Vintage Sand Vintage Sand

The end of 1974 saw the implosion of the Director’s Company, founded just a year earlier by three of Hollywood’s hottest directors: Francis Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, and William Friedkin. Funded by Paramount, the idea was that within a certain budget, these directors would make whatever they wanted, have final cut on their work, and split the profits on each other’s films. Its rapid collapse, amid artistic failure and hubris and egged on by corporate intrigue, signaled the beginning of the end of what later came to be known as the Hollywood New Wave. A year later, the phenomenon that was "Jaws" recentered the narrative so that blockbuster weekend box office was everyone’s sole and explicit goal. This in turn led to the return of the money people to power, and they have barely relinquished any of that power in the ensuing half-century.

It's not a coincidence that 1974 also saw "Hearts and Minds", one of the great antiwar films ever made in this country, win the Oscar for Best Feature-Length Documentary. The film was also a milestone in that it was the last film ever released by BBS, the renegade company founded by Bert Schneider, Bob Rafelson and Steve Blauner in 1969. Buoyed by the money they had made from the success of the Monkees, BBS disrupted an already-crumbling industry by releasing "Easy Rider", which grossed $60 million on a budget of $400K. The next few years saw releases from BBS like Rafelson’s "Five Easy Pieces" and "The King of Marvin Gardens", Jack Nicholson’s directorial debut in "Drive, He Said", Jaglom’s "A Safe Place" and Bogdanovich’s mainstream breakthrough, "The Last Picture Show". By the middle of the decade, however, BBS had been swallowed up by Columbia, and the writing was on the wall for the days of the creative freedom that came with this iteration of American independent film.

So while few realized it at the time, 1974 would mark the end of something unique and the beginning of something else. Come, then, and join our intrepid Team Vintage Sand as we step into the Way-Back Machine to say goodbye to Tricky Dick Nixon, spend weekend days waiting on line for gasoline, and explore that sui generis year in film. It was, of course, the year of young Vito Corleone, Jake Gittes and Harry Caul, but also a time when even many low-budget genre films ended up as classics. In the end, you very well might end up agreeing with our own John Meyer, who back in Episode 5 called 1974 the greatest year in film history.

Our Alternate Oscars episodes, based on Danny Peary’s fantastic 1992 book of the same name, have always been among our most popular. Over the course of the podcast, we’ve covered the 1930’s, 1950’s, 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s, and the 2000’s. Comparing what films actually won Best Picture to what we believe should have won is always a fun challenge, and it has given us a chance over the years to open or reopen some doors for our listeners to movies that are overlooked and forgotten. When we came to the 1950’s episode, in an (eerily prophetic) split decision, we chose to include only English-language works, since the sheer volume of brilliant films from around the world in that decade would overwhelm both us and you, dear listeners. As we approached the 1960’s for this episode, however, we reasoned that the relative lack of great American films from the decade suggested that this time around, we should open our tent to the entire world. We could not stand idly by, for instance while "A Man for All Seasons", lovely though it is, walked away with Best Picture in the year of films like "Persona", "Masculin/Feminin" and "Blow-Up". Our worries about the length of the episode, however, turned out to be justified and then some; therefore, we needed to split the episode into two parts. So with that, we are thrilled to present our first episode(s) since our triumphant, celebratory live recording of Episode 50 in March: thus Episodes 51A (1960-1964) and 51B (1965-1969), Alternate Oscars: The 1960’s Edition.

There were a couple of things that really hit us as we were creating this entry in the Vintage Sand catalogue. The first is that an unexpectedly high number of our choices were, in fact, American films, suggesting that while common wisdom avers that Hollywood suffered a creative decline in the 60’s, there were a lot of great things happening just below the surface that were, unwittingly perhaps, paving the way for the revolution of the American New Wave that would come in the early 1970’s. And the deeper we dove into the cinema of the 60’s, we came to really understand the fundamental difference between those works and film today. Simply put, it was a time when directors really seemed to trust their audience’s intelligence and imagination. This is most obvious in structurally elliptical puzzle films like Resnais’ "Last Year at Marienbad", Buñuel’s "The Exterminating Angel", Antonioni’s "L’Avventura" and "Blow-Up", Bergman’s "Persona" and even Kubrick’s "2001: A Space Odyssey". But in ways big and small, and in terms both of performance and filmmaking technique, there is in 60’s film a refreshing absence of rat-on-the-balcony-rail-at-the-end-of-"Departed" heavy-handedness that seems to be a common thread in the work of even our greatest directors today. So with all this in mind, strap in and join us for our odyssey through 60’s cinema. It promises to be highly irregular, Dave…

Our Alternate Oscars episodes, based on Danny Peary’s fantastic 1992 book of the same name, have always been among our most popular. Over the course of the podcast, we’ve covered the 1930’s, 1950’s, 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s, and the 2000’s. Comparing what films actually won Best Picture to what we believe should have won is always a fun challenge, and it has given us a chance over the years to open or reopen some doors for our listeners to movies that are overlooked and forgotten. When we came to the 1950’s episode, in an (eerily prophetic) split decision, we chose to include only English-language works, since the sheer volume of brilliant films from around the world in that decade would overwhelm both us and you, dear listeners. As we approached the 1960’s for this episode, however, we reasoned that the relative lack of great American films from the decade suggested that this time around, we should open our tent to the entire world. We could not stand idly by, for instance while A Man for All Seasons, lovely though it is, walked away with Best Picture in the year of films like Persona, Masculin/Feminin and Blow-Up. Our worries about the length of the episode, however, turned out to be justified and then some; therefore, we needed to split the episode into two parts. So with that, we are thrilled to present our first episode(s) since our triumphant, celebratory live recording of Episode 50 in March: thus Episodes 51A (1960-1964) and 51B (1965-1969), Alternate Oscars: The 1960’s Edition.

There were a couple of things that really hit us as we were creating this entry in the Vintage Sand catalogue. The first is that an unexpectedly high number of our choices were, in fact, American films, suggesting that while common wisdom avers that Hollywood suffered a creative decline in the 60’s, there were a lot of great things happening just below the surface that were, unwittingly perhaps, paving the way for the revolution of the American New Wave that would come in the early 1970’s. And the deeper we dove into the cinema of the 60’s, we came to really understand the fundamental difference between those works and film today. Simply put, it was a time when directors really seemed to trust their audience’s intelligence and imagination. This is most obvious in structurally elliptical puzzle films like Resnais’ Last Year in Marienbad, Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, Antonioni’s L’Avventura and Blow-Up, Bergman’s Persona and even Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. But in ways big and small, and in terms both of performance and filmmaking technique, there is in 60’s film a refreshing absence of rat-on-the-balcony-rail-at-the-end-of-Departed heavy-handedness that seems to be a common thread in the work of even our greatest directors today. So with all this in mind, strap in and join us for our odyssey through 60’s cinema. It promises to be highly irregular, Dave…

It began six years ago, in the before time, with three film nerds who have been friends for four decades. Through the years, whenever we hung out together, we would inevitably end up talking for hours about film. So, we wondered aloud, why not make it official? Thus was born, in the spring of 2018, Vintage Sand, your film history podcast. One pandemic, one insurrection, a few erasures and rewritings of the film business and several hundred loyal listeners later, we thought it might be appropriate to commemorate our 50th episode by inviting friends and recording said episode live at the 14th Street Y in Manhattan. As you will hear, around 30 people came to support us, to hurl the occasional metaphorical tomato, and to remind us why we love doing this so much, as we recorded our roundup of 2023 in film in an episode we call “Of Bombs and Bombshells”.
As with the last few years, this one was difficult to read. We applied our usual measure, wondering which of this year’s films, beyond “Barbie”, “Oppenheimer” and Scorsese's epic will folks will still be watching 25 or 50 years from now. Hard to say, but at least it was a year where, with the exception of Aster’s “Beau Is Afraid”, we were able to avoid a repeat of 2022, where some of our most interesting filmmakers (Russell, Aronofsky, Chazelle, Iñárritu, Luhrmann, Garland, et al.) released films that were not just bad but disastrous on an epic scale. 2023 was marked by labor strife in Hollywood, huge existential questions about the business as it has been run for over a century, and anxiety over the implications of technologies like AI and streaming. But it was also a year that welcomed a solid return to form of Vintage Sand favorites like Todd Haynes and Alexander Payne, gave us Wes Anderson’s first Oscar for his reunion with Roald Dahl, and brought forth astonishing new voices in works as varied as Celine Song’s “Past Lives”, Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction”, and Emma Seligman’s follow-up to “Shiva Baby”, the wonderful “Bottoms”. It also gave us perhaps the most ambitious American film of the century, Ava Duvernay’s stunning imagining of Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste”, in her epic “Origin”, an underseen gem that may in time prove to be the year’s greatest film.
To top that off, there was the gently surprising return to classic form of the Oscars, featuring first wins for the aforementioned Wes, Christopher Nolan, and Robert Downey, Jr. Emma Stone won for her incredibly complex performance in “Poor Things”, but this Oscars may be remembered as the year Lily Gladstone was robbed for a performance that was much less showy than Stone’s but in our opinion, much more powerful. And as for the show itself, Ryan Gosling’s performance of “I’m Just Ken” may have been the greatest dance number the Oscars has seen in recent memory, though it only served to remind us how intensely the genius and talent behind “Barbie” were ignored by the Academy.
Writing in the “New York Times”, Mark Harris, perhaps our favorite working film writer today, posited that film as the central force in American popular culture may be dying out. But like Harris, we don’t necessarily mourn the change; after all, the “death of cinema” has been a hot topic of discussion ever since the talkies arrived 95 years ago. In fact, we agree with Harris that 2024 may be another 1970, a year when out of the rubble of the collapse of the familiar emerged a revolution of unprecedented creativity and innovation. We have no idea what the future of film will bring, but whatever it is, we hope to be there to share our thoughts with you, not as frustrated film critics or experts in any way but as passionate film lovers who want to open as many doors as possible to new films and to new lenses through which to view old ones. To Billie Eilish’s eternal question, what were we made for? Hopefully another 50 episodes—at least!

When a director of Martin Scorsese’s stature releases a new movie, it’s time to drop everything else and discuss. When last we did this, with "The irishman", our thoughts on that film were mixed; it was a summation of some of the themes and ideas that have characterized Scorsese’s work, and it also contained certain thematic elements of his “spiritual” trilogy of "Last Temptation of Christ", "Kundun" and "Silence". Michael summed it up best when he characterized "The Irishman", and not in a disparaging way, as the film of an old man, an elegy for a passing time. And here we are, once again, with the director in his early 80’s, releasing a very different kind of 3 ½ hour epic that, in our view, not only feels like it could have been made by someone in his 30’s, but encompasses an ambition (both emotional and temporal/spatial) that Scorsese has never attempted before. So we present Episode 49, "Killers of the Flower Moon: It’s Just the Way This Is Going.”

As we did with our study of "The Irishman", we divide this episode into two parts. In the first, we discuss the film on its own terms. Here, we disagree somewhat (which always makes for an interesting discussion) on the overall impact of the film; Michael sees it as an unalloyed masterpiece, while John and I, while recognizing its brilliance, express some reservations. We all agreed, for example, that the film’s extended running time was actually insufficient to tell this story, and that it might have been better done as a mini-series or some longer format. Another thing we all agree on is the acting which, down to the smallest roles, is pitch-perfect. This is especially true of the three leads, and of the stunning performance by Lily Gladstone as Mollie in particular. And we all love the opening and the ending of the film, and how brilliantly Scorsese uses the music of Robbie Robertson (who acts as almost a presiding spirit over the film) to underscore the themes and the mood of the piece. We also appreciate how Scorsese, in adapting David Grann’s brilliant book for the screen, shifts Grann’s emphasis on how the Osage murders helped put the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover on the map and puts his focus up, until nearly the very end, on the human side of these horrific crimes, centered around the extraordinarily complex relationship between DiCaprio’s Ernest and Gladstone’s Mollie.

Then, as we did with "Irishman", we try to place the film in the context of Scorsese’s body of work, and this is where things get really interesting. While his films often focus on violence, and often depict this violence through elaborate set pieces, Scorsese’s approach is very different here. For one, with the possible exception of the misbegotten "Gangs of New York", Scorsese has never attempted to show organized violence perpetrated over such a long period of time and on such an epic scale. Paradoxically, though, while this film contains countless acts of brutal violence, Scorsese chooses to show them in the most blunt, matter-of-fact way. It’s as though he felt that calling attention to his own craft would only distract from the horrific story he is trying to tell. And this raises the stakes for the director in an unprecedented way. Rather than focusing on the violence between rival gangs, or internecine strife within a gang, Scorsese seems to be saying that the whole of American history is at least in part a kind of gang war, with profit and gain for some happening only with the suffering, exploitation and murder of "othered" peoples across the centuries. It is an exploration of the darkest corners of the American Dream, and we think you will find our conclusions about where it fits in the Scorsese canon to be interesting. "Killers of the Flower Moon" is a film of tremendous resonance, depth and contradiction as seen through the eyes of someone who, as an artist, has always been one of the sharpest observers of the complexities of who we are as a peopl

As of our taping of this episode, Hollywood is still under the shadow of the labor problems which have arisen periodically since the beginnings of the industry. After all, remember that the formation of the Academy and the establishment of the Oscars were in many ways the studio moguls’ attempts to crush the burgeoning union movements. Periodically, since the unions were established, they have engaged in strikes, most memorably in 1960 when both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA struck to create a fair distribution of revenue from the then relatively-new medium of television. And every time in the ensuing years when the modes of distribution changed, from syndication to video tapes to DVD’s, these issues of equity have led to labor tensions across the board. With the double whammy of streaming and the technological possibilities of AI upon us, both the writers and the actors went on strike again earlier this year. The writers have settled, but the actors are still on the picket lines, and seem far away from a settlement. Some casual observers see this as a case of millionaires fighting with billionaires. So Team Vintage Sand wades into the fray by beginning this latest episode with Michael, who is a longtime and proud member of SAG-AFTRA, discussing the issue from the lived perspective of the 95%+ of his fellow union members who cannot make a living as actors. Simply put, what’s at stake is the ability of talented, hard-working people without whom the industry could not exist to put food on their table and make this month’s rent.

From there, it was a logical pivot to focus the episode on films that deal with labor movements, workers’ rights and unionization. We each chose three movies, and naturally, you will find well-known films like "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Norma Rae" in the mix. But the real revelation of the episode for us is that in spite of the powerful human drama that is inherent in the struggles of labor, Hollywood has produced almost no films that touch on the subject beyond a well-known handful. We suppose this should not be a huge surprise given the industry’s deep-rooted animosity towards organized labor, but the fact is that of our nine films on the issue, three are from England, one is from France, and one was rejected by the studios and produced and distributed independently. Our hope, as always, is that the episode will open some doors to films you’ve never seen or haven’t seen in a long time. In the end, we make no claims to objectivity here; to quote 8-year-old Charlie Kane (in a completely different context), “The Union Forever!”