Can anyone actually see a movie like FREAKS being made today? I think not ....

Most of the slower paced epic films (such as L of Arabia, Spartacus, 2001: A Space Odyssey) wouldn't get made today. Not enough action.

I was thinking of movies like "Gremlins" and John Carpenter's "The Thing." Movies with superior special effects even by today's standards, but if they were made today they would seem less real/scary because no doubt everything would be done through CGI.

Heathers

I've been right here, actually. I know Dawn of the Dead (04) just released an unrated version on DVD, and thank God for a medium like DVD, but in that version I've seen much worse that was left in an R rated film. But no, a director should aim to get any rating that serves him/studio, but looking back at the last few years, the MPAA has been making no sense. Wes Craven has to repeatedly cut the ending for Scream down to avoid an X or reshoot it entirely, but then the MPAA gives an R rating to all the blood and butchery in Freddy Vs. Jason. They are too wish washy. You really belief a P-13 should have an F-word in it and still be rated P-13? I'm 23, and I find it NOT funny to hear some kid under the teen years yelling F-words. I think the MPAA needs to be rehauled. I am VERY pleased to hear Lion's Gate is releasing Haute Tension next year with the "NC-17" rating intact. I'm 23 and I can and want to see those movies, but when P-13 and R blur together, then it makes me scratch my head and go "Uh?".

And yes, nobody could ever film 25 minutes of degradation and rape in modern film (even with the unrated potential on DVD) like Zier did in ISoYG. Maybe that what makes the 1970s so unique.

Just wanted to to chime in on Blazing Saddles by saying that, yes, Dave Chappelle has done skits on his Comedy Central show just as racially irreverent, if not more so, than the anything in the movie. But that is skit comedy, and I do not believe that a major studio would release Blazing Saddles today. If they did, and casted Dave Chappelle or Chris Rock as suggested, it would have an entirely different complexion. (No pun intended) It would be nothing but a vehicle for the respective actor. Both those actors have reputations, so to spreak, and we would EXPECT nothing less than an over the top performance with shocking humor.

Movies that could NOT be made today are any movies in Technicolor. All the Technicolor cameras got sold to China and all the Technicolor processing plants got overhauled to process regular film.

And slower paced epics can get made today. It just takes a director with enough clout to make them.

Not even Miike?

Miike can do anything.

Yeah, I don't see how anyone could miss that incredibly stupid plot-point in The Sum of All Fears. When I saw the movie and the nuclear bomb was lost in the Middle East, but then ended up in the hands of South African Neo-Nazis, I had to roll my eyes at the ridiculous level of P.C. screenwriting that was on display. (I've never even read the novel, but knew that it had to be Middle Eastern terrorists that got possession of the bomb in the book.)

Conan the Barbarian....today it would be a PG-13 music video with Vin Diesel and cutaways from all the blood.

What I don't understand is why movies themselves wouldn't get made today. If some of the movies discussed were made today, more than likely some of the scenes would be changed and other things would be changed to make it fit the times. Take A Fish Called Wanda for example. In that movie, there is a scene involving an airport and some shaky security at the airport, making light of it. Would the entire movie be scrapped today because it contained some airport humor that might offend people of the post 9-11 crowd? Unlikely, but the movie would probably be made without that scene or something modified to be less offensive. Same with the dog getting run over in the movie.

I think a better thread would be what movie scenes wouldn't be allowed today? I can think of a few from some early G rated movies of the 70's, like the nudity in Planet of the Apes, or at least the rating would be stricter today.

I think there is still room for the offensive material. There are independent movies, and also movies like Bad Santa which are just over the top and still work. I think what would change most are the ratings for these movies.

Fight Club - The ending would remind people of 9/11.

Actually, only the guy that originally bought the bomb from the Arabs was South African. The guys in Europe were German, so I could see them as Neo-Nazis. There were also the Russian scientists and the American dock worker, and I believe the book had similar groups working in concert, aside from the Germans. And all of these changes had been written into the script and mostly filmed by the time 9/11 rolled around.

While it did get made recently, I couldn't see Brotherhood of the Wolf getting greenlit for a major American studio with the bad guys being who they were in it.

I doubt we'll see four well-known actors signing on for a shot-for-shot remake of 1979's Caligula any time soon. Just a guess. Not that it really hurt the careers of the four major stars in the first one, but still, I don't hear Helen Mirren or Peter O'Toole mention it very often.

Remake? ... I doubt that would happen, true. But I think it'd be pretty easy today to get a whole load of respected actors together in a film that they didn't know would end up being so embarrassing.

I'm sure you can think of several examples already... Well, they just wouldn't have used that ending. After all, it's not the book's ending.

Yeah a lot of these are movies that would just have little changes. Truthfully pretty much any film could be made under the right director with the right amount of clout. I would say 2001 would never get made in today's market, but of course nothing like it was really made back then either, that's Kubrick for you.

I mean look at Eyes Wide Shut...take that story and I seriously doubt any studio would even consider throwing 60 million dollars at the budget. Add Kubrick and a couple superstars, no problem.

So in reality pretty much any movie could be made, given the right talent with the right clout behind it. I mean there are still bid budget slow epics...Dances With Wolves was a huge hit and a fairly languidly paced epic, and The Thin Red Line is a 50 million dollar movie that's hardly a mile a minute war epic. If anything now we have more ability to make many sorts of films. In the 80s the idea of a 3 hour film was highly looked down upon, with some credit to Costner's success in turning that around. Granted, these types of films are usually more the exception than the rule, but in general that's always been the case.

Of course, that's barring a few exceptions...something like Birth of a Nation of course would never have a chance of seeing production, at least not with any significant funding.