While I was in high school, some forward-thinking teacher showed us the movie The Strawberry Statement, in class. It stuck with me, so much so that I later found a used copy of the book it was based on, by James Kunen. It’s set in ’68 during the student protests and the takeover of the administration building at Columbia University.
In hindsight, it’s easy to think the anti-war position was a popular view, but in a very immediate way The Strawberry Statement brings home how embattled they were, how much of a minority they felt (the jocks, for example, called them “pukes”), and not just the spontaneity of the moment but a feeling of newness, or everything being up for grabs.
Later, in college, I saw Medium Cool at the student union. By the time I got to college the protests were long over and the good times of a liberal era were rolling. So anything to do with the unrest was easily swathed in the sepia-toned romantic glow that revolution can have if the riot gear isn’t out and the billy clubs aren’t swinging.
Medium Cool is also amateurish by our standards. It involves the Chicago riots of ’68, the role of the media, especially TV. There are obvious rough spots or gaffes, but it has an honest and earnest quality I find very endearing. I listened to the director’s commentary, and found out the TV talking heads at the beginning were all actual Chicago TV anchors at the time. The role of TV was still up in the air, and they are considering their roles in a way we, in our post-Ted Baxter world, give little weight.
So it’s a good blend of actors and real people. The story is interesting, too, involving a West Virginia family moved to Chicago who get caught in the reporter’s world, their Appalachian views on the roles of men and women, and real life footage of the riots.
The director, Haskell Wexler, had actually filmed the national guard preparing for the ’68 convention months earlier in Michigan. Guardsmen in wigs playing the roles of hippies and protesters so they can practice their tactics — all real stuff. The plot involves the family caught up in the protest, Mom searching for her son, and Wexler’s scenes of her in a red dress running through the protests, looking for her son, have a vivid innocence. It’s antiquated filmmaking, but all very earnest.
In one scene they’ve gotten permission from blacks to visit a part of Chicago’s south side, only not everyone got the word. One actor goes into a drugstore to buy cigarettes and when he comes out is confronted by a local. It’s caught on camera, a young black comes up and asks him what he’s doing here and tells him not to come into this neighborhood again — it ain’t acting, it’s real.
Odd to see Peter Boyle, Jesse Jackson, and Studs Terkel in one movie, so long ago and so much younger. Amazing to think they made a movie of it at all, overlaying their plot on that anarchic and violent backdrop. At the end, during the credits, they run an audio recording of some poor middle-aged guy visiting the town who had no sympathy for the peaceniks until he gets beat up by the police and he is raging his anger, a livid convert to the cause.
Plus, I liked the soundtrack. For days afterward I had the theme music running through my head, a cool insistence, dramatic yet under-stated bass, percussive and steady, with a wry tone.
Did I say it was amateurish in an earnest way? They even included homing pigeons. The screenwriter and filmmaker deliberately used the birds as both part of the plot and as a peace symbol. C’mon — it was released in 1969.
So for years I’ve had those two movies in my head, as representative of what gets called “the sixties” as a sort of shorthand for the politics of the end of the decade. (What would be representative of the first 2/3rds of the decade, 1960 to 1966? Breakfast at Tiffany’s? A Hard Day’s Night? Doris Day? Star Trek? It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World?)
I’ve looked for The Strawberry Statement, but it isn’t on Netflix’s list, and have never seen it in a video store. (Odd, in one sense, as the City of New York wouldn’t let them film there, so it was actually filmed here in the SF Bay Area.)
I’ve kept my eyes peeled for any other movie that caught the zeitgeist, especially the politics of the time, in any real way.
And then Peter Boyle died, sometime around New Years. In his obit I read about the first movie he starred in Joe, and put it on our Netflix list, where it was a “long wait” before we got it. And it was excellent! I never knew Susan Sarandon was ever so young. She’s a bit air-headed as the hippie dippy daughter, but I suppose there were people like that.
Boyle, as the blue-collar WW2 vet up in arms and speaking out against “the kids these days” is great. From our perspective he can seem over the top, but if you lived through it you can appreciate how well he captures the ethos of the time.
Later in life Peter Boyle spoke of how odd it was to have people come up and tell him how much they loved and agreed with the character Joe, never suspecting that his views were the opposite of the character’s.
While the first two movies are good interior views of a subculture, Joe better captures the larger cultural issues of the time. I haven’t seen The Strawberry Statement for over 30 years — but that it’s difficult to find probably has something to do with the deficiencies of its plot. I think it’s safe to say Joe has the best plot of the three, as well. So it now tops my personal list as the best movie about the late, political 1960s.
But I’d love to consider any others anyone else can think of. Does anyone have any other suggestions?
You’re making my ‘must see’ list much longer.
Time to join one of the movie-mailer services. Netflix makes it easy. Of course, you have to work this into the writing schedule somehow …
This post is a blast from the past. Made me want to try to find the movie somewhere. Or at the very least, the soundtrack. Remember that Thunderclap Neuman song, “Something in the Air?” That’s a song you can’t get out of your head.
What about Pennebaker’s “Don’t Look Back” with Bob Dylan and that cameo by Allen Ginsburg. It’s kind of like reality film meets the politics of being an artist or musician of that time. It’s one of my favorites of the late sixties.
Oh, QM, I definitely remember Thunderclap Newman and yes, like you, I’d like to see the movie again, also to hear the music. I’m under no illusion that it wouldn’t be disappointing by our cinematic standards (rather, I expect that it would be, and there would be a sort of earnest awkwardness to it, also). But there can be a certain authenticity to seeing something filmed in the moment, of its own time (and perhaps trying hard to be hip and au courant).
Pennebaker’s “Don’t Look Back” is in our Netflix queue; I have to admit, it’s been queued for a while as I/we keep sneaking other movies, especially new releases forward. But it’s getting closer — added it at the same time as “No Direction Home” which was wonderful, even as it gave us a darker side of Bob (stealing his friends albums in Minneapolis? The Woody Guthrie records? Urk.)
As for time travel, here in the SF area there is a radio program called “Ten at 10” – 10 great songs from one great year, beginning at 10 AM weekdays. It includes blast-from-the-past commercials and political clips.
The DJ has people call in and vote on best of set. People from around the country tune in on their computers, sometimes at the end he’ll play appreciative phone calls from Boston or Omaha or wherever.
My interest depends much on the year, but some years are great fun. On Saturday mornings they play all 5 from that week, back to back. It’s 1975 now here in my den; we’ve listened to “Tangled up in Blue,” Queen, “Born to Run.” Gerald Ford was on a bit ago addressing the nation on the Mayaguez incident in Korea; later Humphrey spoke, counseling caution until the facts were in. Discotex and the Sexolets played “Get Dancing”, Journey, Steely Dan, and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils also played.
It’s great fun, on KFOG, (104.5 out here), if you have interest–I know you can listen via their website. And, almost best, no “present time” commercials except between the sets!
Yeah, I just checked out the KFOG link. I’ll have to listen to 10@10 sometime. I like the idea of the Saturday marathon. I saw Bobby Bloom’s Montego Bay was on Friday. Sounds like a cool show.
Yes, No Direction Home is great. Tsk, tsk, stealing his friends records. Hmmm. I read a book written by a couple of the studio musicians from Mpls who played on Blood On the Tracks. I guess they got missed in the credits. It’s a detailed book about the making of that album. Blood’s one of my favorites. Besides the older classics.
Every summer they have something called Dylan Days up in Hibbing. We’ve gone up the last few years. It’s kind of fun to do once in a while. You get a bus tour of Dylan haunts in Hibbing, including his childhood home. It’s a cool town.