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1970s |
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Being There, Hal Ashby
Breaking Away, Directed by Peter Yates
Cabaret, Directed by Bob Fosse
A Clockwork Orange, Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Coming Home, Directed by Hal Ashby
The Conversation, Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Dog Day Afternoon, Directed by Sidney Lumet
Don’t Look Now, Directed by Directed by Nicolas Roeg
The Exorcist, Directed by William Friedkin
Grey Gardens, Directed by Albert and David Maysles
Halloween, Directed by John Carpenter
Harold and Maude, Directed by Hal Ashby
Jaws, Directed by Steven Spielberg
The Last Picture Show, Directed by Peter Bogdanovich
McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Directed by Robert Altman
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Directed by Miloš Forman
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Directed by Tobe Hooper
Solaris, Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
Star Wars, Directed by George Lucas
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Directed by Mel Stuart |
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Breaking Away, Directed by Peter Yates
20th Century Fox, July 20, 1979 (US)
Screenplay: Steve Tesich
Starring: Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern, Jackie Earle Haley, Barbara Barrie, and Paul Dooley
The camaraderie of close friends, the isolation from reality, the longing for something more, the limitless future, and the dead ends to nowhere. Trying for the girl that you know is so far out of your league, but you so desperately want that you’ll do anything to make a connection. Because you’re young and anything is possible. You haven’t been beat down yet. And when you do fall you just pick yourself up and figure out a way go on. The incomparable beauty of youth and its utter fragileness that coexist side by side with the impending disaster that lurks just around every corner, but hey you’re 18, you’re indestructible, and you’re going to live forever.
Breaking Away is a timeless and flawless portrayal of those golden, perfect, time stopping moments of late teenage life. It’s nothing short of a masterpiece. Like all great art it continues to reveal itself as time goes on. This is the closest thing to a time machine I will ever get in my lifetime. I lived this movie, I was there, I took part in this. These characters were my friends. That’s me on the screen! And whenever I need to be reminded of what it’s like to be young and vibratingly alive I watch this film.
And as we all grow older, and we encounter those life situations that begin to drag us down, we can always pick up the pace and put so much distance between ourselves and the rest of the pack that it becomes impossible for them to catch us. Like the timeless Satchel Paige once said, “Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.”
Just keep breaking away.
You know in retrospect it seems
There’s always danger in your dreams
Like an actor stealing scenes
All the magic moments in your teens
-Mark Burgess from “P.S. Goodbye” (The Chameleons)
-RAW
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