Ah, you’re totally correct.
Like numerous Pat Conroy novels and their film adaptations, it’s based on the author’s actual childhood. Conroy was not trying to make Santini a “popular character”, he was depicting the reality of growing up in that kind of family. Robert Duvall’s Santini is only about 1/10th as shitty as the one in the book, who is likewise said (by the author) to be an understatement of how mean his actual father, Col. Don Conroy, was. It should be noted that the father and son Conroys became much closer in later years and “Santini” made a good faith effort to change his behavior and reconcile with his children, but the damage was done and Pat Conroy and all of his siblings were deeply troubled from the trauma of this upbringing.
But in any event, there’s nothing about The Great Santini that couldn’t be made today and there was nothing about it that was glorifying that character as someone who should be admired.
Oh, the gentleman from the South had a question about the dining arrangements. He and his comrades are discussing place settings now.
Thank-you for the elucidation!
I’m sorry I can’t think of a good DD rejoinder to that.
And for those who are wondering about my post, I probably should have added more context, but I got distracted. It’s a quote from The Dirty Dozen. Maggot asked “Are we going to have to eat with n**s?” which led to Jim Brown’s character jumping at him, and a general fight breaks out. Lee Marvin’s character says what I posted to the guard as he’s walking out.
One of my favorite lines from the movie.
There was a remake in 2010 and two sequels in 2013 and 2015 that IMO had rape scenes that were just as if not more disturbing than the original.
So they quite literally made that same movie in today’s world. And there are plenty other recent rape/revenge movies in the extreme horror world.
Ah, again fair enough. (ha! been gettin my butt kicked here in this thread, but in an awesome TIL way)
It’s vaguely coming back to me there were remakes - that genre, along with rape/revenge stuff I’m pretty ignorant of.
Heh, Liam Neeson? (I know, I know - a bit more undergound than him.)
Come to think of it… if we’re are talking of truly the “same movie made today” as in exactly alike, that simply could not happen in virtually any case, never mind “having issues” about content.
Movie or record or whatever “X” was made the way it was made because it was made then , by those people for that public . That’s why you get remakes and reboots reinterpreting things, save for gimmicks like the 1998 Psycho calque. “X could never be made today” is not really a denunciation of today.
So Blazing Saddles could not be made exactly the same in 2023 because it was made in 1974 and made its point then , mocking how the pop Western genre had erased or sanitized the racial issues of the period and that persisted into the then-current time (*) , playing its part in the culture moving in the right direction so we would not need the exact same thing again.
( * the point was NOT that it’s fun to have someone say “n___” every other scene … then again in 2023 we have people complaining they can’t get AI to use the word so maybe we need a movie ridiculing that )
I don’t think so. One of the frat boys asks one of the girls what she’s studying. When she says “primitive cultures,” we instantly cut to the Black guys dancing onstage.
There have been several movies in the past few years that could be summarized as “like American Pie, but from a female perspective”. For instance, 2019’s excellent Booksmart. And, upcoming, the absolutely bananas-sounding Bottoms.
I enjoyed Booksmart.
It’s definitely a sign of changing times.
Jared: Prepare to get bashed! In a fun way, like consensually bashed, I mean. Consensually bashed, it should say. Prepare to get consensually bashed.
Google image search for bananas bottoms yeilded interesting results, but not nearly as x-rated as I expected.
No Hard Feelings sounds like a typical and traditional teen romp. Haven’t seen it. Will soon I think.
That’s what I thought too, and that Lazarus, RDJ’s character, was right. Audiences love movies about triumph over adversity, such as mental disability or physical disability. But they want it glurged up, and they don’t want to know messy details. Simple Jack stayed simple to the end of the story. No hook, no Oscar.
What I did find offensive was the bit where Speedman (Ben Stiller) is talking about adopting a kid, and his agent (McConaughey) says “At least you get to choose…I’m stuck with mine,” and looks sadly at a photo of himself and a kid with a slack jaw and blank expression. I remember a rather uncomfortable reaction in the theater, and there was an attempt to fix this, with a skit at the MTV movie awards that showed the kid as generally neurotypical, just an unmotivated slacker. But that wasn’t something that aged badly; it was a bad idea even at the time.
I happened to watch Cannonball Run a couple days ago. I don’t think it could be made in today’s world. The scenes of Burt Reynolds abducting and drugging Farrah Fawcett, and Terry Bradshaw and Mel Tillis loading up their car with beer for the race to California wouldn’t fly these days.
Plus, it was absolutely terrible.
I agree but… that’s not a reason it wouldn’t be made today. Against a budget of $18 million, it grossed over $72 million. In 1981 dollars, that’s over $182 million.
Just a seat-of-the-pants guess, but I suspect some of the decline in the teen sex comedy can be laid at the feet of the internet; specifically, internet porn. I was a teenager back in the 80’s, and part of the appeal of the teen sex romp was, well, the sex - Phoebe Cates taking off her bikini top in Fast Times At Ridgemont High, or the guys peeking in the girls’ shower in Porky’s; these movies were aimed right at the libidos of horny high school boys.
Now, of course, those boys’ horny sons and grandsons can go online and find hours of far more explicit pornography, for free and without leaving the privacy of their bedrooms. A five-second shot of an actress’ breasts or buttocks simply isn’t as tittilating.
I certainly would never have thought “two stoners use a time-traveling phone booth to bring noted historical figures to the present for their homework” would make a good movie; and yet Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure was a thoroughly enjoyable film.
Cannonball Run is one of those nostalgia movies for me, but I agree it has some issues. The real crime was recasting the hotties in the Lambo for the sequel, not sure I saw that one more than once.
The thing that I noticed is that they make a big deal of all the teams punching a time clock at the start, and say that the lowest time from coast-to-coast wins the race. Then everyone is neck-and-neck at the finish, one team (the Lamborghini) punches the clock, and everyone else gives up. Some team that left after the Lambo could still punch in and get a better time.
Yes, I know I’m missing the point; it’s a small wtf moment in a movie that’s all about towering stupidity.