Paul Schrader. I should have known. I have to wonder how long the script sat on the shelf, how many and passes those I'm Coming Home with a Pistol in My Hand dreams of vengence were fully exorcised. Lord knows you penned a mighty timeless epic with Taxi Driver, a sort of Searchers comes to New York in a heat wave/unexpected garbage strike. I am sure that you were champing at the bit to do your own version of Scorcese's masterwork. I saw it written all over Mr Flynn's seminal drive-in work. It was there all over again, the Vietnam vet/POW returning home to a world that he just can't get, a world filled with simpathetic characters that went on with their lives while those damaged, haunted men sold their souls or had them stoll away overseas.
I remember seeing Taxi Driver one night at the drive-in, right before I went off into boot camp. Took a car load of pals, a trunk full of beer, a pocketful of weed. Was so impressed with it that I went back and saw it again, twice. Lost my liquor store job due to that trunk full of libations, lost that girl to Jodie when I went off to boot camp, but Taxi Driver went off to international acclaim, never mind it lost to Rocky. I've only watched Rocky once. Taxi Driver is and will remain a perennial favorite.
Stumbling across, buying and viewing a copy of Rolling Thunder the other day I was reminded of the glory and almost dirty mystery of catching flicks at the drive in and third run suburban cineplexes. It's not easy to establish a diet for b-features, for exploitation film, for marginal fare these days. Multiplexes are big money, single feature for the price of a ticket kinds of joints these days. Drive-ins are disappearing landscape everywhere we go, all too many plowed under and paved over for subdivisions and shopping malls. There is nothing quite like "learning" about watching flicks in old movie house, the kind where leaky light, poor sound, ratty upholstery and low admission fees add to the atmosphere. Watching the opening titles for Rolling Thunder I saw Z. Arkoff's name displayed and thought, yeah, swallowed my share of that guy's goods, biker babes and horror shows and monster mania. But it was all good.
Schrader wanted to direct Rolling Thunder, it had Taxi Driver written all over it. It had that simmering, brooding anti-hero, the scumbags, the hyper violence, the pedigree actors, the mad writing that he was famous for, all of it, but it was destined for some other kind of noteriety. It was classic, alright, classic drive in fare. It was the kind of flick that had 70's b budget written all over it, had the makings of summertime, greasy popcorn and a car load of pals more than Scorceses classic ever would. Somehow I missed it on it's first run. I was already off dropping acid and taking mandatory Westpac trips overseas, I didn't have time for drive-ins anymore. Might have caught it in Olongapo if I had been paying attention, must have seen the poster overdisplayed in garish colors at some wonderfully ratty cinema somewhere along the Magsaysay.
Pity that that era is almost gone. B features, yeah, still have a taste, an appetite, for those things, an almost secret pleasure. I've never stopped watching them, I only graduated to art house flicks when I saw that's where real film was being stashed, being hidden away. Sure, I marvel at the never ending Hollywood buffet displayed on the marquees of the multiplexes. And yes, I groove on the latest and greatest blockbusters like anyone else, The biggest and newest of the CGI laden is always welcome on my screen.
But, if truth be told, I loved catching Avatar the other day in that hole in the wall dollar house. It lacked the tawdry feeling that I used to get back in the days when I trotted down to Stanton to catch kung fu, it was missing the bloated wonderfulness of a triple feature in a beat old movie palace on Broadway in LA and it certainly lacked that wild open goodness of partying through a feature in a big slab of Detroit metal, but it had the FEELING, the cheap thrillness of that long ago time when you could plonk down fifty cents and catch a handful of those Hammer/Arkoff/DiLaurentiis explotationers. Paul Schrader would have been proud to see his penned and forgotten thriller there up on the screen of that Boise dollar house. I know I would have.
So, do it. Go find a copy of Rolling Thunder if you can. Grab a bucket of p-corn, your gal and your pals and pretend you're sixteen again, young, stupid and bullet proof. Your cinema heart depends on it and so does your movie diet and education.
Action!
Nice review of Rolling Thunder (thanks, Bandiniblog!):
http://www.bandiniblog.com/2009/10/review-rolling-thunder-john-flynn-1977.html
Samuel Z Arkoff, producer of the greatest B features of all time!
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0035098/
Paul Schrader, tough guy writer, no doubt about it:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001707/
Dino, baby! DiLaurentiis, another great and powerful Producer of B:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0209569/
Roger Corman, King of Classic Cheese!
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000339/
I remember seeing Taxi Driver one night at the drive-in, right before I went off into boot camp. Took a car load of pals, a trunk full of beer, a pocketful of weed. Was so impressed with it that I went back and saw it again, twice. Lost my liquor store job due to that trunk full of libations, lost that girl to Jodie when I went off to boot camp, but Taxi Driver went off to international acclaim, never mind it lost to Rocky. I've only watched Rocky once. Taxi Driver is and will remain a perennial favorite.
Stumbling across, buying and viewing a copy of Rolling Thunder the other day I was reminded of the glory and almost dirty mystery of catching flicks at the drive in and third run suburban cineplexes. It's not easy to establish a diet for b-features, for exploitation film, for marginal fare these days. Multiplexes are big money, single feature for the price of a ticket kinds of joints these days. Drive-ins are disappearing landscape everywhere we go, all too many plowed under and paved over for subdivisions and shopping malls. There is nothing quite like "learning" about watching flicks in old movie house, the kind where leaky light, poor sound, ratty upholstery and low admission fees add to the atmosphere. Watching the opening titles for Rolling Thunder I saw Z. Arkoff's name displayed and thought, yeah, swallowed my share of that guy's goods, biker babes and horror shows and monster mania. But it was all good.
Schrader wanted to direct Rolling Thunder, it had Taxi Driver written all over it. It had that simmering, brooding anti-hero, the scumbags, the hyper violence, the pedigree actors, the mad writing that he was famous for, all of it, but it was destined for some other kind of noteriety. It was classic, alright, classic drive in fare. It was the kind of flick that had 70's b budget written all over it, had the makings of summertime, greasy popcorn and a car load of pals more than Scorceses classic ever would. Somehow I missed it on it's first run. I was already off dropping acid and taking mandatory Westpac trips overseas, I didn't have time for drive-ins anymore. Might have caught it in Olongapo if I had been paying attention, must have seen the poster overdisplayed in garish colors at some wonderfully ratty cinema somewhere along the Magsaysay.
Pity that that era is almost gone. B features, yeah, still have a taste, an appetite, for those things, an almost secret pleasure. I've never stopped watching them, I only graduated to art house flicks when I saw that's where real film was being stashed, being hidden away. Sure, I marvel at the never ending Hollywood buffet displayed on the marquees of the multiplexes. And yes, I groove on the latest and greatest blockbusters like anyone else, The biggest and newest of the CGI laden is always welcome on my screen.
But, if truth be told, I loved catching Avatar the other day in that hole in the wall dollar house. It lacked the tawdry feeling that I used to get back in the days when I trotted down to Stanton to catch kung fu, it was missing the bloated wonderfulness of a triple feature in a beat old movie palace on Broadway in LA and it certainly lacked that wild open goodness of partying through a feature in a big slab of Detroit metal, but it had the FEELING, the cheap thrillness of that long ago time when you could plonk down fifty cents and catch a handful of those Hammer/Arkoff/DiLaurentiis explotationers. Paul Schrader would have been proud to see his penned and forgotten thriller there up on the screen of that Boise dollar house. I know I would have.
So, do it. Go find a copy of Rolling Thunder if you can. Grab a bucket of p-corn, your gal and your pals and pretend you're sixteen again, young, stupid and bullet proof. Your cinema heart depends on it and so does your movie diet and education.
Action!
Nice review of Rolling Thunder (thanks, Bandiniblog!):
http://www.bandiniblog.com/2009/10/review-rolling-thunder-john-flynn-1977.html
Samuel Z Arkoff, producer of the greatest B features of all time!
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0035098/
Paul Schrader, tough guy writer, no doubt about it:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001707/
Dino, baby! DiLaurentiis, another great and powerful Producer of B:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0209569/
Roger Corman, King of Classic Cheese!
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000339/
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