Notes for Comm

Reading Notes

New generation can come in and make movies now because old generation cannot connect to the younger culture

Classically movies were scored through a big orchestra and composer

No score in Scorsese’s Mean Streets whatsoever but it still set the mood

Big change in the way movies are made and the way they are scored

Government helped finance music and movies

Is there any role of the government to finance theatre and film?

In most countries, the government takes a little tax at the movie theatre and puts it in a fund and that goes to fund local production

Government can give but it can also take away

Very beginning of McCarthyism

Hollywood is so powerful, ability to get into your brain, there’s probably communists in Hollywood and they’re probably trying to subvert you

Must root them out

Threw people in jail not because they were communists but because they refused to rat out their friends

Orson Welles makes Cradle Will Rock with government funding and then the government thought it was a subversive play

War of the Worlds - radio broadcast about alien invasion that caused millions of people to freak out and begin to evacuate

Record producers were in charge of finding the talent

John Hammond did this almost better than anyone in general

Found Billie Holiday

Had the opportunity to make a name for herself which many black people did not have before

Had a heroin problem and risked her life daily doing it

“Strange Fruit” - speaking up against the lynching of blacks, a regular experience in the South

Sings