When movies came of age

Equally lionized and lamented, the films and filmmakers of the 1970s are the subject of consistent interest among movie fans. It was, after all, the decade that produced such groundbreaking films as “The Godfather,” “Mean Streets” and “Easy Rider,” as well as such duds as “The Last Movie” and 1980’s “Heaven’s Gate.”

So when directors Richard LaGravenese and the late Ted Demme conceived their documentary “A Decade Under the Influence” as a love letter to the cinema of the decade, they were determined to avoid making it a rose-colored nostalgic excursion into the past. Their three-part documentary plays tonight through Friday on the Independent Film Channel.

“I really wanted to use it more as sort of an example of how filmmaking could be done,” says LaGravenese, the screenwriter of such films as “The Fisher King” and writer-director of “Living Out Loud.”

“There was a balance of different kinds of movies,” LaGravenese says. “They were making big-budget movies back then too, but the audiences were different and the studios were more inclined to take chances on personal filmmaking. Now you have the independent cinema and there is a lot of great stuff coming out. And who knows? After this summer, because sequels didn’t do well, maybe now we’ll make originals. Everything comes full circle.”

And just why did filmmakers and audiences become more interested in social issues and reject the glitz, gloss and glamour of the Hollywood heyday of the studios?

LaGravenese recalls director Sydney Pollack’s thesis: Before the social and political revolutions of the 1960s, “you measured your pleasure at the movies by the distance that movie was from your own life. He uses ‘Casablanca,’ where you have Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman and a totally romantic sacrifice [as an example]. He says you know this is never going to happen to you in your own life, and that was what was enjoyable.”

But with the Vietnam War as well as the civil rights and women’s movements stirring things up in the 1960s, “suddenly audiences were saying, I want to see a reflection, I want to see what I recognize represented on the screen. So ‘The Graduate’ became this milestone because everyone got it.”

“A Decade Under the Influence,” which premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival and had a limited theatrical run in a shorter version earlier this year, features interviews with actors, directors and producers from that era, including Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Dennis Hopper, Ellen Burstyn, William Friedkin, Jon Voight and Julie Christie. Also included are clips from such seminal films as “Easy Rider,” “The Graduate,” “The Godfather,” “The French Connection,” “Taxi Driver,” “Midnight Cowboy” and “Coming Home.”

Bogdanovich, who made his first film, “Targets,” in 1968, was one of the Young Turks who rose to fame in the 1970s, thanks to his three big hits: 1971’s “The Last Picture Show,” 1972’s “What’s Up, Doc?” and 1973’s “Paper Moon.” But his fortunes quickly changed by 1974 with the first of his failures, the big-budget “Daisy Miller,” followed in 1975 by the dismal musical “At Long Last Love.”

Reached on the phone in New Jersey where he was directing an episode of HBO’s “The Sopranos” (he also appears on the series), Bogdanovich says the ‘70s film phenomenon was a direct result of the collapse of the old movie studio system in 1962. “All the stars were independent. You couldn’t hold actors. So the whole edifice that had been extraordinarily successful collapsed. There would be some good films made, but the golden age had ended and then there were the dark ages from 1963 to ’67. At that time the Beatles were the most interesting thing that happened. The studios were trying to figure out what to do; they made these big pictures that died.”

The first turn of the tide was 1967’s “Bonnie and Clyde,” which was directed by veteran Arthur Penn but produced by star Warren Beatty, who was just 30. The following year, John Cassavetes hit it big both critically and commercially with his independent drama “Faces.”

“It was one of the first totally independent films,” Bogdanovich says. “The studios took notice of that. The following year, ‘Easy Rider’ came out and that did it for everybody because that was such a big hit. Paramount had $100 million in four pictures that died, and this $900,000 picture came along and absolutely blew everybody away.”

Bogdanovich says he always joked that from 1969 through 1975, “the easiest way to get to direct a picture is never to have directed one. The floodgates were opened. For a short while the studios, the money people, said, ‘OK. I guess the director is the star.’ They backed that idea.”

Eventually, says Bogdanovich, every ‘70s wunderkind abused his or her privilege.

“Some of them really blew it for a lot of others,” he says. “ ‘Heaven’s Gate’ closed the studio [United Artists]. There was a lot of overspending. Dennis Hopper [who directed “Easy Rider”] completely screwed up his next picture [‘The Last Movie’]. It went way over budget. It tanked. This happened to a number of directors, including myself. Marty [Scorsese] made ‘New York, New York.’ Steven [Spielberg] made ‘1941.’ Some of the bombs were bigger than others. Some of us continued to make bombs larger than others.”

Bogdanovich believes that overall, the directors who came to fame in the ‘70s were messed up by the hits and flops. “Success is brutal in America. I said to Gore Vidal recently, success in America is a killer. And Gore said, ‘second only to failure.’ That is true. You are not prepared for it. It sort of screws you up when somebody throws all that money at you. Too much money is not a good thing.”

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A Decade Under the Influence’

Where: Independent Film Channel.

When: 8-9 p.m. tonight through Friday. All three hours air starting at 8 p.m. Saturday.

What else: Key films from the decade follow the documentary. “Mean Streets” airs at 9 tonight, “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” airs at 9 p.m. Thursday and “The Conversation” airs at 9 p.m. Friday.