Hello, Yes, are we out here? We're here, all right?
You send me stopped. I thought for a minute, Oh my god,
James's at a stroke. No, ask not what your country can do for
you, Ask what you can do for your country. Mister Garbitschow, tear
down this wall. It's the Rigorshe Podcast and they're back. Rob Long and
Peter Robinson are back with this. I'm James Lolex. Today we talked to
Director Wood still one of the thirtieth anniversary of Barcelona. So let's resels a
podcast that was really terrible. You're blowing it way out of proportion. Don't
take it as seriously as rady Aans were bad news. They weren't any good
for anybody. Now. I was trying to convince them to look at Americans
in a new way, and then, in one stupid move, you confirm
their worst assumptions. I did not confirm their worst assumption. I am their
worst assumption. Here we are once again welcome to the Academy awars Urus,
as it's known at my house. Passover and the oscar goes to welcome everybody.
This is the Rigashe Pod. Gas number six hundred and eighty three.
You can join us at ricochet dot com any day you like, and if
you want to, you know, puny up a couple of shekels. You
can take part in the most stimulating conversations and community in the web. You
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about it. Oh you can read the front page for free, but all
the fun stuff commenting to get skin in the game is rob Long always loves
to say, yeah, membership and it's a good thing. It'll pay you
every single day you're on the internet. Hail Hail, the Gang's all here.
Peter Robinson is back from his annual exploration of the American soul, and
rob is back from Africa. I've been sitting at the same table for those
the last two three weeks or so. I got nothing to add to this
world travelers. What lessons have you for us now that you have returned?
Well, where's Peter? I don't know where Peter was. I was skiing
ski I was, or rather the tee Tons. I was in the te
tons and you were skiing. Well, you know, I'm just like I'm
trying to cap your visual pace. You were your children with you, A
couple of my yes, and my nurse and my aid and child be built
for me. Yeah. No, my oldest daughter got engaged on the slopes.
Congratulations, congratulations, and moreover to a man of whom my wife and
I thoroughly approve. He's a Canadian and he can ski. He can really
ski, which was one reason that so I didn't quite know what was going
on, except that this brief family trip to the Teetans got arranged and I
was told to attend, and then and then news got broken. So it
was a lovely event, and I did ski. I went cross country skiing
three whole days, and I went downhill skiing. Cheap bastard that I am.
I paid the exorbitant one day pass price and went downhill skiing for a
day. So there, I'm still recovering. I grant it. But yes,
I have a couple of questions. All right, did your wife know,
of course that this is going to happen? Yes, and so uh
so the Canadian, this Canadian fellow, he didn't ask the bride's father.
He did, actually he did, but the bride's father is as usual,
was as usual, So distracted. He did something very sweet and very old
fashioned, and he called me the week before and presented a kind of business
case. God bless him, that I met your daughter and then this happened
and we met you and so on, and the next slide, yes,
exactly, no, no, it was I could It was all deck.
It was all verbal, but he was kind of working his way through a
deck, God bless him, and so and then he actually uttered the very
sweet, very old fashioned words, so do I have your permission? And
of course I granted it. But I didn't know quite when it was going
to happen. I the point, so I knew, I mean, yes,
yes, I knew a happy event was about to take place. I
didn't know quite when. What kind of a Canadian is he? Because I've
met several kinds. Really, he's the kind of Canadian knows how to handle
Peter. That's that's fine. Well, here's what you need to know.
And I told my daughter it's all I need to know. She was describing
him to me for the first time before I'd met him, and I said,
let me see if I've got this right. He's a dartmouth man,
he's a former professional athlete. We played hockey for a couple of years professionally
and important to us, although I know that Rob has his doubts about all
this. And James was raised in what we call a different tradition but important
to our family. And he's a Catholic. I said to my daughter,
I don't even need to meet him, just this is this one is fine,
this one is fine there and he's currently in prison for not stop.
I didn't write Rob Africa Africa. Where were you in Africa? Well,
Africa, you know that's so huge, it sounds really j exotic. I
was in Morocco, which is, of course is technically Africa, but uh
and the Moroccans will always say there Africa, but it's a very different kind
of effort from the other Africa. Lip is what you're you say? You
say Africa. People think you're you're doing a you know, a Hammon when
we askue Safari in the middle of it, exactly exactly. In Morocco,
I was traveling with a group of people. We have a very thoughtful,
generous and interesting friend who wants to, you know, go on tracks,
and so we went on a track. It was quite quite fun and quite
interesting. I mean, I love Morocco. I've been there a couple of
times. This is sort of the more the most purposeful trip I've taken to
Morocco in a way. Uh, it's a really interesting country, and I
was there. I stayed next a couple of days, and I was there,
was in Tangier on Tuesday and for the first day of Ramadan for Moroccans,
everyone else, all the rest of Muslim world, I think, began
ramaed on the day before. Moroccans start the day later. And no Moroccan
that I spoke to could give me a plausible or consistent reason why that is.
So I just suspect that they're just a little bit more groovy and they're
like, well, let's not rush this thing. But I did love I
had never I've ever been to a Muslim country during Ramadan, and I loved
it because they take it very seriously. It's a cultural thing. They're not
they're not devout or Orthodox or anyway fundamental fundamentalist Muslims. The King of Morocco,
Muhammed the sixth, is also the head of the church there, so
he's like, you know it. King King Charles was, Yeah. King
Charles was the King of England. The head of State and the head of
the government and the Prime Minister and also the archbishoper category and what is that
I think that is done in Morocco. She's always been a very kind of
very cosmopolitan place. It's kept any Friday preaching in the mosques from getting weird
because she's the boss. So you can't be in the mosque on Friday,
some crazy one night a mom preaching jihad, not that I think the Moroccan
carecharacter would actually accept that anyway. So the great thing is that they take
robin up very seriously. It's like a serious lent. But everyone has given
up the same stuff for lent, which is different because lent here lent Christian
lent. We all give up whatever we want to give up. So if
I see you walking down the street eating, you know, M and ms,
I don't know that you've for you're breaking your lent found but you know,
I don't know what you gave up or what you took right, raman
On, everybody does the same thing. So it's a lot of like the
first day, at the end of the second, last afternoon prayer. Raminon
officially the fast officially, and so they fast know if you're really devout no
water either, and you could see you could tell and tangier or people walking
around before that the fast officially ended, they were just a little cranky.
They're just a little bit like you could this is just some more there's a
I mean, I didn't even realize that to them. Why is everybody so
you know, pissed off at each other? And that was why so fasctity.
I loved it. I love Morocco. Is a great country, great
city, some great, really fascinating place is I recommend everyone go. I
was in Jerusalem once during Ramadan and at sunset, at the moment when the
Arabs were permitted town, when the Muslims were permitted to eat again, they
fired a rocket. It's like a firework that went over the city and you
can get scattered applies from the streets. Was there anything like that a kind
of communalize. Well, there's the called prayer, which is usually that's what
they do. So there's the cauled prayer, the first one, and then
and then there's a special soup they aliaits. It's really kind of lovely.
I mean, it has all sorts of associations for us. I think they're
negative, and you know, legitimately so in many ways. But it's kind
of a lovely thing for everybody in the country to be doing this and then
have this kind of kind of philosophical idea that it gives me a chance to
think. It clears my mind. I get to focus on what I really
want, and the families get together and then there's feasting, of course,
So it's kind of a lovely, lovely thing to watch. I would be
disappointed if within five minutes of getting off the plane I was not met by
a small spinley sweating man with a white fez who offers to sell me a
special ariquity. I don't know, it's some some rare antiquity, and then
took me to the back roads and the back streets where Sydney Green Streets sat
under a slowly moving fan, you know, fanning himself, mister Lix,
mister Lynx, this way, mister Lylyx. Yeah, I know, you
mustn't protect me, come here. I would be. That would be because
that's all my conception of Morocco and Tangiers and these exotic other places is.
But to hear that it's Cosmopolitay and modern is wonderful. It does sound like
you had a grand time. Yeah, there's cool people. It's a cool
Tangier is a very as a fantastically interesting city, just one of the most
interesting cities in the world. How big is it? Uh, it's it's
uh, it's twice as big as it used to be. Because there's the
there's always the French. They took over, created a separate city next to
the old city, so a medina in Arabic just being city. So you
like New York Media New York Medina, Paris Media Rome, but the French
will always build a nouvelle ville right next to it. And so so depending
on where you live, is depending on what kind of where you live in
the neuville Ville or the Medina. But not that's not that big. It's
not a hill, it's not that big standard of living, streets filled with
cars. You feel you're in a third world country. You're not in a
third way. It's it's not a poor country. It's it's actually it's in
many ways it's the it's a fantastic example of a country that works. Because
the king is an insane and if you look at Mohammed the sixth you were
actually all of the kings. Basically they've been sort of thoughtful. It spent
a lot of time in Paris, you know, downside of the upside of
being king of Morocco, which you get to beautiful hotel Particulier in the seventh
you get to stay in. But he's done a lot of investing and has
created a lot of businesses. He's trying to turn Tangier and the Atlantic coast
and then the Mediterranean coast on the other side into you know, resorts and
pleasure spots for bored rich people, which is, you know, a kind
of a smart idea, not unlike Donald Trump and mar A Lago uh arger
scale, Yes, right, but I mean they they like him. They
really do like you. And if you look at the would be unlike Donald
Trump, it would be. But if you also look at you know who
his contemporaries, not him, are what have been Most of them are dead,
some of them were murdered by their furious citizens. There's not a chance
for that. He's he's an enlightened figure. As they say, Well,
if I wasn't how long the last but if I was doing a book report
on Morocco. Of course, remember from grade school you have to ask.
And the main exports are what are what what do they make? Aside frogri
culture, mostly it's agriculture, figs, right, uh, citrus, oranges,
agriculture, I mean, and then there's there's agricultural products, so there's
a lot of potassium and there's some minerals, but mostly it's I mean,
they if you're if you're in the continent of Europe and you are between you
know, September and May, and you eat an orange or a lemon,
or a grapefruit or a fig or a date, that's where it comes from.
Or olives, olive oil, olives that they have every meal, but
they're all oil is a very good so they do they do all that stuff.
And they also they pioneered this thing that's very much from the Arab culture
and I've eat it all across that that part of the world, and it
is nugad. They all have a terrible stay, incredible sweet tooth. But
they make this nugat and I know it sounds so boring, but like if
you ever went through in Jerusalem, they're the nugot sellars and candy sellers and
Jerusalem all sorts of and around the Middleast it's delicious, and I'm completely,
completely defenseless against it. One of my great experiences was sitting in Nazareth outside
in a in a guesthouse run by French nuns, drinking their wine and smoking
a cigar and eating nugat. And I'm telling you it was great. But
the best nuggat sellers, Yeah, people accuse you of being somewhat sypoetic.
And meanwhile the nuns are puttering around in the background, saying in French under
their breath to each other. But this man, he is not sick,
he is not poor. How do we get the rid of him? How
do we get it of him? Along? He's drinking the worst We'll give
you the worst wine he likes. That's so the nugat sellers you were about
to send some the nuggat sellers of parades sounds it sounds like a Michelle lagronsong
from nineteen sixty The best nugat seller in I think I've ever had, I've
ever eaten, and I Thank you is in Tangier and the guy's been selling
nugat or somewhere's dad in a tiny little booth, from a tiny little booth
in a little street in Tangier and the Medina, and I went to call
the Petite Soco the little market. He's been selling it since nineteen fifty four,
and it is insanely delicious, and I was I was embarrassed to ask
for a kilo because I said a kilo. How much is a kilo?
And he looked at me like, ye kilo, good lord, what's your
problem? So I only bought half a kilo, and I ate a quarter
of a kilo walking around, and then I ate a quart of akilo on
a plane home. What you do, man, here's what you do.
You buy that kilo and then you take it and you cut it, ste
cut it with some three musketeers. Okay, you've got the good nougad,
but then you step on it with some crappy three musketeers stuff. Listen,
folks, you probably learn more history wise about the Morocco than you've known here
in a long time. Right, all of a sudden, the country has
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We're going to get to our guest in a second, but before we do,
I want to ask Peter and Rob. Now that you're back in your
political chairs, perhaps you've seen the CNN map that says, if the election
were held today, Donald Trump has sufficient electoral votes to beat Joe Biden.
Do you believe it? Or do you think that CNN is trying to anger
up the blood of its readers so they're watchers, so they'll get more ratings.
I know, the idea of CNN and the rest of them trying to
puff up Trump in order to get ratings is ridiculous to be on the pail.
But let's just say possible. I believe it. I mean, it's
going to be close, right, I mean, I think it's fair to
say, right, I believe it. Donald Trump has led in national polls
for a couple of months now, with I think only one or two exceptions.
We now have to say that if you take the last quarter, the
polls in which Biden is ahead are the outliers. Now. Of course,
the media argued for the long time that as the poles began to come in
showing Trump ahead, that those were just outliers. That's that's flipped. The
poll after poll after poll shows him especially ahead, not just barely ahead,
but especially ahead in what we all know are going to be the swing or
the combat states of Michigan and Pennsylvania and Georgia and Arizona, some of them
include Nevada. He seems to be up in the mid to high single digits
in some polls in those states. So what is there to say that there
are two things going on that the country, just the middle of the country,
as very distinct from whatever is left of the legacy media just will not
buy. They will not have crammed down their throats the idea that Joe Biden
is a healthy, well, quick thinking forty year old, which is the
way they're attempting to portray him. They are simply say, no, excuse
me, I believe the evidence of my eyes. Stop lying to me.
One and then two these cases, of all the various cases against Trump,
even Andy McCarthy, who detests Trump as much as as Rob does, I
think, if I'm allowed to put it that way, Andy McCarthy, who
is still a very careful, well trained fierce in his day former prosecutor,
says that even in the mar A Lago case, the Document's case, which
is the one case against Trump where they seem to have got him as a
legal matter, they seem to have got him. The way Jack Smith,
the prosecutor, is attempting to rush to trial just violates all the norms of
due process and prosecutorial simple dignity. So that's the other thing that the country
just says, I'm not buying it. Don't do this, don't I'm not
even sure it's of course, there's still a MAGA pro Trump, but that
doesn't explain his majority in the polls. I don't think that the MAGA is
more than thirty five or forty percent of the country as far as I can
tell, at best at best. So there's some independence in there who are
just saying, look, I don't like this guy, but I'm with him.
If you're going to try to corrupt the American judicial system to stop him,
I'll say, hell no. As far as I can tell, it's
about those two policy, it's no. But this is not a horseman Donald
Trump's character. I think that's the way it feels to me. But I'm
sitting here in California, where you know, it's not the rest of the
country. Let's put it that way. I guess I generally I see your
point. I think I think it's worse for Biden actually, because I think
it isn't about his age or his infirmity. I think that's just a placeholder
for people he hasn't done anything, and what he's done they don't like.
They don't like the fact that he hasn't done anything on the border, they
don't like the fact that he hasn't done anything about an inflation. But if
he was a president in full career, in full faculty right now, he
would still be struggling because the people perceive, whether you know, they think
they're wrong, but I mean, the people perceive that the country's going in
the wrong direction, and the general reason for that they're assigning to his age.
But I think there's he's got prior problems that just seem baffling to me.
Means a politician who's been essentially successful for so long in getting elected in
return, is that he just completely misunderstands the American mood. If he was
vigorous and vital and out there handing whip inflation now buttons to everybody, it
still wouldn't work. You're absolutely right, Road, and those of us who
remember the whip inflation now buttons, remember the whole malaise that beset America and
how we climbed up out of it. And now, when read con the
eighties as being this absolutely wonderful, magical Unified Time, which it wasn't.
It wasn't, but it was fascinating and we have one of its greatest chroniclers
with us. Now what Stillman filmmaker, written, directed, and produced Metropolitan,
The Last Days of Disco, Damsels in Distress, Love and Friendship,
and Barcelona, which was released thirty years ago, and it gives us an
excuse of peg here. It tells the story of two American cousins living abroad
as they grappled with their anti Americanism, with career distresses, faith, romatic
disappointments, and all those things that plagued us as young people in the last
decade of the Cold Wars. It's called mister Stillman, thank you for joining
us today. The most important question I have about Barcelona right now, Frank,
having just been there, Barcelona or Bartholona. I can't get a definitive
answer, even from people who live in Bara Bartholona. Well, the South
American and Catalan version would be Barcelona, and the Castilian would be Barcelona.
Yeah, I swear I was going to come down to night fights and punt
over the pronunciation. So the sophisticated viewers of nineteen and ninety four let's say
that they might have been. How do you think in nineteen ninety four when
you put that movie, what was the anticipating reaction that you got exactly?
And you presume that people were going to look at it through and did critics
see in it what you had intended them to see? The critical reaction was
really interesting in the sense that we got beat up early by the sort of
fashioning monthly magazines, and then when it got to the daily press, it
was fantastic result. And that was true both here and you know, their
English language countries like the UK. What was going this is Peter Robinson,
thank you for joining us. What was going on there? I would have
guessed that it would have been just the reverse that the New York Posts.
They would have said, this is a fancy pants movie, too much dialogue,
and the magazine press, the style press would have gloried in it.
No, not at all, not at all. The New York Post is
best review is Michael Medved, and it was a oh well, all right,
all right, Michael Medved knowses MO, but all the h we're really
lucky. One critic sort of wanting to take away I guess the glory of
the good reviews said that it was an accident that a lot of the important
critics were sort of on semi vacation at the Seattle Film Festival where the film
premiered, uh in the United States, and they're very relaxed and in a
good mood. So they all loved it because the conditions were so great in
Seattle. But I'm not sure if that's it. Hey, it's Rob Long.
Thank you for joining us. So okay, two things. One,
Barcelona is thirty years old, so my god, you're old. Holy moly,
I just forgot it. Just never occurred to me. The second thing
is you started your burst on the scene this fantastic movie called Metropolitan. And
all these are by the way, if you haven't seen them, if you're
listening, you haven't seen these. These are all available to stream and they're
fantastic. They're just funny and thoughtful and singular. Really and last Ay's of
Disco of course, wonderful movie. Barcelona. Now you're a giant success.
You know you like your your love and friendship Ansel just big hits? Are
you make movies differently now that you're you know, one of the one of
the official greats. It certainly doesn't feel that way, and I think you're
being much too nice, and uh oh, I'm sorry about that. I
apologize Rob is angling for a job with I don't know. I've been angling
with a job with Wit for about twenty years. So, yes, we
wanted to work together, but it never happens. So it's very hard to
make movies, and I think, actually everyone says the problem is money,
but I think it's actually lack of commercial standards. So all our films essentially
have been profitable, but sort of people don't care because a lot of people,
I think, just get paid in advance before the movie happens. The
green light unlocks their fees, and so there are a lot of non economic
projects, and particularly the awards season kind of projects. So I feel sort
of frustrated that we make profitable films to get pretty good reviews and it's still
very hard to make them. Can we just talk at general? I saw
tweet you tweeted I guess a few maybe a week ago you talked about the
visual fallacy. Yes, which is something that I think you and I agree
on one wholeheartedly. Your movies are dialogue heavy. People sit and they talk
and they say interesting things and funny things, and they have they hold forth,
they have thoughts and perspectives. I love that, I love the writing.
I love hearing the dialogue. But if your movies were sixty pages long
and only ten pages of dialogue, no one would no one in show business
would complain because people think of it as not as a visual medium. But
you consider that a fallacy, Yes, I mean I think that filmsols and
film theory has been dangerous. That films were sort of better before their theories,
when people were just doing it. So in the early thirties and the
later thirties, there was great cinema and they were basing it on great other
works from other fields. So there would be a Booth Tarkington story and that
become a Booth Tarkington play and then become a Booth Tarkington movie in different forms.
We made three times, and all of them pretty good. And the
level of sort of information and narrative in seventy minute early thirties films just dwarfs
the amount of story in current films that they're saying stupid about trying to tell
every story just usually. And also there are so many things that have happened
in the business that just dumb it down. So agents find it easier just
to negotiate a single card credit. So you have these invariable openings of movies
of a car going through the countryside with just one boring single card credit after
another. And people got so sick of that. They now do something worse,
which is end of movie credits. And in the old days they would
just have like three cards of everyone's names on it, and then they'd also
put up sort of little vignettes of the actors who are going to start in
the film with their character names, this really cool sort of way of introducing
things. And so I think there have been a lot of bad habits that
have come in. And I can understand why Hitchcock wanted to sort of defend
his cinema and talk about his storytelling visually and all that. And it's true
with Hitchcock, but it's not true with anyone. It's like, if you
have a photo or a film of sort of an attractive person, well dressed,
you don't know who they are until they open their mouth. It's not
only what they say, but it's their voice, the quality their voice,
their accent, all that. I mean, you really get into people's souls
by what they say. I not even knowing that you were going to be
joining us. A couple of weeks ago, I watched Metropolitan just because it's
such a wonderful movie. My wife was out of town, I had something
that was my house for the evening, and I just watched it for the
sheer pleasure of watching it. And I have to say, this is the
question. It sort of plunged me into lost worlds. I was a kid
nineteen ninety I think was the year of Metropolitan, which isn't that long ago.
All three of us aren't that old, and we can remember. I
mean, it's not like nineteen twenty. And yet I was very struck that
New York is gone that kind of crowd, the prep school crowd, where
they were all Anglo, they were all heterosexual, all unself consciously who they
were. It appreciated wit. I mean, it's in the story that the
couple of witty careors get sort of points with others, all right, and
that is just gone now point one point two, this movie telling movie storytelling
question. I thought to myself as I watched that, that there's a direct
line that goes all the way back to what Irene done and carry Grant and
in literature, I mean it goes in a certain sense, the the the
the sort of feel of Metropolitan. You can feel the same sort of interest
in storytelling and dialogue in Scott Fitzgerald. So where has that if if we
all feel that dialogue still matters, that intelligence and wit are still part of
storytelling, if that's permanent, where has it gone? Has it left Hollywood?
Is it? Is it re emerging somewhere on the on television or on
the web. Where has it gone? Gosh, that's such a tough question
about the world portrayed in Metropolitan. I don't think it existed much then.
I mean, it's this world. It's a turney world, and I think
it has sort of this half life that keeps going down but still exists.
So it's still there. In a similar way, the film that came out
in nineteen ninety was sort of shot in eighty eight, and it reflects a
world sort of of late sixties, sort of straddling Woodstock before and after,
and it's sort of the half life of coming from sort of the nineteen fourteen
f Scott Fitzgerald's debutante year, and it's still there, and there are these
still these kids around, but it is sort of dwindles, and I like
sort of catching it like butterflies and preserving them in the film. And I
have to correct him again because unfortunately the films aren't streaming except for Metropolitan,
which is on Max and Criterion Channel, and Love and Friendship which is on
Amazon Prime, and it's very hard to sort of get the films out of
this sort of rental download model and get them streaming. We really had a
wonderful moment when Sony Classics put Damsels in Distress on Hulu just as Barbie was
coming out, so it's sort of a Cretico star film, and that was
a good moment because Damsels in Distress got to reconsider. But I don't know,
I mean, I hope the film the the the world gets back into
you know, real narrative and stories where people can talk. And inspiration for
Damsels was sort of the world of mumblecore, which is the very low budget
films were being made early in the century by Greta Gerwigan and Andrew Bujowski and
the Duplas Brothers, whole group of people, and they really do make these
interesting talkie films. I recommend Andrew Buchowski support the girls and his computer chests.
They're sort of below the radar. They're not getting awards, they're not
getting award campaigns, but they're there. They exist. James Lolace here in
Minneapolis. You were talking before with the rob about the movies in the thirties
and how they would be short. There'd be an hour and a half if
that, and there'd be a tremendous amount of information and dialogue and the rest
of it. The story was crisp. It moved even the B movies.
I watch a lot of B movies. I watch a lot of programmers,
and you're right, even they're not visually spectacular. But even that said,
sometimes you will see them slip in a great shot. If William Castle is
directing and he's young and hungry, you will find interesting little bits of visual
language there. And I think, why can't we bring back theaters by making
a lot more hour and fifteen minute tight little movie like this, because it
seems now that everything moved to streaming where it has to be eight hours,
it has to be a ten hour show. Yes, I saw the other
day that there was a there's a new Oh I can't remember is it Marlow
or Sam Spade? And Sam Spade who shows up as a detective in France,
and I thought, great, I'd love to see an hour and a
half Sam Spade or Marlow movie. But it's Liam Neeson and it's seven hours,
and I just perhaps don't need seven eight hours of anything, and every
scene feels like seven hours, and that I agree. I feel felt exactly
the impulse you felt, James, and started to watch it and it was
just too slow. I would clarify saying about the visual side of it,
because I think it was a surprising as you see films from ninety thirty three,
thirty four, and they sort of have every good technique people have.
I mean, I think some look aptly sensational and they're very tightly edited and
brilliant. So I do think there's some great stuff issually also in those films,
and a lot of care, a lot of good production design. I
think one of the problems with television is that it's so long you're going to
be shooting so much becomes very expensive, and the result is it's very co
corporate world. It's very hard to get sort of strange projects off the ground.
Because it's just such an investment. And in the film world, no
matter how sort of commercially minded it is, there are sort of film buffs
who want to sort of take a chance on something that's film buffy, and
there's much less of that in television, I find. But maybe I'm wrong,
Robert no Better. It's just it's very cumbersome to fine out something that's
going to be ten hours ten hours long. I think also, I'm just
to get back to the physical part of it. One of the things I'm
struck we talked about a dialogue. One of the things I'm struck with Stillman
movie is that your actors are acting on screen together, that they are you
know, you have these fantastic duos pairs. I'm thinking about Taylor Nichols and
Chris Eigeman and Barcelona, these wonderful shots of two people together, interacting,
being together on screen in the frame, and I think that's that's it feels
incredibly fresh, right because everything now is and it's just a single close up,
single close up, single close up. But that is one of the
ways that the pace I think in those old movies and I think in your
movies works because you're watching something happen between the characters that you've created, which
sometimes I'm watching a movie and contemporary movie and it's as if everybody kind of
showed up on different days and they stitched it together. And I just don't
think you feel connected to even if it's exciting to a bunch of stitch together
close ups. I mean, is that a choice you make? Is that
a choice that you've made because you because the artistic aesthetically is a choice or
artistically it is a choice, creatively a choice or sometimes people would say in
the thirties and forties, like we don't have the money to do that many
setups. We got to the actors have to come prepared, they have to
know their lines and they have to act within the frame. Or am I
oversimplifying, which you have accused me of in the past. Well, I
think a lot of things are defined by the way the industry is financed.
So in film, a lot of films are financed by casting a big star
or stars, and so it has to be about the star or stars.
And if that's not the case, if it's into indie cinema with less money,
you can have an ensemble. It can be about a whole group of
people, no one being the big star really, and that can work.
So you have a lot more freedom in a lot of ways. If it's
not a heavily capitalized project. There are just so many sort of bad habits
people who have gotten into that are served tires. And like half the films
seem to start with an alarm clock going off and someone having breakfast, and
the other half is a car going somewhere, as they do the single car
credits, and so it's good to sort of think of films that can start
different ways. In the old days, they used to do sometimes these sort
of montages sort of quickly telling the sort of historical context with all kinds of
interesting films, very tight montages, and that was great too. There were
two films from this early thirties group where it starts with what it seems like,
it's a beautiful wedding. It's absolutly a gorgeous wedding with beautiful outfits,
and then the camera pulls back and it's actually the showroom of an oat coutur
fashion house and they're showing various rich people the wedding dresses they could buy and
all that and a lot of these films are available on YouTube, like Double
Harness is a film. This is I think William Powell, and it's not
the sort of formula where it's the outsider character who is the hero and the
sort of established rich playboy is the bad guy. It sort of shows this
woman sort of entrapping him and she's sort of in this morally ambiguous, ambivalent
situation. And it's great to see something that's non formula, that has sort
of moral ambiguity, where you sort of identifying with this character and they've done
something bad, they've come of something wrong, and how's that going to come
out? We love our anti heroes. I love that you mentioned thirty four
and you're right. By nineteen thirty four or so, the visual language of
film was in place. The films looked spectacular, but prior to that they
were still working around sound and there was a lot more stag in this It
was static. It was like the microphones were nailed down everybody. Everybody had
their shoes nailed to the floor so they didn't move. But prior to that,
in the most sophisticated portion of the silent era, they had developed a
visual language was absolutely fascinating and sophisticated and spectacular and it's marvelous. I thought
of that because you mentioned William Powell and he plays I think it was the
I saw him in a movie recently where he plays a Russian aristocrat or something
that is coming back, and nobody cared whether or not he was Russian.
Really nobody heard what he was saying. He just had a presence and the
whole film had this spectacular, epic quality to it. But you couldn't get
anyone under thirty to watch it today because it's silent and black and white.
Are these people completely and permanently turned off to an entire this grand, vast
treasure of American art? Or is there some way do you think that we
can get them to pay attention to it and say, look at this,
look at this, it's really important. Now. I'm hopeful that there's sort
of a cult's mentality that people develop an interest in earlier centemon I think some
young people do, and I think with their collection with their channel helped a
lot. It was. It was great when they were combined with TCM and
Warner Brothers for something called Film Struck. That was really ideal. Unfortunately fell
apart. I remember that experience of going with a group of people, including
including young people, and it was Lubitch's Lady Windermere's fan and I thought,
oh my gosh, I didn't know aning about Lubitch Lady Winders fans, Oscar
wild Play. And then we get in and it's it's a silent movie.
And I sort of thought, well, will the kids, you know,
stay for this? And we all stayed for it, and it was fantastic,
And you know, there were a lot of words in those movies are
really good cards. You had great people and need to lose and other people
writing really punchy, interesting cards. And you had always music. You had
music along. So it wasn't silent cinema exactly. It wasn't wordless cinema.
And yeah, I think there's a chance. I think if a talented sort
of repertory cinema owner wants remote that kind of thing, I think you can
find an audience. Hey wait, I know you get a run. I
just one of my favorite movies. I mean that that is not a whistiema
movie is The Women, and it was I think as you as you have
described it, because it made its way from a giant stage play onto the
giant movie Hit And there's a moment in the Women when the older woman who's
a widow is talking to her your two daughter who is a you know,
is going through a divorce since she's miserable, and the older widow is trying
to get moms trying to console her and says, look, it's kind of
great. I mean, you have the you have, you have the kind
of the bed yourself. I get in bed and I can just stretch out
like a swastika. Oh and it's a you know, nineteen thirty six movie,
right, it kind of just whoa, But it's still it's like a
nineteen forty movie. I think it's it. Maybe I think I give it.
I feel like it's yeah, before before swastikas were bad. But do
you ever find yourself writing something, or writing about people and or characters or
a world and think, oh, I got it, I got it.
Trim this sale for twenty twenty four. I don't want to be you know,
carried through the streets and you know, canceled in an abrupt way.
I mean, does any of that effect your creative output or you just kind
of there's a joke. There is a joke in Metropolitan that I since come
to regret. It's someone talking about all the shootings, and you know,
as a progressive Spanish girl is criticizing America for all the shootings, and then
the naval officer character played by Chris Aegumann says, Oh, no shootings,
that's just because we're better shots. And I really regret that joke now because
there have been too many shootings, too much good shooting of the wrong con
So yeah, I sort of regret that A lot of stuff that I sort
of worried about got cut before we shot. And so I mean, I
think if you sort of are acting sort of fairly incorrectly in a sort of
gentlemanly way with your material, you're probably not going to get in trouble over
time. You know, you don't have bad stereotypes of people, you don't
besmerge people in ugly ways, and it can be okay, But I regret
that joke, which I have to say though, just for our listeners,
if you haven't seen Barcelona, go see it because it has one of the
great most robust and hilarious arguments for American military hegemony. I think I'm just
using them. I've ever seen you use their word. That's their word,
their word, all right, you know whatever. Defensive alliance, defensive alliance.
Exactly when Chris Eigenman and I'm with a trail of ants, it explains,
Yeah, explains the contra. Yeah, just explains how the world should
work. And I won't give it away. It's a wonderful moment. And
it's one of those things that you I saw the movie in the theater,
of course, and people just instinctively laughed at it and kind of and clapped.
And now I was in the middle of I think Santa Monica, where
I guarantee you seventy percent of the people in that theater probably philosophically, it
politically disagreed with that point. But that scene was so great and his performance
was so terrific in the dialogue of the movie is so wonderful that you just
you found yourself carried away and thought, hey, wait, wait a minute.
You got And if you have Amazon, folks, you can go.
You can rent it for three ninety nine and find the rest of the works
one of the various platforms, and they're worth it. And what's stillman,
We thank you for coming today, and we hope if there's a justice in
the world that a couple of years from now, Al Pacina will stumble out
of bed and go to the podium and open up an envelope and just simply
say your name exactly. That's very much, thanks wit, thank you to
take care. Yes, the Metropolitan Damsels Barcelona, Uh, you know feature
people in social situations enjoying themselves having a tipple. And they're young folks,
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now that Rob's back, we can answer a question that was actually bouncing around
the memor feed the other day. Meetups. Where's the meetups paid? I
need to be with my people. Yeah, so that's that's your thing,
Rob, to tell people where to go. Well, that's always your thing
to tell people. Well, there's a I'll just start from the from from
the distant the near future to the more media future near future. There's a
Natural Review Cruise in June, and Ricusion members traditionally have gone on there and
have you know, done have meetups on the National Review Cruise. So I
would recommend that there will be one in Saint Louis, where I'm told in
October, which I think is the first time we've had one in Sant Louis.
I don't think we've gone right. That seems like new territory for US.
Uh. And then coming up soon on April eighth, Uh, there
is a Dallas meetup hosted by Omega Paladin and they're going to catch the total
eclipse of the sun, which I think is fast, incredibly fantastic. Uh.
And it is in Dallas on April eighth. What's when the And I
think there'll be some stuff before it and after it too, and I want
to hundred pers. I recommend that if there's anyway where I can get there,
I will do it. But uh, it's great. I mean that
that to me is I can't imagine seeing an eclipse with with with the better
group of people. And remember, folks, if you want to really get
the best impression of the eclipse, stare directly at it while it happens.
Otherwise, how could you possibly see it? And you'll have a memory that
You'll have a memory that lasts year the rest of your life. It's almost
everywhere you look there it is. Yes, I had to say, you
know, it's how do you resist that? I mean, it is a
thing happening, and you're supposed to look at it some other way. It's
like, don't look right at the moment, least to go look at a
you know, on the other side of it. Like I don't know.
I totally understand people who think, wait a minute, I could just take
a quick peek, right, you get a smoked glass, you've smoked glass,
pinhole camera, something like the par this is this is I heard a
physicist give a little talk on this solar eclipse and it turns out and he
said, this is really important. You will really damage your eyes, and
the damage happens fast. But go to Amazon. You can buy these NASA
approved cardboard glasses. You get five of them for ten bucks or something like
that. So I have a son who lives in Austin, where the solar
eclipse will also be available. So needless to say, I instantly sent him
a couple of bundles of these glasses. It's cheap, it's easy. And
the man who told you to look at the sun was Lilacs Kama James,
not Robinson Kamma. Peter just remained, I was kidding. I was kidding
about that. Of course, don't look at the son. Instead, h
Bonnie Tyler song to yourself and enjoy it through the usual socially approved and technologically
saved means. Before we go speaking of technology, and we got a few
minutes here before rob has to peel and Peter has to saunter and I have
to go down to the gym. My pain killers are kicking in, so
now I can go down and make things worse. It's like I have to
I draped the pain under this call this blanket of anesthesia anesthesiology, and then
go and make it worse. TikTok. Where do you guys stand on this?
And of course this is all dependent on how much money you have taken
from there, you know, from by DNZ executives. So go I will
start by saying, because I don't know here, my instinct is that I
think it's silly to ban it. I don't think it needs to be banned.
It's not a ban, it's an investiture, a divestiture. I don't
think it really is what people say it is. That's my instinct. On
the other hand, the politician I think who is still in office who I
admire the most is Mike Gallagher, who in the perfect world would be President
United States tomorrow, or at least President United States on January twenty whatever,
twenty twenty five. Agree, and I hope will someday be President United States.
And this is one of those cases where my instinct is now I'm thinking,
there is a person in government who I respect, who has a composing
view, and that is very meaningful to me that he disagrees with me to
the extent that I'm thinking to myself that maybe I'm dumb and he's I know
that I'm dumb and he's smart, but maybe he's right and I'm wrong.
The courtesy you've never extended to me once in the last thirty years. Yeah,
well, go ahead, go ahead of a high bar. So I
also I'm trying to tease out my reasons. One of the things I like
about banning it or whatever, divesting it is I am loving the response by
the Chinese, which essentially say, how can you do this? What about
free speech? How can you ban a social network that we have banned ourselves?
How can you I mean to the Chinese sea farm propaganda in almost everything,
and so yeah, idea that someone is calling them on it and playing
their game by their rules, it's maybe it's too delicious to ignore. I
don't know. Yeah, so I agree, Mike Gallagher gets my attention.
Here's what's going on. The company that now owns TikTok reports in one mysterious
way or another because China is not it. China is obscure, but we
know that it reports to the government, and that the government is run by
the Chinese Communist Party. One hundred and seventy million Americans use TikTok, including
let's be honest, all three of us glance at it from time to time.
Of course, in my case, is just to see what the kids
are up to. But still and it provides them an opportunity. We don't
even have to prove that they're doing it, although we can assume that they
are, provides them an opportunity to acquire messes of information about viewing habits and
demography and so forth, about the American public going straight to the Chinese Communist
Party that has to stop details to follow. That's my view, and I
agree that's why divest youre not banning is a good idea. The thing of
it is when you say one hundred and seventy million, and some of us
look at it, look at it. I look at tiktoks sometimes when they
show up in social media. I don't look at the app. I don't
have the app. The app has never been installed on my phone. My
daughter had it installed once in the very beginning, and you know, we
drove to another state through it out the window, shot it up with you
know, good f my Velocity munitions and got a new one because I don't
trust any of it. The thing is, if you were the United States
government and you had an adversarial power, and you had one hundred and fifty
million of their children who were glued to this thing, would you not use
it to amplify whatever message you want or to encourage whatever social disorder that you
wished. How would you not want to use a tool like that. I
think we were talking with Charlie about this last week, is that, you
know, given the ability of these things to map out where you are,
you don't need to have a mole in the government that tells you what the
interior of the White House looks like. You just need a couple of stupid
interns walking around with this thing, you know, in the pocket with notifications
and location services on, and you got the joint mapped out. So yeah,
divest and let somebody buy it here, and then, you know,
it'd be great if they could get under the hood and take a look at
exactly what it promotes and how it promotes and if somehow and I know this
sounds like orwellian top down mind control, civilian manipulation, but gosh, if
you could take a platform like this and somehow emphasize positivity in the culture,
in humanity, in our future and the rest of it, that'd be great.
That'd be really great, because while there's a place for everybody sitting in
the front seat of their car and complaining and being very unhappy, and there's
a place for all the fights and the fights and the world Star and the
rest of it. There has to be a larger place in the state on
the stage for things that actually uplift. And I know it makes me sound
like an old grampa shaking his fist at the cloud, but there we are.
We are not at the top of the hour robist appeal. Peter has
to Saundra, I have to go down and exhibit more pain, guys,
anything else before we leave. James, I want you to know I'm willing
to invest ten bucks right now in your effort to buy TikTok. If we
can move it to the Midwest. I couldn't agree more. It could change
everything in this country. All you need is another one hundred and fifty billion
and you're good to go. If anybody wants to contribute, the first thing
I want you to do is just buy a lot of people's subscriptions on a
Ricochet because of the more of the Eric And we'll see Ricochet four point zero
right now, five point zero en route route. But the columns are the
comments is where we'll be discussing these matters and others. As always at Ricochet.
Gentlemen, it's been fun. Welcome back and we'll see you next week.
Next week, Fellas Ricochet join the Conversation.