Before Luke and Laura. Before the Pet Rock and Crystal Pepsi. Before dinosaurs roamed amusement parks and devoured tourists, box office records and scientists alike, there was always something more — before Hollywood died.
It seems like only yesterday that my entire grasp of storytelling revolved around riding my bike to the nearby convenience store to pick up the latest round of DC Comics. Batman, Superman, The Flash, and Green Lantern all magnificently brought to life by such artists of the time like Neal Adams, Mike Grell and Jim Aparo.
But like everything else that expands through time, my tastes in storytelling evolved beyond the DC and marvelous Stan Lee universe that existed on that spinning metallic rack at the corner convenience store. There were novels to be consumed of fantasy and science fiction that consisted of worlds crafted by Tolkien, Frank Herbert and Piers Anthony.
The next Frogger-like leap of my pop culture evolution was, obviously, television and the silver screen. However, the tastes of my friends and I were never really satisfied by the Saturday afternoon schlock of the D-list Godzilla movies with the host in a knockoff Superman costume.
As children of the Corn Pops, we craved something more, something substantial, even at that early age of innocence. And that’s when it arrived, that beacon of hope in dark sky on an otherwise dreary late night. A Bat signal dripping with satire that would forever reshape my isolated little world of Super Friends and Slinky’s with Land Sharks and samurai warriors working in a Coke (No Pepsi!) fueled deli called ‘Saturday Night Live.’
So just as the saga of Star Wars had illuminated the childhood imaginations of my X generation, Saturday Night Live was tapping into the darker side of our formative years. It was subversive and sly and just thing to yank the inner George Carlin out of my scrawny, pre-adolescent frame. It was an R-rated form of Wacky Packages televised from a faraway studio in 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
And it was great.
Now many of my generation are struggling with the thought of an all-female cast of Ghostbusters and a fedora-wearing Chris Pratt in an Indiana Jones reboot. What is left for a Mallrats 2 or a Clerks 3 to even teach us anymore? That all originality died in some mall kiosk back in the ’80s? Is there nothing on the horizon that will once again set the world on fire as did early Saturday Night Live, seemingly a lifetime ago?
There will never be a way to gauge it. My parents and their generation marveled at The Wizard of Oz in pre-Spielberg like wonder, I’m sure. Frank Sinatra was most likely my mom’s Rick Springfield (which awkwardly morphed into Justin Bieber for today’s iPhone generation). Steve Allen might have been the prehistoric ancestor to Steven Colbert, as well. Good, bad, or blah, the evolution goes on and on.
Let’s face facts: The death of Hollywood is not a new concept. Scholars and novices have been lamenting “the death of something” in entertainment since the RCA dog, Nipper, first heard his master’s voice on that antique phonograph.
But I guess the real question is, “when and where did the lack of artistic originality into today’s society start down that slippery downward slope?” No one was ever heard saying “Why did they need to make The Godfather when all it is doing is ripping off old Jimmy Cagney movies!” were they?
I mean, seriously, was Raiders of the Lost Ark just a really good knock-off of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and I was just too naïve to notice it or all some part of an infinite jest?
If cinematic history has taught us anything at all, the answer to these limitless questions is probably somewhere in the back pages of James T. Kirk’s Federation manual under “The No-Win Scenario.”
For me, it probably started after I left the fantasy world of college life and embarked on a 20-something adventure, sitting around with a bunch of my highly educated, woefully under-employed, beer swilling colleagues. We were wittingly our days away together watching Adam Sandler’s opus, Happy Gilmore when suddenly it dawned on me like the ape from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Was Adam Sandler’s Gilmore just a woeful, watered-down version of Caddyshack or was I just yearning for my lost, laugh-filled youth?
Maybe I was onto something revolutionary and redundant many moons ago, but it has followed me to the present day of Ghostbusters 3 and regurgitated Vacation movies: Was Hollywood finally out of ideas?
How is every summer blockbuster seemingly based on some Frank Miller graphic novel now? Have I become some pop-culture codger who should be screaming at the kids of today to get off his cyber lawn?
Or has there just been a technology shift in the space-time continuum that has thrown all the ‘quality entertainment’ onto HBO, AMC and Netflix? Jack Bauer on 24 and The Island on Lost might be two notable non-cable exceptions; although didn’t Twin Peaks and The X-Files also have a hand in bringing intelligent life back to the small screen on network TV? Whatever the case, the truth is out there!
Why is it that shows like Breaking Bad and The Wire (or even Mad Men) seem more “Scorcese-like” than any modern movie director Martin Scorcese has made in the last few decades?
Again, I know there are a slew of talented independent writers, producers and directors out there, living beyond the dune sea. But it’s getting harder and harder to find them (especially when they have to compete against money-grubbing movie studios who would rather make another blockbuster about a Terminator in a Depends diaper).
Granted, maybe it’s just a changing of the guard for a simple guy with a Flux Capacitor in his Gran Torino. Maybe Luke and Laura were really just Bogey and Becall, transported to Port Charles from Key Largo (and I was too blind to see it back then). Maybe venerable comedy meccas like The Second City and Upright Citizens Brigade are just waiting to churn out the next Harold Ramis or Amy Poehler like they have faithfully done before?
But the film nerd in me filled with childlike nostalgia will always be searching for the next big thing in independent-thinking films, whether it be comedies, space operas or otherwise.
Maybe The Force will be with me when it awakens in Star Wars: Episode VII while simultaneously groaning at the trailer for Caddyshack 3 in the coming attractions?
It’s a slippery pop culture slope, to be sure.
