<Narrator> Support for "Reconnecting Roots" is provided by the following.

RPC.

♪ Plain Values, a magazine on a mission to find joy in the simple things.

♪ Muletown Coffee Roasters is all about slowing things down, digging into community, and encouraging good for goodness sake.

♪ Taylor Stitch is responsibly built for the long haul and is proud to partner with brands that inspire hope for a more sustainable future.

♪ Sharing a common passion for music and community in beautiful Paradise Valley, Music Ranch Montana's mission to support musicians and provide a place to enjoy it together is reflected in "Reconnecting Roots".

At TowHaul, we value the creativity and hard work that built this country and improves our lives by supporting education towards careers in manufacturing and the trades.

TowHaul, proud sponsor of "Reconnecting Roots" and public television.

(water splashes) (suspenseful music) >> Come on in the water.

(suspenseful music) ♪ ♪ (suspenseful music continues) (water splashes) ♪ (suspenseful music continues) (girl screams) <Director> And cut.

(water splashes) (Gabe gasps) <Gabe> Nice work, Susan <Susan> Thanks, Gabe.

That was...convincing.

<Director> What do you think about Han Solo being like an archeologist?

<Gabe> Movie magic may be the most powerful kind of magic there is.

Great films can cast a spell on an audience and make them believe they've gone back to the future, into outer space or swimming with the sharks.

But what a lot of us don't consider is just how powerful an influence films can have on our culture.

Certain movies have struck such a chord with audiences that the impact ripples through our society and makes people actually believe certain things.

Take Steven Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster classic "Jaws."

<Employee> You're gonna need a bigger towel.

(suspenseful music) ♪ >> I'm Gabe McCauley.

Join me as we explore the greatness of America.

♪ Beautiful for spacious skies, amber waves of grain ♪ ♪ Purple mountains majesty on the fruited plains we're home ♪ ♪ There's no place like home ♪ ♪ ♪ Whoa ♪ ♪ Tracing the roots of progress from then to now and how.

This is "Reconnecting Roots."

♪ We're home ♪ <Gabe> Even though unprovoked shark attacks were very rare at the time, the success of "Jaws" made people scared of them.

This led to an explosion of shark hunting particularly on the East Coast.

Shark numbers dwindled quickly, which made a lot of people happy, especially those who were terrified to dip their toes in the ocean after the movie's release.

(suspenseful music) There's no denying the power of American cinema's influence on our society.

Movies have caused wine sales to skyrocket, made the world's largest fast food brand change its menu, predicted and directly influenced things like video calls and tablet computers.

♪ When it comes to movies, we export four times more than we import.

In 2019, the movies coming out of Hollywood contributed to a global box office total of 42.5 billion, the highest ever so far.

So, with this much influence and this much power, does our society influence the movies being made or the movies we watch influence our society?

(dramatic music) Who better to understand this dilemma than someone who's spent decades making movies?

My epic journey through modern-day Babylon led me to a multi-hyphenate Hollywood filmmaker that you know as Tim Blake Nelson.

While you may know him for "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

or the Marvel cinematic universe, this writer, director, actor had just released a novel about the film industry.

<Gabe> Let's talk about the movies.

<Tim> All right.

<Gabe> Besides acting you've written screenplays, you've directed, you've spent a lot of time studying the classics, you had a quite a theater background.

Why movies though?

Why the draw there?

<Tim> Movies are rhetoric because storytelling is rhetoric, and storytelling, going back to Aristotle is structured with a beginning, a middle, and an end, that goes back to original classical plays, and movies have not changed.

They ask us to come together in the dark and experience that, so that when we walk outside of the theater we've learned something about our experience as humans.

<Gabe> Why do you think movies are so powerful in that way, as an art form?

<Tim> It's as close as we get to dreams in terms of the subconscious.

<Gabe> Yeah.

<Tim> And I can't think of another art form that does that in quite the same way.

<Gabe> Yeah.

<Tim> It is utterly complete and yet at the same time... ephemeral.

Narrative is a rehearsal for life.

It's become essential for us to go in and experience stories and get to imagine ourselves in them.

There's neurological empathy as we experience characters.

And since it's happening in the dark, again akin to dreams, it's as close as we get to subconscious consciousness.

<Gabe> You wrote your first novel "City of Blows" with the backdrop as individuals within the Hollywood industry.

<Tim> I wanted to write a novel that captured the movie industry and therefore our country at a moment in time, and that moment in time is right as COVID is approaching, and I think the movie business works for that sort of narrative pursuit that examines something small that projects universally.

<Gabe> Yeah.

<Tim> Because that's what movies do.

<Gabe> Do you ever imagine this novel becoming a movie itself?

<Tim> When I wrote that, I wrote it because it could only be a novel.

The best movies when you watch them can only be movies.

You have to watch it and think, this could never be accomplished in any other medium.

I have to be right here right now with strangers in a cinema experiencing this.

♪ <Gabe> While Hollywood's conventions largely come from stage drama, it's roots of storytelling go much deeper.

Like, deep inside the cave.

Paintings on rock surfaces from thousands of years ago tell tales about man and beast, and the struggle to survive the natural world.

Some believe the paintings supplemented oral stories told in the flickering firelight.

These visuals make up the first storyboards, guiding a shared imagination between audience and storyteller.

But what inspired the motion picture was Eadweard Muybridge's sequenced photographs, capturing engaging movement in humans and animals.

A zoopraxiscope, like the zoetrope before it, displayed a short loop of continuous photos that would someday lead to the age old debate, is it a gif or a gif?

This inspired Thomas Edison to create a camera using George Eastman's celluloid film that would streamline, capture and playback from a single continuous roll.

And voila, the movie industry was born.

(playful piano music) Edison's instincts in filmmaking were similar to his instincts in music recording.

The artists take a backseat to his technological wizardry.

He, along with other producers and distributors, also thought audiences wouldn't handle films longer than 10 to 20 minutes, so they kept them short.

The movies fit nicely with vaudeville shows, at first filling time between acts, before eventually becoming the main attraction.

♪ (dramatic music) ♪ Soon audiences went to small, storefront nickelodeons to watch films.

Bigger movie theaters had to open up just to meet demand.

Vaudeville attendance declined along with many of its performers like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton switching to the film format.

But most films were made in Chicago and New York then, where the unpredictable weather caused many headaches.

So movie makers flocked to Los Angeles where they could film year round creating Hollywood as we know it.

♪ <Character> This city never sleeps.

She's as restless as I am.

And just when you think you're safe to get some shut eye, someone throws open the blinds.

♪ Looks like I've got another mystery to unravel and I ain't got nothing to do tonight since my wife left me a few days ago.

She's visiting family in Florida.

American movies are accessible to every class of citizen, but is it all just entertainment?

To get to the bottom of this, I need to watch the first big Hollywood hit "The Birth of a Nation."

I got a private copy of the flick from the black market, which is a nice little store down the street.

I can see why this was the cat's meow when it came out.

The filmmaking is highly innovative.

Introducing techniques we still use today, such as close ups, cross-cutting, and dissolves.

There's only one major problem, it's full-blown racist.

It portrayed KKK members as heroes, which is terrible.

The group had practically been non-existent for decades, but the popularity of this film started a revival.

It was used as their recruiting tool.

No wonder civil rights advocates protested the film and tried to get it banned.

It was abundantly clear that film is a medium powerful enough to change the real world.

Should that kind of power have limits?

Should certain films be censored if they can be harmful?

Will I ever- ♪ <Gabe> Oh, man.

Films in the 1910s and '20s have become increasingly risque and a series of offscreen scandals meant Hollywood was targeted by boycotts from religious and political groups.

<Character>Hey, wise guy, what happened to my scene?

<Gabe> Goes against the production code, so it had to be cut.

<Character>You mean the government is out there telling us what we can and can't show?

<Gabe> Religious groups were pushing for the government to get involved, so, studios agreed to self-regulate so that wouldn't happen.

<Character> So I can't say (beep).

<Gabe> No.

<Character> What about (beep) (beep), oh, (beep), (beep) (beep) (beep) (beep) With a whole (beep) <Gabe> Absolutely not.

<Character> Then what's the point of living?

Ring me in 30 years when this is over.

♪ <Gabe> Despite it's self-imposed restrictions, the studio system cranked out movies at a massive scale.

The golden age of Hollywood was made for an industrialized nation, and even during the hardest of times, audiences were always hungry for more, and Tinseltown delivered with lavish set pieces, show-stopping choreography numbers, and chorus girls as far as the eye could see.

Not every film made in this era was a hit despite its story's star and director, but certain films instantly became a part of American culture with their iconic images, immortal dialogue- <Rick/Humphrey Bogart> Here's looking at you, kid.

<Gabe> And larger than life world building.

<Dorothy/Judy Garland> I have a feeling we're not in Kansas any more.

(video tape screeches) ("Rocky" theme music) ♪ ("Rocky" theme music continues) ♪ ("Rocky" theme music continues) ♪ ("Rocky" theme music continues) ♪ ("Rocky" theme music continues) ♪ ("Rocky" theme music continues) ♪ ♪ Trying hard now ♪ ♪ It's so hard now ♪ ♪ Trying hard now ♪ ("Rocky" theme music continues) ♪ ("Rocky" theme music continues) ♪ ("Rocky" theme music continues) ♪ Trying hard now ♪ ♪ It's so hard now ♪ <Gabe> The Golden Age helped to define Hollywood, but came to an end after years of declining ticket sales and changing taste of audiences, particularly those of younger generations.

The industry needed something new.

♪ The production code was swapped with a rating system, which freed the studios to make more modern, adult-themed movies.

♪ (motorcycle engine revs) A whole new generation of filmmakers were given the reins to make more personal films, but that doesn't mean audiences completely abandoned larger-than-life spectacles.

From "10 Commandments" to "Ben-Hur" to "Lawrence of Arabia," the big screen has always been a natural fit for big stories.

But "Jaws" set the stage for what we now call blockbuster season.

It was released in the summer of 1975, which was considered a dry period, but it was the first movie to make 100 million at the box office.

Two years later "Star Wars" cemented the idea of the summer blockbuster.

And the decades afterwards, these movies got bigger, more expensive, and more popular.

But, what if you don't have hundreds of millions of dollars to make a movie?

Well, that's never stopped filmmakers who only have a shoestring budget to work with.

The problem isn't so much getting the movie made, it's how do you get the movie in front of an audience?

Film festivals like Sundance, which was named after co-founder Robert Redford's role as the Sundance Kid, created a new outlet for indie films and helped the market explode.

Not only did viewers have an easy way to find these movies but they were also purchased by the big studios, ironically enough, sometimes for millions of dollars.

It even convinced the majors to start their own indie labels.

And the indie film circuit got even bigger when film cameras were replaced by cheaper digital ones.

This brought filmmaking cost way down, making it accessible for the average person and allowing more types of people to make movies their own way, and now that our phones have pretty good cameras on them, just about anyone can make a movie.

♪ The things that should be shaping our culture for tomorrow it seems like it should be, you know, our families, our churches, our schools, but my guess is the thing that's going to most influence the culture of tomorrow is what's on a screen.

<Craig> Yes, myth-making possibilities of the big screen and the small screen, do have a way of seeping into our subconscious.

The celluloid dreams get into our soul.

I've been trying to educate a new generation of filmmakers to take that responsibility quite seriously and think carefully about it.

<Gabe> Now you're involved in a Windrider Institute that takes place at Sundance, correct?

<Craig> We want to, in a sense, float on the possibilities of what a young filmmaker could bring to audiences, but what's great about Sundance is it's about how do you do it on low budget or no budget?

What kind of stories can you tell from your community that others may have missed?

<Gabe> Craig Detweiler is a filmmaker and scholar, who serves as dean of the College of Arts and Media at Grand Canyon University.

Craig studies the power of media on culture and mentors directors of films like "Minari" and "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings."

<Craig> I think Hollywood both reflects and in some cases accelerates social change.

<Gabe> So if you took two movies like "Pollyanna" or "Magic Mike," how much does Hollywood share our values and how much do they even affect our social mores.

<Craig> Movies have always maybe shown us things that are a little bit hidden or forbidden, and that's almost been a little bit of the exchange.

Right.

Like come into the dark and I'll show you some things that maybe your parents didn't tell you about.

Are we robbing innocence or are we kind of giving people an opportunity to deal with moral complexities?

It's a little of both.

Film can be a cautionary tale, even while it's showing you, maybe behavior that is questionable, and so, film both shows you the temptation and why it's appealing, and then a responsible film, I think, also shows you the wages, <Gabe> Yeah.

<Craig> of those choices.

I think it's incumbent upon America and our storytellers to think about the stories that we're exporting, the images that we're exporting.

We have decided that the quickest way to end a film is usually with a loaded gun, and unfortunately, I think that notion of resolution via violence has been exported all across the globe in a way that now we as America are now having to deal with, in a sense our own legacy.

♪ ♪ eerie music ♪ <Girl> You're not taking me into your basement to like, chop me up or something, I hope.

<Alex> No, but does that mean nibbling is out of the question?

(Girl laughs) <Girl> Okay, even creepier, you're into antiques.

♪ eerie music ♪ <Alex> Check it out, this beauty is an ultra rare, legendary device and it might be cursed.

<Girl> What does it burn every film that touches it.

<Alex> According to legend, when you see what this projects it heightens everyone's sense of violence.

<Girl> I'm thinking maybe more of like, a Disney princess kind of night, safe...G-rated.

<Alex> They say it has the power to create a vision of beauty unattainable in the flesh.

Such a high standard that women go mad trying to match it, and men who view it expect all women to be so desirable.

<Girl> So it projects body image issues and sexism.

Can't wait to see that.

♪ suspenseful music ♪ Whatever, it's the movies.

Everyone knows it's fake.

<Alex> ...and that's the draw, people wanna escape their own reality and bask in illusion, but underneath it all, there's a powerful influence that says, watch and...

I mean, watching movies can show you how to fall in love, right?

<Girl> So are you gonna show me something on this thing or what?

<Alex> I can't, the bulb is burned out, maybe a fuse too.

It doesn't actually work.

<Girl> That's too bad.

I'm actually really into scary movies.

It's something about the feeling that I get just by watching.

<Alex> I like the way they analogize the darker sides of humanity that each of us must come to terms with.

Let me go see if I can find something to watch upstairs.

<Girl> Yeah.

(chuckles) (suspenseful music) (projector whirs) ♪ <Girl> Alex (projector whirs) (suspenseful music intensifies) (girl screams) <Alex> Come on.

(suspenseful music) ♪ (music stops with flash) (girl gasps) (eerie music begins) ♪ (urgent knocking) (eerie music continues) ♪ (door creaks) <Gabe> One with extra anchovies.

(couple screams) <Gabe> One of the scariest things about cinema today has to do with you and me, the audience.

Since films are so accessible and only take a couple hours to watch, we're spending less time reading books and actually visualizing things for ourselves.

We're also paying more attention to films that require less attention.

Viewing with a critical eye is reserved for the occasional art house flick or Oscar movie, and so we tend to have a superficial viewer experience.

So, if filmmakers give audiences what they want, then that must mean what they want is watered down plots and paper thin characters just going through motion after cliched motion.

The only effect a film can have is achieved through its special effects, which often gets overused.

With all the wonderful tools to create wildly imaginative fantasies on screen, effects can become just a crutch for bad storytelling.

(dramatic music) (explosions) (soft music) But these types of movies have become bigger hits worldwide, often making more money overseas than in America.

Tent poles as they are called, tend to lean towards stories with broad appeal or built-in fan base, which is why they make so many sequels, prequels, and remakes.

Think of all the fairy tales that have been turned into blockbusters, and those fairy tales are often based on older folk tales and myths.

These common stories connect us from generation to generation.

The bedtime stories our great grandparents heard are now movies that dazzle our children, and some films don't need to be remade to stay relevant.

Film connects us as a society, which is why movies have been referred to as empathy machines.

They let us see the world through different perspectives, feel what others are feeling.

We tell stories to make sense out of life to help navigate it and maybe, most importantly, to share it with others.

♪ (woman whistles) (whistling continues) ♪ Blue skies smiling at me ♪ ♪ Nothing but blue skies do I see ♪ ♪ ♪ Blue days, all of them gone ♪ ♪ Nothing but blue skies from now on ♪ ♪ ♪ Never saw the sun shining so bright ♪ ♪ Never saw things going so right ♪ ♪ Noticing the days hurrying by ♪ ♪ When you're in love, my how they fly by ♪ ♪ Blue skies ♪ ♪ Blue skies ♪ ♪ ♪ Never saw the sun shining so bright ♪ ♪ Never saw things going so right ♪ ♪ Noticing the days hurrying by ♪ ♪ When you're in love my how they fly by ♪ (woman whistles) (soft instrumental music) ♪ <Gabe> Connect with me, Gabe McCauley, and "Reconnecting Roots" by visiting reconnectingroots.com.

where you'll discover music, vlogs, behind the scenes, our podcast and more.

Join our email list and never miss a beat.

♪ <Narrator> Support for "Reconnecting Roots" is provided by the following.

RPC.

♪ gentle bluegrass music ♪ Plain Values, a magazine on a mission to find joy in the simple things.

♪ Muletown Coffee Roasters is all about slowing things down, digging into community, and encouraging good for goodness sake.

♪ Taylor Stitch is responsibly built for the long haul, and is proud to partner with brands that inspire hope for a more sustainable future.

♪ Sharing a common passion for music and community in beautiful Paradise Valley, Music Ranch Montana's mission to support musicians and provide a place to enjoy it together is reflected in "Reconnecting Roots."

♪ At TowHaul, we value the creativity and hard work that built this country, and improves our lives by supporting education towards careers in manufacturing and the trades.

TowHaul, proud sponsor of "Reconnecting Roots," and public television.

♪ ♪