erased the working class. they simply do not exist in teh popular imagination except as comic foil. fucking hollywood has redefined povery as "vassar graduate struggling to be a dancer in brooklyn"-- or (on a different genre) ghetto criminals in police flicks. it's outrageous. i don't blame the trust fund brooklynites for it-- they're just doing their thing. but fuckit, we have to be reminded of the constant erasure/stereotyping/ridiculing.

but don't get me wrong, i do enjoy films featuring the hoity-toity. whit stillman is one of my favorite filmmakers. and since you were asking for 80s/90s indie films i'd recommend metropolitan --> barcelona --> the last days of disco. in that order. i reeeeally llike metropolitan and have watched it a bunch of times.

Too true. I'm struggling to think of a single nuanced and broadly positive representation of the working class in mainstream contemporary hollywood. Maybe Erin Brockovich.

Yeah. This is a problem come to think of it. Let's go back a little. Any working class films from the 70s generation? There's that Paul Shrader film BLUE COLLAR. Um...maybe, maybe the first half of FIVE EASY PIECES.

I guess I now appreciate how the TV show Roseanne was seismically broundbreaking.

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Looked up Stillman on IMDB. Two things I wasn't aware of:

The Cosmopolitans (TV Series) (1 episode)
- Pilot (2014)

Damsels in Distress (2011)

Worth investigating?

BTW, I haven't seen METRO in years but I think about it all the time. Lines from that film pop into my head maybe every two weeks or so. For years this has been happening.

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Anyone notice the paradox at the heart of "bougie" films (Allen, Stillman)? On the one hand, we're shown unhappy, neurotic, often foolish characters. And yet the lifestyle is so damn attractive, who wouldn't want to be one of them?

In terms of the 70s, I suppose it depends on whether we're talking political with a big P. Blue Collar, definitely, but I think films like The Deer Hunter, Dog Day Afternoon, Saturday Night Fever (one of the most underrated films ever IMO), Mean Streets, Spielberg in general (when you think about it) were far less demonising and far more sophisticated representations of the working class than we get with today's Hollywood.

i watched and liked damsels in distress-- it's with greta gerwing also (see "frances ha" in the previous page). i liked the movie-- it's sort of terrible, clunky and a cheap production, but great at the same time. i can't explain. it's also a sort of musical which is a genre i tend to hate as well. but what is it about stillman's movies i can't resist? i guess a fundamental, earnest sense of innocence, or untainted goodness-- hard to explain. a serious moral conservatism. i think some of the dialog in metropolitan is very revealing of his deepest beliefs-- like when audrey roget refuses to play.. spin the bottle or whatever the game... because she says there is a reason we've developed some social conventions. quaint, absurd in our age of facebook (that movie was long before facebook), but it still makes sense. he's a kind of radical in that sense-- goes against the grain of cynical trends and really cares about individuals. very american, in a sense (see: barcelona).

he's also directed some tv but i think more of a hired gun. it's his auteurism that interests me (he wanted to be a novelist in his youth).

----

the 70s had plenty i think, plus there was a large international scene, so no complaints from me there. roseanne was rare post-reagan i suppose but even she eventually wins the lottery or something-- not that i watched it, but im aware of it. the early seasons of "good times" were there much earlier, though john amos quit because he didn't want to portray a cartoon character.

lucky louie in fact was a pretty great working class sitcom of the early 2000s, but who the fuck even knows about it? lasted only 1 season.

Car Wash
Cooley High
Rocky

the 70s had a working class

nowadays everyone is a temporarily embarrassed millionaire

ha!

So I guess around 1981 someone crunched the numbers and realized the working class don't really go to the movies that often, so why made movies about them? Brilliant.
--
Roseanne had scenes that took place in a factory line! Blows my mind to think of it.

i think it was more than crunching numbers. it was that mainstream america fell under the spell of the great communicator. everyone can be rich if they just want to! if you're struggling it's your own fault. who wants to watch a loser when we can dream of being yuppies? if you can dream it you can do it. etc.

--

ps george lopez worked in a factory too but apparently his schtick was about the fiction of "race."

--

there's this great scene in lucky louie where they've been hard up for a while and finally the wife gets her paycheck they wanna go out & celebrate and they go to the cash checking place and get a bunch of money orders to pay all their overdue bills and then they're left with 26 cents in change.

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ps - just read this! good stuff. http://www.alternet.org/story/148122/how_america's_working_class_died_on_the_disco_danc e_floor

^^ weird link doesn't copy correctly. just google "70s working class films" and it will appear on top.

From the article:

The megahit of 1977 allowed the nation to begin to move toward the 1980s celebration of working-class heroes who managed to get out, while casting those who could not into cinematic (and political) darkness.

What 80s movies celebrate "getting out"? Or is there a rags-to-riches hit? Just wondering which movies he means.
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Looked up highest grossers of 1980s:

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), $435 million
Return of the Jedi (1983), $309 million
The Empire Strikes Back (1980), $290 million
Batman (1989), $251 million
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), $245 million
Ghostbusters (1984), $238 million
Beverly Hills Cop (1984), $234 million
Back to the Future (1985), $210 million
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), $197 million
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), $179 million

I gather from this no one had any interest in the real world. Someone might even suggest everyone was living in a daydream nation.

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Not to harp, but:

Roseanne-1988
George Lopez Show-2002
Lucky Louis-2006

(By the way, why is Louis so negative about the show? It's not that bad. Also he co-created, produced, wrote, acted in it, so even if it did suck I'm not sure how much blame goes to others.)

Louis CK said HBO ruined his show.

as far as movies celebrating "getting out" in the 80's?

Brewster's Millions (a remake, I know)
Trading Places
Annie

is he negative about it? i thought he was fucking proud. get the discs (2 of them) & check out the commentaries, etc. he's pissed that it was cancelled but both him and pamela adlon were very proud of their work-- which btw c.k. compares it to the honeymooners (they even went for a similar look in the apartment).

can't think of any blockbusters that were about rags to riches stories but for example there's this class-conscious comedy from late 80s/early 90s called "dutch" featuring the al bundy guy as some working class dude dating a rich lady and he goes to pick up the lady's kid for thanksgiving... all kind of shit ensues. but the thing is that this working class schmoe is a millionaire who owns a fucking construction company. and so love triumphs in the end. al bundy the shoe salesman on the other hand is painted as a loser and an object of ridicule.

oh wait there is plenty of that material in the yuppie age about "getting out". the secret of my success, trading places... even a pink-collar revolt like "9 to 5" ends up in marriage and yuppiedom. the 80s were a time of ideological carnage. after that, if you don't have a trust fund it's your own damn fault.

the british thank fuck gave us mike leigh who is still making films. haven't watched his latest. last i saw was vera drake which in recollection was very good. but that's just a drop in the bucket.

Dig this:

Less Than Zero (1987)
Wall Street (1987)
Bright Lights, Big City (1988)

I tried to think of movies critical of how the eighties defined "success" and was surprised to find they all came out roughly the same time.