MOVIES - SUMMER 1977

Just for kicks, and since the end of summer looms, I decided to look back at some of the movies that played at local (Chicago-area) theaters during the summer of 1977, right before entering my senior year in high school.

Like today, many of the movies in '77 were horror shlock, sci-fi, melodramas and action. The biggest difference wasn't in the films themselves but where you watched them. Most of the movies you saw in 1977 were at stand-alone theaters as opposed to seeing them at massive strip mall cineplexes.

STAR WARS garnered the biggest box office dollars in 1977 and it played for the better part of the year rather than only at theaters for a short run like now where movies show for (at maximum) a couple months before hitting DVD.

In 1977, videotape players weren't on most consumers' radar (although consumer players were available at a very high premium). So, if you wanted to see a new movie, you had to go to the theater. You simply didn't have the "I'll just wait until it hits video" mindset.

During the summer of '77, much of my time was spent at the Skylark Drive-In Theater located off of Eola Road and New York Street in Aurora, IL. The Skylark is long gone and the grounds are now home to townhouses and strip malls.

This list (which is not definitive) includes movies that played at indoor theaters as well as double features that played at the Skylark or other drive-in theaters.

At indoor theaters in 1977:

• WELCOME TO L.A.
• THE LATE SHOW
• MAN ON THE ROOF
• STAR WARS
• THE HOUSE BY THE LAKE
• THE FARMER
• IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES
• THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE
• THE WHITE BUFFALO
• BAD
• ANNIE HALL
• CROSS OF IRON
• SUSPIRIA
• ONE ON ONE
• BLACK AND WHITE IN COLOR
• ALLEGRO
• CAR WASH
• ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13
• KID VENGEANCE
• AIRPORT 77
• SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT
• THE SPY WHO LOVED ME
• FIRE SALE
• THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT
• THE LAST REMAKE OF BEAU GESTE
• MARCH OR DIE
• RAINBOW BRIDGE

At the Skylark (or other area drive-in theaters):

• RUBY and THE BEAST MUST DIE
• RUBY and THE LEGEND OF HELLHOUSE
• RUBY and A BOY AND HIS DOG
• THE CAR and TWO MINUTE WARNING
• AUDREY ROSE and CARRIE
• RABID and GOD TOLD ME TO
• THE VAN and THE POM POM GIRLS
• THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVED DOWN THE LANE and BREAKER! BREAKER!

VINYL IS THE REAL DEAL...

"Vinyl is the real deal. I’ve always felt that until you buy the vinyl record, you just don’t own the album … It’s not just me, it’s not just a little pet thing, it’s not just some retro romantic thing from the past. It’s still alive." - Jack White

I saw White's quote on the WAX.FM blog and felt an emotional twinge and longing for the days when I'd spend hours in record stores browsing through rows and rows of vinyl. And then hours at home listening to them. 

WAX.FM is devoted to vinyl and explores the wonders of analog as opposed to digital recording and makes a strong case that music - rock music especially - is just plain better when listened to on record. WAX.FM has little regard for downloading songs or even listening to music on compact disc.

I'm not immune to downloading songs and I have a pretty healthy CD collection but WAX.FM is right - albums provide experience you just can't get by hitting the download button.

My vinyl experience began in 1975 with the purchase of my first record (which I still have) - Chicago's Greatest Hits. I had little musical guidance at that time and bought it because, as a kid, I loved the song 25 Or 6 To 4. Esoteric, tough to decipher, 25 Or 6 To 4 introduced me to the wonders of the guitar solo and its ability to burn unforgettably into your brain.

Five years later I started collecting harder edge garage and punk rock starting with the Clash London Calling, the Ramones Rocket to Russia, and didn't look back.

The vinyl experience started in the store, finding the record choice of the day, purchasing it and speeding home, going into my bedroom and firing up the stereo. At the peak of my obsessive vinyl days I had a Vector Research receiver, which pumped 150 watts per channel, waist-high DLK speakers, a Samsung graphic equalizer and a Harman/Kardon turntable.

I'd unwrap the album and carefully slide it from its sleeve, mindful to not touch the grooves, just the record's edges. I'd gently place the wax on the turntable, lift the table's tonearm and ease the cartridge onto the spinning black circle. I'd lower the turntable's dust cover, sit between the speakers and let the music roll over me, track by track until the first side was complete. Then I'd flip the record over and listen to side two non-stop.

If I loved the album, I'd repeat the process. If I wasn't immediately enamored, I'd put the disc away and return to it later that day or later that night, or after midnight, or after a crazy night of partying.

An album I loved could live in my consciousness for weeks and weeks, sometimes months (even years). I'd learn every pop between the grooves as if they were part of the music. I knew how long the blank intro groove would last before the first drum crack or guitar strum and I'd sit through the blank outro groove until the tonearm lifted on its own.

I became intimate with all of my records, made a deeply emotional connection as if they were living, breathing things. I amassed just over 1,000 records during my collecting years (throughout my 20s) and I still have them - albeit in storage.

Most are in mint condition and waiting for the day when I have the room to put them back on display. 

HIPSTAMATIC iPHONE CAMERA APP = ART

Yes the iPhone camera has limitations but then again, most phone cameras do. However, what's great about them is that you can take photos on the fly when inspiration strikes.

I haven't gotten into the habit of carrying my regular camera with me all the time and, even if I did, to take good shots, you need set up time, etc. With your phone, you can pop pics right out of your car window and sometimes end up with photos that are pretty darn close to art. Okay, so you photogs out there are ready to scream at this statement regarding photographic art - but you're not using your phone camera for artistic expression anyway, right?

And the truth is (mostly), the pictures you snap with your phone aren't going to end up on display at MoMA any time soon but, believe it or not, you can snap some shots with your phone that are worth framing.

Especially if you find the right camera app that achieves a look you're going for. My favorite is called Hipstamatic, an amazing camera app complete with strange lens, film and flash options that give your pics real personality and an edge toward art.

Your initial Hipstamatic download (cost - $1.99) comes standard with three lenses:

• The John S lens, which bathes your photos in oozing shadow
• The Jimmy lens, giving your pics an old-timey, yellowy sheen
• The Kaimal Mark II, producing slightly sleazy shots pulsating with a washed-out red hue

You can use different film types like the "Ina's 1969," which rocks light flares and deepens shadows. Or the "Kodot" choice, giving your photos a slightly unfocused appearance. The "Blanko" film type is smudgey and dirty.

My favorite lens is the Kaimal Mark II because of what it does to light and shadow. It also has a tendency to accent cloud cover and can make a slightly cloudy day foreboding.

Here's a bunch of shots I took with my iPhone using the Hipstamatic camera app. Most were taken from my car window, whether I was going mobile or sitting in an empty parking lot.

After storm shot with John S lens

Truck shot using Kaimal Mark II

Highway (I-88) shot with Kaimal -- note beautiful cloud capture

Glass building shot with Kaimal lens

River shot through Kaimal

House in Long Beach, IN - Kaimal lens

Calm before storm in cemetary - Kaimal lens

Kaimal lens makes this grave shot look like something out of a Juan Lopez Moctezuma film

Kaimal lens totally accents shadows and light

Kaimal lens gives impression of sweltering heat

Here's another Kaimal shot that accents cloud coverage

MODESTY BLAISE DOES MAKE SENSE

A friend of mine argued that Quentin Tarantino's insertion of the book MODESTY BLAISE in PULP FICTION makes little sense in Tarantino's cinematic world.

However, MODESTY BLAISE, a spy fiction novel published in 1965 and written by Peter O'Donnell, completely fits within Tarantino's subreferenced mash-up canon.

In PULP FICTION, John Travolta's character, Vincent Vega, is reading MODESTY BLAISE before he's machine gun peppered by Butch (Bruce Willis), putting an end to Vega long before the film comes to its crazy conclusion.

PULP FICTION isn't as complex as it first seemed and, if you think about its approach, the film isn't confusing at all - it is, in fact, structured like a novel (an approach Tarantino admits to and embraces for all of his films). But when it first came out in 1994, people talked about its wonky structure and how challenging it was to keep track of the multiple story lines that seemed to be wreaking havoc with the space/time continuum, which, of course, isn't what's happening at all (if you want to see a complex film that plays with the space/time continuum, watch Krzysztof Kieslowski's THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE). PULP FICTION is a matter of structure, not the philosophical ruminations on the mathematical theories regarding the supposed fourth dimension of time.

Like all of Quentin Tarantino's films, the director inserts what moves (or has moved) him by incorporating his obsessions into the proceedings, thereby loading his movies with references that are wholly personal to the director.

My friend stated strongly that inserting MODESTY BLAISE into PULP FICTION doesn't make sense whereas I made the claim that it makes sense completely.

My friend, who has never heard of MODESTY BLAISE, fell into the trap that since he has never heard of the novel, it simply must have no place in Tarantino's world.

This is not true. Throughout the years, Tarantino has often considered filming MODESTY BLAISE. He also owns an original copy of O'Donnell's novel, which obviously impacted the filmmaker on some level - enough, in fact, to insert it into PULP FICTION.

NOTE: In 2003, almost a decade after PULP FICTION, Tarantino allowed his name to be used on DVD release of a European film called MY NAME IS MODESTY. The DVD was renamed QUENTIN TARANTINO PRESENTS: MY NAME IS MODESTY.

KICK-ASS MARKETING

"The goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to identify individuals with high Social Networking Potential (SNP) and create viral messages that appeal to this segment of the population and have a high probability of being taken by another competitor." - Wikipedia

I love the movie KICK-ASS for all sorts of reasons:

• It subverts the usual "superhero" genre in film
• It empowers kids (despite its detractors)
• It fuels nostalgia and the way adults wish their early teen years could have been

But I also love the film's use of viral social networking, particularly how it integrates YouTube into the story's plotline. There's a scene where main character Dave Lizewski (as self-professed superhero Kick-Ass) beats some thugs while a witness captures the beating on his phone, only to later upload it to YouTube.

The video goes viral, generating over 24,000,000 views, causing the national news to pick up the story. This YouTube sensation becomes a marketing vehicle for the newly minted "superhero," who picks up over 16,000 "friends" on his MySpace account (as opposed to alter-ego Dave's paltry 38).

Because this video has an almost built-in SNP, it blows Kick-Ass into the public consciousness, giving the superhero auto street-cred and legitimacy (yet Kick-Ass will still have to prove himself and his abilities, if not to his "fans" but to himself).

So, viral can lead to success and, if you want something to go viral, you need to make it viral-worthy whether internally within your company or externally to your targeted market. Just posting something on YouTube (unless your Kick-Ass) doesn't mean you'll automatically get an audience. You need to identify those individuals in your market with high SNP and then rely on them to spread it.

Viral anything is a leap of faith but worth taking if you want your product/brand to gain an audience. But you'll still need to prove yourself.

BRANDING YOU

An acquaintance of mine has his own executive placement business. He tells me things are slow. I ask him how people who need his services find him.

"Word of mouth."

Does that work? Sometimes, he says, but its tough. He hands me his business card, which looks impressive, even sleek. I ask him about his website. He responds he doesn't have one. A blog? Uh, nope, he says. Twitter? No way, he snickers.

Except for a business card, he seems to be missing some pieces in his puzzle.

I ask him about his brand. And that question boggles his mind. "My brand?" he asks.

I ask him if he considers himself an expert in his field, if he's gone out there and branded himself as such? Has he done his homework to gain experience and knowledge about the executive search field? Does he understand employment trends and which jobs are the most viable? Does he understand levels of compensation in conjunction with experience? Has he let people know that he's the best choice when it comes to helping them find executive-level positions? Has he used this knowledge to build his expertise and to exploit his own brand? His response (and we've had this conversation quite a few times) to all of these questions is always, simply, "I don't know."

His attitude is fraught with defeat. In fact, he's defeated before he puts himself out there. Before striking out on his own, he was a marketing professional for a high-level agency in Chicago. He got tired of the grind and decided to, in his words, "hang out his shingle."

But he really hasn't done that because without using any e-media - not even a website - he doesn't have a shingle at all.

What he's missing is the concept of personal branding. I find out that, to him, personal branding is "arrogant."

That he used to be a marketing professional and doesn't get the concept of personal branding is beyond shocking. 

According to Tom Peters, author, In Search of Excellence, everything you do, say, write, and even wear, brands YOU.

You want to be an expert in a certain field? You need to brand yourself as that expert. You need to live and breath that expertise and extend your brand to the world.

This is not about arrogance. Its about making you the brand of YOU.

SOCIAL MEDIA NEEDS TO PERMEATE

Whether b-to-b or b-to-c, social medial needs to be at the center of your business - a driving force behind customer engagement. But sometimes it requires buy-in from the highest level of your organization.

Here's how B. Bonin Bough, Global Director of Digital and Social Media, PepsiCo, implemented a powerful social media component to their business...as well as how they got top level buy-in (via Social Media Influence):