Title: Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice
Year: 1969
Director: Paul Mazursky
Writers: Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker
Stars: Natalie Wood, Robert Culp, Elliott Gould, Dyan Cannon

The Story: Bob and Carol are a laid-back middle class couple who attend a consciousness-raising seminar and then insist that everyone they know get in touch with their feelings. Their uptight friends Ted and Alice are initially repulsed, but then they begin if maybe they could use a little liberation too.

Why It’s Great: Mazursky and Tucker had written I Love You Alice B. Toklas, which was turned into one of those condescending “Let’s fool around with the hippie generation and then condemn them” comedies that aging Hollywood directors churned out in the late sixties. Mazursky wasn’t happy with the result and decided to start directing his own work. The result was a movie that was the absolute opposite of those clunkers. The satire is wicked but the empathy for everyone and what they’re going through is enormous. How cutting edge was this movie? It was the greatest satire of America in the 1970s even though it was made in 1969! Southern California has always been ahead of the country in terms of trends, and here they were giving the country a flashforward to the coming of EST and the hi-fi and gazpacho and Acapulco Gold.

Two more reasons at Cockeyed Caravan…