Word: plot
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...gimmick is good enough. Alas, the characters are solid pine and the plot is upholstered with historical minutiae that quickly become tedious. Moreover, the book is illustrated with old photographs, prints and sketches supposedly drawn by the hero. Altogether a painfully literal effort, except for those who take joy in minute historical coincidence. Like the fact that New York had a ball team way back then called the Metropolitans. But those Mets had pitching problems...
...directing into democracy, if not anarchy. Far from strutting around on the set with a riding crop, Altman is likely to operate the clapstick himself and encourage suggestions from second assistants and electricians. An Altman film is more like an improvisational encounter group than a showcase for stars and plot. Sally Kellerman, who played Nurse Hot Lips Houlihan in M*A*S*H, reports that "even my analyst said it did more for me than a man could." Working for Altman, says Sally, is "like recess at grammar school...
...highly romanticized recount of a strike and bust at a place called Western, but it is understood that the location is Columbia. Horovitz, of course, got the idea for the movie from James Kunen's book about the Columbia Strike. He went on to construct his own fanciful plot. The center of attention is a crew jock, nice boy though, who becomes "radicalized" during the strike. He endures taunts and even a bloody nose from his friends, some of whom he radicalizes in turn...
SUDDENLY, the plot shifts its course. The strikers occupy the gym. They sit in concentric circles singing "Give Peace a Chance." Even an inane conversation between secretaries cannot extinguish the brutality of police charging into the building, systematically beating the students and filling up the gym with tear gas. The romance turns to nightmare, and the people, even though they have been stick figures, are beaten and bloodied with anguishing realism...
...anger turned into the theater of cruelty. Satire declined into a kind of invective. Britain's suicide rate soared. So did crime. From 1956 to 1965, illegitimate births doubled. The money spent on gambling increased fourfold. Hard-drug usage-heroin, cocaine-multiplied ten times over. Gradually the plot of history and the quirks of society grew nastier-Suez, Profumo, the 1966 Moors murder trial. Today, Booker judges, the Great Freak-Out is over. Reality has caught up with fantasy, and the spirit of collective hangover lies upon the land...