Cinematic History as Only the Winners Can Tell It!
December 19, 2019 12:29 PM Subscribe
Tom Breihan (previously) has a column for the A/V Club. Well, actually, he has several, but currently his once-or-twice monthly efforts go to chronicling the highest-grossing movie of each year, starting from 1960's Spartacus, and currently up through 1975's Jaws. Some of the featured entries are no surprise. Some of them are utter surprises. But like his work generally, all of it is a fascinating plunge into 20th Century U.S. History through the lens of pop culture. The Popcorn Champs.
Serious rabbit hole!
posted by supermedusa at 5:46 PM on December 19, 2019
posted by supermedusa at 5:46 PM on December 19, 2019
Some of them are utter surprises.
I saw both Billy Jack (1971 Popcorn Champ) and The Godfather (1972 Popcorn Champ) on the same day in early spring 1972. I was twelve at the time. A friend and I pulled a fast one on a field trip day in downtown Toronto, managed to slip away from the rest of the class without getting noticed (it's a long story, but let's just say, things were different in 1972). Anyway, the main intention had been to see The Godfather, then catch a ride home with friend's dad afterward. But we had hours to kill before The Godfather started and there was Billy Jack still showing down the block (like I said, things were different in 1972, movies stuck around in theaters way longer, particularly popular ones). So we saw it, and it was great, the best thing ever to our twelve year old brains and souls what with hippies, cool music, cool violence, actual sex! Way better than The Godfather, which was rather over our heads, and long, though it did also feature actual sex and plenty of cool violence.
Anyway, it was one of those days you do remember. And if you're wondering how two twelve year old boys managed to get into two then R-Rated films. Well, like I said, things were different in 1972.
posted by philip-random at 6:02 PM on December 19, 2019 [6 favorites]
I saw both Billy Jack (1971 Popcorn Champ) and The Godfather (1972 Popcorn Champ) on the same day in early spring 1972. I was twelve at the time. A friend and I pulled a fast one on a field trip day in downtown Toronto, managed to slip away from the rest of the class without getting noticed (it's a long story, but let's just say, things were different in 1972). Anyway, the main intention had been to see The Godfather, then catch a ride home with friend's dad afterward. But we had hours to kill before The Godfather started and there was Billy Jack still showing down the block (like I said, things were different in 1972, movies stuck around in theaters way longer, particularly popular ones). So we saw it, and it was great, the best thing ever to our twelve year old brains and souls what with hippies, cool music, cool violence, actual sex! Way better than The Godfather, which was rather over our heads, and long, though it did also feature actual sex and plenty of cool violence.
Anyway, it was one of those days you do remember. And if you're wondering how two twelve year old boys managed to get into two then R-Rated films. Well, like I said, things were different in 1972.
posted by philip-random at 6:02 PM on December 19, 2019 [6 favorites]
In his review of 1972 and the Godfather, he mentions
The contender: The box office history of 1972 is wild. The Godfather’s greatest competition was the impressively dumb disaster epic The Poseidon Adventure, and some of that year’s other big hits were just straight-up porn flicks like Deep Throat and Behind The Green Door.
Wha??? So I looked it up. The top grossing movies for 1972: Number 4 was Deep Throat with $45 million in North America domestic grosses. Number 1, The Poseidon Adventure, made over $93 million.
posted by blob at 9:27 PM on December 19, 2019
The contender: The box office history of 1972 is wild. The Godfather’s greatest competition was the impressively dumb disaster epic The Poseidon Adventure, and some of that year’s other big hits were just straight-up porn flicks like Deep Throat and Behind The Green Door.
Wha??? So I looked it up. The top grossing movies for 1972: Number 4 was Deep Throat with $45 million in North America domestic grosses. Number 1, The Poseidon Adventure, made over $93 million.
posted by blob at 9:27 PM on December 19, 2019
blob: Yup. Now, as is made clearer in his Billy Jack article, the "top grossing" criteria he's using is for all time (Billy Jack seems to have gotten much greater distribution in 1972, for instance, which is probably why phillip-random saw it the same day he saw The Godfather. So The Poseiden Adventure probably made more money during 1972, but not as much as The Godfather has made over the course of time.
And yeah, Breihan talks about the weirdness of "Deep Throat" being a popular hit in his "The Number Ones" column as well.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:54 PM on December 19, 2019
And yeah, Breihan talks about the weirdness of "Deep Throat" being a popular hit in his "The Number Ones" column as well.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:54 PM on December 19, 2019
somehow I missed Deep Throat that day.
posted by philip-random at 10:27 PM on December 19, 2019
posted by philip-random at 10:27 PM on December 19, 2019
History won't be kind to this century's winners.
posted by fairmettle at 1:04 AM on December 20, 2019
posted by fairmettle at 1:04 AM on December 20, 2019
It's kind of a weird choice to go with all time box office receipts in discussing movies in the context of the time they were released, but it does make some sense for Billy Jack as it was both so emblematic of its era and took a while to build its box office totals.
The Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door thing isn't so hard to understand once you reframe the context to that of a film world which had been laboring under the production code up into the sixties and was largely unaware of the concept of "porn" as we know it today. While there had been some "nudie" movies made and there was other "pornographic" material out there, movies were generally seen as a much bigger cultural phenomenon, where the release of a movie to normal movie theater carried a sense of some minor import to it. The X rating wasn't intended nor used as just a way to label porn, it was meant to cover all movies that were for adult audiences only, so, as some of the articles mention, things like A Clockwork Orange and Midnight Cowboy were also rated "X" at the time. That meant Deep Throat and Midnight Cowboy were vaguely equivalent as products, even though by today's standards we wouldn't see them that way at all.
Both were new kinds of movies that didn't have the same ready categories to cover them as we might now. Deep Throat was reviewed by movie critics as if it was a more standard release, as was Midnight Cowboy. It didn't take long for that to change, but for a short time there was the idea that explicit sexuality might be a subject "real" movies could engage with. But that faded when it became apparent that the money was in the more exploitative side and "porn" movies got their own separate theaters. (Though the idea did resurface in the nineties and some other "real" movies have featured explicit sex since then.)
posted by gusottertrout at 1:12 AM on December 20, 2019 [6 favorites]
The Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door thing isn't so hard to understand once you reframe the context to that of a film world which had been laboring under the production code up into the sixties and was largely unaware of the concept of "porn" as we know it today. While there had been some "nudie" movies made and there was other "pornographic" material out there, movies were generally seen as a much bigger cultural phenomenon, where the release of a movie to normal movie theater carried a sense of some minor import to it. The X rating wasn't intended nor used as just a way to label porn, it was meant to cover all movies that were for adult audiences only, so, as some of the articles mention, things like A Clockwork Orange and Midnight Cowboy were also rated "X" at the time. That meant Deep Throat and Midnight Cowboy were vaguely equivalent as products, even though by today's standards we wouldn't see them that way at all.
Both were new kinds of movies that didn't have the same ready categories to cover them as we might now. Deep Throat was reviewed by movie critics as if it was a more standard release, as was Midnight Cowboy. It didn't take long for that to change, but for a short time there was the idea that explicit sexuality might be a subject "real" movies could engage with. But that faded when it became apparent that the money was in the more exploitative side and "porn" movies got their own separate theaters. (Though the idea did resurface in the nineties and some other "real" movies have featured explicit sex since then.)
posted by gusottertrout at 1:12 AM on December 20, 2019 [6 favorites]
These are great, I've been merrily reading them all morning. Thanks!
I like the "gross over all time" approach mostly because it pulls up stuff like Cleopatra and Billy Jack to talk about.
posted by Gin and Broadband at 1:33 AM on December 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
I like the "gross over all time" approach mostly because it pulls up stuff like Cleopatra and Billy Jack to talk about.
posted by Gin and Broadband at 1:33 AM on December 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
I might add that even up to 1980 or so there was still some sense that there could be artistic value to "porn". The local "arthouse" repertory theater, that would play daily double features of all kinds of movies, from King of Hearts and Harold and Maude one night, to Aguirre the Wrath of God and Amarcord the next, and on a couple rare occasions, double bills of Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door or Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann and The Opening of Misty Beethoven because Radley Metzger, the director of those latter two, had some "arty" cred at the time, and sorta still does among some auteurist types. It was a weird time for movies just before cable and VHS really took off.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:42 AM on December 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by gusottertrout at 1:42 AM on December 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
Watched 'Cleopatra' a while back. Wow, is it ever long. Seemed like it just wouldn't end.
Also, the art direction is wild. My brother mentioned that it reminded him of Peter Greenaway.
posted by ovvl at 9:40 AM on December 20, 2019
Also, the art direction is wild. My brother mentioned that it reminded him of Peter Greenaway.
posted by ovvl at 9:40 AM on December 20, 2019
I like what he writes about 2001:
That’s because 2001 isn’t a straightforward story. It’s something else: a wild grab at transcendence. Within a climate of roadshow musicals and war epics and slapstick farces, here was this abstract art piece, this meticulous and cold-blooded stare into the abyss, and it was presented as a blockbuster movie. It succeeded on those terms, too.posted by octothorpe at 10:02 AM on December 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
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