Getting Straight (1970) on Netflix
Harry Bailey leaves Vietnam and returns to college for a master's degree to teach English. Radical students still treat him as a hero, and his girlfriend Jan leads the campus protests.
- Netflix2.7/5
- IMDb6.3/101,800 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes33%
Plot summary
Harry Bailey is a Vietnam veteran and a former campus activist who has come back to his university to finish a master's degree and qualify as an English teacher, while the radical students still treat him as one of their own and the administration he has to deal with is reactionary. Both sides look absurd to him: the protesters' aims strike him as impetuous and often futile. Jan, his girlfriend, is a leader in the demonstrations, and she wants to marry him and live in the suburbs. He works as a mediator between the two camps while the campus unrest grows.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Getting Straight (1970)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Elliott Gould had just made M*A*S*H when Columbia came to him with Getting Straight. "Columbia said if I didn't take the part they'd drop it," he said. "I was the only actor they'd go with. I was never so flattered in my life."
- Rush had made several movies with Jack Nicholson and offered him a role, but Nicholson had to decline when he was deluged with offers after Easy Rider. "I guess I've lost my standing with him," Nicholson said of the director.
- Rush says he found the location full of glass walls, so what happened inside had to suit what was happening outside. Having never shot a riot before, he said the tear gas, paddy wagons and helicopters made it a different version of the movie from the one he had written.
- The film was one of a number made about campus unrest at the time, alongside The Strawberry Statement, The Pursuit of Happiness, The Revolutionary, Zabriskie Point and RPM. Getting Straight was the only one that was commercially successful.
