wm lopez

Anybody know what 13 to 24 year olds think of the Marx Bros. movies?

Mondo Kane

Below the age-limit, but my neice (Think she was 9 at the time) saw glimpses of a Marx Bros marathon on TCM. She saw the end of Horse Feathers and loved Harpo. And as mentioned earlier in the thread, it's no surprise that she also likes the 3 stooges.

No luck trying to get her into some of the old horror flicks on Monsters HD, however.

taffer

I am the same way. The oldest movie in my collection is the original Planet of the Apes and it is the only movie from the 60s that I own. I have maybe 25-30 movies from the 70s and the rest of my 400+ DVD collection is from the 80s and beyond.

Troy Stiffler

So... People don't care about old movies. Outside of the film community, what's the significant importance? Do you people view this as a problem?

slop101

Yeah, totally.

That reminds me of a girl who some friends set me up with, telling me that, like me, she loved movies and will watch anything. So after talking to her for a while, I find out that she's seen maybe 3 films made before 1980, and that she doesn't like black & white movies, yet she considered herself a Cineaste.

Here's another funny example of similar ignorance from another girl who fancied herself a "movie lover". After introducing her to a friend of mine who happens to be a grandson of John Wayne's, I find out that not only has she never seen a John Wayne movie, but that she's only heard of John Wayne because of the local OC airport named after him. Some "movie lover"....

It's like saying you're a car lover, and yet you don't care for any of the muscle-cars from the '60s and '70s.

SteveJKo

You know I can understand someone never having seen an actor or actress in a film. I don't think I ever saw Charlie Chaplin outside of an AFI tribute until a friend brought over several films of his on VHS (loved them all by the way). But as a movie lover at least I knew who he was. Sad to say but I've met people who claimed to love movies who thought Joan Crawford was a fictional character played by Faye Dunaway. At least they'd heard of Faye Dunaway (but I had to explain who Louis B. Mayer was).

On a positive note, last year a friend and I took his niece out to dinner to celebrate her college graduation. The niece loves movies, and the subject of the greatest actresses of all time came up. To make a long story short, she admitted to having never seen a Bette Davis film. My friend and I suggested Now, Voyager and The Letter. Well here it is almost a year later and she now owns every Bette Davis film available on DVD. There is hope!

Jason

Children's television programming is so narrowly focused and homogenized anymore it's a wonder children know their own names.

fumanstan

I knew of them from various spoofs and appearences in other media, but I first watched Duck Soup when I was 21 in college (24 now) and enjoyed it. I have an interest in movies, and happen to be taking a comedy on film class, but until then i had hardly watched very many movies pre-70's.

The rest of the class seemed to be fairly into it at the time.

B5Erik

If the market for classic films doesn't grow with succeeding generations there will be no money for film preservation, and thousands of classic films will be lost forever (the old filmstock does disintegrate over time), so, yeah, this is a problem.

Plus, with the dumbing down of movies if there is no connection to classic (smarter) movies that actually told a good story then you can't exactly expect movies to get better in the future, can you?

You have to learn the basics - the foundations of storytelling - before you can go all CGI wild and call yourself a filmmaker. We all know that the people who run the studios are glorified accountants who don't know much about the ART of moviemaking, just the business. So if the next generation of filmmakers has to pander to dumbed down audiences (and especially if the filmmakers themselves are dumbed down) the the art of film will go into a rather precipitous slide.

Yes, that is a problem - at least for those of us who actually care.

wm lopez

To me it seems today's generation grew up watching 80's movies which was very teen bathroom humor. Even E.T. had bathroom humor, so when they grow up on this if they write scripts we get AMERICAN PIE etc. etc. type of movies.
If they were to watch the comedy of the 20's to 60's maybe today's movies would be funny and not gross humor. Seems every comedy in this century has to be sex or bathroom humor and that gets a PG-13 which means any teen or kid can see it.

Eplicon

Most kids today are conditioned with the MTV-style crap on TV, and they expect the same experience when seeing movies, so it's not much of a surprise they have little interest in what a good film is. I grew up watching films in the '70s, back when TV stations actually aired older, classic movies with regularity. At the time Star Wars came out, I also discovered sci-fi classics like The Time Machine, Planet of the Apes, War of the Worlds, Fantastic Voyage, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and many others. I always had a great time watching these; they never seemed old or outdated to me back then, and I can still see these with the same enthusiasm today.

Even when I was a teen, I had very little interest in the so-called teen movies because it never seemed to reach me on the same level as the adult themed ones, so I was glad to have been conditioned so early on with films between the 1930s and 1960s.

SteveJKo

VERY well said!

bhk

The ones that are interested in the old movies are doing film preservation already. The movies that are lost are lost, no amount of caring is going to bring them back.

wm lopez

So it seems that the arts do in fact have an effect on youth!
Liberals don't like to hear that the sex & violence that comes out of Hollywood movies or music or on tv shows has any effect.

perigee

George who?

Seriously, I find most stars on the screen today thoroughly forgettable and usually annoying. It's no surprise that cultural illiteracy goes hand-in-hand with lack of basic verbal, math and science knowledge. Sometimes it seems that GenXYZ believe civilization arose fully developed shortly before Seinfeld began to air.

Breakfast with Girls

Dammit, you stole my joke!

And I had taken the time to work it into a scene from The Philadelphia Story and everything.

PacMan2006

I'm 23, and I think it just depends on where you grew up, what you grew up watching, your parents, etc.

I remember being 13, and having seen Hitchcock movies. To this day, one of my fav movies is "Rear Window." I have deep love for "I Love Lucy," and appreciate the brilliance of shows like "All in the Family," and have fun watching "The Munsters."

But I may be different. I've always loved movies and television. I remember being 13, and being VERY upset, and setting up a group online movement to barrage Nick at Nite when they kept juggling "I Love Lucy" on the schedule. And by then, I had seen every episode two or three times over. So I am probably different. I remember being in 8th grade, and trying to convice my friend to give "I Love Lucy" a try. He was trying to get me into Pro Wrestling. It's not that I didn't like other current shows and movies. I did, I loved them. I just liked some of the older stuff as well.

The average person my age, though, may be casual TV viewers. I know people who really are into the older stuff and appreciate it, and then I know people who aren't big TV watchers at all. Then there's people who enjoy movies, but more modern ones.

I am somewhat shocked that that person didn't know Cary Grant, even by just his name, though. But I don't know if it speaks about my entire generation, or if it's just specific to how certain people grew up.

slop101

And apparently black & white movies have effected you so much, that's how you seem to see the world...

JumpCutz

Giantrobo

Ok, fair enough. Everyone likes what they like and that's cool.

B5Erik

You don't get it. A lot of movies that have not yet been preserved, but are still in decent enough shape to be preserved, WILL be lost if they are not restored in the next 10-15 years.

Every year more films are lost. Money is needed to restore them. Unfortunately, as the fanbase dwindles due to age and death the revenue stream also dwindles - unless younger fans takethe time to learn about why so many "older" folks are so passionate about their classic movies.

But it takes an attention span greater than that of a gnat to enjoy classic films, so for many people under 30 that's just too difficult for them. That's a shame, because not only do they lose out, but the fans who would like to see classic movies that have not been released on DVD may never get the chance as the filmstock turns to goo in the cannisters.

As I said in my first post - I weep for the future.

fumanstan

In defense of this generation, I think it's just as silly for people of the older generation to dismiss some of the stars today, such as rolling their eyes at George Clooney.

Josh H

Same here more or less. I'm 28 and it's pretty much 70's and later for me as well. But I do at least try to netflix some movies older than that every once in a while.

Giantrobo

Agree 100%. They act as if, Hollywood was incapable of making a boring, crap, silly, or lame movie before 1970 and that all actors back them were the greatest ever.

bhk

I do get it. Preserving movies doesn't depend on teenagers. There's so much money to be made in movies that there will always be people trying to become stars, directors, and producers. Those are the people that will pay to do the preserving.