OUR LOVE AFFAIR WITH MOVIES A movie producer and Class of ’68 alumnus recalls the cinematic passions of his senior year—and offers some advice on rekindling the romance for today’s audiences. By Robert Cort crush on movies began on a Around the World was a grand spectacle Louis Jourdan as Gaston realizing how damp November night in 1956. that ultimately claimed the Academy much he loved Gigi and pursuing her Dressed in my first suit—itchy Award for Best Picture. Beyond its exotic through Paris singing, “Gigi, what mir- MY and gray—I sat in the backseat locales, it was my first experience of char- acle has made you the way you are?” of our Oldsmobile as my parents crossed acters attempting the impossible. When Before that scene, what I’d observed the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. At David Niven as Phineas Fogg realized about men and women in love was my Mama Leone’s I tasted Parmesan cheese that crossing the International Date Line parents’ marriage, and that didn’t seem for the first time. Then we walked a few had returned him to London on Day 80, something to pine for. blocks to the only theater in the world the communal exuberance was thrilling. Three Best Pictures, three years in a playing the widescreen epic comedy- A year later my brother took me to an- row: the thrill of daring men in the wide, adventure, Around the World in 80 Days. other palace, the Capitol Theater, for The wide, Todd-AO world; the horrors that I was already a regular at Saturday Bridge on the River Kwai. World War II could overwhelm it; the promise it held matinees, more for the popcorn fights had ended only 12 years earlier, but it was of exquisite feelings. Though the films than the ‘B’ westerns. But my life changed already a war that had happened to other others embraced might differ, millions when we arrived in Times Square. The people. Then David Lean’s movie slammed of boomers had also fallen for the movie- Rivoli Theater had eight marble arches me in the gut. At 11 I began to comprehend going experience. above the marquee; 2,000 seats in the what war’s madness does to men, and Planning for my 50th reunion this past orchestra, mezzanine and balcony; a what individual heroism means. Kwai re- May [“Alumni Weekend,” this issue] fo- domed ceiling 10 stories high, and a mains my favorite movie of all time. cused me on the deep disparity in film huge curved screen. I felt dwarfed by my In 1958 Gigi completed the trifecta. between my senior year and now. To the surroundings and infinitely important Leslie Caron played teenage Gigi. I stole Class of ’68, “Want to see a movie?” was at the same time. her poster. But what struck me most was as popular a question as, “Want to get a 50 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Jul|Aug 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY JONATHAN BARTLETT Jul|Aug 2018 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE 51 drink?” We’d stand in lines around the trust anyone over 30 and they consid- ignorant sheriff solve a murder in a red- block to see the latest releases. Those ered us radical hippies; between middle neck town. Steiger was every adult who lines were badges of honor, bonding us, class youth scheming a way out of mili- waved the flag for the war and ridiculed increasing our anticipation. The next tary service and working-class kids my long hair. But these men’s edgy alli- day we’d discuss and dissect. Film’s mys- marching into it; between young women ance suggested hope, however slim, of a tique was potent and its future promis- embracing careers and their moms who way forward. Certainly not a pat ending, ing. So much so that I cast off a career saw raising families as the purpose of but an unexpectedly satisfying one. and life in the East, moved to Hollywood, their lives; between rebels on the bar- Such equivocal curtains would mark and became a producer. ricades and the law-and-order faithful. the best of film during the next tumultu- Today admissions to movie theaters are Whoever you were, you saw danger in ous 12 months. It was as if movies were stagnant, the core audience is indifferent, the road ahead. saying, “Look, no bullshit—you’re in a and movie studios are consolidating. In Rather than run for the hills (or Canada) fight to the finish. So what if the fight Hollywood, film has lost its standing atop we first-wave boomers took this uncer- wasn’t of your making. You can’t give up the entertainment pyramid. Movies no tainty as a challenge and decided to re- until the system changes. We’re outlaws. longer set the cultural conversation. make the world in our image. It was time So, fuck it.” I found the message terrify- Worst of all, my wife and I can’t find a for revolution. The transformative mov- ing, but sitting in that audience, I knew film we want to see on the weekend. ies that arrived in the fall of 1967 and into I had company. Just like a crack army For me, this downshift isn’t, to para- 1968 certified our feelings. Fueled their unit, we were fighting as much for our phrase The Godfather, just business— fire. Drove them to new heights. brothers and sisters as for our ideas. it’s personal. On the first day of classes, must-see Bonnie and Clyde aimed at our groin— word-of-mouth was already spreading an explosive, brash, sexy backseat ride. FADE IN: about two movies—Bonnie and Clyde Stars Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway Our story begins in the fall of 1967 and In the Heat of the Night—that prom- were a young, hot, hopelessly blind couple when we returned for senior year. Rage ised to break the mold of 1960s films. daring to take down the heart of institu- and anxiety sparked—ignited by the Even the best of that lot, from Doctor tional America—its banks. The movie Vietnam War. As the death toll mounted, Zhivago to The Sound of Music, reflected appalled establishment critics like 62-year- boomers increasingly saw the war as im- the gestalt and style of a 1950s America old Bosley Crowther in The New York moral. When I realized I might have to disappearing in the rear-view mirror. Times: “A cheap piece of bald-faced slap- risk my life to fight in it, I joined the Hollywood had lost its way. stick comedy that treats the hideous active opposition. The urgent civil rights I saw the Steiger-Poitier film and felt depredations of that sleazy, moronic pair movement, burgeoning feminism, and a hot surge I’d been missing. The murder as though they were as full of fun and mind-bending drugs magnified the up- of civil rights workers in Mississippi in frolic as the jazz-age cutups.” And thrilled roar. Virulent protests played to the 1964 had made the South hostile ground. younger ones like 25-year-old Roger Ebert: soundtrack of insurgent rock music. My gut tightened for Poitier’s brilliant “A milestone in the history of American Divides cross-hatched the nation: a detective, Virgil Tibbs, when he’s co- movies, a work of truth and brilliance.” generation gap in which we couldn’t opted to help Rod Steiger’s arrogant- Pravda denounced it; Norway banned 52 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Jul|Aug 2018 it; everyone in the theater the night I pitched in. But most of us paid a price. saw it cheered—even when our brother Film’s mystique Rosemary’s Baby arrived during my and sister died in a riddle of Tommy-gun rat-in-the-maze spring. It was a portrait fire. We were indeed outlaws. was potent of paranoia. Except Mia Farrow’s Rose- Cool Hand Luke arrived after fall mid- mary wasn’t just imagining, she saw the terms. The opening scene of Paul Newman evil in Ruth Gordon’s grotesque neigh- decapitating parking meters announced: and its future bor, Ralph Bellamy’s obstetrician, and “Stick it to the man.” His confrontations her desperate actor-husband. The film’s with Strother Martin’s warden and George promising. foreboding pays off with the awful cer- Kennedy’s king of the convicts marked tainty of no way out. him as the ultimate rebel. With escape As do the final frames of 2001: A Space after escape, beating after beating, hard- Odyssey, which premiered on April 2, boiled egg after hard-boiled egg, Luke 1968. Director Stanley Kubrick broke from captured us. any previous Buck Rogers version of space. Two diametrically opposite films— Our Christmas present was perhaps When Hal the computer takes control, both groundbreaking—arrived just after the finest serio-comedic movie of all we’re hit with the morbid impotence that Thanksgiving. In Cold Blood, based on time, The Graduate. Benjamin Braddock would permeate a society rocked by the Truman Capote’s best-selling book, cre- was us. We felt his alienation from the assassinations of Dr. King two days later ated the genre of true crime drama, corrupt adult world. When he’s seduced and Bobby Kennedy that June. chronicling the grisly murders of a by Mrs. Robinson, he’s able to shake off As 2001 foreshadowed the eventual Kansas family. The film revealed the two her octopus grip and crash even the popularity of space-based science-fiction, itinerant criminals as senseless, brutal, sanctity of the church to recruit her Planet of the Apes (release date March and remorseless.