The American film industry was in bad shape in the 60’s, crippled by the breakup of the studios, the arrival of TV, and the fragmentation of the audience.  It was rescued by a new generation of filmmakers we call the Hollywood Renaissance, mostly graduates of film schools who brought along new generational attitudes and aesthetics.  Their aesthetics were much influenced by what they had watched in film school: lots of European films, especially the French New Wave, notably “Breathless,” steeped in the aesthetics of modernism (fragmentation, formalism, difficulty, self-reference, distancing, the license of authorship).  The breakout films of the Hollywood Renaissance (“Bonnie and Clyde,” “The Graduate,” “2001,” “The Wild Bunch,” etc.) were full of modernist aesthetics. “Raging Bull” is their fruition.        

In taking the life of 1940’s middleweight champ Jake LaMotta as its material, “Raging Bull” gained access to multiple layers of self-referencing history; the entire post-WWII era, its films, even personal histories.  As film history, it invokes the prizefight film, a sub-genre of film noir (“Golden Boy,” “Body and Soul,” “Champion,” “The Harder They Fall”) as melodramas of struggle and betrayal, but much more seriously, the gangster genre itself, which through Coppola’s landmark “The Godfather” had become the dominant genre mythology of the 70’s.  Scorsese counters Coppola’s family epic cum pagan opera with a world of busted families and predatory crooks, through which the solitary Jake must pass in his lonely spiritual quest, a thrilling dispute that Coppola would take up in “The Godfather Part III.”  This self-referencing history oscillates, from the deep background of the film medium itself, which signals the arrivals of color film and TV, to a place where Jake stands in for the solitary film artist in the independent production era, to a foreground nod to Scorsese’s family photos, his father as gangster, even himself in the last scene. 

Formally, “Raging Bull” fully accepts the modernist challenge of fighting the war against convention at the front lines.  The use of black and white, hand-held camera, and slow-motion modulate the film’s distancing effects; the Expressionist design and low-key lighting are master classes; the editing brilliant in its breathtaking liberties; and of course the sound.  The great formal contribution of the Hollywood Renaissance was the total reinvention of motion picture sound, technologically and aesthetically, from “American Graffiti” and “The Conversation” on.  “Raging Bull” continues this adventure, editing sound against image, changing speeds of each independently, performing montage purely in audio, and even pursuing the elusive Expressionist soundtrack. 

As if these formal adventures are not enough, “Raging Bull” gives us one of the great meditations on film acting, which after WWII means method acting.  More than the sixty pounds De Niro would put on during production, every single instant of the film is freighted with the testing of method acting for its promised sense of authenticity, as against classical discipline (“though I’m no Olivier…”), even against it’s greatest performances (Brando’s “I could have been a contender” speech). 

The issue of difficulty is tricky.  Boxing, among the earliest of motion pictures subjects, is easy.  It comes right to you in a violent, vulgar way, like popular entertainment.  Opera, from another time in another language, can be difficult, requiring a lot of work by the audience, like high art.  “Raging Bull” begins with both, Jake shadow boxing in slow motion in a dream ring to the Intermezzo of Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana,” now high art but in its day an anti-romantic tale of brutal peasant passion, much like “Raging Bull.”  It’s a shifting frame, inviting us to consider both the fighter and the filmmaker as artists one instant and buffoons the next.  The film continually shifts this frame of violence and beauty, of entertainment and art.  The fights themselves will serve as both Jake’s and Scorsese’s arias, deeply felt songs of pure lyrical passion, but in the end Scorsese is a stagehand and Jake a clown, declaring, “That’s entertainment.” 

If opera is difficult, how about Catholicism?  Scorsese said early on that only two things were important to him, film and religion.  This is a film that insists you take its religious dimension and Jake’s spiritual voyage seriously.  For Scorsese, it is less the ritual, ceremonial Catholicism of Coppola’s films, but more the Jesuit sense of a lonely and painful spiritual journey.  It is appropriate that boxing is essentially solitary.  Jake passes through crystalline moments transgression, guilt, penance, and, perhaps, absolution.  Perhaps Jake achieves some grace at the end. 

After “Raging Bull” it becomes more and more difficult to bridge the gap between entertainment and art, and motion pictures increasingly veer towards either the surefire pleasures of comic books or the smug elitist pleasures of post-modernism. 

Amazingly “Raging Bull” manages to hold all its aspects and purposes together.  Somehow we know that it is sincere, that it does not speak to us falsely, through silliness or irony.  It’s the real deal.

It was the Reagan era, and I wanted no part of it, or it’s popular films. Looking back I realize that I was probably too hard on both the President and the genre. Most of my opposition to Reagan was his crackdown on drugs, and that probably came from his youth. In old Hollywood, it was the communists who tended to be dope fiends, so in his mind there was a correlation. (Come to think of it, most of the dope fiends in MY youth were communists as well.)

Looking back I realize that I agree with much of what Reagan stood for. His opposition to an ever growing government, matches mine; and his love for America’s promises of freedom prosperity and liberty, are things I cherish as well. Today, I can also enjoy a good action film.

I still remember going to see Rambo: First Blood Part II at a drive-in movie with a girl who was in the Army Reserve. She loved it, but all I could do was mock the picture. I didn’t understand the patriotism she felt watching the Vietnam War won by a man who went back fighting to win, without the bureaucracy holding him back.

I thought the film was quite stupid. At the time I was more of an art-film fanatic. I wanted a film that was dark and dreary and ended with questions unresolved. I really liked David Lynch. Needless to say, the date ended badly; there was no reason for me to be in a drive-in that night.

I was a post-punk. Much like my compatriots, I rebelled against everything American, without even stopping to think what it meant to be an American. As I grew older I realized that few places outside of this country gave its citizens the ability to make total asses out of themselves. I had the freedom to dress stupid, and the freedom to say stupid things onstage. I even had the freedom to watch long monotonous pictures, which someone had the freedom to make.

Now that I’m older, and a little less serious, I look back on the action films as the comic book films of their day. Sure they were silly, and you had to suspend your disbelief, but not nearly as much as you do today, when you are forced to pretend that Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon are tough guys.

They were done without computer effects, million dollar car crashes, or latex costumes to give the girlish male lead a masculine physique. Back in those days, when you saw a guy jump off of a building, you knew that a real human being actually jumped off of a building. (And if the shot got messed up, he did it twice.)

Much like my comedy at the time, I didn’t realize that the sole purpose of entertainment was to be entertaining. It’s okay to suspend the rules of physics for a couple hours and imagine a world where good guys are shot at for two straight hours, only receiving a couple of glancing wounds; and bad guys all suffer painfully horrible deaths, falling in slow motion.

1. Science Fiction/Thriller/Horror Channel

A short form/short film channel showcasing those genres. Independent producers, writers, creators could submit work to be aired. It wouldn’t have to be, nor should it be at the Sundance level of professionalism delivered on DigiBeta and starring Cameron Diaz doing a favor for the filmmaker because it’s her friend’s cousin, either.

We don’t want that. There’s plenty of that kind of venue and they turn down 99% of the stuff submitted anyway, mainly because it’s not the work of someone’s friend’s cousin. So forget that right away. It has to be underground, guerilla, shoestring and, most important, good. Very good. Damn good. But not expensive. How can you do that, you say? 

With writing.  

Without John Hughes, would there have been a 1980s? The filmmaker and screenwriter died of a heart attack while walking Thursday in Manhattan. For the uninitiated, he wrote National Lampoon’s Vacation, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Weird Science and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off–directing several of those films as well.

Memories of Hughes’s films are as likely to be audio as visual: The Psychedelic Furs, The Smiths, and Simple Minds were among the acts introduced to a wider audience through Hughes’s sonically-savvy films.

No John Hughes, no Molly Ringwald; no Molly Ringwald, no 1980s–it’s pretty simple. But when the 1980s ended, so did John Hughes. He hadn’t directed a movie since 1991, and his work as a screenwriter since his golden age had been spotty. Proof that John Hughes will be missed in death comes from the fact that John Hughes was so missed for the last two decades of his life. The void in high school movies that transcend the high school audience is so enormous in part because John Hughes stopped directing movies. From Justin to Kelly? She’s All That? Dude, Where’s My Car? They don’t make teen films like they used to–at least how John Hughes used to.