In 1965, Henry Hathaway, the man who got Hopper blacklisted from Hollywood, hired him for the production of “The Songs of Katie Elder.” Hopper worked alongside John Wayne and Dean Martin. 1967 dawned the beginning of a twenty-five year break in Hopper’s photography. During this period Hopper adopted film as his main channel of artistic expression. During production of “Katie Elder,” Hopper began to create “The Last Movie,” Which he wrote In collaboration with Steward Stern, writer for “Rebel without a Cause.” After struggling with financial issues, Hopper realized that production for “The Last Movie” could not proceed. He took a small role in the psychedelic film “The Trip,” starring Peter Fonda, written by Jack Nicholson, and directed by Roger Corman. Hopper and Fonda were given the change to direct a scene in the film. The film caught the attention of anti-establishment viewers and brought together the team that would eventually produce “Easy Rider.”
In 1968, “Easy Rider” receives its funding, and filming begins immediately. Through a cloud of marijuana smoke, Hopper assembled a crew of misfits tasked with shooting a landmark film about the hippie counterculture in America. Hopper sets off with Peter Fonda, screen writer Terry Southern, cinematographer Barry Feinstein, and a budget of $350,000 USD to begin production of the film. The film was mostly shot without a screenplay. Lines were mainly ad-libbed and production started with only the outline and names of the protagonists. A surely risky move, but opens the channel of free expression for Hopper and Fonda.
During initial test shoots in New Orleans, Hopper fights with the production crew for control over the film. At one point becoming a physical confrontation with photog...
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Reports state that Dennis Hopper was a drunken, drug infused, tyrant throughout production. Hopper is quoted yelling “This is my fucking movie and nobody’s going to take my fucking movie away from me” repeatedly for two-and-a-half hours. Drugs ran rampant on the set of the film, and overall had a huge impact on the birth of the film. “Easy Rider” is the first commercial success for hippies in America, and was the birth of the commercial hippie. The film was an official entry of the United States, at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the award for Best New Director. It was also nominated for two Academy Awards, Best Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor.
The financial success of Easy Rider opened doors for the young filmmaker. Universal Pictures hired Hopper, and in 1970, he revisited “The Last Movie” and began filming in Chinchero, Peru.
Magic Trip:Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place. Dir. Alison Ellwood and Alex Gibney. Prod. Will Clarke and Alexandra Johnes. Perf. Ken Kesey and Neal Cassady. Magnolia Pictures, 2011. DVD.
A more modern outlook on the film recognizes the film's flaws but gives it, it’s credit as the last fully realized work of one of the most important directors in American cinema history. Ford understood that an audience's recollections of older, less complex Westerns would add a layer of expressiveness to the viewing experience. The black-and-white structure helps him achieve this. Ford’s decision to shoot the film in black and white in 1962 produced a dark, anachronistic look, while the unconcealed soundstage effects of the film’s opening scene reinforced Ford’s vision of a wilderness, interiored Western frontier. Just as Ford intended, many of the flashback scenes are masked in darkness, whereas the frame tale is immersed in light. This con...
The American film industry’s early attempts at the narrative Western were limited and in the early years were produced mainly in the east. During this early time in the film industry the...
Van Sant, G. and Bender, L. (1997). Good Will Hunting. New York City: Miramax Films.
One of the most successful directors of this genre was John Ford. He once introduced himself saying, ‘I am John Ford, and I make Westerns’. The somewhat minimizing nature of this rem...
Bonnie and Clyde, directed by Arthur Penn in 1967, was a film about two lovers who robbed banks at the start of the Great Depression. It was filmed in America while the Vietnam War was constantly being broadcasted on television sets, and the “Summer of Love” was taking place in San Francisco and other major cities across the country. The Vietnam War was said to be the first American war to enter the peoples living rooms due to rise in popularity of television. America was already growing more and more violent in general but now it was beginning to take on an unreal quality, especially from the media perspective. In regards to the final scene, Penn said that it was influenced by media reports about Vietnam: “it seemed to me that if were
Spike Lee’s first student production, The Answer, was a short ten minute film which told of a young black screenwriter who rewrote D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. The film was not well accepted among the faculty at New York University, stating Lee had not yet mastered “film grammar.” Lee went on to believe the faculty took offense to his criticisms towards the respected director’s stereotypical portrayals of black characters (1). For his final film project, Lee wrote, produced, and directed Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads. The film won him the 1983 Student Academy Award for Best Director and the Lincoln Center chose the film as its first student production. The film was lo...
In 1984, Tarantino started working at the Hermosa Beach Video Archives in Manhattan where he struck up a friendship with fellow worker Roger Avary with whom he would later collabarate. He continued to study acting at Allen Garfield's Actors' Shelter in Beverly Hills but began to concentrate mainly on script writing. He loved westerns and his favourite was 'ride the whirlwind' directed by Monte Hellman who later was an executive producer on reservoir dogs. He also loved Rio Bravo (another western) which came out before he was born (1959) and was directed by Haward hawks. His favourite di... ...
Think about your favorite movie. When watching that movie, was there anything about the style of the movie that makes it your favorite? Have you ever thought about why that movie is just so darn good? The answer is because of the the Auteur. An Auteur is the artists behind the movie. They have and individual style and control over all elements of production, which make their movies exclusively unique. If you could put a finger on who the director of a movie is without even seeing the whole film, then the person that made the movie is most likely an auteur director. They have a unique stamp on each of their movies. This essay will be covering Martin Scorsese, you will soon find out that he is one of the best auteur directors in the film industry. This paper will include, but is not limited to two of his movies, Good Fellas, and The Wolf of Wall Street. We will also cover the details on what makes Martin Scorsese's movies unique, such as the common themes, recurring motifs, and filming practices found in their work. Then on
The ‘New Hollywood Cinema’ era came about from around the 1960’s when cinema and film making began to change. Big film studios were going out of their comfort zone to produce different, creative and artistic movies. At the time, it was all the public wanted to see. People were astonished at the way these films were put together, the narration, the editing, the shots, and everything in between. No more were the films in similar arrangement and structure. The ‘New Hollywood era’ took the classic Hollywood period and turned it around so that rules were broken and people left stunned.
The director Antoine Fuqua vision for this film was to bring that intense love-hate relationship onto the big screen and showcase it for the world to see. To ensure a convincing film setting, Fuqua shot on location in some of the most hardcore neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Fuqua also wanted to show the daily struggles of officers tasked to work in the rougher neighborhoods of cities and how easy it can be to get caught up in a street life filled with killers and drug dealers. Overall the film displayed the city of Los Angeles in a different perspective. One which m...
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
In recent times, such stereotyped categorizations of films are becoming inapplicable. ‘Blockbusters’ with celebrity-studded casts may have plots in which characters explore the depths of the human psyche, or avant-garde film techniques. Titles like ‘American Beauty’ (1999), ‘Fight Club’ (1999) and ‘Kill Bill 2’ (2004) come readily into mind. Hollywood perhaps could be gradually losing its stigma as a money-hungry machine churning out predictable, unintelligent flicks for mass consumption. While whether this image of Hollywood is justified remains open to debate, earlier films in the 60’s and 70’s like ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1967) and ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976) already revealed signs of depth and avant-garde film techniques. These films were successful as not only did they appeal to the mass audience, but they managed to communicate alternate messages to select groups who understood subtleties within them.
The reclusive film director Terrence Malick has to date, only directed a small number of films. His twenty year hiatus between directing Days of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red Line (1998), may provide the explanation for such a sparse back catalogue. Malick’s refusal to talk with the media, has led to hearsay, as to how he occupied his time during the hiatus. Malick’s directing debut Badlands (1973) is a collection of concepts, all carefully moulded together to create one iconic piece of film. This process draws in and also alienates the audience. Malick’s style is positively noted by critics to be influenced by European philosophy. This is clearly due to Malick’s study of philosophy at Harvard and Magdalen College Oxford. There is no given explanation to the mindless violence featured within the film, mainly due to the films resistance to the straight forward approach. The familiar and the unknown are carefully merged together. The only way of gaining an understanding into the hidden meanings within Badlands is by breaking down the film, by looking at the characters, the use of sound, the visual setting and the films genre. The illusionary effect of Malick’s style means that all is not as it seems.
Barsam, Richard. Looking at Movies An Introduction to Film, Second Edition (Set with DVD). New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Print.