http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/a-seventies-paradox/article/2002564A Seventies Paradox
Hard times yield good TV, bad movies.
Jun 06, 2016 | By JOHN PODHORETZ
The last time America felt this bad about itself was the 1970s, and perhaps the only enduringly positive result of that time was how that rotten mood led to some genuinely great moviemaking. One could say the same today about television, and indeed the dark, anxious, impending-doom-like spirit of the great cable TV programs mirrors the pessimism of the present just as Hollywood reflected the Vietnam-Watergate-OPEC-inflation days.
Perhaps only one medium at a time can capture the zeitgeist, because Hollywood is now as awash in escapist banality as television was during the previous American low. That banality extends even to earnest efforts to evoke the kinds of movies Hollywood used to make in the 1970s.
The new George Clooney-Julia Roberts picture Money Monster was directed by Jodie Foster, whose participation in the great 1976 Martin Scorsese film Taxi Driver nearly changed history when it inspired the near-assassination of Ronald Reagan. It is not Scorsese to whom the movie pays homage but rather Sidney Lumet, who directed Dog Day Afternoon in 1975 and Network in 1976. Money Monster is, like Dog Day Afternoon, the story of a hostage-taking in New York City that unfolds over the course of a few hours; and like Network, it is a partly satirical portrait of an unserious television culture and its terrible impact on people’s daily lives.
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