THE '60S.
(MINISERIES; NBC, SUN. FEB. 7, MON. FEB. 8, 9 P.M.)Filmed in and around Los Angeles by Lynda Obst Prods. in association with NBC Studios. Executive producer, Lynda Obst; producer, Jim Chory; director, Mark Piznarski; writers, Bill Couturie, Robert Greenfield, Jeffrey Fiskin; camera, Michael O'Shea; production designer, Vincent Jefferds; art director, Dawn Snyder; editor, Robert Frazen; music, Jed Feuer, Brian Adler; sound, Kenn Fuller; casting, Molly Lopata. 4 HOURS
Brian Herlihy Jerry O'Connell Michael Herlihy Josh Hamilton Katie Herlihy Julia Stiles Bill Herlihy Bill Smitrovich Mary Herlihy Annie Corley Emmet Taylor Leonard Roberts Rev. Willie Taylor Charles S. Dutton Sarah Jordana Brewster Fred Hampton David Alan Grier Kenny Jeremy Sisto Father Daniel Berrigan Cliff Gorman Neal Reynolds Donovan Leitch Mama Earth Carnie Wilson Hippie Mother Rosanna Arquette
With: Raynor Scheine, David Denman, Elisabeth Rohm, Mary Leahy, Heath Lourwood, Nushond Lee, Dana Smith, Hannah Whelan, Wavy Gravy.
Like herpes and lava lamps, they just keep coming back. The '60s. Unfortunately, with every Civil Rights and antiwar demonstration and Vietnam war and social upheaval story already pretty much told, all that's left for the talented "Risky Business"/"Sleepless in Seattle" producer Lynda Obst is this ungainly four-hour ode to peace, love and Baby Boomer demos, an MTV-styled blast of grainy imagery and classic rock that disconnects from any real sense of profundity or purpose.
In truth, the two-night film (or miniseries, if you prefer) does pick up some emotional steam during its second and concluding night, thanks to a surprisingly affecting cast. But by then it's pretty much too late to rescue a project whose very existence is difficult to peg, except as a baldfaced sweeps demo grab. Despite the presence behind the scenes of some bright creative minds (including executive producer Obst and co-writer Bill Couturie, who was behind the brilliant 1988 doc "Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam"), "The '60s" feels too often like an awkward, quick-cut attempt to force-feed history to 20-year-olds who just don't care.
The creative team makes an admirable stab at the impossible tack of putting the whole of the 1960s into a definitive context. But director Mark Piznarski's scattered, if sometimes artful, work dispenses fictional elements with fact in ways that blur and unwittingly cheapen the memories so many hold dear. The mistake was in attempting to boil 10 very tumultuous years into four hours (minus commercials), and opting not to leave anything out, dooming well-known events like the Kennedy assassination to the same travelogue-like treatment afforded the socioeconomic implications of the love-in.
Filmmakers peer at the '60s through the prism of two fictional historical family composites -- one white and middle class, the other Southern and black and ravaged by discrimination. The white clan includes the boy who goes off to Vietnam an innocent and returns a disillusioned head case (Jerry O'Connell in a sharp performance), a rebellious teenage daughter who winds up pregnant and on the streets of Haight Ashbury (Julia Stiles), the good son who becomes an antiwar activist (Josh Hamilton), the straitlaced father blindsided by the times (Bill Smitrovich) and the strong-willed mother struggling to get her wayward family back together (powerful work from Annie Corley).
The black family (far less defined here) is represented by a black minister in Mississippi (Charles S. Dutton) and his teenage son (Leonard Roberts) whose lives are forever changed in the crossfire of the deadly 1965 Watts Riots.
Some edgy, agonizing moments prop up the second installment (particularly involving Stiles and her life on the streets as a single mother) after an aimless, warp-speed opening two-hours that sprints through Vietnam, lunch counter sit-ins in the South, the JFK assassination, the roots of the antiwar movement, the free love drug culture in San Francisco and Berkeley, the Beatles and the British Invasion, the rise of Martin Luther King Jr., the death of Malcolm X and the Watts Riots (a contrived bit of business set to Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone"). "The '60s" covers it all from a Land Rover with a flash bulb.
Naturally, classic '60s rock hits roll throughout the soundtrack, with tunes like "My Boyfriend's Back," Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" backing the mounds of newsreel footage and newly shot material designed to resemble the historical material, a conceit which more often than not confuses the issue.
While technically impressive and superficially entertaining, "The '60s" is a collection of disparate images spliced together to look like something impressive. Yet though it contains a handful of scenes that embody true, raw power, it most often depicts this revolutionary decade as a series of Kodak moments -- with nary a wide angle shot in the bunch.
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| Author: | RICHMOND, RAY |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Variety |
| Geographic Code: | 9VIET |
| Date: | Feb 1, 1999 |
| Words: | 777 |
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