Provides an analysis of Hollywood from a fresh viewpoint that shows the careers of Robert Altman, Francis Coppola, William Friedkin, and others in the 1980s as far from conforming to a monolithic pattern of decline, but rather as diverse and complex responses to political and industrial changes.
The 1980s are routinely seen as the era of the blockbuster and of 'Reaganite entertainment,' whereas the dominant view of late 1960s and early 1970s American film history is that of a 'Hollywood Renaissance', a relatively brief window of artistry based around a select group of directors. Yet key directors associated with the Renaissance period remained active throughout the 1980s and their work has been obscured or dismissed by a narrow, singular model of American film history.
This book deals with industrial contexts that conditioned these directors' ability to work creatively, but it is also very much about the analysis of individual films, bringing to light a range of unheralded work, from the visual experimentation of One from the Heart (Coppola, 1981) to the experimental production contexts of Secret Honor (Altman, 1984) and the stylistic élan of To Live and Die in L.A. (Friedkin, 1985). Behind the homogenous picture of the decline of the auteur in 1980s American cinema are films and careers that merit greater attention, and this book offers a new way to perceive individual films, American film history, and the viability of sustained authorial creativity within post-studio era Hollywood.
Compared to the vast academic literature on the Hollywood Renaissance auteurs of the 1970s, there is a relative paucity of material about their work in the 1980s when Hollywood embraced conglomeration and the blockbuster film. Chris Horn's exciting new book, The Lost Decade, has come to provide an incredibly detailed account of the metamorphosis of the Hollywood Renaissance in the 1980s, as filmmakers like Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola and William Friedkin continued to work under very different circumstances. Combining rich archival research with impeccable textual analysis, The Lost Decade rewrites important aspects of Hollywood history in the 1980s.
