1967's Oscar Nominees (inspired by "Pictures at a Revolution")

the extent to which people fetishize the good old days of "sophistication", "wit"

we know you don't admire those qualities even w/out the quotes!

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Found this used for $7! I'm fighting sleep just to make it to the next page. Very gripping throughout choked with tons of amazing stories/factoids. Bout 1/4 of the way through and I have some reservations. But overall, fantastic book! Thanx for the tip, Eric H.

Great, though I imagine you're going to really loathe the section describing the Oscarcast that year. Harris really lets the facade drop and comes out cheerleading for the new gen.

Very entertaining book.

Finally got tired of waiting for my local library to get a loaner copy of the Harris book, bought a copy Friday.

OK I've finished this and I thought the cheerleading was actually quite muted (save for the very last paragraph). Or rather, it comes through less in any specific statements of Harris' than in the structure of the book, i.e., what he chose to leave out. The truncated epilogue creates the illusion of a revolution more than anything in the book. So reading it was an absolute pleasure. It's only now, recollecting the argument in its entirety, that I feel snippy. In short, revolution my foot.

I rewatched most of these films while reading. Don't need to see The Graduate for a long time again since I've taught it so many damn times. But basically, my order of preference hasn't changed:

Bonnie & Clyde
In the Heat of the Night
The Graduate
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner - I want to like it more than The Graduate and Spencer Tracy deserved the Oscar no matter how much it would have set back the, um, revolution. But ugh, even on purely dramatic terms, it's insufferable.
Doctor Dolittle - A complete nightmare. This cannot be the same Richard Fleischer who directed one of the tightest thrill rides ever, The Narrow Margin! Could any two narrative films be more different? And the "songs" were godawful! I must be familiar with another version of "Talk to the Animals" because this one made no impression whatsoever. More than once, the musical notes surrounding the closed captioning were seriously the only way I knew a "song" had started. I admit with no guilt that I fast-forwarded the last third or so (right past those charming natives). And the pink snail money shot! Sadness. Still, the precise extent to which this film represents "old Hollywood" should have been explored a bit more in the book.

OK this book obviously hit me a bit harder than I imagined. I had a dream last night in which I won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1967! (I have no clue for what film.) I must have been very young too because a lot of people treated me like a kid, saying things like "Aw, I can see your movie star face coming in now." (!!!)

Warren Beatty was using a cheesy cardboard sign to push me out of the auditorium to get me to go to a party with him. Annoyed, I said "What the hell are you doing? I want to stay and talk with my well-wishers and fans." "Fine!" he said all snippy and walked away from me in a huff.

I woke up with my heart beating very rapidly.

Wtf???

wow, you upset George Kennedy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikk0xfbtVKM

http://filmexperience.blogspot.com/2009/07/were-1967-1979-oscars-most-fascinating.html

that kind of speculation ... man, baseball geeks are nowhere as nerdy as Oscar geeks.

I've read about a third of this book... I wish I'd seen Hoffman play that crippled German transvestite off-Broadway.

also, Katie Hepburn talking about how helpful blacks were in the jungle, what a loony old New England biddy

Fun re-read, this thread. Especially the part where Kev seems to argue gay people were better represented in the era of Franklin Pangborn than the era of Pink Narcissus and Paul Morrissey.

oh c'mon, surely he was talking about films the public actually saw?

First the meltdown on the gay thread, now picking fights here. Everything okay, eric h?

Fine, I just think the notion that Franklin Pangborn is anything other than an embarrassment (albeit a necessary embarrassment) is bizarre.

he's hilarious in those great comedies you hate

This was a ferociously entertaining book... and it was as close to a "revolution" as Hollywood gets, given how his clucking over B&C ousted Bosley Crowther, the death of the Production Code, the way copying The Sound of Music by producing mega-musicals killed at least one studio, etc.

Poitier is the tragic hero of this book. I wonder why he didn't want to play Othello on TV, really? Insecurity about his chops?

I'd read a few things about Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts before, but lordy ... her howling like a dog and doing underwearless handstanda in front of Jimmy Stewart...

Yes, when it comes down to it, this was the most compulsively entertaining read on moviemaking I think I've ever cracked.

Some of the old/new guard pairings were a hoot... Jack Warner to Beatty: "What the fuck's an homage?!"

"That was a three-piss picture!"

Yeah, I read this earlier this month -- in about a week, which is quick for me. Hard to put down.

However, it failed to inspire me to rent Dr Doolittle.

LOL!

Yes, when it comes down to it, this was the most compulsively entertaining read on moviemaking I think I've ever cracked.
― boring movies are the most boring (Eric H.), Monday, September 28, 2009

OTM. I re-read Easy Riders, Raging Bulls afterward and it was clearly the lesser book.

While acknowledging the impact of Bonnie and Clyde, etc, PAAR is less in love with the era's mythos than Easy Riders is about his.

Yep. The scale of it helps, too: the time frame is narrower and that helps keep things focused. But Harris is just a better writer, flat out.

Harris' empathy helps too. Who comes closest to receiving Biskind's pity in Easy Riders -- Hal Ashby? Bob Evans?

However, it failed to inspire me to rent Dr Doolittle.

I actually made a project out of it and watched all five movies before reading the book. (Only one I had seen before was The Graduate.) Liked Bonnie and Clyde, In the Heat of the Night, and The Graduate to varying degrees. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was terrible but fascinating as a historical artifact, while Dr. Dolittle was just a slog. Not even the sight of Rex Harrison serenading a seal in a bonnet was worth it, though it was on Netflix On Demand, so at least I didn't have to spend any money on it.

Rex was ill-equipped to be a movie star after a career as a Shavian stage comedian.

The only role in which he's at all bearable is as the composer in Unfaithfully Yours.

no, he's good in Major Barbara, Cleopatra, and even that ossified film version of MFLady.

(I am still kicking myself for not seeing him in Shaw's Heartbreak House on Broadway in the early '80s.)

This book really holds up.

OK this book obviously hit me a bit harder than I imagined. I had a dream last night in which I won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1967!

lol so much @ this

i watched guess who's coming to dinner for the 1st time -- it's not bad. tracy is great & its fun imo to watch almost every character pair off and have their own lil convo abt whats goin on, etc

graduate > b&c btw

I should poll Hepburn's Oscar-nominated performances.

I've watched Bonnie & Clyde every few years over three-plus decades--from an initial "Huh?", it gets better every time I go back to it, and Harris's book helped that along a little more. But I still would have voted for The Graduate, which is part of my movie-going DNA.

the whole 1960s was a horrid decade for mainstream american movies. but 1965–68 were probably the worst years of all. maybe the nadir of the commercial american cinema (the early '90s, excepting some shining indie films, were pretty bad too).

excepting experimental films (which is hard, because warhol, baillie, brakhage etc. were on fire this year), i guess these are my favorite films of 1967 in roughly descending order...

Point Blank
David Holzman's Diary
Two for the Road
Bonnie and Clyde
Portrait of Jason
In the Heat of the Night
In Cold Blood
The Fearless Vampire Killers
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre
Cool Hand Luke
How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying
The Legend of Lylah Clare

most of these are pretty flawed films, but all have something to recommend them.

i left off hellman's 'the shooting' because it wasn't released until a few years later. if it counts, put it after portrait of jason.

i should have said those are my favorite AMERICAN films.

also dr. doolittle really is an atrocity.

I couldn't finish rewatching Two For the Road a few months ago.

yeah, that's a pretty good list but I didn't like Two for the Road either.

Stanley Donen also did Bedazzled that year, which is nominally British but was produced by Donen and Fox; whatever it is, it's not much more British than 2ftR.

Who's That Knocking at My Door was technically '67, although just a film festival screening. That'd be on my list, probably Titicut Follies, too, even though Wiseman got much better. It was a dire year:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_1967

the dirty dozen was much better than any of the Oscar-nominated American films from this year, IMHO.