Introduction

INTRODUCTION Movies and the 1980s STEPHEN PRINCE The 1980s significantly transformed the nation’s political culture, as it did the Hollywood industry and its products. Today, the United States is an extremely conservative nation, and the turn toward right-wing policies began in the eighties with the administration of Ronald Reagan. Today, Hollywood filmmaking is beset by out-of-control production costs with no ceiling in sight, and these soaring costs, and the industry’s turn toward the global film market for its blockbusters, have their origins in the 1980s. The decade’s most important developments, however, have given rise to a set of core myths in both domains, even as the realities of film and politics proved to be more complex, more nuanced, and more contradictory than the myths acknowledged. The myths about American film in the period are these: blockbusters took over the industry, leading to a general lowering and coarsening of the quality of filmmaking; the films of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg epitomized this blockbuster style and proved detrimentally influential on a generation of American filmmaking; and Hollywood film mirrored the politics of the Reagan period, shifting to the political right and helping to popularize the Cold War politics of the era. ■■■■■■■■■■ Popular Perceptions Each of these propositions is partially true, but like all myths each also distorts by oversimplifying complex and often contrary realities. Each proposes a monolithic view of Hollywood and American culture in the period when, in fact, a more diverse and heterogeneous set of films and influences was at work. Let’s consider each of these propositions in turn as a way of building an introductory survey of the decade. The critical tendency to equate eighties filmmaking with blockbusters is understandable because in that decade the industry did realize that motion pictures were capable of generating a tremendous amount of revenue, and the studios aimed to produce one or more blockbusters each year. As a 1 2 STEPHEN PRINCE result, when one looks back at the 1980s, the blockbusters seem to tower over other pictures because of the media attention and hoopla that sur- rounded them and the mass audience that turned out to see them. Although the industry’s initial move toward blockbusters began in the mid- 1970s, the eighties was the first full decade in which the top box office films consistently earned increasingly huge returns. The Empire Strikes Back (1980), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Return of the Jedi (1983), Ghost Busters (1984), and Batman (1989) all broke the $100 million earnings threshold in the year of their release. At the time, that was a historic threshold, and many other films closed in on it, among them Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Back to the Future (1985), Top Gun (1986), Bev- erly Hills Cop II (1987), and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). Media attention in the period increasingly focused on these popular pictures and on the question of which one was leading the box office in a given weekend. The prevalence of sequels and series (today called franchises) was another symptom of the emphasis on blockbusters. James Bond continued as the most successful franchise in film history with four movies in the eighties, beginning with For Your Eyes Only (1981) and ending with License to Kill (1989), the character’s popularity undiminished despite changes in leading men (Roger Moore in the decade’s first three Bond offerings and the harder-edged, less jokey Timothy Dalton in the fourth). Sylvester Stallone’s two most popular characters, Rocky and Rambo, romped through the eighties with Rocky III (1982), Rocky IV (1985), Rocky V (in production 1989, released 1990), First Blood (1982), Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), and Rambo III (1988). Eddie Murphy reached his career height with Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Beverly Hills Cop II (1987). And it seemed as if the industry had been taken over by mathemati- cians. More and more movies had numbers in their titles: Superman II (1981), Superman III (1983), Superman IV (1987), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Star Trek IV: The Voy- age Home (1986), Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), The Karate Kid, Part II (1986), Police Academy 2 (1984), Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), Back to the Future, Part II (1989). The imperative to sequelize a successful picture became so all-powerful in the period that the industry viewed the late appearance of Ghostbusters II (1989), five years after the success of the original film, as a major failure by the studio, Columbia Pictures, to capitalize on its momen- tum. The widespread embrace of sequels in the eighties showcased the status of film as pure product merchandising. Sequels were like brand labels, and the studios sought to brand audience loyalty by developing characters and INTRODUCTION 3 film properties that could be manufactured in perpetuity. As a result, the endings of many films in the period were not really endings, just the post- poning of narrative until the next installments. Studios wanted sequels to offset the exploding costs of filmmaking. Runaway production costs plagued the industry, and the studios tried to recoup these with the guar- anteed earnings of a sequel. In 1979, the average production cost of a film was $5 million. It rose to $9 million in 1980 and to $23 million by decade’s end (MPAA “1996”). These numbers may sound meager when compared with current figures that often pass $100 million, but what we see today is the continuation of an inflationary process that began in the 1980s. This explosion in the cost of filmmaking explains much about the impor- tance of blockbusters for the industry. Blockbusters are planned as sure-fire winners. By bringing in an enormous amount of revenue, they help the studios stay afloat in a sea of rising costs. It is, however, a self-perpetuating cycle because blockbusters also cost a lot to produce. If the blockbuster was carefully tailored according to a “high concept,” however, it had a very good chance of succeeding. The emergence of high-concept filmmaking was a direct result of the industry’s recognition of the earnings potential of a hit film. High concept offered a formula for manufacturing hits, and the producing team of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer embodied this approach. Their hits in the period—Flashdance (1983), Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop, Beverly Hills Cop II, Twins (1988)—epitomized what Simpson and Bruckheimer described as a “clean” aesthetic. The stories were built on a catchy premise (the hulking Arnold Schwarzenegger and the diminutive Danny DeVito as twins, for example), were constructed without irony or ambiguity, were layered with slick imagery like icing on a cake, and were accompanied by pop rock scores that were cross-promoted with the movies. High-concept films were relentless in style, turning narrative into a series of music videos strung together along a thin narrative line. The Simpson-Bruckheimer formula proved extremely influential and continues to exert a hold over filmmaking to this day. ■■■■■■■■■■ Countertrends Considering these trends, the reader is probably ready to agree with the proposition that blockbusters took over Hollywood in the eighties. The industry felt economically compelled to make blockbusters, but these films were actually a very small part of the decade’s overall production output. As soon as one moves away from the big box-office hits, the true diversity of eighties production becomes apparent. Many of the 4 STEPHEN PRINCE decade’s most significant filmmakers, for example, worked apart from the blockbusters. These included Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, Sid- ney Lumet, Woody Allen, Lawrence Kasdan, Barry Levinson, Brian De Palma, David Lynch, Ridley Scott, and John Sayles. Each filmmaker made at least one masterwork in the period that qualifies as one of the decade’s classic films—Platoon (1986), Do the Right Thing (1989), Raging Bull (1980), Prince of the City (1981), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Body Heat (1981), Diner (1982), Scarface (1983), Blue Velvet (1986), Blade Runner (1982), and Matewan (1987). Unlike the high concept blockbusters, which were aimed at adolescent and young adult audiences, these films are more nuanced in their moral and thematic designs and traffic in irony and ambiguity, all hall- marks of a mature artistic sensibility. Clearly there was plenty of room in Hollywood during the period to bring alternative kinds of pictures to the screen, albeit ones that often had clearly limited box office potential. Clint Eastwood’s career illustrates the relative ease with which a filmmaker might move between clearly com- mercial and more personal kinds of filmmaking. Eastwood would play his popular Dirty Harry character or make a western and then go off and direct unusual pictures such as Bronco Billy (1980), a throwback to the Hollywood screwball comedies of the 1930s; Honkytonk Man (1982), in which Eastwood plays a consumptive country-western singer; Bird (1988), a film biography of the great jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker; and White Hunter, Black Heart (1990), in which Eastwood plays a Hollywood film director modeled on John Huston. Moreover, one of the decade’s most significant developments was the explosion of independent filmmaking, with an abundance of pictures being financed and/or distributed outside the major Hollywood studios. If blockbusters represented a consolidation of control by the Hollywood majors, the rise of independent filmmaking represented a countertrend of decentraliza- tion in the industry. This trend emerged at mid-decade, and it has charac- terized American film ever since. In 1980, the major Hollywood studios released 134 films, while there were only 57 films in distribution from other companies.

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