End of the Line
FILM HISTORY IS VERY YOUNG—AS OLD AS TWO LIFETIMES, and not even particularly long ones at that. And year after year, living linkages to certain discrete eras in film history are snipped. What follows are brief eulogies to individuals, organized by year of death, but also eulogies to the film-historical moments or the particular qualities that they exemplified. It does not pretend to be a comprehensive roll call of the departed, nor could such a thing be possible, but should be taken instead as an idiosyncratic history of the 2010s as seen through the people lost, and what went with them.
2010
The deaths this decade of , , and even and his carny-barker producer were widely noted, but the culling of American genre regionalists began early with the passing of , the longtime Texarkana resident who drew on the lore of his native land—his (1972) was based on reports (1976) is a semidocumentary slasher dramatizing the unsolved Moonlight Murders of 30 years earlier. Responsible for a passel of brilliant films, these figures helped in no small way to decentralize U.S. cinema, wresting power from its coastal capitals with disreputable daring.
