I was an ardent lefty for so much of my life and such a good malcontent in so many ways (anti-authoritarian, irreverent, iconoclastic), and when I first saw Hal Ashby‘s Coming Home at Manhatttan’s Magno Screening Room in January ’78…well, that movie just poured right into me, and I sank into it right back.
I felt moved and melted down, and was nodding in recognition at so much of what it was saying…I felt so emotionally caught up during Jon Voight‘s big speech to those high-school kids at the end. And the late ‘60s soundtrack.
I wound up seeing Coming Home three or four times after it opened on 2.15.78, and felt so enthused when Voight and Jane Fonda won Best Actor and Best Actress Oscars, and Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones won for Best Original Screenplay.
My Bluray version of Hal Ashby’s best film is sitting on the bookshelf in the living room, but I haven’t popped it in for a few years. Being a lefty was such a different thing back then. I was such a whole-hearted believer. It’s hard to accept that early ’78 was nearly a half-century ago.