Monday, May 12, 2008

Movies that could not be made today

I'm thinking about a list. There are so many great movies I remember from my young penguinhood that could not be made today. For example, the original Bad News Bears with Walter Matthau, which had him as a hard drinking hard smoking hard swearing washed up old drunk corrupting a buncha little kids. The morality police would have a hissy fit. Which is why the remake of the Bad News Bears totally sucked, all the vinegar got sucked out of it and left nothing but treacle.

Another one is the movie I just watched from NetFlix -- a 14 year old Jodie Foster in The Little Girl who Lives Down the Lane. I had seen this on television many, many years ago and remembered a brilliant performance by Jodie Foster as the lead character. I was probably at an age back then when a crush on Jodie Foster wouldn't have made me the equivalent of the Martin Sheen character in the film, except she was so obviously out of my league intellectually and experience-wise (frankly she scared the penguin poop outta me) that it wouldn't have even occurred to me. Out of curiousity I added it to my queue to see how it held up as an adult. If anything, it was even more creepy and impressive. There are some places where you have to suspend disbelief, but Jodie's acting at age 14 was as impressive as I remembered. Martin Sheen is appropriately sleazy as the pedophile, and the love story was tastefully done (and because this is the European version, we got to see Jodie's older sister's backside, something that the television version of course cut out). But it couldn't be made today. First, there's no explicit blood and violence. A psychological thriller today has to have blood and violence. This is a psychological thriller, not a slasher flick, and moves more like a character-driven play than an action flick. Secondly, the notion of a girl surviving by herself would not be allowed. And the notion of a thirteen year old girl as a murderer would similarly not be allowed, 13 year old girls are required to be innocents in today's movies. And the notion of a thirteen year old and a sixteen or seventeen year old being lovers would not be allowed, a girl of that age in movies today must be virginal, they're not allowed to have sex until they're juniors or seniors in high school (sixteen or seventeen). The studios would take one look at the script, say "This would get us protests from all the tighty righties under the sun", and axe it.

So what's your list of films that would never be allowed to be made today? (And the fact that we can even make such lists says more about America today than I care to think about)...

-- Badtux the Film Penguin

9 comments:

  1. I like John Wayne movies, especially when he paddles a womans butt or otherwise gets her back in line.

    I'm pretty much fed up with todays women, they're just bunch of spoiled brats.

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  2. catch22, it was an all around brilliant adaptation of a hard book to adapt. it captured the whacked out lunacy that heller experienced during ww2. it got buried by M*A*S*H, and largely went unnoticed.

    it would never get made at all today.

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  3. I'm not so certain your idea that 13-year-old girls can't survive on their own (in the movies) holds much water. Have you seen "The Golden Compass" yet? The little girl in that film has a one-on-one audience with a vicious-minded polar bear king and not only doesn't she drop dead of fright, she lives to tell about it after seeing another polar bear knock the king's jaw off his fucking head -- I'd say her survival skills (not to mention her ability to stomach that kind of gore) are pretty damn keen. I read the book that movie was based on in the 90s, I knew what what coming, and I still flinched...

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  4. JY, "The Golden Compass" is in my Netflix queue, I'll probably see it somewhere around the end of the month depending on how fast I watch five or six movies in front of it. But you have a point there, I was *very* surprised, having read the books and seen their anti-authoritarian anti-religious tone, that they'd be allowed to be made into movies. The only thing I can think of is that the studio heads were gulled with "It's just like Harry Potter! Except with armored bears!" If it wasn't a fantasy and if not for the success of the Harry Potter movies, I doubt that it would have been allowed to be made.

    MB: I'll have to add that one to my queue.

    Beeb: Bitter much?

    - Badtux the Movie Penguin

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  5. Neither the tv or movie version of MASH would get made in today's climate and Enemy of the State would be considered propaganda and never be shown. Plus, half the Hitchcock films would be eliminated

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  6. The Birth of a Nation?

    Dave

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  7. Sorry Dave, all you have to do is turn to Faux News for that one :-).

    Deb, given the number of anti-Iraq-war documentaries that have been made, I don't see anything that would keep a movie like M.A.S.H. from being made today. Michael Moore would have a field day with it, getting back to his "Canadian Bacon" groove. Except of course M.M. is busy making documentaries nowdays rather than movies.

    -BT

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  8. "Three Days of the Condor"

    "Taxi Driver"

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  9. Classic Film Noir. When we had stars like Richard Widmark and Robert Mitchum. Directors like Sam Fuller and Jules Dassin. I know we're still making Noirs, but come on, can you compare EASTERN PROMISES or SIN CITY to NIGHT AND THE CITY and OUT OF THE PAST?

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