Fielding Melish wrote:
I still think tha "The Insider" is the best 70s movie from the last 5 years.
You would be correct. Even better than "All the President's Men" it is, and the film which Russel Crowe has built his entire reputation around. Also contains Pacino's best monologue since his Dog Day Afternoon peak:
You pay me to go get guys like Wigand, to draw him out. To get him to trust us, to get him to go on television. I do. I deliver him. He sits. He talks. He violates his own fucking confidentiality agreement. And he's only the key witness in the biggest public health reform issue, maybe the biggest, most-expensive corporate-malfeasance case in U.S. history. And Jeffrey Wigand, who's out on a limb, does he go on television and tell the truth? Yes. Is it newsworthy? Yes. Are we gonna air it? Of course not. Why? Because he's not telling the truth? No. Because he is telling the truth. That's why we're not going to air it. And the more truth he tells, the worse it gets!
I have to think that's about the most powerful indictment of Television Journalism in Hollywood film in a long, long time
Oh, for the record
Favourite films of the directors mentioned
Altman: McCabe & Mrs Miller
Peckinpah: Straw Dogs
Coppola: The Conversation
Ashby: Being There
Scorsese: Taxi Driver and Raging Bull
De Palma: I'm going out on a limb and saying "Scarface" if only because, frankly, if ever a film summarised the respective directors' excesses, then that is it.
What about John Schlesinger? Surely he got the ball rolling with such great films as Billy Liar, and crucially Midnight Cowboy...
Also...
Anyone with the remotest interest in these directors' work(s) should read this. It's rioutous, entertaining, and fully epitomised how the directors were pricks to a man. Bisking probably fucks around with the facts more than he admits (much of the stuff in there is hearsay repudiated by the people involved, Spielberg in particular has taken the book to task, though he comes accross as the nicest bloke in the book, just the least artistically adventurous). Cocaine, sex, and some films. A great read, but worth taking with some salt.
It's before my time but I've been told, he never came back from Karangahape Road.