A heady, nostalgic rush for me among today's new DVD releases.
First, though hard-core Bronx Bombers fans will snap up A&E's New York Yankees 1977 World Series Collection, it should be of great interest to socialogists as well. This is the team written about in Jonathan Mahler's great book Ladies And Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning, the beginning of the free angency era and arguably the beginning of the end of the Yankees dynasty, when Steinbrenner first started spending like a drunken sailor, hoping he could build a team that way.
Still, back then it worked, with Reggie "The Straw That Stirs The Drink" Jackson leading the way. A&E's collection has all six games against the Dodgers, plus copious extras, highlighted by Jackson's mid-season blowout with Yankees manager Billy Martin.
That season was when I first became a Yankees fan, as they seemed the very personification of New York City, which all through '77 had been depicted by the media as a kind of hell on earth, between the Son Of Sam killings and the insanity following the August blackout. To a twelve-year-old stuck on a farm in the middle of nowhere, NYC seemed as exotic as the planet Tatooine (yes, that was also the summer Star Wars changed my life), a beacon that would call me, a life that was waiting.
A couple of years earlier, that same kid sat slack-jawed through One Day At A Time: The Complete First Season. This was a show I initially watched because everyone else in the family watched it. For the next couple of seasons, I watched it because it followed MASH, and I lacked the energy to get up and leave the room. (Our black-and-white Philco obviously didn't have a remote, and even when we upgraded to a Quasar--featuring TruColor!--we still had to change channels manually. God, I feel old...)
Watching that first season now is both a horror and a revelation. A horror largely because of the hideously ugly clothes and settings, which were unfortunately all too typical of their era. The pacing is unbelievably sluggish, the stock sitcom elements grating, especially the whooping studio audience, a familiar annoyance from other Norman Lear shows of the era.
On the other hand, One Day At A Time sought to connect with audiences by attempting to depict a reality its audience likely knew well. Bonnie Franklin, whose committed but strident performance suggests she thought she was trying out for a Cassavetes film, plays Ann Romano, struggling single mom trying to deal with two teenage daughters, a hostile workplace and a shrinking dollar. It's not really very good, but at its best it has a piercing intensity unlike anything around now.
But for me, the nostalgia flame burns brightest with the long-awaited release of Von Richthofen And Brown, one of the first movies I ever saw in a theater. Released in 1971, when I was in first grade and just learning to read (I remember this because I could actually read some of the credits!), this story of the man who finally shot down The Red Baron seemed tailor-made for me. I literally have not seen it since I was six, and am prepared to be disappointed, but Von Richthofen And Brown is important to me personally for one reason: Though I went for the aerial battle scenes, what stayed with me for years after was a trippy hallucination sequence Von Richthofen endures after being injured. I certainly didn't know as a six-year-old that this movie was directed by cult icon Roger Corman, but it seems appropriate. If you see the right movie at the right time, you'll be a cinephile for life, no matter what you do.
