For the longest time I have been equating the work being done by HBO to the stuff that was being done during the last great epoch of American cinema–the seventies. In the seventies maverick filmmakers like Coppola, Schrader, Friedkin, Altman and Scorcese flourished with a kind of hard edged, reality-based storytelling that was still being served up to audiences in an interesting and entertaining way that made a number of their works classics and made their careers legendary.