Creative decade

Dargis misses a crucial point in her slanted and somewhat snobbish article. Whatever “unchecked ego and rampant greed” was present in 1970s filmmaking, a key difference between those films and many productions of the ‘80s and ‘90s was that passionate directors created films that were about something.

With the passing of the ‘70s, corporate thinking stepped to the forefront and decisions sprang mostly (and sometimes exclusively) from commerce instead of creativity. Dargis would be hard-pressed to deny that a majority of films today originate from the corporate boardroom instead of the imagination. I’ll take “The Godfather” over “Lambada, the Forbidden Dance” any day.

Mark Paskell

Santa Monica