A Decade Under the Influence

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Film ReviewBy Ray Young

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Francis Coppola filming Apocalypse Now

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A Decade Under the Influence

A film by Richard LaGravenese and Ted Demme

For more information contact

Docurama

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A dizzying glance at an intriguing epoch, A Decade Under the Influence (2003)

possesses a sycophantic spirit. Armed with dozens of interviews and film clips, directors

Richard LaGravenese and the late Ted Demme adore their subject the 70s films

that changed everything, according to the pictures tag line and run the risk of

sacrificing their objectivity. But to be perfectly honest, who cares? Originally a

three-part mini-series broadcast on the Independent Film Channel, running a total of

180 minutes, wed be entranced even if it were triple that length.It opens with the chestnut about the demise of the studio system, a mid-century

passing of the baton when the moguls (Darryl Zanuck, Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner,

etc.) retired and sold their interests to lawyers and accountants. Television and a

collective urge away from outmoded values ultimately killed the dynasty of old

Hollywood, and it went down in gaudy, graceless denial. LaGravenese and Demme

disinter footage taken at the star studded premiere of Hello, Dolly! (1969), where

celebrities well into their golden years whoop it up for an astonishingly archaic, white

elephant of a picture.

The film business was a decadent, decaying, empty whorehouse, and it had to be

assaulted, reflects Paul Schrader, one of the documentarys jubilant interviewees. Like

many of his contemporaries who either worked in television during the 50s, or spent

perhaps too much of their adolescence going to the movies, Schrader embraced theimpending upheaval. You had that student-film mentality: lets pick up the banner of

Godard and walk in there and take over!

They had a ready-made audience, supportive of foreign films and apprehensive of

the conventional (re: establishment) thinking that threatened to hitch the 60s to the

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conformity of the 50s. It was an audience that had been politicized by Vietnam and

Watergate, whose consciousness had been changed with drugs, explains Julie Christie.

It was an open audience.

Heady films for heady viewers. Approaching the terrain skewed earlier by Peter

Biskind in his book, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock n Roll

Generation Saved Hollywood (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), A Decade Under the

Influence recognizes the groundbreaking advance of adult themes in Bonnie and Clyde

(1967) and the progression of John Cassavetess improvisational experiments, as

American drama became visibly affected by the naturalism of postwar Europeancinema. The writers, actors and directors whod be influenced the most were then

working at the opposite end of the spectrum, honing their craft in low budget

exploitation pictures. Martin Scorsese, Dennis Hopper, and Bruce Dern (here providing

a kil ler Jack Nicholson impression) have no shortage of stories about Roger Cormans

guerilla university of filmmaking, as its affectionately referred to by Peter

Bogdanovich, churning out movies remembered chiefly for their meager budgets and

impossibly tight shooting schedules than any aesthetic or socially redeeming values.

As members of what once was labeled The new American cinema, this

far-from-beat generation have remained enthusiastic about the art and, for the most

part, reverent of those who came before them. When asked to name their influences,

Bogdanovich replies, There was Renoir, and sweeping his hand to divide rank

then there was everybody else. Robert Altman, conversely, uses his own distinctapproach: The filmmakers who influenced me the most, I dont know their names.

Because I would go see a film, hate it, and say Ive got to remember never to do

anything like that again!

Young, bursting with ideas, and inexpensive to hire, they were a persuasive lot who

finagled a degree of autonomy from broadminded backers and distributors. One

important factor that allowed their films a liberal handling of sexuality and vulgar

language was the MPAA ratings system, which had been initiated in 1968. Unless we

were distracted by all that was going on, A Decade Under the Influence overlooks this

milestone entirely.

Without it, no distributor wouldve touched The Last Picture Show (1971) for its

nudity, or Deliverance (1972) for its homosexual rape. Without the R rating,

M*A*S*H* (1970) and The Exorcist (1973) would probably never have been made.And Robert Towne would not have had the dispute he relates here, an amusing

quandary with producers over how many times he should use the word motherfucker

in his script for The Last Detail (1973).

The liberation and creativity under the ratings system enticed Francis Coppola and

Sidney Lumet to expand the parameters of drama, and enabled Altman, Hal Ashby and

Bob Rafelson to subvert traditional forms. The director was trump, says producer John

Calley. Studios and financiers and directors, William Friedkin declares, were all on the

same page. This is not to say that mindless, studio-controlled movies evaporated

entirely it was, after all, the decade of the disaster picture. But for approximately

seven years, beginning around the time of Easy Rider (1969) and lasting through

Network (1976), an environment existed where, to borrow from Sissy Spacek, the

artist ruled, and generated a branch of cinema that turned the glamour of oldHollywood inside-out.

But the artist ruled for only so long. Metaphysic, satiric, introspective and

nose-thumbing, films like Hi, Mom! (1970), The Panic in Needle Park (1971), The King

of Marvin Gardens (1972) and Chinatown (1974) could also be intellectually and

emotionally draining. Money, power, and excess would soon sour the reputations of

superstar directors: Scorseses New York, New York (1977), Bogdanovichs At Long

Last Love (1975), Coppolas Apocalypse Now (1979), and Michael Ciminos Heavens

Gate (1980) all fell victim to reports of ridiculously excessive budgets and unrestrained

egos behind the camera. By the time they hit theatres, there wasnt damage control

enough to woo a paying audience.

After the remarkable popularity of The Exorcist, escapism became the seminal

buzzword, and by the time A Decade Under the Influence reaches Jaws (1975), we seethe dawn of yet another new Hollywood. Here the documentary virtually palls in tone

and spirit: is that grief in the voices and faces of Monte Hellman, Julie Christie, and

Francis Coppola? Or merely our take on a distressing situation thats yet to reverse

itself? For almost overnight, mature themes and characters were tossed out like so


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many unwanted ideas, and American cinema experienced a candy-coated epiphany.

Jaws isnt a bad movie time may reveal it to be the best thing Steven Spielbergs

ever done but it opened the door for artlessly pretentious, epic bubblegum. With

Star Wars (1977), a picture devised at the lowest rung of Hollywoods food chain (the

vacuous Saturday matinee serial gussied up as celebratory event), the crossover to

superficiality was clear, the arrival of the producer as auteur. Which, in turn, shifted

the concerns of the media and public from art to capital: budgets, merchandising,

opening weekend, franchises, and the double-entendre of back end deals.

Richard LaGravenese and Ted Demme close at this point. Where else can you go?Coppola, Bogdanovich, Towne, Scorsese and Friedkin wandered out of the 70s as if

nursing a hangover. Altman dipped into obscure filmed stage plays, Clint Eastwood

found his voice as an artist, and Sidney Pollack abided by the rules and earned a

fortune. Ellen Burstyn sank below radar, and Dennis Hopper entertained with anger

issues (re: Blue Velvet) and yarns about drug abuse. A whos who in a depressing

chapter for a future volume ofHollywood Babylon we hope will never be written.

A Decade Under the Influence neglects some areas the arresting psychological

fringe of the early Henry Jaglom films and Milton Moses Ginsbergs Coming Apart

(1969); the controlled violent horror of Tobe Hoopers The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

(1974) and gives short shrift to the rise and commercial viability of 70s black

cinema. (Gordon Parks and Melvin Van Peebles go unmentioned, while a brief inclusion

of Pam Grier concentrates on her hooties in the jungle exploitation movies for RogerCorman.) Though these omissions are not minor quibbles, LaGravenese and Demme

shouldnt be faulted for shortsightedness. (At the end, they apologize for any

exclusions.) It was a long, arduous decade, and the uneasy alliance of high- and

lowbrow films is too vast a subject for any one documentary. A Decade Under the

Influence is miraculous for covering as much ground as it does.

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For more information contact Docurama

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Copyright 2004 by Ray Young


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A Decade Under the Influence

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