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Speaker 2: Oh ge is.
Speaker 3: Folks, it's showtime.
Speaker 1: People say good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater. They want clothed sodas,
Speaker 3: hot popcorn in. No monsters in the Projection Booth. Everyone
Speaker 3: for tend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 4: Put it off.
Speaker 3: Two men on opposite sides of the law, Ryan O'Neill,
Speaker 3: Bruce Dern, and between them Isabella Johnny m Three loaners
Speaker 3: playing a ruthless game. None of them could afford to lose.
Speaker 3: In the Driver, Ryan O'Neill is the driver. My line
Speaker 3: of work is kind of hard to come by. His
Speaker 3: reputation the best meal man in the city. Memory is
Speaker 3: not too good about law not Yeah, you can do
Speaker 3: better than that. I don't have to. Did you ever
Speaker 3: get caught on one.
Speaker 4: Of your jobs?
Speaker 3: Hasn't happened yet. Bruce Dern is the detective. I'm very
Speaker 3: good at what I do. His reputation the toughest cop
Speaker 3: in the city, and.
Speaker 4: He saw the man who's driving the car. Yeah, you
Speaker 4: didn't identify him. I just don't like you.
Speaker 3: Now you get out of my time because you go
Speaker 3: out on one more job and I'm gonna nail you.
Speaker 3: You might be getting too big. Two men driven by
Speaker 3: their need to prove they were the best. How you're
Speaker 3: gonna get downstairs? I really like chasing you. Sounds like
Speaker 3: you've got a problem.
Speaker 4: I'm much better at this game than you are. Are
Speaker 4: you winning to make some money?
Speaker 3: I win? You're gonna do fifteen years for them? The money,
Speaker 3: the law, even their lives no longer count. You don't
Speaker 3: care about the money, might even send it to it.
Speaker 3: Who was best was all that matter. This is a
Speaker 3: quiet part of the hunting traps. Offset cowboys out are somewhere.
Speaker 3: You've been set up in am to break the cop.
Speaker 3: The driver was willing to risk it all. Break the driver.
Speaker 3: The cop was willing to break the laws. Pat It'll
Speaker 3: cost you two years. Ryan O'Neill, Bruce Dern Isabella, Johnny
Speaker 3: the Driver. A ruthless game between two legends.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White,
Speaker 1: joining me once again as Ms. Beth A Commando.
Speaker 5: Hello, thank you.
Speaker 1: Also back in the booth is mister Walter Shaw.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: We kick off November twenty twenty five with a look
Speaker 1: at Walter Hill's The Driver. Released in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 1: The film stars Ryan O'Neil as the titular driver getaway
Speaker 1: driver that is, if he were younger, you could call
Speaker 1: him a baby driver. He's pursued by the detective played
Speaker 1: by Bruce Dern and if you can't tell by these
Speaker 1: character names, the film is a stripped down thriller that
Speaker 1: plays with some familiar archetypes, including some that may feel
Speaker 1: very familiar if you're a fan of Jean Pierre Melville
Speaker 1: Le Samurai. We will be spoiling the film as we
Speaker 1: go along, so if you don't want anything ruined, please
Speaker 1: turn off the podcast and come back after you've seen
Speaker 1: the film. We will still be here. So, Beth, when
Speaker 1: was the first time you saw The Driver and what
Speaker 1: did you think?
Speaker 5: I have a terrible memory for the first time. I
Speaker 5: see a lot of films, but I do remember being
Speaker 5: a big fan of Walter Hill around that timeframe, and
Speaker 5: I feel like I saw The Long Writers before I
Speaker 5: saw The Driver, but I remember really liking it, and
Speaker 5: a lot of my film memories are tied to my dad,
Speaker 5: who's the one who got me to really love cinema,
Speaker 5: And I feel like the first time I saw it,
Speaker 5: I think I was still a teenager and not quite
Speaker 5: understanding it, and I remember talking to my dad about
Speaker 5: how the film was these arc types as opposed to
Speaker 5: real characters, because my dad always liked to make me
Speaker 5: think more about films that I was watching, never answering
Speaker 5: my questions, but prompting me to think about it more.
Speaker 5: That's what I remember is the first time saying it,
Speaker 5: being a little bit confused by it, but being a
Speaker 5: fan of Walter Hill and being a huge fan of
Speaker 5: just action films, and I just felt like it felt
Speaker 5: fresh and new and different. I've since put it into
Speaker 5: a slightly different context, seeing like Jean Pierre Melville's work,
Speaker 5: like you mentioned, but when I saw it, that was
Speaker 5: the first thing.
Speaker 1: And Walter, how about yourself?
Speaker 2: For some I saw it, I think it's got to
Speaker 2: be in VHS. I think I came to it backwards
Speaker 2: through the Warriors and the Streets of Fire was so enamored.
Speaker 2: Those were more kind of my friend group, this vibe.
Speaker 2: We really loved Warriors, we love the Streets of Fire.
Speaker 2: Just when I became more aware that there was somebody,
Speaker 2: there was an active hand behind some of these movies,
Speaker 2: you started to work backwards and forwards. I think most
Speaker 2: of us did in the pre Internet age, right, we
Speaker 2: started to look at the credits and start wondering about
Speaker 2: these people. And The Driver was one of the first
Speaker 2: movies I was really actively searching for at local video
Speaker 2: stories and stuff difficult in my small town Collorade to
Speaker 2: find for a while, but I think I finally did
Speaker 2: if I recall it. Video Plus late lamented Video Plus
Speaker 2: had a copy of The Drivers, So I remember renting
Speaker 2: it and being disappointed that it wasn't The Warriors over
Speaker 2: Streets of Fire, something very animal, that was really different.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't for years later that it came back
Speaker 2: to it with a different kind of expectation, with no
Speaker 2: expectation really just to say I was really little. I
Speaker 2: didn't get it. I was twelve or thirteen. I wanted
Speaker 2: street fights. I wanted guys in baseball uniforms. I don't know,
Speaker 2: something different forty eight hours I wanted even and it
Speaker 2: wasn't any of those things. I think the second time
Speaker 2: is really when I began to appreciate it as a
Speaker 2: kind of its own animal. But the first time I
Speaker 2: saw it would have been on a pretty crappy VHS
Speaker 2: and I was not nearly ready for it.
Speaker 1: This was actually a first time watch for me for
Speaker 1: this episode. When we had you on the show. I
Speaker 1: think it was what last year I think you were
Speaker 1: on before Walter. Obviously you've got the book about Walter
Speaker 1: Hill that you wrote, and I was just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this guy knows what he's talking about. Let's get him
Speaker 1: on and talk about a movie that I've always wanted
Speaker 1: to see but never have because yeah, I'm a fan
Speaker 1: of Walter Hill. We've done so many Walter Hill films
Speaker 1: on this program. We've talked about The Getaway, We've talked
Speaker 1: about Hickey and Bogs, Streets of Fire, The Warriors. I
Speaker 1: can't even remember what all else we've discussed. But just
Speaker 1: I had this blind spot of the driver, even though
Speaker 1: I think I've got a screenplay that I printed out
Speaker 1: forever ago and just always wanted to get into this
Speaker 1: film and never did so. I use this as an
Speaker 1: opportunity to say, Okay, if I'm going to talk about
Speaker 1: this movie, I want to talk about it with two
Speaker 1: people that I really enjoy their opinions, So let's check
Speaker 1: it out.
Speaker 5: That's great. What's your first reaction to it?
Speaker 1: My first reaction is that I love this whole idea
Speaker 1: of this stripped down narrative. I can really see the
Speaker 1: Samurai influence on there, the whole idea, mostly at the beginning,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to the Isabella Johnny character and
Speaker 1: the way that she sees Ryan O'Neill. And I know
Speaker 1: we'll talk about how the original screenplay played out that
Speaker 1: it wasn't a coincidence that she sees Ryan O'Neill, but
Speaker 1: she becomes one of the few witnesses to see him,
Speaker 1: very much like the singer Well from Le Samurai, as
Speaker 1: well as Jenny from The Killer, and the way that
Speaker 1: she can be the person that puts the finger on him,
Speaker 1: and just the way that this movie plays with this
Speaker 1: very cool color palette, and also the minimal dialogue that
Speaker 1: it has. I'm trying to think it's like, what fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes into the movie before Ryan O'Neill even says anything,
Speaker 1: and there's very little dialogue. And then of course I
Speaker 1: love Brucetern and seeing Bruce Dern in this era, especially
Speaker 1: anytime I see Bruce Den I'm super happy. But nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies Bruce Dern, Fuck, yes, I am there for it.
Speaker 1: And I just really like him in this movie, and
Speaker 1: especially to him and Matt Clark in their chemistry. And
Speaker 1: then Joseph Walsh, who I've talked with Joseph Walsh for
Speaker 1: hours and hours, but mostly about California Split. I never
Speaker 1: brought up the Driver, which makes me feel pretty guilty,
Speaker 1: but it was so nice to see him in here
Speaker 1: in such a prominent role.
Speaker 2: And Brewster wasn't the first choice for this film. It
Speaker 2: was Robert Mitcham. Hill actually went over to Mitchum's office,
Speaker 2: I guess it was, and he describes as there's two
Speaker 2: chairs with a small refrigerator in between, and they sat
Speaker 2: down and Mitchell pulled out of balla vodka from the
Speaker 2: refrigerator and his is eleven in the morning here, but
Speaker 2: he describes his long day spent with Mitcham and a
Speaker 2: ball of vodka, and then the next day Bencham calls
Speaker 2: up and says, nah, and that was it. He was
Speaker 2: initially considered. You can imagine what a different kind of
Speaker 2: movie that would have been without it. During snaky Reptilian insinuation,
Speaker 2: which I think is perfect for the detective.
Speaker 1: Durren can play a dirty cop like nobody's business. I
Speaker 1: love the laughing policeman, which one of these days I'm
Speaker 1: going to cover on this show. And I just feel
Speaker 1: that he's racist, sexist, plant evidence and basically he's very
Speaker 1: similar in this movie and so far as he will
Speaker 1: do whatever it takes to catch the driver, and I
Speaker 1: really appreciate that, and I also appreciate that I don't
Speaker 1: know if we ever really see him in a police station.
Speaker 1: No see him. We see him at Torchies, and I'm
Speaker 1: just waiting for Peter Jason to be running the bar
Speaker 1: back there and for Eddie Murphy to come walking in
Speaker 1: saying there's a new sheriff in town.
Speaker 5: I was so surprised because I haven't seen it in
Speaker 5: a long time, and there are no police station shots
Speaker 5: at all. His office is in that truck and in
Speaker 5: the bar, and it's interesting because on a certain level,
Speaker 5: it's like he's never in his real environment of his job,
Speaker 5: but he's in his real environment of how he sees himself.
Speaker 5: He's this player out on the streets, or the thing
Speaker 5: about Priestern. I love him, but he's an actor who
Speaker 5: in most of his films I always find that he
Speaker 5: could have played both roles. He could have done a
Speaker 5: kick ass job playing the driver. I especially thought of
Speaker 5: that when I was watching Coming Home. I kept thinking, like,
Speaker 5: man might have been better in him switched places. But
Speaker 5: he's a great actor. I love watching him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ryan O'Neil's an interesting choice. I know that Hill
Speaker 1: really wanted Steve McQueen to play this role. I was
Speaker 1: listening to the commentary that Matthew Aspery Greer put together
Speaker 1: for the I think It's the Imprint disc and talking
Speaker 1: about how O'Neill's career was a little bit on the
Speaker 1: waning side. At this point. We had done Nickelodeon, which
Speaker 1: really wasn't that big. He was huge in the earlier
Speaker 1: part of the decade. By nineteen seventy eight, you're on
Speaker 1: the downswing already. This seems so quick, but I guess
Speaker 1: suff just moved pretty fast. And I think it's an
Speaker 1: interesting choice to have this pretty boy actor playing this role.
Speaker 1: And I like that he is so pretty that and
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to use that word, but whenever I look
Speaker 1: at him, he's such a beautiful man, and you would
Speaker 1: think that he would be more like hard scrabble, like
Speaker 1: even Bert Reynolds or something in this role would seem
Speaker 1: more fitting. But I like that he's playing against type.
Speaker 1: And I guess, really, when you look at somebody, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this later on in the show, but
Speaker 1: you look like a Ryan Gosling very similar so far
Speaker 1: as very pretty man in this role as this silent,
Speaker 1: stoic driver.
Speaker 2: There's something about the John Ireland to him, or I
Speaker 2: won't say money Cliff because he was a great actor,
Speaker 2: but there's something about the sort of gentleman cowboy feeling
Speaker 2: about it if you look at the Driver as a
Speaker 2: Western which is why I did like write Adeal in
Speaker 2: that role, because he's such a cipher really as a
Speaker 2: human being. As an actor, I think there's a real
Speaker 2: blankness to him that could be sociopathic. Possibly he had
Speaker 2: worked with He'll be in a TV movie called The
Speaker 2: Thief Who Came to Dinner, and Hill had written the
Speaker 2: screenplay for that. It's really interesting to see the similarities
Speaker 2: between those two performances. They're both the Thornhill character north
Speaker 2: By Northwest go as the wind goes. There's not really
Speaker 2: a set identity for them necessarily, and whatever's happening around
Speaker 2: them seems to imprint and get filtered through them. I
Speaker 2: think Ryan O'Neill's great movies, or because he's got great
Speaker 2: co stars, there's something about him like open milk and
Speaker 2: refrigerator or something. He takes on the flavor of whatever
Speaker 2: is most prominent in the building. And here he couldn't
Speaker 2: be more different from McQueen to both of your points,
Speaker 2: I think because McQueen is such a died in the
Speaker 2: wools sort of character, he is, we is what he is.
Speaker 2: But for O'Neil, I think he really fits in with
Speaker 2: this unknowable archetype maybe even thing, and in a movie
Speaker 2: that's aspiring towards a Western archetype, I think kind of
Speaker 2: works for hildasem twice, I think is he engenders a
Speaker 2: lot of loyalty, but also I think he's got a
Speaker 2: pretty good eye for that sort of asking all the
Speaker 2: different kinds of masculinity that he covers in turn in
Speaker 2: each of his films.
Speaker 5: Ryan O'Neil wanted the part too, because I think he
Speaker 5: was feeling his career. I don't know like waning, but
Speaker 5: I think he was feeling tired of that sort of
Speaker 5: type casting that he was getting. He was getting all
Speaker 5: the same roles, and I think he saw this as
Speaker 5: a chance to do something different. And if you consider
Speaker 5: that the Samurai was an influence, he's a pretty boy,
Speaker 5: just like Alan DeLong. They're both these like beautiful faces
Speaker 5: that the camera loves that can be just this kind
Speaker 5: of blank slate. You can also say that about Greta Garbo.
Speaker 5: They always joke that what were you thinking about when
Speaker 5: you were shooting that scene? And it was like nothing.
Speaker 5: She was just this gorgeous face that whatever you cut
Speaker 5: to you could read whatever you wanted into her. And
Speaker 5: so I think the only moment where I felt that
Speaker 5: he wasn't the right guy was when he beats up
Speaker 5: that thug. That was the only time when I'm going
Speaker 5: like maybe not, I'm not sure he would like really
Speaker 5: take that guy out. But other than that, I think
Speaker 5: he worked really well in this context.
Speaker 2: You know, I really love that comparison to Alid the
Speaker 2: Loan because lately I likely Samurai a lot asks almost
Speaker 2: more as a comedy, like an existential comedy, because he's
Speaker 2: such a bad assassin. There's thirty witnesses. He doesn't really care.
Speaker 2: He does care how his hat looks, though he does
Speaker 2: care of his callers just perfectly irony. He's just very
Speaker 2: aware of his beauty. And I think there's something about
Speaker 2: Millville that was talking about referencing that as a trope
Speaker 2: I think in some of these movies. And yeah, I
Speaker 2: think O'Neil's that kind of character as well. And the
Speaker 2: only minor pushback I'd give to the beating up the
Speaker 2: thug scene is that I think people who have no
Speaker 2: like Mark Wahlberg, who have no interior life, seem are
Speaker 2: really scary when they get violent because they see sharks.
Speaker 2: You know that was that the Quinn says, their eyes
Speaker 2: roll back to black and then the screaming starts. I
Speaker 2: feel like that with some of these actors that don't
Speaker 2: really have it seems like any kind of hamster spinning
Speaker 2: around the wheel. So when they start beating there's something
Speaker 2: to me that feels really serial killer about that. I
Speaker 2: can't reason with this thing. There's no mercy here. They've
Speaker 2: just started down this road and they're going to continue
Speaker 2: down the road, just because I can't really read him,
Speaker 2: So I'm not really arguing with you. He's saying word
Speaker 2: for me, because the scariest people and film for me
Speaker 2: are not the cannibal elector seeing you can't engage him
Speaker 2: in a conversation about bar talk or something he right,
Speaker 2: and Neil, what are you going to talk to him about?
Speaker 2: He's just there to kill you. So there's something about
Speaker 2: that's scary to me. They can't reason with him, there's
Speaker 2: no talking to him. If he's showing up to your
Speaker 2: meeting angry, he's leaving angry. He's programming, and there's something
Speaker 2: about that I think is interesting in a film that's
Speaker 2: this programmatic.
Speaker 1: But he's so fatalistic as well, because he knows that
Speaker 1: he's being set up. That's how I I read this
Speaker 1: movie is that he absolutely, one hundred percent knows. Even
Speaker 1: when Glasses first approaches him and he basically murders the
Speaker 1: car in the parking garage, that to me was him
Speaker 1: just showing like, I know what you guys are up to.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ruin your car. And then when he
Speaker 1: takes the job later on, it's basically, yeah, I know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen with this thing, but I have
Speaker 1: to have like you're saying, is if this were Western,
Speaker 1: I have to have this showdown. I've been on the sidelines.
Speaker 1: I've been ducking black Bart for this whole time. I
Speaker 1: need to man up. And I'm not sure if he's
Speaker 1: actually a white hat or a black hat, because I
Speaker 1: don't feel that either of these guys have both gray
Speaker 1: hats to me, both very morally ambiguitu. But I just
Speaker 1: feel like, Okay, this is the time I need to
Speaker 1: make sure that I face off with Brewster and with
Speaker 1: this detective.
Speaker 5: Talking about showdown, it's like a showdown of egos, like
Speaker 5: they each think they're the best and the only way
Speaker 5: to prove it is to play this game where I
Speaker 5: know what you're doing, but I can still beat you
Speaker 5: at this or I'm going to trap you. But it
Speaker 5: feels very much like it's all about their egos, and
Speaker 5: that's why, like Isabella, Johnny can just walk away at
Speaker 5: the end. It's not about her. It's about the two
Speaker 5: of them, like having this fight.
Speaker 1: It's his finishing move. It's Ryan O'Neil's the driver for
Speaker 1: his finishing move where he plays chicken twice in this
Speaker 1: movie and he wins both times, plays it against the
Speaker 1: cops at the beginning they both separate and crash, and
Speaker 1: then later on when he's going against glasses and his
Speaker 1: driver does it again, sure enough, there's a crash. He
Speaker 1: will not blink, and I appreciate him for that.
Speaker 5: See, that's the part of the sociopath psychic guy that
Speaker 5: I do believe that he pulls off well for me.
Speaker 5: The punch did not land right for me, but that
Speaker 5: sense of I'm not going to blink in this chicken
Speaker 5: fight that I totally believed and thought he did really well,
Speaker 5: because it's like it doesn't even fake him at all.
Speaker 5: He knows he's gonna win because other people are more
Speaker 5: human and will try to save themselves and pull aside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's that such a fatalism there too, I think,
Speaker 2: where I'm not sure that he knows that he'll win.
Speaker 2: I don't trust that he cares or that he's aware
Speaker 2: of consequences. I don't trust that he's aware of consequences,
Speaker 2: which is a strange I guess sem to say. And
Speaker 2: I think part of the effectiveness of that film for
Speaker 2: me is that the driver is so ambiguous but also
Speaker 2: so scary. He reminds me of all these Western villains
Speaker 2: from Martin Lando, although I think leave Marvin, who show
Speaker 2: up and you feel like, I don't know if they
Speaker 2: know the damage that they're doing. I don't know that
Speaker 2: they have thought through the preciousness of the lives that
Speaker 2: they're taking. All this sort of liberal craft that I've
Speaker 2: been docrenated with. But watching these movies, that was what
Speaker 2: was the horror of those people, and to find it
Speaker 2: a hero for me is one of those things that
Speaker 2: only later as I got a little older, to college
Speaker 2: and more existential, that I really truly appreciate. I think
Speaker 2: watching this movie first, when I was really young and
Speaker 2: looking for that black and white hero villain thing, which
Speaker 2: really is there in Warriors and Streets of Fire in
Speaker 2: forty eight hours, you see this obviously supposed to be
Speaker 2: the hero, and yet well, I don't know. It's hard
Speaker 2: to like him. He's not eloquent, he's not charming, he's
Speaker 2: not warm at all. He doesn't seem to feel fear.
Speaker 2: There's something scary and did about him. And I think
Speaker 2: part of the allure of the Driver now is a
Speaker 2: cult object, it seems like, because it really didn't do
Speaker 2: well at the time. Part of that, I think is
Speaker 2: that there's this chilliness about it. There's no exit kind
Speaker 2: of feeling about it, where they're just engaged in the
Speaker 2: cycle of violence and the set roles that they're trapped
Speaker 2: in and cased it in their lives and they can't
Speaker 2: ever break out of the cycle of the stuff that
Speaker 2: they're doing. The kickers who can, like the player like
Speaker 2: he is a Belgian player, are almost supernatural. She knows
Speaker 2: more than she should at all times. She is able
Speaker 2: to move in and out of the action. Everyone else
Speaker 2: is trapped. We'll get glasses for God's sake. All these
Speaker 2: people are trapped, and these we cannot get out of.
Speaker 2: These were trapped there by their own design or by
Speaker 2: the design of what their makeup is. There's something like
Speaker 2: waiting for you to go about it that you were
Speaker 2: just stuck here and there's nowhere for you to go,
Speaker 2: and you're trapped in these roles that you're forced to
Speaker 2: enact over and over again. Especially in our culture and
Speaker 2: our media culture, you are the same roles that you're
Speaker 2: cast in and you're first to reenact over and over again.
Speaker 2: There's something about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not to jump to the end, but there's no resolution.
Speaker 1: This will continue to go on. It feels like when
Speaker 1: at the end of this movie that bag is empty,
Speaker 1: there is no money, there is no winner. They just
Speaker 1: walk away, and what's going to happen the next day.
Speaker 1: I don't see Ryan O'Neill turning over a new leaf.
Speaker 1: I don't see Bruce Dern not being obsessed about Ryan
Speaker 1: O'Neil anymore. I just see them going their own separate
Speaker 1: ways and then starting against the next day. It's like
Speaker 1: that whole the sheep Dog and the Coyote thing from
Speaker 1: the Warner Brothers cartoon.
Speaker 3: Hello Ralph, Hello Fred.
Speaker 1: Clocking in kind of thing, and then off they go again.
Speaker 1: Because I can see maybe why audiences were like, what
Speaker 1: the hell dies, nobody wins, nobody goes away with the girl.
Speaker 1: You've got this beautiful Isabella Johanni in her first American role,
Speaker 1: and she just walks away. Yeah, she's a complete cipher
Speaker 1: as well. You don't get to know her at all.
Speaker 1: And I'm really glad So I did read the script
Speaker 1: of this, and I'm really glad that they cut out
Speaker 1: that first scene where you have the Ronnie Blakeley character,
Speaker 1: the connection who's at the heart of all this stuff.
Speaker 1: She's meeting with the player, the Johnny character, and basically
Speaker 1: giving her money, and like, this whole thing is almost
Speaker 1: like a setup. And so when she sees Ryan O'Neil,
Speaker 1: and if you know that, then it plays that scene
Speaker 1: a little bit different as far as her looking at O'Neil,
Speaker 1: O'Neill looking at her, and then the lineup scene plays
Speaker 1: a little bit differently as well. And I'm so glad
Speaker 1: that they cut that out because that just would have
Speaker 1: not done this movie any favors whatsoever.
Speaker 5: It would be early on in the film telling you
Speaker 5: something and removing any sense of ambiguity or interest. And
Speaker 5: it also doesn't make a whole lot of sense either
Speaker 5: to me, Like it makes much more sense the way
Speaker 5: it plays out this way, and it seems more true
Speaker 5: to the style of what the film is. When I
Speaker 5: heard about the scenes that were in there, I was like,
Speaker 5: oh my god, thank god they cut that out.
Speaker 2: I don't believe he was interested in making sense. Really,
Speaker 2: we just wrote and that's the Moto American film since forever.
Speaker 2: But sat in an interview. They didn't want a realistic
Speaker 2: depiction of what real criminals were like. I didn't want
Speaker 2: a realistic depiction of what the city was like. It
Speaker 2: wasn't interested in any of.
Speaker 5: That makes it so interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it becomes a metaphor, but for what It becomes
Speaker 2: a symbol but for a passion play.
Speaker 3: But for what?
Speaker 2: So that's the question that holds interest. I think over
Speaker 2: all this time that this is a deeply symbolic, a
Speaker 2: deeply metaphorical film. But what is it for the politicians
Speaker 2: that go in every day and say horrible stuff and
Speaker 2: then they clock out and they have dinner with their
Speaker 2: opposition that they've just been slandering on TV. It's just
Speaker 2: a game, except lives are at stake, the real issues
Speaker 2: are mistaken. These guys are playing some kind of game
Speaker 2: here is it? More and more as I just watched
Speaker 2: it recently in preparation for tonight, I just felt like, Oi,
Speaker 2: this feels like watching television accidentally for a while, watching
Speaker 2: Expand or something. Boy, it really feels like these people
Speaker 2: are just engaging their own micro drama and not realizing
Speaker 2: that they're actually influencing the world with the decisions that
Speaker 2: they're making here just because they have to show up
Speaker 2: and see the right things in front of the camera.
Speaker 2: The stiltedness of a strange daccatoess of the dialogue and
Speaker 2: the roles again, to me, it becomes increasingly poignant, as
Speaker 2: this is who we are, this is actually what's happening.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: We have to pretend that we're still okay. We have
Speaker 2: to pretend that we're playing the rules the same that
Speaker 2: we've always played them. But really we're just trapped in
Speaker 2: these rules and we have an awareness that there's like
Speaker 2: an immense darkness looming. It sound like a crackpot, but
Speaker 2: our job needs to play this role and to enact
Speaker 2: in these same cycles and act like everything is okay.
Speaker 3: That's what we.
Speaker 2: Do while these other people who are in control do
Speaker 2: the same thing, and then we clock out and we
Speaker 2: don't know. So there's something about The Driver that to
Speaker 2: me has now become larger than a genre film. It's
Speaker 2: like an existentialist play.
Speaker 1: To me, well, I can see why it was not
Speaker 1: accepted in America but lauded by more European critics. This
Speaker 1: feels like a European film that escaped to America. Somehow.
Speaker 1: I can't even say it feels like a remake of
Speaker 1: a French film, because it doesn't. It feels like a
Speaker 1: French film instead of a remake of a French film.
Speaker 1: It feels very true to that idea because the script
Speaker 1: is so stripped down and told in very sparse dialogue,
Speaker 1: sparse directions. I know that he'll described as writing haiku.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I necessarily see it like that,
Speaker 1: but it is very minimalist to find that he even
Speaker 1: hacked a bunch of stuff out of that. I've talked
Speaker 1: about scripts before where it feels like when you're watching
Speaker 1: the movie, all of the connecting tissue is gone. But
Speaker 1: I'm glad the connecting tissue is gone. I'm glad that
Speaker 1: it is so enigmatic. It just adds to the experience
Speaker 1: of things because we see Ryan O'Neil where he lives
Speaker 1: and it is super sparse, like no personal effects or anything.
Speaker 1: And then there's a scene where they visit where Bruce
Speaker 1: Dern lives and I think they say, oh, your place
Speaker 1: looks just like the cowboys or the drivers, but not
Speaker 1: like how they call them cowboy as well, and it's yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's that whole Danny Lee chow yun fat thing
Speaker 1: of the two sides of the coin, the Batman Joker
Speaker 1: thing where it's like, okay, which one came first kind
Speaker 1: of thing, and is he that way because the driver's
Speaker 1: that way? Or are they just both so similar that
Speaker 1: they both live in like squalor like no personal effects.
Speaker 1: They just have their one job. I'm the driver, I'm
Speaker 1: the detective.
Speaker 2: And back into best point about Lee Samurai. I remember
Speaker 2: Alan the Loan's apartment in that it's empties except for
Speaker 2: the bed table in the parakeet who's his best friend,
Speaker 2: you know, and actually tells him that he's being bugged
Speaker 2: at one point, I think in that movie. I love
Speaker 2: that movie, very funny, but yeah, happiness.
Speaker 5: I'm also curious if he put that stuff in the
Speaker 5: script to get it approved by the studios. Like I
Speaker 5: wonder if there was stuff in there that he knew
Speaker 5: in his head he was gonna cut because it didn't
Speaker 5: really fit the rest of the film, because so much
Speaker 5: of that is so well written and stripped down, and
Speaker 5: those scenes feel very out of place what that final
Speaker 5: film is. So I'm just curious if maybe he put
Speaker 5: that in as decoy, let the studio have a little
Speaker 5: more conventional narrative, a little more explanation, a little more exposition,
Speaker 5: and then we'll just cut it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very possibly, And for his cast as well, to
Speaker 2: give them a little bit of direction. That's interesting. He
Speaker 2: stated about the Driver that he wrote it essentially as
Speaker 2: a reaction against regular stuff and making a career out
Speaker 2: of writing for a while. Now at that point he
Speaker 2: was like, I guess, didn't he want to do the
Speaker 2: same stuff again? So for the same stuff to show
Speaker 2: up in there to your point to end up being
Speaker 2: cut really interesting. Yeah, I think probably you have something there.
Speaker 2: Derney here's got to know what he's doing. He's a
Speaker 2: little background. But while we're shooting, we're not shooting any
Speaker 2: of this stuff.
Speaker 3: Better again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there is almost always a moment when Bruce Dern
Speaker 1: sounds like he was raised in Ireland, where he will
Speaker 1: add a little irish to his affect. There's one part.
Speaker 1: It's when he dumps the coffee on Ryan O'Neill's hands
Speaker 1: and Ryan O'Neal's about to punch him.
Speaker 3: He's just like, it'll cost you two years. Go on,
Speaker 3: do you want to throw it? Go on? Go on,
Speaker 3: go on. You know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: catch the cowboy that's never been caught, cowboy desperado.
Speaker 1: What are you talking? What's going on here? Bruce? You're
Speaker 1: not in Ireland. You're somewhere in Los Angeles in the
Speaker 1: back streets, or at that moment you're at Torches doing
Speaker 1: a police lined up and the bartender's behind him just
Speaker 1: polishing glasses. Like sam Alone, I'm like, all right.
Speaker 2: Great, Torchie shows up in a lot of his movies.
Speaker 2: That's also the name of the bar and Forty Streets
Speaker 2: of Fire as well. Torchies is the name of Raven's
Speaker 2: bar that he hangs out, and it's just just a name.
Speaker 1: I guess it's his Velverde right.
Speaker 2: To the county.
Speaker 5: I just wanted to get back to one point you made, Mike,
Speaker 5: where you were talking about it felt like this French
Speaker 5: film that you know, landed here. To me, what's interesting
Speaker 5: about it, it's the same thing that kind of happens
Speaker 5: with Westerns and Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leoni. I feel
Speaker 5: like it's something American that got exported and reinterpreted in
Speaker 5: France and then came back over and got reinterpreted. So
Speaker 5: it's got these layers of translation, and each time it
Speaker 5: gets translated, it like picks up some slightly different flavor
Speaker 5: or tone or texture. And I think that's why it's interesting,
Speaker 5: because it's not quite Le Samurai, but it's not quite
Speaker 5: the action films that came before in the United States,
Speaker 5: and it's not quite anything else at that point, so
Speaker 5: it feels like it's just been translated a few times.
Speaker 2: And well, to throw another wrench in it, the movie
Speaker 2: that Hill's actually obsessed with is John Woo's The Killer,
Speaker 2: like a remake Samurai, right, So to your point again,
Speaker 2: there's another and he wanted.
Speaker 1: To remake that for America.
Speaker 2: He did, and he has a script written for it
Speaker 2: in English ready to Go.
Speaker 1: And a lot of that felt like it was taking
Speaker 1: from Rio Bravo. To me, it almost black. He was
Speaker 1: taking Les Samurai into The Killer and adding more of
Speaker 1: a Western flavor. But he kind of was doing that
Speaker 1: whole thing that you're talking about Beth with the echoes.
Speaker 1: He would kind of re echo everything into Last Man's
Speaker 1: Standing And this is more of a pure vision of
Speaker 1: Red Harvest or something. But to me, it's the worst version.
Speaker 1: I think there's a version with David carrotyin that I
Speaker 1: think is an actual better version of Yo Jimbo and
Speaker 1: fist fill of dollars and Last Man Standing. Nobody gets
Speaker 1: blasted off of trampolines and shot through windows or anything.
Speaker 3: See.
Speaker 2: I actually love that. I think there are two different
Speaker 2: kinds of Walter Hill action film.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: There's the kind where it looks like people are actually
Speaker 2: fighting and learn how to fight, and then there's that
Speaker 2: kind with the Fire where Michael Parra swing's a mop
Speaker 2: I think at one point someone goes flying through the window. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a real comic bookness too, some Hills films. Those
Speaker 2: are the two things that he always loved were Westerns
Speaker 2: and comic books, and he wanted to be a comic
Speaker 2: book artist who went to Mexico to study that. But yeah,
Speaker 2: there's two different kinds. And Michael Pere in Streets of
Speaker 2: Fire was like told Hill that he's gonna go take
Speaker 2: boxing lessons that you knew how to fight, and he said,
Speaker 2: absolutely not. It's not that kind of movie. You should
Speaker 2: not know how to fight. You should swing like a
Speaker 2: big roundhouse telegraph swing and you're gonna hit some guy.
Speaker 2: He's gonna go through a door, across the street, through
Speaker 2: a window. But that's the kind of movie that we're
Speaker 2: making here. But there are other movies that are very
Speaker 2: much about fighting and knowing how to fight. I would
Speaker 2: say ahead of that, or even for forty eight hours
Speaker 2: is a very interesting fight film. They both show a
Speaker 2: lot of character through the way that they fight each other.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think my defensive last man's standing it's
Speaker 2: a really wonderful Prohibition era comic book, a take on
Speaker 2: all that stuff. For the driver, I think, to Ryan
Speaker 2: O'Neill's punch, I don't think he's inspired to. What he's
Speaker 2: really wanting is not for them to be able to
Speaker 2: ever express themselves verbally, but only through cars. It's almost
Speaker 2: like a Cronenberg film in that way, or something where
Speaker 2: all of the physicality of the film is really through
Speaker 2: the manipulation of metal and the screeching and the screaming
Speaker 2: of metal. When he's trying to show Glasses is disdain
Speaker 2: for being undervalue, they destroy his car. He destroys his car,
Speaker 2: and this amazing garage sequence, it's this rather than telling
Speaker 2: him off and this eloquently penned speech, He's just I'm
Speaker 2: gonna knock off every door on your car, one by one.
Speaker 2: I'm taking the wings off a fly. I'm going to
Speaker 2: I show my disdain for you through the destruction of
Speaker 2: this metal and so the screeching of it and the
Speaker 2: torturedness of it, and the idea that we're bus stations
Speaker 2: and rail yards and all these places. There's something very
Speaker 2: brutalless about I think the way that this film is
Speaker 2: told as well, again not in a realistic way, but
Speaker 2: in a various metaphorical wayment even about our hist as
Speaker 2: an industrial nation. Perhaps not to get to eve in
Speaker 2: the woods, but there's something about that.
Speaker 5: It's also him just showing how skilled he is too,
Speaker 5: because he doesn't just smash the car. He piece by
Speaker 5: piece very carefully, one side, one other side, one fender,
Speaker 5: the next vender. I can do this exactly how I
Speaker 5: want to like, and it's again like it's a bit
Speaker 5: of ego. And to put my two cents in on
Speaker 5: last man's standing that is his heroic bloodshed film. So
Speaker 5: like all that excess and over the top is like
Speaker 5: perfectly suited to that particular style. I think.
Speaker 1: I love speaking of the use of the cars. When
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember exactly when it is in the
Speaker 1: film when he is Ryan O'Neill is driving through, I
Speaker 1: want to say it's another parking garage, but it's like
Speaker 1: he's sneaking in the car. It's almost like as if
Speaker 1: he were like crawling or just like looking around corners.
Speaker 1: But it's the car doing it. It's not him, but
Speaker 1: it's him as an extension of the car. And I
Speaker 1: want to say that Durn's doing something very similar as well.
Speaker 1: And it's just like these two men just going around
Speaker 1: corners but in these vehicles and just sussing each other out.
Speaker 1: I just really love that he is so identified with
Speaker 1: the cars and the other thing too, going back to
Speaker 1: John wu and the color palette of the Samurai is
Speaker 1: so distinct, and the color palette of Unflick is so
Speaker 1: distinct as well. And I love, absolutely love the cinematography
Speaker 1: that is coming in this movie, and just that it's
Speaker 1: the same gentleman Phil Lathup who did Point Blank, which
Speaker 1: is to me one of the best looking movies pretty
Speaker 1: much ever. It looks so good, and I just love
Speaker 1: the coolness of the colors. I love that amazing shot
Speaker 1: of Walker going down the the airport corridor and you
Speaker 1: just hear the shoes and see him coming, and the
Speaker 1: whole thing of him busting through the door and the
Speaker 1: gray suit that he's got on, or all the gangsters
Speaker 1: with those green, different shades of green. You get so
Speaker 1: much of this, especially in some of these outdoor scenes
Speaker 1: where they have these chases where the world is green.
Speaker 1: There's an amazing shot when O'Neill finally confronts Johnny after
Speaker 1: the lineup scene, and it's a corridor kind of thing
Speaker 1: and it's lit up at the bottom. It looks like
Speaker 1: with green neon and it just casts a shade over everything,
Speaker 1: and you see these two elevators in the background, like
Speaker 1: outside of the building type elevators going up and down,
Speaker 1: and you just see these little red lights going up
Speaker 1: and down. It just looks so good, and everything looks
Speaker 1: so cool and controlled with this film, very much like
Speaker 1: the characters.
Speaker 5: And then the city looks gorgeous too, even when they're
Speaker 5: having the car chases and seeing the neon and the
Speaker 5: lights of the city whiz by when they're taking the
Speaker 5: curves and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think La looks like this anymore.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: There's something very time capsule about this as well. It
Speaker 2: was wonderful movies during the no wave period in New
Speaker 2: York where you really get a feeling for it. This
Speaker 2: is the La version of that, I think. And Lathrop
Speaker 2: he did the Hills first movie Too Hard Times and
Speaker 2: also worked with him on FIFA Came to Dinner, But
Speaker 2: I'm not sure there are a lot of cinematographers who
Speaker 2: are better at shooting with low light like this, bouncing
Speaker 2: light off the streets, using neon and all those things
Speaker 2: to do it. Hill would recapture a lot of that,
Speaker 2: I think for the Warriors, but just the way to
Speaker 2: shoot at night. It's really elle noir Quinn essentially ell noir.
Speaker 2: Right when we think about that is man, This is
Speaker 2: a really beautiful film. What a great comment. I love
Speaker 2: talking about his use of cars and the extension of
Speaker 2: cars and tying it with brilliant observation about heroic bloodshed
Speaker 2: and last standing.
Speaker 3: Thank you for that.
Speaker 2: Jordan does that as well in his Mission Impossible movie.
Speaker 2: There's that sort of tango that Tom Cruise's character has
Speaker 2: on the back of the on the motorcyclist. They're actually
Speaker 2: expressing this and also through the cars, and he does
Speaker 2: that of course in Hard Boiled with motorcycles and cars too,
Speaker 2: and there's yeah, there's a real like marriage of man
Speaker 2: and metal theme trope or whatever going on here. But yeah,
Speaker 2: Lathrop is to be commended for a lot of that
Speaker 2: really beautiful stuff. He also shoot a shot out. They
Speaker 2: shoot horses, don't they?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, another Bruce Stern classic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just really beautiful films, gorgeous looking movies, right, But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's always smart. I think for young filmmakers to attach
Speaker 2: themselves to veteran cinematographers for their first couple of times out,
Speaker 2: it really helps ease the transition.
Speaker 3: I think. Yeah.
Speaker 1: To think that this was Hill's second directorial effort is
Speaker 1: just amazing. And I do love that he says about
Speaker 1: the Warriors. Thank god I was making the Warriors because
Speaker 1: this movie.
Speaker 2: The Driver is the kind of movie that's so experimental
Speaker 2: and unusual that it ends careers pretty quickly in the
Speaker 2: United States. It's very possible that if he didn't have
Speaker 2: Warriors in the chamber already and was actually shooting it,
Speaker 2: that we wouldn't have had at Walter Hill, not the
Speaker 2: way that we do now. I think he had already
Speaker 2: maybe sold the script for Ayleen as well. At that
Speaker 2: point he had started brandy Wine with David Tyler. He
Speaker 2: already luckily had some really soft landings because The Driver
Speaker 2: was just even Isabella Johnny came out afterwards saying that
Speaker 2: she was betrayed. She was told that it was going
Speaker 2: to be an American action movie with a big car
Speaker 2: chases and stuff, and this is what we got. She
Speaker 2: was not a supporter of that experience. Yeah, no, I
Speaker 2: think it's a career ender. But luckily he was already
Speaker 2: ready to go.
Speaker 1: She's an interesting person. I spoke years and years Sorry,
Speaker 1: this is very off topic that I spoke years and
Speaker 1: years ago to Sam Neil about possession and I was
Speaker 1: just like, oh, I'd love to talk to you more
Speaker 1: about this, and he said, I after certain people are
Speaker 1: no longer with us. So I was like, oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: So then when Chaikowsky passed away, I was like, are
Speaker 1: you ready to talk about this now? And he goes, Nope,
Speaker 1: not yet. I'm like, oh, okay, you're narrowing the field.
Speaker 1: And then when I recently was reading her Wikipedia article
Speaker 1: and just where she's at politically, I'm like, oh, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's a little loony. So maybe he's just biding his
Speaker 1: time for that one. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Didn't you check herself into an institution after possession?
Speaker 1: I think she did. Yeah. I think she's very right
Speaker 1: wing these days.
Speaker 2: I would have so much empathy for those people now,
Speaker 2: for the damage that they're doing.
Speaker 1: It's just so casual when it comes to knowing the
Speaker 1: driver is behind all this stuff. There is no I'm
Speaker 1: going to find out who did this. There's no cat
Speaker 1: and mouse as far as that goes. There's no I'm
Speaker 1: following the clue. He knows exactly what's going on. He
Speaker 1: knows that Ryan O'Neil is the guy. There is a
Speaker 1: little cat and mouse as far as he's just batting
Speaker 1: him around, just hey, I know this, Like, here's the
Speaker 1: fake key that you used to get into that car.
Speaker 1: You want this back because I found it, but you
Speaker 1: can have it back, and just walks right into his
Speaker 1: It looks like a hotel room, but it's an apartment,
Speaker 1: and then later on when he checks into a hotel
Speaker 1: it basically looks exactly the same.
Speaker 5: It was funny. When he was handing in the key.
Speaker 5: The first thing that I was thinking he was trying
Speaker 5: to do is to get him to put his fingerprints
Speaker 5: on it so that he could take it back and
Speaker 5: use it as evidence. I don't know if that was
Speaker 5: his first thought. And then when he didn't do that,
Speaker 5: then it was like, let me egg him on more
Speaker 5: to play this cat and mouse game and take the bait.
Speaker 5: But that was I was going like, oh, don't touch it,
Speaker 5: don't put your fingerprints on it.
Speaker 1: Because it's immediately thereafter that the driver goes to Glasses like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm your man, let's set it up.
Speaker 2: There's a strangeness about this, right, there's too much knowledge
Speaker 2: and there's not enough. No, they're just playing his role, right,
Speaker 2: I keep being inarticulate about it. Did you guys read
Speaker 2: Animal Man, the comic book that Grant Morrison revived during
Speaker 2: the Vertigo era when sand Man was big and all
Speaker 2: that stuff. Anyway, this is a superhero. But there's this
Speaker 2: episode called the Coyote Gospel that talks about Wiley Coyote
Speaker 2: as a sentient and he has to wake up every
Speaker 2: day to get murdered horribly and it's a terrible pain,
Speaker 2: and there's like this existential The comic is like this
Speaker 2: where the character is aware of itself as a troupe,
Speaker 2: as a device and a larger machine that is so
Speaker 2: much older than him, and he's helpless to break out
Speaker 2: of it. He is the project of it. He can
Speaker 2: only enact what he's forced to enact, but he does
Speaker 2: it with a certain kind of resignation and fatalism and
Speaker 2: self awareness, all these things that we're all pulling out
Speaker 2: of the driver as a vibe from it, and I
Speaker 2: think that's being carried through with these guys like Brewster
Speaker 2: Earn and Isabelle, Johnny and whatever. They are indeed characters
Speaker 2: that feel as though they're trapped in this and that
Speaker 2: everything else is just like there's money in the back
Speaker 2: or there isn't.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Tomorrow, I'm gonna wake up. I'm wanna be a cop
Speaker 2: in a movie, and you're gonna be a bad guy
Speaker 2: in a movie or a hero an anti hero, and
Speaker 2: you are gonna be the damsel that knows too much
Speaker 2: the film Fatale, and we're gonna do this again. And
Speaker 2: then after that we're gonna wake up and I wanna
Speaker 2: be the cop again. And there's a sort of inevitability
Speaker 2: of what they're doing. And if we read into a
Speaker 2: little bit of Hill's sort of interviews around that time,
Speaker 2: talking about his exhaustion with rewriting, adaptation, writing for other
Speaker 2: people like Pecking Pod, and he just wanted us to
Speaker 2: do something different. These guys are brilliant. I grew up
Speaker 2: on this stuff. All this stuff is brilliant. It's all familiar.
Speaker 2: What if I made a movie that everybody knew what
Speaker 2: roles they were to be playing. He's the gun slinger,
Speaker 2: and there's the kid that comes in the end who
Speaker 2: thinks he's a better gun slinger than he is and
Speaker 2: has to be taught like a day of the Gunfighter,
Speaker 2: Day of the Outlaw? Was that the name of that.
Speaker 2: So there's a sort of archetypal quality to this. And
Speaker 2: then indeed Edgar Wright comes in with Baby Driver and
Speaker 2: does a lot of similar feeling tropes, and to me,
Speaker 2: it's just yeah, do this again, Nicholas ref drive, do
Speaker 2: this again, over and over again, because in fact, the
Speaker 2: point of The Driver is that we are trapped in
Speaker 2: these cycles of storytelling. The mcguffin of the movie is
Speaker 2: the mcguffin to itself. There's nothing in the bag. It's empty.
Speaker 2: It's just completely empty. There are other bags in movies.
Speaker 2: Extreme Prejudice has a suitcase full of money, Hicking Bogs
Speaker 2: has a suitcase full of money. There are all these
Speaker 2: things that wouldcur over and over again. Even in his
Speaker 2: own work. The Driver is when he's commenting on I.
Speaker 1: Want to say, there's a suitcase of money in the
Speaker 1: getaway as well. That's right, And it might even be
Speaker 1: at a It's been a while since I've seen it,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it feels like it might even be at
Speaker 1: either a bus or train station. And I kind of
Speaker 1: love this whole idea of so much of this taking place,
Speaker 1: the finale taking place around that bus station. And again,
Speaker 1: like the exchange man they call him with the money exchange,
Speaker 1: the guy who actually gets away with the money but
Speaker 1: then doesn't. The guy who's just there saying, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he just picked up the money. He's doing the exchange.
Speaker 1: The key's gone. This guy's a punk just reading out
Speaker 1: all of this stuff about this guy. There's no again,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, he's gonna get away. No, they're on
Speaker 1: him like flies on shit the entire time.
Speaker 2: That wonderful image you have that one brother's cartoon work.
Speaker 2: They're just punching in and they're doing this every day,
Speaker 2: and every day it's like Groundhog's Day. Right, every day's
Speaker 2: the same thing, every day's the same variation a different thing.
Speaker 2: Hill is really famous for saying, there's only two stories
Speaker 2: in the Western Cannon. There's the Crucifixion and there's the Odyssey,
Speaker 2: and everything else is just a ballishment, right, And so
Speaker 2: if this is what you believe and he's a really
Speaker 2: well read guy. He knows of which he speaks when
Speaker 2: it comes to some of these things. This is I
Speaker 2: think his real moment of that existential risk. We're saying,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna make a movie that is actually a commentary
Speaker 2: on all action movies and a commentary on all of
Speaker 2: these Western trips we're telling in a commentary in Western
Speaker 2: masculinity in a lot of real ways. There's a really
Speaker 2: uncomfortable scene and I don't know that we're allowed to
Speaker 2: really use this word flippantly anymore, but it's sexual assault
Speaker 2: essentially of the connection in which a gun is forced
Speaker 2: in her mouth. It was really uncomfortable in ugly sequence.
Speaker 2: Even that's recreated in Hill's filmography and Alien, when As
Speaker 2: tries to kill Ripley he rolls up a pornographic magazine
Speaker 2: and tries to put it into her mouth. For me,
Speaker 2: that was always interesting, weird when I was a kid
Speaker 2: an Alien, because I thought, how is he really planning
Speaker 2: on killing her? Is it choking or is it whatever?
Speaker 2: But really later you realize it's a metaphor for sexual violence,
Speaker 2: engendered violence, and how often does that occur in Hills films?
Speaker 2: Fairly frequently, especially towards characters that are as powerful as
Speaker 2: replay or as powerful as the connection is. Really like
Speaker 2: Mercy and the Warriors or Ellen in Streets of Fire.
Speaker 2: These are really powerful women characters that are the only
Speaker 2: way that men are able to confront their castration before
Speaker 2: them is in a gendered way. Even that I think
Speaker 2: is he'll reckoning with certain tropes that he himself will
Speaker 2: continue to enact in his movies as he was forward
Speaker 2: in his career. But yeah, here with the second film,
Speaker 2: he's already taking this unbelievably huge ballsy swing. It's almost
Speaker 2: like it's the kind of thing that Francis Ford might
Speaker 2: do after he tells those vineyards and says, I'll give
Speaker 2: a crap people like this or not. I think the
Speaker 2: Driver willfully denies pleasure in a lot of ways. It
Speaker 2: pushes away the usual easy catharsis, and it says, really,
Speaker 2: examine what it is that you've come here for. What
Speaker 2: is it that you're looking for? What is the resolution
Speaker 2: that they get away, they get married, they buy a
Speaker 2: bungalow in the Bohma, What is it that you're looking
Speaker 2: for here? Because I deny that you remember he was
Speaker 2: brought into the Getaway to rewrite bogdhana script for that,
Speaker 2: and Bogdonagean's script for that was really faithful to the
Speaker 2: book too, Harrison and the book ends in a fantasy
Speaker 2: hell town where robbers pay to stay until they can't
Speaker 2: and then they're cannibalized by the rest of the residents there,
Speaker 2: and that's the ending of the Getaway, and they brought
Speaker 2: in hell to give them something more conventional. So I
Speaker 2: think the driver really is working against that, and in
Speaker 2: a subtle way, he does that for the rest of
Speaker 2: his career. I have all this capital that I just
Speaker 2: won from making this forty eight hours movie. What am
Speaker 2: I going to do now streets his career is the
Speaker 2: giant middle finger to expect and what people want from him?
Speaker 1: God, Now I tracked down that Bogdanovitch script because I
Speaker 1: that's what we talked a lot about when we did
Speaker 1: the Getaway episode, was talking about that ending from Thompson
Speaker 1: and just how aft up that was, and how that
Speaker 1: so many of Jim Thompson's books just take that wild
Speaker 1: turn towards the end, like Savage Night or The Killer
Speaker 1: Inside Me. But yeah, so many of his books just
Speaker 1: take this weird turn towards the end, and when I
Speaker 1: read the original of The Getaway, I was just like,
Speaker 1: what the hell just happened? What dimension did we just enter?
Speaker 1: At the end of this book, it's so good.
Speaker 5: You were talking about denying expectations. But Bruce Dern has
Speaker 5: that scene early on where he says, what do you
Speaker 5: do first thing in the morning? You read the sports
Speaker 5: section because it's easy, It's like good, it's like win
Speaker 5: or lose, there's losers and winners, and it's He's basically saying,
Speaker 5: here's the most simple, basic outcome, that's clear and precise,
Speaker 5: and that's not what you're going to get.
Speaker 2: Hills, Well, what did to do? Another Thompson novel for
Speaker 2: a long time too? Pop twelve eighty in a population
Speaker 2: twelve eighty, which is also really weird.
Speaker 1: So anyway, didn't they do that? As is that coup
Speaker 1: de tourchon or whatever? That's cat? I start to speak
Speaker 1: very quietly when I try to pronounce French work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the richand Tavinir film. Yeah, Jergo's Lanthemos currently owns
Speaker 2: the rights to it, so we'll see if he brutalizes
Speaker 2: him the stone in that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know I've really got turned on to thompsone
Speaker 1: from Keith Gordon, the filmmaker or slash actor, because he
Speaker 1: wanted to do Savage Night Forever Ago and it's God.
Speaker 1: I would love to see what you end up doing
Speaker 1: with that, or if you could, because that one is
Speaker 1: really wild too.
Speaker 2: Keith Gordon is one of my favorite directors that people
Speaker 2: don't talk about enough. As a director, Yeah, would be amazing.
Speaker 2: I'd just love to send another one of his movies. Honestly,
Speaker 2: he's amazing and I love him as an actor too.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a break and we'll be back
Speaker 1: right after these brief messages. Looking for something superior to
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Speaker 1: and we were talking about The Driver and Walter, I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you a little bit about your book.
Speaker 1: How did you come to write about Walter Hill for.
Speaker 2: While I was writing a couple of movie theaters and
Speaker 2: I did a screening on thirty five millimeter of The
Speaker 2: Warriors and Streets of Fires double feature. I loved him
Speaker 2: as a kid, and I thought, we're going to get
Speaker 2: some the usual suspect showing up to these weird screenings
Speaker 2: or whatever I like to do them. Whatever won't make
Speaker 2: any money. They both sold out within a few minutes
Speaker 2: of us putting on the scale, and I snuck in
Speaker 2: the back just to see what the vibe was like.
Speaker 2: And people were going nuts. During the Warriors, they were
Speaker 2: yelling and laughing and all the right places. And Streets
Speaker 2: of Fire same thing. I had flown Larry gross Out,
Speaker 2: the screenwriter, to talk after Streets of Fire, and we
Speaker 2: got up in front of the stage as the credits
Speaker 2: started going, and we turned the music down a little bit,
Speaker 2: and people cried out in horror that we turned the
Speaker 2: music down.
Speaker 3: It's the fix.
Speaker 2: Closer and closer. I think it is the closing sign.
Speaker 2: And so we were like, oh, okay, we just let
Speaker 2: the credits play at full volume so people can't get
Speaker 2: the rest of their energy out, and that kind of
Speaker 2: created kind of a spark in my head of curiosity,
Speaker 2: what is it about these movies? What is it exactly?
Speaker 2: And I started doing research and there weren't any books
Speaker 2: at that time in English about Walter Hill. I think
Speaker 2: Walter Hill was dismissed in a way as a maker
Speaker 2: of ro movies like Red Heat and Last Man Standing.
Speaker 2: He's working with Stallone, He's working with Schwartz and there
Speaker 2: He's just one of those guys. There's more to it,
Speaker 2: obviously in my head anyway, and I started just going
Speaker 2: down that rabbit hole. Okay, what did he do?
Speaker 3: Right? Who is he? Really?
Speaker 2: Can we pull something out of watching his filmography? So
Speaker 2: I went through I think he had twenty three twenty
Speaker 2: four movies at the time, and I watched them all,
Speaker 2: and I watched the tales from the Crips, and I
Speaker 2: watched some of his TV shows that I could find,
Speaker 2: Dog and Cat and stuff like that, and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: there's actually a lot here, and I'm not sure that
Speaker 2: I'm the right person for it, but there's no one
Speaker 2: else doing it, so I'm going to do it. And
Speaker 2: seven years later I finished. And I'd gone out several
Speaker 2: times during that time to meet with him and chat
Speaker 2: with him. And he was very open and very willing
Speaker 2: to help with the caveat that it wouldn't be a
Speaker 2: biography of him, and it wouldn't be about the behind
Speaker 2: the scenes and the dirty stories, which is not interesting
Speaker 2: to me at all, if you know me. So I
Speaker 2: was lucky that worked out perfectly. And the first time
Speaker 2: I met him, he said I've been warned about you,
Speaker 2: and I was like, Okay, here we go. What movies
Speaker 2: of mine don't you like? Was this question? And I
Speaker 2: was like, I don't like Brewster's Millions. I never really
Speaker 2: understood that in your photography, and I don't know that
Speaker 2: I like Crossroads. I hope that you'll give Crossroads another
Speaker 2: and I'm like, deal, I want to write your book
Speaker 2: and we'll give all of them a lot of looks
Speaker 2: after writing the book. Really understand Crossroads, I think in
Speaker 2: a different way. He made that movie after his father
Speaker 2: had just died, and his father was a real musical
Speaker 2: kind of person, and it introduced him to the Southern.
Speaker 3: Blues and all of that.
Speaker 2: Crossroads was really made for him and about an older
Speaker 2: mentor and a young man. All that stuff. I get
Speaker 2: it now. And Brewster's Millions is actually an interesting populous
Speaker 2: piece in which a person that doesn't even want to
Speaker 2: be the mayor the governor is elected on a platform
Speaker 2: of burn everything down. So ultimately the longest chapter in
Speaker 2: my book is ultimately about Brewster's millions because of this
Speaker 2: suppression in some ways without being still not my favorite,
Speaker 2: but anyway, Yeah, I just I knew there was something there,
Speaker 2: and I wondered, because you can program all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 2: You can program class of nineteen eighty four. You know
Speaker 2: nothing about Marc Lester, but you can program a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff from that era that's not going to get
Speaker 2: the same kind of reverence and the same kind of
Speaker 2: full roaded approval and love today, but by a large audience.
Speaker 2: It's a relatively large, cold audience. And so I was like,
Speaker 2: what is it about this guy that we've overlooked and
Speaker 2: that we haven't really reckoned with? And then some friends
Speaker 2: of mine knew that I was doing the book when
Speaker 2: forty eight Hours was coming out on four K, I think,
Speaker 2: and they asked if I wanted to do a special
Speaker 2: feature for it, And first they can you send us
Speaker 2: the chapters of the chapter, And then he asked me
Speaker 2: to do that. We finished a thing for forty eight hours,
Speaker 2: a little video essay, and then my partners in that said,
Speaker 2: this is too good for Paramount. Let's see if David
Speaker 2: Fincher wants it his Fincher was doing something for Netflix
Speaker 2: at the time. He wanted to do a little documentary
Speaker 2: series about film critics that he liked in films.
Speaker 3: That he wanted.
Speaker 2: Fincher got a hold of that, and he took a
Speaker 2: little bit of convincing, not too much, because he had
Speaker 2: not a great experience making Alien three with Hill and Kyler,
Speaker 2: and I think what might have sold it ultimately, not
Speaker 2: only that was done already pretty much. But I said
Speaker 2: to him, I think the assembly cut of three is
Speaker 2: actually the best Alien film and told him that, trying
Speaker 2: to convince him of my seriousness and maybe backfire. He
Speaker 2: was silence for a minute, and he goes, come on, Walter. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he was really like angry almost at the suggestion. But
Speaker 2: I kept talking to him about what was really great
Speaker 2: and what really works about Alien three, the best version
Speaker 2: of Ripley, the most interesting version of this world, the
Speaker 2: blue collar world. And I think at the end of
Speaker 2: our conversation, hopefully what sort of moved the ball in
Speaker 2: our favor was that finally after all that, he was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: let's do it. And so the show that we did
Speaker 2: for him was on forty eight hours and the sort
Speaker 2: of endairy nature of its characterizations and racial dynamics. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I just started writing the book because I think I
Speaker 2: felt like there was an opportunity to tell the story
Speaker 2: of somebody who deserved to get his flowers before he
Speaker 2: was gone. I think too often we have these great retrospectives, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I had twenty years and it wouldn't have been great.
Speaker 2: Someone said something, well, he could hear it, and that
Speaker 2: was really what drove me to the finish line. At
Speaker 2: the end of it, it was like, I just want
Speaker 2: to quit. I'm so tired, and we've got so much
Speaker 2: material and I just overwhelmed. But it really drove me
Speaker 2: to think I really want him, whether he agrees with
Speaker 2: everything saying or not, to know how appreciated he is
Speaker 2: in his lifetime.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that there are movies that take so liberally
Speaker 1: from some of the things that he's done. You mentioned
Speaker 1: Baby Driver earlier, and I bet I think you mentioned
Speaker 1: refin I would throw probably Death Proof a little bit
Speaker 1: in there. Some of the color palette stuff that Tarantino's
Speaker 1: doing and that I'm not a big fan of that. Actually,
Speaker 1: I'm not a big fan of Drive, Baby Driver, or
Speaker 1: death Proof, But I just rewatched Drive before we sat
Speaker 1: down to record this, and it did hit me a
Speaker 1: little bit better than before. But I don't know if
Speaker 1: I've ever seen the theatrical version of Drive, because the
Speaker 1: only version I've ever seen has Angelo by the name
Speaker 1: in the credits, So I'm wondering if that's all temp music,
Speaker 1: because I don't think he ever wrote a score for it,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it's the who is it Cliff Martinez.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's the Cliff Martinez score that's going
Speaker 1: along with it. But it's great music that goes throughout
Speaker 1: the entire thing, and it is an interesting film. I
Speaker 1: did like it more the second time, and I do
Speaker 1: think what a cipher Ryan Gosling is in that, and
Speaker 1: I can really see him being very related to as
Speaker 1: far as this, Like I said, pretty Boy, very minimal dialogue,
Speaker 1: you don't always know exactly what's going on through his head,
Speaker 1: and some of the violence in that movie is just
Speaker 1: absolutely wonderful. The thing with the hammer and the scene
Speaker 1: and the elevator and that opening chase, which for me
Speaker 1: just pays so much homage to the opening chase in
Speaker 1: The Drive, and how it ends at that sports game
Speaker 1: and everyone coming out and him putting on the baseball
Speaker 1: cap and with that cool fucking jacket that he's got.
Speaker 1: I can see why people like that a little bit more.
Speaker 1: But sometimes Refin I love the bits that of Billy
Speaker 1: Friedkin just tearing him a new asshole. I thought that
Speaker 1: was great. I feel like Refin is way up his
Speaker 1: own ass A lot of times.
Speaker 5: I want to throw out. One film that draws on
Speaker 5: Walter Hill, City of Violence, the Korean film. There is
Speaker 5: a great fight sequence where the two Korean guys have
Speaker 5: to face off all these local gangs that are totally
Speaker 5: playing off of the Warriors. It's one of the best
Speaker 5: fight sequences. I love that film so much.
Speaker 1: I need to see that one.
Speaker 5: Oh, it's such a good film.
Speaker 2: I think you really touched on something interesting about Walter Hill, though,
Speaker 2: is that people in the the industry seem to really
Speaker 2: know him to movies and stuff. People who are making
Speaker 2: movies in general really revere some of the things that
Speaker 2: he does in him and you see these echoes popping up.
Speaker 2: He even did the pilot for dead Wood. He did
Speaker 2: this really interesting mini series called Broken Trail, in which
Speaker 2: he allowed his Chinese actresses to write their own dialogue.
Speaker 2: And it's really about an undertold story all over the West.
Speaker 2: And so there's so much that when you say about
Speaker 2: Walter Hill, people are kind of surprised, right you say
Speaker 2: he influenced this. He influenced this, and he was really
Speaker 2: into Asian cinema and he's really into the honesty. He
Speaker 2: would have been my choice to direct The Odyssey. There's
Speaker 2: really this sort of foundational generation I think of filmmakers
Speaker 2: here in internationally, and he's huge in France and to
Speaker 2: your point, and so there's a lot going on here.
Speaker 2: I think podcasts like yours and he's really smart comments
Speaker 2: by both of you and it's a really hard there's
Speaker 2: nothing to do with me, But I feel justified now
Speaker 2: spending all this time digging into the and is feeling like, boy,
Speaker 2: this guy just deserves a different kind of conversation.
Speaker 5: Part of it, too, is that his personality is not
Speaker 5: the type to demand attention, like he seems like he
Speaker 5: doesn't need to be in the spotlight. He's very I
Speaker 5: don't know, it's humble, he doesn't strike you as this
Speaker 5: person who's like this narcissist who demands to have attention.
Speaker 5: He's doing his work. He's a lot like these directors
Speaker 5: for the studios, where they were doing this job and
Speaker 5: they were doing the best they could and elevating it
Speaker 5: as high as they could. But on a certain level,
Speaker 5: it was like, no, it's like I'm not I don't
Speaker 5: need that kind of extra attention, you know.
Speaker 2: And I was always a little bit at the beginning.
Speaker 2: I was a little bit suspicious of that because a
Speaker 2: lot of people say that and they don't mean it.
Speaker 3: Means.
Speaker 2: He really genuinely is extraordinarily humble and kind. We've talked
Speaker 2: to people in a circle and to a one on
Speaker 2: welter great guy that there isn't ever I wouldn't tell
Speaker 2: you probably anyway, but I've never really come upon to
Speaker 2: anybody who has anything to say about him other than
Speaker 2: he's genuine. They may now have gotten along with him,
Speaker 2: but they never felt like he lied to them. He's
Speaker 2: just a very genuine person. And when he says he's
Speaker 2: allergic to attention, he is. He Ultimately watched that thing
Speaker 2: that I did with Fincher, and only because his family
Speaker 2: tricked him into it. He sat me down, they didn't
Speaker 2: tell me what was going He called me after and
Speaker 2: they did it. They sat me down and they didn't
Speaker 2: tell me what I was about to see, and they
Speaker 2: made me watch the damn thing that you did. And
Speaker 2: I just want to tell you thank you.
Speaker 3: And that was it.
Speaker 2: But he wouldn't get into it. He wouldn't talk more
Speaker 2: about it. He doesn't like to talk about his stuff.
Speaker 2: He said that people usually do that when the crew
Speaker 2: is over. And I like to think I got two
Speaker 2: or three more left in me. And he's genuine. He's
Speaker 2: still writing like crazy. He's got four or five screenplays
Speaker 2: that he's written just in the last couple of years.
Speaker 2: He just pitched a new idea for an alien film
Speaker 2: to a Segourity of Uber and she's on board. And
Speaker 2: so there's a lot of life in him and he
Speaker 2: wants to do more, and I think that's hope he
Speaker 2: gets too. That's always interesting to see what he's got.
Speaker 5: What's interesting at this point in his career because one
Speaker 5: of the things about the French New wave directors, they
Speaker 5: were all making films late in their lives and making
Speaker 5: films that were like still breaking boundaries and pushing the envelope.
Speaker 5: So I'm rooting for him to make a couple more
Speaker 5: films at least.
Speaker 2: You know, the thing about Hill is you don't have
Speaker 2: to like his movies, but there's always something to talk about,
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure that's true for everybody, and I
Speaker 2: always appreciate that by him.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you would consider this a minor
Speaker 1: Hill film, but for me, one of his best that
Speaker 1: nobody talks about his Trespass. I fucking love that movie.
Speaker 2: It's incredible and largely nineteen ninety two. He's like dealing
Speaker 2: with new forms of media. He's using surveillance videos, he's
Speaker 2: using camcore footage, he's using sixteen mil, he's using thirty five.
Speaker 2: He's really getting deeply into how just a good Gudar dish,
Speaker 2: But he's really getting into these different new at the
Speaker 2: time ninety two new media is in new ways to
Speaker 2: tell these stories. Yeah, absolutely, Trespass is phenomenal. And of
Speaker 2: my favorite movies of his for the longest time was Undisputed,
Speaker 2: the boxing film that he did with Wesley's nine. He
Speaker 2: had Peter Falk again. He's dealing with these new stats
Speaker 2: on each character that comes up how long they're going
Speaker 2: to be imprisoned for. It's like playing with new modes
Speaker 2: of meat. He's never really getting Oh, I guess in
Speaker 2: the art of creation. And I love Supernova as well,
Speaker 2: which is.
Speaker 1: Super Nova is so interesting and I would be so interesting.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: What a wild story of the making of that too.
Speaker 2: And consider this is a movie that was touched by
Speaker 2: Francis Coppola. He did an edit on it. I was
Speaker 2: directed by Hill and then directed by Jack Shoulder, who
Speaker 2: did one of my favorite eighties movies. They hidden. So
Speaker 2: there's all is weirdly nage in it, but there's also
Speaker 2: there's this weird moment where Angela Bassett somebody is digitally
Speaker 2: turned into an African American woman.
Speaker 1: And because there's a sex scene Robin Tunny.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: So there's a sex scene between Robin computer Facchinelle that
Speaker 2: they made into one between James Spader and Angela Bassett,
Speaker 2: so they had to digitally darken Robin Tunny's crazy. It's
Speaker 2: insane but also fascinating. The final product is really fascinating.
Speaker 2: There's an AI in it that is really incredible. It's
Speaker 2: an incredible AI. It falls in love with the creator,
Speaker 2: but it's bound by its programming not to help it's
Speaker 2: creator when his creator is being murdered. Maybe I've drunk
Speaker 2: too deep from the spring, but I'm able to find
Speaker 2: often right on the surface, these really fascinating tropes that
Speaker 2: bind all the movies together, and they almost always have
Speaker 2: to do with how relationships work between different kinds of people.
Speaker 2: That's what these movies are all about, even stuff that's
Speaker 2: really hate it, like the Assignment I think was really
Speaker 2: hated and misunderstood. If you just give it a look,
Speaker 2: you understand where's coming from. But no, another great one
Speaker 2: is Johnny Hansome. You guys haven't seen Johnny Highly.
Speaker 1: I think I watched that around the time that I
Speaker 1: was on another person's show talking about Angel Heart, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, let's watch Johnny Hansom.
Speaker 2: As a double feature, of course would occur. It's just
Speaker 2: this incredible group just talking about what is the nature
Speaker 2: of personality? Is it announced someone looks or is that
Speaker 2: are you just born with it? And these are just
Speaker 2: primary issues for Hill all the way back to the
Speaker 2: beginning of it.
Speaker 3: Hicky Box, all.
Speaker 1: Right, we're gonna take another break and play a preview
Speaker 1: for next week's show. Right after these brief messages.
Speaker 3: Javeline Turner is trying a detective v I. R. Sholski.
Speaker 3: She's turning up the heat, turning on the charm, get
Speaker 3: to the point, Hello when you talk, turning the town up?
Speaker 3: Signed down, happy Detective, I was a lousy gus wife.
Speaker 4: You let a broad do this deal?
Speaker 3: Kathleen Turner's v I Warshowski? What's that? By Sten for
Speaker 3: Virtuists and the Inquisitive readinar.
Speaker 1: That's right. We'll be back next week with a look
Speaker 1: at a Weird One VII Warshawski. Until then, I want
Speaker 1: to thank my co hosts, Beth and Walter. So Walter,
Speaker 1: what is keeping you busy these days?
Speaker 2: I'm teaching film history at the University of Colorado, Denver
Speaker 2: a lot. I'm working on a few other physical media projects,
Speaker 2: things like that. I don't know, trying to keep my
Speaker 2: head above water as the tides a rising.
Speaker 1: And Beth, how about yourself.
Speaker 5: I'm continuing to work with Film Geek San Diego, just
Speaker 5: trying to bring interesting programming here to San Diego. And
Speaker 5: we're in the midst of picking what our theme will
Speaker 5: be for next year's year long film series. So that's exciting.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Again folks for being on the show, and
Speaker 1: thanks to everybody for listening. Want to support physical media
Speaker 1: and get great movies by mail, head over to scarecrow
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Speaker 2: In