Film Flashback February 28, 1972

There was a time when Murfreesboro was reduced to just two movie screens. There was the Martin Theatre in its pre-Twin days and there was the Marbro Drive-In with its one huge screen. The Princess Theatre had closed its doors and the Cinema One was several years away. It would open April 17, 1974 with The Three Musketeers. You could go see if a movie was playing on campus at M.T.S.U., but the the theatre and screen was very small. Your other best option was to drive to Nashville, but luckily on this night in 1972 there are a couple of great movies playing. 2001: A Space Odyssey is at the Martin Theatre playing for just three days. The movie had been out for 4 years at this point and it was to re-released in 1974, 1977, and 1980 so I'm perplexed why it would be playing in 1972. Gone With The Wind which had been re-released in 1971 had run from February 23-26. Diamonds Are Forever would follow it. 2001: A Space Odyssey is a stellar (get it) movie. Even if you've never seen it there are parts of it that have become pop culture totems. HAL-9000 may be fictional, but Siri and Alexa owe him some respect. Stanley Kubrick is often credited with filming the "faked moon landing" based on his direction of this sci-fi classic. If you have never seen it, you should set aside an afternoon to do so. 

The Marbro Drive-In had future cult favorite Two-Lane Blacktop which starred rock musicians James Taylor and Dennis Wilson. One of my favorite character actors Warren Oates is also a big part of this enigmatic film. Laurie Bird is wonderful as The Girl. Yes, that's right. She's just called The Girl. James Taylor is The Driver. Dennis Wilson is The Mechanic. Warren Oates character drives a brand new Pontiac G.T.O. Judge model so he's known as G.T.O.. His is perhaps the most developed character in the movie. Taylor and Wilson don't have many lines and what few they have are about the car The Driver drives. It's a 1955 Chevrolet. There were three used for the film and one of those became the 55 Chevy rolled in the American Graffiti drag race scene at the end. The main characters just drift from town to town looking to win enough money to keep going. There doesn't seem to be much purpose in the Monte Hellman directed film. When The Driver and The Mechanic run into Warren Oates's G.T.O. character he talks them into racing across the county to Washington D.C. for the pink slips of the cars, but as the movie goes on you see there will be no final scene showing who gets there first. The moment is the only thing that matters and it's exemplified by Laurie Bird's The Girl who plays all of the male characters off each other before leaving with a guy on a motorcycle. She's just drifting too. A hippie haze hangs over the film, but in a mild buzzed out way. I love its aimlessness and the rootlessness of the characters. Universal Pictures was probably hoping it would be the next Easy Rider, but it was a flop. Laurie Bird would tragically commit suicide in 1979. Dennis Wilson would drown in 1983. I have the Criterion DVD release of Two-Lane Blacktop. The movie is definitely not for everyone, but I love its languid pace when its about the speed of automobiles. The racetrack scenes were filmed at Memphis's now long gone Lakeland Racetrack. There's also a scene at Deals Gap on the Tennessee-North Carolina border. What a treat it would have been to have seen this movie at a drive-in. 

Film Flashback January 10, 1980

Yes, it's another film flashback only 12 hours after the last one about January 10, 1975 dropped. How does he do it? It's almost as if these are pre-recorded. We're five years into the future from 1975 yet forty years into the past on January 20, 1980. This is one of those flashbacks where I did see one of the movies in the theatre and have seen all five that were playing in Murfreesboro, Tennessee back then some time or another.

Our first stop is Jackson Heights Plaza to see what's playing at the Martin Twin. Stand up comic Steve Martin becomes a movie star and future all time great with the Carl Reiner flick The Jerk. This is one I wasn't allowed to see due to its R rated. I was allowed to see his HBO special and even buy his book Cruel Shoes, but R rated films were out of the question. I was only 13 and should have been smart enough to sneak into the movie, but instead I went and saw Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I had to learn about The Jerk from my more savvy friends. My school bus driver (bus 84!), Bart Yeagan, would sometimes play Martin's albums if there were no elementary age kids on the bus. I finally saw the movie a few years later either on cable or regular television. I didn't find it as amusing as I thought it would be. Too much hype in my head I suppose. It is a really funny film that has grown on me over the years.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a film that was very successful at the time which relaunched the franchise, but it didn't get great reviews. I vividly remember going to see it. I was into sci-fi, but had never been a huge fan of the show. I wouldn't really get into the TV show until it was rerun a few years later on Channel 17. The movie was a big event and I didn't want to miss it. It was slow and it did spend lots of time on reintroducing the principal cast, but I didn't mind the endless shuttle rides to the Enterprise. The special effects were well done and the main plot was engaging. Here's a review from a future Nashville Scene editor; a then 14 year old Jim Ridley featured in the Murfreesboro Press. You should be able to click and zoom to make it readable. Jim passed away much too young in 2016 and I have loved his writing since he began as a teenager.

The Cinema One was showing The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh which I didn't get to see there, but I would end up watching repeatedly on HBO. It starred Julius Erving and Jonathan Winters along with Stockard Channing. It wasn't a big hit. I think it's considered a flop, but it made some money. It's no flop with me. The scene where Dr. J as Moses Guthrie just shoots hoop in a deserted playground court alone is worth the price of admission for me....heck I could watch him do only that for 2 hours and be happy. It's a silly sports comedy about how an astrologer named Mona Mondieu, played by Stockard, arranges for the Pittsburgh basketball team to be filled with compatible Pisces which turns them into winners. I think this movie deserves a Criterion release just because the versions that are floating around now are all cut up for some reason. May the fish be with you.

The Marbro Drive-In had a pair of great films on January 10, 1980. Alien was on its second run and if you missed it the first time the drive-in would have been a fun place to see it. I would see it when it played HBO managing to talk my mother into letting me see an R rated film. It's the classic haunted house in space movie that you need to see if you haven't. Race With The Devil is a real corker starring Warren Oates, Peter Fonda, and Loretta Swit. A couple of vacationing couples witness a Satanic sacrifice and then are chased all over while driving a Winnebago. Warren Oates's character drives a motorcycle into some water and falls off then mutters the line, "I'm getting too old for this shit" so take that Lethal Weapon movies. It's ludicrous, but is downright creepy and it has a quintessential 70's ending. 

If you're curious about what channels were carried on Murfreesboro cable back in early 1980, the guide is below. WTBS and KTVU were favorites along with HBO, but the one I loved the most was Nickelodeon. I might have to write a post about those early Murfreesboro cable days. Another film flashback will be released on January 17.