Are Times really as bad as we claim? Hollywood doesn't seem to think so. The gritty realness of the 70's has been replaced with dark comedies and depressing subject matter. When our children's children watch the films of the great recession era, they'll know we were bummed, but they won't have a clue as to why. Comic book flicks and stoner comedies fail to sum up the collective emotion of our nation the way "Mean Streets" or "Dog Day Afternoon" did in the 1970's. Ambiguous but well portrayed anti-heroes will never capture the human condition the way Travis Bickle or even Reg Dunlap did. Watching films from that era, you understand how people felt as the economy tanked, factories closed and the Bronx Burned. You get a sense of the uneasy feeling as progress turned to violent civil unrest. ...

Filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman and Sidney Lumet captured the collective scream of the American public until it came to a head with the tag line from Lumet's 1976 classic "Network" - "I'M MAD AS HELL! AND I'M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!".

Hollywood needs to get mad again. The rest of the country is. As Detroit grinds to a hault and corporate America crumbles, we lack the sense of security we had during the "Pax Americana" of the 1990's. As we gingerly skirt the issue of a war we don't understand being fought on two fronts in a part of the world can't fully comprehend, a sense of desperation has surfaced among the American public not seen in this country since the early 80's - and Hollywood needs to catch up.

Don't get me wrong - Hollywood's cashed in. Taking advantage of the downtrodden public to push darker themes. People want to see disaster and Hollywood knows it - look at the recent success of "The Hangover" and before that "The Dark Knight". People are bummed, so they want to see people who are worse off: the citizens of Gotham, the ne'er do wells who bit off more than they could chew in Vegas, the unfortunate pot heads of "Pineapple Express". Hollywood is onto something here. But we need films that give our trying era an identity. Stoner comedies and sci-fi, comic book fantasy can't do that.

Spike Lee showed some balls a few years back when he brilliantly captured the essence of post 9/11 New York in 25th Hour. He pushed the envelope and took a stand with "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts". And what's his response to the state of the Union today? "Kobe Doin' Work". Come On!

Go back and watch "Dog Day Afternoon". You know exactly how it felt to survive a sweltering New York summer with no AC and barely enough scratch to get by. Watch "Slap Shot!" - yeah, it's about more than hockey. You understand how it felt to live in a decaying mill town in the 1970's. It also pointed out the redemptive nature of sports - long before the squeaky clean "Miracle on Ice".

"Mean Streets", "Taxi Driver", "Network", "Nashville", even "Vanishing Point" all captured the grittiness, the desperation of the time. When you watch these pictures, you know just how people were feeling at the time, how they viewed the world, and you feel for them. I can only imagine that it must have at least been comforting.

The only comfort we can take as a society is to look back on that era and realize that it passed. Repeating to ourselves "It's only for now" as we continue "waiting on the world to change". Maybe when we get tired of waiting, we'll try and do something about it and maybe someone will try to capture our national emotion on celluloid. Until then, we'll continue to laugh our asses off and escape reality while movie stars take up every cause in the world - except the need for a great story to be told.

-Wild Bill