Hollywood has a rich and storied history of all-time great directors at the height of their creative and artistic powers. Since the first days of film in the earliest decades of the 20th century, right or wrong, the director of a movie has always been regarded as the primary auteur responsible for the final product on screen. Emerging from theashes of the Hays Code, which came to an end in 1968, and the old studio system along with it, the “Movie Brats” charged into Hollywood, many of them young, passionate, and fresh out of film school, creating decades of dominance at the box-office.
Changing the landscape of a desperate Hollywood industry seeking to speak to a new generation of audiences who had lost interest in the juvenile, candy-coated films of the previous decades, The Movie Brats wrestled creative control away from the big studios, and empowered themselves in the process, easily becoming the all-time greatest generation of film directors; here’s why.
Emerging Talents
After decades of censorship, and a studio system dominated by old ideals having finally come to its demise, the brats, in contrast to many directors of their time, were young, irreverent, rule breaking anarchists, highly suspicious of any form of authority; especially when it came to the movies they wanted to make. One of the major leading figures of this time was Francis Ford Coppola, who as a student at UCLA had beguna successful career directing picturesfor Paramount Studios. For many aspiring filmmakers, Coppola was seen as the blueprint for success in Hollywood. One of the filmmakers lucky enough to study under him was a young George Lucas, who attended the film program at USC. Lucas archives this time of his career in the1968 documentary,Filmmaker: A Diary by George Lucas. This film followed Coppola on the set of Paramount’sThe Rain People, and allowed Lucas to learn under a director already shooting films for a major studio.
But, Lucas and Coppola weren’t the only new names in town. Filmmakers like Peter Bogdonovich, William Friedkin, and Martin Scorsese had begun career trajectories of their own, and many of their films, like Bogdonovich’sThe Last Picture Show,rendered the youth of his era more authentically than anything that had come before. To this new generation of filmmakers, unlike many of their older contemporaries, film was more than just a job commissioned by the studios; it was a passion, a way of life, a lifelong pursuit of perfection in the frame, and a way to speak truth to the injustices of their time. Films like Hal Ashby’sM.A.S.Hand Coppola’sApocalypse Nowtook a more critical look at the American war efforts around the globe in the decade after the end of the Vietnam War, and as the old studio gatekeepers had finally fallen, new, bright-eyed acolytes of the greats before them had come to carry the mantle for a new generation of filmmaking legends.
Related:Apocalypse Now: Why Francis Ford Coppola Deserves More Credit for the Masterpiece
Inspired Generation
As America emerged out of the second world war, many things once considered lavish, like the idea of going to school for film, became more normalized. Film, in the largest sense, was still a relatively new art form, and as such not much study had been dedicated to it. For the first time in history, young students could go to school for their passions and not just a profession. That allowed filmmakers like Scorsese, Lucas, DePalma, and the Spielbergs of the world, to cut their teeth on films that would end up inspiring their careers in numerous ways. Directors like John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, andlegendary Japanese directorAkira Kurosawa, the primary visionaries of their time, are often credited as the catalyzing agent for many Movie Brat films. One need only watch Kurosawa’sSeven Samuraito see the spirit of that film replicated in future film offerings like Lucas’Star Wars, Peckinpahs’The Wild Bunch, or even later Spielberg masterpieces, likeSaving Private Ryan.
New Saviors of Old Hollywood
A major threat to movie theaters, and to the studios began to emerge in the 1950s as the adoption of television screens in the home threatened to make the movie-going experience obsolete, or at the very least, lessen its importance in the cultural hegemony of the time. Studios, desperate to gain an upper hand introduced new film technologies like Cinemascope, which offered widescreen exhibition as the exclusive realm of the theater-going experience. The first film to utilize Cinemascope technology in its theatrical run wasThe Robein 1953, but that wasn’t the only threat. The Hays Code, established in the 1930s, created a film industry that couldn’t keep up with the growing maturity of audiences emerging out of two world wars, and Vietnam. For old Hollywood, it was time to grow up, or else be left behind by a more youthful culture that had moved past the fantasy world that the Hays Code censorship prescribed.
In 1968, the Hays Code was abolished, and films like 1969s,Easy Rider,built on the trend of screening grown-up films with a more political bent. But, studios we’re still left trying to fill theaters will old style films that young movie-goers were okay with skipping. As the studios grew more desperate, filmmakers like Coppola took advantage, signing multi-film deals that put him in charge of the studios creative direction, and instead of casting old directors in the chair to tell new stories, Coppola started from scratch, putting his young, rule breaking director friends in lead auteur positions. Films like Lucas’American Graffiti, after hisless-than-stellarTHX 1138spooked executives, spoke to a younger generation of audiences who wanted movies made for and about them. Friedkins’The Exorcistwasa mature horror flickthat would be impossible to make by today’s standards, andCoppolas’The Godfatherset off an entire decadeof dominance that was unrivaled. For seemingly the first time ever, a new generation of filmmakers were given the keys to the kingdom, free to make the kind of films that would define an era.
Related:Easy Rider Remake in the Works, Producers Will Update the Story for Modern Times
The Modern Day Blockbuster
In 1975, a theater busting film was released to the public and changed cinema history as we know it forever; that film wasJaws.Steven Spielberg, the quintessential movie brat, attended California State University, and had his beginnings shooting cinematic made-for-television films on network television.Jawswould set off Spielbergs’career spanning to modern timesand would make him the most commercially successful filmmaker, ever. AfterJaws, the business of show business changed, and studio executives everywhere began to create films and market them as cultural events. This trend continued in the summer of 1977, whenStar Warshit theaters, creating the most cinematically influential mythology of our times, and shattered the records thatJawshad set only two years earlier.
From the late ’60s to the early ’80s, the movie brats had commanded screens, and changed the fortune of the studios, the film industry itself, and even the movie-going culture that surrounded the cinematic experience, forever. After the decimation of the studio system, filmmakers had been given unbridled access to the film industry, and were able to make films their way; against all the rules. This trend continued until 1980, whenHeaven’s Gate, a film directed by Michael Cimino, bankrupted an entire studio, United Artists, and gave the keys back over to the film studios who had now been increasingly consumed by large media conglomerates. Still, when we look back on this era of film history, there is no other time that can rival it, and no other generation of filmmakers given the type of resources and freedoms that allowed the Movie Brats to become the greatest generation of film directors, ever.
