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Show i ftc njLMMjj. trove, MA-i- oi! feS iiu, auaoajr. efinunr 24, 19M In Arts Decade of Action Not Achievement bash' c By NORMAN NAD EL NEW YORK (NEA) Fifty or 100 years from now, an appraisal of the arts during the 1970s - Robert Redford, Jim Foodi, Woody Alles aid Bart ReyMUs tre top box office draws today. 5 mall Movies Fade Away As 'Big Events' Dominate By DICK KLEINER HOLLYWOOD (NEA) The big change in Hollywood in the 70s was the decline and fall of the small picture. And what everybody expects for the - 10s is the further decline and fall of the small picture. In one way or another, almost all of the top movie executives surveyed for this article said virtually the same thing: Gone are the days when a producer and a director and a couple of actors could make a nice, simple, small movie. If those days aren't gone, they are going fast "We've gone farther and farther away from the small picture in the 70s," says Alan Shayne, vice president in charge of production for the feature-fildivision of War&er Bros. "The small picture we used to make, even into the midVTCs, we don't make now. And I think that will be more and ni?re true in the Ms." Conversely, the big picture has proliferated. Bigger and bigger and bigger, costlier and costlier and costlier. "One of the major developments of the 70s," says Roger Comma, who used to be the king of the small picture, "was the coming of what I call the 'event' tllie giant film like 'Star Wars' or picture 'Apocalypse Mow' which takes a dominant form in the industry and squeezes out the little picture." Carman says his company, New World, started in 1970 expressly to nuke small films. But today, he says, New World has been forced by public taste and inflation to make m pictures like everybody else. And for the 'Sus, Corman sees "bigger and bigger and bigger films." But, he adds gloomily: "I think that sometime in the next few years one of these giant films will fail with disastrous effect I foresee a film costing $20, 30 or HO million winding up an almost complete failure. And that will shake the industry." Hand in hand with the decline of the small film has been the growth of TV movies. Walter Mirisch, one of the giants in independent d a great production, says that TV has deal of the subject matter of feature films, which has narrowed the types of properties that are now m - "pre-empte- motion-pictu- re material." He says many subjects that movies used to deal with routinely art bow the property of TV, "The woman's picture is almost exclusively a TV have some validity; historically, trends oftenmight have not been identified in their own time. But now, at the tag end of the decade, the likelihood of its being remembered as epochal, or even mildly important, appears dim. It isn't that not much happened. On the contrary, creative effort abounded, even if creative accomplishment didn't Perhaps that will be the reason for remembering the 70s; more people participated in just about all of the art forms, and more people looked, listened and in other ways provided the audience than ever before in the nation's history. Yet that trend dates from the '60s, which era probably will be credited by historians. People did put a greater dollar value on art than before. The $2.5 million just paid at auction for Frederick Church's "Icebergs" set a new high for a painting by an America. In 1965. Church's "Twilight in the thing now," be says. "And the big novel. It makes Wilderness," probably his finest canvas, was more sense when TV does it in the long form, so bought for $25,000. New price records were made feature films don't touch big novels much any and broken repeatedly during the decade. more." Perhaps because this has been the emergence of Other developments of the 70s that have had the "me" generation, the philosophy of self above history have been: significance in motion-pictur- e all, the 70s arts have been mostly from "The The growth of disaster movies It can be argued that all art indulges the artist's Poseidon Adventure" to the recent releases of the unique personality. Isn't that supposed to be what it's last half of 79. all about? The permissiveness of movies. Things that used Not quite. Think of the drama to be taboo are today casually given a PG rating. of the 1930s. Think of the '60s, closer in time and of The continuing decline in the importance star memory, when issues and humanity's needs saines at the box office. As 1979 becomes history, dominated the arts and other media of public and who are really there are only a handful of actors personal expression. worth a nickel at the box office. Outpourings of concerned and deeply perceptive Film executives say that only Burt Reynolds, Clint literature have followed all our major conflicts since the Civil War, yet that has not happened so far in the Eastwood, Robert Redfon!, Woody Allen, Mel with a few exceptions. years e Brooks and maybe Jane Foods are safe Michael Herr's "Dispatches," the best book on draws. Even Barbra Strdsand has had her day. that struggle, is a fresh kind of reporting, and The emergence of character leading men such Frances FitzGerald's "Fire in the Lake" provided who have the insights our Asian effort so tragically lacked. as Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro As for novelists, the names that come to mind replaced the heroic leading men of Hollywood's past. are John Updike, John Cheever and I B. quickly of And perhaps most important, the rise cable Singer. TV or pay TV or whatever the generic name turns out Ton! Morrison has come to the fore as a superior to be. People in more and more cities now have the She also is the most able black writer to novelist. option of paying a monthly fee to bring recent movies have asserted her ability in the period. into without commercials, without cuts right Plenty of young writers bear watching, such as their homes. In fact, theater owners are terrified that their Ward Just and Richard Brautigan, each with a disbusiness may suffer in the '80s because of these tinctive style. Still, there has appeared no literary d trend as as, for example, Tom Wolfe's systems. 1960s. At a recent American Film Institute conference on in the Likewise in other arts. film and television, theate-ciai- n operator Bruce Architecture mat has earned attention includes the Corwin said his fear was that movie studios could East Wing of Washington's National Gallery of Art bypass theaters by making big blockbuster movie and the Kennedy Memorial Library outside Boston, and selling it via pay TV to veap a huge profit in one both by I.M. Pei, and the planned New York City night. with the neoclassical look of a Chipepn-dal- e Shayne says he doesn't believe pay TV's full im- skyscraper the grand old man of highboy he But pact will be felt for a few years. says that architecture. by Philip Johnson, dates from the whose Pei, emergence already the fees pay TV shells out to buy movies for early '60s, may prove to be the dominnant force in exhibition are becoming significant this decade. Most executives think that Hollywood's future is There's no point in trying to predict what will happromising. The '80s may see more films produced for pen in the 1980s. Unpredictability is basic to the y TV or network TV than for theatrical release, creative arts. ut film makers should prosper. Only the individual artists know where they're gofrom here and they're not even sure until they oh in ing is the increase," says movies "Interest Mirisch. "Young people are more interested in see or hear what they've tried. So time will tell. 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