{"id":9070,"date":"2021-06-24T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-24T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9070"},"modified":"2021-07-06T08:05:31","modified_gmt":"2021-07-06T12:05:31","slug":"get-your-motor-running","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9070","title":{"rendered":"Get Your Motor Running"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fifty-two years ago, Columbia Pictures released the low-budget film, Easy Rider<\/em> (peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson) and saw its $400,000 investment balloon into more than $60 million in box office. Never an industry to ignore the possibility of a big payday, Hollywood got its motor running and two years later, the studios offered American audiences a rich diet of long hair, antisocial behavior, and oddball relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With predictable results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the tepid audience reaction, in 1971, the industry here and in Britain produced intense, dramatic, even arty films that defy the year\u2019s overall poor box office numbers. Film historian Max Alvarez highlighted a number of them in a Zoom program yesterday. Here are the ones I remember seeing that year. Remember these?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Clockwork Orange<\/strong> \u2013 Stanley Kubrick\u2019s adaptation of a book by Anthony Burgess starring Malcolm McDowell. In a dystopian London, a crime spree is led by a young man obsessed with \u201cultra-violence\u201d (everyday fare in 2021). Warner Brothers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Klute<\/strong> \u2013 Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland star in this noir drama about a high-priced call girl who helps a detective solve the case of a business executive who\u2019s gone missing. Fonda won the Academy Award for Best Actress, and I fell in love with Donald Sutherland. There\u2019s a talkback about this film<\/a> on Sunday, 6\/27. (free, but register)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roman Polanski\u2019s Macbeth<\/strong> \u2013 starring Francesca Annis and Jon Finch. What I most remember about this were complaints about \u201cso much blood.\u201d 1971 was the year Charles Manson and his family were convicted of multiple murders, including that of Polanski\u2019s pregnant wife, Sharon Tate. His response was that he\u2019d seen that crime scene: \u201cI know about blood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The French Connection<\/strong> \u2013 a crime thriller directed by William Friedkin, starring Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider as NYPD detectives in pursuit of a wealthy French heroin smuggler. Even if you\u2019ve never seen the whole movie, you\u2019ve probably seen the car chase<\/a>. Academy Awards for best picture, best director, best adapted screenplay, and best actor (Hackman). 20th<\/sup> Century Fox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Last Picture Show<\/strong> \u2013 based on a book by Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove<\/em>), with Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Ben Johnson, Cybill Shepherd, and Cloris Leachman. Shot in black and white, it well portrays the bleakness of small-town life. Leachman and Johnson won Academy Awards for their supporting roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harold and Maude<\/strong> \u2013 starring Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon. This film was among the year\u2019s subversive comedies that Alvarez highlighted. A flop at the box office, it found its way to college campuses where it became a cult classic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Hospital<\/strong> \u2013 this satire, written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Arthur Hiller, starred George C. Scott, Diana Rigg, and Robert Walden. Academy award for best original screenplay. Here\u2019s a great scene<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film was inspired in part by the poor hospital care his wife received, and Chayefsky became so leery of medical treatment that he didn\u2019t get optimal care for his cancer and died at age 58.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifty-two years ago, Columbia Pictures released the low-budget film, Easy Rider (peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson) and saw its $400,000 investment balloon into more than $60 million in box office. Never an industry to ignore the possibility of a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Get Your Motor Running - 50 years ago, movie box offices were plummeting, but the films were great!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[59,269,272,366,57,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academy-awards","category-actor","category-comedy","category-drama","category-movies","category-the-morgue"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2mi","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9070"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9075,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9070\/revisions\/9075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}