Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson

[saturn]

I never saw the movie until sometime in the 1990s. I had known about it and it's soundtrack for years before I finally got around to seeing it. I guess I was too young to personally get the social/political commentary and I viewed it more for the story. The main thing I remember thinking at the end was how awkward the rest of all their lives were going to be, especially for the girl who would never be able to have a normal relationship with her mother if she was married to Hoffman's character. I guess that's my "shallow" perspective.

 

Reading through the earlier posts, I now wish I hadn't thrown away that crate containing about 200 old McGovern/Eagleton campaign buttons that I had. A good photo of them might have seemed funny.

[milod]

Cupla points about "comedy" in terms of "drama." Adding comedic bit to plays of all sorts of "popular drama" at least from the time of Shakespeare.

 

And I'll definitely agree with Saturn that one's age and, if you will, distance on your life's pathway, makes a huge difference in how you perceive this very well-done film.

 

Another "period piece" film few today might recall is Elliott Gould in "Getting Straight," about a former student activist, now grad student returning to a university environment.

 

That was 1970 and a time of a great deal of on-campus "stuff" going on. By that time I'd already been away from college where I'd done some of my own time "looking" for political lines of thought that made sense - and could identify actually more with that character in a film of less quality than with Hoffman a few years later.

 

I still more or less recall one line from the Gould film that hit me far more than anything in "The Graduate." Asked why he didn't get involved again as a protest-type leader, the response was that he'd already done it. It hit me because yeah, he'd done it and he had to come back to school pretty much to get the credentials to make a living. A rematch in a boxing ring is quite different from the first. I was roughly 25; my 20ish date didn't at all understand why I had that response.

 

That played a role, I'll add, in my reference to the characters (not the quality of acting) in Graduate as vapid.

 

Again, please read Peter Coyote's book, "Sleeping Where I Fall," or at least something about it on his website http://www.petercoyote.com/ for some additional insights to what all was going on among our (his and mine) "pre-baby boom" generation.

 

Pete was a senior and I a freshman when I met him. We took very different pathways, but "we" all did (different paths) in that politically, culturally and emotionally charged era that gave rise to the babyboom avalanche's schtick, out of which arose such as "The Graduate."

 

The good, bad and ugly in the tales found in Pete's book has some parallels in what I watched in mine, regardless of differences in our lives.

 

It's that age difference. At that time period just a few years makes a huge difference - as my 2-year-younger sis and 5-year-younger bro and I were talking about while sorting out our late Mom's possessions this past cupla weeks. That probably had me more philosophical than apparently some folks here want to hear.

 

Yeah... and "clean for Gene" material too... or my notes from interviewing Charles Percy - and if you don't remember who he was either, you're less likely to catch onto that era.

 

OTOH... yup, "Mrs Robinson" is one of the best swinging acoustic folk rock pieces and arrangements I think you'll hear. Doggone near impossible not to tap your toes.

 

m

[Rocky4]

Fantastic movie! Written by Buck Henry, who hosted SNL 10 times.

[saturn]

 

Reading through the earlier posts, I now wish I hadn't thrown away that crate containing about 200 old McGovern/Eagleton campaign buttons that I had. A good photo of them might have seemed funny.

 

I was cleaning out my car today and found this in the back.

 

[cookieman15061]

I was cleaning out my car today and found this in the back.

 

 

The Graduate was released in 1967. A million years earlier.