Hello, my name is Justin the Clue, and I'm here today with Will Sloan, and you're listening to the important cinema club.

And today, we are discussing Martha Coolidge.

This is an interesting career.

This is the kind of career that I increasingly like, the further we get on

in this podcast. You know, somebody who in the 1970s maybe had some kind of path-breaking experimental

debut. And then later in their career, they make The Prince and Me. I mean, arguably,

Martha Coolidge has a, maybe not as much acclaim, but Peter Bogdanovich-style career. Oh, sure, sure. Where he also had that, like, first few films, really good. And I think St. Jack has things to recommend it. Oh, that's right. St. Jack. But a dying gas. But, you know, Martha Coolidge, I don't feel qualified to pass judgment on this career only because I've seen just a small fraction of it. And I'm intrigued by this career. And like the movies that we picked, they're all from early on in her career. And I'm sure that she may say like, what about my newer films when I've learned so much. Like you hear a lot of filmmakers say this of like, oh, if I could only make those earlier films now that I'm so

much more well informed and I know how to really make a movie. Unfortunately, near the end of her

career, if you look at her filmography, it doesn't seem there's that experimental bent, even though

she's making bigger budget films that are for wider audiences. Right. So her career begins in

1976 with a pioneering complex,

ahead of its time, documentary fiction hybrid called Not a Pretty Picture, recently canonized by the

Criterion Collection. As it goes on, she makes several fondly remembered 80s teen comedies. Valley Girl,

real genius, to a lesser extent, the joy of sex.

In the 2000s, and if you look on Letterbox, these are the ones that are some of the most

popular movies because millennials and Zumers grew up with them.

The Prince and Me and Material Girls.

And then in between there, a lot of movies that you look at them and say, oh, that was by

the director of Real Genius. Or a lot say, oh, that was by the director of real genius.

Or a lot of, oh, that exists?

I've never heard of that before.

So there's the late period Lemon and Mathau film Out to Sea.

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