Speaker 1: Meaning a light.
Speaker 2: Man like this, man letting butterfly flapping and wing. They've
down in a forest. Man, it gonna cause the tree fall,
letting five thousand miles away. Man, nobody seen it. Nobody see.
Speaker 3: You don't need no man black. You follow let and
you got bacted like that.
Speaker 1: That's the point.
Speaker 2: Man, don't black and name on the panel.
Speaker 3: Man, Now you don't matter.
Speaker 1: Man all right, George Bagbee, welcome to Jay Burdenshow how
you doing.
Speaker 3: I'm doing great. It's good to be with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm very excited to have you. Uh. This is
another episode in my unofficial series of If I talk
about the Iran War every day, I will go crazy
and so deliberately deciding to talk about something that is
not relevant, at least explicitly to what's happening in the headlines.
And so Bagbee, we're here to discuss the twenty sixteen
film Hail Caesar, and it's a good absurdist way to
get away from the current thing. The Cohen Brothers are
my favorite comic writers of the day. Their comedies are
some of my oldest favorites.
Speaker 3: My wife and I, as a kind of guilty pleasure,
we get no end of enjoyment out of The Big Lebowski,
which is one of our favorite films, and it's it's
just a classic. It's not for everyone, especially those who
are adverse to the language. It's it's very colorful, and
it's language notoriously, but it's such an absurd comic masterpiece.
And that's something that I really love about the Cohen's.
There's such a dynamic, a dynamic force in movie making.
They go from masterpieces, just stupendous achievements like No Country
for Old Men, and they've also made these really slapstick
sorts of comic movies, like Raising Arizona with Nicholas Cage
doing one of his Madman routines. They've also made these
really distinctive regional films, which is something that I particularly
love about them. They've made They made Miller's Crossing, which
was one of their earlier movies, one of my favorites.
It's a really good one. Did you know that one
was shot almost entirely in Louisiana, specifically New Orleans?
Speaker 1: Huh? But I didn't, But that actually makes quite a
lot of sense.
Speaker 3: You you wouldn't know it by watching the film. I
don't think they ever referenced Louisiana and the film, but
it was all shot in Louisiana. I found out that
that one of the scenes, the distinctive forest scene in
Miller's Crossing where he takes John to Truro. Uh, you know,
Gabriel Byrne takes John to Truro out into the forest
and and John Taturo's pitifully begging for his life. He
knows what what everyone expects to happen. He's supposed to
kill him. That was that was shot in a place
that I know, and it's all very familiar to me,
but outside of the city obviously it's a forest, but
in Louisiana.
Speaker 1: Well, and that it's actually funny because I did not
know that. Several things about that film. One, it is
one of the funniest non comedy films, Like there's not
a lot of jokes in it per se, but it's
genuinely hilarious. Like there's one moment I always think where,
you know, Gabriel Burns is tied to a chair, you know,
and you're sort of expecting him to get you know this,
you know, beaten, you know, with the swinging light, and
he just gets up, grabs the chair, and breaks it
over one of the guys interrogating him, and the reaction
the man just looks so genuinely offended he's been hit
with the chair. Very very funny. But additionally, it's funny
you mentioned that because I just assumed, because of the
subject matter that it was set in Chicago. You know,
it seems like a Chicago esque film, and I was
thinking about that when they're walking through the woods, I
was like, this doesn't look anything like Illinois, right, this
looks like the middle of nowhere in the Deep South.
And so that actually makes a good bit of sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they actually talked about that, and they said New
Orleans is this unchanged like nineteenth century relic and they
didn't have to dress up the streets where they were shooting.
They actually interviewed about that and said, yeah, we didn't
have to replace the windows or the shutters or anything
because they're all original. No one has renovated these old buildings,
and so it looks just like it did at the
turn of the century, which is one of the reasons
why I adore New Orleans. It's this untouched old city.
In a way, it's simultaneously New Orleans best selling point
and its downfall that they haven't invested in their own
city in such obvious ways, but it's also the charm
of the place. But they've made, as I said, all
these really interesting regional films, and I think this is
the best testimony in spite of the Cohen's being very
famously amish, uh, the the regional work that they've done
with with Fargo, with Oh Brother, where Art Thou? It
comes from a place of love and affection. Even the
Big Lebowski as as like a set piece for Southern California,
Southern California hippie characters, deadbeats, stuff like that. It comes
from a place of real affection. And the easiest way
to tell that is do you come out of Oh
Brother or Art Thou hating Mississippi or do you come
out of Oh Brother or Art Thou thinking, Wow, I
really like Mississippi. Like there's there are a lot of
winsome points and beauty and and curiosity about these these funny,
you know, country white people. And I think that that's
the best tell about the Cohens, that they love their
subject matter. And they've also they also produced a personal
favorite of mine, which is a serious man. Have you
seen that one.
Speaker 1: No, I haven't, but I need to.
Speaker 3: Oh, that is a really good one. It's it's set
in some Jewish community in Minnesota or something, I guess
Bob Dylan's diaspora, way up there in the distant North.
And it introduced to me the term goy, which is
used very frequently in that film. That film is a
a black comedy, and it's kind of a retelling of
the story of Job, a man who faces like every
possible personal disaster and is meditating on the mystery of
his situation. And it's it's extremely good just in its
own right. But I really like that one. So about
the Cohen's they they have a great affection for Americana,
for American regions, for the gentile majority of the United States.
They really seem to like these people, and that's really
my brief for them. The fact that they are famously
Amish is an interesting factor in the film that we
have for discussion today. It's the twenty sixteen film Hail Caesar,
and the image of Christ haunts this film in a
really surprising way, especially because it comes from non Christian writers.
The very first image that you see when the title
fades is a crucifix in a Catholic church and the
very first scene is the protagonist, who is a Hollywood fixer,
a real historical character by the way, who worked for
Big Studios in la Eddie Mannix, who's kind of fictionalized
for this. He's kind of a legend in Hollywood, as
I understand it, portrayed by Josh Brolin, and he is.
He does a wonderful job in this role, you know,
the stoic and strong Josh Brolin. He's sitting in a
confessional and he's a very scrupulous Catholic. He's going to
confession with spans of hours between his confessions. He's, uh,
he's obviously a man that takes his religious ritual very seriously.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: The priest in the confessional is is telling him, oh,
my son, you're you're doing this too much. You're not
this bad, you know. And he goes to the confessional
to say, you know, I lied to my wife. I
snuck a cigarette. I told her I was quitting, and
and he he breaks down and he says, I'm trying.
I'm trying, and then he leaves the confessional. And he's
this completely stoical, driven, tough guy of the the force
of order and justice in the film.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think that that opening is is really
dramatic on it to sort of set up that that
sort of diet. Because he leaves, it's this sort of
you know, gloomy, rainy night and he walks into this
you know, l a Bungalow kicks the door open, and
you know, one of the the the studio's starlets is
taking is it kind of a racy photo shoot with this?
Is it Steep Buchmy the photographer or some other kind
of like similarly scummy looking actor. And he walks up,
you know, pulls out the negatives, tells the guys to leave,
smacks her in a moment that's very kind of like
silver age Hollywood. Right, you know, you can almost imagine
Jimmy Stewart, right, you know, holding her close and kind
of slapping her across the face. And then when the
police come in, he's given her a fake story. He
hands a bribe to the policeman and they leave, right,
you know, kind of contrasting that, you know, how he
is at work. It is this kind of laying down
the law and then you know this very tender family
man right in the confessional booth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's this great contrast, and and this is a
contrast that we see through the rest of the picture
and the the big questions in the film are about
dream and reality, about fantasy and truth, about what is
real and what we believe in, what we believe is real,
and this is the This is one of the major
elements that we encounter through the entire film, and we're
drawn back to that distinction repeatedly in the dialogue. It's
it's a really fast paced film. There there are lots
of different characters and a bunch of different little subplots,
of many of which are just comic gold. But it's
always turning back to that what what do we understand
to be, what is going on? What is real is
what are we projecting about ourselves? What do we believe
about the circumstances. So faith turns out to be one
of the key themes of the film. And as I said,
the character of Jesus Christ literally portrayed in the film
in the context of the movie within the movie. So
Eddie Mannix is managing the production of this big tent
pole production for the studio. It's a film called Haile Caesar,
and this is the source of most of the drama
in this picture, also called Haile Caesar. But like the
movie within the movie, this is obviously a satire of
ben Her and some other nineteen fifties epic biblical films
like The Robe and Cuovadis and things like that.
Speaker 1: Well, it hails. It's called the other one, right, It's
like the Is it the Tablets of Noah or tap, sorry,
the Tablets of Moses? Is that what I'm thinking of? Oh?
Speaker 3: The Ten Commandments?
Speaker 1: Maybe? Yes, yes, that's what.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Charlton Heston, is that a that must be cecil
d de mill or something, one of one of those
great old epics. I've uh, I've got these things on
on the list. I just uh, I just uh played
Ben Her for my children recently because I remember watching
it at about their age and it having a major
impact on me. So it's kind of fresh on my
mind right now. But we we see with the production
of this film that the set or the setting for
this movie is the fifties. It's like the Golden age
of Hollywood and some of the things that we see
in the context. It's a Christian country and the Hollywood
studios are wanting to present an image of themselves and
of their stars, who are certainly not like traditional moral
kinds of people. They want to present an image of
moral norms, they want to present an image of spiritual norms.
And of course there's a cynical reading of this film
that it's it's meant to discredit the society in that
it's portraying right, that it's these dissolute Hollywood people who
are projecting a sense of normalcy on the screen when
the reality is moral degradation in Hollywood. Nix Is is
constantly encountering that paradox. So he has he has gossip columnists,
columnists coming up to him, uh constantly, and they're saying, oh,
I know about this scandal. I'm going to publicize it tomorrow,
And he says, no, No, the actor is a good
family man. Everyone knows that. And and this is a
and this is a really interesting element here. But I
think that the Cohens really have a general, uh a
genuine affection for the the mainstream that they're presenting here.
I don't think they're they're trying to take them down
a peg. They're they're attacking the corruption in Hollywood. They're
lampooning it. In the film, especially the writers, which we're
going to get to, but we see the Hollywood is
in the business of making dreams, of projecting images on
the side of Plato's cave, and Eddie Mannix is dealing
with the real problems at the base of this projection apparatus.
So these themes of what is true, what is fantasy?
What do we believe? And the whole time Jesus Christ
is lurking in the background. Jesus Christ very clearly services
in several important discussions in the film as the key
question to all of this is Jesus Christ significant? Is
he real? Does he demand faith of us or not?
Even the question is Jesus Christ God? Is a serious
question that's presented in this satirical context.
Speaker 1: Well, and at that point, yes, if I can just
break in if if it's not the immediate next scene
to the one I just described, it's it's very shortly
after that is the which is of course played for laughs,
but it's you know, Mannix's meeting with you know, the
Protestant pastor, the Orthodox bishop and then a Catholic priest
in a rabbi, and of course they're there to discuss
you know, the presence of Christ in this film. And
there are several things because in a cheaper movie, of course,
I mean it is comedic, right, it is played for laughs.
You know that all four of these religious figures are
offering me. You know that this man effectively uh, you know,
your kind of scraps of you know, Christology, right, and
he's deeply confused. But at the same time we see
that same sort of love for America. That all four
of these men they're not caricatures, you know, they're positive characters,
and particularly coming from the Cohen's it's interesting that the
uh if anyone comes out of that interaction looking badly, right,
it's the kind of very nebbish uh nebbish rabbi And
you know that's not the focus or the goal of
this film. But again, right, that's that's where from almost
the very beginning you see the presence of Christ in
Hail Caesar.
Speaker 3: And that that scene is my personal favorite in the film.
It's also the most daring thing I think Hollywood has
put on this in a very long time. It's a
comic scene. Anyone watching that scene is going to find
it hilarious, no matter what they believe. I think, I
think it's naturally hysterical. But will come around to that
here in just a minute. I do have some notes
on it, but but that that scene you mentioned is
absolutely brilliant. So one of the themes I told you
faith is the key word in the film. It appears
in the climax of the film at the very end,
and it's uh, it's the forgotten line that an actor
is delivering a speech in front of the crucified Christ
in the climax of the movie within the movie, and
he forgets the pinnacle of his each and the word
he forgets is faith. And this is intentional. Obviously, they're
trying to emphasize the point the one thing that they lack,
as the actor almost gets to say when he forgets
the last word, if we could only have this one
final thing, and that is faith, then we could see
what is true. And so we see it all come
together there at the end. But we see conflicts of
faith in the film in a big way, and that's
with the communist subversives in Hollywood, and so they present
a different kind of faith. This is the faith in
ideological materialism and Marxism and their their faith and what
it leads them to is also played for laughs. Their
their ham fisted uh sort of attempts to to blackmail
Hollywood and UH to fund the Soviet Union, which is
what their their ultimate goal is. It comes to nothing,
uh in the end, and it's all and it's all
very absurd, but that is another element. So we see
the Cohen's they're they're framing the the two faiths presented
in the film. You have traditional Christianity, you know, faith
in the doctrine of Christ, and then you have an
innovative new ideology, which is Communism, which they they don't
hold back on for their disdain.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: They they think that these people maybe don't even deserve
to be taken seriously. There's such ridiculous characters. They don't
portray the clergy this way at all. The clergy are
are taking these things more seriously. They're very confused, and
the scene with the clergy is absurdist and it's meant
to create laughs, but they're obviously talking about serious things.
So we see this bifurcation. You have destructive faith of
faith that is finally motivated by vengeance. In the case
of the Communists. The communists pretend to portray themselves or
they want to portray themselves as these believers in materialist dogma.
They are actually motivated by very low, vengeful pecuniary interests
and this well and from really obviously with them well.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's another part of this that
I found particularly funny is obviously the sort of drama
of this. You know, the inciting incident is that the
main actor in Hail Caesar has been captured and held
for ransom by these communist writers, and some of the
best comedy in the film is him talking to these
Marxist writers and sort of they are mutually convincing themselves
that he is a Marxist. But the funny thing is
this character played by Clooney is such an abject narcissist
that he is. He is recreating everything in his own life, right,
so it is all, you know, his sort of like
background Hollywood, you know, relationships explained through Marxist theory. You know,
that's the only way he can under standard. You know,
he has no way to conceptualize really outside of like
his incredibly petty foibles. It's very, very funny, and to
that point, there's there's a really hilarious moment where you
know that they've sort of told him that they're kidnapped,
that he has been kidnapped, which happens after this kind
of absurd uh. It kind of like Marxist debate over
finger sandwiches, where you know, they're sitting across the room
and he's he basically says, he's like, well, what happens
if I just tell everyone who you are? And it
becomes very clear that these these Marxists have not even
considered this. This is the most poorly conceived plan. And
so to your point, right, obviously, you know, there is
at least some level of sympathy for these men because
we see that they are from a certain perspective, they're
sort of being ripped off, but they're so so sort
of like so sort of incompetent and bumbling and as
you said, greedy that they come off really as say,
villains isn't quite the right term, because there is, you know,
a more villainous character who sort of serves as the ringleader.
But they are they're painted much much more harshly than
the clergy or you know, the normal Americans. You know,
as we see one of the other kind of rising stars,
you know, the character of of you know, Hobby Doyle,
who is this sort of like you know, small town
actual cowboy who's become you know, a lead in westerns
and in a cheaper movie, you know, he would be
the bumbling rube, the idiot, you know, the redneck. But
he's played very sympathetically, right. He is a character that
you are supposed to feel for and the kind of
you know, sinister homosexual Hollywood mafia is really the villain
of this movie, which, to your point, is a very
brave thing for Hollywood to say in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and that again, it just goes back to my point.
I genuinely believe the Cohens like Toby Doyle. They like
the old stock American cowboy character, the very simple guy
who isn't very good talking on screen, and yet he's
a movie star. He's he's one of the more compelling
characters in the film. So about the about the communist
meeting with George Clooney's character. George Clooney is the lead
in this swordin Sandals epic Hail Caesar.
Speaker 1: Again.
Speaker 3: The the film within the film is subtitled A Tale
of the Christ, which is kind of an illusion to
Ben her That was the subtitle for ben Her as well,
and there are lots of different in jokes that are
related to ben Her, such as the tactic of never
showing the face of the actor portraying Jesus Christ or
in Georgia.
Speaker 1: Kind of well. And the one quote we get from
you know, the the Orthodox Clergy, it's when he says,
I liked it, but I thought jumping from one chariot
to the other seemed a bit fake, which you know,
of course, is both a reference and kind of a
comedic moment. But sorry, I've interrupted you for probably a
tenth time, George.
Speaker 3: Yes, Indeed, the the meeting with the clergy, I'm gonna
I'm gonna compare these two meetings, the meeting with Mannix
in the Christian Clergy and the meeting with Clooney's character
which his name is Whitlock with the Communists. There are
certain parallels between these two meetings. When Mannix meets with
the clergy, it's very interesting that the Protestant pastor and
the Catholic priest are both going towards the theology. They're
trying to argue about the details of the theology, and
the rabbi gets involved with that and he says well,
this is all nonsense. The Trinity is nonsense. Christ was
not God. He says that, which is a really incredible
thing to portray on screen just by itself, was a
very courageous thing to do. To put that on screen.
And of course it's played for laps, which kind of
diffuses the tension, which I think is necessary in order
to present such a thing, but it's also so very valuable.
The Orthodox bishop who is in this scene is obviously
my favorite. That's my representation here. The Orthodox bishop, I think,
is the one that takes it as seriously as it
needs to be taken. He is not arguing theological points
it Curiously, Eddie Mannix, after interacting with the Catholic priest,
the Catholic priest is trying to talk about the dual
nature of Christ, that he's both completely God and completely Man,
and this is Christian dogma. There's nothing controversial about saying this.
Mannix is confused. Now he's observing Catholic but he's also
not very deep in the theology. So he says, so
God is split, and the Catholic priest says, well, yes
and no, which is also the Christian answer, that he's
one being with two complete natures at the same time,
which is kind of paradoxical, but that's the that's the
doctrine of the trinity. The Orthodox bishop he references the Bible.
He says, well, we have the Bible, you know, and
and Mannix says, well, yeah, but we we have pictures too,
and that's what we're doing here. And that's what I'm
getting your vice on. He's kind of try to refocus.
The Orthodox bishop says, h, he says some mystical things.
He says, well, God is who he is, and this
this uh infuriates the rabbi. He says, you think that's
special who isn't who he is? But his his take
is entirely mystical. And and then the Mannix he asked
them all, well, would any reasonable person object to our portrayal?
And they all say no, No. I think I think
this is all fine. I think it's tastefully done. The
Orthodox pre says, oh, I've seen worse, which is just
a wonderful, uh sort of detached, h sort of approach,
which I much appreciate. I think that he comes out
of that maybe make maybe looking less serious than any
of his comrades there, but from a certain perspective may
be more serious than all the rest of them put together. Now,
when the Communists when they assembol with Whitlock after they've
kidnapped him, of they they've employed the villain from Jurassic
Park to drug Whitlock's wine in a movie scene. Did
you notice that that actor?
Speaker 1: No, I actually had. I didn't even think about that,
but now remembering it, that's exactly yeah.
Speaker 3: I looked him up because I thought I recognized him.
He's he's the big round guy from Jurassic Park who's
who's trying to blackmail the park. I forget exactly what
he was doing, but he he meets his untimely end
with the giant frill lizard. He's he makes a little
appearance there and he poisons George Clooney's wine and then
carries him off into captivity. Clooney wakes up and he
spends the entire film in his Roman legionary costume, which
is is also very comic, like he's carrying a sword
in every scene. He sits down with these these communists
and they say, oh, we're a we're a reading group,
you know, And he goes, oh, what what are you
talking about? And they say, we're talking about history and
economics because it's the same thing, you know, don't you agree,
And and they say, well, history is science of history
is determined by materialistic formula, so we can explain everything
that has happened and everything that will happen according to
our formula. So we know what the future will be.
This is inevitable, and we are on the side of
the future. And once they get into the discussion, we
see the parallel emerge. Clooney is asking for clarification and
he asks one of the communists, so man is split,
and the communist says, yes, we have two classes. We've
got the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and they're in conflict
with one another. And we know the means to resolve
this conflict. It's going to be, you know, the future utopia,
and it's going to solve the dialectic of history. And
this is just all orthodox Marxism. But in the background
of the meeting we have all these Communist members. They're
all Hollywood writers. Uh, they're also all Amish, which is
coincident here. Many of these are these are kind of
minor Hollywood actors that as as is the case with
a lot of Cohen Brothers movies. They've they've appeared in
other uh previous uh elements in their filmography, and a
lot of those in the communist group had previously been
in A Serious Man, which portrays this Amish community in Minnesota.
So they're they're you know, ethnic actors, and they're portraying
Communist subversives in Hollywood, and they and they brag that
they've they've inserted their Marxist doctrine into their screenwriting. But
they're all personally personally vindictive. They want to loot the
studios because they believe they deserve more. And this this
comes out really clearly that there are several members of
the group that are perpetually angry and they just randomly
belt out things, screaming out there. They're exploiters, they deserve
to be destroyed, and they're just randomly shouting in the background,
and another character is constantly telling them to shut up.
It doesn't matter what one of these guys says, whatever
he says, another character is always telling him to shut up.
And it's very funny, but we see that this this
kind of faith is a belief that man is split
into two distinct classes, into warring classes, and this explosans
everything whereas the clergy are talking about the nature of God,
that God is split, and this determines man's relation to God,
so that God became man, and this is a kind
of split in the divinity that we insist this is unity,
this is the doctrine of the trinity, but that God
is both completely man and completely God in the person
of Jesus Christ. So it's a complex theological dogma, but
it's also a fig feature in the film, and we're
invited to consider it, and that's really extraordinary. Now that
this isn't a Christian film given its makers, but I
think they were taking it seriously. They're presenting it fairly.
One reading of the film, which I've encountered in the
reviews is that this is all played cynically.
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't think it has to be read this way.
I certainly enjoy it. As an orthodox Christian. I take
these dog dog most entirely seriously, and I find the
film extremely entertaining because I don't think it's it's doing
it any discredit well.
Speaker 1: Well, certainly, and I feel like the the the reason
that I know this film is not cynical is the
the sort of you know, rising star, you know, small
town American we mentioned earlier, because that character is played
for laughs. You know, for instance, he he sort of
you know, goes through He's cast in this sort of
you know, period ballroom drama. You know, the other actors,
the director, very proper trained British actors, and you know,
while clearly he is a fish out of water, the
relationship between him and the director, which is Lawrence Lawrence
in the film, but I mean it's it seems to
be sort of a pastiche of like Lawrence Olivier, is
that the brid is acting horribly to him, you feel
for him. And later, you know, he goes on this
sort of studio arranged date with this other star and
we see him again acting very genuinely. He likes this girl.
He is, you know, interacting with her in a very
non cynical, non predatory way, and he is in fact
that the man who you know returns George Gluney to
the studio. He ends up rescuing him. And it would
be very easy to play that character as a rube,
to play him, you know, as an untalented moron. But
you know, at this this date he goes on this woman.
This premiere, we see that he's actually a very talented musician,
and obviously there is some dissonance because while he is
singing this sort of beautiful song, there's the kind of
stock you know, Prospector Pete character in the background, you know,
fumbling around and you know, falling into the pig trough
and we see the crowd laughing and he's looking around like, well, yeah,
it's funny, but also, you know, I did I sang
this song. You know, it was an emotional moment. And
you know, he is you know, sort of on the
b plot for at least most of this. But again,
this is normal small town American, you know, he's he
is shown to be very naive, but he is a
force for good in the film and is honestly better
than pretty much any other actor on a moral level
we see in this film.
Speaker 3: And he's obviously the outsider in Hollywood as well. And
he's he's not a victim either. He could be victimized
easily by these these cynical power players that he's interacting with.
He is very resourceful. He's also trustworthy. Eddie Mannix just
instinctively trusts him. Uh though he's aware of his limitations
because he's a he's like a comic Western actor. The
kinds of films they they see, Uh, you see Hobie
Doyle acting in at at the very beginning, What what
he got his his start in?
Speaker 1: What made him?
Speaker 3: Uh a minor you know western star in Hollywood. It's
a corresponded to how John Wayne got his start. Did
you ever see those really early John Wayne movies, those
old black and white ones where he's young man, He
invariably like jumps off of a cliff on horseback into water.
They they redo that shot. They probably recycled one shot
and put it in a dozen movies or something, because
it must have been so very dangerous to pull off
this horse jumping over a vertical cliff or something. This
is the kind of thing that they're they're portraying Hobby
Daniels performing or Hobby Doyle performing. It doesn't require much
in the way of dialogue. It's gunfights and horse races
and stuff. But he gets he gets cast on on
the sound stage and he's trying to adapt to it
and as part of the comic element of the movie.
But it's one of the the subplots involved Scarlett Johansson
is also in a subplot as a starlet who has
unexpectedly come down pregnant and has no husband, and Mannix
is trying to manage this for her, and that's and
that's part of the comedy of it, and it also
it also refocuses the theme of fantasy versus reality. Mannix
goes and sees Scarlett Johansson. He says, have you thought
about who you're going to marry? Because you got to
marry somebody and this this speaks to the social norms
of the time. He says, well, we have to have
you married to somebody because your your image is that
of the innocent woman. But we can't have a single mother,
you know, replace your Hollywood image. And she's compliant to
some degree. They come up with this crazy scheme and such,
but it ends up working out. I don't have to
spoil it for you that that's one you should go
and find for yourself.
Speaker 1: Well. Interestingly, on that minor plot again, it's it's an
interesting moment when there's a sort of how we're introduced
to her as she is starring in this sort of
h I guess you could say kind of like mythically
informed synchronized swimming film, right, you know, it's very you know, elegant,
and there's an orchestra next to the swimming pool, and
you know she ends up sort of at the climactic moment,
which is an interesting repeat right that, over and over again.
We see these climactic moments and scene sort of subverted
at the last minute. And when she's talking to Matt's
on the side, she says, I just need a reliable man.
You know. He goes through sort of comedically, the other
figures she's been married to. You know, he's been married
to a major mom mob figure, you know, a drug
addicted musician. And now she's been you know, gotten pregnant
with another director probably and you know, at first they think, well,
you know, we'll have this director, you know, marry her,
only to find out that he is, in fact Mary.
He has a wife back in Sweden. Obviously it's impossible,
but scarletor Henson is not necessarily playing the most sympathetic character,
at least initially. But you see a very interesting inversion
where when she is faced with or when she interacts
with a genuinely reliable man, right, the most reliable man
in Hollywood. We see her character change in a very
interesting direction. And like I said, I won't spoil it.
You should watch it. It's a fun film. It's one
you can watch with your wife. Your wife will like
this film to you listener. But again, it's a moment
where this movie is less cynical than it initially appears,
and less cynical than many have read it to be.
Speaker 3: Yes, certainly it comes into focus in curious minor scenes.
There are these interacts Mannix has with gossip columnists, both
portrayed by Tilda Swinton, who always does a fantastic job.
She's such a great actress. She comes to Mannix and
she says, well, I've got I've got the goods on
Baird Whitlock. I'm going to write my column tomorrow and
I'm I'm fishing about for more information here. I'm giving
you an opportunity to change my story here if you
give me more information. And she tells Mannix the people
want the truth, and Mannix replies, people don't want the facts.
They want to believe, again emphasizing faith. And we've got
to have something worthy to believe in. And what is
what is Hollywood offering? You know, it's it's Plato's cave.
It's believing in believing that Baird Whitlock is an upright
family man, which anyone that looks into the details of
his life is going to know. And he's not the
same with Scarlett Johansson's she's not an innocent person the
way that Mannix kind of casually says, well, that's your image,
you know, that's what we've made you to be. You're
an innocent woman. That's why everyone loves you. And then
they absurdly talk about the sort of details of her
personal life. But it's it's true. Nevertheless, people do want
something to believe. Richard Weaver, who is one of my
favorite writers, a great Southern agrarian writer, he said, it's
the raw stuff of life that is exactly what civilized
people want and need to have refined. And we don't
want the mere, undigested facts. We want something higher to
believe in. We want to order these things, we want
a system to have faith in. And this is the
major conflict in the major groups we've encountered already in
the film, the Communists, the religious Christians. So the the
plot comes to a head with the curious character Bert
Gurney portrayed by that that flaky looking fellow. I guess
he has a great profile. Is his name Channing Tatum?
Is that his name?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And the the way that this character is introduced is
legitimately hilarious because so that he is a you know,
he is one of these kind of you know, gay
Hollywood actors, and you're introduced to him in this sort
of you know, Roger and a Hammerstein musical. And at first,
it's from the film's perspective, played relatively straight double and
tundra is intended, but as you get further and further
through the musical number, it's it's a group of sailors
singing about how they aren't going to see any women
while they're out at sea, and then dancing getting more
and more comedically homo erotic. Uh, it's genuinely it's a
hilarious and relatively subtle joke in the film, right, they
never go out and say it, but it is sort
of funny. The dissonance you see between this you know
more and more kind of fabulous glee club style dance
and then the very kind of like dour Norman Rockwell
esque film director and also Josh Brolin's reaction. It's legitimately hilarious.
Speaker 3: Yes it is. It's one of the one of the
great old lampoons of the Golden Age of Hollywood. In
this film. The synchronized swimming is another element that's just
beautifully done, and it's remarkable that it really can be
done anymore. The huge synchronized dance number with Tatum and
and the whole sick crew that is, that is also
very well done as well well. Bert Gurney, the channing
Tatum's character is actually the ringleader of the communists, and
his house is the setting for the communist book reading
group and uh Clooney's captivity. Uh Gurney returns to his
house with the intention of defecting to the Soviets, and
he's actually arranged for a Soviet nuclear submarine to come
pick him up. It might not be a nuclear submarine,
it's certainly a Soviet submarine, I believe it's it's a
minor role. And you don't never never see this guy,
Dolf Gungrin, who is the he's the guy from the
Rocky film. He portrays the Soviet superboxer.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, i'van Drego. He's also actually if he's not
a chemical engineer. I think he's a nuclear physicist. He's
ugitimately a very intelligent man.
Speaker 3: He's a very curious character. My brother loves this guy.
And and uh, he hasn't been in very many movies.
I think he played at James Bond villain once back
in the seventies, but he only you never see his face,
but he portrays the Soviet captain of the submarine. So
the Communists they row Bert Gurney out into Malibu Bay
and they rendezvous with the submarine, and in the process
they lose the ransom that they got for Whitlock. They're
supposed to send it to the commentary and it's incredibly funny.
There's multiple layers of jokes to this. One of them,
which is kind of just a background joke, is that
they have to row him out in this old timey
row boat, and because they're all academics and writers, they
have to wear gloves to row a boat one hundred yards,
which is funny. They're also, despite being Communists, they don't
like they row in the most unsynchronized way possible. There's
literally no coordination between them, which is a joke, but
also Tatum's dog. Is Is it named Engles? I think,
isn't it? Yes? Yes, his dog, his name is Ingles.
Speaker 1: It's this little, like white, fluffy dog. And there's this
very grand, dramatic moment where the you know, the kind
of second in command of the communists says, you know, hear, hear, brother,
you know, take this as our small donation to the
common turn. So he takes it. He's supposed to leave
his little flufy dog. And then the dog breaks out,
runs away, and Tatum, who's been at least to this
point very you know austere, you know, kind of strong jawed,
you know, flips his wrists out, catches the dog, and
then the money drops into the ocean. And the last
thing we see of this summarine is them walking in
at just the sound of this barking dog get get
quieter and quieter as they close the the you know,
the hatch to the submarine. It's a very funny moment.
Speaker 3: And there they distinctively play Soviet era choral music in
the scene. It always wants me to always stimulates me
to go and find playlists on YouTube of of that
Soviet era music because I like it. I have a
guilty pleasure in listening to it. But it illustrates something
important that, as Weaver said, the Soviets were the first
true realists in hundreds of years, and no dodging about
in the excluded middle will save Western liberalism. A possible
allusion to James Burnham there, who Weaver was familiar with.
The Soviets are very hard logical believers in a doctrine,
and they believe that they're going to save the world,
that this is going to Their success will mean the
end of history, which means the end of conflict, the
end of war, the end of suffering and evil. It
is an apocalyptic vision, the solution of all of history,
and this inspires them to feats of sacrifice, courage, and
the art that surrounds it, which has certain religious kinds
of undertones. Of course, these are not people who believe
in the spiritual world. They deny that this soul exists.
You know, they're completely thoroughgoing materialists. But they're also messi
and that that is part of the dichotomy here with
the two systems of belief presented in the film. The
communist system, which uh isn't isn't given much serious treatment.
I think they present orthodox Marxism more or less. It's
it's very clear what these people are talking about, even
though the dialogue is unfortunately short. I would have liked
more in the communist reading group, but it's it's one
of the one of these two systems presented here that
are in conflict. Obviously, but Hollywood isn't isn't representing you know,
Christian belief or social norms. They're they're kind of representing
it in spite of themselves. Well, we finally get to
the the climactic scenes of the film, after the defection
of Gurney. He gets on the submarine, he goes away.
The communists are all rounded up by the police. Immediately
after the cell is busted. Whitlock is returned by Hobie Doyle,
who goes to the house in the nick of time,
gets Whitlock out of there, and then Whitlock confronts or
Whitlock is confronted by Eddie Mannix. Whitlock mindlessly and he's
just an absurd character with no ideas of his own.
He is explaining Marxism to Mannix in his office and
he says, oh, well, I found out you know how
the world works, that history is science, that we know
what's going to happen next. And all we're doing here
is we're manufacturing lollipops for the masses, so the fat
cats can get rich and exploit the proletariat. And this
is all this all amounts to what they used to
call bread and circuses, just to distract the masses of
people and to take their money. And in the midst
of this, of this thoughtless stream of consciousness from Clooney,
Josh Brolin gets up and starts slapping him across the
face and says, I hear another word out of you
on this nonsense. I'm going to have you arrested for
colluding in your own abduction. And Clooney, in the midst
of his explanation, he says, we have this delusion that
we're producing something of artistic value, or that there's some
spiritual significance to what we're doing. And of course, the
the implication here is the Marxist denial of the spiritual realm.
They're completely materialist. Brolin gets up and then gives this
really interesting and spirited command to Clooning. He says, you're
going to go and give your speech at the foot
of the Cross, and you're going to believe every word
you say. And then Brolin gives what I think amounts
to another, you know, another sort of philosophical realism. He says,
you're going to do it because you are an actor,
and you do what you do just like the director
does what he does. You do it because the picture
has worth, and you have worth when you serve the picture.
Now go out there and be a star. And ultimately,
is charge is you got to believe there's something bigger
in life. It's more than money. It's more than the
material world. It's not about the owner of the of
the studio. It's not about the money that we make
from the picture. It's about intrinsic worth that this is
actually something. Ultimately, we're trying to do something beautiful here,
and it's only gonna be beautiful, it's only gonna be
worthy if we believe, which is a wonderful comparison to
what a worthwhile life looks like, that our actions have
significance when we have faith in the ultimate meaning. And ironically,
just before this scene with Mannix, we have this absurd
little vignette of a man on the set of the Crucifixion.
They're getting ready, you know, to shoot this climactic scene
in Hail Caesar, and the one of the Errand boys,
he's distributing lunch to the set and he goes up
to the actor who's all strapped to the cross, you know,
and he's he's crucified on the cruss. You know, it's
an incredible difficult position to hold, and who knows how
long he's been there. They're obviously all exhausted because the
star hasn't shown up yet. They're all just waiting for
the moment. And he goes up to the man portraying
Jesus Christ, and he says, well, what kind of lunch
do you have anyway? And he goes, oh, I don't know,
you know, he's obviously very exhausted and in pain. And
he says, well, are you a principle or are you
an extra? And this is uh, this is ultimately, you know,
this is obviously the major question of the whole film.
It seems to me, the fact that it's put right
right where it is to stick into our heads, you know,
the absurdity of it which makes us laugh. Is the
man portraying Jesus Christ in this Hollywood epic is he
a principal actor? Is he the point and the illusion,
of course is the broader one. Is he the point
of human life? Is he supposed to be the point
of our lives? Or is he just an extra? And
the actor says no, I'm a principle and goes, oh, okay,
well you get the better lunch then, not that he
can eat it, you know, he's strapped to the cross. Well,
then Clooney, after his meeting with Mannix, he shows up.
He gives his speech. It's a you know, it's rather
what you would expect from from a Hollywood piece of
the of the day, but it it gives. It gives
like basic Christian affirmation. A Roman legionary who has come
into faith in Jesus Christ at the moment of his crucifixion,
and George Clooney gives this this speech in front of
the cross, and he says, Christ came to ease the
suffering of all men. He loves sinners. He knows all
that I've done, and yet he loved me. That he
is God revealed to us in this strange people, in
this distant land, and we could see the truth of
God if we had. And then he forgets his line,
and of course the missing word faith. If we only
had faith, then we could see the point of human existence.
We would have the ultimate meaning that we can have
in our lives. And I think that if we interpret
this straightforwardly, we see this as actually a very encouraging film,
encouraging to people of faith. Though it is obviously a
comedy and it makes us laugh. I think that it
does what it does brilliantly. I think it's insightful, it's
moreover entertaining, but it's getting at the most fundamental questions
of life. And that's one of the reasons why I
immediately enjoyed it when I saw it some years ago.
I guess it's ten years old, now, yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: You had shown it in class, I mean a decade ago,
and I was what sixteen seventeen at the time, and
I enjoyed it, but I didn't absorb much. I understood
the Marxism angle. I thought it was funny that Herbert
Mark Cusa is in this film, which is admittedly quite funny,
but I didn't take away a lot much more than that.
And then rewatching it, I think my review mirrors yours.
It's genuinely a very touching film. It has the same
Cohen Brothers regionalism that makes me love so many of
their movies. And honestly, this movie's not particularly well reviewed.
It sort of has, you know, middling to low praise
if you look at the critics, which you shouldn't. But
I think it's quite a good film. I highly recommend it.
And honestly, George, this has been a fascinating discussion. Thank
you so much for coming on to discuss it.
Speaker 3: It was a lot of fun. I really appreciate the invitation.
It's pleasure to talk about this stuff. Thanks for having
me well.
Speaker 1: Definitely. Of course, as you said off air, you have
added many more books to Tall Men Books, So if
you're interested in deep historical primary sources that you cannot
get anywhere else, I highly recommend you check out Tall
Men Books. You also have a social media presence on
substack and Twitter, as well as your Telegram, which is
I find incredibly amusing. It's very good. Those will all
be linked down to the description. As far as my stuff,
Jayburdin Show, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, anywhere you listen to podcasts,
this is what I do now. If you want the
episodes without ads, which I realize art irritating, but they
sort of fund this whole thing. It's five bucks a
month Patreon, Substack or gum Road. Uh, that's pretty below
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I've basically stuck it the lowest it'll go. So, you
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His business is very good. He knows what he's talking about.
And again, Bagbie, thank you so much. It was great
talking to you.
Speaker 3: Good talk to you too.
Speaker 1: Thank you to everyone at home. Keep your head up.
I can't last forever. Good Night,