Camera And Action, page 39
80. Robert Geller and Sam Kula, "Toward Filmic Literacy: The Role of the American Film Institute," journal ofAesthetic Education 3.3 (July 1969): 99.
81. Coe, "Support for New Talent," 22-23.
82. "The American Film Institute," 16, 17.
83. Aljean Harmetz, "Custodian for Cinema Culture," Show (Aug. 1970): 16.
84. George Stevens, Jr., "Remarks of George Stevens, Jr. on his Appointment as Director of the American Film Institute," Journal of the University Film Association 20.1 (1968): 6.
85. The United Nations became involved by conducting an educational session on the impact of the "projected image" versus the "printed word" and considered several ways to "protect them [young people] against the barrage of visual impressions to which they are being subjected increasingly." The most important solution suggested was "the development of screen education." Mayer, "Motion Picture Courses in American Universities," 27. The Television Information Office released results from a survey showing that "a very substantial portion of the total television audience watching feature films these days has a college education." Stewart, "Movies and Colleges," 18.
86. Arthur Knight, "Engaging the EyeMinded," Saturday Review 51 (28 Dec. 1968): 18.
Chapter III
1. Edgar Z. Friedenburg, "Calling Dr. Spock!" The New York Review ofBooks 10.6 (28 Mar. 1968): 27.
2. Paul Clark, L.B. Press-Telegram, 10 Jan. 1993. Production folder, Margaret Herrick Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library, Beverly Hills, CA.
3. Martin Quigley, Jr., and Richard Gertner, Films in America, 1929-1969 (New York: Golden Press, 1970), 328.
4. Peter Bart, "Mike Nichols, Moviemaniac," The New York Times, 1 Jan. 1967. Godard had dramatized contemporary youth but his films did not get much notice in the United States. Francis Ford Coppola had also produced You're a Big Boy Now (1966), which dealt with a similar theme of generation.
5. The film was later rated PG.
6. Nadine M. Edwards, "The Graduate, Hilarious Romp Beautifully Done," Hollywood Citizen-News, 22 Dec. 1967.
7. William Tusher, The Film Daily Yearbook ofMotion Pictures 50 (1968): 96.
8. William Wolf, "The Graduate," Cue 36 (23 Dec. 1967): 57.
9. Paul Seydor, "The Graduate Flunks Out," reprinted in Film Society Review 5-6 (Jan. 1969-1970): 36.
10. Life ran a four-part series on "the individual in our mass society." The editors framed the subject as the struggle to maintain an identity and "make a difference." A lead article featured images of adult commuters caught in their world of mass technology, streamlined buildings, and impersonal air terminals or bus stations, and dodging about chaotically in front of glass and steel buildings. The theme carrying the subsequent parts is the young's positive impact on society through their myriad "involvement" programs. Bayard Hooper, "Challenge for Free Men in a Mass Society" and "Modern Society's Growing Challenge: The Struggle to Be an Individual" Life 62.16 (21 Apr. 1967): 60. Author Bayard Hooper argued, "for many, the forces of society have become so vast and encompassing that its goals seem too obscure to fathom, too complex to pursue." The "emptiness and anonymity in modern life are a direct result of technological advances and affluence." Young people turned to social work as a way of helping to stop a drifting society. "Comfort is not enough," one young college student said. "The Search for Purpose: Among the Youth of America, a Fresh New Sense of Commitment," Life 62.17 (28 Apr. 1967): 66.
11. W H. Ferry, "Forward," in Students and Society: A Report on a Conference (New York: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1967), 2.
12. Frederick Richman, "A Disenfranchised Majority, Extracts from a Paper," Students and Society, 4-5.
13. Daniel Sisson, "The Dialogue: Youth and Society," in Students and Society: A Report on a Conference (New York: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1967), 40-41.
14. George R. Bach, "We Can Close the Generation Gap," Ladies Home journal 85.1 (Jan. 1968): 36.
15. Ibid., 36, 95.
16. The Institute of Group Psychotherapy in Beverly Hills and Marathon were the two mentioned. Ibid., 36.
17. "Robert F. Kennedy, What Our Young People Are Really Saying," Ladies Home journal 85.1 (Jan. 1968): 96.
18. Russell Lyrics, "Cool Cheer or Middle Age," Look 31.21 (17 Oct. 1967): 45-46.
19. Frank Bardacke, "Discussion," in Students andSoci- ety: A Report on a Conference (New York: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1967), 8.
20. Hollis Alpert, "Mike Nichols Strikes Again," Saturday Review 50 (23 Dec. 1967): 24.
21. Sandra A. Lonsfoote, "Making Out `The Graduate,"' Letter to the Editor, Saturday Review 51.30 (27 July 1968): 19.
22. Pauline Kael, "Review," http://www.geocities.com/ hollywood/8200/gradkael.htm.
23. David Brinkley, "What's Wrong with the Graduate," Ladies Home journal 85.4 (4 Apr. 1968): 79.
24. Phyllis N. Braxton, Letter to the Editor, Saturday Review 51.30 (27 July 1968): 19.
25. John Simon, "Movies into Film 1967-1970: The Graduate," Feb. 1968, 1971, http://www.geocities.com/ hollywood/8200/gradfilm.htm.
26. Pauline Kael, Going Steady: Film Writings 1968-1969 (New York and London: Marion Boyers, 1994), 280, 281, 124, 127.
27. Senator Jacob K. Javits, "Politics Or Pix-You Gotta Make Your Audiences Believe," Variety 252.13 (13 Nov. 1968): 31, 157.
28. Joseph McBride, ed., Filmmakers on Filmmaking: The American Film Institute Seminars on Motion Pictures and Television, vol. II (Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, Inc., 1983), 33.
29. Personal Interview, Susan Parker. Feb. 2001, Salt Lake City.
30. Miriam Weiss, Letter to the Editor, "Movie Mailbag: She Identifies with `Graduate,"' The New York Times, 9 June 1968.
31. Hollis Alpert, "'The Graduate' Makes Out," Saturday Review 51 (6 July 1968): 14-15.
32. The New York Times, full-page ad, 26 Nov. 1967, and subsequent advertisements.
33. Stuart Byron, "Rules of the Game," Village Voice 27.2 (6-12 Jan. 1982): 48. Embassy's publicity vice president at the time explained that one likely candidate was Chris Connelly of Peyton Place.
34. Joseph Morgenstern, "A Boy's Best Friend," Newsweek 71.1 (1 Jan. 1968): 63.
35. McBride, Filmmakers on Filmmaking, 30.
36. Jeff Lenburg, Dustin Hoffman: Hollywood's AntiHero (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983), 22.
37. David Zeitlin, "A Swarthy Pinocchio Makes a Wooden Role Real," Life 63.21 (24 Nov. 1967): 113.
38. Byron, "Rules of the Game," 48.
39. Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drug-and-Rock `n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (New York: Touchstone book Published by Simon and Schuster, 1998), 34.
40. Betty Rollin, "Of Wit," Look 32 (2 Apr. 1968): 74.
41. Bart, "Mike Nichols, Moviemaniac." Production Notes from Margaret Herrick Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library, Beverly Hills, CA, 8.
42. Douglas Brode, Dustin Hoffman (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1983), 8.
43. David Zeitlin, "A Swarthy Pinocchio," 114.
44. Ibid. 16.
45. Stanley Kauffmann, "Stanley Kauffmann on Films," The New Republic 157.26 (23 Dec. 1967): 37. That same year Gene Hackman helped extend the star image to include the casual midwestern look through the AcademyAward-winning In the Heat of the Night.
46. Byron, "Rules of the Game," 48.
47. Brode, Dustin Hoffman, 10.
48. Charles Webb, The Graduate (New York: The New American Library, 1963), 68, 69, 41.
49. The Graduate, Script 45.
50. Kauffmann, "Stanley Kauffmann on Films," 22.
51. In the early 1960s, surfing as a sport was married to surf music. Its radical element came from promoting a loose, laid-back lifestyle in contrast to eastern sophistication and its fast-paced, everyday life. Surf music's mild form of cultural anarchism did not move beyond the "hot rod" and "woodie" form of good times.
52. Part of film's challenge in the decade's early years was to compete with the potency of music as a young person's market. Because of rock music's appeal as an expression of dissent, filmmakers appropriated music and incorporated rock music into cinematic narratives, broadening the appeal of the feature film by associating it with music's rebellious flair. Certainly the 1950s Elvis and early 1960s Beach Blankets films used music to incorporate teen culture, but the post-1966 filmmakers' application of music in film disseminated music for both common consumption and as way to advance the social role of music and film as a forms of protest.
53. "See `The Graduate' Again for the First Time Now!" in the press kit at Margaret Herrick Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library, Beverly Hills, CA. It described Sunset Strip as "a hazardous undertaking because of the `tripping' hippies who populate that area when the stars come out and the smog goes to rest for the night." "See `The Graduate,"' 2.
54. Bart, "Mike Nichols, Moviemaniac."
55. The Graduate Script directions, 54.
56. The Graduate Script, 61.
57. She is the transgressor of what Michel Foucault calls "conjugal and parental obligations." Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 121.
58. William Herndon, Letter to the Editor, The New York Times, 21 Jan. 1968.
59. Hollis Alpert, "Mike Nichols Strikes Again," 24.
60. Joseph Morgenstern, A Boy's Best Friend," 63.
61. Andrew Sarris, "Films," Village Voice 13.11 (28 Dec. 1967): 33.
62. Because Ben has already established the honesty of his agenda and because of Hoffman's new appeal as the young adult with inner strength, the film encourages viewers to accept his authenticity. A helpful essay on the construction of celebrity status and the power of star strength is Richard Dyer, "Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society," in Film and Theory, ed. Robert Stan and Toby Miller (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 613.
63. John Simon and Pauline Kael. Kael "because so many people are beginning to treat `youth' as the ultimate judge-as a collective Tolstoyan clean old peasant." http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/8200/gradfilm.htm.
64. The phrase is Michel Foucault's in The History of Sexuality.
65. David Zeitlin, "A Swarthy Pinocchio," 113. While the zoo confrontation and the shower scene both suggest shifting symbols of youth and screen images from the golden boys to eastern New York ethnics through the Hoffman persona, it was clearly not an indication of ethnic acceptance in the larger society. Early in the story at Ben's graduation party, a guest admires Ben's car and comments on "the little red Wop job." Certainly the point was to show a "self-satisfied, middle-class person who would be bigoted enough to use such an expression." In the book the word does not appear. Moreover, the Italian League requested to have the reference to Wop removed from the script and film copies. Despite the MPPAs Code censoring "words or symbols contemptuous of racial, religious or national groups" if "used so as to incite bigotry or hatred," the word remained. Embassy justified the word's inclusion by explaining that it did not denigrate "people of Italian descent" but advanced the narrative's stance against bigotry. Code words are from Film Daily Yearbook of Motion Pictures (1967), 626. The Americans of Italian Descent spokesman, Joseph Jordan, explained to Embassy, "We have been besieged by telephone calls and letters from many of our members and friends who are appalled at the slur in the movie, The Graduate, which we would like to believe was unintentional. I refer to the line spoken by one of the actors to Dustin Hoffman, `That's a beautiful red wop job [car] you have out there,' referring to an Italian-make car, which may not be a verbatim quote but certainly does use the word wop." "Italian Descenters Hit `Graduate' `Slur,"' Film and TVDaily, 16 May 1968. Ignoring arguments from the Italian Defamation League and the censorship code suggests the language was not explosive enough to threaten receipts.
66. Susan Parker interview.
67. Sarris, "Films," 33.
68. Kaufmann, "Stanley Kaufmann on Films," 37. Note: In classic literary structure, the interruption of weddings is typically to expose to the protagonists an imposter minister, a bigamist bridegroom, or some legal problem that satisfies conventional morality.
69. Alpert, "The Graduate Makes Out," 32.
70. Webb quoted in ibid.
71. Webb and Nichols both quoted in ibid. See also Anthony F. Macklin, "Benjamin Will Survive...." Film Heritage 4.1 (Fall 1968): 3.
72. Seydor, "The Graduate Flunks Out," 42.
73. Brode, Dustin Hoffman, 64.
74. Weiss, "Movie Mailbag."
75. Byron, "Rules of the Game," 48.
76. Friedenburg, "Calling Dr. Spock!" 27.
77. Kael, Going Steady, 126. See also Tom Milne, "Films," The [London] Observer, 11 Aug. 1968; "Movies," McCall's 95.1 (Apr. 1968); Simon, "Movies into Film."
78. Seydor, "The Graduate Flunks Out," 40.
79. Eric Harpuder, Letter to the Editor, The New York Times, 21 Jan. 1968.
80. Bart, "Mike Nichols, Moviemaniac."
81. Gary Dauphin, "Plastic Fantastic," Village Voice 42.7 (18 Feb. 1997).
82. Kaufmann, "Stanley Kaufmann on Films," 22.
83. Friedenburg, "Calling Dr. Spock!" 27.
84. Ibid., 26.
85. Ibid., 25.
86. It was the move from the privacy of the daughter's room to the hotel to the red convertible that enabled Hoffman's character to reveal his true self, his genuineness, and thus speak for a generation's ideas about what is real.
87. Simon, "Movies into Film."
88. Seydor, "The Graduate Flunks Out," 38.
89. Weiss, "Movie Mailbag."
90. See Janet Staiger for a discussion on reception theory and ideal representations. Janet Staiger, Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception ofAmerican Cinema (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
91. Kauffmann, "Stanley Kaufmann on Films," 37. Especially noticeable were the juxtapositions, jump cuts, noir interiors, low angles, and perspective visualizations through rainy windows, foliage, and chain link fences and around objects such as statues and pillars.
92. Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, 34, 10.
93. McBride, Filmmakers on Filmmaking, 32.
94. Kael, "Review."
95. Ella Taylor, "Boomer Reunion, The Graduate turns 30," L.A. Weekly (7 Mar. 1997): 33.
96. Susan Lydon, "Movies: The Graduate," Rolling Stone 1.5 (10 Feb. 1968): 14.
97. Other award-winning films critiqued social reality, but they typically stayed safely within the parameters of already popularized views. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? and In the Heat of the Night, for example, not only cast celebrities, but they also cast them as ideal, resourceful, articulate, and intelligent characters during the civil rights movement's mainstream activism and prior to overt militancy. Both films, in a sense, recycled what was already legitimized politically by that time. The social reconciliation of racial strife was by no means congenial, but the change in attitude had already circulated in friendly articles about interracial issues. When Peggy Rusk, the daughter of Georgia-born Secretary of State Dean Rusk, married a black college student in the fall of 1967, Ladies Home journal engaged in the debate about public acceptance of interracial marriages. As Mrs. Medgar Evers wrote in April 1968, "I envy my children's color-blindness and the color-blindness of their many white friends. I know that they are right, that their attitudes are those of a hopeful future." Though the strongest display of racial strife was yet to come in the final years of the 1960s with militant revolution, the view from 1967 looked promising. "Peggy Rusk: First Pictures of Her Interracial Marriage," and Mrs. Medgar Evers, "A Distinguished Negro Mother Asks: Why Should My Child Marry Yours?" Ladies Home journal 84.4 (Apr. 1968): 80-81.
98. Alpert, "The Graduate Makes Out," 32.
99. Dauphin, "Plastic Fantastic."
100. Lenburg, Dustin Hoffman: Hollywood's Anti-Hero, 35.
101. Robert Windeler, "Study of Film Soaring on College Campuses," New York Times, 18 Apr. 1968.
Chapter IV
1. Sharon McCormick, "Alice's Restaurant," Filmex (3 Apr. 1976): 55.
2. "Reviews, Alice's Restaurant," Digest, Motion Picture Herald (13 Aug. 1969).
3. Ibid.
4. As Stuart Hall has explained, "All meanings are produced within history and culture. They can never be finally fixed but are always subject to change, both from one cultural context and from one period to another. There is thus no single, unchanging, universal `true meaning."' Stuart Hall, "The Work of Representation," in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, ed. Stuart Hall (London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997). Penn's most compassionate representation of Alice is helpful for understanding the limitations of the counterculture in 1969.
5. Axel Madsen, "Reaching the Tribes," Sight and Sound 39.1 (Winter 1969/1970): 33.
6. Stephen Farber, "End of the Road?" Film Quar-
terly 23.2 (Winter 1969-1970): 3. 7. Ernest Callenbach, "Editor's Notebook: American New Wave?" Film Quarterly 23.2 (Winter 1969-1970): 1.
8. Ernest R. Barea, fetter to the Editor, The New York Times, 2 Nov. 1969.
9. Callenbach, "Editor's Notebook," 1.
10. Deac Rossell, "Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant,' becomes Arthur Penn's newest movie," Boston After Dark, 27 Nov. 1968; "Hillard Elkins Plans Show, `Real People' in Alice's,"' Hollywood Reporter (6 Feb. 1969): 38.
11. Venable Herndon, "Alice's Restaurant," Hollywood Citizen-News, 22 Aug. 1969.
12. Paul D. Zimmerman, "Alice's Restaurant's Children," Newsweek 74.13 (29 Sep. 1969): 101-106.
13. Rossell, "Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant,"' 16.
14. Roland Gelatt, "SR Goes to the Movies, Arlo as Arlo" Saturday Review 52.35 (30 Aug. 1969): 35.
