Sisters
 
Recently, I've seen a couple of 70s movies where I've been like, "Holy-Shit -- now that's a movie."  Saw one last night - Sisters, by Brian Depalma, director of Scarface, Carrie, Mission Impossible, etc.  This one he did in his early new york days.  Depalma, to me, is a a little bit younger and cooler than Lucas or Spielberg, almost like Coppola, but less interested in befriending the newbies.  My favorite Brian Depalma story is that when he saw a test screening of Star Wars, he laughed at Lucas and told him how stupid it was.  I think Lucas took away his points in the film (they used to give each other points, so that if the films made money, they all benefited).  I bet Depalma regrets that one...or maybe he doesn't.
 
If Sisters is any indication, American cinema was going in a different, and I would argue, better direction in the early 1970 than the post-Star Wars era of the blockbuster.  Today, we look around theaters and see mostly HUGE budget movies, costing 100 Mil and making 150 Mil.  There is little to no use for the 5 Million dollar films that makes 8 Million.   It's almost a waste of time for the studios to pay attention to.
 
I remember my first internship in the industry, during college, an internship that turned me off from filmmaking for 4 years, basically.  I worked at a production company on the Universal lot.  I read a lot of shitty scripts for this young guy, a Pomona grad, hustling his way up in the industry.  (I hear now he's an executive somewhere).  I told him how shitty I though everything was and he asked whether I like ANYTHING.  I said, well, I read this screenplay "Straightman" which was written by Richard Russo and based upon his book that was really good. 
 
He smiled and was like, "Ehhh.  It's good, yeah, but there's no money there.  Take Nobody's Fool, a nice movie, it made a little money....but what's the point.  It's not going to be a big hit."
 
To my mind, I thought, "but the whole point to movie-making was to make a GOOD movie, big or small, not a mega-profitable one."
 
Then he gave me this script called the 6th Sense to read.  It was good.  And as it turned out, huge.
 
But Sisters was nuts - Depalma does some crazy stuff for 1973, split screens, camera trickery through and back through the television, not to mention a creepy and scary story about separated siamese twins and a murder.  The story starts off on this nice African American protagonist, becomes the story of one of the siamese twins, and then becomes the story of a reporter who witnesses (or thinks she does) a murder.  Scored by the guy who did a bunch of Hitchcock films, it definately was influenced by Psycho, and has a few CLEVER and brilliant moments.