WEBVTT

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Hold your folks, it's show time. People paid good money to see this

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movie. When they go out to
a theater, they want cold sodas,

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look off popcorn, and no monsters
in the projection booth. Everyone for tend

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podcasting isn't boring, Burn it off. Before the turn of attention and two

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of the great nines of old time
met at began adventure that get signal fraud

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together brillions and friends their very lives. The Universal presents The seven Percent Solution,

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Nicholas Meyer's best selling mystery from the
personal memoirs of doctor John H.

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Watson, Ussimus T I guess the
detens of my life with such uncanny acculacy,

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kind of a guess. It is
an affording anon in destructive for the

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logical package from the contents the seven
Percent Solution, revealing for the first time

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the vile and destructive habit that almost
destroyed the world's greatest detective. What's in

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the true identity of Sherlock Holmes arch
nemesis Professor James Moriarty subtlement and the extraordinary

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circumstances surrounding the hitherto unknown affair be
known. Every adventure of the seven Percent

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Solution, but cry Nichol Williamson is
Sherlock Holmes, Alan Arkin is doctor Sigmund

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Freud. Robert Duval is doctor John
H. Watson. Bennetta Redbray, who

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is the lovely love of Ever,
Jeremy Kempet run by Linstore, Joel Gray

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is the possibly fictitious low End Steam
and Sir Laurence Olivier's professor Moriar prosecuting me.

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I can put it persecuting you.
I see everything of the case,

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and you have faced. Now you
must cover my inspections. Sherlock Holmes Most

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Baffling Mystery and mister Sigmund Freud's Most
Curious Case. The year's most intriguing motion

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picture was Trained originally heading it is
now. There has been no explanation for

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the seven percent solution until now.
Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your

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host. Mike White joined me once
again. Is mister Aaron Peterson. Thanks,

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Framily Beck again also back in the
booth, This is mister David McGregor.

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A pleasure to be here. Once
again, we continue our month of

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discussions around the nineteen seventies interpretations of
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's consulting detective Sherlock Holmes.

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On this episode, we are discussing
The Seven Percent Solution from nineteen seventy

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six, written by Nicholas Meyer and
based on his first of many Sherlock Holmes

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books. The film was directed by
Herbert Ross and stars Nicole Williamson as Sherlock

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Holmes, Robert Duval as Doctor Watson, and Alan Arkin s Sigmund Freud That

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food Dude. The film finds Holmes
in the grip of cocaine addiction, while

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Watson plans to take his friend to
Vienna to undergo therapy by Freud. We

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will be spoiling this film as we
go through, so if he don't want

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anything ruined, please just turn off
this podcast. Go out watch the movie

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first, find the movie, watch
the movie, come back, turn the

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podcast back on, and then listen
to the discussion. It's just that easy.

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David, when was the first time
you saw the film and what did

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you think? Along with the other
films that we're discussing this month. I

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can't give you an exact date,
my guests would be late nineteen eighties early

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nineteen nineties as a result of coming
across the Jeremy Brett TV series and kind

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of being inspired to search out other
interpretations of Sherlock Holmes, and when I

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saw this, I liked it a
lot. I read the book. The

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book is well for me anyway,
incredibly clever and incredibly well informed about the

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mythos of Sherlock Holmes. And the
way Nicholas Meyer was able to tie together

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several of the characteristics that we associate
with the character and then put it in

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a way that it gets explained in
a logical fashion through psychoanalysis and hypnosis.

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It's just really brilliant. It's a
well written novel, and the film does

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a really good job of capturing what
the novel is setting out to do,

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which is kind of again once again, it's a humanized version of homes kind

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of behind the scenes glanced at what
went into making him the character that he

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was, and I think it does
a really effective job of it. So

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I enjoyed the film a lot.
The only thing that really continually pulled me

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out was Robert Duvall's English accent.
Other than that, it's a big thumbs

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up for me and Aaron about yourself
like his accent, but I'm also American.

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I'm just like he did it.
I saw this one probably around the

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same time as David did. My
mom I talked about this in an earlier

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episode. She got me kind of
into the Sherlock Holmes books, and also

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she worked in psychology for thirty years, so when this one was around.

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It came out when I was a
wee little kid, and I didn't see

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it until I was a teenager,
but she wanted to watch that one with

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me because of the because of the
tie in to Freud, and it's still

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one of my favorites in terms of
how it captured columns. I agree with

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everything David said. It really understood
the mythos of the character and really brought

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in the Freud argument, and really
it just kind of flushed it out because

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at the very end of the movie, where he's talking about, you know,

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the unconscious mind and all that sort
of thing, and how you can

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dress personal issues through hitting your unconscious
mind is very much part of how Freud

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went about his practice, So it
really ties in well. I think it's

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a very smartly written piece of art. Yeah, I don't remember the first

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time I watched this one either.
It just seemed to always kind of be

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around. I think I've seen bits
and pieces on TV and I didn't really

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realize just how clever it was until
I sat down and read the book.

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The movie picks up a lot of
the things that the book does. I

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think it's you know, it's good
that it was an adaptation by Meyer of

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his own work, and I think
that he's his best friend when it comes

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to that, sometimes you can be
your own worst enemy and decide like,

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oh, well, I did it
this way in the book, let's do

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it this way on film. There's
a couple changes, and we'll talk about

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those as we go along, but
there's nothing where I was just like,

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oh, wow, you really made
a mistake there. So you guys said

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it's super clever. Even the opening
credits have all these little asterisks through them,

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and you know, they talk about
like, you know, Professor James

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Moriarty and his paper that was written
and how it's still being referred to,

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and just all these things that I
have the little thing where it says like

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only the facts have been made up
about this story, and just this whole

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idea of mixing fiction and fact and
taking loss in the wilderness years of Sherlock

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Holmes and mixing that in with what
Freud was doing. I mean just yeah.

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I thought it was very, very
well put together, and I don't

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think they were going to stop talking
about how clever it is, because just

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as it's more and more clever as
the movie goes through and the end of

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it. The first time I saw
this, I was like, well,

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I'm not really sure about this end. And then I watched it again the

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other day and I was like,
oh, wow, yeah, I can

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see exactly what he's doing here,
and I think he did some really smart

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things. And this, like I
said, written by Nicholas Meyer, based

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off of his own book, and
not directed by Meyer though this was Herbert

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Ross. But this was right before
Meyer was going to start his own directing

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career. You know, when we
lose Nicholas Meyer, and I hope it's

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no time soon, people really need
to step back and just talk about how

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damn smart this guy is and just
how great his works are. I mean,

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time after time, so fricking good. And then what he ended up

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doing for the Star Trek franchise,
his mark is indelible. What they're doing

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on Picard this year is picking up
a lot of stuff that Meyer put forth

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back in eighty two. I can't
say enough good things about Nicholas Meyer.

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Another thing about the credits, I'll
just throw this out there. It was

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a little tip of the hat to
Sherlock Holmes fans, as You're right,

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they're kind of they're very whimsical that
are a wee bit tongue in cheek.

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But the illustrations that accompany the opening
credits are original Sydney Padget drawings from the

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Strand magazine stories, and anybody that
is familiar with the stories and those illustrations,

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it's like, oh, that's really
cool. It's a nice little detail

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which d tells you right from the
outset that the people making the film it's

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kind of an homage in a way
to the whole mythology of Sherlock Holmes from

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the very beginning. So that was
a nice little touch that I appreciated,

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you know, don't I don't know
how many Sherlock Holmes movies you've watched,

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Mike, but I can tell David
has seen like me, he's pricing most

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of them. When you're watching one, you can tell in the first fifteen

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minutes if this is going to be
a good interpretation or not. Typically because

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you can feel the love, you
know, you can feel, do they

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do they appreciate the character, they
just using it because it's free. Is

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it a copyright thing, like they
just want the cool character name or something?

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Or is this some buddy who actually
appreciates the character. And you can

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tell in fifteen minutes this one you
can tell in like the credits, like

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you talked about it. I mean, there's just so much love that's put

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into this that it's hard not to
appreciate it. Even if you don't love

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how it plays out, it's hard
not to appreciate the effort. Yeah.

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Just for the record, Sherlock Holmes
only became in this country completely copyright free

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as of January first. It was
earlier in other countries. It was earlier

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in the UK, but since the
United States has ninety five years and the

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last last Sherlock Holmes story was published
in nineteen twenty seven, it was only

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in January first, twenty twenty three
that the entire cannon, as it's called,

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became a copyright free. That's why
everybody makes their Sherlock Holmes movies in

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the UK. This was the first
of five so far of these Holmes books

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that Meyer has written, and in
each one of these he either takes well

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I would say. In each one
of them, he takes historical figures and

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mixes them into his fiction. And
it's not that too clever by half type

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of thing where it's all like,
not in a wink kind of stuff.

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He really does a great job of
saying, oh, in this year,

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this person would have been in Sherlock
Holmes's circle. And I like that even

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throughout his five books, he's making
references back to the previous book, Like

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when he goes on to do I
Just listen to the Adventures of the Peculiar

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Protocols and he makes a mention of
Shaw, and then Shaw has shown up

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in the West End Horror, and
so you know, at one point Watson

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is like, you know, because
Sherlock Holmes doesn't really keep up on the

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news sometimes, so Watson's like,
well, actually he's gone from critiquing place

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now writing place. He's pretty successful
play right now this George Bernard Shaw guy

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that we've met way back when kind
of thing. So I really like that

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he does that even within his own
books, He's making these little nods back

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to his own stuff while keeping that
mythology going and just continuously adding to it

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and just again super clever with what
he's doing, and that I really liked

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The Peculiar Protocols too, because it
was so much based on the story of

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the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This really horrific racist track or anti

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Semitic track, And so he is
talking about that while he's also unveiling a

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mystery that only Sherlock Holmes could solve. Of the four movies we're covering,

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this has the best cast in my
opinion, like top to bottom. It's

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an all star cast, absolutely,
and Williamson is pretty good as Sherlock.

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I mean, for the one that
carries the least amount of weight in terms

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of the primary cast. He did
a really amiable job. He was a

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legend on stage. He was considered
the Shakespearean actor of the nineteen sixties in

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the UK. His Hamlet was acclaimed. You know, they even made a

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film of it with him as Hamlet. His his Ophelia was merry and faithful

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of all people. So he's a
really well regarded stage actor, equally famous

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for tantrums and throwing punches at people, and you know, and it goes

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hand in hand. Yeah, Well, he was a hard drinking, hard

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smoking. He claimed that he would
smoke eighty cigarettes a day. Really kind

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of tightly wound guy. Actually more
respected from a theatrical perspective than a film

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perspective, because the film he's best
remembered for his Excalibur when he played Merlin.

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Interesting character, let's put that way. Yeah, but the fact that

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they've got Laurence Olivier as Moriarity,
the fact that they've got Joel Gray,

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Charles Gray. The list goes on. If it's an all star cast year

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with Alan Arkin, Yeah, Robert
Robert Duvall, sort of with hair,

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kind of Nicole Williamson. He will
always be doctor Eric Mason for me.

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He was one of to me,
one of Colombo's best villains that he had.

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He was. I wondered if you
were kid bringing that up. Oh

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yeah, because he worked a couple
of times with faulk the same year,

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because he was also in The Cheap
Detective. How did dial a Murder?

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Right? Was that the exactly?
Yeah? And he's a huge movie fan,

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which is great. There's all this
talk about Citizen Kane. His two

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dogs are Laurel and Hardy. Yeah, it's so good. I can't wait

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to talk about that one way finally
get to it on the Shabby Detective because

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yeah, he's great and that voice, that amazing voice, and he really

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does a great job of going between
that calm, cool, collected Sherlock Holmes

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and this drug addict. And I
love the first time you see him,

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how you see the shot of his
eye looking through the crack in the door

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and his pupils are huge in that. I was like, oh, that's

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really smart that they gave us that
close up in just to show how strung

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out he is, manic and paranoid, just a true addict, like right

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off the bat. Yeah, the
scene where he meets Freud is great,

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and that's what's probably my favorite scene
in the movie, in which Freud says,

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well, what can you tell me? And he does he does this

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Sherlock Holmes thing, Who am I
that your friends should wish us to meet?

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Beyond the fact that you are a
brilliant Jewish physician who was born in

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Hungary and studied for a one in
Paris, and the certain radical theories of

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yours have alienated the respectable medical community
so that you have severed your connections with

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various hospitals and branches of the medical
fraternity. Beyond this, I can deduced

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a little. You're married with a
child of five, you enjoy Shakespeare and

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possessor sense of honor. This this
is wonderful commonplace. I'm still awaiting an

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explanation. It's brilliant, it's logical, it's deduction of the highest order.

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And yet he's fallen apart because his
addiction has kicked in, and you can

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see him just struggling to do his
thing but also fight off the cravings for

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cocaine. It's a really vora performance. His hands in that scene. Just

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look at it, the way that
he's constantly moving his hands and rubbing his

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hands and stuff. It's like,
I need something for them to do.

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And yet his mind is going as
mouth is going. But you just like

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see the tension in the anxiety and
his body. Yeah, you can hear

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in his voice too, just the
strain of someone. I don't know if

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you've ever been in a position where
you're really conflicted by something but you've got

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to focus on something else and talk
at the same time. You can hear

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the strain in people's voice when they've
got just so much going on that they're

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in danger of getting completely overwhelmed.
Yeah, it's called being apparent. I've

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been there, I get it,
And just that whole thing of Sherlock Holmes

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and his way of deducing things,
his way of observing things so related to

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what Freud is doing, and just
to bring these two figures together and realize,

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oh, we're not so different to
you and I, and just one

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is using his tools for the outside
world and the other one is exploring the

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mind. I'm like, oh,
again, very very well done the way

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that they're doing this, because as
we go along, Freud seems to be

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doing more and more of what Holmes
is doing. This almost seems like this

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is the moment for Freud to really
kind of come into his own and he

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almost needed Holmes as a catalyst in
order to become the signal for it.

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That we know they're both trying to
help people, and they're both using their

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intellect and their logic and their instincts
to help people to make the world a

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better place. So although they seemingly
when they meet very different people to very

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different characters, they're very much kindred
souls in what drives them and how focused

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they are on their own unique professions. I admire how if you just read

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the description and you don't really come
into this film with high expectations. You

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could easily look at this, is
it going to be a gimmick? Is

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it just going to be Freud's a
gimmick to sell this movie? And to

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be fair, if you come into
the expecting that, I totally understand that

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that makes total sense. But once
you're watching the movie, you can tell

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the same care that was put into
Sherlock Holmes, which is a lot.

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There's a lot of Karen Love put
in the Sherlock Holmes of this film,

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even though they're kind of tweaking a
lot of mystiques about especially Moriarty, they're

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kind of changing that character a lot, but they give Freud just as much

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love throughout the film, and really
he's a very pivotal character to everything that

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happens. And that's what I what
was needed for this to work. You

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have to it can't just be oh, yeah, Sherlock's going to go to

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a shrink and it's going to be
cool because it's Freud and then he's going

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to be cured by the end.
It has to be something that's really integral

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to the plot. And Meyer really
worked that out. And I'm you know,

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for people that aren't fully familiar with
the whole Sherlock Holmes cannon. If

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you look at pop culture, it's
easy to get the impression that his drug

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addiction is a huge part of the
stories, and it's not. It only

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pops up very and frequently. It
pops up a couple of times in the

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short stories. The story that features
it most prominently is the second story was

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actually a novel novelette, The Sign
of the Four, and you know that

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came out in eighteen ninety and that
was, you know, really trying to

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shape poems. That's not almost a
kind of decadent hero removed from society,

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very esoteric, very eccentric in his
interests. When Colin Doyle wrote the first

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Shrlock Holmes story, it got published
in eighteen eighty seven in what was called

250
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the Beaten Christmas Annual, and that
was it no interest. It kind of

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kind of sank like a stone.
But in eighteen eighty nine he was invited

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to meet a editor from the US
from Lippincott's magazine, a guy named Joseph

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Marshall's Stoddard, at the Langham Hotel
in London. This guy's looking for stories

254
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from English authors, and the two
authors that he met were Doyle and Oscar

255
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Wilde. I just think that's one
of the great meetings in literary history.

256
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And he said, I want to
commission stories from both you guys. And

257
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so that's when Conan Doyle went home
and thought, well, revived Slackholm's take

258
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another shot at it. He wrote
the Sign of the Four. Oscar Wilde

259
00:20:10.720 --> 00:20:12.519
came out with a picture of Dorian
Gray. I just loved that story,

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the fact, you know, and
the hotel is still there. You can

261
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go as far as I know,
you can still go there. You know,

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one of the great meets. I
think August thirtieth, eighteen eighty nine

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is a plaque I think on the
hotel to commemorate the meeting of those of

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those people. The picture of Dorian
Gray, his hero is again he's kind

265
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of a decadent hero. He's fighting
against time. And both of those came

266
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out. There was a Frenchman,
a novelist by the name of yours,

267
00:20:40.400 --> 00:20:45.200
Karl Weisman, who wrote a novel
called Against Nature in eighteen eighty four,

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and it was a new kind of
hero, a decadent hero in full retreat

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from civilization. And some people liked
that. Many, you know, commentators

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reviewers hated it, like, that's
not a hero, but he was kind

271
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of redefining what a hero could be. And clearly Conon Doyle and Oscar Wild

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picked up on that for their respect
and stories in eighteen ninety. But the

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point I want to make is that
Conon Doll did not make him a drug

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addict throughout the whole Cannon. By
the time he gets to there's a story

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called The Adventure of the three Quarter
in which Watson is writing, well,

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by this point, I'd kind of
weaned him off the cocaine. Not that

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I was kidding myself. You know, it's never going to fully go away.

278
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It's just sleeping, but it doesn't
form as big a part of the

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stories as it does in subsequent interpretations
of the character. The irony is that

280
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Freud was we in n cocaine.
Oh yeah, he loves the way it

281
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makes me feel. Well. I
had jock cancer too, so it takes

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a little bit of adge off the
pain. Just ironic in terms of how

283
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this particular script worked out well.
I even love that the words solution can

284
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have a few different meanings. You
know, the cocaine this is soluble in

285
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water type of thing. Then then
also a solution as the the end of

286
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a mystery. You know, I
really thought that that was nice as well.

287
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I mean, tell me a little
bit more about Moriarty as far as

288
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how many times Moriarty actually shows up
in the stories, because I don't imagine

289
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it's a lot. It is that
a lot. Moriarty shows up because Arthur

290
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Conegill wanted to kill off Sherlock Holmes. He was sick of it. He

291
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churned out two dozen stories off of
the Strand magazine. Every time he wanted

292
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to stop, they kept saying,
how would you like more money? And

293
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he's like you, okay, I'll
take more money. But by the end

294
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the first Sherlock Holmes short story appeared
in the Strand magazine in July of eighteen

295
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ninety one. By the end of
eighteen ninety three, he was done and

296
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he killed him off in the Final
Problem. And if you're going to kill

297
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off Sherlock Holmes, you need a
worthy adversary. So that's you know,

298
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Moriarty shows up in that. Moriarty
shows up in the Return story. He

299
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brought Sherlock Holmes back to life in
nineteen oh three in the story called the

300
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Empty House Moriarty also features or was
talked about in the novel of the Valley

301
00:23:00.359 --> 00:23:04.240
at Fear, But is he permanently
part of the receedings. No, he's

302
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not. He's not mentioned much at
all. However, he's such a great

303
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character, you know, an evil
mathematics professor who controls crime in London.

304
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As he's described, he's an Napoleon
of crime. It's a genius character.

305
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And there's no wonder that in so
many film or play versions of the stories,

306
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he's going to get used. He's
going to be put into the story

307
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because he's such a great antagonist.
He's mentioned more than he's actually a role,

308
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has a role in the stories.
Did they try to do the thing

309
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that they did in Sherlock the BBC
series where or suddenly revising the cab driver

310
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that was the murderer? I can't
remember if it's a study in paint or

311
00:23:48.200 --> 00:23:52.480
what it was, but like,
oh, he actually was working for Moriarity.

312
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Do they try to tie all that
stuff back together again or is it

313
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just left the way that it is? No, there's no real through line.

314
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There's no real Moriarty through line.
You know. When he comes back

315
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in nineteen oh three, Holmes has
to explain his hiatus, his disappearance,

316
00:24:08.400 --> 00:24:12.799
which is what this film is about. If it tries to explain, well,

317
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why did he disappear? And when
he comes back, well, Moriarty's

318
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dead. But it's Moriarty's henchman,
specifically a guy named Colonel Sebastian Moran,

319
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who is now going to try to
assassinate Sherlock Holmes to make up for the

320
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death of Moriarity. But it's not
something that is trailed out through the stories

321
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to stories. By and large,
they are discreet entities, self contained,

322
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and you know, they build up
this larger picture of who the character is

323
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story by story and those references back
and forth to stories that have already occurred.

324
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But it's not as if Moriarty is
a large through line through the whole

325
00:24:49.319 --> 00:24:55.240
cannon. It's like twenty five stories
something like that before you even hear Moriarty.

326
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And what it is is basically like
it's not so much that he's behind

327
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every case he's solved before. Is
it's that he's this you know, this

328
00:25:02.519 --> 00:25:06.359
godfather, this guyfather of crime and
whatnot. So Holmes has just figured it

329
00:25:06.359 --> 00:25:11.039
out, so he basically, you
know, a couple dozen stories in Arthur

330
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Gunnan Doyle is looking at it.
Wow, we need a master villain and

331
00:25:15.160 --> 00:25:17.319
maybe we need to take sure like
Holmes out. That's the way we need

332
00:25:17.400 --> 00:25:19.480
to do it. What Conon Doyle
does is he mentions, you know,

333
00:25:19.519 --> 00:25:23.319
there's some historical criminals he won't touch, like Jack the Ripper, but he

334
00:25:23.400 --> 00:25:30.799
does mention Jonathan Wilde. And Jonathan
Wilde was known as the Chief Thieftaker of

335
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England and he was a guy who
was very Moriarity like. He basically organized

336
00:25:38.160 --> 00:25:41.519
the crime in London and then he
was the police too. That was a

337
00:25:41.640 --> 00:25:47.319
very profitable enterprise up until the time
he was caught and hung. You can

338
00:25:47.319 --> 00:25:49.640
still see his skeleton. His skeleton
is on display. I can't remember the

339
00:25:49.720 --> 00:25:53.200
name of the museum, but it's
on display in London. And if I

340
00:25:53.319 --> 00:25:59.079
remember right, I don't think Watson
ever is ever involved directly with Moriarity.

341
00:25:59.240 --> 00:26:03.000
I feel like that that's a point
that it's Holmes and Moriarty they meet,

342
00:26:03.079 --> 00:26:07.759
so it's never it's really like Watson
hears about him. Yeah, it's Holmes

343
00:26:07.880 --> 00:26:11.440
that has the final confrontation at Rick
and back falls with right. But I

344
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mean in general, I mean I
don't I don't think Watson ever comes face

345
00:26:14.680 --> 00:26:18.599
to face with Moriarty. If I
remember right, I don't believe so now

346
00:26:18.680 --> 00:26:22.720
I don't think so. But Sherlockian's
around the world will let me know if

347
00:26:22.720 --> 00:26:27.839
I'm wrong. So this whole idea
of Moriarty not being a figment of Sherlock

348
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Holmes's imagination necessarily, but being built
up in Sherlock Holmes's imagination in this movie,

349
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in this story, to be this
Napoleon of crime. But yet poor

350
00:26:40.839 --> 00:26:45.839
Laurence Olivier is playing this very put
upon mathematics teacher who's just like, this

351
00:26:45.039 --> 00:26:49.440
guy is torturing me. He's always
outside my house and he's accusing me being

352
00:26:49.480 --> 00:26:52.920
this napoleon of crime. And a
movie, now, if they were going

353
00:26:53.000 --> 00:26:57.160
to make it, he would do
with Kaiser Sozie at end. Yeah,

354
00:26:57.839 --> 00:27:02.400
he would just start why oh,
thank you so much, Doctor Watson,

355
00:27:02.680 --> 00:27:06.480
and then like turn around and just
like you know, his whole body change

356
00:27:06.480 --> 00:27:08.200
and he would walk around, yeah, AND's just like, oh, I'm

357
00:27:08.240 --> 00:27:11.960
off to create a whole new web
of crime. Consider me the new Doctor

358
00:27:12.000 --> 00:27:15.160
mambousset. You know, But no, that's not the way it is.

359
00:27:15.200 --> 00:27:18.599
And you know, you're talking about
the cast and the way that they use

360
00:27:18.759 --> 00:27:25.440
this cast is so smart. Laurence
Olivier isn't in it as much as maybe

361
00:27:25.480 --> 00:27:27.359
he could be. You know,
it's a very small role, but he

362
00:27:27.599 --> 00:27:32.640
makes a very big impression. Same
things I would say with Charles Gray as

363
00:27:32.720 --> 00:27:37.839
Mycroft. Homes really like Charles Gray
whenever he shows up in anything. And

364
00:27:37.960 --> 00:27:41.680
then you know, I think that
Joel Gray Charles Grays's brother. Right now,

365
00:27:41.720 --> 00:27:48.400
I'm just kidding that Joel Gray is
slightly underused as Low and Steam.

366
00:27:48.559 --> 00:27:52.519
He's in here more than I remembered
him being in here, but it's kind

367
00:27:52.519 --> 00:27:56.000
of a thankless role for Joel Gray, who at this point had already been

368
00:27:56.119 --> 00:27:59.599
I think nominated for an Oscar for
Cavaree a few years prior. So I'm

369
00:27:59.599 --> 00:28:04.119
like, okay, but Joel Greece
such an interesting guy that I don't see

370
00:28:04.200 --> 00:28:08.400
him leading a lot of films,
but he's good in this type of role.

371
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But I was just like, man, I wish that there was a

372
00:28:11.079 --> 00:28:14.599
little bit more of him. But
then the one for me that really stands

373
00:28:14.640 --> 00:28:19.079
out is Jeremy Kemp, who we
just talked about top Secret episode a few

374
00:28:19.119 --> 00:28:25.480
months ago, and him is a
very baron. Carl von Leinsdorf. Man

375
00:28:25.720 --> 00:28:30.000
I mean, Jeremy Kemp has one
of the great villain faces, and they

376
00:28:30.240 --> 00:28:33.759
just they know how to play that
up. And I don't think we mentioned

377
00:28:33.799 --> 00:28:41.519
earlier Vanessa Redgrave as Lola Devereaux's Oh
she's fantastic, And I didn't realize to

378
00:28:41.799 --> 00:28:45.640
the change that they made to Myer's
book, or the change that Myers made

379
00:28:45.680 --> 00:28:49.480
to his book. I mean that
she's the character where things really start to

380
00:28:49.599 --> 00:28:57.480
diverge between book and movie because in
the book she is found she had jumped

381
00:28:57.519 --> 00:29:02.319
off of a bridge. So we've
got the wet damsel who I think that

382
00:29:02.559 --> 00:29:06.480
we get in a few things,
and I think that it was a wet

383
00:29:06.599 --> 00:29:10.799
damsel in the first movie that we
talked about this month. She was also

384
00:29:11.279 --> 00:29:15.839
allegedly conked on the head by the
river. I can't remember she was thrown

385
00:29:15.920 --> 00:29:19.119
into the river or not. Kind
of the same thing here if Vanessa Redgrave,

386
00:29:19.759 --> 00:29:23.160
she had been held and you know
they weren't sure what was going on

387
00:29:23.279 --> 00:29:29.119
with her. In the book,
she is the basically new wife of a

388
00:29:29.920 --> 00:29:36.599
recently mysteriously killed or mysteriously died.
It's like a baron, I think,

389
00:29:36.680 --> 00:29:42.960
and he is all involved in the
arms. Trader makes arms and they kind

390
00:29:44.000 --> 00:29:47.960
of take her and steal her away. She manages to escape. It's this

391
00:29:48.079 --> 00:29:51.200
whole thing of who is this woman? You know, they're trying to get

392
00:29:51.240 --> 00:29:53.400
her to talk, they have to
put her on her hypnosis. They're getting

393
00:29:53.519 --> 00:29:59.079
very few clues. She's this woman
from Providence, Rhode Island, and she's

394
00:29:59.079 --> 00:30:03.599
actually a Quaker, and she was
going to pretty much be given over her

395
00:30:03.720 --> 00:30:08.519
husband's estate and then she was going
to dismantle his whole armament business because Quakers

396
00:30:08.559 --> 00:30:12.880
are not into war and why not
just get rid of all of this and

397
00:30:14.160 --> 00:30:18.680
her basically her son in law through
a complete fit. And the son in

398
00:30:18.759 --> 00:30:22.759
law would be this Carl von Line
store of character. So there's a little

399
00:30:22.799 --> 00:30:26.400
bit of a difference when it comes
to that. And there's no churks,

400
00:30:26.480 --> 00:30:29.759
by the way, there's absolutely no
churks in the book at all. So

401
00:30:29.880 --> 00:30:32.880
I thought it was kind of funny
when these churchs show up at one point,

402
00:30:33.039 --> 00:30:37.119
and I'm just like, Okay,
these are like the six dwarves that

403
00:30:37.599 --> 00:30:41.359
escaped or what missing, Like these
churchs will show up again, and definitely

404
00:30:41.480 --> 00:30:45.759
they do. So some of these
same patterns that we're seeing from these other

405
00:30:45.839 --> 00:30:49.200
Sherlock Holmes stories are showing up in
this one as well, which again all

406
00:30:49.279 --> 00:30:53.839
being built off of the same scaffolding
I thought was nice. Well. Vanessa

407
00:30:53.960 --> 00:30:59.839
Redgrave, ironically enough, or coincidentally
enough, has a good Sherlock Holmes pen.

408
00:31:00.519 --> 00:31:04.559
Her grandfather, a guy named Roy
Redgrave, the patriarch of the Red

409
00:31:04.599 --> 00:31:10.160
Gray family, wrote and started his
Sherlock Holmes play in nineteen oh two,

410
00:31:10.480 --> 00:31:14.680
and then he was Sherlock Holmes in
South Africa, and he was Sherlock Holmes

411
00:31:14.759 --> 00:31:18.160
in Australia. I'm not sure of
all the details. It was basically either

412
00:31:18.279 --> 00:31:22.799
he was being pursued or pursuing women
that he was trying to get away from

413
00:31:22.039 --> 00:31:26.480
or was trying to catch, or
maybe they were pregnant. Anyway, he

414
00:31:26.559 --> 00:31:30.680
was apparently a real ladies man,
and he was hopping from continent to continent.

415
00:31:30.799 --> 00:31:34.519
But he was playing Sherlock Holmes sporadically
as he did so. And Vanessa

416
00:31:34.599 --> 00:31:40.720
Redgrave's daughter Natasha actually appears in one
of the episodes of the Jeremy Brett Shrlock

417
00:31:40.799 --> 00:31:44.720
Holmes series, The Copper Beeches,
because like her mom, she's got that

418
00:31:44.799 --> 00:31:48.680
amazing red hair, so very striking. So the Red Gray family is well

419
00:31:48.720 --> 00:31:52.480
represented in the annals of Sherlock Holmes. Tim To be fair, most British

420
00:31:52.480 --> 00:31:56.240
actors have done something with Sherlock Holmes
and something that's true. Yeah, it's

421
00:31:56.279 --> 00:32:00.640
hard to avoid. Yeah, all
British actors, Anne Robert duvall I do

422
00:32:00.799 --> 00:32:07.519
really appreciate how Meyer takes her and
now makes her a former patient of Freud's

423
00:32:08.079 --> 00:32:13.359
also a former patient that he managed
to get off of drugs. So suddenly

424
00:32:13.519 --> 00:32:17.440
now she has a connection with Sherlock
Holmes that wasn't there before. And I

425
00:32:17.599 --> 00:32:21.920
like this thing too, of I
mean she basically she looks so much like

426
00:32:22.000 --> 00:32:25.680
Ophelia, just laying there and this
hospital bed all in white, and the

427
00:32:25.759 --> 00:32:31.000
way that they call her the was
that the lady of the lilies right,

428
00:32:31.160 --> 00:32:37.119
and then being able to use the
lilies later on a gift from Karl von

429
00:32:37.279 --> 00:32:40.640
Lensdorff, and leaving those lilies as
a trail. And we've got like the

430
00:32:40.759 --> 00:32:46.759
trail at the beginning, which is
the vanilla that they put onto Moriarty and

431
00:32:46.880 --> 00:32:52.519
they allegedly are tracking him even though
it's it's really nice. It's Watson and

432
00:32:52.720 --> 00:32:58.000
Microft working together to help save Sherlock
Holmes, and they bring out Old Toby

433
00:32:58.160 --> 00:33:01.880
the Bloodhound, who think he had
worked in the Hound of the Baskervilles,

434
00:33:02.000 --> 00:33:06.400
so it's just like, oh,
it was that Hound of Baskervilles or something

435
00:33:06.640 --> 00:33:08.079
different. Case. Yeah, I
can't remember which story it was, off

436
00:33:08.119 --> 00:33:13.440
the top mic, but yeah,
Toby is a character in anytime you add

437
00:33:13.480 --> 00:33:15.079
a dog to a movie, as
long as the dog doesn't die, I'm

438
00:33:15.119 --> 00:33:17.960
on board. I was just so
glad that they brought him back at the

439
00:33:19.039 --> 00:33:21.319
end because I was like, man, don't forget about Toby. And then

440
00:33:21.359 --> 00:33:23.319
it was like, oh, here's
old Toby. He's gonna go back to

441
00:33:23.920 --> 00:33:29.039
England with us. Okay. Great
being able to have that now connection between

442
00:33:29.079 --> 00:33:31.720
these two characters, so she's not
just Shosha la fem or just like,

443
00:33:31.799 --> 00:33:36.680
oh, here's the kidnapping victim to
be saved. She does end up becoming

444
00:33:36.839 --> 00:33:38.839
like the victim kind of thing.
And that's the same thing in the book

445
00:33:38.920 --> 00:33:44.240
too, where she's on this train
and we have this amazing train chase and

446
00:33:44.720 --> 00:33:47.359
that's really like the pinnacle of the
third act for us, as this whole

447
00:33:47.480 --> 00:33:52.480
train chase that they have, there
are so many good moments leading up to

448
00:33:52.559 --> 00:33:54.880
that as well, and who doesn't
love a good train chase too, So

449
00:33:55.160 --> 00:33:59.759
that was well done too. Yeah, and this whole idea of we're going

450
00:33:59.799 --> 00:34:04.759
to rip apart this car for fuel
and just yeah, I thought that was

451
00:34:04.839 --> 00:34:07.280
really smart. Toby was signing the
four by the way, oh thank you,

452
00:34:07.760 --> 00:34:10.199
okay, thank you. And also
it wasn't a Great Mouse Detective?

453
00:34:10.199 --> 00:34:15.320
I think too. Isn't that the
name of the basset down? It could

454
00:34:15.400 --> 00:34:21.039
be I hadn't seen Great Mouse Detective
maybe ever, I just remember the list.

455
00:34:21.480 --> 00:34:24.039
No, it's good, it's good. It is worth watching. I

456
00:34:24.119 --> 00:34:30.039
know it's a cartoon, but they
actually used Basil Rathbone's voice from earlier recordings

457
00:34:30.119 --> 00:34:34.719
that he did Vincent Price is Ratigan. It's worth watching. And if it's

458
00:34:34.719 --> 00:34:37.920
again, as was mentioned, made
with affection for the character and for the

459
00:34:38.000 --> 00:34:42.920
stories. I am a feeling you
probably get a lot more out of these

460
00:34:43.000 --> 00:34:49.199
than I do. Because there are
times where he's going through his drug withdrawal

461
00:34:49.320 --> 00:34:52.159
and there's all these redheaded people.
So I'm just like, oh, it's

462
00:34:52.239 --> 00:34:55.280
the Redheaded League, okay. And
then this dog comes out of a closet.

463
00:34:55.320 --> 00:34:58.840
I was like, Okay, that's
the Hound of the Baskerville. But

464
00:34:58.920 --> 00:35:01.199
I'm sure there's so many things or
I'm like, I'm not picking up this

465
00:35:01.360 --> 00:35:05.960
reference. But it's like comic book
fans watching a Marvel movie with Easter eggs.

466
00:35:06.000 --> 00:35:08.119
That's really what a lot of it
is. But we've into the screenplay,

467
00:35:08.159 --> 00:35:12.800
which works. Yeah. I never
felt like I was being talked down

468
00:35:12.920 --> 00:35:15.920
to with this, and I never
felt like, oh, I'm missing a

469
00:35:15.079 --> 00:35:20.079
joke or I'm missing a reference here, even when it comes to like his

470
00:35:20.199 --> 00:35:22.360
speech at the end where he's just
like, oh, you know, tell

471
00:35:22.400 --> 00:35:27.400
them that my mathematics teacher killed me. And then he says something about like

472
00:35:28.039 --> 00:35:30.599
they'll never believe it anyway, and
I'm like, okay, so there's that

473
00:35:30.920 --> 00:35:35.320
death and resurrection that you're just talking
about, David, Like, they don't

474
00:35:35.360 --> 00:35:37.360
believe that Sherlock Holmes. Instead,
they have to bring him back, and

475
00:35:37.679 --> 00:35:43.639
he even does the whole you know, look for a violin player named Sigerson.

476
00:35:43.800 --> 00:35:46.159
So well, if it will ease
your mind at all, in the

477
00:35:46.800 --> 00:35:52.320
withdrawal luten togetic sequences, that's all
there is. There's the reference to the

478
00:35:52.360 --> 00:35:55.400
Hound of the Basketball, so there's
the reference to the Redheaded League, and

479
00:35:55.480 --> 00:36:01.320
there's the reference to when the asp
is coming down the chord. That's yet

480
00:36:01.360 --> 00:36:05.480
another Sherlock Holm story. But as
far as other references. I don't know

481
00:36:05.679 --> 00:36:08.440
that there's any in that particular sequence
at all. The ASP is the speckled

482
00:36:08.480 --> 00:36:13.360
band, that's the story. I
was so surprised because there was that ASP

483
00:36:13.480 --> 00:36:15.840
and there were a lot of other
snakes in this as well. Yeah,

484
00:36:16.079 --> 00:36:20.360
and I just kept waiting for Fred
to say, sometimes a snake is just

485
00:36:20.480 --> 00:36:23.280
a snake. Well, they're even
doing nods to other story, Like I

486
00:36:23.360 --> 00:36:27.840
get that Christy was at the Orient
Express h and that was a little on

487
00:36:27.880 --> 00:36:30.440
the nose even for this, but
I like that it was in there.

488
00:36:30.440 --> 00:36:32.199
I'm like, all right, that's
kind of clever. How did you feel

489
00:36:32.239 --> 00:36:37.239
about Robert Duval as Watson thumbs up
from sideways, thumbs down, thumbs up

490
00:36:37.280 --> 00:36:39.880
for me, but I'm a big
Robert Duval fan. It's really hard for

491
00:36:39.960 --> 00:36:45.199
me to not get behind him and
seeing him in this performance, it's so

492
00:36:45.760 --> 00:36:50.239
removed from anything else he ever did
or tried to do. Yeah. Is

493
00:36:50.280 --> 00:36:53.400
this British accent fallible? Probably?
But I like that he gave it a

494
00:36:53.440 --> 00:36:57.639
go, and it's always nice when
we see an American do a British accent.

495
00:36:57.760 --> 00:37:00.119
You know, I'm for it.
What I think, Mike, It's

496
00:37:00.119 --> 00:37:06.559
a little disconcerting at first, to
hear well, because his voiceover voice doesn't

497
00:37:06.599 --> 00:37:10.400
seem to match his Watson on screen
voice at times, because he does do

498
00:37:10.480 --> 00:37:15.400
a little bit of narration, which
is fine. There's a lot of times

499
00:37:15.480 --> 00:37:19.440
where Robert Duval, like these days, especially Robert Duvall, shows up and

500
00:37:19.559 --> 00:37:22.760
he's a shit kicker. You know. He shows up in Jack Reacher,

501
00:37:23.079 --> 00:37:25.840
he shows up in quite a few
films where he just is like, you

502
00:37:25.920 --> 00:37:30.079
know, this good old boy,
like kind of like a lonesome dove revisited

503
00:37:30.119 --> 00:37:32.199
type of thing. And I was
just like, Okay, that works.

504
00:37:32.239 --> 00:37:36.679
Like seeing Robert Duval as a cowboy
works. But I'm sure even the first

505
00:37:36.719 --> 00:37:42.159
time he played a cowboy was probably
kind of a weird thing for people that

506
00:37:42.239 --> 00:37:45.800
were used to him as being to
kill a mocking bird or the Godfather,

507
00:37:46.000 --> 00:37:50.440
especially where there's there's no accent.
He's just you know, it's Tom He's

508
00:37:50.480 --> 00:37:54.199
the Irishman and no accent there or
anything, but it's German, Irish German.

509
00:37:54.320 --> 00:37:58.360
Yeah, exactly. Well, I
didn't have a problem with it.

510
00:37:58.480 --> 00:38:00.960
If anything, I thought it was
kind of nice to see him doing something

511
00:38:01.199 --> 00:38:06.000
different, and I mean, he's
such a solid actor that after a while,

512
00:38:06.159 --> 00:38:08.039
I just yeah, there was no
question. I would say it took

513
00:38:08.119 --> 00:38:14.639
maybe three minutes before I just completely
bought him as Watson, and then seeing

514
00:38:14.719 --> 00:38:15.599
it a second time, I'm just
like, oh, yeah, no,

515
00:38:15.880 --> 00:38:19.880
no issues right here. Since you
said it, I've just been thinking,

516
00:38:19.960 --> 00:38:22.159
thinking, thinking of every role I've
ever seen Robert duval I can't I can't

517
00:38:22.159 --> 00:38:27.559
even fathom him being poor. I
mean, I just don't think I can

518
00:38:27.639 --> 00:38:31.440
recall any performance that he gave that
was anything but entertaining to me. No,

519
00:38:31.960 --> 00:38:35.760
no, even when he shows up
for just a brief second, and

520
00:38:36.079 --> 00:38:38.800
things like the conversation where he just
kind of shows up, he does a

521
00:38:38.880 --> 00:38:44.239
little thing, and that he's off. Yeah, he's he nails every performance.

522
00:38:44.280 --> 00:38:47.079
This guy. Maybe a lousy movie, but my god, does Robert

523
00:38:47.119 --> 00:38:50.920
Duvall give you a performance? Well? I agree with you, guys.

524
00:38:50.960 --> 00:38:53.920
I mean, he's one of my
favorite actress. He's just great because he's

525
00:38:54.000 --> 00:38:58.440
not a type. He's just a
great character actor. And I will say

526
00:38:58.480 --> 00:39:01.519
one of the things, like years
ago, there was a DVD Blu Ray

527
00:39:01.639 --> 00:39:06.920
release I think from Shout Factory,
I want to say, in which Nicholas

528
00:39:07.039 --> 00:39:12.519
Meyer there's an interview that is accompanying
the disc and he basically said that Duva

529
00:39:12.800 --> 00:39:16.360
was cast as the anti Nigel Bruce
again with the Nigel Bruce Hayes. I

530
00:39:16.480 --> 00:39:20.719
know because because you're thinking, Okay, this came out in nineteen seventy six.

531
00:39:21.000 --> 00:39:24.280
The last film Nigel Bruce made as
Watson was nineteen forty six. Yeah,

532
00:39:24.280 --> 00:39:29.400
it was a while thirty years later. It's like people are shaking their

533
00:39:29.440 --> 00:39:32.000
fist, old, damn you night, Nigel Bruce. He's not He's not

534
00:39:32.119 --> 00:39:37.480
like this, So that cod you
know, Agel Bruce's Watson has legs.

535
00:39:37.599 --> 00:39:40.079
Like him or not. He made
a real big impact on the world of

536
00:39:40.119 --> 00:39:46.000
Sherlock Holmes. This Holmes isn't that
action hero that we're talking about when it

537
00:39:46.079 --> 00:39:52.880
comes to Robert Downey Jr. But
he can do a lot of things.

538
00:39:52.159 --> 00:40:00.519
And just you buy Nicole Williamson as
this more heroic Sherlock Holmes. You by

539
00:40:00.880 --> 00:40:06.239
Duval as being right there helping out
as much as possible. You see him

540
00:40:06.440 --> 00:40:10.440
as for me being Holmes as equal, and you don't necessarily see him just

541
00:40:10.599 --> 00:40:15.360
like jaw dropping, just like,
oh gosh, Holmes, how did you

542
00:40:15.480 --> 00:40:16.559
do this? He's just like,
Yeah, this is my friend, this

543
00:40:16.719 --> 00:40:20.960
is this thing, this is what
he does. And this whole story is

544
00:40:21.280 --> 00:40:25.639
I am here helping out my best
friend and trying to help save him and

545
00:40:25.800 --> 00:40:30.480
save his sanity, and that really, I just appreciate that so much.

546
00:40:30.320 --> 00:40:37.000
Is Watson is reminiscent of the actor's
name is David Burke, and he appeared

547
00:40:37.039 --> 00:40:42.159
in the first episodes of the Jeremy
Brett TV series for Granada. And again

548
00:40:42.360 --> 00:40:45.679
it's like, this is a good
partner for Sherlock Holmes. He's very levelheaded,

549
00:40:46.119 --> 00:40:52.920
he lets his eccentric friend go off
on these wild tangents, and he's

550
00:40:52.239 --> 00:40:57.559
kind of our conduit into the character. He's the middle class, normal man

551
00:40:58.280 --> 00:41:02.920
who appreciates the stuff his friend and
is a steading influence on him. And

552
00:41:02.960 --> 00:41:07.320
you get done a nice scene of
him and Samantha Eggar as his wife and

553
00:41:07.599 --> 00:41:14.360
their conversation, and you really and
this is doctor Watson's story sometimes even more

554
00:41:14.440 --> 00:41:17.000
than it is homes. It's more
about him and his reactions. And I

555
00:41:17.199 --> 00:41:22.880
really appreciate when Holmes is going through
his hallucinations and going through his withdrawals and

556
00:41:22.119 --> 00:41:28.039
he calls Watson a cripple, and
when Watson just decks him, and then

557
00:41:28.079 --> 00:41:30.880
you get that great apology scene from
Holmes later on, and it's like This

558
00:41:31.119 --> 00:41:37.480
is really nice to see these two
friends kind of reforming their friendship. I

559
00:41:37.599 --> 00:41:40.159
stable defend Nigel Bruce to the end
of the earth because I have a very

560
00:41:40.559 --> 00:41:46.039
personal fondness for those movies. But
on the same token, it is always

561
00:41:46.119 --> 00:41:50.960
nice to see a Watson that is
more formidable because in the stories, I

562
00:41:51.039 --> 00:41:52.440
mean, he was in the army, he's a military man, he's been

563
00:41:52.480 --> 00:41:57.639
trained. He's not he's not he's
not a sissy. He doesn't just sit

564
00:41:57.719 --> 00:42:00.280
there and stand by and get bush
all the time. I mean, he's

565
00:42:00.280 --> 00:42:05.159
formidable. He can handle himself,
and unfortunately, I think that gets lost

566
00:42:05.239 --> 00:42:08.000
a lot because of the Nigel Bruce
character, because that became very popular for

567
00:42:08.079 --> 00:42:10.159
a long period time, which is
probably why I dud is talking about your

568
00:42:10.199 --> 00:42:14.280
Lotcheans don't love him. But on
the same token, I mean there's so

569
00:42:14.320 --> 00:42:16.320
many interpretations. A lot of people
do get it right, and Robert Duval

570
00:42:16.599 --> 00:42:22.960
is more akin to what I would
picture John Watson character Martin Freeman too.

571
00:42:22.039 --> 00:42:25.960
I mean he came pretty close.
Well. I like Nigel Bruce, I

572
00:42:27.079 --> 00:42:31.639
just do's he solved the problem of
Watson. What do you do with Watson

573
00:42:31.960 --> 00:42:37.320
if he's no longer the narrator of
the stories. How do you make him

574
00:42:37.599 --> 00:42:40.599
a fit into the narrative? And
that was a really good solution. And

575
00:42:42.079 --> 00:42:45.000
is it canonical so to speak,
Well, no, not so much,

576
00:42:45.079 --> 00:42:47.199
but does it work really well?
Yeah, it does work really well.

577
00:42:47.360 --> 00:42:52.760
So I like his interpretation of the
role, and that was he was great

578
00:42:52.800 --> 00:42:57.440
at that. You know he in
other films, Rebecca, he's the dithering,

579
00:42:57.599 --> 00:43:00.840
self important, ineffectual Englishman. That
was, you know, his sweet

580
00:43:00.880 --> 00:43:06.280
spot. You know, last week
we talked about ciccusin homes and all of

581
00:43:06.360 --> 00:43:10.199
the fencing, and here we have
another duel going on, but this one

582
00:43:10.360 --> 00:43:14.760
is even more elevated to me.
We're not necessarily on the rooftops, but

583
00:43:14.920 --> 00:43:20.079
we are on this train. And
what I really liked was that there is

584
00:43:20.199 --> 00:43:25.599
that callback to the earlier duel and
just how clever that whole thing with the

585
00:43:27.320 --> 00:43:30.440
tennis matches. That you think that
there's going to be you know, pistols

586
00:43:30.440 --> 00:43:37.039
at dawn, but when Fred chooses
his weapons, he chooses a tennis racket,

587
00:43:37.440 --> 00:43:42.840
and that he figures out his opponent's
weaknesses and then plays upon those weaknesses,

588
00:43:43.280 --> 00:43:47.800
and then that weakness comes back to
ultimately be line store of undoing.

589
00:43:49.440 --> 00:43:52.480
Again, I just keep saying how
smart this movie is. But again,

590
00:43:52.559 --> 00:43:55.559
that's a really smart thing. Well, I love that scene the tennis match

591
00:43:57.280 --> 00:44:00.320
that was. I don't know if
it's still in existence, but the time

592
00:44:00.400 --> 00:44:02.679
it was. That was shot at
the Queen's Club in Kensington, London,

593
00:44:04.119 --> 00:44:07.800
and it was a historic tennis court. That's the way tennis courts used to

594
00:44:07.960 --> 00:44:10.440
look. It's obviously a little bit
different than what we're used to today,

595
00:44:12.000 --> 00:44:15.599
but I thought it worked really well. And the whole concept of you know,

596
00:44:15.679 --> 00:44:19.480
in competition, you can face someone
who's better than you and you can

597
00:44:19.519 --> 00:44:24.159
still win if you can figure out
how to exploit their weakness and accentual strength

598
00:44:24.559 --> 00:44:29.719
and look our first rate competitor.
And that's what makes Freud such a good

599
00:44:29.800 --> 00:44:32.519
character. He just outwits his opponent. It's not you know that he's bigger

600
00:44:32.559 --> 00:44:36.400
or faster or stronger, he's smarter
and that's what allows him to win.

601
00:44:36.519 --> 00:44:39.320
And I like that a lot.
Well, that is also talking about the

602
00:44:39.360 --> 00:44:44.360
anti Semitism at the time. You
know, here we are so many years

603
00:44:44.480 --> 00:44:47.519
before World War Two, of course, but you know, anti Semitism is

604
00:44:47.639 --> 00:44:53.840
not something new to European shore.
So this whole thing of von Leinsdorf basically

605
00:44:54.000 --> 00:44:58.480
being like a proto Nazi and coming
in and just like, oh, they're

606
00:44:58.480 --> 00:45:02.079
allowing Jews in the school up now, And like when Watson stands up and

607
00:45:02.119 --> 00:45:05.039
he's about to take him on,
and then it's like no, no,

608
00:45:05.280 --> 00:45:07.159
you know, I can fight my
own battles. And then he fights his

609
00:45:07.239 --> 00:45:12.679
battle and again, you know,
Alan Arkin, Jesus Christ. I always

610
00:45:12.760 --> 00:45:16.519
love Alan Arkin again, so solid
with his performances. He can go way

611
00:45:16.639 --> 00:45:22.599
out there and just be you know, wacky as wild as hell. See

612
00:45:22.719 --> 00:45:27.039
our episode on Simon that we did
so many years ago. But you know,

613
00:45:27.239 --> 00:45:31.360
he can just bring it. And
I at first was wondering how much

614
00:45:31.440 --> 00:45:35.719
of a comedian he was going to
be in this movie, but he playss

615
00:45:35.800 --> 00:45:38.800
Freud really straight. Yeah. I
thought he did a great job with it.

616
00:45:39.199 --> 00:45:44.039
I mean they I know, they
had to change up his kid.

617
00:45:44.159 --> 00:45:47.440
They had to change his daughter to
his son because she was going to sue

618
00:45:49.119 --> 00:45:52.239
if they depicted her as a child, so they changed it to his son.

619
00:45:52.639 --> 00:45:57.599
Um No, I think works really
well. And I'm always somebody I

620
00:45:57.760 --> 00:46:01.360
like spaces, I like room and
so when I watched Sherlock Holmes movies,

621
00:46:01.679 --> 00:46:06.320
I'm always interested in how are they
going to depict the rooms of Sherlock Holmes,

622
00:46:06.960 --> 00:46:09.960
and they do a really nice job
in this film. Obviously they're in

623
00:46:10.039 --> 00:46:14.719
a bit of chaos because Holmes is
in chaos, but the same goes for

624
00:46:14.760 --> 00:46:19.880
the rooms of Freud. Really well
appointed. I'm a huge fan of set

625
00:46:19.960 --> 00:46:23.880
decorators and props because they can,
as Holmes himself says, a man's study

626
00:46:24.079 --> 00:46:28.960
tells you who he is, and
yeah, it's it's just the look of

627
00:46:29.000 --> 00:46:32.639
the film set dressing, the sets
themselves. It's just really well done throughout.

628
00:46:34.039 --> 00:46:36.639
Let me just add one more thing
that I really like, and here

629
00:46:36.800 --> 00:46:45.159
is when they are trying to find
the Vanessa Redgrave character and they eventually this

630
00:46:45.400 --> 00:46:50.000
is Holmes and Watson eventually end up
at this brothel that she used to work

631
00:46:50.079 --> 00:46:53.000
at and they open up the room. You know, you've got this great

632
00:46:53.079 --> 00:46:58.400
Stephen Sondheim song, the Madam song. Open up the door to her room

633
00:46:58.519 --> 00:47:04.199
and those Freud sitting on her back
and he has deduced where she was going

634
00:47:04.280 --> 00:47:06.719
to be. And it was just
like, that's so nice. It's like

635
00:47:06.840 --> 00:47:09.480
the teacher meets the master type of
thing. I just heard that the pupil

636
00:47:09.559 --> 00:47:13.480
meets the master. I was like, ah, that's really nice. I

637
00:47:13.920 --> 00:47:16.400
like that. Yeah, I agree, that was a great touch. Yeah.

638
00:47:16.440 --> 00:47:22.039
The film is basically, I mean, feel free to disagree or whatever.

639
00:47:22.280 --> 00:47:24.840
To me, it's like almost a
two part film, Like the first

640
00:47:24.880 --> 00:47:30.840
half of it is the reclamation of
homes, and then once that's been accomplished,

641
00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:32.960
then it shifts into this other narrative
of Okay, now we're going to

642
00:47:34.079 --> 00:47:39.280
see the the you know, the
healed homes in action with not only Watson,

643
00:47:39.360 --> 00:47:44.079
but you know, Sigmund Freud as
his allies. And I like that

644
00:47:44.159 --> 00:47:46.920
a lot. I like the kind
of two stories that dovetail together. So

645
00:47:47.039 --> 00:47:52.280
what do you think about the final
hypnosis scene and when we get to find

646
00:47:52.360 --> 00:47:55.719
out what has been giving Homes all
these problems for all of these years.

647
00:47:57.400 --> 00:48:00.920
I think it's great. It's just
it worked so well. It's you know,

648
00:48:01.000 --> 00:48:05.719
Sherlock Holmes, it's like, okay, drug problems yep, dark moods

649
00:48:05.880 --> 00:48:10.639
yep, Depression yep, animosity,
sometimes outright hostility towards women. Will say,

650
00:48:10.719 --> 00:48:15.199
misogyny in general, as he says, women are never to be trusted,

651
00:48:15.320 --> 00:48:16.880
not the best of them. So
where does that come from? And

652
00:48:17.159 --> 00:48:23.079
the solution presented in the film,
boy tick tick tick yep, yep,

653
00:48:23.199 --> 00:48:29.480
yep, yep, everything falls into
place. Dad explains his character and his

654
00:48:29.679 --> 00:48:34.360
neuroses incredibly well. I just thought
it was very clever and beautifully done.

655
00:48:34.679 --> 00:48:37.920
They changed the movie from the book. You know, in the book,

656
00:48:37.280 --> 00:48:43.239
it's the fact that Sherlock Holmes his
mother's having an affair, his dad finds

657
00:48:43.280 --> 00:48:46.800
out, his dad shoots his mother, his dad shoots her lover, his

658
00:48:46.960 --> 00:48:53.079
dad kills himself, and it's the
math tutor Moriarity who relates this, you

659
00:48:53.199 --> 00:48:58.239
know, these unhappy events to both
Shrlock and Mycroft. Well they up to

660
00:48:58.280 --> 00:49:04.039
Annie. In the film, it's
that it's Moriarity that relates what happened.

661
00:49:04.159 --> 00:49:08.840
Moriarity is his mother's adulterous lover.
And you know, the same thing though,

662
00:49:09.119 --> 00:49:12.760
the father kills the mother, and
in fact, as you see in

663
00:49:12.800 --> 00:49:16.320
the film, Alms witness it and
is actually splattered with his own mother's blood.

664
00:49:16.440 --> 00:49:20.079
I mean, if that's not going
to traumatize you, I don't know

665
00:49:20.159 --> 00:49:22.960
what is. It's great. I
agree with most of what David said.

666
00:49:22.960 --> 00:49:29.039
I agree that having Mortiarity be the
lover was intriguing. The affair portion,

667
00:49:29.360 --> 00:49:31.679
Dad being infuriated, that sort of
thing, The whole murder portion of it.

668
00:49:32.159 --> 00:49:36.360
That's where it kind of lost me, because I don't think that's as

669
00:49:36.519 --> 00:49:39.079
sharp as it could have been when
it comes when it comes to unconscious trauma.

670
00:49:39.199 --> 00:49:42.239
But this comes from my mom.
I mean, she's been in psychology

671
00:49:42.280 --> 00:49:45.079
for thirty years. So to me, I've heard this my whole life.

672
00:49:45.360 --> 00:49:52.000
So to me, it's much more
sustainable trauma as accomplished by less known facts

673
00:49:52.039 --> 00:49:55.320
and murder as a known fact,
which means everybody probably would know about that

674
00:49:55.480 --> 00:50:00.920
even back then. You know,
Watson should know that his murdered his mother.

675
00:50:00.039 --> 00:50:05.159
Somebody would know that case. You
know, somebody on the somebody on

676
00:50:05.199 --> 00:50:07.760
the force would know that that was
the case. So to me, it

677
00:50:07.800 --> 00:50:12.480
would have been more impactful for me
personally had it been something along the lines

678
00:50:12.519 --> 00:50:16.880
of his father beat his mother or
something along those something that wasn't so permanent

679
00:50:17.320 --> 00:50:21.360
and obviously that should have been well
known. I get what you're saying,

680
00:50:21.400 --> 00:50:23.320
but like nineteenth century, I don't
know if you guys have ever tried to

681
00:50:23.360 --> 00:50:27.960
do any kind of genealogical research.
No, I get it, but I

682
00:50:28.000 --> 00:50:30.760
mean a murder of the guy that
you're living with, and he's never mentioned

683
00:50:30.800 --> 00:50:35.400
that his mom was murdered, probably
by his dad. I mean, that's

684
00:50:35.440 --> 00:50:37.559
not really a to me, that's
not a subconscious thought. That's more,

685
00:50:37.760 --> 00:50:42.599
he should know that that happened.
I'm not making excuses, but he does

686
00:50:42.679 --> 00:50:46.280
not share his family history, very
randolacence. He hasn't even mentioned Cigarets and

687
00:50:46.360 --> 00:50:51.800
Holmes. By this point, somebody
would know. Somebody, even the idiots

688
00:50:52.440 --> 00:50:58.360
on the force would know that.
There was a famous murder case in London

689
00:50:58.920 --> 00:51:02.559
in eighteen twelve that the novelist P. D. James and a historian by

690
00:51:02.559 --> 00:51:06.639
the name of Critchley wrote an account
of called the Mall and the Pear Tree,

691
00:51:07.079 --> 00:51:10.800
in which two families were brutally slaughtered. One of the tools was a

692
00:51:12.039 --> 00:51:16.440
mall that at all sledgehammer, which
was found at the scene of the crime.

693
00:51:16.840 --> 00:51:19.239
And it's like, who did it? Who did it? What do

694
00:51:19.320 --> 00:51:20.840
we do? What do we do? What do we do? And it

695
00:51:21.039 --> 00:51:25.440
was days later that somebody decided to
scrape some of the blood and hair off

696
00:51:25.679 --> 00:51:31.400
weapon and there were initials on it. And that's how slow police forces were.

697
00:51:31.559 --> 00:51:37.119
The idea that a crime scene was
a story to be uncovered and told

698
00:51:37.480 --> 00:51:42.599
that was completely beyond them. All
they relied on for the most part was

699
00:51:42.679 --> 00:51:45.800
witnesses and offering rewards. So it
was a different era, and all the

700
00:51:45.840 --> 00:51:50.400
stuff that we kind of take for
granted now, like DNA analysis and all

701
00:51:50.440 --> 00:51:52.920
that, actually a lot of the
stuff that you saw in the early Sherlock

702
00:51:52.960 --> 00:51:57.960
Holmes stories, fingerprints, blood typing, those were in the stories before they

703
00:51:58.000 --> 00:52:00.440
were even used by the police.
And I understand what you're saying in terms

704
00:52:00.440 --> 00:52:06.719
of like investigative techniques understood. But
the fact that no one in the entire

705
00:52:06.960 --> 00:52:12.400
none of the inspectors or anything else, have heard of this just to me

706
00:52:12.719 --> 00:52:14.840
as a stretch, And I feel
like it would be more impactful if it

707
00:52:14.920 --> 00:52:16.920
was entitled a different way, just
my opinion. I'll tell you one of

708
00:52:16.960 --> 00:52:22.320
the things I like about this,
and maybe purely coincidental, is there's a

709
00:52:22.440 --> 00:52:28.119
very famous story by the Argentinean writer
Jorge Luis Bohe called Death and the Compass,

710
00:52:28.719 --> 00:52:32.079
and it kind of traces a plot
that you see here. Where in

711
00:52:32.159 --> 00:52:37.239
the story it's a criminal. Here, it's Freud and Watson, where they

712
00:52:37.360 --> 00:52:43.559
have a brilliant detective and they use
his own brilliance against him to lead him

713
00:52:43.960 --> 00:52:46.559
following a trail. He thinks he's
following clues that he has discovered, but

714
00:52:46.639 --> 00:52:52.760
the clues have been intentionally placed down
for him to discover, and in the

715
00:52:52.880 --> 00:52:57.679
Boree story, it ends up with
the villain kills the detective because he fell

716
00:52:57.760 --> 00:53:00.079
right into the trap by following all
the clues. In this case, happily

717
00:53:00.199 --> 00:53:02.719
enough, it's just, you know, the trap that he falls into is

718
00:53:02.760 --> 00:53:06.679
being in the study of Sigmund Freud, where he can be cured of his

719
00:53:06.719 --> 00:53:08.639
addiction. I'm Mike, you asked
us, what about you? What'd you

720
00:53:08.719 --> 00:53:13.800
think of that review? I don't
think that anything is ever that clean and

721
00:53:14.079 --> 00:53:17.320
clear. Oh, I just happened
to forget the death of my mother,

722
00:53:17.480 --> 00:53:22.079
Like I think I would have just
realized that there was a big gap there.

723
00:53:22.239 --> 00:53:25.079
But I can't speak to somebody's mental
aptitude when it comes to that kind

724
00:53:25.119 --> 00:53:28.840
of stuff. I don't. I'm
sure there are aligned many things I've hidden

725
00:53:28.880 --> 00:53:32.840
from myself over the years and just
never think to question. So why question?

726
00:53:34.159 --> 00:53:36.559
You know, whatever happened to my
mom? Or just like you make

727
00:53:36.679 --> 00:53:38.519
up a story and that's the story
that you live with. Kind of thing

728
00:53:39.440 --> 00:53:43.840
that makes things a lot easier.
I thought that was kind of nice.

729
00:53:43.920 --> 00:53:46.760
I wasn't sure with the snakes that
kept coming up if that was going to

730
00:53:46.840 --> 00:53:51.480
have something to do with it.
But once we got to that point,

731
00:53:51.599 --> 00:53:53.800
I thought it was really well done. I don't think it was too heavy

732
00:53:53.840 --> 00:53:58.840
handed. I thought the raw shot
it very well. And then it really

733
00:53:59.000 --> 00:54:04.039
leads to a great moment when after
Holmes is done with all that and he

734
00:54:04.119 --> 00:54:07.079
says his goodbyes to Watson when he's
on that boat, and he happens to

735
00:54:07.159 --> 00:54:12.679
sit down next to Miss Devereaux,
next to the Vanessa Redgrave character and her

736
00:54:12.800 --> 00:54:17.000
little thing about you know, hey, what an a coincidence too, addicts

737
00:54:17.039 --> 00:54:21.639
on the road to recovery, it'll
probably seem shorter if there are two of

738
00:54:21.760 --> 00:54:27.159
us, And I was just like, wow, that's really nice and such

739
00:54:27.199 --> 00:54:30.880
a great way to end this whole
story. And you know, it gives

740
00:54:31.360 --> 00:54:36.920
again Meyer so many more stories that
he can tell. I mean, the

741
00:54:37.039 --> 00:54:42.400
next one that he does is right
after this, we've actually shows Sigerson this

742
00:54:42.679 --> 00:54:49.320
new Holmes character in I think he's
in France and he's trying to be first

743
00:54:49.400 --> 00:54:52.920
violin, and I don't even think
he's good enough to become first violin,

744
00:54:52.079 --> 00:54:57.719
but he manages to get involved in
an orchestra, so it's pretty darn cool.

745
00:54:57.840 --> 00:55:01.280
I really recommend all of the Myers
Show. Like Holmes books, they're

746
00:55:01.400 --> 00:55:06.239
really top notch. He's a good
he's a smart guy, and he does

747
00:55:06.280 --> 00:55:09.719
some really good stuff absolutely well.
Speaking of let's go ahead and hear from

748
00:55:09.760 --> 00:55:22.159
mister Meyer right after these brief messages. Hello, everyone, this is Malcolm

749
00:55:22.239 --> 00:55:29.199
McDowell. I just want to say
that this is a request to listeners of

750
00:55:29.360 --> 00:55:37.000
the Projection Booth podcast to become patrons
of the show via Patreon dot com,

751
00:55:37.360 --> 00:55:45.800
pat e o n dot com slash
Projection Booth. That's pretty simple. I

752
00:55:45.920 --> 00:55:50.880
think you can do that. It's
a great show and Mike he provides hours

753
00:55:51.119 --> 00:55:54.960
of great entertainment. So now it's
time to give back my little drugs.

754
00:55:55.639 --> 00:56:00.679
Settle down and take a listen and
have a sip of the Malocco and then

755
00:56:00.760 --> 00:56:05.639
you'll be ready for a little of
the old in out, in out real

756
00:56:05.840 --> 00:56:13.199
horror show. Bye bye. Can
you walk me through a little bit of

757
00:56:13.519 --> 00:56:17.199
that time period in your life,
like early seventies going into mid seventies,

758
00:56:17.280 --> 00:56:22.760
just because you were into a lot
of things. There was the book writing,

759
00:56:22.960 --> 00:56:28.119
there was television writing, there was
movie writing. What was that timeline?

760
00:56:28.559 --> 00:56:34.440
Well, I moved out to southern
California in the fall of nineteen seventy

761
00:56:34.480 --> 00:56:39.480
one, and I didn't know anybody
here in Los Angeles. I hadn't never

762
00:56:39.599 --> 00:56:45.239
been to Los Angeles. I didn't
know that Los Angeles was by the water.

763
00:56:45.800 --> 00:56:49.920
I guess I didn't know much.
I just knew that after three years

764
00:56:50.000 --> 00:56:53.880
in New York following school, I
didn't seem to be getting anywhere. I'd

765
00:56:53.920 --> 00:56:59.719
worked for Paramount Pictures as a publicist. I wasn't sure what that was,

766
00:57:00.000 --> 00:57:05.480
but I did it for a while. I started to make headway by I

767
00:57:05.559 --> 00:57:13.800
guess nineteen seventy three, I was
writing television movies. I got a chance

768
00:57:13.880 --> 00:57:16.840
to write a television movie at ABC, and then I got a chance to

769
00:57:16.880 --> 00:57:22.239
write one at CBS. And I
was just sort of working up to a

770
00:57:22.320 --> 00:57:29.000
head of steam in that department,
my object being to write and direct movies.

771
00:57:29.679 --> 00:57:32.719
And as I say, that was
just starting to happen for me.

772
00:57:32.920 --> 00:57:38.920
Must beIN sometime in nineteen seventy two, late seventy two, when the Writer's

773
00:57:39.000 --> 00:57:44.800
Guild went on strike. We do
that. We seem to do that a

774
00:57:44.880 --> 00:57:47.239
lot. The Director's Guild, I
think, has never been on strike.

775
00:57:47.440 --> 00:57:52.840
It's interesting you were allowed to write
screenplays at that time. You had to

776
00:57:52.920 --> 00:57:59.360
pick it every day with a placard
outside the studio where you were designated,

777
00:58:00.000 --> 00:58:06.000
and the rest time you're not supposed
to write scripts. And so the Willard

778
00:58:06.079 --> 00:58:08.519
with whom I was living at the
time, said, oh, well,

779
00:58:08.679 --> 00:58:15.400
now is the perfect time to write
that Sherlock Holmes book that you keep talking

780
00:58:15.440 --> 00:58:20.280
about. Now, that Sherlock Holmes
book, which, as you and perhaps

781
00:58:20.320 --> 00:58:25.559
your listeners also no, became the
seven percent solution. It originated at a

782
00:58:25.800 --> 00:58:31.679
very long gestation period, starting when
I was about eleven years old, and

783
00:58:31.840 --> 00:58:37.800
my dad gave me the complete Sherlock
Holmes stories to read, and I gobbled

784
00:58:37.840 --> 00:58:43.920
them up, and I was really
fascinated and delighted and in love with those

785
00:58:44.079 --> 00:58:50.119
characters and that language. And at
the time, back when I was eleven

786
00:58:50.239 --> 00:58:52.599
or twelve or whatever it was,
there was a big hit musical, the

787
00:58:52.679 --> 00:58:58.199
biggest hit musical anybody had ever seen, was called My Fair Lady, and

788
00:58:58.400 --> 00:59:02.519
My Fair Lady was based on a
play by George Bernard Shaw called Pygmalion.

789
00:59:02.920 --> 00:59:07.480
And it was very evident to me
when I saw the musical and then I

790
00:59:08.280 --> 00:59:14.239
saw or read the play or saw
the movie of Pygmalion, that George Bernard

791
00:59:14.280 --> 00:59:20.880
Shaw was ripping off Arthur Conan Doyle. It was very evident that Professor Henry

792
00:59:21.239 --> 00:59:29.559
Higgins of twenty seven A Wimpole Street
with Colonel Pickering just back from India wasn't

793
00:59:29.679 --> 00:59:36.360
very far removed from Sherlock Holmes of
two twenty one B. Baker Street with

794
00:59:36.840 --> 00:59:44.599
Doctor Watson just back from Afghanistan.
That Shaw was helping himself. And I

795
00:59:44.760 --> 00:59:50.880
thought, Gee, if Pygmalion made
a great musical, Shirley Sherlock Holmes being

796
00:59:50.920 --> 00:59:54.679
the original would make an even better
musical. So as a teenager, I

797
00:59:54.840 --> 01:00:00.320
was all involved in that, and
then somebody went and did it in all

798
01:00:00.360 --> 01:00:05.320
I think of nineteen sixty four and
it flopped. And I was at school

799
01:00:05.360 --> 01:00:08.400
at the University of Iowa at the
time, and I believe that my father

800
01:00:08.559 --> 01:00:14.480
then sent me a telegram saying congratulations, knew they couldn't do it without you,

801
01:00:15.199 --> 01:00:17.639
or words to that effect, and
that sort of put me off homes

802
01:00:17.719 --> 01:00:25.039
for a long time. But then
another stream of associations sort of fit into

803
01:00:25.199 --> 01:00:30.440
that, and that had to do
with when I was in high school and

804
01:00:30.760 --> 01:00:35.239
people would say, oh, your
old man's a shrink? Is he a

805
01:00:35.360 --> 01:00:38.840
Freudian? And I didn't know,
so I said Pap are you a Freudian?

806
01:00:38.920 --> 01:00:42.760
And he said, well, it's
a silly question. And I didn't

807
01:00:42.840 --> 01:00:46.559
understand. Why is it a silly
question? And he said, because it's

808
01:00:46.719 --> 01:00:53.440
no more possible to discuss the history
of psychoanalysis and not start with Sigmund Freud

809
01:00:53.519 --> 01:01:00.559
than it is to discuss the discovery
of the Western hemisphere by Europe without starting

810
01:01:00.599 --> 01:01:06.400
with Columbus or the Vikings, take
your pick. But to suppose that nothing

811
01:01:06.519 --> 01:01:13.320
has happened since Columbus, that's being
pretty doctrinaire. When a patient comes to

812
01:01:13.400 --> 01:01:15.719
see me, I listen to what
they say, I listen to how they

813
01:01:15.920 --> 01:01:20.719
say it. I'm very interested in
what they don't say. I'm listening.

814
01:01:21.239 --> 01:01:23.000
I'm looking at how they're addressed.
I'm curious, are they on time,

815
01:01:23.079 --> 01:01:29.159
what's the body language? I am, in short searching for clues from them

816
01:01:29.800 --> 01:01:32.440
as to why they're not happy.
And I said, gee, I'm now

817
01:01:32.559 --> 01:01:37.599
maybe fourteen. He said, well, now that you mentioned it, I

818
01:01:37.679 --> 01:01:40.400
guess it is like detective work.
And a little light bulb went off in

819
01:01:40.519 --> 01:01:46.119
my head again. We're talking about
years years thinking about all this. I'm

820
01:01:46.199 --> 01:01:52.440
wondering how much Arthur Conan Doyle knew
about the life and writing of Sigmund Freud.

821
01:01:52.880 --> 01:01:58.280
Freud knew about Holms all right.
He liked Sherlock Holmes stories, has

822
01:01:58.360 --> 01:02:04.000
his bedtime reading. He knew he
had been compared to Sherlock Holmes. He

823
01:02:04.159 --> 01:02:10.199
compared himself at one point to Herlock
Holmes. Freud and Doyle were both doctors.

824
01:02:10.400 --> 01:02:16.000
That was interesting. They both died
in the same town within nine years

825
01:02:16.079 --> 01:02:22.000
of each other. How it's starting
to get very interest. Then you learn

826
01:02:22.239 --> 01:02:28.519
that Holmes was a cocaine addict,
and so for a time was Sigmund Freud.

827
01:02:29.039 --> 01:02:36.360
And you learn that Arthur Conan Doyle
studied ophthalmology in Vienna for six months.

828
01:02:36.960 --> 01:02:42.400
An Ophthalmology was where Freud was introduced
to cocaine when he wrote a paper

829
01:02:42.480 --> 01:02:46.800
with Kernigstein and Curler, two eye
doctors, on the uses of cocaine is

830
01:02:46.840 --> 01:02:52.400
an anesthetic during eye surgery. So
all this stuff is burbling around and burbling

831
01:02:52.480 --> 01:02:58.239
around. And now it's nineteen seventy
two or whatever it is. The writers

832
01:02:58.320 --> 01:03:01.320
Guild is on strike. My girlfriend
says, now you can write that Holmes

833
01:03:01.400 --> 01:03:06.559
book that you keep going on about, and she was right. I had

834
01:03:06.599 --> 01:03:10.079
nothing else going on. So that's
how I came to sit down and write

835
01:03:10.119 --> 01:03:15.400
it in the midst of pursuing career
in the movie industry. Did you write

836
01:03:15.480 --> 01:03:21.000
that before you were writing the Judge
D movie? Or is that after the

837
01:03:21.159 --> 01:03:23.760
Judge D film? It was after, as I say, I started to

838
01:03:23.800 --> 01:03:29.800
write a couple of television movies,
and Judge D was one, and The

839
01:03:29.920 --> 01:03:35.119
Night That Panicked America, which I
originally titled The Night the Martians landed Hie,

840
01:03:35.159 --> 01:03:37.280
I thought was a much better title. Those were two movies that I

841
01:03:37.360 --> 01:03:42.119
hadn't under my belt. I believe
when I sat down to write the seven

842
01:03:42.199 --> 01:03:46.280
percentage, how quickly after you write
it does it get picked up for publishing?

843
01:03:46.920 --> 01:03:52.960
Ah? Well, when I wrote
this seven percent so that I finished

844
01:03:53.000 --> 01:03:58.639
it and I thought this has got
to be publishable. I read so much

845
01:03:59.119 --> 01:04:04.079
crappy stuff this is I thought this
is the least publishable, and I sent

846
01:04:04.199 --> 01:04:10.679
it. This is probably early nineteen
seventy three. I'm guessing. I'm guessing

847
01:04:11.199 --> 01:04:15.320
to my agent, my literary agents
in New York, because I had West

848
01:04:15.360 --> 01:04:20.480
Coast office, same branch, and
they declined to read the book. Lady

849
01:04:20.599 --> 01:04:25.880
said, she said to me,
well, I've never read any Sherlock Holmes,

850
01:04:25.960 --> 01:04:30.519
so how could I tell if this
is any good, and I guess

851
01:04:30.599 --> 01:04:34.440
I have a short fuse. And
I said, well, putting aside the

852
01:04:34.519 --> 01:04:40.519
fact that you call yourself a literary
agent and you've never read any Arthur Conan

853
01:04:40.639 --> 01:04:44.679
Doyle, I would have to say
that if my book depends on another book,

854
01:04:45.000 --> 01:04:49.320
it's already a flop, which struck
me as an invincible line of argument.

855
01:04:49.760 --> 01:04:55.239
But she'd hung up long before I
got that far. So I knew

856
01:04:55.320 --> 01:04:59.440
one person in the publishing business from
growing up and living in New York.

857
01:05:00.079 --> 01:05:04.239
So I took my manuscript and I
flew to New York. I arrived there,

858
01:05:04.239 --> 01:05:09.679
it was pissing rain. It did
not occur to me to phone ahead.

859
01:05:10.280 --> 01:05:15.679
I walked into the offices of McMillan
and I said, as Jim Needlan

860
01:05:15.840 --> 01:05:17.960
there, and they said, no, he doesn't work here anymore. This

861
01:05:18.159 --> 01:05:23.679
had not occurred to me, along
with everything else. And I stood there,

862
01:05:24.000 --> 01:05:27.719
dripping in their lobby and said,
but but, but he's still in

863
01:05:27.800 --> 01:05:30.119
the publishing business, isn't he.
And they said, well, let me

864
01:05:30.199 --> 01:05:32.480
check, and they go, oh, yes, he's over here at this

865
01:05:32.599 --> 01:05:36.760
and named another company. And I
said, you have the address, and

866
01:05:36.960 --> 01:05:43.440
they scribbled it on a piece of
paper and I tromped back into Madison Avenue

867
01:05:43.519 --> 01:05:46.480
or wherever it was and found where
he worked, and he came out to

868
01:05:46.599 --> 01:05:53.679
see me a little befuddled, and
I explained that I'd written a novel and

869
01:05:53.880 --> 01:05:59.079
he said, oh, well,
this is a non fiction house. I've

870
01:06:00.159 --> 01:06:03.920
had five novels here and I can't
get one published. And I said,

871
01:06:05.119 --> 01:06:10.400
look, Jim, I don't really
have a choice. I'm getting on a

872
01:06:10.440 --> 01:06:14.440
plane. I'm fun back to LA. Here's the book. And I gave

873
01:06:14.480 --> 01:06:17.360
it to him and sort of forgot
about it. I'm not forgot, but

874
01:06:17.480 --> 01:06:24.559
I just assumed that that was a
dead end. So I was surprised when

875
01:06:24.719 --> 01:06:29.280
several days later he called me up
and said, this one they'll publish,

876
01:06:29.679 --> 01:06:32.480
and I said oh. And at
that point I said, well, I'm

877
01:06:32.719 --> 01:06:39.400
damned if my agency I don't remember
what they were called, Ashley Famous.

878
01:06:39.480 --> 01:06:45.320
I think I was gonna get ten
percent for negotiating this contract. So I

879
01:06:45.400 --> 01:06:49.400
went to I. By this time
I had a lawyer, a showbiz lawyer,

880
01:06:49.719 --> 01:06:55.079
very lovely man, and I said, Tom, when you I said,

881
01:06:55.559 --> 01:06:58.719
I don't want them making money off
something that they had nothing to do

882
01:06:58.880 --> 01:07:01.840
with. And he said, great, we'll get a release from your literary

883
01:07:01.960 --> 01:07:12.239
works, and I'll represent this,
and which unhesitatingly granted me my literary works.

884
01:07:12.920 --> 01:07:15.840
And Tom, who by the way, subsequently went on to be the

885
01:07:15.880 --> 01:07:19.599
president of Universal Pictures, was a
really wonderful man, no longer with us

886
01:07:19.719 --> 01:07:23.400
Alas he said, well, he
said, well, now, let me

887
01:07:23.440 --> 01:07:26.360
read this book. So he read
the book and he said, listen,

888
01:07:26.880 --> 01:07:30.519
you can do much better than this
house. They're a non fiction house.

889
01:07:30.639 --> 01:07:32.039
Your book is going to get lost
there. And I said, but what

890
01:07:32.159 --> 01:07:35.480
about my friend Jim, And he
said, he'll understand, believe me,

891
01:07:35.880 --> 01:07:41.880
he's waiting for this call, which
was more or less true. I then

892
01:07:42.400 --> 01:07:48.239
got into a long tug of war
with the Conan Doyle estate, and that

893
01:07:48.480 --> 01:07:53.199
took such a long time that I
wound up writing another book. I got

894
01:07:53.280 --> 01:07:59.079
so bored I wrote a novel called
Target Practice that actually came out first.

895
01:08:00.159 --> 01:08:05.960
It was written second. But by
nineteen seventy four or August whenever it was,

896
01:08:06.519 --> 01:08:11.440
I think it was August, matters
had been resolved with the Doyle estate

897
01:08:11.920 --> 01:08:15.720
and the seven percent Solution was published. I imagined that Sherlike almost was not

898
01:08:15.800 --> 01:08:19.479
in the public domain by that time. He was not in the public domain.

899
01:08:19.680 --> 01:08:26.000
Somebody said, where ignorance is bliss
tis folly to be wise. If

900
01:08:26.079 --> 01:08:30.039
I had done my research and learned
that he was not in the public domain,

901
01:08:30.640 --> 01:08:34.000
I would not have written the book. So it was great that I

902
01:08:34.159 --> 01:08:39.119
was stupid. By the way,
nothing has changed. I wound up making

903
01:08:39.159 --> 01:08:44.520
a deal with them that was I
may say, no seven percent solution.

904
01:08:45.159 --> 01:08:50.760
They made money off this. The
estate has gone through so many permutations and

905
01:08:51.000 --> 01:09:00.279
convulsions. It's a rather sordid tale
of cupidity and greed. And what they

906
01:09:00.399 --> 01:09:06.039
basically do at this point is they
wait for a movie about to come out

907
01:09:06.199 --> 01:09:12.399
or a book about to be published, and then they pounce and they try

908
01:09:12.479 --> 01:09:16.560
to get you to pay them off
rather than take them to court. So

909
01:09:16.680 --> 01:09:20.319
a big studio like Warner Brothers will
say here's ten thousand dollars, go away,

910
01:09:20.760 --> 01:09:26.279
and they go away because that makes
more sense to them than taking them

911
01:09:26.359 --> 01:09:31.079
to court. But a man named
Les Clinger, who is a Sherlockean scholar

912
01:09:31.199 --> 01:09:35.199
and happens to be a lawyer,
he did take them to court and he

913
01:09:35.359 --> 01:09:40.399
busted it wide open. And now
Sherlock Holmes, for all practical purposes,

914
01:09:40.920 --> 01:09:45.119
is in the public domain. How
was your relationship with them when you did

915
01:09:45.239 --> 01:09:48.000
the West End Horror, because that
was only what two years afterwards, if

916
01:09:48.560 --> 01:09:53.800
even that long. Because of the
weird timeline here, I'm thinking that I

917
01:09:53.920 --> 01:09:58.000
must have still paid them something.
But I'm not one hundred percent. I

918
01:09:58.119 --> 01:10:03.680
have a good, but not perfect
memory. I make weird mistakes. This

919
01:10:03.880 --> 01:10:10.600
is your first novel, even though
target practice comes out beforehand. Correct and

920
01:10:10.760 --> 01:10:15.720
your first novel gets onto the New
York Times bestseller list, Yes it does.

921
01:10:15.399 --> 01:10:20.479
Wow exactly took a word right out
of my mouth. How long after

922
01:10:20.840 --> 01:10:26.960
that happens or how long after you
publish until the rights get sold? It

923
01:10:27.119 --> 01:10:30.720
was within a year in nineteen seventy
four. It was really weird. Nineteen

924
01:10:30.800 --> 01:10:35.520
seventy four was the year of the
oil embargo and the endless gas lines around

925
01:10:35.560 --> 01:10:42.439
the block. The whole country was
suffering except me. I had the number

926
01:10:42.479 --> 01:10:47.760
one best selling novel in the United
States, and I had a movie I

927
01:10:48.199 --> 01:10:53.800
think Judge d got On the year
that year, or maybe it was the

928
01:10:53.960 --> 01:10:59.439
other one, the Night that Panicked
America, And I was doing really well

929
01:11:00.199 --> 01:11:03.880
then. I By this time I
had a different agent, a lovely young

930
01:11:04.000 --> 01:11:10.760
man who was too smart and too
serious and loved books too much to be

931
01:11:10.880 --> 01:11:15.479
an agent. Very long. But
he had a mom who was in the

932
01:11:15.600 --> 01:11:19.079
movie business, and he settled the
book to his mom. And a lot

933
01:11:19.159 --> 01:11:26.079
of people at the agency criticized him
for the deal he made, but I

934
01:11:26.159 --> 01:11:30.039
think they missed the point. He
sold the damn book and it became a

935
01:11:30.600 --> 01:11:35.800
movie, and all these people had
been too busier, too snotty or something

936
01:11:36.319 --> 01:11:42.840
to pay any attention to Sherlock Holmes. And as part of the deal that

937
01:11:43.119 --> 01:11:45.800
you get to write the screenplay.
Was there on the talk of you directing

938
01:11:45.880 --> 01:11:49.840
At that point I hadn't directed a
feature film yet. I didn't want to

939
01:11:50.680 --> 01:11:54.680
that. I didn't want to do
that. It was certainly a condition that

940
01:11:54.840 --> 01:11:58.000
the only way I would sell it
is if I got to write the script.

941
01:11:58.520 --> 01:12:02.439
How was it adapting your own aren't
well? That is an interesting question,

942
01:12:03.079 --> 01:12:10.279
and there a couple of things.
You have to be prepared when writing

943
01:12:10.359 --> 01:12:14.479
a movie or doing a work of
art. Anything. I suppose to be

944
01:12:14.640 --> 01:12:23.560
sort of ruthless. And I saw
writing the screenplay as an opportunity to improve

945
01:12:23.720 --> 01:12:28.079
the book. I felt, and
artists, I should say, at the

946
01:12:28.199 --> 01:12:33.319
outset, are not the best judges
their own work. It's it's not possible.

947
01:12:33.840 --> 01:12:39.239
There's a Robert Burns poem that goes, I would to God the gifty

948
01:12:39.359 --> 01:12:45.479
gee us to see ourselves as others
see us. We can't. You can't

949
01:12:45.720 --> 01:12:49.000
judge your you know, or at
least you have to know that your opinion

950
01:12:49.840 --> 01:12:53.680
is simply one more opinion. At
this point, the book is out in

951
01:12:53.760 --> 01:12:58.079
the wide world. It's on the
list for forty weeks. People love it,

952
01:12:58.319 --> 01:13:02.319
They're going crazy for it. So
but what was my opinion? My

953
01:13:02.520 --> 01:13:10.239
opinion was that the book had certain
strong points. Its language, its imitation

954
01:13:10.319 --> 01:13:15.720
of Doyle was pretty good. Its
central conceit Holmes meets Freud. Freud cures

955
01:13:15.840 --> 01:13:21.000
Holmes of his cocaine addiction, and
Holmes puts Freud's feet on the path to

956
01:13:21.119 --> 01:13:29.720
psychoanalysis with deductive reasoning. Why.
But the mechanism through which this happens is

957
01:13:29.800 --> 01:13:33.560
that Freud and Holmes wind up collaborating
on the solution to a mystery. And

958
01:13:33.800 --> 01:13:40.680
that's where I thought the book got
weaker, that the mystery was not first

959
01:13:40.800 --> 01:13:45.920
class, and I saw writing the
movie as an opportunity to make it better.

960
01:13:46.319 --> 01:13:50.520
I also saw it as an opportunity
to do something else, and that

961
01:13:50.920 --> 01:13:57.000
is when you have a mystery story
that's a famous mystery and then you make

962
01:13:57.079 --> 01:14:01.359
it into a movie. Everybody who's
read the book already knows who done it.

963
01:14:01.880 --> 01:14:08.439
Case in point, Scott Tarrow's book
Presumed Innocent. When I read Presumed

964
01:14:08.439 --> 01:14:11.920
Innocent, we're all shocked when we
learn who done it. But when we

965
01:14:12.000 --> 01:14:15.680
go to the movie, having read
the book, we already know who done

966
01:14:15.720 --> 01:14:20.760
it. So I thought maybe I
could kill two birds with one stone.

967
01:14:20.800 --> 01:14:26.079
I could make a better mystery,
and I could surprise an audience that thought

968
01:14:26.159 --> 01:14:31.920
they could sort of sit back and
relax and something. And so that's what

969
01:14:32.159 --> 01:14:39.239
I did. I still think that
the movie is too wordy, there's too

970
01:14:39.319 --> 01:14:44.000
much talk in it, and I
kept cutting things down, and I kept

971
01:14:44.039 --> 01:14:46.880
trying to cut them in the even
in the editing room with the director,

972
01:14:47.000 --> 01:14:53.359
Herb Russ, and Herb was very, very protective of all the words.

973
01:14:54.279 --> 01:14:57.680
No one would have believed that here's
the writers saying, geez, Herb,

974
01:14:57.720 --> 01:15:00.279
we got to cut this out.
We don't need it the audiences ahead of

975
01:15:00.399 --> 01:15:04.760
us, and him saying, no, you're debawling your own script. There's

976
01:15:04.800 --> 01:15:09.119
a scene in the movie where two
people in the movie I don't want to

977
01:15:09.119 --> 01:15:13.279
give away things, but wind up
playing tennis. And the way that scene

978
01:15:13.319 --> 01:15:15.159
came to be written, was that
the book itself was finished. It was

979
01:15:15.199 --> 01:15:18.000
at the publisher, and I had
a dream. I woke up there were

980
01:15:18.039 --> 01:15:23.359
two characters in my movie playing tennis. And I lay in bed and figured

981
01:15:23.399 --> 01:15:27.920
out why that was cool, and
called my editor and said, you gotta

982
01:15:27.960 --> 01:15:30.159
put this in. And now I'm
telling her Bross, you got to take

983
01:15:30.199 --> 01:15:34.199
this out. Nobody wants to see
two guys playing a set of tennis,

984
01:15:34.479 --> 01:15:39.960
unless it's Alfred Hitchcock, strangers on
a train and somebody's going to plant the

985
01:15:40.039 --> 01:15:45.279
cigarette lighter as murder evidence. Nobody
wants to see the movie stop while these

986
01:15:45.319 --> 01:15:47.720
two guys play tennis. And herb
said, you're wrong. Everybody loves the

987
01:15:47.800 --> 01:15:51.039
tennis scene. We have to keep
it. And he was right. He

988
01:15:51.560 --> 01:15:56.520
was right on that one. They
like that one. Maybe they talk too

989
01:15:56.640 --> 01:16:00.640
much in the movie, but it's
smart talk, it's good talk. The

990
01:16:00.199 --> 01:16:04.840
acting is terrific, the music is
the movie is really good to look at,

991
01:16:04.920 --> 01:16:11.119
and so forth. So. But
yes, I had wanted to cut

992
01:16:11.199 --> 01:16:15.199
things out, cut things down,
sharpen them. It was a do over

993
01:16:15.479 --> 01:16:20.159
in a way. Must be very
interesting to be able to revisit and revisit

994
01:16:20.279 --> 01:16:25.039
so close to publishing. You're only
like a year out when you're able to

995
01:16:25.600 --> 01:16:28.920
look back at this work that you
had obviously you had lived with it for

996
01:16:29.000 --> 01:16:32.319
a long time, but that you
had just written well, I guess two

997
01:16:32.439 --> 01:16:38.479
years prior with the whole battles with
the estate. Yeah. I mean again,

998
01:16:38.560 --> 01:16:42.520
this is all sort of lattened out
in a sort of telescopic hindsight.

999
01:16:43.159 --> 01:16:48.239
What was going on at different at
different times. But that's that's pretty much

1000
01:16:48.359 --> 01:16:55.079
my recollection of events. What was
that relationship like with Herbert Ross? It

1001
01:16:55.319 --> 01:17:00.279
was very close and very lovely.
I liked him, adored his wife,

1002
01:17:00.640 --> 01:17:08.279
Nora Kay, who was America's most
famous dramatic ballerina. She had long since

1003
01:17:08.399 --> 01:17:15.840
retired, but she was a remarkable
woman, a remarkable helpmate, had incredible

1004
01:17:15.960 --> 01:17:19.640
taste. They really sort of just
included me. I said, you know,

1005
01:17:19.720 --> 01:17:23.760
I want to direct a movie and
I want to watch how one has

1006
01:17:23.880 --> 01:17:30.760
made. And he was very,
very solicitous and careful about dealing with me,

1007
01:17:30.880 --> 01:17:34.840
and as I say, more often
than not, he was protective of

1008
01:17:35.840 --> 01:17:42.439
the book and its movie incarnation.
At one point I said to me,

1009
01:17:42.600 --> 01:17:45.800
we should cut this out. And
I remember because it was so unusual the

1010
01:17:45.920 --> 01:17:50.960
words he said, you're debawling your
own book. I think he meant castrating,

1011
01:17:51.039 --> 01:17:55.960
but he used debawling, which I
remember. You know, I don't

1012
01:17:56.000 --> 01:18:00.199
think I was, but I think
you have to be ruthless. Maybe there's

1013
01:18:00.239 --> 01:18:03.560
only two rules in show business.
You know, if it works, leave

1014
01:18:03.600 --> 01:18:09.199
it in and variety is the spice
of life. And try not to repeat

1015
01:18:09.239 --> 01:18:14.239
yourself. Henry James said that the
least demand that you can make of a

1016
01:18:14.319 --> 01:18:17.520
work of art is that it be
interesting, and the most demand is that

1017
01:18:17.640 --> 01:18:21.960
it be moving. And I just
kept saying, this has to click along

1018
01:18:23.720 --> 01:18:28.840
faster than it does. The end
result is it's a terrific movie. I've

1019
01:18:28.920 --> 01:18:32.000
seen it since and you look at
it and go, wow, this is

1020
01:18:32.079 --> 01:18:35.439
really good. But at the time
you just, you know, remember the

1021
01:18:35.560 --> 01:18:43.079
birthing struggles. Well, the cast
is amazing. You cannot get better actors

1022
01:18:43.199 --> 01:18:47.079
altogether one place. At this time, two of the three leads were my

1023
01:18:47.239 --> 01:18:53.479
idea. My idea was Alan Arkin
as Freud, and my idea was Robert

1024
01:18:53.560 --> 01:18:59.000
Duval as Watson. And he became
my idea when I heard somewhere along the

1025
01:18:59.119 --> 01:19:03.239
line that he was interested in playing
Watson. And one of the things about

1026
01:19:03.359 --> 01:19:09.720
the novel is seven percent solution is
that, at least as intended by me,

1027
01:19:10.479 --> 01:19:15.159
it was a revisionist look at the
Sherlock Holmes that we had seen in

1028
01:19:15.479 --> 01:19:24.560
other books and other movies, which
I mainly hated because I never understood why

1029
01:19:24.680 --> 01:19:30.279
Watson is portrayed as a jerk,
because I didn't understand why a genius wants

1030
01:19:30.319 --> 01:19:35.840
to hang out with a jerk.
That just didn't compute for me. When

1031
01:19:35.920 --> 01:19:41.840
we cast Watson, I didn't want
another Nigel Bruce, another Colonel Blimp.

1032
01:19:42.359 --> 01:19:45.680
And when I heard that Robert Duval
and somebody says not English, I said,

1033
01:19:45.880 --> 01:19:48.600
you're missing the point. This is
a great actor, this is one

1034
01:19:48.640 --> 01:19:54.880
of America's greatest actor, and he
wants to play doctor Watson in our movie.

1035
01:19:55.359 --> 01:19:59.640
Come on. So I fought very
hard to get him. Vanessa Redgrave

1036
01:19:59.720 --> 01:20:04.720
at the time, I think nobody
wanted to hire her because of what they

1037
01:20:04.760 --> 01:20:11.520
took to be her pro Palestinian sentiments. So she certainly, you know,

1038
01:20:11.680 --> 01:20:16.000
wanted to work. That's my recollection. How she got cast. Lawrence Olivier,

1039
01:20:16.800 --> 01:20:20.920
who was my idol from the time
I was about five years old and

1040
01:20:21.039 --> 01:20:26.840
saw him in the first movie ever
so, and I just was fixated on

1041
01:20:27.079 --> 01:20:31.359
him and He was one of the
biggest influences in my life. When I

1042
01:20:31.560 --> 01:20:38.279
was I don't know about fourteen,
I'm guessing I saw played hooky from school

1043
01:20:38.800 --> 01:20:43.239
to go to a revival movie theater
and see him in a movie that I

1044
01:20:43.319 --> 01:20:47.079
thought was called Henry V. And
it had pictures of you know, guys

1045
01:20:47.119 --> 01:20:51.880
on horses and armor with swords,
and but it never said Shakespeare. So

1046
01:20:53.520 --> 01:20:55.359
you know, I just walked in. I didn't know what I was.

1047
01:20:55.479 --> 01:20:58.560
I thought I was seeing the swords
and the and the and the horses,

1048
01:20:58.680 --> 01:21:01.479
which I got out all of that, but I also got like the greatest

1049
01:21:01.520 --> 01:21:04.319
movie I'd ever seen in my life. I got the greatest actor, I

1050
01:21:04.399 --> 01:21:09.640
got the greatest writer. So I
was totally fixated on Lauren Silia from that

1051
01:21:10.239 --> 01:21:15.319
point on. And then while we're
casting the movie, her Bras says to

1052
01:21:15.439 --> 01:21:19.319
me, what do you think about
Laurence Olivia is Professor Moriarty and like,

1053
01:21:19.439 --> 01:21:25.960
oh, my wiring is shorting out. I'm thinking be cool, normal,

1054
01:21:26.520 --> 01:21:32.279
and I go, yes, that's
really really empty. Yeah it looks good,

1055
01:21:32.319 --> 01:21:35.239
it's good good, you know,
and I'm thinking, oh my god,

1056
01:21:35.319 --> 01:21:39.960
this will never happen, but it
did. What did you think of

1057
01:21:40.159 --> 01:21:45.760
Nicole Williamson. Nicole Williamson was her
brass's idea. We had both seen him

1058
01:21:45.920 --> 01:21:51.199
on Broadway doing Hamlet, and my
first idea was Peter O'Toole. Herb had

1059
01:21:51.239 --> 01:21:56.720
made a movie with Peter O'Toole,
a musical version of Goodbye Mister Chips,

1060
01:21:57.239 --> 01:22:01.720
and they had not got on.
Sol was not in the running. He

1061
01:22:01.920 --> 01:22:06.760
mentioned Nicole Williamson, and I thought, that's either a brilliant idea or a

1062
01:22:08.159 --> 01:22:11.800
terrible idea. And it turned out
it was a brilliant idea because it was

1063
01:22:11.960 --> 01:22:15.760
such a curve bootle. But then
again, we weren't making a Sherlock Holmes

1064
01:22:15.920 --> 01:22:21.399
movie. We're making a movie about
Sherlock Holmes, and that was different,

1065
01:22:21.720 --> 01:22:28.880
and Nicol was different. He threw
quit a curveball with the idea of Moriarty

1066
01:22:29.399 --> 01:22:33.840
not being the Napoleon of crime.
Other people have made similar suggestions. And

1067
01:22:33.960 --> 01:22:38.720
one of the things that I discovered
when I was unemployed and at the beginning

1068
01:22:38.760 --> 01:22:45.239
of my Hollywood career, I stumbled
onto all the books about Sherlock Holmes written

1069
01:22:45.279 --> 01:22:51.479
by other people. There is just
volume after volume after volume of books on

1070
01:22:51.720 --> 01:22:58.159
every aspect about Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock
Holmes and music, Sherlock Holmes, and

1071
01:22:58.319 --> 01:23:00.800
women, Sherlock Holmes, And how
did he go to the bathroom? Sherlock

1072
01:23:00.880 --> 01:23:08.239
Holmes in cocaine? Sherlock Holmes and
everything. And there was a series of

1073
01:23:08.399 --> 01:23:12.680
essays by a gun named Trevor Hall. But a lot of people have pointed

1074
01:23:12.760 --> 01:23:19.239
out that Moriarty isn't seen by anybody
except Sherlock Holmes. No, Watson takes

1075
01:23:19.279 --> 01:23:24.000
the whole story at face value,
but he never all he sees is a

1076
01:23:24.039 --> 01:23:29.119
guy shaking his fist at a departing
train. I'm sure there's a lot of

1077
01:23:29.199 --> 01:23:32.399
pissed off guys who have missed trains
wound up shaking their fist off and the

1078
01:23:32.800 --> 01:23:38.840
goddab train or the engineer who left
on time. And I also never liked

1079
01:23:39.479 --> 01:23:45.079
the Moriarty idea because what I really
loved as an eleven or twelve year old

1080
01:23:45.199 --> 01:23:51.079
kid reading those stories was how real
they seemed to me. Whether they would

1081
01:23:51.119 --> 01:23:56.000
seem as real now, I don't
know, but what I glimbed on to

1082
01:23:56.520 --> 01:24:01.680
at the time was the little things
that the stories were about. The kidnapped

1083
01:24:01.880 --> 01:24:09.520
Raceforce, the people who swallowed LSD
and lost their marbles, the Speckled Band,

1084
01:24:09.680 --> 01:24:15.920
the Redheaded League, all that kind
of real stuff, or real enough

1085
01:24:15.479 --> 01:24:20.359
real to me, as opposed to
the Napoleon of Crime, which struck me

1086
01:24:20.439 --> 01:24:27.439
as sort of the prototype for Lex
Luthor or something, and I didn't buy

1087
01:24:27.520 --> 01:24:30.640
it. And somewhere, you know, later I understood, Okay, he

1088
01:24:30.880 --> 01:24:35.119
created this guy because he wanted to
kill off Sherlock, and this is what

1089
01:24:35.279 --> 01:24:40.960
he dredged up to do it.
Somewhere I read this theory that Moriarty had

1090
01:24:41.000 --> 01:24:44.760
been the math tutor, and I
took that idea and ran with it.

1091
01:24:45.239 --> 01:24:48.039
Well, I do love how you
set all of these stories in the real

1092
01:24:48.159 --> 01:24:53.840
world, and like in the West
End Horror, having George Bernard Shaw there

1093
01:24:54.239 --> 01:25:00.319
or brom Stoker and just interacting with
historical figures and just capturing that age so

1094
01:25:00.600 --> 01:25:05.319
well, or with Canary Trainer when
he goes to Paris and just hearing about

1095
01:25:05.600 --> 01:25:09.560
what was happening at that time,
and you know, what was going on

1096
01:25:09.760 --> 01:25:14.039
in the world of opera at that
point. I mean, just setting things

1097
01:25:14.279 --> 01:25:18.000
in that real world and then also
having you be this poor guy. By

1098
01:25:18.079 --> 01:25:21.840
the third book that I'm reading,
where it's just like, ah, here's

1099
01:25:21.840 --> 01:25:26.039
another manuscript that I got a hold
of. I almost feel bad for you

1100
01:25:26.159 --> 01:25:30.399
because people keep sending you to these
manuscripts somehow. Yeah, it's a terrible

1101
01:25:30.520 --> 01:25:34.800
burden. How has your approach to
writing Sherlock Holmes changed over the years,

1102
01:25:34.920 --> 01:25:42.760
or if you remain pretty steady.
I read Doyle less often than I formerly

1103
01:25:42.920 --> 01:25:45.960
did. I've got the thing so
much in my DNA at this point,

1104
01:25:46.479 --> 01:25:54.439
and I know that I'm pushing the
envelope. When I wrote The seven Percent

1105
01:25:54.560 --> 01:26:00.920
Solution. There had been Holmes imitations
before, and I had read some of

1106
01:26:00.000 --> 01:26:05.640
them, but I basically had the
fields to myself. This was just boom.

1107
01:26:06.039 --> 01:26:12.680
Holmes suddenly was everywhere thanks to this
book, and in the wake of

1108
01:26:12.800 --> 01:26:18.079
that, this whole cottage Sherlock Holmes
industry has cropped up. If I read

1109
01:26:18.199 --> 01:26:23.399
nothing but Holmes imitations between now and
the time I dropped dead, I wouldn't

1110
01:26:23.439 --> 01:26:26.680
have time to read anything else that. That's how much there is on the

1111
01:26:26.840 --> 01:26:31.720
market. Holmes's daughter, Holmes's brother, Holmes's father's sister, and on and

1112
01:26:31.840 --> 01:26:38.199
on and on. And I don't
read a lot of the imitations because I

1113
01:26:38.279 --> 01:26:44.359
guess I'm insecure enough that I worried
that those imitations would be better than my

1114
01:26:44.520 --> 01:26:49.279
imitations. I'm insecure, so I
don't want to read. But even worse

1115
01:26:50.199 --> 01:26:56.880
is that I might wind up trying
to imitate those imitations instead of my own

1116
01:26:57.439 --> 01:27:04.000
version of Doyle. And I've gotten
bolder as I've become older, and there

1117
01:27:04.079 --> 01:27:12.000
are certain paths that are open to
me that we're not exactly open before,

1118
01:27:12.640 --> 01:27:18.479
by which I mean, since my
stories pretty much advanced the Holmesyan chronology.

1119
01:27:19.159 --> 01:27:23.359
By the time we get to my
new one, The Return of the Pharaoh,

1120
01:27:23.520 --> 01:27:29.640
we're into nineteen eleven. He's different, language is different. There's telephones

1121
01:27:29.720 --> 01:27:33.119
where they're only used to be telegraphs, and there's motor cars where they're only

1122
01:27:33.239 --> 01:27:39.319
used to be carriages, So that
sort of frees me up. Also,

1123
01:27:40.159 --> 01:27:45.119
the social world has changed the role
of women in it. And the other

1124
01:27:45.279 --> 01:27:49.319
thing I found, and I found
this with the seven Percent Solution and all

1125
01:27:49.399 --> 01:27:54.600
the others, with the exception of
the West End Horror, which does take

1126
01:27:54.760 --> 01:28:00.800
place in London in England, is
that getting home out of town freeze me

1127
01:28:00.960 --> 01:28:06.720
up. Whether I'm putting in Paris, in Russia, in Egypt. Those

1128
01:28:08.640 --> 01:28:13.560
trips abroad make him a sort of
fish out of Thames water and allow me

1129
01:28:13.680 --> 01:28:18.560
to sort of experiment with his character
a little bit, raise his game occasionally

1130
01:28:18.640 --> 01:28:24.960
I go back and sit down and
reread one of the stories, whether it's

1131
01:28:25.000 --> 01:28:30.079
The Devil's Foot or the Bruce Partinson
Plans or Silver Blaze, or you know,

1132
01:28:30.359 --> 01:28:35.279
once in a while, just to
sort of get it in my bloodstream

1133
01:28:35.319 --> 01:28:42.199
again. But I've become a supposed
boulder. And the thing that I guess

1134
01:28:42.239 --> 01:28:47.039
I'm working my way up to saying
here is that if the imitations become too

1135
01:28:47.239 --> 01:28:53.279
slavish, and I've noticed this when
I occasionally do open one of these other

1136
01:28:53.439 --> 01:28:58.840
pastiches and start reading them, it
starts to resemble Taxidermy's. It starts to

1137
01:28:59.000 --> 01:29:04.680
feel like a stuffed moosehead s something. And then I think it may be

1138
01:29:04.960 --> 01:29:12.279
very accurate. The author may never
have used a word that Doyle didn't use,

1139
01:29:13.079 --> 01:29:15.640
but somehow it comes out lifeless.
Not all of them, as I

1140
01:29:15.720 --> 01:29:19.199
say, some of them are better
than mine. I have to admit I

1141
01:29:19.359 --> 01:29:26.840
do appreciate how you have the bit
about americanisms in your openings that I was

1142
01:29:27.119 --> 01:29:30.159
a good kind of caveat in there
as well. It's a caveat or a

1143
01:29:30.279 --> 01:29:36.479
cop out the caveaut. Do you
have any favorite adaptations of Holmes? Do

1144
01:29:36.560 --> 01:29:40.239
you have any particular ones that you
say, oh, they did a good

1145
01:29:40.319 --> 01:29:44.640
job, or I really like that
actor's interpretation of this. I confess I

1146
01:29:44.800 --> 01:29:48.399
have a real soft spot for the
Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, the Billy

1147
01:29:48.479 --> 01:29:55.159
Wiler movie, which I realized a
lot of people have a lot of difficulties

1148
01:29:55.239 --> 01:30:00.199
with, and I suppose I could
say yes, but I really love it.

1149
01:30:01.039 --> 01:30:05.920
I love the look of it.
I love the crazy story that they

1150
01:30:06.359 --> 01:30:11.560
dreamt up for it. I realized
that there were other stories that it was

1151
01:30:11.600 --> 01:30:15.680
an anthology, but I have to
say, not having seen those other parts

1152
01:30:15.720 --> 01:30:18.079
of it, I don't miss them. I love the music, which is

1153
01:30:18.159 --> 01:30:24.159
the Miklos Roja Violin Concerto, which
I think is great. It's the only

1154
01:30:24.239 --> 01:30:29.199
Billy Wilder movie that I know of
without a trace of cynicism, not a

1155
01:30:29.319 --> 01:30:33.439
trace. It's a side of him
that you don't see anywhere else. I

1156
01:30:33.640 --> 01:30:39.680
love one, a funny one called
Without a Clue, where Holmes is the

1157
01:30:39.800 --> 01:30:44.119
dummy and Watson is the smart one. I think that's great. I really

1158
01:30:44.199 --> 01:30:48.520
love that. I love the Peter
Cushing Hound of the Baskerville's pretty straight ahead

1159
01:30:49.039 --> 01:30:54.079
Sherlock Holmes. I think that's very
good. And there was an old television

1160
01:30:54.239 --> 01:31:00.479
series with Ronald Howard, where I
guess is the son of Leslie Howard as

1161
01:31:00.600 --> 01:31:08.199
Sherlock Holmes and an actor named h
Marion Crawford as Watson. And I thought

1162
01:31:08.239 --> 01:31:12.159
those were pretty good. I don't
know if they're still good, but time

1163
01:31:12.640 --> 01:31:15.760
I liked them a lot. But
I was not a fan of Basil Rathbone

1164
01:31:15.800 --> 01:31:20.439
and Nigel Bruce, and I'm and
I'm not a fan of movies where there's

1165
01:31:20.560 --> 01:31:28.760
some moriarty like sinister world plot equivalent. That isn't what I liked about Holmes.

1166
01:31:29.079 --> 01:31:34.079
I like those stories, those skookie
crazy stories, the Red Headed League,

1167
01:31:34.720 --> 01:31:40.119
Silver Blade, the Devil's Foot,
the Bruce Partins and Plans, the

1168
01:31:40.279 --> 01:31:44.079
Greek conterpreter of the Naval Treaty,
and even the ones I like that.

1169
01:31:44.279 --> 01:31:48.319
Sometimes Holmes is wrong the Yellow Face. It's a good will. So how

1170
01:31:48.359 --> 01:31:53.560
do you keep coming up with these
ideas, because over the last what four

1171
01:31:53.760 --> 01:31:57.560
years, you've done at least two
more books, The Adventures of Peculiar Protocols

1172
01:31:57.600 --> 01:32:00.239
and the Return of the Pharaoh.
Well, the short answers, I don't

1173
01:32:00.279 --> 01:32:03.439
come up with them very often.
It's unusual for me. I mean,

1174
01:32:04.000 --> 01:32:10.399
think between the West End Horror and
the Canary Trainer was I don't know,

1175
01:32:10.479 --> 01:32:15.880
fifteen sixteen years, and then there's
like twenty three years between, when you

1176
01:32:15.000 --> 01:32:19.079
can count the rings on my tree
trunk to find out how long this has

1177
01:32:19.119 --> 01:32:24.079
been going on. I write them
when I get an idea, or when

1178
01:32:24.119 --> 01:32:30.159
I'm given an idea that will not
let go. The Canary Trainer was written

1179
01:32:30.199 --> 01:32:35.119
after a long hiatus because the movie
deal that I'd been anticipating had fallen apart,

1180
01:32:35.600 --> 01:32:44.319
and so had my income for that
year, and I was very distressed

1181
01:32:44.439 --> 01:32:47.760
or distraught. And I was in
a bookstore, which is place I like

1182
01:32:47.920 --> 01:32:51.399
the haunt, if there are any, and I saw a copy of The

1183
01:32:51.479 --> 01:32:57.000
Phantom of the Opera, the novel, which I realized I had never read,

1184
01:32:57.520 --> 01:33:00.600
and I was thumbing reading the introduction, and somebody's that, wow,

1185
01:33:00.680 --> 01:33:04.159
it's kind of amazing that Holmes never
crosses paths with the Phantom because the dates

1186
01:33:04.239 --> 01:33:09.880
work out. And I remember just
standing there looking around and saying, is

1187
01:33:09.920 --> 01:33:15.119
anybody else like seeing this idea on
this page? So that's how I wrote

1188
01:33:15.199 --> 01:33:18.880
that one. And then the Protocols
came about twenty some odd years later,

1189
01:33:19.479 --> 01:33:23.600
But I had really been thinking about
it for at least ten years, because

1190
01:33:23.960 --> 01:33:28.640
I realized at a certain point that
when it comes to the Holmes books,

1191
01:33:29.279 --> 01:33:32.000
I'm a forger. I forge,
whether you want to call it Watson or

1192
01:33:32.079 --> 01:33:36.199
Doyle, but I'm forging. And
then I started getting interested in forgery and

1193
01:33:36.359 --> 01:33:43.199
collecting a library about forgery. And
when you start studying forgery, and I

1194
01:33:43.319 --> 01:33:48.640
include paintings, music, book whatever, it isn't long before you come across

1195
01:33:48.800 --> 01:33:54.720
the biggest, baddest, most vicious
forgery of all time, which is the

1196
01:33:54.840 --> 01:34:00.479
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. And that's a mind or I mean,

1197
01:34:00.600 --> 01:34:05.760
your listeners can google it. Being
distressed and astounded as I was,

1198
01:34:06.359 --> 01:34:15.239
and somewhere I thought, how do
I should Holmes try to expose the Protocols

1199
01:34:15.319 --> 01:34:18.399
of the Learned Elders of Zion?
And I was thinking about that for ten

1200
01:34:18.520 --> 01:34:24.720
years before I found my way into
it. And then my agent and my

1201
01:34:24.840 --> 01:34:28.640
friend Alan Gasmer, I don't know
after the book came out or when it

1202
01:34:28.760 --> 01:34:32.039
was coming out, he said what
about Holmes in Egypt? And that instantly

1203
01:34:32.640 --> 01:34:35.439
took root. And I have an
idea of you know, I'm working on

1204
01:34:35.520 --> 01:34:42.880
another one, which again is slightly
weird to have them in quick succession like

1205
01:34:43.079 --> 01:34:45.760
this but it'll take me a while. Can you talk a little bit about

1206
01:34:45.880 --> 01:34:53.079
how the seven percent solution helped to
bed to time after time? When the

1207
01:34:53.159 --> 01:34:56.159
book came out, I can't remember
whether it was the book or the movie,

1208
01:34:56.199 --> 01:35:00.720
but I think it was the book. I was contacted I a friend

1209
01:35:00.760 --> 01:35:03.960
of mine from the University of Iowa
who had been at graduate school there when

1210
01:35:04.000 --> 01:35:10.239
I was an undergrad, and he
said, I have I'm writing a novel

1211
01:35:10.439 --> 01:35:15.960
which is more or less inspired by
yours. I have sixty five pages and

1212
01:35:15.079 --> 01:35:19.600
an outline. Would you read what
I've written and tell me which you think?

1213
01:35:20.079 --> 01:35:24.479
And in those days I had time
to do that, so I said

1214
01:35:24.560 --> 01:35:30.000
sure, and I read his sixty
five pages, which was about young H.

1215
01:35:30.119 --> 01:35:32.760
G. Wells, who, having
invented a time machine, hasn't quite

1216
01:35:32.800 --> 01:35:38.399
worked up the nerve to use it. And then Jack the Ripper escapes to

1217
01:35:38.479 --> 01:35:45.199
the future from the police using it, etc. And I gave him my

1218
01:35:45.399 --> 01:35:48.960
notes and I found, you know, what I thought, and what I

1219
01:35:49.000 --> 01:35:54.199
thought would be useful and so forth. And then I didn't think anything more

1220
01:35:54.279 --> 01:35:59.319
about it, except that I couldn't
stop thinking about it. What a cool

1221
01:35:59.399 --> 01:36:02.680
idea. I would never have had
such an idea in a million years.

1222
01:36:03.439 --> 01:36:09.239
But it also struck me, as
I would like lie awake thinking about this,

1223
01:36:09.960 --> 01:36:13.279
that it was really a much more
visual idea than it was a verbal

1224
01:36:13.359 --> 01:36:17.720
one. That it was two guys
in Victorian outfits running around a modern world

1225
01:36:18.359 --> 01:36:23.880
that seemed like a movie to me, A world in which everything they saw

1226
01:36:24.119 --> 01:36:28.920
we would see through their eyes.
A bag of doritos would be sci fi.

1227
01:36:29.600 --> 01:36:34.079
I don't think very quickly, so
it was maybe a couple months later

1228
01:36:34.159 --> 01:36:36.159
I woke up in the middle of
the night and thought, you're an idiot.

1229
01:36:36.159 --> 01:36:40.239
Why you just option his book,
which is what I did, and

1230
01:36:40.319 --> 01:36:43.479
then I wrote the screenplay and that's
how the movie got made. What else

1231
01:36:43.520 --> 01:36:46.760
are you up to these days?
I am working on a podcast series with

1232
01:36:46.960 --> 01:36:55.399
Paramount Pictures. I am working I
did the Medici with Frank Spotnitz. Frank

1233
01:36:55.439 --> 01:37:00.159
and I are working on two other
television series. There's not enough time in

1234
01:37:00.239 --> 01:37:03.600
the day. Well, I'm glad
that you're working with Frank. We had

1235
01:37:03.720 --> 01:37:06.680
him on a show a long time
ago, and such a nice guy.

1236
01:37:08.479 --> 01:37:13.520
He's not only nice, he's amazingly
talented. Those don't always go together,

1237
01:37:14.039 --> 01:37:17.920
but he is great, you know, he's terrific. Mister Maya Thank you

1238
01:37:18.039 --> 01:37:20.560
so much for your time. This
has been such a pleasure talking with you

1239
01:37:20.640 --> 01:37:58.760
again. Thanks for coming back for
more. All right, guys, we

1240
01:37:58.840 --> 01:38:01.159
are back and we're talking about seven
percent solution. And the one thing,

1241
01:38:01.359 --> 01:38:05.000
you know, I brought this up
in our first episode. I was talking

1242
01:38:05.000 --> 01:38:09.119
about how for me growing up in
the seventies, and I think you guys

1243
01:38:09.159 --> 01:38:14.359
are somewhat similar ages. Sherlock Holmes
was everywhere, and it just seemed to

1244
01:38:14.439 --> 01:38:16.159
be the thing. And then last
week, David, you mentioned how there

1245
01:38:16.159 --> 01:38:24.159
seemed to be like this proliferation of
homes in the seventies, and I just

1246
01:38:24.319 --> 01:38:28.159
kept wondering why that is. And
the reason I keep coming back to is

1247
01:38:28.880 --> 01:38:32.319
the nineteen seventies things were still in
such turmoil, at least here in the

1248
01:38:32.439 --> 01:38:34.880
United States, if not the world. I mean, I got I think

1249
01:38:34.880 --> 01:38:39.119
of nineteen sixty eight. Of course, I always talk about France and just

1250
01:38:39.680 --> 01:38:43.159
there were movements in Japan and just
some of the different countries. Of course,

1251
01:38:43.199 --> 01:38:45.479
there's the product spring. All this
stuff is going out in sixty eight.

1252
01:38:46.079 --> 01:38:50.520
Sixties are rough. Seventies don't really
start off too much better, especially

1253
01:38:50.640 --> 01:38:56.760
here when we've got Watergate, and
one of the things that Watergate brought around

1254
01:38:56.840 --> 01:39:01.359
for us and conspiracy theories and all. This is the rise of the investigative

1255
01:39:01.399 --> 01:39:06.600
reporter and the rise of just this
reporter as hero. And I'm wondering,

1256
01:39:06.880 --> 01:39:11.319
and feel free to shoot me down
on this, but I'm wondering if Holmes

1257
01:39:12.079 --> 01:39:17.960
having this resurgence of popularity had something
to do with this need to have somebody

1258
01:39:18.079 --> 01:39:23.199
who can put order to all of
this chaos that we re seeing. Well,

1259
01:39:23.239 --> 01:39:27.640
the one the films that we're looking
at, Smarter Brother accepted because that's

1260
01:39:27.720 --> 01:39:30.439
kind of a comedy. The three
films that we're looking at, ordered by

1261
01:39:30.479 --> 01:39:36.800
Decree seven percent Solution in Private Life, they all represent under the umbrella term

1262
01:39:36.840 --> 01:39:41.720
of humanized. It's a humanized Holmes. He is not the hero of the

1263
01:39:41.800 --> 01:39:45.279
books anymore. He is disillusioned,
he is a drug addict. He is

1264
01:39:45.800 --> 01:39:53.920
kind of broken in many ways,
and he's reimagined as a different kind of

1265
01:39:54.039 --> 01:39:57.520
hero, a hero that is,
as they say, as they say in

1266
01:39:57.600 --> 01:40:01.800
this film from the we're talking about, the most heroic thing that Watson ever

1267
01:40:01.840 --> 01:40:06.159
saw him do was kicked the cocaine
habit. The whole notion of what it

1268
01:40:06.239 --> 01:40:13.039
means to be a hero is reimagined, and that's quite in keeping with the

1269
01:40:13.159 --> 01:40:16.640
kind of anti heroic tone of a
lot of the cultural production of the nineteen

1270
01:40:16.720 --> 01:40:20.840
seventies. I'm not sure if you
guys are baseball fans at all, but

1271
01:40:21.399 --> 01:40:27.720
there was a book published in nineteen
seventy called Ball four I Got named Jim

1272
01:40:27.800 --> 01:40:32.239
Boughton, which was a behind the
scenes diary of a season where he pitched

1273
01:40:32.239 --> 01:40:36.640
from the Seattle pilots, and he
had previously been on the Great Yankee teams,

1274
01:40:38.199 --> 01:40:41.640
and it was this kind of tell
all and a lot of people involved

1275
01:40:41.680 --> 01:40:45.840
with baseball they were absolutely horrified.
He's telling you this is what Mickey Mannel

1276
01:40:45.840 --> 01:40:50.359
would do in the dugout, and
it wasn't particularly savory. And so the

1277
01:40:50.479 --> 01:40:56.840
great heroes were systematically kind of being
trashed one after the other. But in

1278
01:40:56.920 --> 01:41:01.359
a way we're made even more endearing
because they were more human and they were

1279
01:41:01.439 --> 01:41:06.560
able to overcome the various foibles and
issues that human beings have. So it

1280
01:41:06.760 --> 01:41:12.840
really was the celebration not the pure
as the driven snow type of hero.

1281
01:41:13.279 --> 01:41:15.640
Not not Sean Wayne as a hero, Clint Eastwood as a cowboy hero.

1282
01:41:16.199 --> 01:41:19.840
And that's not a good guy.
Clint Eastwood, you know, the spaghetti

1283
01:41:19.880 --> 01:41:24.920
Western cowboy he shoots people. He
I think one of the films he rapes

1284
01:41:24.960 --> 01:41:28.680
a woman. He's not a good
guy. And James Bond, you know,

1285
01:41:28.840 --> 01:41:30.960
was a kind of anti hero as
well. He's a professional assassin who's

1286
01:41:30.960 --> 01:41:35.239
a hero. So you saw this
kind of sweeping change with Watergate, with

1287
01:41:35.479 --> 01:41:42.960
Vietnam, with this understanding that after
the love generation of the sixties, you

1288
01:41:43.000 --> 01:41:45.640
know, the Summer of Love sixty
seven, everything was kind of starting to

1289
01:41:45.800 --> 01:41:51.800
go sideways in Downhill, and you
saw art and films responding to that zeitgeist.

1290
01:41:53.720 --> 01:41:57.960
The seventies are kind of a decade
where everything went edgy, right,

1291
01:41:58.039 --> 01:42:00.079
all of film, all of art
went Really they were trying to go against

1292
01:42:00.119 --> 01:42:03.159
tropes. They were trying to you
know, anti heroes were huge at that

1293
01:42:03.479 --> 01:42:06.319
point, and I feel like if
you really read the stories, you know

1294
01:42:06.560 --> 01:42:11.199
Sherlock is kind of an anti hero. And also I think they wanted to

1295
01:42:11.319 --> 01:42:15.199
experiment with going a different way because
in previous decades he was kind of known

1296
01:42:15.439 --> 01:42:23.159
as this stalwart hero and they wanted
to turn that on its axis. I

1297
01:42:23.199 --> 01:42:26.439
mean, it really felt like they
wanted to take Sherlock Holmes and use him

1298
01:42:26.479 --> 01:42:30.680
as a way to show that,
hey, even heroes are fallible and kind

1299
01:42:30.720 --> 01:42:34.520
of illustrate that through different various forms
of art. And I feel like that

1300
01:42:34.600 --> 01:42:40.279
was a character that's so well known. It's instant capitalism, I mean to

1301
01:42:40.359 --> 01:42:44.000
instant name recognition. They can use
that and also turn the tropes on their

1302
01:42:44.039 --> 01:42:45.319
ear, which is what they did
most of the films were talking about.

1303
01:42:45.600 --> 01:42:49.239
Yeah, I don't think it's any
coincidence. David, you mentioned baul Ford.

1304
01:42:49.359 --> 01:42:54.840
I believe it was the author of
that who ended up being Terry.

1305
01:42:55.039 --> 01:42:58.800
I can't remember his last name.
In the Long Goodbye the Altman film,

1306
01:42:59.319 --> 01:43:06.359
which again is taking Raymond Chandler Philip
Marlow and taking that character and making him

1307
01:43:06.439 --> 01:43:11.279
pretty dirty, you know if literally
in some parts with the ink on his

1308
01:43:11.399 --> 01:43:15.760
face and all this, and just
also shooting this. I know it's not

1309
01:43:15.000 --> 01:43:19.119
Terry Bradshaw because it's the football player, but I can't remember the character's last

1310
01:43:19.199 --> 01:43:24.960
name. But killing his friend because
his friend is just you know, it's

1311
01:43:25.039 --> 01:43:29.520
kind of a wild dog. He
said he's a bad guy, and Marlow

1312
01:43:29.600 --> 01:43:33.760
asked to write the world and that
same thing. It's kind of that Forgetta

1313
01:43:33.840 --> 01:43:36.640
Jake. It's Chinatown type of thing
too, where it's like this is the

1314
01:43:36.720 --> 01:43:42.680
era where the bad guys can win
and get away with that. But it

1315
01:43:42.880 --> 01:43:46.960
feels like Sherlock Holmes is trying to
put things back to the right when it

1316
01:43:47.039 --> 01:43:51.399
comes to what we saw in the
private life of Sherlock Holmes while we're seeing

1317
01:43:51.479 --> 01:43:58.399
now and the seventh Percent Solution.
Even the book The seventh Percent Solution,

1318
01:43:59.199 --> 01:44:02.560
I found it interesting because, like
I was saying, it was this person

1319
01:44:02.720 --> 01:44:13.720
who was basically an arms manufacturer.
And the plot that Holmes is really unraveling

1320
01:44:13.920 --> 01:44:18.560
has to do with the Chancellor of
Germany. It has to do with arc

1321
01:44:18.680 --> 01:44:24.359
Duke friends Ferdinand, and just basically
he's trying to stop World War One.

1322
01:44:24.600 --> 01:44:27.239
He doesn't have a name for it. He doesn't call it World War one.

1323
01:44:27.279 --> 01:44:29.199
Of course they didn't call it World
War one. And when it was

1324
01:44:29.239 --> 01:44:30.800
World War One because we didn't know
there was going to be a second one,

1325
01:44:31.319 --> 01:44:34.840
the Great War. We didn't know
that that was going to happen.

1326
01:44:35.039 --> 01:44:40.720
So here he is in eighteen eighty
nine or whatever, working at this and

1327
01:44:40.960 --> 01:44:45.279
seeing in his Sherlock Holmes way,
he's able to take here's this woman who

1328
01:44:45.319 --> 01:44:48.680
has counked on the head and you
know, we jumped down in the river

1329
01:44:48.840 --> 01:44:53.800
and has all these bruises and all
these things that is able to take her

1330
01:44:53.960 --> 01:45:00.520
in her relationship with this man who
manufactures arms and just spin this whole tale

1331
01:45:00.680 --> 01:45:03.560
of oh, this is what's happening. He deduces all of the stuff to

1332
01:45:03.680 --> 01:45:08.600
the point where it's if we don't
say this woman, if we don't make

1333
01:45:08.720 --> 01:45:12.399
this case, this war is going
to break out. And then at the

1334
01:45:12.520 --> 01:45:15.920
end of the book he's basically,
well, we might have forestalled it,

1335
01:45:16.159 --> 01:45:19.520
but that war is probably still coming, you know. Even when it comes

1336
01:45:19.560 --> 01:45:25.159
to the Peculiar protocols, Well,
we stopped the protocols from being printed and

1337
01:45:25.239 --> 01:45:30.359
we got this confession, but it
doesn't change anything because it's already being translated

1338
01:45:30.439 --> 01:45:34.199
into all these different languages, including
German, and we know how that is

1339
01:45:34.239 --> 01:45:38.840
going to turn out when it comes
to the Jews and the protocols of the

1340
01:45:38.960 --> 01:45:44.119
Elders of Zion and how they're perceived
in Germany. So there is a lot

1341
01:45:44.239 --> 01:45:48.319
of hubrist to these stories. He
doesn't set everything completely right. If anything,

1342
01:45:48.359 --> 01:45:53.199
he just pretty much forestalls the inevitable. Well, I mean, if

1343
01:45:53.239 --> 01:45:58.359
you guys have ever seen like the
original films the Mayor Brothers did, like

1344
01:45:58.560 --> 01:46:02.079
eighteen ninety five, eighteen ninety six. What's striking is the number of the

1345
01:46:02.119 --> 01:46:06.680
films that feature the military, and
boy do they look great. Oh they

1346
01:46:06.760 --> 01:46:10.319
look great. The horses look great, the uniforms look great. Everyone's got

1347
01:46:10.399 --> 01:46:13.720
big feathers in their hats and you
can see, I mean, Europe was

1348
01:46:13.760 --> 01:46:19.039
an armed camp and anybody with any
ability to look around new something's gotta set

1349
01:46:19.159 --> 01:46:23.920
this off. Because people love war. It's great, it's wonderful, it's

1350
01:46:24.039 --> 01:46:27.720
romantic, and it's always going to
be short and you're always going to come

1351
01:46:27.760 --> 01:46:31.079
home in one piece. And then
it happens and it ends up horrifically tragic,

1352
01:46:31.319 --> 01:46:34.000
and then we go, oh,
maybe that wasn't such a good idea.

1353
01:46:34.479 --> 01:46:36.920
Then a few years passed and it's
like, wow, it's yeah,

1354
01:46:36.960 --> 01:46:41.279
it's going to be great again.
We keep going down that road over and

1355
01:46:41.439 --> 01:46:45.640
over and so yeah, it is
there. You can see the foreshadow of

1356
01:46:45.199 --> 01:46:50.399
what's coming down, and unfortunately it
just keeps, you know, occurring over

1357
01:46:50.479 --> 01:46:56.319
and over. You know, human
beings are a sad bunch but also a

1358
01:46:56.439 --> 01:46:59.119
wonderful bunch. I feel, you
know, I got to mention that I

1359
01:46:59.159 --> 01:47:00.159
because you know, I don't know
about you guys, but some of the

1360
01:47:00.199 --> 01:47:03.840
stuff you get immersed in media on
social media, and you just want to

1361
01:47:03.840 --> 01:47:09.600
commit seppuku. But then it's like
we're putting machines on Mars and we're figuring

1362
01:47:09.680 --> 01:47:12.680
out how to cure this type of
cancer or whatever, and it's like wow,

1363
01:47:12.760 --> 01:47:16.920
it's like almost two different species of
humanity occupy the planet and you just

1364
01:47:17.000 --> 01:47:19.760
try to navigate between the two of
them. Yeah. I want to mention

1365
01:47:19.840 --> 01:47:26.000
the horses because we didn't even talk
about that, the stallions. How do

1366
01:47:26.119 --> 01:47:28.479
we not talk about that? Because
that whole scene, I'm like, is

1367
01:47:28.479 --> 01:47:30.199
he under hypnosis? Because I didn't
I couldn't see these fins in this most

1368
01:47:30.199 --> 01:47:32.840
since I was a kid, and
I'm watching going is he under hypnosis in

1369
01:47:32.920 --> 01:47:36.359
the scene? Is this? Is
he basically remembering his drug addiction? Because

1370
01:47:36.399 --> 01:47:40.479
horses are white, it's cocaine.
Is that what's going on here? I

1371
01:47:40.560 --> 01:47:43.479
don't know, they're killer horses.
What more do you need to know?

1372
01:47:43.760 --> 01:47:45.359
I don't know, But what he's
got a cocaine addiction? I can't.

1373
01:47:45.439 --> 01:47:48.520
I can't help but look at that
as like a possibility. Well, if

1374
01:47:48.560 --> 01:47:53.359
you're going to ride ride the white
pony, he's going to snore the lippings

1375
01:47:53.399 --> 01:47:56.680
on her stallion and then he confronts
it head on, and then they get

1376
01:47:56.720 --> 01:47:59.359
out of the way and it runs
away. His addiction runs away. You

1377
01:47:59.399 --> 01:48:03.439
don't you see I'm saying it's a
metaphor. We got psychoanalysts in the crowd,

1378
01:48:04.039 --> 01:48:08.960
Holmes, these horses were trained to
kill. Yeah, who does that?

1379
01:48:09.159 --> 01:48:12.880
Who trains horses to kill? Seriously, it's a metaphor. They're running

1380
01:48:12.960 --> 01:48:15.840
like crazy, and then he finally
faces him, and then he gets out

1381
01:48:15.880 --> 01:48:18.239
of the way and they run away, just like he conquered his addiction.

1382
01:48:18.880 --> 01:48:20.960
All right, guys, let's go
ahead and take another break, and we're

1383
01:48:20.960 --> 01:48:26.359
going to play a preview for next
week's show, Murder by Decree, and

1384
01:48:26.720 --> 01:48:30.720
the critics overwhelming choice is the best
thriller of the year. Rex Reid calls

1385
01:48:30.720 --> 01:48:33.520
it the most gripping and totally fascinating
quality who've done it in years? Bruce

1386
01:48:33.600 --> 01:48:38.840
Williamson of Playboy says a smashing,
seweebul thriller. A crimebus should re joice,

1387
01:48:39.279 --> 01:48:43.199
heading shoulders above what is masquerading his
entertainment today, Vincent can be New

1388
01:48:43.279 --> 01:48:46.880
York Times After Dark seventeen and Cosmopolitan
Magazines at All made it their Movie of

1389
01:48:46.920 --> 01:48:55.279
the March. Murder by Decree rtd
BG. That's right. We conclude our

1390
01:48:55.359 --> 01:48:59.319
Sherlock Holmes Monk next week with a
look at Bob Clark's murder by Decree.

1391
01:48:59.399 --> 01:49:02.279
Until then, what is the Ladies
with You wearing? Well? I started

1392
01:49:02.319 --> 01:49:05.600
out rereading some Sherlock Holmes stories because
I haven't read in them a few years,

1393
01:49:05.640 --> 01:49:10.439
so that's a positive that came out
of this. But also been doing

1394
01:49:10.479 --> 01:49:14.239
the Hollywood Outsider podcast, which I
do every week on film and television.

1395
01:49:15.039 --> 01:49:16.800
By the time you listen to this, it will be a few weeks past

1396
01:49:16.840 --> 01:49:19.800
it. But the south By Southwest
Film and TV Festival episode that we've did,

1397
01:49:19.960 --> 01:49:25.079
we covered over twenty five films,
and a lot of them more independent

1398
01:49:25.399 --> 01:49:28.399
features that might not even be out
yet, so it's definitely worth checking out.

1399
01:49:28.479 --> 01:49:31.039
You can go to the Hollywood Ouside
dot com and also presenting Hitchcock,

1400
01:49:31.159 --> 01:49:35.960
which I do every month where we
look at a film in the Hitchcock catalog

1401
01:49:36.479 --> 01:49:41.119
and David, what's the latest with
you? Sir? I am heading to

1402
01:49:41.520 --> 01:49:45.479
beautiful Daton, Ohio and a couple
of days to give a presentation on my

1403
01:49:45.600 --> 01:49:49.640
three Sherlock Holmes plays. I was
very kindly invited to come chat about them,

1404
01:49:50.399 --> 01:49:56.399
so I will do that, and
all three of the plays are being

1405
01:49:56.479 --> 01:50:01.439
produced next year at Stage one in
Fort Worth, Texas, according to my

1406
01:50:01.560 --> 01:50:06.239
publisher at any rate, so I
will probably venture down there to check at

1407
01:50:06.319 --> 01:50:11.159
least one of those out. Congratulations
on that. That's awesome. Can I

1408
01:50:11.199 --> 01:50:13.840
ask you a question, Daby before
we sign off? You were talking about

1409
01:50:13.840 --> 01:50:16.600
your set design love earlier, which
I agree and especially I think if you're

1410
01:50:16.680 --> 01:50:19.279
a fan of Shallock Holmes, and
everybody is a fan in different ways.

1411
01:50:19.319 --> 01:50:21.399
Some people are more fan of the
character, some people are more fan of

1412
01:50:21.439 --> 01:50:27.239
the mysteries portion whatever you're a fan
of. When you watch a film or

1413
01:50:27.239 --> 01:50:30.039
a TV show that's based on Shallock
Holmes and you know it so well,

1414
01:50:30.520 --> 01:50:33.119
does it infuriate you when you see
books on the shelf that you know shouldn't

1415
01:50:33.159 --> 01:50:36.319
be there, like he wouldn't read
those. Well, let me put it

1416
01:50:36.399 --> 01:50:41.720
this way. I try to be
as open minded and forgiving as I can.

1417
01:50:42.000 --> 01:50:45.239
On the other hand, when it's
a play of mind that's going up,

1418
01:50:45.800 --> 01:50:50.159
I stalk the set. The premiers
are all at a theater that's only

1419
01:50:50.199 --> 01:50:54.119
forty five minutes from me, the
Purple Rose Theater and Chelsea, Michigan,

1420
01:50:54.600 --> 01:50:59.239
and the set designers are great.
Prop designers are great. But yeah,

1421
01:50:59.279 --> 01:51:01.520
I will walk aroun round and make
a menace of myself and say, I

1422
01:51:01.560 --> 01:51:04.439
don't want that book there that you
know that would book? Would it be

1423
01:51:04.520 --> 01:51:11.199
there exactly? And they are.
They tolerate my presence reasonably well, but

1424
01:51:11.760 --> 01:51:14.520
yeah, you know I should stay
in my lane. But you know it's

1425
01:51:14.560 --> 01:51:17.079
your baby, and then you want
it to be perfect and pristine. So

1426
01:51:17.760 --> 01:51:21.079
I get very prisnickety about stuff.
I'm trying to be better about it,

1427
01:51:21.199 --> 01:51:26.000
but yeah, I do. It's
my stuff especially I want to be right.

1428
01:51:26.359 --> 01:51:29.079
But when you're when you're looking at
it from you know, trying to

1429
01:51:29.119 --> 01:51:30.920
be objective. It kind of goes
back to what I was talking about at

1430
01:51:31.000 --> 01:51:33.800
the very beginning, where I said, you can tell in the first fifteen

1431
01:51:33.840 --> 01:51:38.760
minutes whether somebody really loves his property
or not. That's something that I noticed

1432
01:51:38.840 --> 01:51:42.000
right away. If I'm watching something
and I feel like they didn't even take

1433
01:51:42.039 --> 01:51:45.920
the time to think about that,
that aspect of the room, how the

1434
01:51:45.000 --> 01:51:47.399
room is set up, how it
looks, you know, certain things that

1435
01:51:47.439 --> 01:51:51.079
Sherlock wouldn't allow. Those are those
are the kinds of And I was curious,

1436
01:51:51.199 --> 01:51:55.039
since you're talking about set design,
if that really gets on you.

1437
01:51:55.520 --> 01:51:59.640
The only ones that really really irritate
me are where they represent the rooms as

1438
01:51:59.720 --> 01:52:04.520
a maculate and pristine and there's no
indication of chaos or indolence or laziness,

1439
01:52:05.079 --> 01:52:09.760
you know, cigarette ashes or dishes
laying around. I mean, Sherlock Holmes

1440
01:52:09.920 --> 01:52:13.359
was so absorbed in his work he
didn't have time to keep everything nice and

1441
01:52:13.439 --> 01:52:16.920
tied up all the time. There
should be some degree of disarray, but

1442
01:52:17.039 --> 01:52:20.399
it also needs to feel very lived
in. You know, you do want

1443
01:52:20.479 --> 01:52:24.640
books, you do want a big
armchair, you do want to fire,

1444
01:52:24.720 --> 01:52:28.840
you do want a chemical set.
You know, it's that's part of Sherlock

1445
01:52:28.920 --> 01:52:32.920
Holmes is the surroundings. And even
in a film like you know, the

1446
01:52:33.000 --> 01:52:38.439
Basil Rathbone films, all the Universal
films, they're updated, they're modernized,

1447
01:52:38.720 --> 01:52:43.560
but his rooms they could just as
well be from eighteen ninety and that's part

1448
01:52:43.600 --> 01:52:45.359
of the appeal of those films.
Well, thank you so much guys for

1449
01:52:45.439 --> 01:52:47.880
being on the show. Thanks everybody
for listening. If you want to hear

1450
01:52:47.920 --> 01:52:50.680
more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows

1451
01:52:50.840 --> 01:52:56.119
that I work on. They are
all available over at weirdingweightmedia dot com.

1452
01:52:56.600 --> 01:52:59.880
Thanks especially to our Patreon community.
If you want to join the community,

1453
01:53:00.279 --> 01:53:03.680
visit patreon dot com slash projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the Projection

1454
01:53:03.720 --> 01:53:05.119
Booth dig over the world.