American Films of the 70s: Conflicting Visions

Introduction: "Nobody Knows Anything"

Introduction ‘‘nobody knows anything’’ Screenwriter and novelist William Goldman, writing in 1982, suggests that the first rule of Hollywood is ‘‘Nobody Knows Anything.’’1 Goldman explains that film industry producers and executives do not know in advance which film will be a box office success and which film will be a failure. Blockbuster movies such as The Godfather were written off as inevitable failures during production, and Raiders of the Lost Ark was turned down by all the Hollywood studios except Paramount. Any number of big-budget productions have done no business, whereas low-budget sleepers such as Easy Rider, American Graffiti, Rocky, and Porky’s have done phenomenally well. Nobody knows anything. Goldman’s formula can be historicized by dividing Hollywood sound film into three periods. In the first period, from the late 1920s to the mid-1950s, Hollywood executives did in fact know a few things. The film audience was more or less stable (especially in the first part of this period), and a welldeveloped system of stars and genres was in place. Further, the Hollywood major studios owned chains of first-run theaters, so every film from the Hollywood majors could expect a carefully planned release. Executives and producers could be confident that a well-made film following established conventions would find at least a moderate audience. It is also worth mentioning that studio executives at this time were experienced showmen with an intuitive understanding of what would play for an audience. This intuitive sense can be represented by a story about Harry Cohn, the legendarily crude head of Columbia Pictures. Cohn supposedly said one day, ‘‘I know it’s a bad film if my ass itches. If my ass doesn’t itch, the film is OK.’’2 Cohn’s seat-of-the-pants approach does suggest that he knew at least a little bit about which films would work. But in the 1960s and 1970s, the film audience shrank and fragmented, and the verities of the old studio system fell apart. Stars and genres were no longer enough to sell a picture. The Sound of Music (1965) was an enormous box office success, but its followup , Star! (1968; same genre, same star), was a resounding failure. Established writers, directors, and producers, many with track records stretching back for decades, were suddenly out of favor with a film audience now consisting primarily of young people. In desperation, major companies bypassed established talent to take a chance on younger producers, directors, and actors. Several important films were produced in this way: Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Graduate (1968), Easy Rider (1969), Midnight Cowboy (1969), M.A.S.H. (1970), The Last Picture Show (1971). But the second wave of youth films, descendants of Easy Rider such as Getting Straight (1970), The Strawberry Statement (1970), Zabriskie Point (1970), and The Last Movie (1971), were colossal failures. The 1970s were the true era of ‘‘Nobody knows anything,’’ a period of uncertainty and disarray in the Hollywood film industry. By the time William Goldman was writing his book Adventures in the Screen Trade in 1982, a new set of rules and regularities was being established in American films. Stars were once again important, with the new actors introduced in the 1970s—Nicholson, De Niro, Pacino, Hoffman, Streisand , Streep—becoming the established talents of the 1980s. Businessmen, not showmen, were running the Hollywood companies, so emphasis was put on the assembling of ‘‘packages’’ (marketable stars and directors) plus such presold properties as sequels, comic books, and best-selling novels. The younger audience had stabilized and become at least reasonably predictxvi american films of the 70s able. Beginning with Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977), Steven Spielberg and George Lucas had pioneered a return to simple, optimistic genre films. Finally, the film industry was beginning to stress advertising and market research as key elements in film planning. To summarize, in the 1980s film executives once again thought they knew a few things. Those who value creativity and risk taking in the arts are strongly attracted to the ‘‘Nobody knows anything’’ period of the 1970s. The average quality of films may have been better at the height of the studio period (for example, in 1939); but for sheer diversity of aesthetic and ideological approaches , no period of American cinema surpasses the films of the 1970s. The example I gave above of films like Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy...