1960s
INTRODUCTION
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A LONG TIME AGO, IN A FILM SCHOOL NOT TOO FAR AWAY...a new generation of filmmakers rebelled against long-standing Hollywood traditions. One of these "Movie Brats," a young George Lucas, set out (like his contemporaries Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma, and Steven Spielberg) to make more personally-relevant films than those which had come out of the Hollywood studio-system in the 1950s. The movie industry was at that time in as much turmoil as the nation it sought to reflect, as studios slipped further and further out of touch with their audience ("Film School Generation," 1995). Many things were to change with the arrival of these Hollywood mavericks; interestingly enough, these changes led to what became the new standards and traditions of filmmaking. In Lucas' case, his vision for what is in essence little more than an archetypal myth about the struggle between good and evil revolutionized peoples' thinking about how movies are made and seen, both in Hollywood and in theater seats.
The very notion of Lucas as the instigator of the changes facing Hollywood in the late 70s springs from the concept of auteurism , formally introduced by the French in the 1940s (Thompson and Bordwell, p. 492). Simply put, auteurism is "the belief that a director is most centrally responsible for a film's form, style, and meanings" (Thompson and Bordwell, p. 492). The general idea was that directors and filmmaking equipment were synonymous with writers and pens. Auteurism as a concept for collegiate study came to America in the early 1960s, where it reached the attention of film school students. Obviously, this implies that it came to the attention of the "Movie Brats," including Lucas, who were then able to look for common visuals, themes, and plot situations in the works of individual directors (Thompson and Bordwell, p. 493), the "greats" of which (including John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Frank Capra) were retiring during this time (Sklar, p. 322). This is an important concept when dealing with Lucas and the "Movie Brats" in general, because A) the absence of these figures left room for new, non-studio contract directors to come in (Sklar, p.322), and B) this newfound cinematic awareness from audiences was a crucial factor in how Star Wars was received. Understanding the conventions of both directors and genres enables viewers, either consciously or unconsciously, to construct meanings which are "appropriate" for the films being viewed. For example, Dean Devlin, writer/producer of Stargate and Independence Day cites the first appearance of Darth Vader in Star Wars (WAV sound, 162KB) as a moment when an audience's genre "training" instinctively prompts an unconscious response (Grane, 1997).
The introduction of auteurism as a concept in America marked the emergence of directors like Robert Altman, Stanley Kubrick, and Sam Peckinpah as American auteurs in the 1960s and early 1970s. The next wave of film students coming up were trained to recognize cinematic patterns, not only through their formal educations in the medium, but through a lifetime growing up with cinema. They seemed to understand how to use the conventions of the medium, in essence using the past as a restorative for Hollywood's ailing present (Sklar, p. 323). This ailment is attributable to several things, not least of which was the political unrest of the 60s and early 70s, which fueled the popular culture of the time. Young, rebellious filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese made films which for the first time criticized national institutions in mainstream American films like The Godfather and Mean Streets , respectively.
However, Sklar makes a valid point:
"We need to be wary of postulating a direct correspondence between society and cinema or condemning its absence. Film subjects and forms are as likely- more likely -to be determined by the institutional and cultural dynamics of motion picture production than by the most frenetic of social upheavals."
1960-1964- The Hollywood "Dream Factory" of the first half-century was dying, and theater attendance was at an all-time low in the 1960s thanks to television, which could bring simultaneous access of programming to everyone, a glaring contrast to the slow diffusion process of film distribution at the time (Sklar, pp. 321,323). However, the studios already had their fingers in some television pies, and were slowly working their way to producing the majority of television programming (Maltby, p. 477). At the same time, major multimedia conglomerates were taking advantage of the studio's situation, absorbing many of them (i.e. music company MCA's acquisition of Universal Pictures in 1962 (Maltby, p. 477).
1965- The Sound of Music is released with tremendous success, causing studios to overcompensate for past failures by increasing budgets (Maltby, p. 477).
1967- Theater attendance increases for the first time since 1947, due in part to the success of youth-oriented films like The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde . This prompts the studios to hire younger filmmakers to make films appealing to young audiences (Maltby, p. 477).
1968- The Motion Picture Association of America implements a ratings system for films: G for General Audiences, M for Mature audiences, R for Restricted Audiences , and X for Adult films (Maltby, p. 478).
1969- Big-budget failures like Doctor Doolittle cause major financial setbacks for the studios, especially 20th-Century Fox, which suffered a $65 million loss, and United Artists, which lost $89 million (Maltby, p. 478). As a result, studios started taking chances with the films they produced. As I stated above, Hollywood was in financial trouble, and needed to bring people back to the theaters. Since the classical Hollywood directors were retiring, Hollywood looked to the new generation emerging from film school, students who were, unlike their retiring counterparts, raised on film and film styles, and were trained to understand genres (Sklar, p. 357).
These filmmakers looked back at the Hollywood studio system to revive the genres on which they were raised. 1960s civil rights movements and struggles for empowerment had begun to erode the ideological consensus that had perpetuated the notion of Hollywood as the "Dream Factory," and the new filmmakers were able to take advantage of Vietnam-era social disorder to make films that were personal, political, commercial or combinations of these. Films that should never have been made ("Film School Generation," 1995) according to the habits of studio executives at the time were being given serious attention. Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider in 1969 (http://us.imdb.com) and Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets in 1973 (Pye and Myles, p. 261) received an unexpectedly positive response from audiences ("Film School Generation," 1995), prompting the studios to give these film school newcomers enough room to connect with the filmgoers who were no longer impressed by what mainstream Hollywood had to offer, especially thanks to television. But according to Sklar "It was Lucas, perhaps more than the others, who fully grasped the element of nostalgia in audience response...the desire to return in thought to former times, as an exercise in regret for the loss of a presumed simplicity that did not yet know its future...Lucas planned a retreat to the past" (Sklar, p. 328).
Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola used this newfound directorial autonomy to form American Zoetrope on 19 November, 1969 (Lebo, p. 22), their idea of a film production facility located outside of Hollywood and the studios, based in San Francisco (Pye and Myles, p. 86). In a press release given after the company's inception, we can see the beginnings of an attitude that will carry Lucas through his career:
"The main objective of this company will be to undertake film production in several different areas by collaborating with the most gifted and talented young people, using the most contemporary and sophisticated equipment available."
The problem was that any new facility needed startup money, so Coppola had to deal with Warner Brothers, who agreed to put up a loan as long as Coppola was either directly involved in the productions, or the films' budgets were under $500,000. The important thing to note here is that "Warner's also kept, in effect, final cut, script approval, and the power to reject Coppola's schemes and make him buy them all back" (Pye and Myles, p. 87). Zoetrope's first project was to produce a feature version of Lucas' student film THX 1138: 4EB (Electronic Labyrinth) for Warner Bros.