Directors in New Hollywood:
- Martin Scorsese- Directed Mean Streets and Taxi Driver
- George Lucas- Directed American Graffiti. Had a $13 million budget for Star Wars- earned rights to a sequel that pathed his way to big budget films.
- Jack Nickelson
- Steven Speilberg- 28 years old when he started Jaws- Jaws was ovedue and has a large budget that made over $100 million and was put on 1200 screens
- Denis Hopper- directed Easy Rider
- Francis Ford Coppola- directed The Godfather- made history with the amount of money they made so quickly. Coppola moved into technology and forward thinking- worked with Lucas
- Bert Schneider- significant producer
- Sam Peckinpah- emerging talent who brought lots of violent realism ‘The Rifelman’. ‘The Wild Bunch’ reflected violence in Vietnam war.
- William Friedkin- directed The Exorcist- start of the auteur movement
New Hollywood:
- Studio system officially collapsed by 1963
- Television had become more popular
- Foreign film had become more popular- influenced by europeans
- American made films were seen as pointless
- ‘Drive in’ and younger audiences increased in popularity
- More directors saw film as an art form
- Period of lots of drugs and drinking
- Paramount pictures were bought by a big corporation
- 1969 Charlie Manson’s followers broke into Roman Polanski’s house and killed his pregnant wife while the director was away in NewYork.
- Universal set up it’s low budget devision in attempt to cash in on the youth market
- American Graffiti drew in the younger generation
- By the 1970’s audiences had returned to the cinemas
- New wave made films that spoke to modern audiences
- After Jaws and Taxi Driver the age of the blockbusters had begun
- The era of the director came to an end by the late 1970’s and replaced by block busters
- After Star Wars was released in 1977, came the era of high budget blockbusters.
Emma Coe Film Studies 