The Year That Was: 1976

Posted by Greg Ferrara on January 4, 2012

People love demarcation points, a specific time or place they can point to and say, “Here! This is where it changed.” It’s important to have markers if only to help organize that which is, essentially, resistant to all forms of organization: life. It provides a sense of security, of nostalgia, of a longing for a return to a starting point when life was uncluttered and uncomplicated. For me, I have no desire for any such thing in my personal life. It is exactly where I not only want it but where I long dreamed it would be after suffering through years of confused wanderings through some of the most depressing times of my life. I do desire it, just a little, in my work life. I would like to write a great deal more, including books, but have too many other things going on that keep me to a tight schedule. When I have time to write, it is almost exclusively about movies.

And that’s where I get that sense of longing. Sometimes I wish I could go back and start all over as a cinephile. It’s been decades since it all began and so much of it is smashed together in a jumbled blur I can hardly remember sometimes that I have even seen a movie, much less what it was about. When I get these bouts of longing, I think back to when movies officially took over for me and how I had so much to see that lay ahead. Oddly enough, in a strange way, it’s the same time movies died for me, too, so to speak. The year was 1976: The future had much to offer but the door was already closed.

The first movie I remember seeing in a theater was The Poseidon Adventure, starring Gene Hackman, Shelley Winters and Ernest Borgnine (among many others). According to my mom, I saw Pinocchio and Fantasia before my 1972 excursion into the upside down ship but I don’t remember that. I do remember The Poseidon Adventure, though, and how, for weeks afterwards, all I wanted to see were movies about ships.

Over the next two years I saw my share of movies but nothing too dark or dense. I didn’t see Chinatown, The Godfather movies, The Conversation, Mean Streets or any other movies for aimed at a more serious crowd but I did take in The Sting and American Graffiti as well as The Land that Time Forgot and At the Earth’s Core, both starring Doug McClure and the latter with Peter Cushing, as well. Jaws was a big movie on my radar, and everyone else’s, and that only whetted my appetite for more . By 1976, I wanted to see everything, whether I was the proper audience or not. I saw all the movies a young kid was supposed to see (King Kong, Logan’s Run) but I also wanted to see Bound for Glory, All the President’s Men and Network. By the time 1977 rolled around, I was a full blown cinephile doing all the things you’ve heard other cinephiles talking about: Staying up late to watch classic movies, liking movies that none of my friends liked, hating movies that they loved, reading old reviews and falling in love with the words of James Agee.

The thing is, I didn’t necessarily see all of those movies until years later, on cable, at revivals or on VHS. I said I wanted to see them, not that I did. And when I did finally see all of them I discovered that, somehow, magically, that year of 1976 was the year that movies ended for me as well. From that point on, my primary interest was films made in 1976 or before. Why? I have no idea.

Or maybe I do.

I have, of course, watched movies from every year on and can count many masterworks and favorites from the period of 1977 forward but 1977 to the present feels like current cinema, 1976 back feels like classic cinema and the only reason I can imagine why is because that’s when it started for me so I must perceive that as the before/after period of movies in my life. More than that, the movies of the late seventies have a different feel than the movies of the early seventies, at least for me they do. The earlier ones seem grittier, messier, darker. It’s not fair but in my mind I associate the late seventies with movies like The Goodbye Girl, Superman, Star Wars, The Muppet Movie and Moonraker while I associate the early seventies with The French Connection, The Last Detail, Mean Streets, The Conversation, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Network and so on. Oh, I know you can easily find those different types of movies in each part of the decade and simply reverse it, I’m just saying that, in my own mind, those are the associations I make.

I tend to have to be reminded of the great movies made after 1976 because of my psychological lock on that fork in the road. To me, great cinema occurs during and before 1976 and everything after is still current and needs more time for assessment. This is, of course, absurd as any movie made in 1982 will be thirty years old this year but, still, that’s how my mind works on the matter. Because of this, I’ve probably given short shrift to the movies made in the last 35 years and that’s where I’d like to start over. I was so focused in the late seventies and all of the eighties with seeing every single movie made before 1977 (usually on tv or on tape and in poor condition) that I neglected seeing some fantastic cinema that was in theaters, right there in front of my face. I saw all the big American and British releases in the theater, like Amadeus or Witness or Hannah and Her Sisters or A Room with a View but neglected many foreign ones as I was a bit too concerned with making sure I saw the entire French New Wave first. Movies like Babette’s Feast, which I could have seen in the theater and instead, saw years later on DVD. Mephisto which I saw on cable. Fanny and Alexander, Entre Nous, The Official Story – all available to me in theaters but I let the moment pass. I saw them all eventually on a much smaller screen with considerably less impact. What a fool.

But there are other areas of longing with this demarcation point. For one, I wish I could go back and pay better attention, quite frankly. There was a time when I took in three, four or five movies a day, depending on school and work. Definitely two, often three and on weekends, four and five. I was watching, in the early days of VHS, everything I could get my hands on from before 1976 and now I’ve probably forgotten half of what I’ve watched. In the mad rush to see everything I could, I lost the careful feel of examining something in detail, savoring it and exploring it before moving on. That’s what I do now. I take in a movie and watch and re-watch it for days afterwards (if not in the theatre, that is) before watching another. I wish I could go back and tell myself to slow down just a bit.

And so now, going on 35 years from the start of 1977, the day cinema became current for me and everything before became classic, I find myself longing for something more. Fortunately, with venues like the A.F.I. Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, my port of call, I find I am able to relive the past and, this time, get it right. I don’t go to the A.F.I. all the time but when I do, it’s special. No matter how many movies I took in in my younger days, none of it can compare to seeing glorious prints of La Dolce Vita, Nights of Cabiria, The Earrings of Madame de… and countless other wonderful movies in the Silver’s main auditorium. Or seeing Strangers on a Train with Farley Granger, right there! Or seeing The Crowd with its original organ score performed live in the theatre! Or seeing Mon Oncle, Foreign Affair, White Woman, Scarlet Street and on and on and on. Many, if not most, of the movies I see at the Silver, I’ve seen before but once the movie strikes up and the screen lights up, I realize I never really saw them at all until now. Kind of like when, after seeing it multiple times on television and videotape, I finally saw 2001: A Space Odyssey on a big screen (the massive Uptown Cinema screen in DC) and thought, “Oh, so that’s what they mean about having to see certain movies on the big screen!”

I feel as if I’m entering a final, welcome stage of cinephilia, the savoring stage. It’s the point where the idea of savoring a particular movie at a particular place and time is infinitely more valuable than seeing ten movies in its stead. I’ll always think of the post-1976 cinema as current and do most of my exploring in the years before then but now, I won’t move so fast. What’s better? Racing through an art museum that contains all of the world’s masterpieces and seeing them as only a blur or going to a private collector who has, perhaps, a small, early Picasso or Wyeth or Bacon and staring at it, and into it, until you see it’s soul? I know which I prefer. The problem is, I didn’t know that until the blurs started to give me a headache and I realized I was full… but I hadn’t tasted a thing.

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32 Responses The Year That Was: 1976

Posted By Richard A. Ekstedt : January 4, 2012 11:41 am

And dont forget “SHADOW OF THE HAWK”, a favorite of mine, starring Jan Michael Vincent and Chief Dan George! great little film, now-I’m happy to say-on dvd!

Posted By Juana Maria : January 4, 2012 1:12 pm

I was remember 1976 as the year my brother was born. My Dad always remembers that year as the bi-centennial of the U.S.A. I have seen a lot of movies from the 70′s. They were in on TV a lot in the 80′s and seemed relatively new then. I love “The Muppet Movie”. I have seen most of them over the years. I looking forward to seeing the newest one eventually. Keeping writing about the 70′s & 80′s please! I too like movies with Cheif Dan George, though I have not seen “Shadow of the Hawk”. I love his acting in “Outlaw Josey Wales”. “I’m an Indian alright; but here in the nation they call us “the civilized tribe”. They call us “civilized” because we’re easy to sneak up on.The white man has been sneeking up on us for a long time”. I feel those words very strongly because mostly of Cherokee descent and some other races. I too can sneak up on people like the “indians” in “Outlaw Josey Wales”, it scares my family how quiet I can be!

Posted By Tom S : January 4, 2012 2:20 pm

I’m at a weird crossroads right now- on the one hand, there’s so much out there that I’m dying to see that I feel like every minute I spend not watching a movie is a minute wasted. There’s so much out there that needs watching- I went to the movies at least twice a month this year, and I still missed at least three that I desperately wanted to see (The Skin I Live In, Into the Abyss, and Martha Marcy May Marlene) and still have several from 2011 that I need to hurry up and watch before they leave theaters.

I’ve been to at least a dozen older movies at the theater this year, but I’m kicking myself for the revival screenings I missed- if I had found a parking space in time, I could have seen The Third Man at the MoMA! I skipped seeing Hausu because I was tired! I missed a chance to see True Stories in its proper aspect ratio!

And of course, my pile of movies which I own and haven’t watched grows bigger every week. I’m up to literally like 700 now, counting all the individual movies in box sets and things. Sure, I watched more than 150 movies out of my collection that I’d never seen last year. But I bought 300. How will I ever catch up at that rate?

On the other hand? Screw it. This isn’t the year I failed to get through Berlin Alexanderplatz again, or the year I missed seeing the Battle of Chile in a theater. This is the year I saw Tree of Life, the year I saw Certified Copy, the year I saw Ivan the Terrible, and the year I saw the Seventh Seal. It’s the year I watched more than 100 movies from the thirties, for the first time or the seventh, for a project from which I derived no benefit beyond watching and talking about movies. It’s the year I really, really got into Jonathan Rosenbaum, the year I bought a James Agee book, the year I really got a handle on silent non-comedies. What do the things I didn’t do matter? I can do those later.

Posted By swac : January 4, 2012 3:09 pm

Funny, I saw 2001 in D.C. too, but sadly not at the Uptown. It was somewhere in the burbs in the ’80s. But at that point I hadn’t seen it at all, so here I was in my early teens, getting to experience it in all its glory on a big screen without much advance info (all I knew was that it was the biggest thing in science fiction before STAR WARS came along). My cousins were bored stiff by it, but I was completely drawn in, and at the end a little light bulb went off over my head as I realized it was all about man’s evolution (obvious I know, but for a 13 year old?).

My first “grown up” movie was THE STING, which I saw as a reissue at Halifax’s still-running (and still single-screen) Oxford Theatre, probably around 1977 (I would have been 10, I can’t imagine my parents taking me when I was in single digits), and before I saw STAR WARS later that summer. But THE STING was a major event for me, a rite of passage of sorts, and I was fascinated by its 1920s setting and the twists and turns of the plot. I didn’t get all of it (the actual scam went a bit over my head, I needed the Mad Magazine parody to get a better handle on it), but afterwards I knew I was hooked.

Posted By Emgee : January 4, 2012 5:08 pm

Your argument of seeing 1976 as a turning point in cinema history brings to mind the excellent Biskind book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Although he stretches his timeline to 1980 to include Apocalypse Now and Raging Bull, the central point is that blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars basically killed off intelligent cinema for thinking adults. After that you either went for the megabucks or aimed at arthouse conoisseurs. Will the twain ever meet again? It seems more unlikely with every passing year, or is that just me getting old?

Posted By Tom S : January 4, 2012 7:23 pm

I think that’s kind of a glib history- the blockbuster model existed long before the 70s (Cleopatra, The Ten Commandments, that sort of thing), and there are plenty of engaging and intelligent movies that play in mainstream theaters (most of the Coens work, for instance, or PT Anderson’s.) Besides, it presupposes that blockbusters inherently aren’t “intelligent cinema for thinking adults”, a view with which I take issue- what is Apocalypse Now if not a blockbuster? How is Inception any less thoughtful than The Deer Hunter?

Posted By Tom S : January 4, 2012 7:34 pm

(I should probably qualify that last remark by pointing out that I really don’t care for The Deer Hunter)

Posted By Emgee : January 4, 2012 7:58 pm

Well, i don’t care for Inception or The Deerhunter. Sure, it’s a bit of an overstatement, but to me it rings at least partially true. Yes, blockbusters existed pre-Star Wars, but the argument was that after the collapse of the studio system the way was paved for more daring, author-type cinema.
But then wasn’t The Godfather a blockbuster of sorts, although not intended as such? So the argument is flawed, but why do i still feel that mainstream movies have changed for the worse after the mid-Seventies? Could One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, if made today still rake in big bucks like it did at the time?
I sincerely doubt it. And the Coen Brothers films as “intelligent cinema”? I mean: really?

Posted By Mike P : January 4, 2012 8:04 pm

Well, and all this time I thought it was just me. I just never nailed it down to one specific year. Much to say on this topic too but I can use 1973′s The Sting as one of the examples you mentioned. This film was a nostalgic humorous look at gifting in the 30′s. It just could not be made 10 years later. It wasn’t edgy enough or PC enough for it’s treatment of Blacks or Irish or Italians or heck, even grifters for that matter. Newman and Redford looked for another project for years and never made that next “buddy” flick. The world had changed and it coincided with home video and the final demise of the non google plex theater.

Posted By Tom S : January 4, 2012 9:14 pm

Yes? I think No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, and Barton Fink (among others) are every bit as intelligent as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest- and I would say they are broadly more challenging to the audience.

Posted By suzidoll : January 4, 2012 10:37 pm

The Jaws/Star Wars model as a modern blockbuster means more than a big-event movie. It also involves exhibition patterns and marketing strategies. Jaws opened in hundreds of theaters simultaneously on its opening weekend, instead of as a platform release (standard up to that point). It depended on a marketing blitz to pull people into the theater, instead of relying on word of mouth (standard up to that point). And, there were product tie-ins to promote the movie, and, in turn, the movie was used to promote the product tie-ins (for Jaws, it was cups with the Jaws logo on them and tee-shirts). This was a new, pre-thought-out strategy, which then became the norm. That’s why Jaws is considered the film that instigated “the blockbuster,” with Star Wars sealing the deal.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : January 5, 2012 12:22 am

Tom, that sounds like a great year. Tree of Life is my personal favorite of the year at this point, and maybe, of several past years. I’m glad you’re watching silent non-comedies, there are a lot of great ones out there.

And Jonathan Rosenbaum and James Agee are two terrific critics. I like Agee’s with much better (he was so damned sharp) but Rosenbaum can alternately fascinate and infuriate me. Which, in a way, is a good thing.

Here’s to a successful year of you watching every movie you haven’t seen but own.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : January 5, 2012 12:25 am

swac, ha, I used Mad Magazine, too! I loved their Godfather musical (“Get Me to the Church on Time” became “Satisfy My Itch for Crime”) and read it and re-read it so much that by the time I actually saw The Godfather, I felt I had had a primer for it already.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : January 5, 2012 12:29 am

Emgee, I should clarify, I’m not saying it’s a turning point in the actual world of cinema, just for me personally. But, yes, I read Easy Riders and Raging Bulls feverishly when it was released. Still not sure how I feel about it. An excellent read, to be sure, but I wonder how much of it is true and how much is just sour grapes influencing stories by actors and directors.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : January 5, 2012 12:34 am

Emgee, Tom, Suzidoll – I have to go more with Emgee and Suzidoll here as the 1975-77 blockbuster double shot of JAWS and STAR WARS was different than previous blockbusters of just a couple of years prior, like THE EXORCIST. Friedkin insisted on a simultaneous release around the country because he didn’t want word of mouth ruining the shock moments for the audience. And it was a huge hit, as had been AIRPORT, LOVE STORY, THE SOUND OF MUSIC and THE TEN COMMANDMENTS before it. The difference was JAWS and STAR WARS both attracted a large, young, summer audience. Summer was, previously, believe it or not, the dead time of year for the movies. People went on vacation, kids saw cheap kiddie flicks or cartoons, etc. JAWS and STAR WARS changed that, most definitely.

Posted By Tom S : January 5, 2012 1:57 am

I’m not claiming that Star Wars and Jaws didn’t alter the way the business of selling movies worked- that’s undeniably true. I’m arguing that it didn’t forever mean that there were no smart movies being released into mainstream theaters- I really strongly object to Emgee’s proposition that “blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars basically killed off intelligent cinema for thinking adults. After that you either went for the megabucks or aimed at arthouse conoisseurs.” and I don’t think the way that those movies changed the way movies are sold in this country goes very far to prove that point.

Posted By Christopher : January 5, 2012 1:59 am

1976 seemed like the official end of innocence in film for me..Films like Star Wars,Superman etc.. that followed only projected a manufactured bogus sense of innocence ..

Posted By Tom S : January 5, 2012 2:01 am

Rosenbaum irritates me too, sometimes- he’s a cranky old bastard and his taste is idiosyncratic, to say the least. But he’s also one of the few critics I know who are really willing to examine the ideological underpinnings of movies and argue with them, and he has insights that nobody else seems to. Like, yeah, he doesn’t like Godfathers 1 or 2 (though, weirdly, he does like 3) and they’re among my favorite movies. But his argument for why he doesn’t like 1 and 2 is fascinating, even if it’s not enough to compel me to change my feelings about the movies themselves.

Agee is harder to dislike, really, he’s just a great writer who wrote a lot of really intelligent and clearly heartfelt stuff about the movies- he’s not someone who necessarily opened new doors of criticism for me, but he’s a delight to read.

Posted By Heidi : January 5, 2012 1:37 pm

Great post. I also feel that way about movies made after a certain date. My husband usually drags me to movies and I go, but there is something lacking in most of them.

I remember a couple of years ago one of the local movie theaters presented a single showing of Philadelphia Story on the big screen. I was shocked that the place wasn’t packed, but those of us that went, got a treat. THe film quality was not very good, but who cares if you get to see Cary Grant on the big screen, the way he was meant to be seen. The movie was always a favorite, but now when I watch it I remember seeing it at the theater, and it is even better.

Posted By Kingrat : January 5, 2012 5:50 pm

This is a great subject for discussion. If you haven’t read Mark Harris’ PICTURES AT A REVOLUTION, which discusses the five Best Picture nominees for 1967, find it. You’ll love it. He discusses the changes taking place in the industry–the end of the old studio system–and how this affected the five very different nominees. From about 1967 until the mid-70s seemed to be an exciting time in American movies with lots of new directors making personal films. That would even include THE GODFATHER, a film I’m very 3 stars out of 4 about.

Several of you have pointed to the importance of THE EXORCIST and JAWS: the horror film has now gone mainstream and become a central genre for the industry, not just a B movie. THE GODFATHER II is arguably more important than the first because it confounded received wisdom about sequels not being profitable. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and STAR WARS established the action/adventure film as the central product, and Suzi is surely right to emphasize the new way that Spielberg and Lucas marketed their films. The relative importance of the genres has now been completely re-established.

Just as in present-day publishing, if you have $1M for promotion, you can sell more units of one hit novel (THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, anyone?)than by splitting that money to promote 20 novels. Thus the movie multiplexes–which in my ignorance I thought would bring lots of foreign films and other offbeat projects–instead make their money by showing the same films in various parts of town.

Posted By dukeroberts : January 6, 2012 12:57 am

I’m with Tom in thinking that there are still intelligent films being made. Although it didn’t gross “Cuckoo” money, Midnight in Paris is a very intelligent movie that has become Woody Allen’s biggest hit (in real dollars, not adjusted for inflation). I wouldn’t consider it’s gross, $56 million+, was not accumulated strictly by arthouse connoisseurs. I am not an arthouse connoisseur. I’m middle brow, but I sure enjoyed it. The marketing has definitely changed, but there are plenty of intelligent movies that (eventually) see wide release.

The first movie I remember seeing in the theater was King Kong in 1976, so 1976 is a demarcation point for me as well, but for different reasons. I think movies changed for me when I was able to start going without my parents or other adults (Hoosiers). As a child I saw Kramer vs. Kramer and Terms of Endearment with my parents on the big screen. I was 5 and 8 years old respectively. Hoosiers, Kramer vs. Kramer and Terms of Endearment are all tear jerking movies with adult themes, however the greatest difference for me was the lack of parental supervision associated with seeing Hoosiers.

Posted By dukeroberts : January 6, 2012 1:01 am

Kingrat- You know, I saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on December 23rd. I was pumped to see it and I liked it, but to me it was so much like the Swedish version it seemed anticlimactic. I wish everyone could have just seen the Swedish one, but God forbid you have to READ the movie.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : January 6, 2012 9:56 am

Hi everybody. I have been tied up with a situation that is waaaay beyond my control to handle so I haven’t been online the last two days except for a brief jump online once or twice. Putting up a post and then not being able to jump into the discussion is like preparing a meal I really want to eat and then just staring at it. My apologies for my lack of responses.

That said, Tom, yes, I would of course agree that intelligent movies are still made. I once wrote a post on just how many great movies there are in the much-maligned eighties if you look for them. It’s just a psychological thing with me.

Duke, I loved the feeling too of seeing movies on my own without parents. It was so liberating. I saw STAR WARS five times in the theatre and not once with my parents. There was a theatre not half a mile from my house that my friends and I walked to all the time in the summer.

Kingrat, I haven’t read PICTURES AT A REVOLUTION and really want to. I’m going to get it next chance I have. And I have often made the same wide-eyed mistakes of thinking the exact same thing you did. Every time a newer, bigger multi-mega-giganto-plex opened, I thought, “now maybe they’ll have room for the smaller stuff.” Ha! Instead, they simply play the same five movies on 40 screens.

Heidi, there’s nothing – Nothing – like seeing a beloved classic film on the big screen for the first time. The AFI has given me the gift of this more times than I can remember and I’m eternally grateful.

Posted By Dan Leo : January 6, 2012 6:58 pm

This was great piece, Greg, and one great thing about it is that I’m sure it got everyone who’s read it to ask, “What’s my demarcation point?”

With me I feel as if there’s a great shift — sort of like the Great Vowel Shift in English (no, not the Great Bowel Movement) around 1965, because that seems to be the year after which film makers could no longer make a black-and-white movie in B&W simply because the material demanded B&W. From about 1966 it’s pretty much all-color all the time with very glaring and odd exceptions from directors who were really shoving their weight around to have their way (The Last Picture Show, Woody Allen’s B&W movies, Schindler’s List, The Man Who Wasn’t There). And I love that last glorious period of black-and-white movies: I could make a list of thirty great B&W movies from 1960 to 1965 just off the top of my head. To me that period was a last hurrah, not to great movies, but to black-and-white movies…

Posted By Emgee : January 7, 2012 4:39 pm

One post-1965 B&W movie that comes to mind is In Cold Blood (1967), and does it look great! Colour would have made such a grim tale look too gaudy, I think. Since we had a B& W television when i was young, ALL movies were in that color, but you could tell which ones were supposed to look that way.
Now i’m not against color movies, but i still prefer a well-made B&W movie to a lot of colored ones. Color can be very distracting, while expert B& W photography makes it easier to focus on the essentials, and creates a more intimate mood.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : January 8, 2012 7:32 pm

Dan, I never really thought about the transition period for bw to color because it took so long but you’re right, it was around that year. Up to about 1965, there was still the feeling that a small, deeply serious drama, like THE PAWNBROKER, should be in black and white. By the mid to late sixties, with shooting at gritty, dirty real-life locations and desaturated color, it became acceptable to go ahead and shoot in color. I can’t imagine something like MIDNIGHT COWBOY in black and white and that’s just four years into it.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : January 8, 2012 7:36 pm

while expert B& W photography makes it easier to focus on the essentials, and creates a more intimate mood.

It’s true. So many movies from the forties had such great play with light and shadow because they had perfected the use of black and white cinematography. The first two to three decades of color (from BECKY SHARP in 1935 to the mid-sixties) had a flat, unnatural look that definitely encouraged a lot of film makers towards black and white. By the late sixties, that evenly lit, unnatural look was gone.

Still, for big, splashy fifties sci-fi and musicals, I so miss that technicolor look.

Posted By dukeroberts : January 9, 2012 12:19 am

I totally miss Technicolor. I keep hoping someone will make a big budget Hollywood movie musical of one of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s lesser known productions and shoot it in Technicolor. I just really don’t care for musicals made these days. They’re always dark and the music is not nearly as good (to me) as the old musicals.

Posted By Dan Leo : January 9, 2012 4:10 am

The cool thing about Technicolor — like the flip side of the coin from black-and-white — was that it was so unrealistic. Black-and-white and Technicolor both take you into another world: Movie World.

Posted By dukeroberts : January 9, 2012 10:02 am

Exactly! And I want to go to there.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : January 9, 2012 10:20 am

I don’t care much for musicals of today, either, quite frankly. I like the old style musicals (color or black and white) where it was 60 to 70 percent dialogue, 30 to 40 percent singing. From TOMMY on, musicals have been 90 to 100 percent singing. There’s nothing wrong with the operetta format (constant singing as opposed to breaking into song), it’s just that there’s no variation anymore. Except for animated stuff from Disney, I suppose. But live action is wall to wall (mediocre) music.

Posted By dukeroberts : January 9, 2012 10:55 am

Oh yes, I should have made the Disney exception as well. I love animated Disney musicals.

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