Whatever happened to great movies?

 There I am in an episode of The Angels in BBC – or was it called just Angels. Now why is that up there? Well why not.

In London, you have to be six feet high to be a cop – in Los Angeles it's probably four feet six. I say that because most of the cops there seem to be shorter than I am but there we are.

Above, I am playing a cop who is supposed to be a certain height but it doesn't matter as it is only TV – or movies. Paul Newman was shorter than me but look how many cops he played – and I don't mean at table tennis.

I wrote this a few years ago but someone wrote to me recently and said they liked it – so here it is again and just as relevant:

I remember in 1978, I was in Scotland filming a Shakespeare for the BBC; we were in Glamis Castle which is mentioned in the play Macbeth, and, to use a phrase, I was the only person in the cast that I'd never heard of.

The cast was peppered with famous actors from the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company), who were mostly very nice to me apart from one or two who thought they were God's gift to the theatre and to acting – in fact if you look up the play on YouTube - As You Like It (1978) Helen Mirren - you should see me sword fighting in the first few shots which is followed by a piece of very bad acting and sweating.

By the way 'As You Like It' is known to some people in the profession, namely casting directors, as 'as you' – it saves them saying the 'like it' part!! I kid you not!!

One of the members in the cast was David Prowse who had, just before that, played Darth Vader in the movie Star Wars; this didn't mean much to us as most of us hadn't seen the film but one day, a load of kids found out we were filming and came up for autographs.

The RSC actors sharpened their pencils, so to speak, but the kids wanted David. They knew what he looked like beneath the mask as he was well known in Britain as the Green Cross Code man which he had played in a series of road safety films on TV; he was surrounded and the rest of us kicked our heels.

We got on quite well – me and David, well Dave, you know how it is - in fact I gave him a lift in my car one day and, whilst I can't remember where we went to or came from, I recall the car leaning over sideways when he got in, as he was, and is, a huge man.

What we were witnessing, and we didn't realise it at the time, was a new world order in movie making, pop music and general technology.

If you get the chance to look at the original Star Wars you will see that a lot of the technology in that movie was old hat by the time the second movie came out and because of the technology Star Wars and the like were discovering and using, the great movies of the early seventies – The Godfather (I & II), Taxi Driver and dozens of others - were on the way out only to be replaced by children's films.

Now you might not think they are children's films but what else would you call super hero movies? Films adapted from comic strips? Graphic novels?

There are those that have asked what happened to the movie business, what happened to the business after those great movies of the 70s – there's only Woody Allen still going in the same way, I mean look at these films:

  1. The Godfather - (1972, Francis Ford Coppola) (Marlon Brando, Al Pacino)
  2. The Godfather part II - (1974, Francis Ford Coppola) (Al Pacino, Robert De Niro)
  3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - (1975, Milos Forman) (Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher)
  4. Apocalypse Now - (1979, Francis Ford Coppola) (Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall)
  5. Chinatown - (1974, Roman Polanski) (Jack Nicholson, John Huston)
  6. A Clockwork Orange - (1971, Stanley Kubrick) (Malcolm McDowell, Patrick McGee)
  7. Star Wars - (1977, George Lucas) (Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford)
  8. Jaws - (1975, Steven Spielberg) (Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss)
  9. Taxi Driver - (1976, Martin Scorsese) (Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster)
10. The Deer Hunter - (1978, Michael Cimino) (Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken)
11. Annie Hall - (1977, Woody Allen) (Woody Allen, Diane Keaton)
12. Network - (1976, Sydney Lumet) (Peter Finch, William Holden)
13. Rocky - (1976, John G. Avildsen) (Sylvester Stallone, Carl Weathers)
14. Patton - (1970, Franklin J. Schaffner) (George C. Scott, Karl Malden)
15. Close Encounters of the Third Kind - (1977, Steven Spielberg) (Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr)
16. M*A*S*H - (1970, Robert Altman) (Elliot Gould, Donald Sutherland)
17. The Exorcist - (1973, William Friedkin) (Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair)
18. American Graffiti - (1973, George Lucas) (Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss)
19. The French Connection - (1971, William Friedkin) (Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider)
20. Mean Streets - (1973, Martin Scorsese) (Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro).

There will be some people – and I have no idea who they might be – who will not like any of the above  but I'll bet your favourite is amongst them – I think I love them all apart from you know what.

But the 70s wasn't the only decade of great movies; look at the 60s:

 1. Lawrence of Arabia - (1962, David Lean) (Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness)
  2. Psycho - (1960, Alfred Hitchcock) (Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh)
  3. Dr. Strangelove... - (1964, Stanley Kubrick) (Peter Sellers, George C. Scott)
  4. 8 1/2 - (1963, Federico Fellini) (Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale)
  5. 2001: A Space Odyssey - (1968, Stanley Kubrick) (Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood)
  6. Once Upon a Time in the West - (1968, Sergio Leone) (Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson)
  7. To Kill a Mockingbird - (1962, Robert Mulligan) (Gregory Peck, Mary Badham)
  8. Midnight Cowboy - (1969, John Schlesinger) (Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight)
  9. Bonnie and Clyde - (1967, Arthur Penn) (Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway)
10. La Dolce Vita - (1960, Federico Fellini) (Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee).

Only ten there but that's because I didn't want to fill the page with charts – I love all those movies and nearly in that order so what happened?

I have nothing against Star Wars but it's a kids' film – the same as Dr Who; it's for children; I have yet to see an episode but again, I have nothing against it.

But look at them – look at those movies; the film business will never be the same again it out technologised itself (I know – no such word).

I know they tried to make Batman weird or more grown up but watching it you have to buy in to the fact that the hero walks around in a bat suit – come on!!!!!

I know it's technology gone mad but when other innovations were invented they died down a bit after they'd got use to it.

When talkies started every movie seemed to be a musical; coloured movies gave a kaleidoscope of colour as happened on TV later and the zoom lens left a lot to be desired in some of those great 70s films above but they got used to it and this time it doesn't appear to be ironing itself out.

Will we ever see the likes of Lawrence of Arabia again? I doubt it.

One of the biggest flops in 2013 was The Lone Ranger starring Johnny Depp; it was a huge budget but back in the 40s and 50s directors like Raoul Walsh used to knock out cowboy movies like that in a matter of weeks.

The Lone Ranger series on TV was made for the price of the parking fees on the new one so what is going wrong? Why would The Lone Ranger cost so much money – maybe because they like to use a Lone Arranger these days?

The same happened to pop music with the invention of the boring over technologised stadium super groups . . . but that's another story!