On August 6th, 2009 Producer/Writer/Director John Hughes died of a heart attack. Born in 1950 in Lansing, Michigan, Hughes is best known for a series of high school comedies he did in the 80s, launching the careers of some of the members of The Brat Pack. Among the actors who appeared frequently in his films were Molly Ringwald; John Candy; and Anthony Michael Hall.

Hughes’ family moved to the greater Chicago area when he was thirteen, and he attended Glenbrook High School in Northbrook, Illinois. Many of his films were set in the Chicago area - more specifically, the fictional Sherman Illinois, stand-in for Northbrook.

Hughes only directed eight films (Sixteen Candles (1984); The Breakfast Club (1985); Weird Science (1985); Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986); Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987); She’s Having a Baby (1988); Uncle Buck (1989); and Curly Sue (1991), although he was a prolific writer and producer, doing much of his less critically successful work after 1992 under the alias Edmond Dante. Some of the films Hughes wrote and produced, but did not direct include Mr. Mom; National Lampoon’s Vacation films; Pretty in Pink; Some Kind of Wonderful; The Great Outdoors; and The Home Alone movies.

During his most successful period (1983-1989), Hughes was directly responsible for no less than 13 films, among them some of the most notable comedies of the decade. He excelled at stories about families, focusing in particular on the experience of suburban young people.

The following lists consists of some of Hughes’s most successful films, all made between 1983 and 1989.

Mr. Mom (1983) Directed by Stan Dragoti  Written by John Hughes  Starring Michael Keaton; Terri Garr. After becoming unemployed, Jack (Keaton) is forced to take on the household chores after wife Caroline (Garr) returns to work.

Vacation (1983) Directed by Harold Ramis  Written by John Hughes  Starring Chevy Chase; Beverly De’Angelo; Anthony Michael Hall. The Griswald’s go on a cross country drive to visit Wallyworld.

Sixteen Candles (1984) Directed by John Hughes  Written by John Hughes  Starring Molly Ringwald; Anthony Michael Hall; Michael Schoeffling. Teenager Samantha (Ringwald) feels neglected by her family, and pines for the class hunk, Jake Ryan (Schoeffling), while trying to avoid the advances of The Geek (Hall).

Breakfast Club (1985) Directed by John Hughes  Written by John Hughes  Starring Molly Ringwald; Anthony Michael Hall; Emilio Estevez; Judd Nelson; Ally Sheedy. A disparate group of high school students spend a Saturday in detention.

Pretty in Pink (1986) Directed by Howard Deutch  Written by John Hughes  Starring Molly Ringwald; Jon Cryer; Andrew McCarthy; James Spader; Harry Dean Stanton. Poor girl Andie (Ringwald) wants to go to prom with the boy of her dreams - the rich, popular Blaine (McCarthy), while remaining oblivious to the devotion of her loyal friend Duckie (Cryer)

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) Directed by John Hughes  Written by John Hughes  Starring Matthew Broderick; Alan Ruck; Mia Sara. Ferris (Broderick), a high school senior, blows off school in order to spend the day in downtown Chicago with friend Cameron (Ruck) and girlfriend Sloane (Sara)

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) Directed by John Hughes  Written by John Hughes  Starring John Candy; Steve Martin. Neal Page (Martin) encounters a series of mishaps, and is forced to turn to traveling salesman Del Griffith (Candy) to help him get home by any means possible.

Some Kind of Wonderful (1987) Directed by Howard Deutch  Written by John Hughes  Starring Eric Stoltz; Lea Thompson; Mary Stuart Masterson. Keith (Stoltz) lusts after Amanda Jones (Thompson), oblivious to the feelings of tomboy friend Watts (Masterson).

The Great Outdoors (1988) Directed by Howard Deutch  Written by John Hughes  Starring John Candy; Dan Akroyd; Annette Benning. Chet Ripley (Candy) takes his family on what’s intended to be a relaxing vacation, but their good times are affected by the presence of Roman (Akroyd) and Kate (Bening) and their kids.

Uncle Buck (1989) Directed by John Hughes  Written by John Hughes  Starring John Candy; MaCauley Culkin; Gaby Hoffman. Ill-equipped bachelor uncle Buck Russell is forced to care for his nieces and nephews.

Hollywood has never been above navel gazing. Classics like A Star is Born (1937); Sullivan’s Travels (1942); In a Lonely Place (1950); All About Eve (1950; Sunset Boulevard (1950); Bad and The Beautiful (1952); and The Big Knife (1953) take on various aspects of the movie business. More recent Tinseltown related flicks include The Player (1992); Barton Fink; (1991); Swimming With Sharks (1994); Get Shorty (1995); Wag the Dog (1997); Bowfinger (1999); Adaptation (2002); The Deal (2007); and What Just Happened? (2008)

The idea of directors making films about their profession and/or their creative process automatically enters into some interesting meta areas, allowing filmmakers to explore an array of ideas associated with real life versus the make believe world of movies. Certain directors - Jean-Luc Godard; Frederico Fellini; Rainier Fassbinder; Atom Egoyan (who is not included here); the Iranians Mohsen Malkhmalbaf and Abbas Kiarostami, to name as few, seem especially obsessed with the differences between, and overlapping nature of, their own lives and the fictional art they create. Auteur directors are (perhaps by nature) often interested in stories arising out of their own experience, and the actual machinations of the creative process are very much a part of the real life they are leading.

All over the globe, directors have made films about various aspects of the filmmaking process. The following list, however, focuses on some quality films that are, at least in large part, concentrated on the actual making of a single movie. The list includes several documentaries, several auto-biographical films made by iconic directors, and number of films melding fact, fiction, and various forms of innovative self-reflexiveness that defy simple categorization.

Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (BRIT) (2005) Directed by Michael Winterbottom. Post-modernism pushed to its limits in this multi-layered story about the making of what has traditionally thought to be an unfilmmable novel.

Lost in La Mancha (DOC) (2002) Directed by Keith Fulton. The documenting of Terry Gilliam’s (eventually aborted) attempt to make Don Quixote.

Sex is Comedy (FR) (2001) Catherine Breillat. Anne Parrillaud is the stand-in for Breillat in this film about the difficulty a female director on location has in dealing with young, self-involved actors, coaxing performances out of them in moments that include a difficult nude love scene.

State and Main (USA) (2000) Directed by David Mamet. The story of neophyte screenwriter, playwright Joseph White (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), and his attempts to remain pure during a film shoot in small town Vermont.

Close-Up (IRAN) (1990) Directed by Abbas Kiarostami. Mixing reenactments with the actual participants and documentary footage, Kiarostami tells the story of Hussain Sabazian, a simple man who used a slight resemblance to Iranian director Mohsen Makhbalaf to impersonate him. Sabazian was later brought to trial for the fraud.

Real Life (1979) Directed by Albert Brooks. Brooks plays a version of himself, directing a documentary about a suburban Phoenix family who are chosen as the subjects of the PBS series An American Family.

Sweet Liberty (USA) (1986) Directed by Alan Alda. Alda stars as South Carolina novelist Michael Burgess, who is overwhelmed when a film production comes to his town to make the movie based on his book about The Revolutionary War. Michael Caine is actor Elliott James and Michelle Pfeiffer plays lead actress Faith.

Day For Night (FR) (1973) Directed by Francois Truffuat. Truffuat plays director Ferrand, in charge of the film Je Vous Presente Pamela (May I Present Pamela), starring troubled actress Julie (Jacqueline Bisset). Truffuat’s long time stand-in Jean-Pierre Leaud this time plays a self-centered actor.

Beware of the Holy Whore (GE) (1970) Directed by Rainier Fassbinder. A German film crew drinks and sleeps with one another at a Spanish seaside hotel while awaiting additional financing so their film can begin shooting. Fassbinder appears as production manager Sasha.

8 1/2 (IT) (1963) Directed by Frederico Fellini. One of the Italian maestro’s greatest. A surreal look at the moviemaking circus starring Fellini’s alter ego Marcello Mastriani as director Guido Anselmo, a man facing “director’s block”.

Contempt (FR) (1963) Directed by Jean Luc Godard. Godard’s cynical look at the business of filmmaking. Stars Brigette Bardot as Camille, wife of writer Paul Javal, who contemplates doing re-writes for a crass film based on The Odyssey. Godard appears as the assistant to the director, Fritz Lang, played by Lang himself.

Paul Newman was a character actor with movie star looks. He was married to the same woman for forty years, and they had three children together, but in order to marry her he left another wife and three children - a decision he was said to have never gotten over. His second wife, actress Joanne Woodward, and he, shared a home and raised their children in Westport CT, far from the glitter of Hollywood. He was a top movie star for much of his career, but managed to avoid some of the pitfalls that so often accompany the degree of fame he enjoyed.

Newman was born in Ohio in 1925, and grew up in suburban Shaker Heights, the son of successful Hungarian-Jewish sporting goods store owner. He went to Ohio University for a year before joining the Navy, intending to be a pilot, but instead was relegated to radioman-gunner during the war in the pacific. After three years in the Navy, he returned to Ohio after the war, finishing his undergraduate degree at Kenyon college (1946-1949). Following graduation, he married Jackie White, and for awhile ran the family business. However, unsatisfied with selling sporting goods, he decided to enroll in Yale drama.

After Yale, Newman headed to the New York, where studied at the actor’s studio and did work in a series of plays. Newman’s Broadway debut was in Picnic in 1953. He met Woodward while working on the stage, left his wife (the marriage to officially lasted nine years (1949-1958) and went to Hollywood. Over the course of the next few years he had a number of successful television roles, but his film debut came in The Silver Chalice (1954), an acting performance he was so ashamed of that he continued to refer to it in a mocking way for the rest of his life.

His big film break came in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), playing real-life boxer Rocky Graziano. Soon after, he became a star, and would go on to rack up nine Oscar acting nominations and one win (for The Color of Money, 1986) throughout his career. He was nominated for Oscars in five different decades, a testament to both the longevity and quality of his legacy. He also directed five films, and served as producer for a number of others. An avid car racer, he enjoyed the sport throughout his life, racing professionally and owning a team. He also established a food company, Newman’s Own, which donated some 250 million dollars to charity during his lifetime.

Newman had the kind of on-screen style, sangfroid, and presence embodied by only the greatest male movie stars. He had numerous well-known roles in popular movies over the course of multiple decades. His roles in the films chosen for this list, though (Hud; The Hustler; Cool Hand Luke; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; The Sting; Slapshot; The Verdict; Absence of Malice; The Color of Money; Nobody’s Fool; and Empire Falls) are, for the most part, iconographic characterizations, performances actors the world over aspire to match. Newman often played cocky men, full of bravado, who also seemed to carry with them a kind of heaviness from their pasts. They were heroes with flaws, contending with demons of various sorts - the kind we could identity with even if there was no escaping the fact that with Newman playing them they were all inherently better looking than most everyone else. In fact, Newman seemed to come into his own when he got a little older - grey haired, blue-eyes still ablaze, but with a kind of weariness to his countenance, a gravitas earned from living life, enduring one’s share of sadness and pain.

The Hustler (1961) Directed by Robert Rossen. Newman is pool ace Fast Eddie Felsen. Co-stars Jackie Gleason and Piper Laurie.

Hud (1963) Directed by Martin Ritt. Based on the book by Larry McMurtry. Newman plays farmhand Hud Barron, an insolent young man who rebels against hardline father Homer (Melvyn Douglas). Co-stars Patricia Neal.

Harper (1966) Directed by Jack Smight. Newman plays the titular character, detective Lew Harper. Based on the Lew Archer books by Ross Macdonald (the name was changed to Harper for the movie). Co-stars Lauren Bacall as the wife of a missing millionaire.

Cool Hand Luke (1967) Directed by Stuart Rosenberg. Luke Jackson is a petty thief sentenced to a Southern chain gang. While there, he engages in a battle of wills with the all powerful Captain (Strother Martin), thereby serving as an inspiration to some of his fellow prisoners, including Dragline (George Kennedy).

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) Directed by George Roy Hill. With a price on their head, robbers Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and The Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) are chased all the way to Bolivia by authorities. Co-stars Katherine Ross.

The Sting (1973) Directed by George Roy Hill. Henry Gondorff (Newman) and Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) are two con men in 1930s Chicago looking to take off a dangerous crime boss played by Robert Shaw.

Slapshot (1977) Directed by George Roy Hill. Newman plays Reggie Dunplop, aging player/coach of the Charlestown Chiefs, a minor league hockey team based in PA. Co-stars Strother Martin.

Absence of Malice (1981) Directed by Sydney Pollack. Newman plays liquor distributor Colin Michael Gallagher, son of a dead crime boss, who is falsely accused of wrongdoing by Miami reporter Megan Carter (Sally Field).

The Verdict (1982) Directed by Sydney Lumet. Based on a book by Barry Reed and script by David Mamet, Newman plays has-been attorney Frank Glavin, who stumbles upon the case of his career. Co-starring Charlotte Rampling and Jack Warden.

The Color of Money (1985) Directed by Martin Scorcese. Twenty years later, Newman reprises his Fast Eddie Felsen role. Tom Cruise co-stars.

Nobody’s Fool (1994) Directed by Robert Benton. Based on the novel by Richard Russo. Newman plays “Sully” Sullivan a contractor and failed father with a bum knee who, despite his age, is loathe to change his bad boy ways. Co-starring Bruce Willis; Melanie Griffith; Phillip Seymour Hoffman; and Jessica Tandy (in her last role).

Empire Falls (2005) Directed by Fred Schepisi. This HBO mini-series was based on another novel by Richard Russo. Newman plays an older version of Sully, and thus another stand-in for Russo’s fictional father. Here he’s Max Robey, hard-drinking, hard-living father to Ed Harris’ Miles. The stellar cast includes Phillip Seymour Hoffman; Robin Wright-Penn; and Joanne Woodward as town matriarch Francine Whiting.

(Heinrich Karl) Henry Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) is an American writer who, using various alter egos, (including Henry Chinaski), wrote largely about his own existence - working menial jobs, writing, drinking, and his various affairs/relationships with women.

Bukowski was born in Germany to a German mother and Polish-American serviceman father. In 1922 the family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, and then later, to Los Angeles, California, where Bukowski was raised. Growing up, Heinrich, who was called Henry, suffered through an unhappy childhood. He was picked on by other kids because of his German accent, and later, because of his terrible acne and social awkwardness. His parents were also very strict, particularly his father, who physically abused him.

Bukowski published his first short story (as Charles Bukowski) at age twenty four, but did not enjoy any immediate success. Between his twenties and late forties, he spent years working various labor intensive jobs, including a two extended stretches at the US Post Office (of three and ten years). Through most of this time he drank heavily, for a while traveling the country living an itinerant life, shacking up in various run-down apartments and hotels, and later, boozing and brawling in skid row Los Angeles bars. As detailed in his fiction, his early life was often marked by violence and dysfunction (including tumultuous relationships with women) brought on, at least in part, by his heavy alcohol consumption.

In the mid-fifties when he was around thirty five, Bukowski began writing poetry. At this point he was still occasionally publishing stories and poems in smaller publications. In the late nineteen sixties and seventies though, he became popular among college age readers and began getting offers to make appearances and give readings at various college campuses and coffee shops. It was around this time that John Martin, the publisher of Black Sparrow, made a deal with the 49 year old Bukowski (guaranteeing him $1000/month for life) that allowed him to quit the post office and write full-time. Soon after, his first novel, Post Office, was published.

Bukowski’s rising popularity among counterculture youth made for a strange marriage. The outspoken writer was from a different generation, and did not agree politically on many of the major issues with the vast majority of those expressing this new found admiration. He seemed to revel in the first real fame he had enjoyed, however, taking advantage of the paid opportunities (as well as the fringe benefits) that came his way. Without the burden of having to work another job, he would go on to publish six novels and a number of poetry and short story collections in the intervening years.

Bukowski spent his latter years in San Pedro, California writing and living a more placid lifestyle with his wife Linda Lee Beighle, whom he met in 1976 and married in 1985. Bukowski was married twice, and fathered one daughter, Marina Louise Bukowski, with another woman. He has been depicted in at least four narrative films and several documentaries, along with a number of taped readings that are available on DVD (Bukowski (1973); Charles Bukowski: The Last Straw (1980); There’s Gonna Be a Goddamn Riot Here (1979); and Bukowski at Bellevue (1995). He participated in the making of the film Barfly, penning the script, and working with director Barbet Schroeder to bring the project to the screen.

The following is a list of some of the best known narrative and documentary films based on his life and/or work.

Tales of Ordinary Madness (1983) (IT) Directed by Marco Ferreri. Starring Ben Gazzara. Italian production. Gazzara plays Charles Serking, an alcoholic, sex addicted poet.

The Charles Bukowski Tapes (1985) (Doc) Directed by Barbet Schroeder. Schroeder’s documentary would lead to the making of Barfly several years later.

Crazy Love (1987) (FR) Directed by Dominique Derrudere. French film based on Bukowski’s Love is a Dog from Hell that examines three separate days over a twenty year period in the life of lead character Harry Voss (Josse Depauw) as he navigates the rough waters that constitute his dealings with the opposite sex.

Barfly (1987) Directed by Barbet Schroeder. Starring Mickey Rourke as Henry Chinaski and Faye Dunaway as his drinking buddy/lover Wanda as they frequent Los Angeles dive bars.

Lune Froide (1991) (FR) Directed by Patrick Bouchitey. Black and white French film starring Jean-Francois Stevenin as Simon and the director Bouchitey as Dede, two aimless drunks searching for booze and sex.

Charles Bukowski: Born Into This (2003) (Doc) Directed by John Dullaghan. Documentary containing interviews with some of the important people in Bukowski’s life, as well as celebrities like Bono, Sean Penn, harry Dean Stanton, and Tom Waits, who were influenced by his work.

Factotum (2005) Directed by Bent Hamer. Starring Matt Dillon. Based on the Bukowski novel, Swede Hamer’s take on Henry Chinaski, played by a decidedly better-looking Matt Dillon. Co-Starring Marisa Tomei.

Having recently watched several documentaries about the art world like Guest of Cindy Sherman (2008); Alice Neel (2007); and Agnes Martin: With My Back to the World (2002), The Cinema Guy is reminded of some other documentaries about artists and the art world in general. There have been an abundance of these films made in the past five years, and so the following list is dominated by newer films, although there are a few classics listed as well. 

The Mystery of Picasso (1956) Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. Picasso paints twenty pictures (all of which are destroyed at the completion of shooting). 

Crumb (1994) Directed by Terry Zwigoff. Classic documentary about the eccentric San Francisco comic book artist, Robert Crumb, the man responsible for Fritz the Cat.

How To Draw a Bunny (2002) Directed by John W. Walter. Ray Johnson, a pop artist who was a contemporary of Warhol, Johns, and Lichtenstein, is the focus of this highly entertaining profile. Johnson lived his life in the mode of a performance artist, respected by his peers, but never receiving the same level of acclaim and monetary success. 

Stolen (2005) Directed by Rebecca Dreyfus. In 1990 the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston Massachusetts was robbed of millions of dollars of paintings by thieves posing as Boston Police officers. The paintings included Vermeer’s “The Concert”. To date, none of the works have been recovered. 

The Gates (2005) Directed by Albert Maylses; Antonio Ferrara. After a 26 year effort by installation artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the 23 mile long art installation “The Gates” was built along paths in Central Park in New York City. It was unveiled in February of 2005. 

Tales of The Rat Fink (2006) Directed by Ron Mann. Detailing the life and career of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, car designer and cartoonist.

Who the $&!#%&! is Jackson Pollock? (2006) Directed by Harry Moses. In the early 90s a painting was purchased for $5 at a yard sale by female truck driver Teri Horton from Texas, who claims to this day that it is an original Jackson Pollock. Horton allegedly turned down millions for the painting after the film was made.   

Who Gets to Call it Art? (2006) Directed by Peter Rosen. A look at curator Henry Gedzahler, who is associated with the 1960s New York pop scene.   

Black White and Grey: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mappelthorpe (2007) Directed by James Crump. The relationship between curator and photography collector Sam Wagstaff and photographer Robert Mappelthorpe, and their friendship with musician Patti Smith, is examined. 

My Kid Could Paint That (2007) Directed by Amir Bar-Lev. Controversy surrounding the legitimacy of four year old Birmingham, New York artist Maria Olmstead.

The Cool School (2007) Directed by Morgan Neville. A look at a group of groundbreaking artists in Los Angeles in the late 50s and 60s that included Edward Ruscha. The Ferus Gallery, opened in 1957, served as a launching pad for a number of these modern artists. 

The Art of Failure: Chuck Connelly is Not For Sale (2008) Directed by Jeffrey Stimmel. New York artist Chuck Connelly enjoyed success in the 1980s, and was the inspiration for the Nick Nolte character in Martin’s Scorcese’s section of New York Stories. Connelly fell out of fashion and is now on the outer edges of the art world.

The following list contains a selection of films about labor unions and the average working man and woman. These films are mostly centered on the fight for rights in the workplace - better wages, benefits, safe working conditions, equal treatment - things that some of us, at least in developed countries, take for granted. In a country like the United States, many have suffered, lost jobs, time away from work, money, and in some cases their lives to gain the advantages we, as workers, enjoy today. Films criticizing big business, and particularly government’s complicity in maintaining status quo, have a tendency to upset those in power. This attitude certainly has a chilling effect on the number of pro-worker, pro-union films that have managed to have gotten produced, and seen. Even a low budget film like Salt of Earth (1954) by Henry Biberman was actually banned or blackballed because it spoke about simple human rights in the work force. Three of British filmmaker Ken Loach’s films appear on this list, but there could have been more. Loach is on the vanguard when it comes to making cinema about the working class. He has been faithfully doing so for some forty years. 

1. Salt of the Earth (1954) Directed by Henry Biberman. The production included a number of people who had been persecuted during the McCarthy hearings. The film was based on the real life Zinc Miner’s Strike of 1951, and employed non-professionals involved in the actual struggle as actors and extras. Many of the miners were of Mexican descent.  

2.  On the Watefront (1954) Directed by Elia Kazan. Kazan, rather ironically given the nature of this film, named names during the McCarthy hearings. Classic tale of New York dockworkers. Stars Marlon Brando as washed-up boxer Terry Malloy. The film, Kazan, and Brando all won Oscars. 

3. The Angry Silence (1960) Directed by Guy Green. A film that is somewhat critical of British union organization. Stars Richard Attenborough as a man who bucks the party line.    

4. Man of Marble (1976) Directed by Andrzej Wadja. Story of Polish bricklayer who gained notoriety as a symbol for the labor movement.  

5. Harlan County U.S.A. (1977) Directed by Barbara Koppel. This famed documentary examines a group of 180 Kentucky coal miners striking against The Duke Power Company. 

6. Blue Collar (1978) Directed by Paul Schrader. Detroit factory workers played by Harvey Keitel, Yaphet Kotto, and Richard Pryor fight for their rights.  

7. Fist (1978) Directed by Norman Jewison. Based in 1930s Cleveland Ohio. Details the teamsters and their battles to unionize. Stars Sylvester Stallone as Johnny Kovak.  

8. Norma Rae (1978) Directed by Martin Ritt. Sally Fields shines as the titular character, a textile factory worker who stands up to vicious management tactics. Based on real life North Carolina worker and union organizer Crystal Lee Sutton.

 9. Matewan (1987) Directed by John Sayles. Story of 1920s West Virginia mine workers fighting low wages, squalid living arrangements, and even more dangerous working conditions. 

10. Moonlighting (1982) Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski. Starring Jeremy Irons as a contractor in charge of a group of Polish tradesmen working illegally in the UK.

11. Riff Raff (1991) Directed by Ken Loach. Classic Loach, the master of films about the working class. Robert Carlyle stars as a London construction worker in love.  

.

12. Bread and Roses (2000) Directed by Ken Loach. California janitors fight for their right to unionize. Adrien Brody stars as a union organizer. 

13. The Navigators (2001) Directed by Ken Loach. A group of British railway workers from Sheffield see their jobs privatized. Based on a screenplay from a longtime railway and union worker. 

14. North Country (2005) Directed by Niki Caro. Charlize Theron starred in this look at women being harassed by co-workers and management alike while working for a Northern Minnesota union mine company in the late 80s. Based on real life story of Lois Jenson.

                   The 1970s are thought by many to represent the finest decade of filmmaking in North American history. The 70s brought us a stunning array of great directorial talent - Scorcese, Altman; Coppola, Friedkin, Bogdonavitch, and Peckinpah; artists at the height of their powers who’d been influenced by cinema from the French New Wave, Italian Neo-realists, Bergman, Kurosawa, and Fassbinder; as well as American iconoclasts like Samuel Fuller and Nicholas Ray. With the studios, run by aging executives, in a state of flux, and younger writers, directors, and creative producers seizing the reigns, suddenly a slew of films with edgy, daring subject matter got financed that never would’ve never been made in the past.

As a result of this creative explosion, we got Easy Rider (1969) and Midnight Cowboy (1969), films which paved the way for the emergence of lead characters like Travis Bickle in Scorcese’s Taxi Driver (1976); Sonny Wortzik from Sydney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon (1975); and Randall McMurphy in Milos Foreman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (1975) - misfits who drew us into their altered reality. Mavericks like Hal Hasby, John Cassavettes, James Toback, and Paul Mazursky are examples of period directors with outsider perspectives, a rebellious viewpoint manifested in the stories they chose to tell, and personified by the characters populating these stories. The following list contains examples of lead characters who were not at all like the ready-made, like-able “heros” of the past. Each and every one of them has serious flaws - they are, in turn, depressed, violent, angry, resentful, promiscuous, unfaithful, selfish, egotistical, addicted, profane, loud, jealous, disaffected, disallusioned, and defiant. These characters demonstrate ugly human characteristics most traditionally assigned to movie villians, but are instead assigned the role the protagonist, and thus the anti-hero was born. There had been some examples, in the past, of true anti-heros in film noir and in Westerns (John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards from The Searchers comes to mind), but the 70s brought about a proliferation of these roles, in major films, being played by some of the biggest names of the decade - Jack Nicholson; George Segal; James Caan. No longer did the “bad” guy have to get it in the end; no longer did the “bad” character have to learn his lesson, or at least not in the same overt way. In many cases, these characters are hard to like, but conversely we often identify with them anyway, because of their flaws, because of their very fallibility and humanness.

It’s no mistake probably that only one of the characters on this list appeared in a film made after 1976. The success of Jaws (1975), and later, Star Wars (1977) helped bring about the idea of the tentpole/block-buster/summer popcorn movie - big budget “event” films that had the potential to garner huge profits for the studios and remove some of the guess work from the greenlight process. This move toward “high concept,” combined with some runaway egos and excesses, as well as several colossal box office failures, like Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980), to help re-align the Hollywood power structure and snuff out the greatest stretch of filmmaking ever seen here, and perhaps anywhere else. Thirty years-plus down the line the industry still hasn’t recovered creatively.   

Five Easy Pieces (1970) Directed by Bob Rafelson. Jack Nicholson is Robert Eroica Dupea, a womanizing, hard-living oil rigger, who comes from a wealthy, musically inclined family. 

Wanda (1971) Directed by Barbara Loden. Loden, wife of famed director Elia Kazan, wrote, directed, and starred as the title character, Wanda Goronski, a wife and mother who leaves her family to embark on a cross-country trip with a criminal. 

The Heartbreak Kid (1972). Directed by Elaine May. Charles Grodin starred as Lenny Cantow, who falls in love with another woman while on his honeymoon. 

Play it as it Lays (1972) Directed by Frank Perry. Tuesday Wells is the beautiful, but depressed and dissatisfied model/actress Maria Wyeth Long

Blume in Love (1973). Directed by Paul Mazursky. George Segal plays bad behaving Stephen Blume, desperate to get his wife back. Segal played a series of these type of characters in films like Loving (1970) Born to Win (1971); and California Split (1974). 

The Last Detail (1973) Directed by Hal Ashby. Jack Nicholson is tough as nails navy man Billy “Bad Ass” Buddunsky. 

The Gambler (1974) Directed by Karl Reisz. Based on the James Toback script, James Caan plays Axel Freed, a college English professor with a serious addiction.  

A Woman Under the Influence (1974) Directed by John Cassavetes. The indie director’s real life wife Gena Rowlands is alcoholic Mabel Longhetti.

Shampoo (1975) Directed by Hal Ashby. Warren Beatty co-write the script, produced, and played lead George Roundy, the stud hairdresser with all the women but very few solutions for the turmoil in his life. 

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) Directed by John Cassavetes. Long time Cassavetes collaborator Ben Gazzara plays Cosmo Vitelli, a strip club owner with a serious gambling debt.

Fingers (1978) Directed by James Toback. Harvey Keitel plays pianist/criminal Jimmy Fingers in Toback’s directorial debut.

There have been a number of films involving crime that have been set in and around Boston, Massachusetts. Fuzz; The Thomas Crown Affair; Blown Away; The Verdict; and A Civil Action all involved some sort of criminality at the center of the plot, even if the films themselves were, essentially, detective or court room dramas. No one could forget Boston’s most famous TV series, Spenser for Hire (which, unlike Cheers, was actually filmed in and around the city). However, while there have been lots of stories set in Brooklyn, The Bronx, and Queens, NY, only a small list of films have actually been set in inner city Boston neighborhoods and dealt with street level criminals as part of their central plots. With a group of lower budget offerings and a Hollywood film like Good Will Hunting in the late nineties, and now the latest spate of films to come out over the past few years, however, neighborhood Boston has become known to an international movie watching public. The following list contains 11 films, all of which could be comfortably categorized as belonging to the the crime genre; and all of which are based, in large part, in one or more of Boston’s neighborhoods. They range from smaller, low budget indies like Squeeze (1997) and Southie (1998) to big budget action extravaganzas like 2006s The Departed. 

1. The Friends of Eddy Coyle (1973). Directed by Peter Yates. Based on the book by local novelist, the late George V. Higgins. Starring Robert Mitchum; Peter Boyle; Alex Rocco. Perhaps the best critically accepted film of its kind to be located in Boston. Tells the story of small-timer Coyle (Mitchum), facing a possible prison sentence he’d like to avoid. Set and filmed all over Eastern Mass.  

2. The Brinks Job (1978). Directed by William Friedken. Starring Peter Falk; Peter Boyle; Gena Rowlands; Warren Oates. From the director of The French Connection, the film takes a look at one of the most famous heists in Massachusetts history, and a crew made of of local Boston thieves from places like Dorchester and the North End.   

3. Squeeze (1997) Directed by Robert Patton Spruill. Starring Tyrone Burton; Eddie Cutanda. Low budget indie set and filmed in Dorchester from Roxbury native Robert Patton Spruill. Tells the story of three high school age friends (one Latin; one Asian; one African American), and their attempts to survive the challenges of the inner city. 

4. Monument Ave. (1998) Directed by Ted Demme. Starring Dennis Leary; Colm Meaney; Billy Crudup; Famke Jannsen. Set in Charlestown. A story about low level criminal car thieves. Worcester native Leary was the driving force behind bringing this story to the screen.  

5. Blue Hill Ave. (1998) Directed by Craig Ross Jr.. Starring Allen Payne; Michael Talifero; William Forsythe. Rather typically plotted crime film about a group of street savvy friends. Set in Roxbury.  

6. Southie (1998) Directed by John Shea. Starring Donnie Wahlberg; John Shea; Amanda Peet; Rose Magowan. Ex New Kid Wahlberg plays a guy who has moved away from Southie, but returns when his mother gets sick. Cliches abound, but there’s some nice cinematography; a young Amanda Peet; and a number of local residents doing well in smaller parts. 

7. Lift (2001) Directed by Khari Streeter; Demane Davis. Starring Kerry Washington; Lonette McKee. Tells the story of a female shoplifter Niecy (Washington) from Roxbury.  

8. Mystic River (2003) Directed by Clint Eastwood. Starring Sean Penn; Marcia Gay Harden; Kevin Bacon; Tim Robbins; Laura Linney; Lawrence Fishburne.  A dark, baroque opera of a film. Based on the novel by Dorchester’s Dennis Lehane. Lehane and Eastwood do not name the neighborhood where Mystic River is set, but it bears a striking resemblance to South Boston. Filmed all over Boston

9. Gone Baby Gone (2007) Directed by Ben Affleck. Starring Casey Affleck; Morgan Freeman; Michelle Monaghan; Ed Harris. Based on the Kenzi/Gennaro detective novels by Dorchester’s Dennis Lehane.  A somewhat over-plotted, but promising debut from actor turned director/Cambridge native Ben Affleck. Like the books, set in Dorchester and filmed in the area.  

10. The Departed (2006) Directed by Martin Scorcese. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio; Matt Damon; Mark Wahlberg; Alec Baldwin; Martin Sheen; Vera Famiglia. Evidently, the rights to The James Bulger story were unavailable so Scorcese chose to take the story anyway, calling it a remake of the superior Asian flick Infernal Affairs. Set in a South Boston only a New York Italian could imagine. Screenwriter and Massachusetts native William Monaghan wrote this cartoon-like action flick. Filmed in Boston and New York. 

11. What Doesn’t Kill You (2008) Directed by Brian Goodman. Starring Mark Ruffalo; Ethan Hawke; Amanda Peet. Gritty story from South Boston native Brian Goodman. Goodman used elements from his own life experiences to tell a gripping story. Set and filmed in South Boston. 

The following list represents some of the best sports films made during the decades of 1970s & 80s. This list includes some of the best sports films ever made. Comedies like Caddyshack and Slap Shot are full of colorful characters and much quoted lines. Others, like The Bad News Bears and The Longest Yard combine elements of comedy and drama. Vision Quest, All the Right Moves, The Jericho Mile, Breaking Away, and Hoosiers are films specifically about underdogs that raise our spirits, but all of the films on the list have the idea of someone fighting the odds as part of the plot’s core. Brian’s Song and Bang the Drum Slowly are heartfelt tragedies about athletes dying young. North Dallas Forty is a cynical look at the exploitation and hypocrisy in professional sports. Fat City combines a number of these previously listed elements in its realistic portrayal of the hard world of pro boxing from the perspective of a washed-up, aging fighter. And finally, another boxing film, Raging Bull, is not only one of the finest sports films ever made, it is one of the finest period. 

Hoosiers (1986) Directed by David Anspaugh. Starring Gene Hackman; Barbara Hershey; Dennis Hopper. Set in the 50s, newly hired Indiana high school basketball coach Norman Dale (Hackman) seeks redemption in a small town as the local team makes an improbable run at a state championship. 

Vision Quest (1985) Directed by Harold Becker. Starring Matthew Modine and Linda Fiorentino. Louden Swain (Modine), Washington area high school athlete, embarks on a “vision quest” to challenge the top wrestler in the state.  

All The Right Moves (1983) Directed by Michael Chapman. Starring Tom Cruise; Lea Thompson; Craig T. Nelson. Stefan Djordjevich (Cruise) is a high school football player trying to win a scholarship to college and get out of this Pennsylvania mining town.

Raging Bull (1980) Directed by Martin Scorcese. Starring Robert Deniro; Joe Pesci. Story of real life professional fighter and champion, Jake Lamotta (Deniro), a New York pugilist known for his brawling style. 

Caddyshack (1980) Directed by Harold Ramis. Starring Chevy Chase; Bill Murray; Rodney Dangerfield; Ted Knight. A classic golf comedy full of quotable lines. 

North Dallas Forty (1979) Directed by Ted Kotcheff. Starring Nick Nolte; Mac Davis. Story of Phil Elliott (Nolte), a wide receiver for a professional sports team in Dallas who becomes disallusioned with the pro game. Based on a novel by Peter Gent, who played wide receiver for The Dallas Cowboys. 

Jericho Mile (1979) (TV) Directed by Michael Mann. Starring Peter Strauss. Inmate Larry “Rain” Murphy (Strauss) struggles with the problems of incarceration while achieving success as a competitive runner.  

Breaking Away (1979) Directed by Peter Yates. Starring Dennis Christopher; Dennis Quaid; Daniel Stern. Dave (Christopher) and his friends, the blue collar sons of “cutters” (the men who built the local quarries), try to decide what to do with their lives. Despite his father’s concern, Dave dreams of being a pro bike racer. 

Slap Shot (1977) Directed by George Roy Hill. Starring Paul Newman; Strother Martin. Reggie Dunlop (Newman) is an aging hockey player/coach tied to a floundering Buffalo based minor league team. Brought us the magic of the Hanson Brothers.   

The Bad News Bears (1976) Directed by Michael Ritchie. Starring Walter Matthau; Tatum O’Neal. Story about Morris Buttermaker (Matthau), a washed up ex-baseball player who coaches a California little league team of misfits. 

The Longest Yard (1974) Directed by Robert Aldrich. Starring Burt Reynolds; Eddie Albert. Former pro football player Paul Crew (Reynolds), incarcerated in State prison, leads a team of cons in a game against the guards.

Bang The Drum Slowly (1973) (TV) Directed by John D. Hancock. Starring Robert Deniro; Michael Moriarty. Seriously ill New York Yankee catcher Bruce Pearson (Deniro) relies on his friendship with fellow player Henry Wiggin (Moriarty).  

Fat City (1972) Directed by John Huston. Starring Stacy Keach; Jeff Bridges. An aging, alcoholic fighter from California (Keach) navigates through the seedy world of professional boxing while mentoring young protege Ernie (Jeff Bridges).  

Brian’s Song (1971) (TV) Directed by Buzz Kulik. Starring James Caan; Billy Dee Williams. True story of friendship between two young Chicago Bears football players, future hall-of-famer Gale Sayers (Williams) and Brian Piccolo (Caan), who contracts a fatal illness.

                               The following list includes a selection of ten outstanding French crime films made from 1954-1966. Jean-Pierre Melville would continue to make films of this ilk, including several more classics (Le Samourai (1967); Le Cercle Rogue (1970); and Un Flic (1971)), but this period from mid-fifties to mid-sixties produced a number of gems from a selection of France’s top directors (Melville; Claude Sautet; Francois Truffuat; Jean-Luc Godard; Robert Bresson, and Jacques Becker). Outstanding work from actors like Jean Gabin; Lino Ventura; and Jean-Paul Belmondo, who all managed to combine a certain on-screen cool with the necessary gravitas to be convincing as hardened criminals; and writers, such as Jose Giovanni, who spent eight years in prison, and was responsible for some of the best screenplays of the period, contributed to a number of quality efforts. The French Crime Wave was of course related to, and perhaps even a sub set of, the French New Wave, which brought emerging directors like Truffuat and Godard to national fame and accord and influenced filmmakers the world over. The crime films included in this list stand up as some the best of the genre in the history of cinema.   

1. Bob Le Flambuer (Bob the Gambler) (1955). Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. Starring Roger Duschene.

2. Pickpocket (1959). Directed by Robert Bresson. Starring Martin LaSalle. 

3. A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) (1960). Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo; Jean Seberg.

4. Le Trou (The Hole) (1960). Directed by Jacques Becker. Starring Marc Michel.

5. Classes Tous Risques (The Big Risk) (1960). Directed by Claude Sautet. Starring Lino ventura; Jean-Paul Belmondo. 

6. Le Deuxieme Souffle (Second Wind) (1966). Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. Starring Lino Ventura.

7. Band ‘a Parte (Band of Outsiders) (1964). Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Starring Anna Karina.

8. Tirez Sur la Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player) (1960). Directed by Francois Truffuat. Starring Charles Aznavour.

9. Le Doulos (The Finger Man) (1962). Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo; Serge Reggiani 

10. Touchez Pas au Grisibi (Don’t Touch the Loot) (1954) Directed by Jacques Becker. Starring Jean Gabin; Lino Ventura; Jeanne Moreau