Ever feel our generation is the last literate TV/Movie generation ?

[Mikey]

Was watching It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World with one of my nephews.

He loved it, but it shocked me how many stars he didn't know from the movie.

I still remember back in the day my older bro taking me to the theatre to see "Mad, Mad" on a 70's matinée theatre replaying.

He made dang sure I knew who EVERYONE in the movie was - whether I wanted to know or not

He even explained why each were funny (their schticks)

Rewatching Mad, Mad today I kinda felt like a dinosaur on his last leg.

I almost felt my nephew was laughing just to amuse me - not because he was in on the jokes or thought anything was funny.

Ever feel you're part of the last generation that "gets" classic movies/TV ?

[TomStrong]

Oh yeah, my stepdaughter, after watching a presentation from the local police where a body bag was used in a reenactment of the death of a drunk driver, asked me why they put you in the "bad bag" if you were caught by the police. Here's the shocker, she was SIXTEEN years old. After recovering from my initial coronary I had to explain to her that those were used only if you died. So, having to explain old movie stars and their jokes doesn't strike me as too tough. If you're around many kids today you'll understand. If I dwell on it too much I'll become really depressed.

[jimsmegos]

Yeah and to me its kind of sad. These past couple generations of kids have got so many choices and options, which I think is good to a point BUT that makes it nearly impossible to have one pop culture voice. This I think is the biggest problem for modern toy makers and other merchandisers. How can you possibly invest a bunch of money into a property to create a run of action figures based on a cartoon (for example) that is only on one of the miscellaneous cable / satellite networks? Sure there is a national audience but it is a much much much smaller one than a Saturday morning in the 70's and early 80's. Even being completely fair saying each of the big three were equally divided at 33 and a third % of the market share NONE of them command those kinds of numbers now. They do good to get a 2 to 5 % share at any given time. And that's on a really popular property.

I think this is why we will continue to be plagued with all of the long standing properties get revamped over and over and over. It's a far safer bet than the latest CBS, ABC or NBC Saturday morning fare. If you think about it the biggest properties today are attached to their own studio / network system such as Disney and Nickelodeon. It's almost like the "Golden Age of Cinema" when studios owned movie theaters. It's a whole lot easier to get people to watch your movies when you provide the screens. The downside of course is that in realm of television they have 24 hours a day, 365 days a year of time to fill up and not get too redundant as far as reruns or rehashed ideas.

Sorry if I got off course there Mikey... but to me that's the bigger, partial answer to your question.

[Werewolf]

Umm, I really don't know the answer.

One thing to remember, though, before feeling to bad is stuff like those kids reacting to things we grew up with vids are set ups designed to make people feel bad/old. Don't take them to seriously or think they actually represent all kids. Like the rotary phone one for example. The Fisher Price Chatter phone is still being made and is still popular and was featured heavily in the last Toy Story movie. So I find the idea that most kids would have no idea what a rotary phone is, unlikely.

Now, I do think 70s and 80s kids did generally watch and have an appreciation for TV shows and movies that predated them by decades. But as a child a can say I certainly didn't get every dated joke or know every actor cameo in a Looney Tunes short. Didn't stop me from enjoying it though. Kids today still like Mickey Mouse and the classic Disney movies. I guess it probably depends a lot to what you are exposed to. So, it's up to our generation to teach an appreciation of what came before like our parents, friends and families did for us.

On a sorta related note, I do get frustrated, at times, trying to slog through post after post after post of overzealous fans that think Lucas can do no wrong and the theatrical cuts of SW should NEVER be seen again or restored. That mindset just shows a mind numbing idiocy level of a lack of appreciation for film preservation, the art of film, history and our shared cultural heritage. Sorry for the rant. I've been wading through a Blu Ray forum tonight trying to find restoration news.

[HardyGirl]

And the age of the iconic actor is dead. There are too many channels, shows, movies, downloads, yada yada yada, that there won't be any iconic favorites anymore. All of our childhood favorites who are dying are the last of their kind. There is no commonality in TV or movies either for that matter, because there's all the underground stuff on YouTube. Most kids attention spans are so short, they can't even follow a simple plot anymore, either. They're waiting for the gross jokes, the violence or the S*x scenes and when that doesn't happen fast enough, they get bored. Even movies that are supposed to be period pieces are dumbed down to be relatable to today's youth market. And since the popular trend is that kids are smarter than their parents, and being plugged in at all times, fewer and fewer kids appreciate the classics b/c kids don't wanna see it, and parents don't wanna try to show them something other than what's in their own little myopic, egocentric world. It's really sad.

[alex]

Kids these days have never heard of Clark Gable or the godess Sofia Loren, and I bet U that in fifty years time, no one would of heard of Tom Cruise, only the few who are into thier movies.

[Hector]

All this movie star/celebrity concept is relatively new in the history of mankind...100 years back or so...prior to that...they were known as court jesters, lol.

[Hector]

BTW, I just saw The Treasure of the Sierra Madre for about the sixth or so time a couple of days ago...what a great movie...one of my all time favorites.

What a fantastic classic scene...

[enyawd72]

This is an area where I feel I have some expertise, so I definitely need to chime in here. For the past ten years I've managed The Last Moving Picture Company in Kirtland, Ohio. We are dealers in vintage original movie posters and have the world's largest inventory with 40,000 posters and 500,000 stills from film and television dating all the way back to as early as 1898.
In the time I've managed the store there has been a steady decline in sales of our oldest material and material from certain genres. Some of the biggest stars of the silent era are losing their value rapidly. Posters that were extremely valuable a decade ago have lost anywhere up to 50% of their value because younger collectors simply do not know or care who Harold Lloyd, Fatty Arbuckle, Clara Bow, Theda Bara, Louise Brooks, etc. are. Sure, the biggest names like Charlie Chaplin are holding on for now, but I fear they too will become unknowns as time goes on.
An even worse fate has befallen nearly anything associated with the western genre. It's simply dead. Hard to believe considering the sheer volume of westerns produced from the 1920's through the 1970's. At their peak, for more than two decades from the late 30's through early 60's dozens of westerns were released every year.
Posters that we once sold for hundreds of dollars we're now grouping in bulk lots that often don't sell. Tom Mix, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, Tom Tyler, Buck Jones...you almost can't give them away anymore.
Now what's interesting in all this is our customer base. I would estimate 60% of our clientele are between the ages of 50-65, and these oldest collectors definitely buy material from films much older than they are, but many of them are slowing down and even beginning to try and sell off their collections. The younger our clinetele, the less interested they are in anything that predates them.
Every once in a while a twenty-something will come into the store looking for the classics, but it's so few and far between it's scary.

[Earth 2 Chris]

Not my kids. They don't care how old a movie is. If it's good...they'll watch it. They both love the classic Universal Horror movies. If I land on something that interests them on TCM, they'll watch it. My son and I watched The Dirty Dozen just a month or so ago, and I am not generally a military movie guy, so it really wasn't due to my influence.

I think some of this is just cyclical. Eventually, movies, actors, books, etc, that aren't continuously in the spotlight somehow, get forgotten by the masses, and are remembered only by the die-hard fans of that particular subject.

In the time of the silent films I'm sure there were very early movie stars and stage actors that were still popular, but were eventually forgotten by the time the 40s rolled in.

Chris

[VintageMike]

It just seems like now the the the same (small) talent pool is picked from for very movie. Which leads to situations I feel there was someone better for that part of but they HAD to pick one of four, maybe five people for it. Waters things down, IMO. Also in lot of cases the properties are becoming more important than the actors.

[kerowack]

Everybody in this thread who touched on the amount of different avenues that kids have available to them is absolutely correct. Water cooler talk is basically dead, when the entertainment is divided between YouTube, social media, video games, tv, movies, sports, etc. and the bigger problem there is that all of those are divided into more categories than we've ever had available to us when we were a similar age. Radio stations have all kind of narrowed into three familiar formats (pop, country, adult contemporary/classic rock)where as when I was a kid there was a station for every genre. So those who like current rock are scattered across the internet picking and choosing what to listen to.

It's definitely the commonality that is gone.

[MIB41]

Great subject. I think every generation is a reflection to what is (and is NOT) made available to them. I saw an old interview with Roddy McDowell years ago and he would talk about how he and his closest, affluent friends would get together and spend an entire evening talking movie trivia amongst themselves. They even made a game of it and occasionally had access to films they could watch privately. A luxury in those times, but a near dated idea these days with the evolution of media through VHS, DVD, and now Blu ray. Imagine his amazement if he were alive today to see so many classics remastered on a Blu ray? But I think his comment really speaks to the generations of people from that era (even ours) who had very limited access to things they loved.

My generation had access to three major networks on TV. The rest was reading material. So if I saw Frankenstein and wanted more information on it than what I got from Famous Monsters magazine, there was nothing readily available like it is today. I couldn't go to my local library and find much on the subject. Even if there were, it would require coaxing my mother to take me. Today kids can spend less than five minutes on computer and learn more about this movie than I could in my entire childhood. So I often wonder if the lack of access helped stir my interests in these subjects, that ultimately made me a life long fan. I think if I could go back in time and do a physical count of how many times I watched one of my favorite movies (like Frankenstein) during my childhood years, I would stunned at how low that number is. But that would also explain why I invested so much time in my AHI Frankenstein figures and monster magazines. I had to supplement what wasn't readily available to me. Had the access been there to watch these movies whenever I chose, could I have stayed as big a fan or moved on to other interests in my childhood?

So I think the information age is killing off the longevity of many things that always managed to find new fans. Today's generation has a luxury mine never did. They can immerse themselves into something and get sick of it after a week, maybe even a day. The allure of seeing something from a distance and wanting to find out more about it is dead. You can immerse yourself into anything and become a well informed expert overnight. That takes the lasting appeal off allot of things for kids today...sadly. My generation can appreciate it, because we spent a large portion of our lives without it. For me that means I don't abuse it. I purposely only watch some films as I did as a kid. The Wizard of Oz? Once a year. Frankenstein? Maybe not even that much. So I try to retain some reasonable viewing gaps from some of these old "friends" of my childhood, so I can still appreciate their magic.

[enyawd72]

^You hit on something here...anticipation versus gratification. I remember the FUN of having only three channels on TV, and cartoons only on Saturday morning...the anticipation of Saturday was just magical. It was something you looked forward to all week, and the reward of watching those cartoons something to be cherished.
What kids have access to today, I liken to having Christmas every day. When you do that, it's no longer special and loses the magic. There's nothing to look forward to.

[4NDR01D]

Breaking News,This just in, studies show teenagers are showing less interest in antiquing and aren't spinning Glenn Miller records like they used to.