#1: Chicken Jockeys and Psych Wards
The year 1975 is widely ascribed to be the first canonical ‘Great Movie Year’ – that is the first to have its movies lauded, interrogated and discussed widely as a collective. The dawn of the modern blockbuster with Steven Spielberg’s Jaws arrived alongside a raft of exciting auteur-driven projects, old Hollywood-style epics, hit musicals, and a further codifying of the talented crop of artists who made up ‘the new Hollywood’. The variety and depth of great films from 1975 is the metric against which other movie years are now judged. How do we know that 1994 and 1999 were great movie years? Or 2007? Or 2019, the year Quentin Tarantino has decided was the end of good movies? Or, most recently 2023, with the pink atomic bomb of Barbenheimer leading the charge? The easiest way to determine whether a movie year was good is simple: look up the year’s top box office performers and count how many from the list you would consider a good film. Chances are, for all the years mentioned, the number is fairly high.
The films of 1975 existed in an era of worldwide social and political unrest, Cold War paranoia and a sense of ‘tomorrow’ being an unknown and unpredictable quantity. The defining event of the year is almost certainly the Fall of Saigon – an event whose fiftieth anniversary is today – which spelled the end of the near-decade of the Vietnam War, and put a serious dent in the myth of American military dominance worldwide. On U.S. soil, five of the six men indicted in the Watergate scandal were found guilty, even though its supposed architect, Richard Nixon, had been officially pardoned by his successor Gerald Ford, immunising him against prosecution. Ford himself would survive an assassination attempt in San Francisco in September of 1975. The stench of the Watergate scandal pervaded movies for much of the 70s. Indeed, three of the biggest movies of 1975 could reasonably be considered ‘Watergate movies’: Robert Altman’s Nashville, Hal Ashby’s Shampoo, and the aforementioned Jaws.
Things were not much more stable in Ireland. While the country’s industry and economy continued to grow prior to the recession of the 1980s, Ireland, and particularly the North, was still in the midst of the violence of The Troubles. Despite the truce between the IRA and the British Army which came into effect in February 1975, there was an escalation in Loyalist paramilitary violence, with 120 Catholics killed in the North, and 12 people killed in one day on October 2nd 1975. One of the most storied atrocities of The Troubles, The Miami Showband Massacre, occurred on July 31st 1975.
It’s hard to divorce the films of 1975 from the environment of paranoia, mistrust and danger that pervaded the year itself. Fifty years on, in the second quarter of 2025, it’s interesting to imagine if the films of this year will be seen through the lens of our current unstable global political environment, which also seems to be composed mainly of paranoia, mistrust and danger.
This article will be the first of a bi-monthly series whose goal is to analyse some of 1975’s great films in the context of the world in which they were birthed, and seek to find analogues within the 2025 slate of films in an effort to compare and contrast our current moment to fifty years ago. Though I will largely focus on the most important and lauded films of 1975, I will also endeavour to feature films that, despite being less well-known, still highlight some important elements of life at the time. You, the reader, may find some of my comparisons tenuous, perhaps even far fetched. Nonetheless, we’ve got a shark to hunt here at Film in Dublin, and its name is Content, so it’s time to load the cage onto the Orca and go fishing.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (dir. Miloš Forman) / Mickey 17 (dir. Bong Joon-ho)
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The societal relationship to power and authority was at a previously-unthinkable low in 1975. After thirty years of global dominance (give or take the odd Cuban Missile Crisis), the United States and the western world at large had been upended by the Watergate scandal. The question to be asked was: “If the President is misusing his power, then who else is?” The wave of 60s anti-authoritarianism and civil rights movements had reached a zenith. What Miloš Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest sought to interrogate was whether people who we assume to be altruistic, genteel and fair could be similarly corrupted by their power.
When Randle P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) encounters his nemesis, the legendary movie villain Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), his brash persona and anti-authority streak immediately bumps against her ward administration style, based on chastity, abstinence, restraint and shame. Their tete-a-tete sees McMurphy repeatedly attempting to break the hold she has over the other patients (“What do you think are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin’? Well, you’re not!”) while Ratched tries to show McMurphy for a charlatan by embarrassing him and showing his powerlessness to the others (“If Mr. McMurphy doesn’t want to take his medication orally, I’m sure we can arrange that he can have it some other way.”) McMurphy is not to be deterred, thinking her just another authority figure bound by their commitment to rules, but when she wields her power over McMurphy’s friend Billy, leading to his suicide, McMurphy is overcome by rage and tries to kill Ratched. Suffering the consequences of this action, McMurphy is lobotomized, removing him as a threat to authority, and inspiring the character Chief to escape, refusing to meet a similar fate at Ratched’s hand.
It was hard for an audience in 1975 to imagine that a prim, sleepy-eyed nurse with a gentle voice could harbour such malice, which is part of what makes her such an outstanding villain. She’s a regular person who holds the mental stability of a group of people in her hands. It’s not much power, but she’s willing to wield it mercilessly and fight tooth and nail to keep it intact. By contrast, it is very very easy for an audience in 2025 to see the malice in Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), the villain of Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17. Even if he weren’t so obviously sending up Donald Trump, he is introduced as a disgraced politician leading an expedition in the name of a mysterious right-wing Christian group to colonise a distant planet.
Wow, no shit, and he’s the bad guy?
Bong’s lack of faith in power structures and his distrust of wealth is evident throughout his filmography, but his approach in Mickey 17 is explicit to the point of crude, and Ruffalo follows suit by chewing the scenery vigorously with his fake teeth. Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) is not a chaos agent like Randle P. McMurphy, and his passivity and hopelessness at the beginning of the film makes us view him as Marshall likely does: a man destined to be used like a slackjawed human shield. Unlike McMurphy, he seemingly accepts his fate with due misery (“Our entire life is punishment”) and only ends up becoming a problem for Marshall’s authority when he clones himself as Mickey 18, a more aggressive, anti-authority, McMurphy-esque version of himself.
In 1975, Nurse Ratched abusing her power to control others was shocking. In 2025, Kenneth Marshall abusing his power to not only control, but intentionally hurt others is expected, and to even speculate that he would do otherwise is the worst kind of naivete. Audiences may have brushed up against the obviousness and cartoonishness of Marshall as a representation of absolute power corrupting absolutely, but it’s hard to argue that it doesn’t meet our current moment. The shame of being caught misusing one’s power, as Ratched would have been were her misdeeds exposed, does not exist anymore. Marshall is proud of his demagoguery, whether we know about it or not. It’s interesting to note as well that both Forman and Bong sacrifice their chaos agents (McMurphy and Mickey 18) as the only way of upending/overthrowing the authority figure and inspiring others to do the same.
Fox and His Friends (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder) / One of Them Days (dir. Lawrence Lamont)
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If the differing authorial approach in the previous two films is indicative of our changed societal relationship to power between 1975 and 2025, then the consistency of approach in films about money and class over the same period demonstrates that not all that much has changed. How do we escape the soul-crushing existence of the poverty line? How would we adapt were we suddenly thrust into wealth?
To Franz “Fox” Biberkopf (played by Fassbinder himself), winning 500,000 marks in the West German lottery is his dream come true. Living an aimless existence in a ratty circus troupe, all that he has (outside of meaningless sex, alcohol and cigarettes) is a belief that life can only get better from where he is now. However, no sooner has he found wealth, he also finds a new drain on that wealth, in the form of his new lover – upper middle-class entrepreneur Eugen – who, along with his friends, sees in Fox an uncouth fool whom they can use to their own ends. Eugen uses the tactics of an emotional abuser to make Fox feel stupid and worthless so that he can make decisions about the usage of Fox’s money, then praises him and showers him with love when Fox does as he’s told. Fox’s dream is fulfilled, but right from the outset he has no control over it, with Eugen impressing upon him that he needs to refine himself to match his wealth. This comes in the form of new clothes, a new apartment and décor, a new social circle, and wise investments (in Eugen’s printing company). However, the deeper Fox embeds himself in Eugen’s world, the less acceptance he feels, and any attempts to return to his old life are met with derision and jealousy from his working-class former friends.
Dreux Jones (Keke Palmer) doesn’t dream of a lottery win. She is a realist who has worked her way up the ladder to better her circumstances, and now finds herself with an opportunity to step onto the corporate ladder into a world that previously seemed out of reach. The drains on Dreux’s social and financial mobility are not handsome snake-oil salesmen such that Fox encounters, but rather her free-spirited best friend Alyssa (SZA) and the fuckboy she has allowed to live in their apartment. When said fuckboy runs off with their rent money for the month, the two women are left in crisis. Dreux may have worked herself above the poverty line, but one missed rent payment is still not something she can afford.
Though One of Them Days explicitly deals with Dreux and Alyssa’s quest to avoid eviction through a comedic lens, the lengths that they must go to in order to get the money they need paint a pretty stark picture of America in 2025. They go to a loan bank where an extremely rude employee mocks Dreux’s abysmal credit score. Dreux attempts to donate blood at a shady medical facility staffed by untrained nurses. They try to sell a pair of vintage Jordans only to find that they are the property of an angry gang leader called King Loko. And when Dreux has finally made it to the big, shiny corporate building that she hopes will represent her future, an echo of the working-class environment she hails from arrives and ruins the opportunity for her.
The tone of the two films’ endings are, as you might expect, vastly different, but it is notable that we see both Fox and Dreux’s search for a better life come up against many of the same obstacles, despite the fifty years between them.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (dir. Jim Sharman) / A Minecraft Movie (dir. Jared Hess)
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There is simply no film in the history of the medium that occupies the place in culture that Jim Sharman’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show does. In many ways, it is the rubber stamp of success being relative in this industry. Released to roundly negative reviews and extremely poor box office performance in the autumn of 1975, Sharman’s film (based on screenwriter Richard O’Brien’s stage musical), which follows a newly-engaged couple whose car breaks down leaving them in the clutches of Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry) and a band of myriad strange individuals, failed to make any impact on its initial release.
However, five months into its run, something began to happen with the film during screenings at New York’s Waverly Theater. A core following emerged who would see the film over and over, and they began a ritual of speaking aloud in the theatre in counter-point dialogue to the film itself. This soon progressed into singing along out loud to the catchy musical numbers, then to dressing up as the characters to attend screenings, and even to performance groups acting out the film in theatre screens as the film itself played. Word of these traditions soon spread beyond the Waverly Theater, and soon a box office failure became an overnight sensation. Due to the enduring popularity and pageantry of Rocky Horror screenings, the film has remained in limited release for nearly fifty years, making it the longest film to be in continuous circulation in the history of the medium.
It wouldn’t be overstating matters to say that Rocky Horror fundamentally altered the relationship between audience and film. Audience participation has always been a part of every art form, but the organic way that an entire subculture was codified around a film that may otherwise have been lost to time changed the rules of the game. It popularised in-theatre singalongs during musicals, and also the lovingly ironic reclamation of films that general audiences have rejected, such as Tommy Wiseau’s The Room.
Then, we have Jared Hess’ A Minecraft Movie.
My screening of A Minecraft Movie began with the cinema’s Duty Manager asking the audience NOT to participate in the film. The viral TikTok trend of audience members throwing popcorn and drinks, jumping on each other’s backs and filming both themselves and the screen at the moment Jack Black’s character says the words “Chicken jockey” had apparently already resulted in damages to the theatre and major copyright issues. When the moment finally arrived, nothing was thrown, but multiple people were cautioned (and some were ejected) for filming the screen, with one such instance leading to the film being paused until the audience member left and some rather egregious insults were aimed at cinema staff. A group of teenage boys all left voluntarily when the Chicken Jockey moment was over, satisfied that they had participated in the important part of the film, and uninterested to see how it ended. The last act of the film was undercut by a near constant stream of cinema employees going up and down the aisles to prevent further copyright infringement.
This, apparently, is the logical endpoint of audience participation. While Rocky Horror screenings became legendary for the organic script developed over years by dedicated fans, A Minecraft Movie’s trend arrived simultaneously with the film, and rather than a constructed script or elaborate costuming, the entire audience engagement amounts to filming yourself or causing a major disturbance in the theatre in response to one specific line.
It might be a bit much to declare that the juxtaposition of these two instances of audience engagement is a sign that cinema culture in 2025 is “in trouble”. However, it’s hard to ignore that the group experience that developed around Rocky Horror is not something Minecraft fans are seeking, and the Chicken Jockey trend has very little to do with the actual art that it is responding to. If anything, it seems more like organised chaos for the benefit of the movie studio’s marketing, which makes more sense when the film’s director Jared Hess expressed admiration for the trend, but no remorse for the trouble it’s causing for cinema employees.
A Rocky Horror rep screening is a banner night for most cinemas, and cinema staff are even likely to participate by dressing up for the occasion. It’s a night of celebrating the greatest cinematic ode to freaks and weirdos, and the purity of the enjoyment is why these screenings remain so popular. If A Minecraft Movie’s Chicken Jockey trend is able to survive the relentless modern content cycle to become a similar cultural touchstone, I doubt any theatres will be enthusiastically scheduling rep screenings.
Nashville (dir. Robert Altman) / Sinners (dir. Ryan Coogler)
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You would be hard-pressed to find a music biopic film that doesn’t show how money is the ultimate perversion of music as an art form, and that a capitalist system can’t help but bleed artists dry, misuse their talent and corrupt their souls for the purposes of profit, until it moves on to its next victim.
Altman’s Nashville is a patient film. It follows twenty-four character arcs as they all descend on Nashville hoping, in one way or another, to make it big. It’s a microcosm of the American Dream, the Land of Opportunity, and the opportunists are out in full force. Geraldine Chaplin’s Opal is an English journalist willing to buy, charm and sleep with anyone to get an inside scoop. Shelley Duvall’s L.A. Joan is a runaway hoping to snag a talented, rich husband. Keith Carradine’s Tom is a soulful guitarist, a member of a famous trio whose unhappiness leads him to use his musical talent to sleep with as many women as he can. There are political aides, hometown heroes, country stars, failsons, groupies, rivalries, the untalented, the unappreciated and, for some reason, Elliott Gould playing himself. And the thing that has brought each of them there is the music. For some of them, it’s their great love, their passion. For others, it’s a tool to use for stardom. For others still, it’s of no interest beyond that it can be used for profit.
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners was marketed as a vampire movie, but audiences have quickly learned that there is far more to it than that. It opens with Wunmi Mosaku’s narration telling us of the numerous ancient societies that believed music was a connection to our ancestors and a portal to the Otherworld, and that certain gifted individuals had the power to open this portal. In one breathtaking scene, Coogler shows us the literalisation of this idea centring around Michael Caton’s character of Preacher Boy. It’s Coogler’s conception of the idea that music has power that crosses time and space, and like any great power, there are those that would use it for nefarious ends. When Jack O’Connell’s Irish vampire Remmick arrives into the movie, we believe that it is to end the revelry. Here is the malevolent force that will seek out The Smokestack Twins’ (Michael B. Jordan) Club Juke – a hub of unabashed, untamed and unrepressed Black blues music – and turn it to ash. But this is not his aim.
Remmick’s intention, once he is invited in, is to manipulate and pervert this hub of music for his own ends. Music, it seems, is power to Remmick too. The character states that it is Preacher Boy’s powerful singing that has drawn him and his vampire acolytes to Club Juke. Smoke, Stack, Preacher Boy and their comrades are resolute in their rejection of him, at first. But when Remmick picks off enough members of the group to infiltrate, leading to the killing of Stack and his joining of the vampire horde, everything changes. Our core of purists – loyal to the music and to each other – has been broken down. Under the influence of Remmick, Stack tries to convince Smoke and Preacher Boy to give in and join them. He extolls the ‘Hive Mind’ of the horde, which we can interpret as homogeniety, the flattening of the artist to fit into the world of their new masters. Smoke is now at odds with his own brother and, through the symbolism of the identical twin brothers, at odds with himself.
Sinners reckons with the question of how to respond when your culture, which connects you to your past and everything that you are, is invaded and commodified. In Nashville, the process is nearly complete. Altman’s film is set just over forty years after the events of Sinners in a city built on a musical genre (country) that had its origins in Delta blues. Despite its obvious Black origins, as rendered in Sinners, there is only one Black musician in Nashville, Tommy Brown, whose race is repeatedly commented on as unusual for a country singer. The other musicians experience different obstacles. Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakely) is ostensibly the biggest star in Nashville, but she is worked to exhaustion and mentally unstable. Connie White (Karen Black) is constantly feeling that, despite her talent, she is on the verge of being replaced by someone younger. Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) has leveraged his musical ability for power and a stake in a political campaign. And amidst them all is Barbara Harris’ Albuquerque, a wannabe who struggles at every turn to get noticed, and then ends up a star as the film concludes, having taken advantage of a tragedy for her own personal gain.
Despite Nashville painting the industry around music so negatively, it’s fascinating that Coogler – after killing off all of his lead characters (in one way or another) except Preacher Boy, the musician – concludes his film with an after-credit scene that shows how Preacher Boy (now played by legendary Blues guitarist Buddy Guy) has remained an artist of his own design right to the end of his career. Whether Coogler is dealing in idealism, historical revisionism or something else, it is certainly interesting that though we might assume cynicism towards the music industry would be higher now than in 1975, there may be a growing belief that the best music simply cannot be tainted or perverted. I would be curious to know what a 1975 Robert Altman would think of that.