Re: [sixties-l] re: Steal this movie

From: Martin Blank (pubblan@amber.indstate.edu)
Date: Thu Jun 08 2000 - 17:48:01 CUT

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    > Interesting point. But even if the sixties finished off the novel, as you
    > say, the era seemed kind to film. And in that medium, which seems far from
    > straightjacketed in termso of expressive possibilities, there have still been
    > few if any direct representations of the era that don't seem hollow, to me at
    > least. So is the problem with the limitations of the medium alone, or does it
    > extend to issues embedded in audience gestalt?
    >
    > To me, the best film embodiments of the sixties ethos--if there is such a
    > creature--shows up in films that have nothing to do with the sixties proper.
    > I think you find the zeitgeist better in Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch and
    > even The Thomas Crown Affair than you do in The Strawberry Statement.
    >
    >

    > but again, that's just the embodiment -- a two-dimensional thing in a
    > two-dimensional medium. and really those films are all about the outlaw. we
    > don't however, know hos it feels to be the outlaw.

    creating the "thing itself" through art is what was important in the sixties
    (kesey talks about this, saying: "I saw that (Neal) Cassady did everything a
    novel does, except he did it better cause he was livin it and not writin about
    it" and he quit writing. So does Jerry Garcia, lead guitarist for the Grateful
    Dead and a particpant in the Acid Tests, who said: "Neal (Cassady) represented a
    model to me of how far you could take it in the individual way. In the sense that
    you werent going to have a work, you were going to be the work." It was also a
    driving spirit behind the mime troupe/diggers, the family dog, etc.)

    so if the goal was to become something, any media that reduced this thing
    dimensinally would make the thing seem trite.

    personally, i think it's there in the music -- bob dylan, jefferson airplane,
    grateful dead, quicksilver messenger service, great soceity, the byrds. it can
    live there becasue of the nature of the medium -- it's much more
    three-dimensional and emotinally connected. it's also more immediate.

    > But even then, while the best films were steeped in a new and
    > different set of values shaped by the 3-D acid test of the previous decade,
    > little of the acid test itself was committed to film in compelling ways.
    >

    > i think that's because the acid test was happening inside of you and film
    > cannot portray that kid of thing.

    martin blank

    in terms of film, i've thought that to get an accurate picture of the sixties you
    really need to string a bunch of films together -- american grafitti to animal
    house to platoon to born on the fourth of july to. . .



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