Why, in the 1990s, did so many films obsess over and imitate distinctly 1970s film style, iconography, and content? A cycle of films, including Casino (Martin Scorsese, 1995), Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997), The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997), The Last Days of Disco (Walt Stillman, 1998), 54 (Mark Christopher, 1998), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Terry Gilliam, 1998), and The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola, 1999), obsessively recreated the ‘bad objects’ of Americana-drugs, gambling, pornography, serial-killing, and bankrupt cities-within the urban spaces of the 1970s. This cycle continued into the 2000s with Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe, 2000), Blow (Ted Demme, 2001), and more recently, Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007) and American Gangster (Ridley Scott, 2007). All of these works privileged the 1970s as a lost object of desire, as opposed to earlier nostalgic representations like American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973) and its TV cousin, Happy Days (Garry Marshall 1974-1984), which longed for the innocence of pre-Vietnam, Eisenhower-esque small-town America. Thus, the evocation of the ‘good old/bad old days’ dichotomy warrants that we wade deeply into this murky phenomenon to explain its historical significance, its narrative logic, as well as exactly what this specific brand of nostalgia is trying to express. Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam (1999) provides an excellent case study of how this trend plays out, in a scene that presents a dazzling display of 70s iconography choreographed to The Who’s “Baba O’Riley/Teenage Wasteland.” Not only does the scene absorb the logic of the music video and summarize the film, but it also presents a personalized rendition of the era, which we can deconstruct to get to the root of this nostalgia.