At first the deaths today of Tom Snyder, the idiosyncratic talk show host and Ingmar Bergman, the great Swedish filmaker, would seem to have nothing in common. But at the age of 44, and having grown up in the 70s, I can't help but think of the two together and what their passing says about today's media landscape.
Like many Americans of a certain age, I got to know Bergman through Woody Allen who referenced him in many of his films and, at times, like in the emotionally claustrophobic 1978 film, Interiors, openly mimicked Bergman's sense of despair and intense interest in the tortures (and pleasures but mostly the tortures) of family life. If you grew up in a certain suburban millieu of the 70s, as I did, with parents who voted for George McGovern, took vacations in France, and watched public television, you knew even as a 10-year-old about Scenes from a Marriage, Bergman's 1973 made-for-TV series about the despairs of marital life was a huge hit on American TV and made its way, eventually to the big screen. Liv Ullman, the Norwwegian actress with whom Bergman had a child and who starred in so many of his films, made the cover of Time magazine, something that's impossible to imagine today.
For his part, Snyder was ubiquitous on TV on the 70s. His late-night talk show, perhaps the last one to be filled with the host's cigarette smoke, was edgy and funny and driven by Snyder's nervous tics which were captured hilariously by Dan Aykroyd in the early years of Saturday Night Live. With a blackened set, the show was an obvious precursor of Charlie Rose. But while Charlie is an enthusiast and hyper-cordial to his guests, Snyder was confrontational. His combative interview with Johnny Rotten remains one of TV's greats. He had other shows and David Letterman tried to get him back on the air but eventually he fell from the airwaves and I confess to not having thought about him in years.
It would be crazy to think of the 70s as a golden age of television. As a whole TV is arguably much better now. The Sopranos trumps The Thorn Birds. Films as a whole probably aren't as good. The Godfather, Chinatown, Deer Hunter, French Connection -- the most popular entertainment of the day, as in Dickens time, was also the best. [I've since been corrected by commenters that schlocky 70s fare like Love Story were among the best selling. I stand corrected but I still think, overall, you had a nice correlation between quality and popularity that you don't have as much of today.--Matt]
But the thing that I think about Snyder and Bergman's passing is that the media landscape was more forgiving of trial and error back then. A Tom Snyder, not at all pretty or slick , could have as much airtime as the ridiculous Chris Hansen's Dateline NBC's To Catch a Predator where he stings pedophiles each week in a kabuki ritual of justice triumphant that's comical at best and sad at worst, not just for what it says about pedophiles but also about what it says about TV. I watched it a couple of nights ago as Hansen set about catching predators who, upon finding out that they were on TV, were told they were "free to go" whereupon they were tackled by a ridiculously overarmed set of local police dressed like a SWAT team ready to do battle with heavily armed bankrobbers instead of a middle aged pervert. This is what NBC likes now for its prime time news instead of the likes of Tom Snyder. Today's corporate culture wouldn't allow the rise of another Snyder. It's not that there was no profit motive then but it wasn't as relentless. A Snyder could stay on the air as long as he made some money. He didn't have to make a lot of money.
Likewise, could Bergman be Bergman today with long films, darkly shot? I doubt it. Sure, Indie cinema is obviously thriving but it's all pretty accessible and middlebrow. Could a Bergman emerge today and have a popular audience on TV and in cinema? In my 70s childhood he could, but I don't think that could happen today.
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