I know it’s Valentine’s Day, but last week I decided to hijack the old Time Machine to get an overview of cinematic history as it pertained to my specific neck of the woods in Colorado. I set it for the 1890s and moved on up to the 1950s. In short: Boulder went from a small mining town of 4,000 with hookers, booze, and a Kinetoscope, to a bustling mountain town that boasted a flagship university with 32,000 folks all living under the shadow of the Cold War with Drive-In theaters to comfort them. Now we look at the turbulent ’60s and beyond. Let’s think of this as a love-letter to my home-town – one with pre-nuptials written into it.

1960s: Shoot for the Moon!

Cinematically, this decade is marked by such gems as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962). But to go off the beaten path, let’s look at Denver-born Dean Reed, who would initiate his cinematic career with Mi Primera Novia (1965) and round off the sixties with Blonde Koder fur den Morder (1969). Dean Reed was known as “the Russian Elvis,” and when he died later (in 1986) he was buried in Boulder. Tom Hanks optioned a biography titled Comrade Rockstar to produce, but that’s still floating around. Speaking of floating around and Tom Hanks, who starred in Apollo 13, the sixties mark a serious transmogrification for Boulder that separates it from the rest of Colorado, and it wasn’t just because of influx of hippies. Locally, Boulder becomes the first place to tax itself to raise funds for the purchase of open space but, cosmically, it also contributes the fourth American in space: astronaut Scott Carpenter. He was chosen for Project Mercury in 1959, and flew into space in 1962 atop the Mercury-Atlas 7 rocket. (Incidentally, but of possible interest to TCM fans, Carpenter’s second wife was Maria Roach – daughter of film producer Hal Roach.) Boulder also launches it’s first nationally recognized surf-band; The Astronauts (they would play stadiums in Japan), and names a park and pool after Scott Carpenter. NASA’s space program certainly had many cinematic minds at work, and at the forefront was Stanley Kubrick who premiered 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968. When it comes to theatrical venues, the sixties were good to Boulder: six large single-screen venues open up for business. Another cinematic connection for this decade was initially erroneously posted in the previous decade; Sidney Poitier wins an Academy Award for his performance of Homer Smith in Lillies of the Field (1963), which is inspired and based on the Convent of St. Walburga in Boulder.

1970s: Blockbusters, VHS, Multi-Plexes, & Mork from Ork.

This was the decade that brought us Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977). HBO was the first premium cable station to make gains into America’s living room, and the VHS market starts growing. This also marks the era of the multi-plex, and Boulder gets three of them which, cumulatively, add ten screens to the area. Cinematically, Woody Allen puts Boulder on the map by using many famous local backdrops, buildings, and locations in Sleeper (1973), a science-fiction comedy about a health-food store owner who goes to the hospital for a minor operation only to wake up 200 years later. I think one of the reasons why Boulder seems a perfect fit for science-fiction comedies is because it provides a perfect blend between hard science and a variety of wacky New Age hippie ideals. How else to explain that Boulder’s two most famous space-travelers at this time are the aforementioned Scott Carpenter, on one hand, and Mork from Ork on the other? For those needing a refresher on the latter, Mork & Mindy was a popular American sitcom that ran from 1978 – 1982 and featured Robin Williams as an alien who comes to earth in an egg-shaped spaceship. The show contributed such popular catchphrases to the national lexicon of the time as “Na-Nu Na-Nu” (the Orkan greeting, accompanied by a Vulcan-like hand gesture and handshake) and “Shazbot” (which was an Orkan profanity). If we reach further into the dustbin of seventies ephemera, we even find Fonzie overlapping with Mork, as is made clear from the following Wikipedia excerpt that discusses the premise for Mork & Mindy:

The series was a spinoff from the sitcom Happy Days. The character of Mork (then-unknown Robin Williams) first appeared in the season 5 episode My Favorite Orkan (a take on 1960s sitcom My Favorite Martian) where he attempts to take Richie Cunningham back to Ork as a human specimen, but his plan is foiled by Fonzie. The character proved to be popular enough with the audience to rate a series of his own. In Mork & Mindy, Mork resides in Boulder, Colorado in the current day (1978) as opposed to the Happy Days late 1950s setting.

On more serious fronts, Boulder makes a few other cinematic contributions via: Electra Glide in Blue (1973 – director James William Guercio was a Boulder native), The Divided Trail: A Native American Odyssey (1978 – directed by Jerry Aronson and nominated for an Oscar in the Best Doc Short Subject category), and Breaking Away (1979 – the connection here being that scriptwriter Steve Tesich was influenced in part by a famous Boulder bike race of the time; The Red Zinger).

1980s: Exit the Drive-In, Enter the Reagan Years.

The eighties heralded the first movie-star President of the US (Ronald Reagan) and also ushered in E.T: The Extra Terrestrial (1981) and “high-concept” films of the sort that you could sell in two-sentences. In some ways, this was a glorious time for me because in the early part of the decade I managed to see a slew of cult films like Aguirre: the Wrath of God (1972), Eraserhead (1977),  Liquid Sky (1982), Repo Man (1984), and many, many more. I was a teeanager getting my crash-course in eclectic fare and was able to do it via single-screen arthouse theaters that played a mix of repertory and new titles, all locally programmed by film lovers. But it was to be their last gasp, and most of those single-screen theaters were defunct by the end of the decade, giving way to yet another multiplex.

To look at the 80′s as a whole, the operative words would be crass commercialism and style over substance. Think about it: E.T. – the highest grossing film in history for this time and years to come – was a highly visible and huge success story for the marriage between blockbusters and product placements (it made a celebrity of Reese’s Pieces). This was the “Greed is good” decade epitomized by the white-collar criminals of Wall Street (1987). Of course, most of the crimes committed in the eighties by the Reagan administration were eclipsed by the Great Communicators admittedly awesome ability to make a nation feel good about consumption and American Exceptionalism, nevermind the 138 Reagan administration officials that were convicted, indicted, or subject to investigations for a variety of criminal violations.  And “high-concept” films? The poster boy for this was Joe Eszterhas. His career was launched with Flashdance (1983) and from there he would eventually become infamous for making millions from “high concepts” you could scribble on a napkin. Although he did give us Showgirls (1995), I’ll grant you that. So to sum up this decade: it starts out with great promise, and Kubrick gives us The Shining (1980) – which has establishing shots in Boulder – but then the tides shift and the name of the game is big money, and making it by any means necessary. Blockbusters get even more inane and crass, the multiplex wins, and the single-screen arthouse scene gets demolished. Ugh. Let’s move on.

1990s: CGI, DVD’s, and Netflix

On a national level this would be the decade of ones-and-zeroes. Hard to believe I was still buying laser discs throughout most of this decade, because by the time it wraps up DVDs are the norm and Netflix is launched in 1998. Pixar makes Toy Story (1995), the first entirely computer animated film. On a local level, things are still enjoying analog times: Trey Parker and Matt Stone, while still students at C.U. Boulder and before achieving fame for South Park, shoot Alferd Packer: The Musical (1993) on 16mm. It would later be picked up by Troma and retitled Cannibal: The Musical. Margaux Hemingway comes to Boulder to shoot an absolutely dreadful film called Double Obsession (1994), which was shot in my house in trade for them re-painting my kitchen (I should have asked for more). Boulder also contributes yet another television icon to our collective unconscious: the iconic and dead Laura Palmer from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (1990) – Sheryl Lee – was a graduate of Fairview High School. In 1993 we are visited by Kirk Douglas when the University Memorial Center Fountain is renamed the Dalton Trumbo Free Speech Fountain. (Trumbo attended C.U. from 1924 – 1925).

2000s: Franchises & Indy Breakthrough Pics.

Whether its Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Harry Potter, Star Wars, or any other blockbuster of the type, franchises become the big thing. But, refreshingly, there are suddenly a slew of more independent films that suddenly also get a lot of attention. Films like Little Miss Sunshine (Boulder-based band Devotchka helps on that sountrack), Juno, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Sideways, Memento, and many more. Alexander Payne’s About Schmidt (2002) uses a Boulder church for a location shot, Catch and Release (2006) is shot almost entirely on location here, but probably our biggest contribution to the cinematic scene came at the end of the decade with The Cove (2009). Director Louie Psihoyos is the director of the Boulder-based Oceanic Preservation Society and this documentary about dolphin slaughter was recently nominated for an Academy Award. The film employed the talents of many Boulder folks, some of whom I know, so it’s nice to have a dog in the race for the upcoming awards show that I’ll be rooting for. Boulder does also have a connection to another Academy Award nominated film with Precious (2009) – which was produced by Boulder native Sarah Siegel-Magness – but as I have not yet seen that film I shall have to recuse myself for the moment.

How does this decade end? The key word now is: 3-D. Can I make one last local connection to this upcoming paradigm shift in cinema? All I have to do is turn to a Feb. 1 business insert from our local newspaper titled “Getting the Full Picture.” The byline is this: “RealD’s research and development office, based in Boulder, created the glasses and other technology that makes 3-D movies like Avatar possible.” And at this point, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to end with: “You’re welcome” or “I’m sorry” – only time can tell.