Back when your grandparents were dating – let’s make that era sometime in the 1950’s, a film star was known the world over for simply standing on a grating on a Manhattan street and having a wind draft from below lift up her skirt.
That would be the legendary Marilyn Monroe and the film was called The Seven Year Itch. Monroe’s career was already in high gear by that time (1955), and an iconic picture like what was used in the film’s poster (to the right), only added to her allure. Sadly, she died in her sleep in 1962, having made, in fact, only six more films after this one.
This film was a male fantasy of course. Tom Ewell played the male lead whose wife goes out of town for a period of time, and then, a dreamy, single, sexy blond bombshell moves into the apartment upstairs. Fantasies ran rampant through his head after chatting with her, when she said to him, “When it’s hot like this, you know what I do? I keep my undies in the icebox.”
Some of you may recognize our title this month. Does it take you back to the late 60s and early 70s, when America’s youthful males were obsessed with gas guzzling muscle cars, and had high hopes that the girl of their dreams would fast become a woman during their courtship?
Their songs focused on the nearly eternal sunny days of Southern California, surfing, and the pursuit of fun.
I remember not rushing off to the movies theater to see Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation when it came out in 2003. Probably because I was in Asia at the time. But later I did see it. My initial reaction was that the film was dark and depressing. It was like witnessing a collision of automobiles at an intersection only instead of cars – Love and Life collided with Lost and Lonely.
Recently I watched the movie, The Hunt for Red October (1990). This is a real man’s movie filled with submarine warfare, geo-politics and its offspring – political brinks-manship, as well as great heaping gobs of pure testosterone. There’s no sex or romance in this tale, in fact there may not even be any speaking roles for women in the movie.
It is early 1969. The colorful word counter-culture had begun to creep into your consciousness. Your name is Dennis Hopper. You are 33 years old and have a growing acting career. But you haven’t gotten ‘there‘ yet. Stardom is still around a few more corners. Somehow you, fellow actor Peter Fonda, along with writer Terry Southern write a screenplay for a movie about hippies, bikers, pot, and the freedom of the open road. You’ve hounded enough suits or backers to raise about $400,000. A paltry sum by Hollywood standards even then, in 1969, but enough to enable the production to begin with you as the film’s director. The movie is entitled Easy Rider; and becomes a runaway success, both artistically as well as at the box office. It would become the definitive counter-culture road movie.