What film, if any, had an influence on you? BONNIE AND CLYDE seemed like it came out of another world for me in 1969. I had never seen violence portrayed so vividly. Now that is not exactly an endorsement but it changed the way I saw a shootout.
Friday, December 06, 2024
FFB-THE FILM THAT CHANGED MY LIFE, Robert K Elder
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
Ah. BONNIE AND CLYDE. It came out when I was in college, and the majority of my particular were on the college football team. And the majority of the football were there because a judge had given them a choice: enlist in the army, go to college, or go to jail; it was that type of school One evening the entire football team saw BONIE AND CLYDE en masse, after which they went back to the dorm, grabbed theri guns (just about every member of the team was armed), went out to the parking lot, and riddled a random parked car with bullets because it seemed like a cool thing to do. One of my stranger college memories.
Really you should have been a novelist.
Surely BONNIE AND CLYDE was 1967, not 1969. Sorry, Mr. Pedantic here. I can't think of any film that "changed" me in any way. I can think of movies that spoke to me in a way that I "got" immediately - ANNIE HALL, from the first scene, was one. Also, some we sat through twice, immediately, not necessarily for a profound reason, but just because we enjoyed it so much, like AMERICAN HOT WAX. Maybe if I had to pick one I'd pick something that seems relevant to our current situation today - CABARET. The "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" scene was very disturbing, and look where we are today. I remember seeing it for the first time at the Ziegfeld Theatre on 54th Street.
Depressing.
Every movie I see now seems applicable today in some fashion-certainly WICKED did and also A REAL PAIN.
Seeing some of the kitchen sink dramas and their cinematic heirs when I was seven or eight (Boston at the beginning of the '70s was a good place to catch a good movie on tv rather easily, particularly with the PBS and Kaiser stations, and WSBK 38 not too much of a slouch, particularly when their sports programming was rained out)...THE L-SHAPED ROOM and PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK and the like suggested that as nasty as childhood could be, even young adulthood could be even worse. Of course, THE 400 BLOWS and FORBIDDEN GAMES (WGBH 2 benefited from being in the neighborhood of the Janus Theater and the eventual Janus Film Collection and Criterion) made it clear how much worse childhood could be, as well.
Great fan of L-shaped room. (Lynn Reid Banks, I think) Did you see SISTERS with Sela Ward is back on Prime)
I didn't...thanks for the pointer. I didn't find it superb, but good enough, and I was certainly taken by Ward when I would flip over to catch HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREETS which followed it on NBC on Friday nights. THE L-SHAPED ROOM was indeed based on a Banks novel, her first...not the one that most 8yos were introduced to her with (but that wouldn't come till 1980, THE INDIAN IN THE CUPBOARD).
I saw so many movies during my teenage days as a ticket taker in a theatre in The Pas, Manitoba that none seemed to have had much of an impact. Three different movies were shown each week so if you worked the late shift that week you saw all three. As the late shift worker, you sold tickets to latecomers and sat on a stool where you could watch the movie while monitoring the crowd. You were the only employee other than the projectionist. Lots of B movies. i do admit that it was a job every kid in town wanted and one of my best friends and I had it for three years.
Who is our stealth Canadian?
Post a Comment