come with us. we re heading for the valley. going where? mexico. all the way down. you going all the way to mexico tonight in this heap of junk? reckon the town will get along without is till monday? oh, i reckon. i was young enough to bounce that far, i d go with you. the last picture show was a movie that, however old i was when i saw it, i said, oh my god this movie is about me. this movie is about us. this movie is about america as we are right now, here in the mid- 70s, not as we were back in the early 1950s. do you think the last picture show is a john ford type movie? no. i think it s a peter bogdanovich type movie. peter bogdanovic loved movies, had a sense of movie history, but had a very strong sensibility. he spoke to a new generation, both visually and emotionally. orson welles read the script. and i said, i d like to get that depth of feel, everything being sharp the way you did in citizen kane, touch of evil. he said, you
the country shifting. suddenly, we were beginning to length people by how they looked rather than what they really stood for. i win, but what have i really won? what do we do now? we never discussed what i would do if i won. now what am i going to do? so that s how i wanted to end the film. conversation came out in 1974 in the shadow of watergate. taciturns oas it turns out, e start to see movies that reflect that. independence day is very heen meaningful to me because sometimes i ve been called too independent for my own good. it s the story of whether or
did it. first of all, it stands out right away because of that beautiful black and white photography by the late, great gordon willis. and of course you had that score by george gershwin opening with rhapsody in blue. it showed new york in the most romantic way. in a way that new york wasn t thought about in the 70s. hi. what are you doing here? well, i m here, of course i m here. here s a movie set mostly in little dialogue scenes between cynical, nervous intellectuals on a giant wide screen. isn t it beautiful out? there s this amazing sequence where they end up sitting on this little bench, and you see the 59th street bridge above them. i made it my business when i was in college to find that bench. this is really a great city. i don t care what anybody says. those are the kind of things that those movies made you do. you saw something amazing. in a part of the city that you d never been in, and you would try to find them. manhattan was ostensibly a comedy.
hit movie to a cultural phenomenon. it essentially is a fun movie to watch. it s been a long time since people have been able to go to the movies and see a sort of straightforward, wholesome, fun adventure. excuse me. that s a bad outfit! as we move out of the 70s and into the 80s, we start to see something a lot more glamorous, a lot more produced. what starts to disappear is the flawed leading man. afraid of things. afraid of things? why would i be afraid? instead we see stories that make big heroes out of someone who does a good thing. america needed to believe in a hero again. and we found out that there are heroes everywhere. what s wrong? the future. what s the matter with it?
when you first see mccabe and mrs. miller , you can mel that film. the steam and the piss and the cooking and all the different things that were going on in this town it s such a beautiful film, and the absolute heartbreak in all of it. i think people underestimate the tremendous empathy that altman had as a film maker. he loved people in they were flawed, if they were wonderful, he celebrated real humanity sfwr he s overlapping voices. he s letting the camera drift around. these were unprecedented things at the time. there s been ensemble movies and ensemble movies.