Bert Tenzer, a writer and a veteran of radio and television production and direction, could not, in fact, "write" the feature film he wanted to make in terms that, say, a studio story editor could grasp. Outline or dialog would bear no relationship to the ultimate movie; it has to be "written with film" rather than pen and paper. Having made "loot and plunder" and deeply concerned with the state of society in which he had made it, he could afford, with some fund-raising, to go out on his own to say what he wanted to say. After two years' work as writer-producer-director, "eight months of that devoted to editingor 'writing'-the final film," for little less than $700,000, he came up with 2,000 Years Later, A major studio-Warner Brothers 7 Arts-could then "read" it and undertook its distribution.
2,000 Years Later is a "personal" film and an interesting one at that. It still defies script outline because it is so thoroughly cinematic. It has distillations of La Dolce Vita, Dr. Strangelove, Mondo Cane, and The Savage Eye; it has a brilliant take-off on High Noon and the fast inter-cuts, repetitions and cinema verite inserts that are the hallmark of so many "now" films; it has Terry Thomas as the unctuously venal television host of an International Cultural Hour, and Edward Everrett Horton as his pretentiously intellectual co-host; it has Murray Roman as the ultimate motorcyclist, Superdude, and Monty Rock III as Tomorrow's Leader. For Plot it has the last decedent Roman brought by the gods to our time to warn against the imminent decline and fall. It has flashy and fascinating techniques (consider paralleling a television guest show with a bull fight- eh, toreros?) and a fast contemporary score.
But most important, it has a point of view and something to say and you will either get the message or hate every seemingly exploitative and relentless moment of the film. It's essentially a statement about the loot and the plunder and the universal sell-out, whether it's by the TV Boys, the super culture hounds, the rock idol who digs "love and peace and those boots" or the Superdude who trades in his "tradition" for the boodle. It's a ruthless film- that makes the faces of the customers at the topless discotheques more fascinating then the females, that looks fads and fashion in the fraud (with Rudi Gernreich), that explores a zap-pow jet-set party (only two actors in this one and the rest just folks who gladly let the cameras roll), devastates physical fitness programs, lets the military mind have free rein and peels the skin off the fast-buck society. It's not a comfortable film because it is a merger of conflicting elements and the eye of the beholder is all.
Irreverent, skirting the borders of taste, nose-thumbing and back stabbing, it hits at a number of today's shams and shambles. And if you get the message
. It, is Mr. Tenzer feels, almost a Rorschach test. I urge you to take it.
--Judith Crist
New York Magazine
