The 1970s have, for quite awhile now, become a common time frame for American period films. That decade saw the youth counterculture emerge into the mainstream in clothing, lingo, long hair, and a tendency towards the weird and marginal, with multiple challenges to the status quo. It’s a fertile setting for satiric commentary on America. Moreover, the ‘70s were a period when filmmaking broke through the old studio taboos, resulting in an amazing assortment of movies that have acted as an influence on our cinema ever since. To this genre we can add Gus Van Sant’s new film Dead Man’s…