'70s Movies Bracket Game: The Jerk v Animal House
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All month long we here at Le Blog are going to be celebrating the Me Decade! The 1970s were an amazing time for the art of filmmaking. Passionate audiences across the world turned out consistently to see a wide variety of movies. For example, films as diverse as Patton, Woodstock, The Boys in the Band, and Love Story all managed to hold down the top spot at the box office at some point during 1970. Just take a look at our bracket below and consider how many great films did not get included. Auteurs such as Coppola, Scorsese, Lucas, Altman, Spielberg and others broke through in the 70s, delivering films that were both artistically lauded and financially successful. But what has ended up being our absolute favorite movie of what may be the finest decade in film history? That is what we hope to find out here…within the context of the Le Blog community. So join us and vote each and every day as we dispose of masterful art with a click of a mouse!
In our last match, Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece Taxi Driver edged out Jack Nicholson and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and will move on to challenge The Godfather in our next round.
Steve Martin has always been just a bit ahead of his time. In 1979 he held a premiere party, complete with giant search lights for his new film The Jerk…or rather, for its 3-minute trailer. It was a gag, but honestly not too far off from the hullabaloo that ensues nowadays around new trailers for anticipated genre flicks (we here at Le Blog are guilty of this ourselves). Martin would sometimes attribute his own innovative nature to “not knowing any of the rules.” The Jerk came about primarily because Martin felt that his highly successful stand-up routine had units course and that maybe a career in the movies would have a little more staying power. Having appeared in small roles in the Bee Gees’ take on Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the first Muppet Movie, he felt ready to headline a film on his own, building the script around some of his established stage gags. The movie made a big splash, out-earning its production costs by almost $70 million and launching the film career Martin had envisioned. The Jerk was conceived as a series of gags around its central foolish protagonist, but gained form and warmth in part through the work of director and comedy legend Carl Reiner, who Martin says became like a father to him, but was not allowed to bathe him.
Animal House is the iconic comedy about the American college party experience, a status which was reinforced both by its wildly popular soundtrack album full of fun party hits of the early 60s and its early availability in the home video market. As generation after generation of young men arrive on college campuses, Animal House gets played repeatedly for them as a model for the expected good time they are about to have. Ivan Reitman, the producer of the movie, had initially wanted to direct it, but with a very short resume at the time had the good fortune of getting John Landis in that role instead. The cast full of young performers who were in the process of becoming household names (John Belushi, Tom Hulce, Tim Matheson, Karen Allen, and Kevin Bacon) was bolstered by the presence of actual movie star Donald Sutherland and used a combination of the 110 page treatment Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney, and Chris Miller had created for the studio and improvisational comedy to produce a tightly constructed, but loosely shot quality that lent it its shambling forward motion. Belushi in particular would become a legend based largely on his performance as John “Bluto” Blutarsky prior to his unfortunate death due to an overdose on a mixture of cocaine and heroin.
As we enter the comedy portion of our ’70s movie bracket, it is up to us to decide where the real yucks lie. Vote for one of these crazy classics and tell us in the comments section how you made your decision!