Camera And Action, page 38
51. Tusher, "Hollywood 1967," 96. In 1967 Jack Valenti held a press conference in New York to unveil a new Production Code which contained the category SMA (Suggested for Mature Audiences). This new form of categorizing film led to the movie ratings of 1968 but also marked a time that Hollywood clearly defined poetic license as the highest significance of film. The SMA structure opened the doors for a new film audience and allowed for experimentation of visual taste for the mainstream screen. For a sample of Valenti's New Production Code, see Film Daily Yearbook 49 (1967): 627-628.
52. Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock `n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (New York: Touchstone Book Published by Simon and Schuster, 1998), 29.
53. Joseph Gelmis, The Film Director as Superstar (Garden City: Doubleday and Co., 1970), ix.
54. Peter Bart, An Ambition: To Make a Movie No One Else Would," The New York Times, 30 Jan. 1996.
55. Balio, United Artists, 3 and chapter 6.
56. Peter Bart, "Can Our New Directors Steal the Show Away from Europe's?" The New York Times, 25 Dec. 1966. Jack Valenti had also created the new category SMA.
57. Peter Bart, "Hollywood Has Warm Welcome For an Influx of New Directors," The New York Times, 11 June 1965.
58. Quoted in Gelmis, The Director as Superstar, xi, xii.
59. Ibid., xv.
60. Peter Biskind, Easy Rider, Raging Bulls, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22.
61. Ibid., 20.
62. Vance King, "Hollywood 1968," Film and Television Daily 51 (1969): 91; Biskind, Easy Rider, Raging Bulls, 15.
63. King, "Hollywood 1968,"91.
64. Peter Biskind, Easy Rider, Raging Bulls, 14-17.
65. Robert Osborne, 70 Years of the Oscar: The Official History of the Academy Awards (New York, London, and Paris: Abbeville Press, 1999), 187.
66. Gelmis, Director as Superstar, xx.
67. Maurice Rapf, "Can Education Kill the Movies?" Action 2.5 (Sep.-Oct. 1967): 10.
Chapter II
1. Hollis Alpert, "Something New in Movie Communication," Saturday Review 45 (9 June 1962): 54-55. A Room at the Top, for example, attracted 5 million viewers, giving substantial notice for the art film to Hollywood exhibitors and producers. As reported, Room at the Top "which went far beyond the art house patronage ... was the most important breakthrough for an English film made in the American market since the 1930's." Martin Quigley, Jr., and Richard Gertner, Films in America, 1929-1969 (New York: Golden Press, 1970), 269. When art film success coincided with studio failures of trusted genre moneymakers, Hollywood executives started to ask why. Cleopatra, for example, almost cost Fox its theatrical future. One industry official perceptively understood that European art films seemed to gain attention and therefore "set ... the pace" while Hollywood was "making the same pictures over and over again." By mid-decade, industry loyalists could no longer ignore the profits made by films such as Goldfinger and Cassanova '70. The European challenge more than anything framed the paradox of Hollywood and
its claim to be the center of the film industry at a time when excitement for European material was at an all-time high. Peter Bart, "Europe's Successes Worry Hollywood," The New York Times, 20 Sep. 1965. Interest in the art film indicated the industry might also take advantage of "the potential market for quality pictures," but, as director George Stevens pointed out, Hollywood's "trickle" of serious pictures had "all but stopped." Peter Bart, "The Excitement Is All From Europe," The New York Times, 3 Apr. 1966.
2. James I. Limbacher, "Film Societies Reply to Exhib Fears: 16-Millimeter Shows Divert No Biz," Variety 237.7 (6 Jan. 1965): 27, 51.
3. The hope of earlier societies' wish for preservation was fulfilled when later society members created the public research archive at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
4. Founding officers of AFFS included Director Fred Goldman of the Exceptional Films Society in Philadelphia, University of California at Berkeley Professor Cameron McCauley, film critic and writer Gideon Bachman, and Ernest Callenbach, editor of Film Quarterly in early 1960s. Approximately 735 societies were involved in the AFFS by 1963. Phillip Chamberlin, "What About Film Societies?" Journal of the Screen Producers Guild 11.5 (Sep. 1963): 37.
5. Gideon Bachman, "Change or Die," Film 28 (Mar.-Apr. 1961): 17.
6. Anthony Hodgkinson, "What Is a Film Society For?" Film Society Review 3 (Apr. 1967): 24.
7. Limbacher, "Film Societies Reply," 51.
8. Chamberlin, "What About Film Societies?" 36-38.
9. Hollis Alpert, "Onward and Upward with the Institute," Saturday Review 50 (24 June 1967): 50.
10. Bachman, "Change or Die," 17.
11. Hodgkinson, "What Is a Film Society For?" 26.
12. Bachman, "Change or Die," 17.
13. Membership ad in Film Society Review I (Sep. 1965): 23. Officers included Chairman of the Board Jack Ellis from Northwestern and officers Anthony Hodgkinson from Boston University, Arthur Knight from USC, Colin Young, Jr., from UCLA, and David C. Stewart from Dartmouth.
14. John Thomas, "The Big Picture," Film Society Review 1 (Oct. 1965): 5.
15. Arthur Mayer, "Motion Picture Courses in American Universities: A Report by an Old Instructor," TheJour- nal of the Producers Guild ofAmerica 19 (Mar. 1967): 26.
16. Chamberlin, "What About Film Societies?" 37.
17. David L. Parker, "Projection Room -A University Film Series," Journal of the University Film Producers Association 19.1 (Fall 1967): 26-29. Jack C. Ellis, "The Little Ivy-Covered Giant," The journal of the Producers Guild of America 19 (Mar. 1967): 20. Membership of campus and non-campus film societies totaled an estimated 2.5 million by mid-1966. The number of campus societies had increased from two hundred to approximately four thousand from 1950 to 1967. Bart, "The Excitement Is All From Europe"; David C. Stewart, "Movies and Colleges: Some Notes on the Fall of an Ivory Tower," Journal of University Film Producers Association 19.1 (1967): 17; David C. Stewart, ed., Film Study in Higher Education (American Council on Education: Washington, DC, 1966), 6 and Appendix C; Molly Wilcox, "Film Education: The National Picture," Filmmaker's Newsletter 2.2 (Dec. 1968): 1.
18. Jack C. Ellis, "The Big Picture," Film Society Review 1 (Jan. 1966): 5.
19. The Daily Utah Chronicle, 27 Sep. 1968.
20. Professor Rob Yeo, Chair Department of Film, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, telephone interview by author, Dec. 3, 2002. Professor Yeo was an undergraduate student during the late 1960s when he directed the college film series.
21. Robert Gessner, "Bachelors of Fix Biz," Newsweek 25 (2 Apr. 1945): 86. From the early 1950s to the 1965-1964 school year, campuses witnessed a 47-percent increase in degree-oriented film courses. The number of production courses increased by 64 percent. History and criticism courses doubled; audio-visual grew by 26 percent. Numbers are taken from the American Council on Education report from 1965. See David C. Stewart, "Movies and Colleges," 17; and Ellis, "The Little Ivy-Covered Giant," 20.
22. Raymond Spottiswoode, "Eyewitnessing the World of the 16 mm. Motion Picture," The Saturday Review 32 (8 Jan. 1949): 36.
23. Haig P. Manoogian, "New Spirit in Young Filmmakers," The journal of the Producers Guild ofAmerica 9.1 (Mar. 1967): 23. As professor Manoogian noted on p. 23, A college film society holding weekly showings of specialized films gained such popularity that the showings became a course, and then a course or two became a program." Likewise, at Dartmouth in 1964, two hundred undergraduates petitioned Provost John Masland for a film course and the administration responded by instituting one in the English Department in the spring of 1965, taught by Arthur L. Mayer. Maurice Rapf, "Can Education Kill the Movies?" Action 2.5 (Sep.-Oct. 1967): 11. The petition read, "We, the undersigned, request that the faculty of Dartmouth College consider offering a full credit course in the history and appreciation of motion pictures. We feel that the motion picture is a legitimate art form of great significance in our society, and that it deserves serious study in a liberal arts college." Film Daily gave it front-page coverage as "The first motion picture course to be conducted by film-makers and motion picture executives at an Ivy League college." David C. Stewart, "Men and Movies at Dartmouth," Journal of the University Film Producers Association 18.2 (Winter 1966): 7. Students who became more serious about their future in film gravitated to those centers of film study-NYU, USC, and UCLA-which in turn became more cohesive and consistently produced solid programs for study and production.
24. Terry Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties: Protest in America from Greensboro to Wounded Knee (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 95.
25. Lawrence E. Dennis and Joseph F. Kauffman, The College and the Student: An Assessment of Relationships and Responsibilities in Undergraduate Education byAdministra- tors, Faculty Members, and Public Officials (Washington, DC: American Council on Education, 1966). The council, in cooperation with the President's Commission on Academic Affairs, convened in 1965 to address improvements for "the student in higher education." Their primary concerns included the proper use of the college, a clearer definition of the role and responsibilities of the student, and the changing college social environment.
26. See Willis Rudy The Campus andA Nation in Crisis: From the American Revolution to Vietnam (Cranbury, NJ: Associate University Presses, Inc., 1996) for a discussion on the history of campus insurrection in America. Max Lerner discussed the 1960s campus as "the convergence point of the major revolutionary forces of our time." Max Lerner, "The Revolutionary Frame of Our Time," The College and the Student (1966), 8. Lerner's article addressed impact of these forces on the changes in curriculum and the college system.
27. Although the numbers of radicals and conservatives who joined in the debate over American social and political issues were relatively small, their publications coming from organizations such as Young Americans for Freedom and Students for a Democratic Society indicate the depth of interest. Both organizations published material debating the meaning of America. Their dialogue was represen
tative of the active political discourse of the time. A revealing source documenting the conversation about the young's discontent is Irving Kristol, "What's Bugging the Students?" in The Troubled Campus, Writers, Educators, and Students Confront the Question, Whats Wrong in the Colleges and Universities, ed. Atlantic Monthly (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1965), 6.
28. Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter, Roots of Radicalism: Jews, Christians and the New Left (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 9.
29. Manoogian, "New Spirit in Young Film-makers," 23.
30. Ellis, "The Big Picture," 7.
31. Mayer, "Motion Picture Courses in American Universities," 26.
32. Bernard Kantor, "Film Study in Colleges," TheJour- nal of the Producers Guild ofAmerica 19 (Mar. 1967): 3.
33. Film societies at the time sent their notes to Dartmouth, where affiliates made up packets and sent them to AFFS members. Because the college was relatively isolated, its residents provided a following for the local theater, "The Nugget." As David C. Stewart reported, the theater "enjoyed a virtual commercial monopoly on collegiate movie-going in Hanover for fifty years." Thirty-three films screened in one season brought a total of nearly 28,000 in attendance. Stewart, "Men and Movies at Dartmouth," 8.
34. Robert Steele, "Film Scholars at the New York Film Festival," Film Comment 2 (Fall 1964): 41-43.
35. Stewart, Film Study in Higher Education, 15; and George C. Stoney, "Breaking the Word Barrier," in ibid., 84.
36. Wilcox, "Film Education," 8.
37. "The Student Movie Makers," Time 91.5 (2 Feb. 1968): 78. In Lexington, MA, Yvonne Anderson, according to the Time article, ran an extracurricular workshop for five-year-olds and up.
38. The University Film Producers Association was founded in 1947. Comprised largely of those faculty involved in teaching and research, the Association served as a "central source of information on film instruction and film production by educational institutions" and sought "to assist ... those members in recognized educational institutions engaged in the teaching of the arts and sciences of motion pictures production techniques, film history, criticism, and related subjects." Stewart, Film Study in Higher Education, 152-153.
39. Shirley Clarke, "Teaching Filmmaking Creatively," Journal ofthe University Film Producers Association, A Quarterly 17.3 (Spring 1965): 8. Clarke co-managed the Filmmakers Distribution Center, which was established to meet demands for viewing independent films at theaters. James Lithgow, "Filmmakers' Distribution Center," Filmmakers' Newsletter 2.6 (Apr. 1969): 10.
40. Colin Young, "Films are Contemporary: Notes on Film Education," Arts in Society 4.4 (Winter 1967): 29, 32. As Young stated, "The class is more important as an audience than as a class in the traditional sense." Ibid., 28.
41. Edward Fischer, "Film Studies Are Coming- Ready or Not," Journal of University Film Producers Association 14.4 (Fall 1965): 25.
42. Northwestern had ten graduate students in 1966-1967, compared to zero ten years prior. See Kantor, "Film Study in Colleges," 4; and Ellis, "The Little IvyCovered Giant," 20, 21.
43. "Center for Advanced Film Studies Established in California," Filmmakers Newsletter 2.8 (June 1969): 4.
44. Stewart, "Movies and Colleges," 28, 17.
45. Mayer, "Motion Picture Courses in American Universities," 26.
46. The Daily Utah Chronicle, 27 Sep. 1968.
47. Ibid.
48. Ellis, "The Little Ivy-Covered Giant," 21.
49. Kantor, "Film Study in Colleges," 8.
50. Alvin Fiering, "Film at Boston University," Film Society Review 1 (Feb. 1966): 16.
51. Laurent Tirard, Moviemakers' Master Class: Private Lessons from the World's Foremost Directors (New York and London: Faber and Faber, 2002), 59.
52. "The Student Movie Makers," 78.
53. Aljean Harmetz, "The American Film Institute," Show 1.5 (20 Aug. 1970): 16.
54. Anthony Schilacci, "Film as Environment," Saturday Review 51 (28 Dec. 1968): 14.
55. http://www.cinema.sfsu.edu/curricframe.html. Accessed 22 Nov. 2002.
56. David C. Stewart, "The Movies Students Make," Harper's 231 (Oct. 1965): 68.
57. Young, "Films are Contemporary," 32; and Colin Young, "Film at UCLA," The journal of the Producers Guild of America 19 (Mar. 1967): 11. Student filmmaking required a considerable amount of money and, as film programs grew, outside companies contributed funds to promising students. The Louis B. Mayer Foundation awarded five grants at $3,000 each to UCLA. Others included appropriations to USC (the Disney Foundation, M.C.A., The Directors Guild, Johnson Wax-Red Skelton Scholarship, and individual donors). In 1965, the Screen Producers Guild awarded Martin Scorsese's "It's Not Just You, Murray," produced at NYU, "best student film made in America." Student films were also sent to universities overseas where they were shown and discussed. Stewart, "The Movies Students Make," 70.
58. Parker, "Projection Room," 29.
59. Young, "Film at UCLA," 9.
60. Darrell Loo, "Student Film Making Hits University," The Daily Utah Chronicle, 27 Sep. 1968.
61. Jackson Burgess, "Student Film-Making," Film Quarterly (Spring 1966): 33.
62. At mid-decade USC and UCLA had a combined film study and production enrollment of approximately 316 undergraduates and graduate students. Peter Bart, "Hollywood Scholars: College Groups Try For Improvement In Screen Teaching Techniques," The New York Times, 2 Aug. 1964.
63. Part of what prevented students from getting Hollywood jobs was the union structure in Hollywood, which controlled admission and therefore employment. From the late 1950s, few students had gone from the UCLA film school directly to Hollywood (although, in countries around the world, a degree in film from UCLA might result in the opposite). At the same time, by 1965, an estimated $400 million a year was spent on educational and industrial filmmaking. As a result, the non-theatrical fare drew "some 70 percent of U.S.C.'s film students." Ibid.
64. Kantor, "Film Study in Colleges," 5.
65. Manoogian, "New Spirit in Young Film-makers," 23.
66. Young, "Films are Contemporary," 31, 32.
67. Loo, "Student Film Making Hits University."
68. See Young, "Film at UCLA," page 9, for a list of thirty-some professionals involved at the time with the UCLA program. See also Mayer, "Motion Picture Course," page 27, for a list of the prominent campus educators, and Kantor, "Film Study in Colleges," page 5, for the experimental program between USC and Universal.
69. Burgess, "Student Film-Making," 33.
70. Stewart, "The Movies Students Make," 71, 72.
71. Larry Cohen, "The New Audience: From Andy Hardy to Arlo Guthrie," Saturday Review 52 (27 Dec. 1969): 9.
72. Wilcox, "Film Education," 2.
73. Hollis Alpert, "The Falling Stars," Saturday Review 51 (28 Dec. 1968): 16.
74. See Richard Maltby, "`Nobody Knows Everything': Post-classical Historiographies and Consolidated Entertainment," in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, ed. Steve Neale and Murray Smith (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 27. Maltby provides a discussion on the marketing strategies Hollywood employed with well-known sponsors to market a film's saleability before release.
75. Ibid.
76. Saturday Review dedicated its annual movie issue on Dec. 28, 1968, to "The Now Movie." Articles were written mainly by film specialists under thirty.
77. Stewart, "The Movies Students Make," 72.
78. Philip Chamberlin, "The Big Picture," Film Society Review 1 (Dec. 1965): 29.
79. AFI received over $5,000,000 in funding from foundations and government, corporate, and private sources; the institute is located in Washington, DC, and offers scholars and independents an educational resource. George Stevens, Jr., director of AFI in 1968, explained to Saturday Review that the AFI serves the purpose of helping thousands of young people to mature in their film production, not to create another Hollywood. Washington added one more filmmaking site to the dominance of New York and Los Angeles. Richard L. Coe, "Support for New Talent," Saturday Review 51 (28 Dec. 1968): 22-23. See also Alpert, "Onward and Upward with the Institute," 50; and Stewart, "Men and Movies at Dartmouth." The Institute also developed an advisory committee made up of university professors and department chairs from Ohio, Stanford, Temple, New York, UCLA, and USC. This committee helped with the development of educational material, study programs, and funding. The representatives of the academic community worked hand in hand toward their common goal with the leading people in the film industry who sat on the Institute's Board. "The American Film Institute," Dialogue in Film 2.1, n.d.
