The 1970s All-Hollywood Team

After I tripped down a flight of stairs and hit my head, I suddenly wondered: what if filmmaking was more like the NFL?

Think about it. Fall down a flight of stairs if you have to. I know they say that art is subjective, unlike, say, NFL stats. But to that, I say poppycock! We know who the all-time greats are! So I thought it would be fun to create an all-time roster for the 1970s, using the all-decade template the NFL uses, switching out offensive and defensive positions for Oscar categories. Unfortunately, I’m not attuned enough to assess categories like “film editing,” “sound editing”, and “costume and production.” They will be left out. Also, like the NFL template, there will be a “First Team” and a “Second Team”.

Let’s get started!

The criteria for selection is a combination of Oscar wins/nominations+legacy. The latter, of course, is subjective (subject to my tastes specifically)

Cinematographer

First team-Vilmos Zsigmond (2x nomination. 1x winner). Notable works: McCabe and Ms. Miller, Deliverance, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Deer Hunter. A pioneer in naturalistic lighting. Widely recognized as one of the greatest cinematographers of all time.

Second Team- Owen Roizman. (3x nomination). Notable works: The French Connection, The Exorcist, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Network. Perhaps the greatest cinematographer to never win an Oscar. His work exemplified the gritty, documentarian style that defined the 1970s.

Film Composer

First Team: John Williams (13x nominated. 3x winner). Notable works: Fiddler on the Roof, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, Superman. Needs no introduction. Unquestionably the greatest film composer of all time.

Second Team: Jerry Goldsmith (8x nominated. 1x winner). Notable works: Patton, Chinatown, The Omen, Alien, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Often considered the poor man’s John Williams, Goldsmith might’ve had a shot at being the GOAT hadn’t he and Williams’ careers blossomed simultaneously.

Screenwriter

First Team– Robert Towne (3x nominated. 1x winner). Notable works: The Last Detail, Chinatown, Shampoo (credited). The Godfather, Marathon Man, Heaven Can Wait (uncredited). The premier screenwriter and script doctor of the 1970s.

Second Team: John Milius (1x nominated) Notable works: Jeremiah Johnson, Magnum Force, Apocalypse Now (credited). Dirty Harry, Jaws (uncredited). Where he lacked in accolades, he made up for by writing the greatest lines of the 1970s, including the “Do I feel lucky, punk?” from Dirty Harry, the USS Indianapolis monologue in Jaws, and “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” in Apocalypse Now.

Supporting Actress

*note: much like special teams in the NFL, being a supporting actor/actress play a key role in clinching a game or movie. While not as flashy as being in the starting lineup on offense or defense, a supporting actor has a special set of skills needed to make a film work. Sometimes they need to steal a scene. Sometimes they need to just read the lines. It’s for that reason why I’m including this as a separate category from Leading Actor/Actress.

First Team: Karen Black (1x nominated). Notable works: Five Easy Pieces, Airport 1975, Nashville, The Day of the Locusts. One of the great unsung actresses of her time. Could easily hold her own against some heavy hitters.

Second Team: Meryl Streep (2x nominated. 1x win). Notable works: Julia, The Deer Hunter, Manhattan, Kramer Vs. Kramer. Streep was only in five films during the 1970s, but her arrival on the big screen went off like a nuclear bomb. It was a sign of things to come.

Supporting Actor

First Team: Robert Duvall (2x nominated). Notable works: MASH, The Godfather Parts I and II, Network, Apocalypse Now. Bobby Duvall was slingin em in the 70s. The ultimate best supporting actor.

Second Team: Jason Robards (2x nominated. 2x wins). Notable works: The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, All the President’s Men, Julia. Hey, he wouldn’t be the first I’d put on this list. But when you when back-to-back Oscars for supporting actor, that’s enough to get you on any team.

Actress

First Team: Jane Fonda (4x nominated. 2x winner) Notable works: Klute, Julia, Coming Home, The China Syndrome. Combined with her “Hanoi Jane” reputation, Jane Fonda is the undisputed champion of actresses for this decade.

Second Team: Faye Dunaway (2x nominated. 1x winner) Notable works: Little Big Man, Chinatown, The Towering Inferno, Three Days of the Condor, Network. A lot of actresses could have claimed this spot, but to me, the two marquee performances of the decade came from Dunaway in Chinatown and Network.

Actor

First Team: Jack Nicholson (4x nominated. 1x winner). Notable works: Five Easy Pieces, The Last Detail, Chinatown, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. His Cheshire grin alone defined the decade.

Second Team: Al Pacino (5x nominated) Notable works: Godfather Parts I and II, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, …And Justice For All. The biggest mistake that the Academy made was not awarding Pacino an Oscar during the 1970s.

Director

First team: Francis Ford Coppola (3x nominated. 1x winner). Notable works: The Godfather Parts I and II, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now. Coppola absolutely DOMINATED this decade. No other auteur came close to matching his success.

Second Team: George Lucas (2x nominated). Notable works: THX 1138, American Graffiti, Star Wars. Hear me out. Only a handful of directors were nominated more than once in 1970s, among them are Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet, William Friedkin, and, against all reason, George Lucas. Not even Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese achieved that. Additionally, Star Wars essentially reshaped cinema. We are still living in its shadow. And it’s for that reason alone why George Lucas made the team.

Move over citizen Kane

Why do we watch movies?

I don’t have an answer here, I’m genuinely asking why do we watch movies? Is it to think? Feel? Be entertained? Be turned on? To mindlessly pass the time? I really wanna know. I’m asking because I’ve come across a startling problem. Well, it’s not so much of a problem per se as it is something that we as a society have overlooked. And not just the average movie goer either. Critics and the film intelligentsia have long disregarded what they have known all along—Raiders of the Lost Ark is the most competent movie ever made. Of course, the AFI continues to acknowledge this. It remains ranked in the top 100 movies of all time. But somehow I feel it doesn’t get the respect it deserves. Like, we know it’s great. We just can’t comprehend how great.

I’ve racked my what little of my brain is left trying to address why that is. Raiders came at a time when Steven Spielberg was shitting out hit after hit. First came Jaws. Then came Close Encounters of the Third Kind (let’s forget 1941 for the moment). A year after Raiders, Spielberg released what some might call the pinnacle of his blockbuster era, ET. Meanwhile, George Lucas was in the middle of producing the OG Star Wars trilogy staring Harrison Ford, who was in the midst of cementing himself as the greatest leading man in Hollywood history. So we had three great minds at the height of their creative powers converging on one project. And it worked. It worked so well that we’re still struggling to understand it.

First the casting of Harrison Ford. As is well known, Tom Selleck was originally selected to play Indiana Jones. No doubt, he would have been good. But I implore anyone reading to go watch Selleck’s audition tapes. He’s intense. A little on edge. Kurt Russell gave a similar reading for Han Solo. When you compare Russell’s audition to Ford’s, you realize what an inspired choice it was to roll with Ford. Why? Because Harrison Ford looked liked he couldn’t have given less of a fuck. And that’s part of his charm. Lesser filmmakers, perhaps even filmmakers that many would consider great, might have gone with Kurt Russell or a more intense “actor’s actor”. But Lucas and Spielberg didn’t and their careers were rewarded because of it.

But something that always bothered me about the movie was its conclusion. If you recall, Indiana Jones was dispatched to find the Ark before the Nazis did. After some back and forth in Egypt, Jones secures the Ark in the greatest action sequence of all time and then stows it away on a ship. While in the Mediterranean, the Nazis intercept the vessel, take the Ark, and bring it to an isolated island with Indiana Jones secretly in tow. Jones is caught and is forced to be present when the primary antagonist opens the Ark, which unleashes the wrath of God, killing all the Nazis on the island and leaving only Jones and Marion alive. So if you think about it, Indiana Jones didn’t do much to save the day. IN FACT, it would have been better for the United States to not dispatch Indiana Jones and let the Nazis find the Ark for themselves to presumably open it in Hitler’s presence where he and all of the other high ranking Nazis would have been violently killed. So had US officials done nothing, World War II would’ve never happened. In other words, Indiana Jones started World War II.

But the important thing here is that none of this matters. Your brain didn’t notice this wild act of incompetence because writer Lawrence Kasdan tried to tell you this would happen in the opening scene. When we’re introduced to Indiana Jones, he’s in the middle of a South American jungle trying to steal a golden idol. After surviving numerous threats to his life, he achieves this only to have it pried from his hands by a rival archeologist. This sequence of events establishes Jones as an incredible archeologist in addition to being a scrappy survivalist, but in the world of Raiders, the field of archaeology is filled with treachery and avarice. So Indy can’t win em all. Even though Jones ultimately ends up with the Ark, it is pried away from him by higher powers, allegedly to be studied by “top men.”

And that’s the genius of this film. It begins as it ends. Where many might see a mindless, albeit well executed action/adventure movie, is actually quite well thought out. It’s little pieces like this that make Raiders of the Lost Ark the most competent movie ever made.

Assthetics

When it comes to the Star Trek vs Star Wars debate, I stand firmly on the Star Trek side (the Gene Roddenberry/Rick Berman era. Not the JJ Abrams/Alex Kurtzman era). I prefer my science fiction to be a bit more grounded. Star Wars, to me, is more Sci-fi/Fantasy.

The success rate of Star Wars, in terms of quality per production, is well below 50% (Star Trek hovers at around 50%). If you think about it, there are really only TWO really good Star Wars films: Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back. The Mandalorian is alright, but it’s a bit too predictable. Nevertheless, I can appreciate George Lucas’ creation. Despite some of the terrible storytelling, when historians reflect on the artful impact of cinema, Star Wars will be to film what William Shakespeare was to the English language or Plato to philosophy.

Star Wars is so ubiquitous in modern culture that people don’t stop to appreciate how it really was a game changer. Watch a Hollywood film before 1977 and watch one after. You’ll see that film and pop culture entertainment was forever changed by it.

To be honest, I don’t think George Lucas’ screenplay (or direction) was that revolutionary. The revolutionary aspect was the production design, music, special effects, and editing (although I’d argue that the James Bond films were far more revolutionary in film editing). In this respect, Lucas was more of a CEO overseeing various departments in creating a lived-in universe. For Star Wars, the stories were always secondary. What grabbed everyone’s attention was the myths and scope: it was like watching an ancient epic being played out on the big screen in a way that films before weren’t able to capture.

So I don’t think that devout fans enjoy Star Wars because of their incredible stories and performances (unless they’re watching because of Harrison Ford). It’s purely an aesthetic experience. Make a Star Wars movie without storm troopers, Star Destroyers, light sabers, Boba Fetts, Jedis, Death Stars, etc. then you probably wouldn’t have a Star Wars movie.

You could make the argument that you can’t make a Star Trek movie/TV show without Starfleet. But fans of Trek have shown to be more open to bending its internal rules to further explore its universe.

But I don’t know dude, you like what you like.

But you know who my favorite Star Wars character is?

Admiral Piett

I hope he gets his own spin-off.