70s cinema
For many, many years now - I have never understood quite why I have had such a fascination with 70s cinema. Or perhaps I knew - but couldn't put the 'why' into words. Hard to put into words until I watched "Not Quite Hollywood". (thanks Loki)
It was a time, it seems to me, when the world was cinema's oyster. People were trying utterly crazy things using unorthodox methods ALL THE TIME. Anyone was willing to slap down money to make any old crap just for a chance to be part of making a film, it's truly amazing to think about. The real exciting bit, which I've known of seminally for a while, was the Aussie film industry being supplied lots of government incentives for making film - which led to some flagrantly berserk filmmaking on the Aussie side of the coin. But even the crud was fascinating. A lot of it was balls to the wall guerrila filmmaking. No safety, no rhyme or reason. If you wanted to have a car crash scene, one mad crazy dude would fling a car into another car for real and they would just hope for the best. I do not approve of this in practicality, and if I were to ever hear of that sort of behaviour in modern filmmaking I would be horrified.
But for some reason, it being the seventies and (early) eighties makes it okay. It's like that time period is protected by some sort of stasis bubble, like it is shielded from scrutiny from my mind. Because the films made then were visceral. They were real because everything that was happening in them (sans perhaps the acting) was as close to real as makes no odds. They are filled with oodles of energy that just seems so tired in the modern vernacular - now it's not always the case, there are films that still have that spice today, but it seems like they're much more few and far between. It feels like there's so much mystique, so much mystery surrounding those dusty periods in cinematic history, like no matter how hard I try I'll never find it all out.
And that is what I love about that period, what I crave. Why I wanted to make films in the first place. And if I'd been born then, I know I would have been stuck in that industry for all my life. :)
It was a time, it seems to me, when the world was cinema's oyster. People were trying utterly crazy things using unorthodox methods ALL THE TIME. Anyone was willing to slap down money to make any old crap just for a chance to be part of making a film, it's truly amazing to think about. The real exciting bit, which I've known of seminally for a while, was the Aussie film industry being supplied lots of government incentives for making film - which led to some flagrantly berserk filmmaking on the Aussie side of the coin. But even the crud was fascinating. A lot of it was balls to the wall guerrila filmmaking. No safety, no rhyme or reason. If you wanted to have a car crash scene, one mad crazy dude would fling a car into another car for real and they would just hope for the best. I do not approve of this in practicality, and if I were to ever hear of that sort of behaviour in modern filmmaking I would be horrified.
But for some reason, it being the seventies and (early) eighties makes it okay. It's like that time period is protected by some sort of stasis bubble, like it is shielded from scrutiny from my mind. Because the films made then were visceral. They were real because everything that was happening in them (sans perhaps the acting) was as close to real as makes no odds. They are filled with oodles of energy that just seems so tired in the modern vernacular - now it's not always the case, there are films that still have that spice today, but it seems like they're much more few and far between. It feels like there's so much mystique, so much mystery surrounding those dusty periods in cinematic history, like no matter how hard I try I'll never find it all out.
And that is what I love about that period, what I crave. Why I wanted to make films in the first place. And if I'd been born then, I know I would have been stuck in that industry for all my life. :)