It's Official: The Damn Thing's Ubiquitous

Old Jonathan Lapper's daughter was only six years old. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate (to borrow a phrase from Charles Dickens).

So on Saturday I had to drive the six year old Little Miss Lapper and her six year old friend to her soccer game. It's a fascinating weekly event in which six year olds wander aimlessly in circles and oblong formations attempting to kick a ball with some sense of purpose. Occasionally, if the planets are aligned correctly and the universe engages in a brief quantum flux, the ball rolls into one of the goals. The planets do not align correctly often.

On this past Saturday we arrived to find the game had been cancelled due to the muddy field from the previous day's rain. Being the responsible and resourceful father that I am I decided the perfect alternative to a vigorous and healthy workout on the soccer field was a trip to the ice cream shop. Besides, I had a hankering for a malted. So I packed up the two little ham balls into the car and drove across town to a nice little locally owned ice cream shop for a bit of creamery delight.

The six years olds confirmed their age by ordering the oddest combination of flavors and toppings available. Maybe I'm too unimaginative but in my book gummy bears don't go with Dulce de Leche flavored ice cream very well. But who am I to judge? I got my malted, paid and we all took a seat.

Upon sitting down it wasn't long before Little Miss Lapper inquired as to the deliciousness of my malted. I told her it was indeed delicious. She (and this should be no surprise to anyone with children) immediately wanted some. I gave her the malted for a taste. She took it in both hands, as children are want to do, and that's when it happened. She looked me squarely in the eyes, furrowed her brow and said:

"I drink your milkshake. I drink it up!"

"Wow," I thought, "it's official. That goddamn line is now known by every human being on the planet."

Now obviously, movies are discussed quite a bit in my household and if I may brag for a moment, the Little Miss Lapper, at the tender young age of six, can identify by face or name most of the big stars of the thirties and forties, which places her far ahead of most casual moviegoing adults. She loves "old movies", as she says, and indeed The Awful Truth is one of her favorites, with the scene of the cat holding back the door against Cary Grant guaranteed to crack her up every time. And it's not just classics but older movies in general. Last year for a playdate she wanted to bring a DVD and picked Murder Ahoy with Margaret Rutherford. Not wanting her to face the rejection of this choice we explained that other children might not appreciate Miss Marple on the same level that she does. But at home we've watched all four of Rutherford's Marple series many times over. Margaret Rutherford fascinates the Little Miss Lapper.

But There Will Be Blood? I saw it in the theater. I still don't have it on DVD. And yet there she was, quoting Daniel Plainview to me at the local ice cream shop. Amazing.

What is it about certain movie lines that they are immortalized almost instantly? Why do some lines become ubiquitous while others go unnoticed? Casablanca is famous for it's wealth of quotable lines from "shocked, Shocked!" and "hill of beans" to "here's looking at you kid" and "round up the usual suspects." Hell, it's got so many memorable lines people even remember lines that weren't there ("Play it again, Sam"). In keeping with the classic Hollywood film theme of this comparison, Citizen Kane has a screenplay filled with great lines as well, including one of my favorites, "You know Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn't been very rich I might have been a really great man." But what's the one Kane line that everyone knows? "Rosebud."

I don't have the answer for why some lines become immortal while others do not. Some are understandable. For instance, "May the Force be with you" is not only a simple statement along the lines of "Good Luck" or "Break a Leg", it also has the fortune of being spoken in a film seen more times by more people than most other films in history. Same goes for "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." Outside of the obvious advantages of that line (spoken by Clark Gable, appearing in generationally popular movie) there's also the context: It's being said to someone who connives and schemes by someone who is, to quote an old internet joke, just so tired of all her shit. It provides the audience with a "finally!" moment that they love.

So is it context that makes a line immortal? The context of the milkshake scene in There Will Be Blood could certainly fall into the same category as the Gone With the Wind line in the simplest of comparisons in that one character is telling another character off, a character the audience has been waiting to see get told off. Only in There Will Be Blood the character doing the telling off, Daniel Plainview, is decidedly less likable than Gable's Rhett Butler. But what about those famous lines that have practically no context like "Yeah Baby!" from Austin Powers that people started saying because they didn't know how to be witty or clever on their own. Or "I'm the King of the World!" from Titanic? It's not a particularly deep line or containing any kind of clever play on words but for whatever reason it became famous. A seemingly coke-addled James Cameron even yelled it out when he won one of his many Oscars that night, acknowledging it's ubiquity.

Is it quality? Doubtful. There are many lines from many a bad film that are utterly immortalized. But quality films do seem to have the advantage. More people know "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" from The Godfather than "muzzled by army brass" from Plan Nine from Outer Space (or it's almost orgasmic description of Solaranite, one of my favorite scientific explanation movie moments in film history) but Plan Nine does have its share of famous lines nonetheless.

The thing with immortal movie lines is you never know which ones are going to become immortalized and which ones aren't. So maybe it's the mood of the country or the world at any given time. I've often thought that despite its cleverness as a line, one of the reasons that "We're gonna need a bigger boat" caught on so well was due to the sinking ship feeling all over the world in 1975. Gas shortages, meat and sugar prices shooting up, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Watergate, the drawn out end of the war in Vietnam, recession and so on and so on. It was a mess and nobody had the answer. But in that movie, Jaws, Chief Brody saw the problem and addressed it succinctly, honestly and appropriately. I think everyone in the seventies felt like we needed a bigger boat.

So what's the zeitgeist now? Why is the milkshake line so ubiquitous? Is it because it uses the word "milkshake?" Seriously, is that why? If he had said "water" instead would it have stuck? I don't think it would have so the wording definitely goes a long way in explaining its popularity.

Or is it the internet? It seems more movies have memorable lines now than ever before if only because we can watch clips from them over and over at our leisure. And that goes for television shows too. Most people can quote episodes of The Simpsons or South Park liberally and with ease so maybe it's just the access we have now. Maybe if There Will Be Blood was released in 1957 the line would've disappeared without a trace.

And this technological advantage of the internet and DVDs has helped out smaller movies immeasurably. The ability to watch the movie on DVD or online again and again has helped movies that would've fallen down the memory hole just a couple of decades before become cult classics. Take The Big Lebowski. It had a lukewarm reception in the theatres during it's opening run. It got mixed reviews and seemed destined to be one of the lesser known Coen brothers' films. Then it was released on video and took on a brand new second life as a cult classic. With its release on DVD it became even easier to go to favorite scenes over and over. And the price didn't hurt either. The Big Lebowski was one of the first DVDs I ever bought, partially because I liked the movie and partially because it's price point was around seven bucks. Today its fans (and most cinephiles in general) can quote the movie endlessly even though many of the quotes are only funny within the context of the film and don't stand out as anything special on their own. The line on the phone, for instance, when the Dude tells Walter that, no, he didn't think the kid was about to crack, is hilarious, but only if you've sat through the astonishing homework interrogation scene before it.

So will there be more out of context quoting of 'R' rated movies by six year olds in the future? Almost assuredly. We have entered the golden age of movie quoting, aided by technology, that allows moviegoers the world over to connect with each other on the basis of shared knowledge. In this case, shared knowledge of movie or television dialogue. When people unfamiliar with each other can recite a scene from a favorite movie together or knowingly laugh when the other says, " I don't roll on Shabbos!" we've entered a new age; the age of quote conversations, as I like to call them. I've had many quote conversations with people I would have otherwise had nothing to say to. Usually it ends there, but sometimes it goes further and who knows, with all these quote conversations going on, some of them may end up as the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I think I heard that in a movie somewhere.

Director's Commentary: The 70's - The Second Golden Age?

This month I will be revisiting the Oscars of the seventies in my ongoing series on the Oscars. Before I get to the next entry (1970 - 1974) I thought it might be useful to re-examine the idea that the seventies were a second golden age for American cinema.

1970 saw a major re-awakening of American film that would carry through to the mid-seventies. Finally realizing that it was losing the youth audience to foreign imports Hollywood starting financing films that today would be lucky to get backed at the Sundance Film Festival: Five Easy Pieces, M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud, Alex in Wonderland, Gimme Shelter, Husbands, I Never Sang for My Father, A Man Called Horse, Joe, Woodstock, Little Big Man. Okay, Hollywood didn't finance all of those but the studios started to distribute as many as they could while smaller distribution companies were getting into the act as well. Now defunct National General Pictures co-produced and distributed both Little Big Man and A Man Called Horse. The studios themselves continued to put out big movies like Ryan's Daughter, Patton, Catch-22, Tora, Tora, Tora and Airport of which some were successful and some were not. The start of the reputation of the seventies as a second Golden Age of the movies had begun. But the story of the second golden age isn't entirely true.

There were before and have been since just as many good to excellent to great small, intimate films made each year as there were in the seventies. The difference was in the promotion of those films and their box office take. Put it this way: In 2003 Lost in Translation was released to excellent reviews and terrific word of mouth with a limited marketing campaign. That same year Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was also released to excellent reviews with a massive marketing campaign. Lost in Translation pulled in 44 million and Return of the King pulled in 377 million. Thirty years earlier, in 1973, it would have been the other way around (and the special effects for Return of the King would have been considerably worse). That was the difference. The big box office winners were the small character driven dramas and comedies. Going back to 1970 the biggest budgeted, special effects extravaganza was Tora! Tora! Tora!. It cost $25,000,000 to make and pulled in... just $14,500,000. By contrast M*A*S*H cost all of $3,500,000 to make and pulled in... $73,200,000.

The reverse of today was true in the early seventies. Big budget, big special effects, low box-office. Low budget, no special effects, big box-office.

And if you're thinking that M*A*S*H grossed much more than Tora! Tora! Tora! due to its considerably higher acclaim consider this: In 2001 Pearl Harbor, based on the same events as Tora! Tora! Tora! and opening to even worse reviews, grossed $450,400,000 worldwide by the end of its run. With an estimated budget of $140,000,000 that's a gross of over three times the cost of the film. In the same year, 2001, Mulholland Dr. opened to near unanimously great reviews. Its worldwide gross was $20,112,339. With an estimated budget of $15,000,000 that's just a 33% take over the cost of the movie.

Mulholland Dr. is exactly the type of movie that would have flourished in the early seventies. As the baby boom moved into adulthood they were interested in seeing more adult themes on the big screen. The studios, always going where the money is, gave them what they wanted. With the success in 1969 of Easy Rider ($340,000 budget, $60,000,000 take by 1972) and Midnight Cowboy ($3,600,000 budget, $44,785,053 take) and the failure of Hello Dolly ($25,000,000 budget, $15,200,000 take) and Sweet Charity ($20,000,000 budget, $4,000,000 take) it was clear where the money was. As an added bonus the movies bringing in the most money cost the least amount to make.

By 1971 the biggest movies with the biggest marketing campaigns starred actors and actresses like Gene Hackman, Jack Nicholson and Glenda Jackson. Movies like The French Connection (made for $1,800,000 and taking in more than $51,000,000 - a whopping 28 times the cost of the movie) were winning at the box-office, the critics polls and the Academy Awards. For a short, dreamlike period it seemed that art and business had finally found a way to sleep in the same bed together. Gone were the days of the little guy being stepped on by the big studios. Gone were the days when the artist would have to struggle to get financing. Now the studios were seeking out the film students and the artists and giving them the keys to the kingdom. Young filmmakers just out of film school found themselves in the same demand that theatrically trained actors and actresses found themselves in at the advent of the sound era. The movies they and other old newcomers (like Don Siegal and Robert Altman and Hal Ashby) who had struggled under studio supervision for years, produced were challenging, engaging, thought-provoking. Titles like Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, Straw Dogs, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Last Picture Show, The Hospital, Harold and Maude, A Clockwork Orange, Deliverance, The Getaway, Sounder, Fat City, The Heartbreak Kid, Play it Again Sam, American Graffiti, Drive He Said, The Last Detail, Charley Varrick, Don't Look Now, The Long Goodbye, The Exorcist, Scarecrow, Papillon, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Serpico, Mean Streets, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, The Conversation, Chinatown, Harry and Tonto, The Sugarland Express, Thieves Like Us, Nashville, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dog Day Afternoon, Shampoo, The Man Who Would be King, Hester Street and on and on. I've left out quite a few actually, but you get the point. The bonds of playing to the box-office had been broken. From here on out the writer director could make the movie he wanted and not worry about focus groups or whether or not it would play in Peoria. Of course it would. It's what everyone wanted. It was blue skies as far as the eye could see.

But there were clouds on the horizon.

As much money as the low budget personal films were making there were other movies raking in big bucks too that had nothing to do with artistry. Big time musicals (Sweet Charity and Hello Dolly) and over-inflated dramas (Tora! Tora! Tora! and Ryan's Daughter) were no longer bringing in the big box-office that had always been guaranteed them for decades. But in 1970, by pure chance, Hollywood discovered something that brought the audiences in by the multitudes. In decades prior, disaster films had never done poorly at the box office but they were rarely ever big box-office winners either. Hollywood had even released a couple of airplane based disaster movies, The High and the Mighty (1954) and Zero Hour!(1957) that did middling to good box-office so there was no reason to believe another one would be that different. But they were wrong. Very wrong. In 1970 Airport fulfilled an unknown desire of the masses to see has-beens, former Oscar winners and second bananas gather together for an hour and a half of turgid soap-opera followed by twenty minutes of disaster management. It grossed over $60,000,000 in its initial run and went on to gross more than $100,000,000 overall worldwide.

Hollywood being Hollywood, by 1971 they had moved everyone to a ship, sent a rogue wave in its direction and called it The Poseidon Adventure. Big time box-office once again. They were on to something. And the directors that made these films weren't nearly as much a pain in the ass as those young kids making movies the studio heads didn't understand in the first place. And the actors (former stars happy to get work, character actors happy to have leads) were very easy to work with. Willing and cooperative. Hmmm...

By 1974 the disaster genre had become standard. Two big ones were released in that year: Earthquake and The Towering Inferno. Earthquake cost $7,000,000 and took in $79,700,000 worldwide by the end of its run. The Towering Inferno cost $14,000,000 and pulled in $116,000,000 worldwide before its run ended. And with plenty of studio loyalists voting, The Towering Inferno even managed to get a nomination for Best Picture! No film had yet raked in $100,000,000 domestically on its initial run but that wasn't far around the corner.

In 1973 The Exorcist had eschewed the standard distribution technique of opening in the big two, New York and Los Angeles, and then slowly making its way around the country with limited engagements before going into general release. Instead it was released en masse in as many towns and cities and on as many screens as the studios could rent. The result was big box-office as it shattered opening weekend records. By the time its general release ended it had raked in more than $89,000,000 at the box-office domestically. The idea of a wide release in lieu of limited engagements seemed like a possible goldmine. Within two years the studios would strike that gold they had long been mining for: $100,000,000 domestic.

In 1975 it happened. Jaws opened on 465 screens (nothing compared to the thousands of screens a big movie opens on today, but there were no multiplexes back then) and by the end of its initial run had pulled in $129,549,242 domestically, more than The Towering Inferno had pulled in worldwide. The Age of the Blockbuster had begun. And that Second Golden Age of low-budget independently made films was rapidly heading for the door.

Of course, there would still be many more low to mid-range budgeted movies coming out of the studios for years to come. Films like Taxi Driver, Annie Hall, Days of Heaven and Kramer vs. Kramer would still be made, still receive acclaim and still do well at the box-office. But the studios had discovered (as they always seem to do) an easy formula for big bucks: Special effects, wide releases, summer openings. It wasn't perfect. For every Star Wars there was a Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century, for every Airport 75 there was a Beyond the Poseidon Adventure. But perfect or not, the big box-office takers raked in enough to cover for the failures.

By the late seventies Hollywood had gone back to the business it was used to: Studio directors, churned out scripts, re-hashed ideas, proven formulas. The small movies were still there, they just weren't getting the star treatment they had received in the early to mid-seventies. The Second Golden Age turned out to be more smoke and mirrors than reality. The movies were great, no doubt, and there were probably slightly more of them made due to studio interest than there have been in other years. But it was studio financing and promotion that made it seem bigger than it was.

So was there a second golden age in the seventies? Yes and no. There were many more great independently made "small" films in wide release than ever before but the blockbusters, from Airport through Jaws, were still there and eventually took the attention away from the smaller films. But for a few short, shining years the filmmaker as artist stood at the forefront of American movie making. If that's what it takes to create a golden age, then here's hoping we have many more to come.

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