I could always be blown away as a youngster by the skills of John Carpenter ("Escape from New York", "The Thing") or John Landis ("Animal House", "The Blues Brothers", "Trading Places") or George Romero ("Dawn of the dead", "Creepshow"), Martin Scorsese ("Mean Streets", "Taxi Driver")

but by the mid-90's it would seem I would have to really be on the extreme look-out for something to really blow me away (Wim Wenders "The Million Dollar Hotel", Gary Auerbach "Just your luck").

from being a kid in the 70's/80's, I just had the view very strongly around 77-84 that those adults who make movies, comic books, cartoons, etc. really WENT BEYOND ANYTHING THAT WAS ...eh.....

by 85, there was so much ".....eh...." around in all those aforementioned creative fields that there was a serious disconnect in me.

I went from being someone who told parents and family members I wanted to be a director and had my sights on NYU (and actually was accepted into NYU - I didn't go), to being someone who just didn't "feel it" about film anymore.

Some would say this is about "not wanting to look diligently for good stuff" but when an atmosphere is around, like the atmosphere of 70's to early 80's, the loss of that atmosphere will be felt. I definitely felt the loss.

Same exact thing happened to the field of music. Music was hot almost top to bottom. Nirvana hit and hip-hop was massive. Record stores etc. were all over and doing serious profits. I wanted in so bad I used to go into office buildings in Manhattan trying to talk myself into a music industry job (you could really get into an office building in Manhattan back then - early - mid 90's, as opposed to now where a person is stopped at the security desk). I worked at Tower Records village NYC and even a low level music industry job at RED Distribution (Bone Thugs and Harmony "the crossroads" was a big record RED worked on when I was there).

but, as we know, the music industry and record stores fell off and now the atmosphere just isn't there. So, another loss felt painfully.