Whoever it was, their wish has just been at least approximated, if not exactly granted. The new stuff:
American History X (1998), in which Hollywood tries to make a non-hysterical movie about Nazi skinheads, but can’t quite bear to do it…
Smithereens (1982), in which the rotting remains of the New York City punk scene become a haven for dead-end scam-artists…
Stone (1974), in which a cop who left the edge three or four counties back is assigned to infiltrate a gang of outlaw bikers in the hope of figuring out who’s been going around bumping them off…
Suburbia (1983), in which you can’t entirely blame the residents of a decaying Los Angeles suburb for failing to tolerate the band of teenage runaways who are squatting an abandoned house a few miles away up Interstate 605…
and…
The Trip (1967), in which a man who was supposed to be a thinly disguised stand-in for Jack Nicholson becomes a thinly disguised stand-in for Roger Corman instead, but still drops acid in an attempt to figure out why he’s so dissatisfied with life.
#1 by lyzard on May 31, 2009 - 5:40 pm
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It’s interesting – and this applies to A Bucket Of Blood, too – that Corman was the one person who managed to make films about the various counter-cultures without espousing either extreme of the situation; whether due to a (finanicial) reluctance to alienate either customer base, or a natural fair-mindedness, who knows?
It’s also interesting that he seems to have been less sympathetic to the beatniks than to the hippies. Because they were first? Because he saw them more as poseurs? Because he had no friends/personal experiences in that milieu? I wonder.
#2 by KeithA on June 1, 2009 - 2:02 pm
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AIP’s mandate was to make movies for teenagers. So it makes sense that Corman and other AIP directors would side, at least nominally, with the freaks who have to suffer authoritarian speeches from their elders.
#3 by Anrkist on June 1, 2009 - 5:07 pm
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“And perhaps most disheartening of all, we watched as the high-minded ideals for which our parents’ generation seemed never to tire of congratulating themselves curdled into a sick strain of reactionary narcissism.” – That entire paragraph is a great summary of the punk movement in itself. Though I don’t think many of the punks I knew could put it into words.
#4 by Tom on June 3, 2009 - 10:47 am
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Thank you for reviewing Stone. It’s a good movie, but I’ll admit that I mostly have a soft spot for it due to the completely ridiculous dialogue. I like to hope that there really was a time in this country when people spoke like that one guy in the music shop.