Read part one of this series here.

In William Strauss and Neil Howe’s Generations, the babies born 1925-1942 are classified as members of the “Silent Generation.” These were the kids who grew up during the crises of the Great Depression and World War II, entered young adulthood at the postwar high of the 1950s, and hit middle age during the cultural chaos of the late 1960s and ’70s. This life sequence puts them in Howe and Strauss’ “Adaptive” archetype, a recessive generation less populous in numbers than the ones before (the GI Generation) and after (the Baby Boomers.)

When this generation started making movies they transformed Hollywood. Peter Biskind’s 1998 book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and Rock ‘N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood lays out the popular narrative. The tail of the Silent Generation and the beginning of the Boomers (filmmakers born 1939-1946) put out major dramatic work that challenged the more bland conventions of mid ‘60s Hollywood cinema. The 1970s were the R-rated decade. Francis Ford Coppola made “The Godfather.” Martin Scorsese released “Mean Streets” and “Taxi Driver.” New serious actors like Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Jon Voight, and Robert De Niro delivered legendary performances. This was a film generation inspired by the French New Wave to treat movies as serious art.

Oscar Nominated-screenwriter, award-winning mystery novelist, and now Pajamas Media CEO Roger L. Simon was a member of this clique. Born in 1943, Simon is like others born at the edges of generations, a blending of both appears in his re-titled memoir Turning Right at Hollywood and Vine, recently released in paperback with new material. (more…)

Let’s just get to where we left off in Part 1.

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5. Star Trek: Generations (1994) – Yes, “Where the hell’s Kirk?” was my mantra through most of the second act, but the Next Generation (TNG) crew got off to a promising start with William Shatner’s Captain Kirk bookending events to graciously hand off the baton. Plot holes riddle the story of Malcolm McDowall’s Soran and his maniacal attempt to return to the Nexus, an energy ribbon with a crack-like addictive ability to deliver its inhabitants into a dream-like nirvana (there had to be easier ways to get in the thing other than blowing up an entire friggin’ planet), but the concept of the Nexus – the idea of choosing between a false perfection and an imperfect reality is Trek at its best, and the scene where Picard enjoys a heart-wrenching Christmas with a family he’ll never have is a franchise high point. The best moments, though, arrive when Kirk and Picard, two Captains wildly different in personality but who share a love called Enterprise, come together to save the Universe. The complaints about Kirk’s death being anti-climatic are valid and the less than iconic setting for the demise of an icon is obviously due to budget and imagination constraints, but for me it works. When heroes fall it’s often in nondescript places we’ve never heard of where a stand has been taken to risk one’s life for those they’ve never met. Kirk may not have been real, but his final moments are. (more…)