TINSELTOWN TRANSFORMATIONS: HOLLYWOOD IN THE 1970S


Set in the late 1970s, True West follows its main characters’ competing journeys to sell a screenplay to a major Hollywood producer. Some of the biggest turning points in Hollywood history took place during this time period; as studio executives’ priorities changed, so did the types of films considered “hits.” An exploration of the shifting focus of the film industry during this time can illuminate the obstacles that characters Austin and Lee encounter in their quests to write and sell a screenplay.


THE NEW HOLLYWOOD The late 1950s and early 1960s are generally considered a low point in American cinema. With some exceptions, films of this time followed predictable and widely-used formulas. Many were war movies or Westerns featuring recycled plots and stars, and all were under threat of censorship by the Hollywood Production Code, which at that time set strict limits on the content allowed in motion pictures. What resulted was a decade of movies—including such big-budget behemoths as Cleopatra and Mutiny on the Bounty—that, in hindsight, are generally considered stilted and uninspired.


But the release of Bonnie and Clyde in 1967 ushered in an era that would later be dubbed “The New Hollywood.” Bonnie and Clyde, alongside a handful of other


1967 films, flouted traditional moviemaking practices, experimenting with plot structure, camera work, and subject matter. Drawing inspiration from the films of the “French New Wave,” a period of boundary-pushing French cinema that had begun in the 1950s, the works of “The New


Hollywood” embodied the transgressive counterculture of 1960s America. Out of this era of American filmmaking emerged such young directors as Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather), Mike Nichols (The Graduate), and Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver), whose films explored the taboo and embraced the uncomfortable.


THE NEW NEW HOLLYWOOD


The era of “The New Hollywood” all but ended in 1975 with Jaws, a summer release that shattered box office records and introduced America to a new kind of film: the blockbuster. (The term “blockbuster” was originally used in World War II to describe massive bombs that could level entire blocks.) Blockbusters like Jaws, Star Wars (1977), and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) changed the DNA of Hollywood, as the promise of never- before-seen profits sent film executives scrambling to produce the next megahit. Spawning action figures, theme park rides, McDonald’s Happy Meal toys, video games, and more, films like these became brands unto themselves.


Many lament the rise of this “New New Hollywood,” claiming that the obsession with blockbuster profits has resulted in decades of films made for money rather than for art. In 1980, The New Yorker published an exposé on the film industry titled “Why Are Movies So Bad?, or, the Numbers” by film critic Pauline Kael. In it, Kael—who had


spent months studying the inner workings of Hollywood— describes an industry run not by artistic producers but by advertising executives, who had the final say in which films to produce based on which stars were interested in them and how profitable they were predicted to be. To this day,


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24