MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > OT: New Book : "Opening..at a theater o...

OT: New Book : "Opening..at a theater or drive-in Near You"

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
24 replies | jump to latest

I can't grab the link, but the Roger Ebert site has a Q and A with Charles Taylor, author of a new book called "Opening Wednesday at a Theater or Drive-In Near You."

That was a code phrase for studio product(like "Our Man Flint" or "Chuka") or B-minus product (like "Coffey" or "Night of the Living Dead") that was getting no roadshow or (in LA) Downtown Holllywood showcase release...but rather "going wide" to all neighborhood theaters AND drive-ins on FIRST RELEASE.

Its a very nostalgic phrase to me -- "Opening at a Theater or Drive-In Near You," especially when I lived in LA and that phrase would go over "locally shown" trailers that seemed to play out of a tinny speaker.

BTW, eventually "big movies" would open "at a theater or drive-in near you"...but maybe after a year, and with an "additive" "Ben-Hur, now playing at a theater or drive-in near you AT REGULAR PRICES."

Here's something: while North by Northwest got a showcase opening in LA at the Egyptian on Hollywood Blvd in 1959, one year later Psycho opened all over LA (though on only about 20 screens, there weren't multiplexes at that time)... "at a theater or drive-in near you" pretty much as it should have.

Oddly, these releases thereafter for Hitch:

The Birds...theater or drive-in near you.
Marnie...theater or drive-in near you.
Torn Curtain...theater or drive-in near you.
Topaz..SHOWCASE(One downtown LA theater)...for Oscar consideration.
Frenzy...SHOWCASE(LA Cinerama Dome)
Family Plot...theater or drive-in near you.

Rather haphazard, how Hitchcock's late films were handled.

MORE

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Per the Q and A with Taylor in the Ebert site, evidently Taylor's book leads with a movie we've talked about round here: Lee Marvin and newly Oscar'ed star Gene Hackman in "Prime Cut" (1972.) They're warring Midwestern Irish-American gangsters shooting it up in "crop duster country": the heartland of America, with dollops of gore(the badder gangsters run a meat packing plant and grind up their enemies), sexploitation(nude drugged young women in pig pens for auction), Hitchcockian action(a wheat thresher chases Marvin and Sissy Spacek through a wheatfield) and dark comedy (Marvin, confronted with a string of hot dogs that was once a colleague says "Was he a good guy, did you like him?...then bury him(the hot dogs).)

Lee Marvin turned down The Wild Bunch and Jaws to make movies like Prime Cut (and the very bad race-and-rape thriller The Klansman with a visibly drunk Richard Burton). He must have had a taste for exploitation in those years. I wonder why.

---

Taylor's Q and A touches on 70's films as diverse as The Way We Were(a personal favorite of mine) and Two Lane Blacktop; it gave me a hankering to buy and read that book.

Which I just may do.

PS. Taylor cites "John Wick" and "The Shallows"(Blake Lively in a bikini trapped on a rock by a great white shark) as movies that might be released "at a theater or drive in near you" back in the day.

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

Charles Taylor was a movie reviewer at salon.com for a long time. He was (is?) married to Stephanie Zacharek who reviewed films there for a long time too. Zacharek's at Time magazine now, not sure about Taylor (although I seem to remember he's been teaching at NYU and other NYC schools).

Anyhow, Taylor was kind of a fun read in the late '90s at Salon. He had a kind of brawling, lusty style, that was very indebted to Pauline Kael... but maybe a bit unapologetically male for Salon (I recall him being 'in trouble' with the ultra-sensitive readers there quite a bit).

Can his book can escape just being the umpteenth elegy for the '70s movie culture in the US, sort of Easy Riders and Raging Bulls + Grindhouse?

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Anyhow, Taylor was kind of a fun read in the late '90s at Salon. He had a kind of brawling, lusty style, that was very indebted to Pauline Kael...

--

I read a biography of Kael a few years back that contended she "trained" a whole coterie of follower-critics called "Paulettes," who worshiped her and emulated her style, sometimes. That said, how COULD they get it down exactly. THAT said..evidently the key to wanting to be a Paulette was that...she would recommend you for critics jobs at newspapers and mags. So...some worship...some business savvy to be her acolyte.

---

but maybe a bit unapologetically male for Salon (I recall him being 'in trouble' with the ultra-sensitive readers there quite a bit).

---

Oh, well. Commenters oftimes play to their own extremes...at THOSE publications, left and right. Not here.

Can his book can escape just being the umpteenth elegy for the '70s movie culture in the US, sort of Easy Riders and Raging Bulls + Grindhouse?

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Can his book can escape just being the umpteenth elegy for the '70s movie culture in the US, sort of Easy Riders and Raging Bulls + Grindhouse?

---

I dunno. But you opened up some sweet thinking for me in the days I've been gone from here. I'd like to jump in on a few things.

I'm expecting, with the book's emphasis early on on Prime Cut, that Taylor will perhaps be playing to the "grindhouse" side of the 70's but perhaps more likely to what I noticed LIVING through them. Yes, many great, great films were made. But a lot of garden variety trash came out, too.

Particularly demoralizing was the clunky corporate stuff churned out by studios that were "up from the ashes" with no overhead. Even good SciFi thrillers like The Omega Man and WestWorld looked cheap, TV movie-ish, backlot.

Universal's run was pretty bad when Earthquake and Airport 1975 were on screen. These films made money but were not respected (The Towering Inferno, a classier act with hotter stars, was.)

Hey, wait a minute. The Omega Man. Skyjacked. Airport 75. Earthquake. Two Minute Warning. Midway.

Was Chuck Heston the king of schlock? (OK..Omega Man was pretty good and Midway was respectable.)

I recall how Star Wars came out in the same summer as Damnation Alley. Both from Fox...and Fox had higher hopes for the latter...because it was the same old, same old. Rather cheap and clunky, but understandable in plot and actors(George Peppard.) Well, Star Wars set the pace for the gloss and professionalism of the 80's through today. Even BAD movies look great.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

...and as for being "the umpteenth salute to 70's movie culture, I got something to say":

When I saw The Godfather on the Big Screen a few weeks ago, on-screen TCM host Ben Mankiwciez (ha) came on to introduce it and said something like: "...and The Godfather is a top drawer example of a film era considered by many -- including me -- to be the greatest of all time: the years 1967 through 1977."

It sounded like dogma, to me, that line. We all know that '67 has Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, and that 77 has "Star Wars" and...well...

...as I've just pointed out, the 70's had a LOT of schlock.

But more to the point, how about the decade....

....1957 through 1966.

Let's back up one decade from Mank's Golden Era...

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

12 Angry Men
Bridge on the River Kwai
Vertigo
Touch of Evil
Rio Bravo
Some Like It Hot
North by Northwest
Anatomy of a Murder
Psycho
The Apartment
Spartacus
The Magnificent Seven
West Side Story
The Guns of Navarone
101 Dalmations
The Music Man
The Manchurian Candidate
Lawrence of Arabia
To Kill a Mockingbird
Charade
Its a Mad, Mad World
Tom Jones
Dr. Strangelove
Mary Poppins
A Hard Day's Night
My Fair Lady
Goldfinger
The Pink Panther
The Sound of Music
The Pawnbroker
The Great Race
A Man for All Seasons
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
The Professionals
Alfie

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

That's not a bad bunch, eh? And while the "R" rating wasn't much available, otherwise we're talking quality, plush studio product and great VARIETY.

The 70's didn't bring us a West Side Story or a Sound of Music. Nor even a Charade(an attempt with George Segal and Jackie Bisset from the same screenwriter, Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe, felt like a weak copy.)

The Pink Panther of 1964 was lush, plush studio entertainment. The Return of the Pink Panther of 1975 was funny, but a very cheapjack, foreign-bank financed shadow of what a sixties movie was. And don't get me started on The Pink Panther Returns or all the terrible rest.

And I felt this IN the 70's. I vividly remember how cheap that Return of the Pink Panther felt -- "we couldn't go home again."

Robert Blake(of all people) said to Playboy in the 70's "the (male ejaculate) has gone out of movies," citing a skimpy battle scene in Patton. Its like in the 70's, "gritty realism" and "broke studios" were an excuse to cut corners and give the audience LESS of a fantasy.

Irony:

Alfred Hitchcock worked in that 1967 to 1976 corridor, and he gave us Topaz, Frenzy, and Family Plot(just barely, and fittingly in 1976.) Only one of his best in there, and that's "conditionally."

Alfred Hitchcock worked in that 1957 to 1966 corridor, and OWNED it, even accounting for misfires at the end in Marnie and Torn Curtain.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

None of this is to say that the 67-76 corridor is overrated or subpar. Great movies WERE made there, and often with the R and aspects of the PG rating to inject the movies with logic and realism that had never been there before.

But hey -- MY favorites are more plentifiul in that 57-66 corridor. Maybe because I saw them on TV and I was enthralled and young. But they still play pretty damn good today.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

And one more thing:

Ben Mankeiwicz's "automatic" shout out to the 70's as where the greatest movies are tracks with what's known as "baby boomer smug certainty" about a LOT of things in that decade, principally:

Saturday Night Live.

At least, in its first mid-70's incarnation, because the story was that the "old fashioned comedy of the past had been defeated and new hip counterculture comedy had taken over."

Well, yes and no. There were some great young comics(Belushi, Murray, Chase, Ackroyd, Radner) and some great catch-phrases("Land shark," "Cheesbugga, cheesbugga") and we all watched every Saturday but go back and look at a lot of those shows and -- they were the usual hit or miss TV comedy stuff.

And the idea that folks like Jack Benny(uber alles), Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Red Skelton were has beens...may have been true(Benny died the year before SNL debuted) but...they were very, very funny to the generations before SNL.

It remains odd that Lorne Michaels -- a 70's relic -- still oversees SNL. What if Uncle Milties producer tried to do SNL in the 70's? Well, Hip is Forever, and Lorne uses his kids and grandkids to help find the hot new musical acts and comedians. But still..

I love SNL (all decades) and I love the 70's movies. But to think they were the best TV and movies of the 20th Century strikes me as ...wrong.

I mean, come on: Vertigo, Rio Bravo, NXNW, Some LIke It Hot, Psycho, The Apartment...and that's only a three-year span...

[–] movieghoul (213) 7 years ago

At the age of 7, my favorite comics were Jack Benny, Jackie Gleason and Groucho Marx. What passed for comedy on kids TV in the 50s was kind of lame.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

At the age of 7, my favorite comics were Jack Benny, Jackie Gleason and Groucho Marx. What passed for comedy on kids TV in the 50s was kind of lame.

---

Groucho came later for me(college age worship), but in our house all those TV comics were watched religiously by my parents and I joyously went along for the ride. Benny especially.

It was "reversible" for my parents. On Saturday mornings, we would all gather round to watch the Bugs Bunny Show(actually I think it started as a Tuesday NIGHT thing -- baby boomer kids ruled and cartoons were on at night in the beginning) and we ALL laughed hard at that violent, intricate stuff. My hard-working father found Wile E. Coyote's various blocked-punt failures to be just as funny as I did. A nice memory of childhood, actually.

BUT...Chuck "Bugs Bunny" Jones humor was at Groucho/Seinfeld level. We didn't gather as a family around "The Flintstones" or "Yogi Bear." That was for the kids.

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

I appreciate your 'backing up a decade' ecarle. While I too am a big fan of early '70s US film, I think that the slightly longer view that sees a lot of continuity across the preceding decades is probably more accurate.

Something similar is true in France: for the longest time people were so wedded to the idea of the French New Wave starting in about 1959/1960 with instant-classics such as Breathless, 400 Blows, Hiroshima Mon Amour, etc.. It was such a loudly hailed big-bang that it encouraged the view that the '50s French film must have been some kind of wasteland and that there must have been something like a complete changing of the guard around 1960. But, really, 1950s French film is full of landmark works by directors such as Ophuls, Tati, Clouzot, Melville, Becker, Dassin, Bresson, Clement, Franju all of whom are innovative and interesting in roughly the same ways that the New Wave guys were, and many of whom kept going right through the New Wave period producing arguably their greatest work in the late '60s and even '70s.

In sum, these days it's the continuity of director-centric French film through that 1960 boundary that's much more striking than the discontinuity.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I appreciate your 'backing up a decade' ecarle. While I too am a big fan of early '70s US film, I think that the slightly longer view that sees a lot of continuity across the preceding decades is probably more accurate.

---

Well, I think the 1967-1977 thing became a bit too easy to reference for too many people. In some ways, it is very real -- By '67, Hitchock and Hawks and Wilder were in various ways "losing it"(though Hitch stayed the sharpest) and some new young kids had gotten through in Hollywood. But those kids didn't necessarily make the ONLY great films of the 20th Century ONLY in the 70s.

----

Something similar is true in France: for the longest time people were so wedded to the idea of the French New Wave starting in about 1959/1960 with instant-classics such as Breathless, 400 Blows, Hiroshima Mon Amour, etc.. It was such a loudly hailed big-bang that it encouraged the view that the '50s French film must have been some kind of wasteland and that there must have been something like a complete changing of the guard around 1960. But, really, 1950s French film is full of landmark works by directors such as Ophuls, Tati, Clouzot, Melville, Becker, Dassin, Bresson, Clement, Franju

---

I yield to you on that area of expertise, swanstep, but I have seen TCM screen many a pre-1959 foreign film on their channel, and they look pretty good for the minutes I watch them(MY problem, not theirs.)

---
In sum, these days it's the continuity of director-centric French film through that 1960 boundary that's much more striking than the discontinuity.

---

Intriguing. Here's as good a place as any to note that the writers of Bonnie and Clyde took it to Godard and Truffaut before giving up and going with Arthur Penn.

[–] movieghoul (213) 7 years ago

ecarle, I remember those as as well, and I believe the phrase was "playing at a theater near you with continuous performances at POPULAR prices"/ TO which we would joke "Who would want to see a movie at unpopular prices?"

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

ecarle, I remember those as as well, and I believe the phrase was "playing at a theater near you with continuous performances at POPULAR prices"/

--
One of my great roles around here -- as it was at imdb, so we're talking years now -- is to be wrong.

My fuzzy memory makes an attempt...somebody else comes in and gets it right.

And thus , I learn. With great gratitude.

--

TO which we would joke "Who would want to see a movie at unpopular prices?"

---

Ha! Still "popular" is a more movie-ish word than "regular," I guess.

This is one of those "I walked through the snow five miles to school" stories, but in the 60s I lived with my parents in Los Angeles, and even though the "first run flagship theaters" of Hollywood Boulevard and Westwood weren't that far away, we almost NEVER saw movies there.

We would wait until the movie reached the "nabes" (Neighborhood theater.). So I saw 1964's My Fair Lady in 1966, I think. 63's Mad Mad World in '65. Etc.

It never bothered me. My parents ran the show, I just went along.

THAT said, Disney and Universal and others made sure to get new movies out to the nabes IMMEDIATELY a lot of the time. So there was no waiting for "Lt. Robinson Crusoe, USN" or "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken." Or.... "Torn Curtain." Or Elvis. But I never went to Elvis movies.

Modernly, most movies hit the "nabes" immediately. Except for those early-release Oscar bait things in "LA, New York and SF" that play in December and then go out wide in January.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Test test test test....

[–] movieghoul (213) 7 years ago

But in the late 60s when a lot of road show films tanked at the BO, they would ruthlessly edit the films down for the nabes. I know for a fact that Camelot and Far From the Madding Crowd got this treatment, with Camelot the musical numbers (the best part of the film) were trashed.

So if you saw Camelot in the nabe and see it now on TCM and can't recall hearing some song verses back then, it's not necessarily a memory issue; you're getting the uncut film now.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

. I know for a fact that Camelot and Far From the Madding Crowd got this treatment, with Camelot the musical numbers (the best part of the film) were trashed.

So if you saw Camelot in the nabe and see it now on TCM and can't recall hearing some song verses back then, it's not necessarily a memory issue; you're getting the uncut film now

---

Interesting. I didn't see Camelot at the nabe, but it does seem that there are some movies in my past which didn't "match up" when I saw them later on cable to when I saw them when I was young.

I do recall reading, in 1968, about how the Julie Andrews musical Star! kept getting recut for various releases and even ended up with a new(weak) title: Those Were the Happy Times.

Poor Julie. The mega-musicals Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music made her. But the middling to disastrous musicals Thoroughly Modern Millie, Star, and Darling Lili killed her career off. Until hubby Blake Edwards saved her with lots of movie roles, the biggest being in Victor/Victoria.

Rise-fall-rise. With a loved one's help. (And EDWARDS came back by re-booting the Pink Panther.) Classic Hollywood.

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

re: 'Popular Prices'

The phrase 'Popular prices' must have had considerable currency in the early 20C. It appears on a neon sign in downtown LA atop the semi-famous 'Million Dollar' New Hotel Rosslyn (Wim Wenders made an eponymous movie w/ U2 and Milla Jovovoich about it back in 2000). The sign features prominently in Safety Last! (1927), The Driver (1978), and in many other films set in downtown LA.
http://tinyurl.com/y8jvw8r2
Tellingly perhaps, when they light up the sign at night these days, 'Popular' is *never* lit:
http://tinyurl.com/ybw83sjq
Since the Hotel's recent renovations into lofts, 'Fire Proof' has also been turned off:
http://tinyurl.com/y9g7d639

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

Apparently one of Taylor's principal 'forgotten drive-in movies' is Aloha Bobby and Rose (1975).

A made-for-$60K movie that made $50 million or so worldwide, I vaguely remember the advertisements for ABAR from when I was a kid, but don't remember ever having a chance to see it through video stores, etc.. It took some serious effort but I finally was able to find a pretty good copy online in one of the shadier corners of the internet.... and I think it's just OK. ABAR has nice technicals for such a low-budget film: it certainly looks good (albeit with some clumsy, over-done proto-music-video sequences) thanks to DP William Fraker (Bullitt, Rosemary's Baby, Cuckoos Nest) and sounds good thanks to the sort of Jukebox soundtrack that should be impossible for a cheap film to arrange. Maybe music licensing wasn't sorted out that well in 1975 (at least for independent films) and they just *used* stuff without permission. E.g., most of Elton John's biggest '70s hits are used centrally and repeatedly/thematically in ABAR, but they aren't listed in the credits. And while John should be regarded as something like a co-author of the film the way Simon and Garfunkel are for The Graduate or Cat Stevens is for Harold and Maude, he isn't mentioned in the credits at all, which is absurd. Maybe this omission is part of why ABAR has been hard to see since the '70s? John and Taupin may have put their foot down about being paid, not only from future royalties but also their cut of the big money the film made (500+ times budget) on its original release. Does Taylor cover this side of things?

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

Anyhow, setting aside the visuals and sound, the story and performances are moderately pleasant '70s meanders in that beloved post-Five-Easy-Pieces vein. But neither of the leads are as interesting or vivid as the leads in Badlands or Kings of Marvin Garden or Slither, and none of the supporting characters *really* pop.

ABAR also signals that it wants to partake of another strand of '70s cinema: the jukebox, car-centric movie where a DJ dispenses wisdom over the air, a la American Graffiti and Vanishing Point. But that turns out to be a feint that the film never really pays off. The whole second half of the movie feels like it's assembled from other movies' spare parts and that they're just padding for time while figuring out some cheap way of ending the movie. For example, the overblown, in-a-rainstorm, downer ending feels like it's straight out of 1974, perhaps from The Parallax View or Sugarland Express. Note that ABAR made tons more money than either Parallax or Sugarland (despite their being studio films). Parallax and Sugarland are incomparably better and more interesting movies than ABAR, however, as are of course all the '70s movies I've otherwise mentioned in these posts.

ABAR is directed by one Floyd Muttrux whose later American Hot Wax (1978) is even harder to see than ABAR (possibly more corners cut on music rights?). There's some talent on display in ABAR, but ABAR ultimately to me does feel like a bit of a Corman-style con job. ABAR is a winner because it made serious money for somebody. If Muttrux had gone on to become a De Palma or a Scorsese or a Demme or a Cronenberg after this then we'd look charitably on ABAR, but he didn't so we don't. ABAR is an OK watch, probably for '70s completists like me only. In no way is it a forgotten/hidden '70s gem, the way The Gambler or Long Weekend or The Silent Partner were for me in the last year or two. Can Taylor change my mind?

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Apparently one of Taylor's principal 'forgotten drive-in movies' is Aloha Bobby and Rose (1975).

---

I lived in LA in 1975 and I remember a heavy "cult promotional push" for this film, at college campuses and indie film theaters. I never saw it, but I remember always hearing about it.

The 70's were weird in that thanks to spotty distribution systems for non-studio films, movies could come out of nowhere, disappear, come back, and then just sort of linger on. Aloha Bobby and Rose was one of them. Also: A Boy and His Dog. And sort of: The Man Who Fell to Earth.

The one major studio production that got this treatment was 'Jeremiah Johnson," with Robert Redford from 1972. Thanks, I guess, to The Sting and The Way We Were being such hits in '73, but also because of the burgeoning "granola environmentalist movement," Jeremiah Johnson kept getting dragged out for re-issues about once a year, it seemed.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Maybe music licensing wasn't sorted out that well in 1975 (at least for independent films) and they just *used* stuff without permission. E.g., most of Elton John's biggest '70s hits are used centrally and repeatedly/thematically in ABAR, but they aren't listed in the credits. And while John should be regarded as something like a co-author of the film the way Simon and Garfunkel are for The Graduate or Cat Stevens is for Harold and Maude, he isn't mentioned in the credits at all, which is absurd. Maybe this omission is part of why ABAR has been hard to see since the '70s? John and Taupin may have put their foot down about being paid, not only from future royalties but also their cut of the big money the film made (500+ times budget) on its original release.

---

That's pretty amazing. Are the John/Taupin songs on this release you found somewhere on the 'net? It would seem to me if they ended up in the movie without contractural rights, they'd have to be stripped out of the film. Or it would have to be removed from distribution, as you suggest.

---

Does Taylor cover this side of things?

---

I dunno. I haven't found this book in the few chain book stores left that I frequent. I'm not a guy to order from Amazon but I may have to join the club.

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

That's pretty amazing. Are the John/Taupin songs on this release you found somewhere on the 'net?

Yes. You can see things like ABAR's opening credits w/ 'Benny and the Jets' (still one of the most brilliant pop hits ever I'd say) over them on youtube. Watchable full copies ripped from dvds are findable/google-able on blogs/sites specializing in rare old exploitation films and pornos. That said, I'd recommend staying away from such sites unless you keep your anti-virus, anti-tracking, etc. software up to date, and you know how to use a VPN to make yourself relatively anonymous on the net.

Anyhow, who knows what arrangement behind the scenes the director may have had with Elton John.... And maybe it's the indie-ness of ABAR rather than any music rights issues that have made ABAR hard to see over the years. It *did* get a dvd release. American Hot Wax (1978) apparently did not, hence its current almost complete unavailability (most of AHW is on youtube but only in muddy, cropped-for-TV, ripped-from-VHS forms, and nothing more complete or better is findable/googleable at least with my google-fu).