"[Moviewatching is like] the ride through the air with the devil Asmodi who strips off all the roofs, bares all secrets."

Hugo Von Hofmanstafl, "The Substitute for Dreams" [trans. in German Essays on Film]

Qtd. In Kracauer, Theory of Film, p168.

“The history of the horror film is also a history of flat repetition with the most minor of differences — of shark attacks that only inspire bear attacks. But when we shift away from trying to identify the subject positions, radical or otherwise, of that horrible content, we find the basis for a new kind of political reading, one sensitive above all to how films refract an economic and social order that constantly produces swelling mass of the unwanted pressing up against the edges and into the foreground. It is this horror, that of the secondary material that refuses to quit the scene or do its job, that deserves to be defended and elaborated. To move away from allegories of horrible content with their emphasis on identifying who might be radical is to encounter a revolutionary dimension to the political reading of horror films. What at last comes into focus is the insurrectionary prospect of the background coming monstrously into its denied prominence”“The history of the horror film is also a history of flat repetition with the most minor of differences — of shark attacks that only inspire bear attacks. But when we shift away from trying to identify the subject positions, radical or otherwise, of that horrible content, we find the basis for a new kind of political reading, one sensitive above all to how films refract an economic and social order that constantly produces swelling mass of the unwanted pressing up against the edges and into the foreground. It is this horror, that of the secondary material that refuses to quit the scene or do its job, that deserves to be defended and elaborated. To move away from allegories of horrible content with their emphasis on identifying who might be radical is to encounter a revolutionary dimension to the political reading of horror films. What at last comes into focus is the insurrectionary prospect of the background coming monstrously into its denied prominence”vv“The history of the horror film is also a history of flat repetition with the most minor of differences — of shark attacks that only inspire bear attacks. But when we shift away from trying to identify the subject positions, radical or otherwise, of that horrible content, we find the basis for a new kind of political reading, one sensitive above all to how films refract an economic and social order that constantly produces swelling mass of the unwanted pressing up against the edges and into the foreground. It is this horror, that of the secondary material that refuses to quit the scene or do its job, that deserves to be defended and elaborated. To move away from allegories of horrible content with their emphasis on identifying who might be radical is to encounter a revolutionary dimension to the political reading of horror films. What at last comes into focus is the insurrectionary prospect of the background coming monstrously into its denied prominence”

"The American people haven't made up their minds what they want cities to be. They don't know how much agony they want cities to go through. They have to ask themselves: do cities represent an important national resource? And if so, they have to support them."

Robert P. Rosell, Director of Community Development Commission, Detroit. Qtd in "Detroit Struggles to Save Itself, " by Susanna McBee, Washington Post, February 20, 1973, A12.

RED SQUAD is a 1972 documentary, made under the auspices of Martin Scorsese's NYU production class, that seeks to document the police surveillance of protest and activist groups.

http://www.psfp.com/redrevisited.htm

From CINCINATTI Magazine, an article detailing how downtown renewal projects make Cincinatti's downtown ideal for... people. The implication being that the downtown core was perceived to, or actually was, absent of people. This seems to be a fairly prevalent presumption in the 1970s (see Arendt's review of Illumintations etc.)

[Magazine accessed via cover browser archive)

References for "Location Shooting" from Film Literature Index, 1973 and 1974

"Scenario for an 'NG'; or what every young filmmaker should know about locations but was afraid to ask." BUSINESS SCREEN 34: 24-25, Jan-Feb 1973.

"Arriflex 35 BC Makes Production Debut in Across 110th St." AM CIN 54(5), August 1972, 876-877.

"Question of the Month: What sort of difficulties did you encounter while shooting abroad and how did you surmount them?" J. Newby and others. MILLIMETER 2:32-3, Nov. 1974.

Film LIT index also references a publication titled "Making Films in New York" - possibly put out by the Mayor's Office? The Jerome Hill Archives at the Anthology Film Archives in New York appears to have editions of this for 1967 and 1972 - no mention of 1974.

Net-published (unpublished?) book on Detroit from the Germany-based Shrinking City project.

http://people.emich.edu/mryan7/pdfs/WP-Band_III_Detroit.pdf

Includes small filmography of Detroit-based films with annotations.

Jean Baptiste-Thoret, who has written Le Cinéma américain des années 70, writes an obtuse piece for Senses of Cinema here:

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2011/feature-articles/the-seventies-reloaded-what-does-the-cinema-think-about-when-it-dreams-of-baudrillard/

Lots of nonsense, but could prove useful at some point for disagreeing with.

Following up on last year's Brookings (?) report on the reversal of suburbanization, here is a piece from the Gawker with links to other reports on demographic changes occuring in cities and suburbs.

http://gawker.com/5816205/old-people-are-clogging-up-the-suburbs

Short piece on John Conn's photographs of NYC subway from early 1980s in Daily Beast:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2009/06/10/john-conn-s-new-york-subway-photos.html

See also: Bruce Davidson, Martha Cooper, Jamel Shabazz

Introduction could use The Out-of-Towners and Little Murders, two films which demonstrate external and internal views of the city at the beginning of the 1970s.

Contemporary interview with Gordon Willis in The Boston Globe by Mark Feeny January 14 2007. Conrad Hall calls Willis "The Prince of Darkness."

Chapter 1 should focus more on Klute and the status of noir in the early 1970s. Quote Naremore on the problems and possibilities of colorized noir. Note Straw's account of the mulitplicity of noir-like tags: film-blanc, film-gris, etc. Straw's development of tabloid crime aesthetic based on true crime digest covers that feature place-less b&w crime scenes in broad daylight (as opposed to hi-contrast, or Wee Gee-like crime scenes) could be drawn into parallel with "figures in windows" aesthetic. Perhaps also verite could be mentioned here as THE b&w moving image of the 1960s. Color would be associated with technicolor/H-wood artifice. Also ref. opening essay to recent Neo-Noir anthology.

Excellent post about NIGHT OF THE JUGGLER at Obscure One-Sheet:


http://knifeinthehead.blogspot.com/2011/05/not-so-obscure-tv-spot-but-still-mia-on.html

Also, can't forget about Homebodies by Larry Yust (who also did Trick Baby), from 1974.

LIFE magazine. Loft Living.

http://books.google.com/books?id=hFAEAAAAMBAJ&pg=RA2-PA61&dq=behind+these+grubby+facades+lurks+an+artists'+colony+life+magazine&cd=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

"People who flock to cities looking for jobs and more interesting lives will flock back again if jobs and more interesting lives are to be found where they came from. It has been suggested that, with modern systems of communication, the America of the future may be simply a network of small towns. But should we not say Walden Twos? A few skeletons of cities may survive, like the bones of dinosaurs in museums, as the remains of a passing phase in the evolution of a way of life."
- B.F. Skinner, Walden Two (introduction)

Early depiction of Post-stonewall NYC

There are a number of film narratives that take up the rather Hitchcockian idea of following an an object. Sometimes this motivates an anthology narrative, telling a group of mildly related stories (a la Ophuls LA RONDE). Examples include Julien Duvier's TALES OF MANHATTAN (1946), which follows a coat, THE GUN (John Badham, 1974) which follows a gun, Sacha Guitry's Les Perles de la Couronne uses a story of a necklace to construct a story which covers generations; TWENTY BUCKS (1993) by Keva Rosenfeld. There's also a German film, I believe, that follows a penny? These are narratives of circulation. DIABLE DE PARIS is an antecedent.

Joseph Wambaugh's THE BLUE KNIGHT (1975)

Joseph Wambaugh's POLICE STORY

James Willwerth seems to have been a crime correspondent for TIME in the late 1960s and 1970s. A search using his name on the TIME website brings up a number of articles. "Narcotics: Search and Destroy - The War on Drugs" describes a 1972 heroin bust in Chinatown, for example, as going off as "motion picture perfect."

Willwerth is also the author of Jones: Portrait of a Mugger, and Badge of Madness: The True Story of a Psychotic Cop. There's an excellent New York Times book review of the former.