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. It was a reminder that daughter Elaine to an unknown future, 27) did the same for dystopian visions of the savage images from Vietnam had a but one that belonged to them. Again, earth after the apocalypse. When domestic counterpart. the movie delivered an infamously am- Charlton Heston saw the toppled head In contrast, Guess Who’s Coming to biguous ending, but one that sent us into of the Statue of Liberty, even a pseudo- Dinner gave us Sidney Poitier marrying the night in a state of euphoria. sophisticate like me gasped. the daughter of Spencer Tracy and It didn’t last. In February Lyndon These remarkable movies released dur- Katherine Hepburn—over the old man’s Johnson dropped the guillotine when he ing our final two semesters at Penn gar- objections. Again, the establishment ended graduate school deferments. We nered 50 Academy Award nominations. fell—it was what America wanted to be- all became potential canon-fodder. What They represent a creative achievement lieve could be happily ever after. I bor- should have been a glorious “senior that the movie business hadn’t seen since rowed from it in making Save the Last slump” became a rush to find a way out. 1939, when Gone with the Wind compet- Dance 30 years later. The two remain the I even tried joining the Coast Guard, until ed with The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering top box office successes among interra- I learned it required a long swim in icy Heights, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, cial love stories. waters. Parents, friends, and advisors Ninotchka, and Stagecoach. Despite dif-
Jul|Aug 2018 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE 53 ferences in genre and subject, they were proudly subversive. Characters saw the 1967–1968 darkening shadows; they boldly chal- TOP lenged the power structure, confronting rather than escaping conflicts. Our heroes VS GROSSING and anti-heroes didn’t always win—they were often bludgeoned and bloody—but they were alive with the fight. 2017–2018 FILMS The transition to movies aimed at the boomer generation was messy, not dis- The Graduate Black Panther crete. Camelot and Dr. Doolittle were The Jungle Book Avengers: Infinity War also released in our senior year. But the Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Star Wars: The Last Jedi executives in Hollywood quickly realized how profoundly we’d changed the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle marketplace. Bonnie and Clyde It Television—still with only three major Valley of the Dolls Thor: Ragnarok channels—had a huge nightly audience Rosemary’s Baby Justice League for the likes of The Andy Griffith Show, Planet of the Apes Deadpool 2 Gomer Pyle, USMC, Gunsmoke, and Camelot Coco Family Affair. Nobody I knew bothered to In the Heat of the Night A Quiet Place watch. Film was our medium. Our cohort would dominate society with our dreams Yours, Mine and Ours The Greatest Showman and demands. And we’d turn the movie Casino Royale Solo: A Star Wars Story business back into the bonanza it had been Wait Until Dark Ready Player One in the Golden Age of the 1930s and 1940s. Cool Hand Luke Wonder In Cold Blood Peter Rabbit CUT TO: The present. My female classmates Release dates August through May. have reached professional heights that seemed out of reach at graduation. Gays, tends beyond government to business, law, But the top hits this past year feel like rarely out of the closet in 1968, can now religion, medicine, and sports. The Cold they’re from another world—literally. marry. A white country has grown di- War is long over, but Russia continues as Rather than confront reality, Hollywood verse. The knowledge we were once re- a malevolent foe. Today’s college seniors has adopted a new approach: ignore it. quired to go forth and seek now resides don’t fear a military draft, but they’re Studio movies now live in fantasy. Eighty at our fingertips. Conversely, the once anxious as hell about their futures. percent of this year’s hits are grand scale comfortable middle class is no longer. As a producer, this landscape suggests comic book, fantasy, science fiction, and It’s still dangerous to be a black man. an abundance of movie ideas. But when animation. Compare that to 20 percent And baby boomers, who thought they’d I go to make them, I often encounter no in ’67–’68. This pattern is intensifying. remain forever young, face their delu- takers. To demonstrate, I created a chart Of the top box office hits for the last 10 sion getting out of bed in the morning. (above) that compares the 15 top-gross- years, 70 percent are fantasy-based, com- But a profound similarity to my senior ing films released between August and pared to roughly 10 percent from the year is that we’re a sharply divided soci- May of my senior year and that of the 1950s to the 1980s. Fantasy is the sand- ety. Those partisan rifts are different but Class of 2018. box in which studios want to play. Some equally deep: between the 1 percent and It’s stunning today to see that the pro- of these films, like Black Panther, embody the 99; between city-dwellers with their vocative films from 50 years ago were complex themes and are additions to eyes on the prize and disrespected not only artistic triumphs; they also cinema’s pantheon. But most are as dis- Americans in moribund towns; between achieved vast commercial success. All of posable as diapers. immigrants and nationalists. Everyone’s them were top box office hits. Examining, Originality was once prized in Holly- hurling blame at someone else. We have inhabiting, and personifying the frac- wood; now it’s a dirty word. More than a president as paranoid as Richard tured world in the late 1960s captured half of the top 15 this past year are se- Nixon. Distrust of institutions now ex- the audience. quels and reboots. Only Casino Royale
54 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Jul|Aug 2018 Hollywood used and Jungle Book in ’67–’68 fit that bill. That’s my prescription for saving our re- Pre-sold titles are preferred to fresh to export its lationship to film. Rekindle the romance ideas. That’s because current production by encouraging talented filmmakers to costs dwarf the inflation-adjusted bud- movies; now it make movies about the real world, instead gets from 50 years ago. And today’s mar- of seducing them with millions to make keting costs can run 50 times what they makes movies Fantasy #5. Support those movies with ag- were in the 1960s. Sequels and remakes, gressive marketing. This requires a com- I’m regularly reminded, are favored be- mitment by the studios. My bet is that if cause they already have “brand aware- for export. they make it, the movies will resonate with ness.” This is not a term I ever heard ap- the audiences that determine the future plied to movies in my senior year. Or even of film. Like embracing clean energy, re- during my first decades as a producer. building Hollywood’s legacy is not only the Movies, it seems, have become just an- right thing to do, it will prove the profit- other commodity, marketing is now the able one as well. godhead of the film business. The best evidence for this is the boom So when producers like me aspire to small distribution companies with mea- in television, where everyone from teens make the likes of In the Heat of the Night ger marketing budgets. Even the best to boomers now go for their emotional and The Graduate—confronting intrica- rarely earn as much in total as a big stu- fix. Some of what used to be those classic cies of people and relationships—what we dio film does on its opening Friday night. movie experiences can still be enjoyed hear from studio executives is: “Dramas Most simply wind up on indecipherable on cable. But even television is increas- won’t work overseas. Foreign moviego- video-on-demand (VOD) menus. The ingly infused with fantasy and remakes. ers want big and simple; they want ex- dramas, comedies, and thrillers that cut And the medium has become so atom- plosions; they want American movies to our core and roused us are a near ex- ized that each of the hundreds of pro- that aren’t really about America.” That’s tinct species. grams garner tiny, niche audiences. It’s also critical to the studios because 72 If the strategy adopted by the studios a rare show like Game of Thrones that percent of their revenue flows from the only frustrated boomers like me, it might unites a broad swath of America around international market. It’s a complete flip be understandable, albeit disappointing. a single viewing experience. from the last century, when studios But despite being targeted by Hollywood, Movies can accomplish that because earned 75 percent from the domestic our children and grandchildren have they are a unique form of storytelling. I market. Hollywood used to export its never developed a passion for film. love their elegant completeness in two movies; now it makes movies for export. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, admissions hours. It stands in contrast to the buy-in I counter that the movies I’m propos- have declined 17 percent since 2012. required with television series that con- ing cost so much less, we don’t need as Movies are casual hookups—as if the tinue season after season. When seen much from foreign markets to have a hit. youth know deep down that most of the and savored in the dark in a communal Their answer is that such movies won’t extravaganzas are fun but won’t last a setting, films possess vast power to con- even work domestically. There’s just too lifetime in their memories. It remains an vey truth and emotion. When they cap- much competition for our entertainment open question whether millennials and ture the public imagination, they are still time: 500 channels of television, instant the “iGen” cohort behind them have an what we talk about the next day and for streaming, double the number of profes- appetite for challenging films. Tastes of weeks to come. They can affect us, thrill sional sports franchises from 50 years audiences change, as was proven in the us, inspire us, unite us, and alter our ago, video games, and the internet with seismic shift in my senior year. It’s pos- perceptions of our society in a way that all its infinite distractions. sible that edgy films, in the mode of the no other medium can. When my conversation with the studio memorable movies of ’67–’68, would dis- Which is why, despite the slings and ends (or now rarely begins), I seek inde- comfort rather than galvanize. That to- arrows, I’m still producing. pendent financing. This is a process akin day’s self-protective younger audience to door-to-door sales in a cold weather would prefer to turn their heads. And Robert Cort C’68 G’70 WG’74 has produced climate. The equity is tough to raise, so that they get a bigger charge out of vir- dozens of films since the 1980s that have by default the scope of the stories pro- tual reality than a century-old technology. grossed in excess of $3 billion. His latest, ducers can tell is limited. But even in We don’t have an answer because so few On the Basis of Sex, about Ruth Bader success, one faces another hurdle. Such movies as good and commercial as Bonnie Ginsburg’s landmark first case as a lawyer, is films are generally released through and Clyde and Cool Hand Luke get made. scheduled for release on November 9, 2018.
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