1977: The Year that The Neurotic Hypochondriac Beat the Insurrectionary Wookie

I've decided that all of my titles should be turned into really bad 70s and 80s television. Preferably they would all be spin-offs of Happy Days. On a side note, I find it ridiculous that one of those spin-offs is Mork and Mindy. How can a non sci-fi show all of a sudden decide to have an alien storyline just to fuel another show? And did you know the infamous "jump the shark" episode was in season 5 and it went on for another six seasons? Almost all of Joss Whedon's shows get canceled prematurely though. That's not cool. All of this is somewhat relevant because I find these things out when I'm surfing Wikipedia during times when I'm bored watching a nominee for the escapade. And I was driven to this by 3 films from 1977. So yeah, it's gonna be one of those. BUT, there's good stuff as well. Including my aforementioned epitome of childhood. I don't think I used the word "epitome" before but I should have.

But first we have to deal with The Goodbye Girl. If I was one of those "I think I'm snarky and clever but I'm not" reviewers I'd say: "the producers should have said goodbye to this script!" or "viewers should say goodbye to this film!" That's probably because they're trying to be succinct and polite, and I of course believe in being neither of those. Although I do find Richard Dreyfuss' performance to be entertaining, it's not enough to save the film. Because he's playing off of Marsha Mason who is really quite terrible. I often talk about performances being overrated or not being as good as other performances or whatever but she is really, truly bad. Throughout the whole movie I felt like I was watching the screen test for Dreyfuss who was acting wonderfully even against the casting director's terrible intern who would need narcotic assistance to be believable. I looked up some old reviews of the film and apparently many, including Roger Ebert, felt the same way (albeit in a more dignified fashion). However, I also really didn't care for the script too much. The overall plot is your generic "people who hate each other who learn to love each other" drivel, which can be saved by some good dialogue. But I really didn't like the dialogue. At all. Part of this was the delivery, because a lot of humor is only good in the delivery. Most of the lines on modern comedies like The Office and Community aren't that funny on the page but in their delivery they're hilarious. In this case, the lines themselves are cheesy. But humor was different back then, as it was a time when the more "traditional sitcom" flourished. Not that it doesn't still flourish today in terms of ratings, but there are also plenty of non-traditional sitcoms that never would have aired back then. So okay, the lines themselves are cheesy but they can still work with a good delivery. Dreyfuss achieves this some of the time, but even he screws up in the same way Marsha does with basically every line (and I blame the director who I also believe was the writer). And that common screw-up is hard to define but the closest I can define it is: they're waiting for people to laugh. They deliver a snappy and clever line (or they wish it was snappy and clever) and then they stand there with their heads down for a second or two as though waiting for the off-camera A.D. to give them the cue of when to start again. This would be okay on stage, when there is actual laughter, and I'm sure it was less noticeable in a theater where there was actual laughter. But comedies should always have jokes you missed the first time around because you were laughing. That's natural comedy. This script is the type of junk that would come from a formula: "insert joke here. (pause) Put line in that illustrates emotional conflict. (pause for reflection) Justify serious moment with another snappy zinger." I've gone on a bit much with this one, I guess because I just really hate bad comedy. Even more: I hate when people like bad comedy. It's why there were 6 more seasons of the Fonz than there should've been and not nearly enough Arrested Development.

A movie that's bad for a completely different reason is Julia. It's shocking to me how similar Roger Ebert's thoughts on some of these movies are to my own. Does this mean I've seen almost as many films as he has and have ergo gained a similar heavily-critical view on them? It's entirely possible. I hope his viewings came with a social life though, it would've been a lot tougher to spend time alone in the 70s since Instant Watch Netflix didn't exist. Anyway, what he said about the film is that it tries to make it about both women and thus it becomes about neither of them. The two women I'm talking about are the title character Julia (based on a real person) who fought against the Nazis (in an espionage kind of way) and her childhood friend Lillian. Julia's story is interesting, but we only experience it from the non-interesting perspective of Lillian. This could be interesting but the way it's delivered is really sloppy. Plus, Jane Fonda is the non-interesting character and she annoys me enough already. Vanessa Redgrave does a good job as Julia, although I wouldn't say she was in the movie enough to warrant the Oscar she received. Now, a movie about an ordinary woman who fights the Nazis with espionage that stars Vanessa Redgrave in more than 12 minutes of footage? I'd like that movie. A movie where Dashiell Hammett is an uninteresting drunken hippie who's also not in it enough to warrant the Oscar that the actor received, which also features Jane Fonda being her screechy self? That's not particularly good. I'm sure the book was far more interesting, and I also find myself wondering if this was a precursor to Prince of Tides syndrome where they change the story so that the more famous actress gets more screen time. Although I guess in Streisand's case it was: "the bigger producer who sees herself as a big star." So I should've used a different example. From now on I'll use Fonda as the example, so there. The point being that the film could have been interesting, could have been enthralling, and could have even been moving. But instead it's just kind of boring. I like to think that the modern filmmaker would rather use Vanessa Redgrave more, the far superior actress, but since Megan Fox continues to be in movies that don't have titles like "Drilling Miss Daisy" I'd say that maybe Hollywood has remained the same.

And on that note of adult cynicism, let's talk about the reason I love movies: Star Wars. Hell. To. The. Yeah. First off, this is the one and only time I will refer to it in this way and not as Episode IV: A New Hope. I could get into the long saga of why all of that went down the way it did, but the fact remains that when it was nominated it didn't have that part of the title. Anyway, this was the last time that a true sci-fi film was nominated for Best Picture until very recently (literally last year). In many ways it's still the standard that all other sci-fi is held up against, and for good reason. Just yesterday I was reading a retrospective of the first HP movie and how it had a similar task that George Lucas had with this movie. It has to show you a bunch of ridiculous nonsense and make you say, "I buy that" and then "I buy that and it is awesome." If this was any other movie, I'd probably complain about some of the acting. But what people fail to realize about all six films in the saga is that they're not about the acting or the dialogue. Much like the old movie serials on which they are based, it's all about the scope. The sweeping musical score (John Williams' best, which was rightfully called the greatest film music of all time by the AFI. The one time we've agreed), the operatic quality of the battles, and the envelopment of the story itself. Although the films are not devoid of interesting moral, political, and religious issues that I won't get into (because I wouldn't stop typing for 20 paragraphs or so) they largely function as being straight-up enjoyable for people of all ages. And there's something wonderful about that. Because filmmaking itself doesn't always have to be about being artsy or thought-provoking, sometimes we recognize a filmmaker's talent for bringing a world to life and transporting the audience to another realm for a mere few hours. Not many directors or writers have actually achieved this (for me it's really just Lucas, Peter Jackson, and the creators of Lost) but when they do it is magical. I won't even bother describing the plot because if you haven't seen it then there is something missing from your life. Although interestingly: George Lucas, and myself, put this film at the bottom of the saga in many ways. Not because it's bad, it's fantastic, but because once you know the world then the first half-hour of introducing the world isn't as meaningful. The film also introduces Darth Vader, who some may recall was my top-ranked villain of all time, and though his true emotional impact on the story comes in later movies there is simply no comparison to his "I find your lack of faith: disturbing" scene. Films like this never win any of the big awards of course, but that's okay. George Lucas hates Hollywood anyway. I could also go on about his business genius but I won't. I simply love the series too much, and thus have too much to say about it. So I'll just end by saying that perhaps the Academy was a lot better back then. A lot of the movies I personally dislike were popular at the time, so I respect them for nominating films that people had actually seen. And even though Lucas' space opera never stood a chance at winning, at least they didn't totally snub him like they recently did with Nolan (and will probably do again this year). And even the AFI knows some of the greatest music ever written when they hear it.

I considered just writing about George Lucas' whole saga for this entire blog entry and then summing up the other 3 non-winners with "they weren't very good" but I decided against it, and so I shall talk about The Turning Point. I figure that if I start cutting corners then soon I'll stop watching the films in their entirety and then that means that the time I've spent watching a lot of it was time wasted. And I hate wastes of time. So I'd rather waste another 50 years worth of time on some more movies I might not like, just in the off chance that some of them are excellent (which some will be) and so I can say that I did. This film is probably one I'll have trouble recalling things about in the weeks to come (or possibly even hours) but not because it's bad just because I don't find it personally interesting. Something interesting that I've neglected to mention before is that all of a person's life experiences alter how they view films. And they can't really view them any other way. That's why you can tell a lot about a person based on what they watch, and especially what they re-watch. There are likely many films I've reviewed that I saw as bad because I couldn't see them any other way. Someone else might have had different experiences which would cause them to like it. There are, of course, exceptions on both sides because no one should like Gigli and everyone should like Iron Man. But, after all of that blathering, this particular movie fits into the category of "well-done but not compelling for me." I empathize with a lot of the themes of the film: missing out on one's true potential, being sabotaged not by bad decisions but by life itself, etc. Because most people can recognize with those issues, but the overall pull of the movie is kind of a mid-life crisis thing with an added element of vicariously living through one's children. As 22 hasn't been "mid-life" since the 1800s and I certainly don't have any kids, I really can't fully become emotionally attached to this movie. Also, I'm not a female. Just saying. But its storyline of the ballerina who missed out on her big break when she became pregnant is well-delivered, well-acted, and contains some great classical music. I'm not a big ballet person, as I probably proved by not knowing a more dignified word than "ballerina." By comparison it's probably like the feeling I get when people call a graphic novel a comic book (Archie is a comic book, "The Dark Knight Returns" is novel-quality fiction with pictures). But I don't know any better in this instance. One thing that did annoy me about the film is that before a lot of the ballet performances the credits for the classical piece were put up on the screen. If they had projected it on the back wall of the stage, thus making the credits exist in the movie, that wouldn't have taken the viewer out quite as much and would've achieved the same goal (which was probably legally-based). And who knows? Maybe the filmmakers wanted to do that but couldn't. Anyway, I'd recommend any moms with daughters to watch the film and I guess any moms in general. For me: it was meh. But I still respect what they accomplished.

On the complete flip-side of things, this year's winner hits a little bit too close to home: Annie Hall. Comedies rarely win, and only one since then has won, Shakespeare in Love, and I wouldn't consider it a real comedy anyway. If Woody Allen was dead, I'd think I was the reincarnation of him. As he is not, I think we were both cursed by the same shaman. Because his misadventures with women, social gatherings, and life in general are all too familiar. I mean, not really. I can't say as I've ever embarrassed my girlfriend by sneezing into cocaine (I know, I know. I haven't truly lived). And in reality, Woody Allen's misadventures dwarf everyone else's. That's why people like him: you feel a lot better about your life when his movie is over. This is easily his masterpiece. Its narrative style in particular is outstanding. It has a "stream of consciousness" style that makes it so grounded and real because it evokes memory itself. He's reflecting on things that happened to him and showing it to us in ways that we remember our own lives. So everything feels so real even though it's totally over-the-top. But isn't life over-the-top a lot? Mine is. And the beginning of the movie focuses on Woody talking about how everyone in his grade school classes annoyed him because he felt he was ahead of them in many ways. As this closely mirrors the beginning of my forthcoming autobiography, I'd like to go on the record and say that you can check when my Word document was created and my Netflix history to see that I did, in fact, start the book before I saw the movie. I'm sure Woody would enjoy and empathize with my book enough that he'd ignore the similarities anyway. And then endorse the book and make it huge. Note to self: create more parallels to Annie Hall in memoirs. Anyway, want to hear what actually snappy dialogue sounds like? Watch this movie. It was SO ahead of its time in the way that it structures its comedy. Along with Mel Brooks, he really ushered in the era of modern comedy. I'm not kidding when I say that Young Frankenstein should have won for Screenplay and been nominated for Picture, it is truly brilliant. And whereas Brooks usually spoofs and references things, Allen basically makes movies that can be viewed as behind-the-scenes footage of his stand-up routines. I usually dislike when comedies are nominated, because they're usually no good. If more comedies were like this then not only would I endorse their nomination, but their wins as well (depending on what they're up against of course). By means of a plot: neurotic guy seems charming to woman, woman finds his neurotic nature annoying after a while, and they break up. The story is largely irrelevant, because it's Allen's views on what happens and the mini-vignettes that make the movie. The part where Allen is in line for a movie while standing nearby an obnoxiously loud movie-goer was especially great, and it illustrates why I usually wait for the DVD nowadays.

Way back in the 7th grade I got all mad when I found out that some comedy beat out one of my personal favorites for Best Picture. But now I understand why, and I also recognize that some movies are better when they exist outside of the Academy. It makes them cooler in the same way that minor forms of rebellion are cool in a "it's cliché and stupid to rebel against the establishment but everyone still likes it anyway even if they don't admit it" kind of way. And what's this? Next year is even better? Not in the sense that it epitomizes my childhood, but it might epitomize my pre-teen years. I haven't quite finished it yet but I know it will include the precursor to the Internet meme, superfluous social commentary, and the little-seen and much-overlooked foil to the Western: the "Eastern."