Leonard Maltin Sexy Boomer Episode Transcript

Leonard: [00:00:00] One thing I've noticed about Zoom. No one knows how to say goodbye. You say goodbye. Welcome. Bye. Okay. Right. Nice. Okay. Goodbye. So long. Right? So long now. All right. Talk to you soon, right? Goodbye.

AE Guy: [00:00:17] Welcome to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show with your hosts, Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt fill in Ted's guest. Today is world renowned, film critic and historian, Leonard Moulton, author of Leonard Moulton's movie guide. And now your sexy boomer hosts, Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt.

Ted: [00:00:38] Welcome to bonnet I'm Ted Bonnitt.

Phil: And that means I'm Phil Proctor. And today we're talking with a friend Leonard Maltin, who is probably known to you all because Leonard is a fabled expert on the movies. I'm sure everybody has a copy of at least one of his reference books in your library. Uh, in fact, Leonard just last night, we looked up some information about The Man Who Fell to Earth, which we were watching.

And you said, and I totally agree that it's a fascinating film for the first two thirds, and then it completely falls apart in the last third.

Leonard: [00:01:20] Well, I call ‘em as I see ‘em. You know, I have to say partying the curtain here as the wizard did, uh, that, that review was written when I saw the movie for the first time.

Yeah. Where I to see it again, and today I might have a different reaction. And when I started doing this book over a period of years, I said, well, I can't rewatch everything every year. I can't, I can't go back and revisit 16,000 movies. Uh, so I just have to live with the fact that these are the impressions I had at the time these films came out,

Phil: [00:01:59] The new physics that things are affected by what, by people who are watching them happen. Right?

Leonard: [00:02:07] I can't dispute that. I can't dispute anything. I have a COVID brain right now, but. Think about how this unprecedented event that we've all experienced is going to manifest itself in the stories that are told.

And the movies that are made and everything else that's done artistically for years and years and decades to come, it's more than just a reboot. It's a reorientation to life and every aspect of life, including movies,

Phil: [00:02:39] You know what it is, it's a reboot in the ass.

Leonard: [00:02:41] well said, really

Phil: [00:02:44] Things are, are shook up.It's like a little earthquake, you know? And, and, uh, and, and the other thing about it is. What about the audiences? The audiences are now very limited in movie theaters, and we have to talk about the fact that a whole chain of movie theaters, 300 of them just gave up the ghost, just quit the Pacific movie chain, right?

Leonard: Yeah. Which includes the specialty ArcLight cinemas, uh, which, uh, started out as a, uh, one of, one of a kind in Hollywood attached to the. Cinerama Dome, uh, itself, uh, landmark in, uh, in Los Angeles. Yep. And then they were so successful with that operation, which has kind of a high class movie going experience.

It's the movie going experience the way you want it to be? Yeah. Great sight lines, uh, you know, superior projection and sound, uh, a. A personal welcome from a theater staff member, uh, before the show begins, limited numbers of, uh, trailers and a movie that you actually want to see. And high-end, high-end refreshments, including including, uh, drinks for, uh, for grownups.

Phil: [00:04:02] It's nothing like a drink in your hand while you're watching, watching a film,

Leonard: [00:04:06] you know, so it was so successful in Hollywood. They, they, they built others, uh, on the same pattern. One near, near you and me fill in Sherman Oaks, California, and another one in the South Bay area. Yep.

Ted: [00:04:21] That's right. We have one here in Santa Monica. Yeah. Beautiful one. Yeah. And it would, they would do special events. It kind of reminded me of the Ziegfeld Theater in New York.

Leonard: [00:04:30] R I P a moment of silence for where I sat. I had some of my most memorable movie going experiences. I saw apocalypse now at the Ziegfeld, and I will never forget it.

Ted: [00:04:43] I went to the very first showing of Apocalypse Now at the Ziegfeld, it was a noon show in the middle of the week. I, I was working at WPIX in New York and the daily news building, and I took off and it was a hot summer day. And I was in a cab and it was, I was held up in the cab because someone had been shot to death in front of grand central terminal. I saw them lying there, a

Phil: [00:05:04] New York. Oh, I miss it.

Ted: [00:05:07] I get there in time. It's hot. And then a helicopters started.

Leonard: [00:05:12] Oh man. And that sensory experience, uh, with those helicopters was just mind blowing. Absolutely mind blowing.

Ted: [00:05:21] Yeah, it really was. I came out of the movie and I was stunned. I just realized I have to go home.

There's nothing more I can say or, or think about. I went home and again, it was a hot day. I laid down in my bed and of course I had a ceiling fan.

Leonard: [00:05:37] Yeah, my wife and I had a different kind of experience, uh, at the Ziegfeld when we were. First married, living in Manhattan. Uh, we were curious about a movie that we heard, heard nothing but bad things about called hockey tank freeway directed by John Schlesinger and, uh, with a motley cast of characters.

And, uh, we wanted to see it. We were curious, so we looked it up as what one used to do in the newspaper to see what time it was playing. And there was an eight o'clock show on Saturday night. And we went there and we were one of something like eight people in that 3000 seat theater. And we sat through Honky-Tonk Freeway and, uh, it satisfied our curiosity, if not our desire to see a good movie.

And when it was over, we left and we realized we should have stayed to see if they ran it again as scheduled at 10 o'clock or if no one showed up, did they show it anyway? It's like the tree falling in the forest. Does it have to be a 10 o'clock show with a movie?

Phil: [00:06:46] No, it doesn't. But I worked in a production of the cherry orchard.

Abe Bagota was with us when we had a blizzard and we did the show, but afterwards he said, um, you know, this happened to me before in another play I was doing. And one woman. Who had come early to the show was the only person in the audience. Now equity says, if the cast out numbers, the audience, you don't have to do the show, but they had nowhere to go.It was a blizzard. Right? So the cast says, would you like to see the show? And she says, okay. So she applauded nicely and said, that was very nice. Thank you. So, so there you are not with movies, but th the fact that there is so few people in the audience is not unusual these days, even before COVID, and this is a revolutionary time, and I really would love to know Leonard, what you think might be the next iteration. Is it, is it going to be, people are going to write just for the home theater?

Leonard: [00:07:59] If I had an answer to that, I could make a lot of money. As we speak, we’re a couple of weeks away from the first real box office weekend in over a year when King Kong and Godzilla made almost $50 million over one weekend.

Now that's serious money that's monster money. Yes, that's right. In a non COVID time, uh, that might've been doubled or tripled given that it's at a time when theaters are still on the cusp of reopening and people are still concerned about going out in public and all that, that's a lot of money. And what it says to me was a people want to go out to the movies and be.

People really like the idea of a communal experience. And that is going back to the, you know, sitting around the campfire, telling stories. That's a truism that I don't think is going to be, uh, uh, undermined even by, by something as dramatic as our pandemic and these companies like Pacific theaters and AMC and Regal, all the big chains have been hemorrhaging money for a year.

Yeah.

Against the law to open them movie theater. I can't imagine another occasion when that has been true for such a prolonged period of time. Wow. Good grief. So I don't know. I mean, there's a James Bond movie sitting on the shelf waiting to be released. There's a, uh, a Marvel black widow movie sitting on the shelf waiting to be released.

These are films with huge audience appeal. They're not the kind of films I get all excited about, but, uh, you know, if they're good, I like them too. Uh, I tend to prefer quieter, more thoughtful films, but there's room for everything. Variety is the spice of life and I've actually been enjoying independent films.

The documentaries, the foreign language films. That have been released if not two brick and mortar theaters than two platforms of home viewing. The options. It's just an entirely different world.

Ted: [00:10:15] The theatrical business has always been fueled by the youth. Yeah. And if they have weaned off of the theatrical experience, just by evolving into personalized screens, I just wonder if the pandemic just hastened the inevitable, which is a shame because there's nothing like seeing a fully projected image. There's just no impression like that.

Phil: [00:10:39] With people enjoying it alongside you.

Leonard: [00:10:42] Exactly with people, people surround you I'm, as they say, cautiously optimistic that even young people who are well accustomed to watching things, as you say, on a personal screen or at home will be lured away from home by a Marvel movie, a James Bond movie, some sort of a crowd pleaser that has always proved reliable.

For drawing an audience opening weekend. I don't think that's going to drastically change.

Ted: [00:11:12] Theatrical experience also enhances the escapism of a movie.

Leonard: [00:11:16] No distractions. You are a captive audience. Exactly. You're in the dark and the screen is larger than life. That that's all of that matters. And the way you absorb a movie.

Ted: [00:11:31] That's why I think the Cineramadome will come back because, uh, you, you just you're right. You just can't replicate that experience at home.

Leonard: [00:11:39] Oh. Wants to stay home all the time. You know, whether you're a kid or a boomer like us, uh, you know, do you want to be home all the time? Well, after the past 13 months, I'd say. Especially, no,

Ted: [00:11:57] although they're saying that there's a, there's something called the cave syndrome now for people who are phobic about going back out.

Leonard: [00:12:03] we're all gonna have to, uh, undergo this readjustment. True to living our lives. Uh, and, uh, and putting on pants, there's going to be a real transition period.And a lot of people will find it tough to do, including

Phil: [00:12:20] that's right. The new abnormal.

Ted: [00:12:21] When we spoke about a year ago, when this was all starting, you said that, you know, you had. Piles and piles of DVDs and movies at home that you needed to get through. And this was going to be your perfect opportunity to, uh, finally get through your collection.

How did that work out for you?

Leonard: [00:12:40] Well, but we also started watching more television and more streaming television and we binged some shows. At the early boomer part of my existence, I was a TV junkie as a kid growing up, I was addicted to television and I, I got out of that habit around the time I went to college and I just haven't gotten back into that habit of watching a lot of TV.

Uh, but now I am back because there are so many options, so many choices. My God, there's over 400 series. On the air

Ted: [00:13:18] it's coming into its own as a new medium. I think that the streaming quasi movie television experience and bingeing, yeah. It's almost like seeing a 30 hour feature now. Perry Mason, remake on HBO. These are like theatrical movies each and every one of these episodes are spectacularly produced.

Leonard: [00:13:39] Yes. Yes. The French show call my agent. On Netflix. Have, have you seen that? No, I haven't yet. Oh, let me heartily recommend it. Okay. You okay. It had four seasons and it's just a delightful show about a talent agency in Paris.

And in every episode, real French movie stars and filmmakers appear. Did they do cameo appearances as themselves and, and, uh, sometimes more than cameo sometimes they're the actual, uh, subject of that, that episode. Uh, very, very entertaining show.

Phil: [00:14:15] My wife, Melinda, and I have been spending a lot of time watching old movies from the thirties, forties 50, you know, and, and that really cools you down that black and white.

No, it had wonderful inside ensemble feeling the great stars, the beautiful cinematography and the music and the dancing, and that, that has been, uh, a kind of a healing, uh, escape for us during this.

Leonard: [00:14:44] That's my normal M.O. I watch a lot of old movies. Uh, last night, Alison, I watched the ghost and Mrs. Muir, uh, with, uh, gene Tierney and Rex Harrison.

Yes. And George Sanders directed by Joseph L Mankiewicz and written by Phillip Dunn based on a novel. And uh, with music, Gotham was gorgeous music score by Bernard Herman. Oh, just exquisite

Phil: [00:15:08] boggles my mind that they could make these movies, you know, kind of on an assembly line in these great studios. And, and whenever there's a mob scene or a w a war scene, those are real people. Thousands of real people, there's no CGI involved, you know, That takes my breath away. It really does.

Ted: [00:15:32] And, and in the depression era and the forties to seven major studios releasing a movie every week,

Leonard: [00:15:40] the numbers, it was just simply staggering.

I heard a, a wonderful story about Louis B. Mayer, the, uh, legendary chief of, uh, MGM. He was back in New York and he attended a cocktail party. And, uh, there was a fellow who was a literary sword. Who was a bit snobbish about movies and a mayor said, well, even you will have to admit that, uh, every year we make two or three films that are really good.

And the message. Yeah. I'll give you that. And mayor said, well, we don't have, even in that assembly line, in a world of Hollywood movie making at that, at that time, there was room for individuality. There were some writers and directors and producers who were able to give the studio what it wanted and provide a finished product that checked all the boxes, but still express something personal.

Frank Capra, Leo Macquarie, Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder. Uh, Joseph L Mankiewicz list is, is surprisingly low.

Phil: [00:16:50] I don't know about the Gen-Xer’s, I don't know if they're getting hip to the fact that there is such a treasure of cultural information and entertainment available to them. You know, I'm curious, you're teaching a course, aren't you at USC?

Leonard: [00:17:08] Yes. It's my 23rd year teaching this course, and the course itself is, is even older than that. Uh, it started in the early sixties and, uh, was the brainchild of, uh, men Arthur Knight, who was a prominent film critic of that time. Yep. I recognize who wrote a book called the liveliest art. That was the first, uh, compact one volume history of the movies.

He approached USC and said, you know, we're, we're here in the heart of the movie business. Why don't we invite, uh, filmmakers, uh, to come here and show their latest film and, uh, uh, sit for question and answer panel George Lucas took this course, Ron Howard took this course, so it has a history of its own.

Alfred Hitchcock was a guest in this class. Uh, and so as John Cassavetes, Arthur taught it for a good number of years and then retired. And I am the latest custodian of this class. Well, Bravo,

Phil: [00:18:11] Bravo. Oh, one quick aside. One of the other things I enjoy about watching particularly TCM is that they show these all movie shorts.

Every once in a while. Yes. And I just saw Frank Sinatra singing the, is the patriotic number. That's America to me. Right. And it's all about diversity, the house I live in. Yeah. The house I live in and the postman down the street in that, uh, and, and all about this diversity about w it doesn't matter what color this is, and he's singing it to a group of entirely white boys.

Leonard: [00:18:43] Oh, no, no, there's one black boy there. Oh, is there, it was shot 1945 and he got a special Academy award for doing this show. Oh. To, to promote tolerance. And in the late fifties, early sixties, I sought as a student in a public school in New Jersey while I was still using it for its intended purpose. Right.

Uh, except for one thing. He's talking about, uh, a bomber crew, a famous bomber crew from, from wartime and how, uh, there was a Jewish guy from Brooklyn and an Irish guy from Milwaukee, eh, you know, kind of thing. Right. Uh, and, uh, to bomb them yeah. Right. So there's, you know, and of course it was made during the war.

That's right. And during war time, what do we tend to do as humans? We tend to demonize the enemy. Uh, it happened, you know, remember the Ayatollah vicious, characatures dehumanize them. That's the only way you can hate enough to justify killing is if you dehumanize. That's right, but it's an unfortunate reference and an otherwise beautiful short subject.

Phil: [00:20:04] That's a very contentious and interesting issue. Isn't it about, you know, films that were made at a certain time that express a certain cultural vision of that time. And for instance, one of the shorts I saw was minstrel shows the history of minstrel shows, you know? Oh, how do you feel about that yourself being an historian?

Leonard: [00:20:26] In art. This is a hot time as you well know, and TCM has done, uh, an excellent, uh, filler piece runs probably wants 15 minutes about the use of blackface and it traces its history from the minstrel shows into vaudeville and then to movies, they don't apologize for it. They don't defend it either. They just explore it with Jacqueline Stewart, who is now one of the hosts on, uh, on TCM, uh, who who's an African-American and, uh, Donald Bogle, another African-American and old friend of mine, who is a scholar of black performers and black filmmakers.

And, uh, it's uncomfortable. To watch some of these clips and uncomfortable for me, I'm a Caucasian. I grew up watching these films on TV and in revival, theaters, and not thinking twice about some of these moments in films. Uh, Fred Astaire, uh, is in modified black face. For a number called the Bojangles of Harlem in my favorite austere Rogers movie.

Swing time. Yeah. I've seen that over and over again since I was a teenager and I love it. I love it too. I love it. But now you can't show it without commenting and without contextualized, uh, that sequence and the same is true of many other films. So many to name what I find intriguing. Is how much we're going to have to bend into a pretzel to explain stuff to younger people who come along and encounter these things like, uh, sexism, uh, casual sexism, uh, boss chasing a woman around the desk, you know, a secretary around the desk, uh, for comic effect.

Yeah.

Phil: [00:22:27] Some guys slapping some some woman.

Leonard: [00:22:29] Yeah. Yeah. There's so many things. I mean, the movement has revolutionized and it’s about time, revolutionized our attitudes and our awareness of how women have been treated and discussed and depicted. So it's not just a racial thing or an ethnic thing. We're contending with changes in society and the movies are set in stone.

We can't change them. We can't alter them. We, I say most sensible people don't want to offer them. Or, and thank goodness Turner classic movies has taken the stand that they will not bury them. Won't lock them away in a vault. Yeah. I think

Phil: [00:23:13] that's the right attitude. We stumbled across a film starring Doris Day in Danny Thomas about a songwriter, famous songwriter.

Leonard: [00:23:20] Gus Kahn.

Phil: [00:23:22] Yeah. Right. There's a scene at the near of, I guess the middle of the movie where Doris Day is doing a song in blackface. And after, after the, the number is over she's with Danny and she puts a record on which is like a Rock-a-bye baby. Okay. And Danny realizes she's telling him she's going to have a baby. And he says, I wonder what color it will be. Right. I know. Ha Oh, Ooh.

Leonard: [00:23:47] Yes, yes. And yet that wasn't done. I mean, you have to say that wasn't done with malice.

Phil: [00:24:02] No, it was just colorblind and it was comedy. You know, yeah. A joke is why so many people these days get called on the jokes that they did. Jay Leno just apologized recently for his anti-Asian jokes, you know?

And that's good, but, but it is an evolution. It's an evolution in culture.

Ted: [00:24:22] You're listening to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show with our special guest, Leonard Maltin, we'll be right back.

AE Guy: [00:25:17] You're listening to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show with Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt. To hear all the Sexy Boomer shows go to sexyboomer show.com and press the subscribe button in your podcast player. To know when a new episode drops back to Phil and Ted and their special guests, renowned movie critic and historian Leonard Maltin.

Ted: [00:25:41] We're back.

Phil: [00:25:43] We're talking with a friend Leonard Maltin,

Ted: [00:25:45] As you've said, Leonard, when you look back at the era of the 1950s films, the great epics, they're not necessarily the ones that are remembered. It was the B pictures, the ones that were cultural touchstones that resonated with a quarter of the budget.

Leonard: [00:26:00] Look at the Academy award winners from the fifties and first portion of the 1960s. I'm a film like Ben Hur, let's say. Which one more Oscars, I think, than any other movie up to that time. Uh, it it's, it's not a, it's not a, it's a pretty good movie actually. Yeah. Uh, at the time they thought it was a great movie.

I don't think you find too many. People, uh, taking that vociferous stand form for Ben Hur, which is extremely well-crafted. Yes. And of course the chariot race holds up phenomenally. Well, that is an exceptional piece of movie making. And again, without CGI, uh, what you see is what you get. So on the level of sheer craft it's superior, but one of the films that we really find intriguing from the fifties, it's the films that had to sort of subvert their intentions through disguise Martin Scorsese calls it smuggling.

He says filmmakers directors are smugglers. So they're smuggling some idea. In the guise of a science fiction film and the guise of a film war in the guise of a Western, uh, Allah high noon, or the invasion of the body snatchers. And so it's those films that, uh, that I think survived the years in better shape than the so-called prestige pictures of that period.

Ted: [00:27:31] Body snatchers, for example, was in the height of the cold war. These were anticommunist statements. Is that how you see it?

Leonard: [00:27:38] Well, I interviewed the director, Don Siegel. Uh, at the Telluride film festival sometime ago, after screening of it, he made light of that. He didn't think that was necessarily what they had in mind, but he wasn't the writer.

And, uh, it's possible that he interpreted it in a different way, but you can't help. But think about the communist witch hunts of that era and apply it to the invasion of the body snatchers. And I felt by the way, at the time, when I was working for a television show, That, um, some of my producers were pods.If you remember the movie.

Ted: [00:28:16] And night of the living dead George Romero's film. And then the first sequel Dawn of the Dead. We did a documentary when he was filming it, uh, the Dawn of the Dead. And he said at the time, w was his take on consumerism, the mindlessness of consumerism. Final act of the movie where they're in the mall, throwing pies in each other's face happened for two reasons, because it seemed like an absurd scene to him.

It was the ultimate in consumerism. These people just shuffling around a mall and a zombie state was also cause he sold all his territories, uh, for distribution ahead of time. And they had a surplus of money in film to shoot. So they decided to just go ahead and shoot the pie scene for fun. And so you never know exactly.

Leonard: [00:28:56]And sometimes you can read too much. Into a movie and project your own ideas,

Ted: [00:29:04] Leonard and I discovered the other day that we took the same film course in New York at the new school with Ralph Rosenblum, who was a great film editor. It was my favorite course I ever took in school.

Leonard: [00:29:15] The most eye-opening experience of my life

Ted: [00:29:19] And it's worth talking about a little bit, who Ralph Rosenblum was.

Leonard: [00:29:21] Ralph Rosenblum was pretty much acknowledged as the top film editor based in New York city. He did. Everybody's the first movie he did, Mel Brooks, first movie, the producers. He did Robert Benton's first movie, a bad company. Wow. He did Harold princess first movie, something, something for everyone. And of course, Woody Allen's first will be take the money and run, and then they clicked and he.

Uh, subsequently edited all of Woody Allen's films up through Annie hall. He also did a William Friedkin, this, I guess second movie, the night they raided Minsky's and, uh, after freakin walked away from that film and it was considered unreleasable, uh, Ralph got to work on it and made it, uh, it made it playable.

And, uh, and he, and he told him great stories about all of these experiences. And he would show us the film on a 16 millimeter print. At first, he talked about his experience in general. Then he'd show us the movie and we'd talk a little more. And then the second week when we'd come back, he showed us the movie again, but stop after every sequence and discuss, uh, the options and the choices and the decisions.

That went into all the, uh, the editorial moves that he made. Wow. What a, an illuminating experience.

Ted: [00:30:58] So what was so fascinating about it was, so this was just a course in the catalog at new school in New York was the aesthetics of film editing. So I wanted to learn theory and there were only about eight of us. And we were in his one bedroom apartment, turned studio on eighth Avenue. Very, very informal.And small and he would just talk and he was cutting loving death. So the stuff was all over the room while he was cutting. When he had us over every Tuesday night for three hours.

Phil: [00:31:28] Wow.

Ted: [00:31:33] He would say, “You can get away with so much more in comedy.” For example, he says, when I cut everything you want to know about sex, but were afraid to ask the scene with Woody in the inflatable outfit where he sh it, someone punctures a hole and he's shooting like a rocket across a pond.

He said, I cut right to, uh, a cave with, uh, an old VW bug. It made no sense whatsoever. He said, I could never get away with that in drama, but I could do it in comedy. The real treat was, he said, I'm going to get Woody in here. And Woody Allen came in and, and literally was a couple of feet from the eight of us.

And just talk to us for two, three hours.

Leonard: [00:32:08] Fortunately, he put all that down and writing in a book, uh, called when the shooting stops. Hmm. If we have peaked anybody's curiosity, you can read in this book, all of these. They're more than anecdotes. They're they're life experiences and, uh, uh, hard earned wisdom.

That, uh, that he imparted to us.

Ted: [00:32:32] If anyone's interested in understanding how to craft a story, whether it's in film or audio or whatever you do, even writing it's worthwhile to hopefully read his book to get his wisdom. Because the first thing I believe he said to us was if you're good at this, your work is invisible.

You should never see my work. Yeah. Again, going back to that era of the seventies, we had Neil Israel on. And he told the story about how America Thun got made, which was basically, uh, that his script was passed through a girlfriend, to a studio head in bed. And we talked about how that was the way Hollywood used to be.

And in the seventies, because television had viscera did the business and it was sort of a desperate situation. Uh, it bred opportunity and. Some of these movies that were made back in those days, like easy rider and Bonnie and Clyde, the graduate, some of these extraordinary films were green lit because there wasn't a middleman bureaucracy in, in the film business at that point, like there is now, it was like, you could go talk to the studio head and if they like, they did it, that's correct.

There weren't focused groups and it wasn't debated to death and watered down. And do you agree with that? Well,

Leonard: [00:33:46] yes. In the late eighties, the Telluride film festival at a, a fascinating panel discussion about what they were calling, what they dubbed the silver age of movies, uh, which is the early to mid seventies.

And they had a number of people there representing different facets of movie-making their producer Saul Zaentz who, uh, financed a lot of really good movies. Like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Peter Bogdanovich, uh, who was a key player in the, in the seventies in Hollywood, Michael Richie, an under appreciated filmmaker who made, uh, the candidate, uh, was Robert Redford.

A lot of other good movies was like nine or 10. Significant people on this, on this stage. And someone asked Michael Richie what the single biggest difference between making movies then late eighties and in the silver age, in the early to mid seventies was, and he said, just what you said. He said middle management.

That's the biggest change is that in the early seventies, you pitched your idea. To a studio head and he, or she mostly, they were, he, he said, uh, yeah, let's make it. And you knew where you stood. It may be something of a simplification, but not very much. It's the case. When you go back and look at a lot of the most memorable films of that period, and to this day, When I interview young filmmakers as I do in my class at USC and ask what their influences are.

They all point to that period of the seventies. That's their touchstone. The seventies were the floods, Robert Altman and the early films of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and Francis Coppola. What a flowering of talent. Amazing talent writing and directing. Yeah. Yeah. I just finish reading. Uh, Mark Harris has wonderful new biography of Mike Nichols.

Nichols, of course is an avatar of that new Hollywood. His first film was who's afraid of Virginia Wolf, which was one of the pivotal films in. Bringing to an end, the motion picture production code. That's right. And breaking the barriers that kept Hollywood from embracing adult subject matter. And adult language and sex and even violence, all of which were still taboo here, not in Europe.

That's right here. And, uh, and then he went on to make The Graduate, uh, seminal film of its time. .

Ted: [00:36:28] Going back to the Legion of Decency, the Hays code back in the twenties, when there was major self-regulation in the movie business to prevent federal intervention. Do you think that with the woke movement of which much of it is a healthy growth, do you feel that there's any, uh, parallels to a, an age of self-censorship right now?

Um, uh, political correctness taken to the extreme? Sure.

Leonard: [00:36:53] Woke culture has given birth to cancel culture. And cancel culture is one of my pet peeves right now. And I have to tiptoe even to talking to you guys and your audience, I have to weigh my words very carefully. Uh, lest I, you know, fall into a trap, get attacked for speaking my mind. It's a very thorny issue.

Ted: [00:37:19] The extremes of that would be to say, you can't watch films now from the sixties or seventies because they're offensive and therefore they should be disappeared. There'll be canceled. They never existed. Exploitation film never happened. So you're denying actual pieces of history.

What benefit is that? Is that to say we're not adult enough to self-regulate our, our tastes. Where is the line

Leonard: [00:37:43] here? It's a blurry line and that line keeps moving. Eventually it will, if not swing back, uh, you know, make its way back to a center of position and sanity will ultimately prevail. I hope

Ted: [00:37:58] there's pretty edgy, uncomfortable and Intense stuff that you can see all the time on any number of streaming services and in the cinema. So, yeah. True. Is it even real?

Leonard: [00:38:09] It's real. If you talk about Woody Allen. Yeah. It's real. If you talk about a Song of the South. Yeah. It's real. If you talk about gone with the wind now it's real. If you talk about DW Griffith, who made the birth of a nation 1915 with the clan last year, or maybe the year before there's an arts center at bowling green.

Is it called bowling green state university in Ohio. There's an arts center named for Lillian Gish. The actress who got her start with DW Griffith in the earliest days of motion pictures. And remained a formidable and a wonderful actress to advanced age. Well, a student group decided that they wanted to take her name off this arts center because she appeared in the, the birth of a nation.

Oh, that's ridiculous. Isn't it? It's called guilt by association. She didn't write or direct that film. Uh, she appeared as an actress in that film among many others. That's how absurd it can get. It's a very strange world out there. It's not progressive. No, it's the opposite of progressive it's repressive.

Ted: [00:39:23] And do you have a podcast called Maltin on Movies?

Leonard: [00:39:26] And we have all of our backlog available free of charge, as they say, one of our guests was a certain Philip Proctor. Yes, no, my I've heard of him. Yeah. We've had a wide range of guests, Mel Brooks, late Carl Reiner. Amy Adams, wonderful actress. Lovely.

Ted: [00:39:45] We'll put a link to your podcast on our page. Uh, so people can find you. And you're on Turner classic movies.

Leonard: [00:39:53] Yeah, every now and then I pop up without warning. Most recent evening I did for them was evening of unsung movies, under appreciated movies. And I picked five at random with one of their regular hosts, Dave Karger.

We discussed the films and we've got a nice reaction to it.

Phil: [00:40:13] Yeah. I'd like to see much more of you on that channel. I, I don't know. Uh, who do we have to sleep with Leonard?

Ted: [00:40:22] Well, Leonard, thank you so much for coming on the sexy boomer show.

Leonard: [00:40:25] Well, I, I don't know if that means I'm a sexy boomer. Or just the show is the sexy boomer show. Oh yes. We only

Phil: [00:40:33] interview sexy boomers.

Leonard: [00:40:34] Yeah. Well, okay. I'll take it. I'll take it where I can get it. Yeah.

Ted: Thank you so much, Leonard.

Leonard: Thank you guys. Fun to talk to you both. Take care.

Phil: Love you.

Ted: [00:40:43] That was delightful. Great. If you'd like to hear more of our show, come to our website, sexy boomer show.com. We have a number of episodes with some really interesting folks. You can also find it of course, on all your favorite podcast platforms. And if you're listening to it, say on Apple podcast or Spotify just hit the little subscribe button on a player.

That way you will get a notification. Whenever we drop a new episode,

Phil: [00:41:12] We want to thank you, the generous donors out there to keep us afloat and going, especially a dear friend, Edgar Bullington, who also happens to be the president of the funny names club of America, and has been a friend of the Firesign theater, a dear friend as we call him for decades. And I'm so grateful to you, Edgar, that you supporting our show. I love you.

Ted: [00:41:36] If you'd like to do the same, just go to our show website, sexy boomer show.com and you can donate. And if you donate $20 or more, we will send you a fabulous, sexy boomer bumper sticker

Phil: [00:41:49] on a car of your choosing.

Ted: [00:41:53] You've gotten lucky haven't you, Phil?

Phil: [00:41:56] Oh, I get followed very often by a attractive looking police women.

Ted: Yeah.

Phil: Yeah.

Ted: All right, Phil.

Phil: [00:42:06] Well, we look forward to the next show.

Leonard: [00:42:07] Yeah. Stay tuned.

AE Guy: [00:42:10] You’ve been listening to Phil in Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show, featuring Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt and their special guest, Leonard Molton. “Bob Dylan at the Met” was written and performed by the Firesign Theater. Music by Eddie Baytos and the Nervis Brothers.

I'm A. Earnest Guy. Stay tuned for the next episode of Phil in Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show. Produced by radiopictures.com. The makers of fine podcasts for seasoned hipsters, man.