Today on TCM, there’s a short movie running between the other movies and it’s about the making of Westworld, the 1973 sci-fi mediocrity about androids that go berserk and start killing the guests of the futuristic resort they occupy. It’s a great idea, poorly executed. Michael Crichton wasn’t much of a director but he did come up with some really great science fiction ideas and stories that worked better if someone like Robert Wise or Steven Spielberg were behind the camera. Westworld does have a few things going for it besides the basic idea, though. One, it has a great villain in Yul Brynner’s mad cowboy android. Two, the pursuit by said cowboy of hapless Richard Benjamin during the climax is surprisingly well done by the usually leaden Crichton, and three, it was made in the seventies. I’ll pretty much forgive any movie made in my youth of anything.
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Maybe it’s because the decade that you really start watching movies with a passion – and that goes straight into the next decade as the first few years of the eighties had nothing but movies from the seventies on tv – is the decade you also forgive the most because it’s the one that taught you to love the movies. I’ve probably seen more movies from the seventies than any other decade. I’ve seen a ton from the eighties, too, and of course the thirties is the other decade I’ve obsessed over. But the seventies, well, I saw just about everything that got released. I wasn’t very discerning back then either so my bright-eyed satisfaction with practically everything I saw still has a palpable hold on me as I watch these same movies again, even though with many of them I now realize they’re pretty bad, or at least hopelessly mediocre. And when I say I wasn’t discerning, I really mean I wasn’t discerning (Friend: “What did you think of Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, Greg?” Me: “Pretty good, you should see it!”) so there’s a sense of wonder about every movie I took in at the theater in that decade, and into the early eighties, that’s still with me.
The Poseidon Adventure (the first one) was probably the first big budget movie I saw in the theater and that set my young mind atwitter with the possibilities of the cinema. I didn’t really care how hokey the movie was, I just liked that they were in an upside down ship trying to break out of the hull. Honestly, despite the greatness of The Godfather, Cabaret, Sounder, and others from 1972, my two favorites are probably The Poseidon Adventure and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. And what’s wrong with that? Of course, I loved the great ones, too. That’s the point, I guess. I loved everything. The seventies really couldn’t do wrong by me. Hell, my best friend and I saw The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh the same year we saw Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and liked it. Clearly, I had issues in 1979.
Now, I didn’t necessarily think these movies were actually good and that’s what’s interesting to me. I give people grief all the time for liking really bad blockbusters made today but I question why I do that at all. I’ve simply forgotten that I had a time in my life when the only thing standing between me liking a movie and not was seeing it. Once I saw it, I liked it. I may have thought it was garbage, but I enjoyed the experience nonetheless. You see, early on, before really delving into what makes a movie good or bad, what appeals to you emotionally about it, or intellectually, you’re just thrilled to be going to the movies at all. It didn’t matter what the movie was, it was the going that was important. “Let’s go see a movie,” I’d say to a friend with excitement. “Which movie,” he’d ask. “Who cares?!”
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Somewhere along the way, I think I lost that, and I’m pretty sure it was sometime in the nineteen eighties. By then, I guess I’d finally seen enough good movies to be bored with the bad ones and the experience of going to the movies wasn’t enough to compensate for it anymore. I guess that’s understandable. We all have to grow and develop our minds, our ideas, our tastes, our aesthetic. But losing the experience weighs more heavily on my mind. Where I used to watch all of the coming attractions with excitement and heightened expectations, I now think, “Start the movie!” While I used to look forward to the big box of candy and the bucket of popcorn, I now sneak in snacks in my pockets to avoid the high cost of concessions.
But when I watch movies from the seventies, or something as simple as the short, On Location with West World, it makes me remember that the movies aren’t just about the film in front of you, but the experience surrounding it, and how I often let myself forget that. Sure, I’ve loved seeing all the greats that I’ve seen on the big screen and small, but that time my friend and I saw Creepshow in the second run theater that allowed smoking and brown-bagged booze just might be the best damn experience I’ve ever had at the movies. Drinking, smoking, and laughing like hell. Does it matter that I’ll never get that back? Not really. We all move on and the experiences live on in my head. That’s all I need. The man said, “We’ll always have Paris,” for a reason. I think I know what he meant.