Nov 10, 2004

Little Cinema

Saturday night we watched the 1975 movie DOGPOUND SHUFFLE with Ron Moody and David Soul. It's about two hoboes who begin and song and dance act to raise $30 to get one's dog out of the pound! I haven't seen the film in 20 years, and I fell in love with it all over again. Seeing this film reminds me just how vital it is in to keep the smaller films alive. Their existence is getting squeezed out by the multiplex's hostile takeover of SPIDERMAN 15. Sometimes all people need is a modest little movie of everyday people doing ordinary things.

1 comment:

Rob Craig said...

I couldn't agree more. With terribly few exceptions, its the "little" films which make it to cult film status. They tend to be closer to the truth, thus closer to the audience, than large-scale corporate entertainment. And certainly the filmmaker's vision and idea (and talent and resources, for better or worse) come across loud and clear in indie cinema. To most folks, this is a bad thing, actually the reason that folks like Ed Wood became film gods at the start; everyone wanted to showcase how stupid and off-center one man's vision could be, if he was a nut, a cheapskate or an alcoholic. To the multiplex rat of today (and yesteryear, for that matter), a film like JAILBAIT illustrates how NOT to make a movie; to some of us, it illuminates exactly how one SHOULD make a film...