Original Coverage & Source Attribution: faroutmagazine.co.uk
In the last ten to 15 years, modern cinema has been obsessed with nostalgia.
Countless films have hearkened back to past eras in history and/or pop culture, either by literally telling stories set in those eras, or by cribbing the stylistic choices associated with the era, despite ostensibly being set in the modern day. This probably irks Steven Soderbergh greatly, and he might have a point.
The rise of shows like Netflix’s Stranger Things, the new It movies, and Ghostbusters: Afterlife, plus the neon lighting so prevalent in everything from The Guest to John Wick, is probably anathema to Soderbergh. Why? Because he believes the 1980s were the worst thing to happen to Hollywood in its long history.
In fact, Soderbergh is adamant that his 1989 indie masterpiece Sex, Lies, and Videotape helped kill off that terrible decade, before ushering in the wave of cutting-edge, vital American independent movies that defined the ’90s.
“When my first movie came out, it was the end of the worst decade of the American cinema,” the Ocean’s Eleven helmer told The Telegraph, “So I am a great believer in timing, a big believer in Zeitgeist, and we were the right thing at the right time.”
Now, while it can’t be denied that the ’90s were an incredible era for cinema, with seminal voices like Soderbergh, the Wachowskis, David Fincher, Paul Thomas Anderson, Richard Linklater, and Sofia Coppola making mainstream indies that had important things to say, it does seem short-sighted to write off the entire previous decade.
There’s also the fact that legions of directors, writers, and actors raised on a steady diet of The Terminator, Back to the Future, Aliens, E.T., Stand By Me, and The Goonies work in Hollywood today, and to them, Soderbergh sounds like a crazy person. Here’s the thing, though: it ain’t just Soderbergh who feels this way. Instead, his old buddy Quentin Tarantino has also taken several pops at the offending decade and even gone into much greater detail about his grievances.
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
“After growing up in the anything-goes ’70s, the ’80s marked a play-it-safe decade, like that other horrible decade for Hollywood movies, the ’50s,” Tarantino claimed in his excellent memoir-meets-potted history of US film, Cinema Speculation. “But the ’80s were even worse.”
In Tarantino’s opinion, which more than likely lines up with Soderbergh’s, Hollywood reacted to the ’70s in all the wrong ways. That decade saw the death of the staid, boring Hollywood studio system, and suddenly, young, hungry directors and actors with vision were able to get movies like The French Connection, Easy Rider, and Taxi Driver made. ’70s movies were brave, gritty, and reflective of reality in a way Hollywood had never been before. The industry had been repressed in previous decades, with restrictions forced upon filmmakers by uptight censors and societal pressures, but the ’70s blew that apart with reckless abandon.
In the Reagan-era ’80s, though, that censorship didn’t come from exterior forces. Instead, Soderbergh and Tarantino feel Hollywood got cold feet about making risky movies and turned the eyes of the censors on themselves, in a creative sense. “The harshest censorship is self-censorship,” Tarantino raged. “And it doesn’t always come from the big bad studio either. Many filmmakers watered down their own vision right from the beginning.”
Now, whether or not you agree with Soderbergh’s assertion that the ’80s were a creative wasteland is up to you. However, it must be acknowledged that there is a distinct difference in the look, feel, and perspective of most ’70s movies versus the flashier, less obviously confrontational ’80s. Is that enough to write off an entire decade? Perhaps not. But Soderbergh has been one of Hollywood’s most innovative and experimental directors for nearly four decades at this point, so his opinion certainly carries some weight.
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