THE MOVIE OF MY LIFE PHASE ONE: Candidates for 1978

Okay, 1978.  I am now living on the third floor of a building on Jamaica Avenue in Woodhaven, which was a major commercial area and is in the perpetual shadow of the J line.  I am literally traversing the length of Queens, as I’m going to Benjamin Cardoza High School in Bayside and getting into scraps almost every. Damn. Day.  I am hanging out with some misfits like Frank Hause (obsessed with porn) and Brendan Mullarkey (obsessed with horse racing), and I seem to be getting a little more...serious in my comic book writing and filmaking, having made a number of home made comics and partially completed Super 8 epics with my downstairs neighbor Eric.  During the Fall I spent Far Too Much Time in Ruby’s of Woodhaven, a costume shop two blocks from me that had an incredible supply of Halloween masks and magic tricks.  This is the beginning of a long period where my fashion choices become....questionable, as I’m rocking white shoes and a suede pullover jacket that seems to have been more appropriate for hunting in the midwest than commuting on the east coast.

This also might be the year of two of the more notorious incidents in my teen years--the famous Masturbating Monkey Encounter and the Warren Zevon Pizza Incident--but I’m not sure.  I am pretty sure this is the year I gain an unhealthy crush on a classmate named Jennifer, the year I tried to learn disco dancing, and the year I became reacquainted with two of my favorite TV shows, The Avengers* and Kolchak: The Night Stalker, as they were run as part of CBS’ late-night line-up.

Anyway....Your candidates for 1978 are:

THE SILENT PARTNER

Even though this is listed as an American film, its Canadian-ness shines through--I mean, John Candy is in it.  It’s not a comedy, though; it’s supposedly an unjustly forgotten neo-noir about a bank teller (Elliott Gould--who at this time was considered a sex symbol) who takes advantage of a robbery by pocketing some of the money himself...only to find out the robber (Christopher Plummer) knows what he did, and would like that money back.  I’ve heard this is exceptionally good, and I love me some well-made neo-noir (emphasis on well-made), so I am curious to see what this one is like.

JUBILEE

It’s 1978; it’s time for some weird-ass punk rock cinema, and Derek Jarman was really weird.  He might not be as famous or as prolific as Ken Russell, but he seemed to share lots of Russell’s tendencies and interests.  This is about Queen Elizabeth I traveling through time to a dystopian Punk Rock London and getting into shenanigans.  It’s one of those films from the Midnight Movie Era (Hell, it features Nell Campbell of Rocky Horror fame) that seems to have fallen through the cracks of time in the wake of the death of the Midnight Movie Circuit.  But somebody must love it, because it is in the Critereon Collection, so I’m very interested to experience it.

I suspect we’ll be seeing a couple more Midnight Movies in these polls as we go through the 80‘s.

THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY

It’s 1978; it’s time for some embarrassing disco movies!  And people forget there were a lot of Disco Movies in that small sliver of time when that style of music was King (and before it slowly got co-opted, assimilated and beaten into submission to become one of the foundations of mainstream pop).  The things some people also forgot was that some of these Disco Movies were genuinely Good-To-Great--I defy anyone to not feel the joy of Car Wash, for example--and this one was considered one of those....and yet, it seems to have disappeared from the zeitgeist.  This film featured some kick ass performances (Donna Summer’s ‘Last Dance’ was a Top Ten Hit) and supposedly was pretty funny in its way.  Plus it has a very early performance by one of my favorite Masters of Quirk, Jeff Goldblum, and I’m dying to see that.

COMA

A little disclosure: I adore Geneviève Bujold, and have ever since I saw her in The King of Hearts.  Granted, I think she gets sexier as she gets older--some people need to grow into their faces, and by the 80‘s, she had become the perfect female avatar for some of my favorite directors like Cronenberg and Alan Rudolph--but even in her ingenue days, I thought she was, to quote my therapist, a snack.  I am not going to deny that her presence as the young doctor who uncovers a conspiracy in a Boston Hospital plays a part in my choosing it for the poll.

It also features a set piece that was used in the advertising that haunted me for months.

And yet....

I remember the book that this film was based on.  It was huge, and I remember young fourteen-year-old me struggling to get through it and not getting it at all.  And if I had to choose someone to adapt it for the big screen, Michael Crichton--who was, shall we say, an idiosyncratic writer/director--would not be at the top of that list. Crichton’s filmography is quirky to say the least, so I’m interested to see how he handles this project.

You have to Friday to go to my Twitter Page and vote.  Have fun!

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*--Okay, technically CBS was running The New Avengers, the peculiar follow-up that was produced in cooperation with France and Canada, but the network also ran the color Diana Rigg episodes in the summer after the new episodes ran out.