Speaker 1: Oh, folks, it's show tied.
Speaker 2: People say good money to see this movie.
Speaker 1: When they go out to a theater, they want cold
Speaker 1: sodas from hot popcorn and no monsters in the protection booth,
Speaker 1: everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 3: Don at off.
Speaker 1: Hospita Bob, and that they don't have a spat caniball again?
Speaker 3: Whose one's yass name? Man?
Speaker 2: Asp?
Speaker 3: You haven't been yet?
Speaker 1: Give loose yet.
Speaker 2: You have any home from ot to think of us?
Speaker 4: It was a little love.
Speaker 3: Aspit you never.
Speaker 5: Wake up so bad?
Speaker 3: Miss him King?
Speaker 2: What's been in cover?
Speaker 3: CZI.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Projection booth. I'm your host. Mike White
Speaker 2: joined me once again as Miss Heather Draine.
Speaker 3: Hello, Hello.
Speaker 2: Also back in the booth is mister Chris Tashu.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, I'm here.
Speaker 2: We continue our request month with one from Andrew Hendrickson.
Speaker 2: Kamikazi eighty nine or Kamakazi nineteen eighty nine per the
Speaker 2: film itself, directed by Wolf Graham of the film is
Speaker 2: the fifth adaptation of the same book by I'm sorry
Speaker 2: by my pronunciation. I'm sure it's not pronounced the way
Speaker 2: it's spelled per Walloo murder on the thirty first floor,
Speaker 2: with two of them coming out in nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 2: the year prior to this one. Graham takes a very
Speaker 2: different tact, setting the film in the distant future of
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine. We will be ruining this film as
Speaker 2: we go along, so if you don't want anything spoiled,
Speaker 2: please turn off the podcast and come on back after
Speaker 2: you've seen the film, which used to be incredibly easy
Speaker 2: to find, possibly one of the easiest German films to
Speaker 2: find for a number of years. Heather, when was the
Speaker 2: first time you saw Kamikazi eighty nine and what did
Speaker 2: you think?
Speaker 3: I'm Michael's eighty nine has been on my radar for years.
Speaker 3: I anybody who's into film, especially foreign film or even
Speaker 3: cult film, that image of Rayner Werner Faspender in leopard
Speaker 3: print like a teddy boy from hell a Sor I
Speaker 3: think it's even morely brothel creeper is icotic like that image?
Speaker 3: Allowed is okay? What is this? And I didn't get
Speaker 3: around to actually sitting down. I'm watching this film till
Speaker 3: this year. File under thank you Mike for making me
Speaker 3: get off my ass and watch a movie that's been
Speaker 3: on my watch list for freaking ever. My initial impressions
Speaker 3: loved it, absolutely loved it. I had a good spidy
Speaker 3: sense that I would I don't know about you, guys.
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm pretty good about, like ninety percent
Speaker 3: of the time having a good feeling if something's gonna
Speaker 3: jail with me or not, and this one one hundred percent. It.
Speaker 3: I absolutely loved it. I'm looking forward to to hearing
Speaker 3: what you find, Chaps think about it.
Speaker 2: And Chris about yourself.
Speaker 1: First off, I'm actually a little bummed you didn't tell
Speaker 1: me who picked this movie, because Andy Hendrickson is a
Speaker 1: Patreon supporter of mine as well. Go Andy, so we
Speaker 1: got a little crossover action here. I also really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: I think that there are plenty of things in this
Speaker 1: movie that we're going to talk about that what's the
Speaker 1: word we use, prescient or topical or like the fucking
Speaker 1: nightmare that we're living in now just in film form.
Speaker 1: So there's some of that going on with this movie,
Speaker 1: which makes it a little bit more prescient and topical
Speaker 1: to use those words again than I was expecting it
Speaker 1: to be. I didn't read anything about it going into it.
Speaker 1: I knew nothing about it going into it. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to go in blind and I enjoyed it immensely.
Speaker 1: It's one of these movies that, to your point, Heather,
Speaker 1: I feel like more people would enjoy it. More people
Speaker 1: should see it, and people that have been sleeping on
Speaker 1: it to watch it should do themselves a favor and
Speaker 1: check it out. Because the time and this is gun
Speaker 1: sound like a goddamn broken record by the end of
Speaker 1: this episode, I'm sure, but the times that we're living
Speaker 1: in now are not that far removed from what this
Speaker 1: movie and the per Wallou book talk about. We're not
Speaker 1: too far off from that. Frankly, We're inching ever closer
Speaker 1: every day, and if that means more people stop listening
Speaker 1: to the stuff that we work on, because we, as
Speaker 1: weirding Way Media are part of the media, and we
Speaker 1: want a free and fair media to continue to be
Speaker 1: a thing, which is part of what this movie is
Speaker 1: ultimately about. I think more people should educate themselves about
Speaker 1: because it's quickly and possibly becoming a reality a lot
Speaker 1: faster than I think anybody would like to hope, and
Speaker 1: anybody would even at least some of us would like
Speaker 1: to believe.
Speaker 3: I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: There's a lot to talk about there's a lot to
Speaker 1: break down, and hey, what isn't like a good movie
Speaker 1: that you could double feature with Brazil?
Speaker 2: Don't think me? Heather. Definitely thank Andy Hendrickson because he
Speaker 2: got me off on my ass to watch us as well.
Speaker 2: I've owned, oh gosh, I don't know how many copies
Speaker 2: of this movie I've owned over the years. I initially
Speaker 2: picked it up when there was a video store going
Speaker 2: out of business. I was very familiar with the cover
Speaker 2: art from working at video stores and going to video stores.
Speaker 2: Like I said, this one seemed to be everywhere for
Speaker 2: a while, very easy to find. You couldn't really find
Speaker 2: too many Fastbender films when you were looking around, but
Speaker 2: you could find this which has him on the cover
Speaker 2: in this amazing What is it cheetah or leopard print
Speaker 2: that he's wearing?
Speaker 1: It just is a animal print. Man, I love it.
Speaker 1: I want this fucking jacket so bad. I have a
Speaker 1: real affliction for these kinds of outfits that are really loud,
Speaker 1: and I want his jacket.
Speaker 3: You got to get the matching pants now, Oh, I
Speaker 3: want all of it.
Speaker 1: His outfit is every single character's outfit in this movie
Speaker 1: is absolutely insane, especially the gentleman that you essentially meet
Speaker 1: five minutes into the movie with his green jacket is
Speaker 1: long green jacket. Oh my god, it's just everybody is
Speaker 1: just to the nines in this movie. The outfits are
Speaker 1: off the chain.
Speaker 2: I owned this for a while. I think I even
Speaker 2: owned it on DVD, and now a new blu ray
Speaker 2: is out from Film Movement. I picked that up. It's
Speaker 2: a documentary by Wolfcram who was the director of this.
Speaker 2: He also acted in Quarel, and you could see a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of behind the scenes footage from both Querrel
Speaker 2: as well as this. But what would have motivated me
Speaker 2: to watch this sooner? I didn't realize that this was
Speaker 2: based on a Pervallu book and so Wilo he and
Speaker 2: his partner MJ. Showwall. However you pronounce this stuff, I'm
Speaker 2: so sorry, and I even I tried watching interviews and
Speaker 2: trying to listen to see how people are actually pronouncing
Speaker 2: these names, but a lot of them weren't in English,
Speaker 2: and the subtitles weren't necessarily that good. And then even
Speaker 2: with the English ones, it was like, oh, yeah, you
Speaker 2: know who this is, We're just never going to say
Speaker 2: the person's name. I'm like, fuck you very much. But anyway,
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 3: I love it when that shit happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks so much.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: They were the two who created the character of Martin Beck,
Speaker 2: and Martin Beck is the central character in a film
Speaker 2: that I absolutely loved, the laughing policeman, and the Martin
Speaker 2: Beck character was around for years and years. This is
Speaker 2: just the state of foreign noir and detective novels, and
Speaker 2: almost all of these Becks have been translated into English.
Speaker 2: I wasn't that familiar with Inspector Jensen, which was Wa
Speaker 2: Lou's solo character. Apparently he was supposed to write three
Speaker 2: he only wrote two. But this Jensen character is very
Speaker 2: interesting because he's such a curmudgeon and I really think
Speaker 2: that they capture that pretty well in this, especially him
Speaker 2: picking on his partner Anton played by Gunther Kaufman, and
Speaker 2: he's always on him about no superfluous.
Speaker 1: This no superfluous that I'm gonna start using that in
Speaker 1: my daily life. Get to the fucking point.
Speaker 2: And those are lines right from the book, cut to
Speaker 2: the fucking chase. I don't need to hear it at
Speaker 2: one point in the book, like some guy's joking around
Speaker 2: or something. It's just oh, just so you know, I'm
Speaker 2: going to report you for this.
Speaker 1: He just he is so like, buy the book.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. But I would say, and Chris, it sounds
Speaker 2: like you've read the book. Correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 2: But this is a pretty faithful adaptation.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Again, that's what it seemed like to me anyways. And again,
Speaker 1: obviously with something like literature, our own minds are going
Speaker 1: to fill in some of the gaps that the author
Speaker 1: intentionally leaves open for the audience to do. Look, that's
Speaker 1: what Jadie Salinger always complained about with adaptations of Catcher
Speaker 1: and the Rise. I don't want any one film version
Speaker 1: of this to usurp the way I wrote the book,
Speaker 1: and I want the reader to have And for me,
Speaker 1: I would agree with that sentiment. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: this is a really close and well done adaptation of
Speaker 1: the book and I appreciate that as well. To your
Speaker 1: point about him being a curmudgeon, and this might be
Speaker 1: jumping ahead at bit, jo Nezbo has mentioned multiple times
Speaker 1: that Berwalloo's works are an inspiration for him, which Harry Hula,
Speaker 1: his detective in his books, is a drunken curmudgeon, just
Speaker 1: the same way that Jansen is in this kind of
Speaker 1: curmudgeony dick doing his job and he's good at it,
Speaker 1: but he's also dealing with a substance abuse and substance addiction,
Speaker 1: and I really appreciate that influence here. But I also appreciate,
Speaker 1: like to your point, that they don't really deviate too
Speaker 1: far from an already well done book, and that it
Speaker 1: might sound like I think people don't do all the time,
Speaker 1: but there are plenty of things that are great that
Speaker 1: then they just adapt it and it's awful. This is
Speaker 1: a great adaptation, frankly, a really great adaptation as far
Speaker 1: as I'm concerned.
Speaker 2: The thing with Jensen that I like is that he's
Speaker 2: not really addicted to anything, but he has all of
Speaker 2: this intestinal distress, and you get a little bit of
Speaker 2: that in here. They talk about a drug called Narton
Speaker 2: I think it is, and he puts it in some
Speaker 2: water and drinks that up, and it's very similar to
Speaker 2: how Jensen is constantly taking.
Speaker 1: Like a biki car rioshi as the Italians would call it,
Speaker 1: some sodium biicarbs, some alca seltzer and then you so.
Speaker 2: You have that whole basis and you've got a lot
Speaker 2: of the same characters, You've got a lot of the
Speaker 2: same plot points. I would say a fairly simple story
Speaker 2: at heart, because it's basically someone sends a letter to
Speaker 2: In the book, it's a magazine conglomerate, and they say
Speaker 2: there's a bomb in the building. It's going to go
Speaker 2: off at two o'clock and Jensen gets called in. He
Speaker 2: tries to evacuate the building. The person that is running
Speaker 2: the business is a complete dickhead and doesn't want anybody
Speaker 2: to leave. He's just like, it's going to cost us
Speaker 2: so much money. We've got forty four thousand people here.
Speaker 2: It's going to take forever to do. This isn't going
Speaker 2: to work. He eventually gets stocked into evacuating the building,
Speaker 2: and of course the bomb doesn't go off, and then
Speaker 2: it becomes the Jensen's responsibility, thanks to his jerk of
Speaker 2: a boss, to go out and find who sent this
Speaker 2: letter and prevent anything else from happening. And then it
Speaker 2: just is a very detective novel. Him going around and
Speaker 2: he tries, when was the letter mailed? Can we figure
Speaker 2: out where it was mailed from? How is this letter made?
Speaker 2: Because it's one of those ransom type notes where you
Speaker 2: get all the letters cut out all we figured out
Speaker 2: what the paper is. The paper's this very specific paper
Speaker 2: and it is only given out as a diploma quote unquote,
Speaker 2: which is a great word for a diploma for people
Speaker 2: who have been fired from this company. So then he
Speaker 2: has to go around to all of the people that
Speaker 2: have been fired and try to figure out what their
Speaker 2: story is and how much did they hate the company
Speaker 2: and are they capable of doing this? And meanwhile he
Speaker 2: has his boss, the police captain, who's just what are
Speaker 2: you doing. You got to hurry up, You've got seven
Speaker 2: days to solve this, very arbitrary puts a seven day
Speaker 2: limit onto him. You got to hurry up and do this.
Speaker 2: And after a while, it feels like everybody is trying
Speaker 2: to make him stop investigating, even his boss. His boss
Speaker 2: is like, oh, we have a confession, don't bother with
Speaker 2: this anymore, and he's like, no, I'm going to buy
Speaker 2: He breaks a confession super easily and then just keeps going.
Speaker 1: On with his job.
Speaker 2: That's this movie. Then you add this whole level of
Speaker 2: science fiction to it and put it in this dystopian
Speaker 2: utopia where it's it's like, oh, there's no pollutions, there's
Speaker 2: no that there's no suicide anymore, and they really make
Speaker 2: a point of that no one commits suicide, whereas I
Speaker 2: don't know if it was a thing when this book
Speaker 2: was written that there were a lot of suicides. I've
Speaker 2: seen the seventies people, the Peter Watkins film where they're
Speaker 2: talking about how rampant suicide is in some of these
Speaker 2: Nordic countries. Okay, I think this is all being completely
Speaker 2: glossed over. And even that opening narration that you get
Speaker 2: in Kamikazi eighty nine where there's no pollution, everything's green,
Speaker 2: everything's so good. I'm like, yeah, I'm really not buying this,
Speaker 2: especially when you get that audio affected the voice where
Speaker 2: it's just it feels so evil and feels so big brother.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing for me that I appreciate is
Speaker 1: that it just gets right into it immediately. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: there are no suicides. They're called unusual daths.
Speaker 3: Oh premature. I don't premature. And that's always the whole
Speaker 3: thing of George Carlin saying soft language makes soft people,
Speaker 3: and we currently have I know there are content creators
Speaker 3: on YouTube who can't say suicide. You have to say
Speaker 3: un alive. I can't think of anything more offensive to
Speaker 3: somebody who's actually either had suicidal ideations or know somebody
Speaker 3: who's committed suicide to be like, oh, we don't like
Speaker 3: to use that word. This is offensive, that's offensive. It's
Speaker 3: just this. No, this doesn't exist like the weather forecasts
Speaker 3: or even like oh, bright blue Skies Dale song Dane
Speaker 3: song enis. Meanwhile, it's like gray and shitty out every day.
Speaker 1: I think Gray and Shitty Outside was Depeche Mode's third
Speaker 1: or fourth album, was the one after Black Celebration. Okay,
Speaker 1: we underrated EP by them. I love loved Alan Wilder
Speaker 1: Synth work on that one. I love how to your
Speaker 1: point though, Heather, how gray and shitty the movie does
Speaker 1: look because it works. Again, like to say Brazil or
Speaker 1: even like a Blade Runner, this feels so I do
Speaker 1: not to give Ridley Scott a lot of credit, but
Speaker 1: or or I would give Terry Gilliam Moore credit frankly
Speaker 1: for Brazil getting to evoke this kind of feeling and
Speaker 1: time in a place we see it now that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of directors who think it takes a lot
Speaker 1: to do that, when in reality it's actually less is
Speaker 1: more and all you have to do is just shoot
Speaker 1: in Eastern Europe somewhere. That's what all those and I
Speaker 1: know this is going to seem like a stretch. A
Speaker 1: lot of those VOD movies now all look like these
Speaker 1: movies that came in the seventies and eighties that were
Speaker 1: being shot in Eastern Europe. A lot of those late
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis Segaal, John Claudevan Damn movies while being shot
Speaker 1: in Romania and Eastern Europe or something like. This is
Speaker 1: again ostensibly theoretically, we're trying to evoke that time and place.
Speaker 1: I love how not that they don't do a lot,
Speaker 1: but how little it seems like they have to do
Speaker 1: to get the feeling and time and space evoked. Very
Speaker 1: I think again, just about as well done as Brazil,
Speaker 1: which I know a lot of production went into that.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying a lot of production didn't go into this,
Speaker 1: but this seems like it just it's in the world
Speaker 1: already and they didn't really have to create much, if
Speaker 1: that makes sense.
Speaker 2: They do that Alphaville thing where it's in the future,
Speaker 2: but they're not making it. There's a couple of futuristic
Speaker 2: things in here, but they're not relying so much on
Speaker 2: science fiction and special effects. I would say it's very
Speaker 2: similar to what Fastpender was doing with his own world
Speaker 2: on a wire type thing, where it's okay, we're gonna
Speaker 2: shoot this with a ton of mirrors or something. But
Speaker 2: in this one, the production values are over the moon
Speaker 2: because they're using disused factories and everything just looks like shit.
Speaker 2: So many of these places they all look completely run down.
Speaker 2: You think of that final image of Fastpender in that
Speaker 2: office area and just all the peeling paint that's everywhere,
Speaker 2: and just everything looks so run down.
Speaker 3: I think the thing that impressed me with how things
Speaker 3: frame too is particularly between Wolfgrem's direction, but also the
Speaker 3: cinematography is the way through angles and perspective they are
Speaker 3: able to make the combine, which is this huge building
Speaker 3: that we're given to believe hit house, multiple TV studios,
Speaker 3: an arena at one one do we see like a
Speaker 3: large arena, And he does such agree job of making
Speaker 3: it seem on one hand, completely like a labyrinth, like
Speaker 3: it almost never ends, and yet also completely and utterly claustrophobic.
Speaker 2: And I wonder with them calling it the combine, if
Speaker 2: that's they I know what a combine is. And of
Speaker 2: course there's the farm equipment, the combine, and there's other combines,
Speaker 2: but I kept thinking of One Flu of the Cuckoo's Nest,
Speaker 2: the actual book of One Flu of the Cuckoo's Nest,
Speaker 2: where Keisy is talking about this kind of epic machine
Speaker 2: that is just coming and running over everybody and just
Speaker 2: chopping everybody up into bits kind of thing. It's almost
Speaker 2: like Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock or something where it's
Speaker 2: just like there's a machine that controls everything, that sees everything,
Speaker 2: and the combine works in combination with the Big Nurse
Speaker 2: from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. She's almost like
Speaker 2: the agent of the combine. And I was just like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that kind of feels like this where it's just one
Speaker 2: media conglomerate that runs over everything and they try to
Speaker 2: control the whole message and the thing that I love
Speaker 2: that they really make it more apparent in the book
Speaker 2: for me. But we'll talk about what they do with
Speaker 2: the TV stuff here. But in the book they're talking
Speaker 2: about all of these magazines that are being run and
Speaker 2: I guess maybe that's why I was thinking of The
Speaker 2: Big Clock as well, all of these magazines that are
Speaker 2: being run by this company, and they're all completely vapid
Speaker 2: and insipid and just all about good news, and if
Speaker 2: you try to write anything that's real, it just immediately
Speaker 2: gets axed. I think, speaking of suicide, somebody wrote a
Speaker 2: report about suicide, try to submit it as a story.
Speaker 2: And he's one of the guys that got fired. And
Speaker 2: we'll talk more about some of the what's actually on
Speaker 2: the thirty first floor as we go along, But yeah,
Speaker 2: this whole idea of them running this TV station and
Speaker 2: the only thing you really see is the laughing contest
Speaker 2: where it's just people on TV louing.
Speaker 1: Holy fuck, it's like a true dystopian fucking nightmare right there, folks.
Speaker 1: It looks so bananas and I was I can be like,
Speaker 1: this is like torture. This is literally if you were
Speaker 1: forced to watch this, you would go insane. It just
Speaker 1: it is maddening anytime they show clips of it. And
Speaker 1: of course you get a lot of the great stylistic
Speaker 1: design where we especially keep seeing like one lady in particular,
Speaker 1: who's got like this great hat and she's got this
Speaker 1: great just almost like a RICTI scrint.
Speaker 3: Is that quite technically, but it's one inch away from
Speaker 3: being like a ricta scrint and then later on the Little.
Speaker 1: Girl that's where it's really upsetting. But hey, it's the future, folks,
Speaker 1: and she's the.
Speaker 2: One who's gonna break the world record. Apparently.
Speaker 3: I love Jensen and see I'm going into this. I
Speaker 3: have not read the book, but for anybody listening to this,
Speaker 3: you don't need to. I don't think you need to
Speaker 3: read the book necessarily.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think so either.
Speaker 3: This film is it stands alone on its own brilliantly.
Speaker 3: And Chanson is such a cool character because he's like
Speaker 3: a great mixed Fastpender just visually. To me, it's always
Speaker 3: such a cool looking guy, such an interesting guy.
Speaker 1: Would you say Kinski and Heather No, because.
Speaker 3: I don't think Fastpender. I would trust him with the
Speaker 3: house plant. I love Klauskinski as an actor, but as
Speaker 3: a human. Yeah, the fish stops swimming, it becomes to
Speaker 3: the house if you know what I'm saying. Best Manders
Speaker 3: And he's great as an actor here too, because I've
Speaker 3: seen more of this work as a director, to be honest,
Speaker 3: and I am as an actor, but which I want
Speaker 3: to rectify that, especially after this, because he's not supernaturally
Speaker 3: cool though because I think the thing is in America.
Speaker 3: And this kind of actually ties into a discussion Mike
Speaker 3: that you and I had with Jessica Shiers earlier this
Speaker 3: week on Franco's Dantown, because we got a detective character
Speaker 3: in that who was very much an every an, average
Speaker 3: man and every man in a way. Janson's not quite that.
Speaker 3: He does have this Stirling track record, but there's a
Speaker 3: haggardness about him. I'm not even talking physically. There's just
Speaker 3: something in his gait in a way. He knows all
Speaker 3: of this is bullshit, but he but he knows better
Speaker 3: than to say it out loud. It's like when Anton
Speaker 3: makes it I love Anton too, Oh my god, his
Speaker 3: interplay with Anton, Oh my god, so great. But Anton
Speaker 3: really apt leaves. You're basically saying, wow, the state bans alcohol,
Speaker 3: but then creates a world that drives people to drink,
Speaker 3: and then we basically beat them for it. And immediately
Speaker 3: Jansen's just don't say it. Don't ever say that out
Speaker 3: loud again. And you could tell he's not trying to
Speaker 3: be like a dick, like he's drank.
Speaker 1: The crew laid.
Speaker 3: It's almost more just you got to cover your ass.
Speaker 1: It is what it is.
Speaker 2: If you want to make it in this world, Anton,
Speaker 2: you better not say this stuff. You better keep it
Speaker 2: on lock like me, because you'll never get anywhere other
Speaker 2: than maybe thrown in a looney bin or something.
Speaker 1: Early Unexpected Exodus. Ooh, that would be a great prog album,
Speaker 1: Unexpected to exit it.
Speaker 2: I did notice that Chrismo Papas is a banned out
Speaker 2: of Germany now, so they must have taken the name
Speaker 2: from this.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Hell, that's a great name. Oh now, speaking of.
Speaker 2: The book, that stuff was not in here, the Blue Panther,
Speaker 2: the Chrismo Pappas. No, no, I totally agree with you, Heather.
Speaker 2: You do not need to read the book for this
Speaker 2: because it is a self contained world in this movie. Well,
Speaker 2: I just want to bring that aspect to it of
Speaker 2: what the book had versus.
Speaker 5: This, because oh, absolutely, yeah, this is I absolutely think
Speaker 5: that this movie really sets up a world and sets
Speaker 5: up the look and feel of things.
Speaker 2: Even if you look at Jensen's car and he's got
Speaker 2: like the leopard print across the fucking dashboard and it's
Speaker 2: in the back, I'm just like he is on brand
Speaker 2: with all this.
Speaker 1: I love the leopard print so much. I really think
Speaker 1: that for me. As much as I enjoy the movie itself,
Speaker 1: the production design of the movie and the costume design
Speaker 1: is just it's so unique and weird and strange, and
Speaker 1: it is that weird. It's not futurism, but I would
Speaker 1: say almost retro futurism in a way. We have this again,
Speaker 1: the juxtaposition of advanced civilization. But yet people are still like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, driving cars because again it's something like
Speaker 1: Blade Runner. There's no cars, right, It's just it's the
Speaker 1: floating taxi. So I guess the floating cars as it were.
Speaker 1: And then in Brazil are there cars in Brazil? Do
Speaker 1: we ever see people driving around in cars?
Speaker 2: At least in the one cut they take that truck
Speaker 2: and go out of town to the beautiful countryside. But
Speaker 2: they sure the big fucking trucks those too, like the
Speaker 2: big industrial type things. But yeah, you're right, I'm trying
Speaker 2: to think of the car situation. It feels like he
Speaker 2: gets round in a little car.
Speaker 1: With that futurism, you have them using cars phones that
Speaker 1: have like keypads on them, still like CRT TVs. So
Speaker 1: I like that juxtaposition because it makes it feel similarly
Speaker 1: to someone like George Lucas. It makes the world feel
Speaker 1: genuinely lived in a way that, again it's hard to do,
Speaker 1: not intentionally, but it's hard to do on a budget
Speaker 1: that this movie was operating on. For all of the
Speaker 1: great quality acting, I think everything else is matched by
Speaker 1: the production design and the writing obviously, but the production
Speaker 1: design I can't say enough good things about, because every
Speaker 1: time you meet a new character or you go into
Speaker 1: a new scene, there's something else to look at, there's
Speaker 1: something else to notice. And I appreciate that about the
Speaker 1: film and the filmmakers and even the book itself, because again,
Speaker 1: while the book may not be one to one, a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff does come from the book. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And where it doesn't come from the book, I think
Speaker 2: they just add such a great flavor to it, things
Speaker 2: like how he's wearing the camera ring the eye of
Speaker 2: the Tiger, or it reminds me of Mark Singer's ring
Speaker 2: from a beast Master?
Speaker 4: Was it Mark Singer?
Speaker 1: It was?
Speaker 2: Which ring I'm talking about from beast Master where they
Speaker 2: eventually put the poker in there and blind the witches
Speaker 2: from seeing what's going on.
Speaker 3: When you say beast Master, my brain immediately goes to
Speaker 3: Ferret's rip torn in that order. But yeah, No, I
Speaker 3: loved that ring and the fact that he's got like
Speaker 3: a well it's not quite.
Speaker 1: A bolo tie, no, but it's like it's not a
Speaker 1: cravat either, No, but.
Speaker 3: He's got a sort of a permutated bolo TIChE what's
Speaker 3: af fixing it is like another sort of like type
Speaker 3: tiger eye, which tiger is this stone is often used
Speaker 3: for protection. I don't know if that was going into that,
Speaker 3: but that's something cold as an aside, and it kind
Speaker 3: of adds toutely and Chris, I love the fact that
Speaker 3: you brought up sort of the tech because I think
Speaker 3: sometimes when people do science fiction they get too lost
Speaker 3: in the weeds. I mean, like everything has to be
Speaker 3: high tech and it's but that's not always reality, is it.
Speaker 3: And to be honest, if you're focusing so much on
Speaker 3: tech and not so much on the human story, because
Speaker 3: humans are the same like we That's why we keep
Speaker 3: rereading history unfortunately, but humanity doesn't ever really change that much.
Speaker 3: And this story in this world definitely conveys all of that.
Speaker 3: And there is a great stylization though to the fashion,
Speaker 3: and it is a great mix of we have Jansen
Speaker 3: who is very much like a teddy boy, which actually
Speaker 3: quick another aside about teddy boys, because there's that great
Speaker 3: club that we see in the film, and the last
Speaker 3: time we see in the club, there are people in
Speaker 3: the back dancing, and I swear to god they're doing
Speaker 3: that weird teddy boy dance that you see in Tommy.
Speaker 3: Anybody ever seen Kid Russell's Tommy You know what I'm
Speaker 3: talking about. And my husband actually writer me that if
Speaker 3: you watch the Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park that
Speaker 3: was like the memorial for Brian Jones, there are Hell's
Speaker 3: Angels doing that same dance and I'm like, oh my god.
Speaker 3: kN Russell probably though that and so connective tissue. Janssen
Speaker 3: has an old slot machine where he hides his booze.
Speaker 3: He's got the astronaut imagery. He has these tathers to
Speaker 3: the past, and he's surrounded by people that are dressed
Speaker 3: in this very much. I love your term, Chris, like
Speaker 3: retro futurist kind of style, where it's very much more
Speaker 3: like Neon cutlers. Bright colors that clash together, patterns that
Speaker 3: clash together at times, sort of angular clothing for some
Speaker 3: of the particularly some of the people in the clubs
Speaker 3: and also which we'll get to her, I'm sure in
Speaker 3: a bit Barbara the ex hostess of the cop of
Speaker 3: one of the Combine's top TV shows. And yeah, and
Speaker 3: but we see her those great angular glasses that are
Speaker 3: very eighties style, commerced a bit like what we see
Speaker 3: Christopher Lee down in the club scene and haling to
Speaker 3: she's got that is she also the one.
Speaker 1: With the shoulder pads where she looks like a football player.
Speaker 2: Yes, that outfit is amazing.
Speaker 1: That is the greatest outfit in the film. And this
Speaker 1: is a movie that has a guy in a leopard
Speaker 1: suit the entire movie. Yeah, that outfit in particular, in
Speaker 1: my notes, I was just like, what the fuck Tennessee
Speaker 1: Titans outfit is this? She looks like she could be
Speaker 1: a Tennessee Titans player or cheerleader or both because it's
Speaker 1: blue and white. But then the pink shower cap with
Speaker 1: the flowers on it, for me, is really the set
Speaker 1: the production design that sets it right over the top.
Speaker 1: Everything in this is just stylized. We just keep coming
Speaker 1: back to the term stylized. And I love how stylized
Speaker 1: this movie is because and there's other things like it,
Speaker 1: But there's nothing really specifically like this, which is really fun.
Speaker 1: That makes us a really fun movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that whole shower cap or shower cup like
Speaker 3: that swimming cap thing is totally like such a to
Speaker 3: me in nineteen fifties figging.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, another kind of anachronism, really, oh totally.
Speaker 3: Even her home design is very like mid century like,
Speaker 3: very like mid like late fifties to late sixties design,
Speaker 3: which I don't even know if that was that common
Speaker 3: of a design in Germany, then I always think of
Speaker 3: that design more being very American. But of course maybe
Speaker 3: it's because I'm American. I don't know. Don't nobody judge
Speaker 3: us and judge me? Like, Okay, our schooling system in
Speaker 3: this country has a lot of fatures. We're doing our best, Okay,
Speaker 3: what's left of it?
Speaker 2: Heather, Just wait till your friend Vince McMahon's wife gets douned.
Speaker 1: It's the wife of former Disgrace CEO and founder Vince McMahon.
Speaker 1: Just to make sure nobody forgets that he's a disgraced
Speaker 1: piece of dog shit allegedly. But that's the thing about
Speaker 1: this movie, right, not to get real for a moment.
Speaker 1: On the movie podcast, Folks, but let's get real for
Speaker 1: a moment. The point of this movie is what we
Speaker 1: are dealing with now, which is the utter and complete
Speaker 1: erasure of ideas as they exist completely. We are being
Speaker 1: told that things are not existing when we know that
Speaker 1: they exist. We are being told sometimes that the sky
Speaker 1: is green when it's clearly fucking blue. And there are
Speaker 1: people now that Again I'm not making broad generalizations about anything.
Speaker 1: There are people that believe things now that are so
Speaker 1: out there that to even bring it up and give
Speaker 1: it credence. I'm not saying we should stop people from
Speaker 1: having conversations, but sometimes even the things that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: if you're believing it seriously, that's fine. But the total
Speaker 1: erasure of ideas is not okay for me for the
Speaker 1: most part at all. And this movie literally cuts to
Speaker 1: that idea completely because they live in a society where
Speaker 1: what you are told every day is what you are
Speaker 1: expected to believe, which I don't know how we haven't
Speaker 1: mentioned it up until this point, but nineteen eighty four, anybody,
Speaker 1: that's the other big point of influence with this, right,
Speaker 1: it's a huge point of influence here.
Speaker 2: Clearly, Yeah, news speak would be all about unexpected exodus.
Speaker 3: Unusual deaths, and you can think Arbik further before or Well.
Speaker 3: This is pretty much considered a proto in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3: But there's a Soviet author by the name of Eugene
Speaker 3: Samyatin who wrote the book We, which I do highly encourage.
Speaker 3: Maybe I don't read it right now if you're in
Speaker 3: this country.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of things I wouldn't suggest people read
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 3: It is a brilliant work of dystopian science struction and
Speaker 3: definitely has a lot of I wouldn't say that Orwell
Speaker 3: ripped it off like Orwell's great a lot nite day four,
Speaker 3: But there's some parallels. Certainly there's some again connective tissue.
Speaker 3: I think though, that's why it's so important to watch
Speaker 3: movies like this and actually this is souf fake. As
Speaker 3: I think about some of the science fiction films that
Speaker 3: stay with me the most are the ones like this
Speaker 3: that really have a humanity to the story, that it's
Speaker 3: really this is us now, guys, and this has always
Speaker 3: been us too. We have always historically as a species
Speaker 3: had to battle. Hey, here's some breads and circuses. Don't
Speaker 3: worry while we oppress you, while we economically oppress you
Speaker 3: while we physically approached you, while we et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera. But this is the vitality of art, and
Speaker 3: this is the vitality of films like Comic Cozat nine,
Speaker 3: because it's able to not only remind us of that
Speaker 3: because we're like that, We're like the mouse that keeps
Speaker 3: getting shocked trying to get that cheese. We keep having
Speaker 3: to relearn the lesson, and that that's why art is
Speaker 3: so important to have, because that's a great way for
Speaker 3: us to be reminded of that without having to put
Speaker 3: our hand in the fire. Do we need to relearn
Speaker 3: the lesson?
Speaker 1: Or do the people that have never learned the lesson
Speaker 1: to begin with need to learn the lesson for the
Speaker 1: first time. I think that's probably the I mean the
Speaker 1: collective when I say we have the species.
Speaker 3: I'm not talking about individuals here, but yeah, I know
Speaker 3: I'm trying not to be thrown in with everybody else though,
Speaker 3: But I've heard mass graves are quite cold and frigid
Speaker 3: this time of year. I can't segue from that, but
Speaker 3: I can't segue from American culture and how it does
Speaker 3: pop up in this belt because you have the whole
Speaker 3: comic book, which I mean, obviously underground comics have been
Speaker 3: a great way to attack oppressor's attack the status quo.
Speaker 3: People are doing that in Europe in a seventeen hundreds
Speaker 3: and having pornographic drawings of a various royalty just to
Speaker 3: be a way to undercut them. But I love seeing
Speaker 3: that here, and I love also there's this weird invocation
Speaker 3: of comic book culture, particularly the Blue Panther character of
Speaker 3: the fact that his weirdo nephew is his nephew, because
Speaker 3: please guys, if I'm misremembering that's please tell me is
Speaker 3: isn't it you? The one that keeps going? At one point,
Speaker 3: baby like that when we person met.
Speaker 1: Him, baby, oh babe, what the fuck is going on here?
Speaker 4: Is he pop?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: What really hit him? Hard? Oh?
Speaker 3: Man? He needs to share? But he's got like the
Speaker 3: Superman phone. And then later on we see another character
Speaker 3: who is like a landlord who we find out actually
Speaker 3: has some ties to the underground comic about chrismal popos,
Speaker 3: but ended up getting bought out and sold his soul,
Speaker 3: and the he learns that I sold my soul on
Speaker 3: time ago, which that's a heavy statement. That's the shit
Speaker 3: that I think haunts me is characters like that. It's
Speaker 3: not so much okay people that basically barely had a
Speaker 3: soul to sell. You definitely don't get any sense of
Speaker 3: real conflicted humanity from the head of the combine or
Speaker 3: his weirdo nephew or any of their sort of people adjacent,
Speaker 3: But you do get that from that guy, and it's godly.
Speaker 3: How do you got just think you gave that journey
Speaker 3: to going from somebody who was really trying to fight
Speaker 3: the good fight to being like, fuck it.
Speaker 2: The person that sold his soul was that wis.
Speaker 3: No the guy with the paint cowboy hat and the
Speaker 3: diegg Yes, that's right, and he's in a hammock reading.
Speaker 3: He's like, well, we finally Jansen gets to truly confront
Speaker 3: him because when he first meets and the guy just shrugs,
Speaker 3: mop and he's Ohlana because there's that whole character of
Speaker 3: Elena Farr, who's this model that Chanson's trying to research
Speaker 3: because obviously she's tied to this somehow, and he's just, oh,
Speaker 3: she doesn't live here anymore, but nobody goes back. The
Speaker 3: guy's in a hammock and he's reading a Superman comic
Speaker 3: and the.
Speaker 1: Car that chases after them on the highway at one
Speaker 1: point is papered with comic Oh geez yeah covered in it,
Speaker 1: and I think there's even I forget exactly who it is,
Speaker 1: but there's a female superhero on the windshield of the car.
Speaker 1: Even to your point, whether the American culture is there,
Speaker 1: which kind of again comes back to this like a
Speaker 1: nack weird, kind of anachronistic feel that this movie has
Speaker 1: at times where it's like, if this is the future,
Speaker 1: what a weird future this must be. Again, I'm sure
Speaker 1: people one hundred years ago from now might look at
Speaker 1: us and be like, that was a weird future. People
Speaker 1: had computers and cars and tablets. Like again, like there's
Speaker 1: some of that here. But yeah, the superhero stuff, I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting. But again to your point, like it
Speaker 1: does make it goes back to the comic book underground
Speaker 1: comic book feel and kind of message of the movie,
Speaker 1: because the message of the movie is pretty subversive, right,
Speaker 1: I would think at least anyway at least for good, common,
Speaker 1: polite society.
Speaker 2: Going back to the way that stuff looks in this film.
Speaker 2: I love the use of neon. I think this is
Speaker 2: one of the best uses of neon I've seen, even
Speaker 2: when they're doing the evacuation of the building and you've
Speaker 2: got the different colored neon numbers and then the same
Speaker 2: color for the piping around there and stuff. And then
Speaker 2: when he goes to there's like a medical clinic that
Speaker 2: has a huge needle that's made out of neon. And
Speaker 2: then when he goes to the police, which is right
Speaker 2: next door to the sixteenth Precinct where he works, and
Speaker 2: that's got another great neon sign, and their whole thing
Speaker 2: of the thumbs up for the police, and I love
Speaker 2: how they've got that guy standing outside of the building
Speaker 2: just with this thumbs up welcoming people there. It's almost
Speaker 2: like a salute. And when they're like, oh, who are you,
Speaker 2: and he's on a company opens up that great leopard
Speaker 2: jacket and there's a thumbs up inside of there. This
Speaker 2: is so strange, but I love it. This world is wonderful.
Speaker 3: Some of the police, the people who work at the
Speaker 3: station that thumbs up, theyre dressed like medicals. There almost
Speaker 3: a high fashion medical staff, more so than what we
Speaker 3: think because there's not even really a uniform for any
Speaker 3: of the actual officers, which is cool.
Speaker 1: I do like that.
Speaker 3: I like the fact that the Chief is basically we
Speaker 3: never really see him in person. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He reminds me of the Donald Pleasants character from Mister Freedom,
Speaker 2: where he just will show up on a screen and
Speaker 2: be like, you know, here's what you do today.
Speaker 3: Yes, that would be a great double bill.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really think so, especially with all that jingoism
Speaker 2: of Mister Freedom.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, o oh, God blessed William Klein. And the
Speaker 3: Chief being so frail because even when we do see
Speaker 3: him on the screen, he's always got that nurse with him.
Speaker 3: Is he gonna be okay? And the answer is no.
Speaker 3: But spoiler, spoiler for a film that came out in
Speaker 3: the eighty two, Like anybody I know, we have to
Speaker 3: say spoilers I had, but really, people, my gosh, come on,
Speaker 3: But if a film's old enough to vote, don't worry
Speaker 3: about it. And the fact that it doesn't feel like
Speaker 3: a trope in this film, because there is that whole
Speaker 3: trope that we have in this country of you're a
Speaker 3: wild card, but you're the guy we need for the job,
Speaker 3: and the Chief's always mad at him and always cussing,
Speaker 3: and we have it. But this film doesn't play it
Speaker 3: quite like that. There's nothing in this film that's played
Speaker 3: as how you would expect it, and I always love that,
Speaker 3: and that's something I always really treasure in any film
Speaker 3: I see. Please, don't give me what you think I want,
Speaker 3: give me what you want, give me the story that
Speaker 3: you want to tell. And plusly, Chance's a character the
Speaker 3: Gray Fassbender portrays him. He's the definition of still waters
Speaker 3: run deep.
Speaker 2: And I was really glad to watch that little documentary,
Speaker 2: the Wolfgram documentary about the making of this in Quarel,
Speaker 2: and he's talking right at the beginnings. People told me
Speaker 2: not to work with him. People told me not to
Speaker 2: have Rainer in my film because he's a fellow director
Speaker 2: and he's just going to question everything and he's going
Speaker 2: to be a total pain in the ass. But he
Speaker 2: was completely the opposite. He was curious, he was polite,
Speaker 2: he asked questions, he was on time. That's the thing.
Speaker 2: I don't know that much about Fastbender, but I know
Speaker 2: that he's temperamental. That's one of the few things that
Speaker 2: I've heard about him as a person. And what a
Speaker 2: weird thing too, Sar, This is a complete tangent. What
Speaker 2: a weird fucking thing too, To have the American ad
Speaker 2: campaign for this. Be another director to have Fucking John
Speaker 2: Cassavetti's be the guy who's recording all these radio spots
Speaker 2: and acting like a complete nut job. Fossin Fastpinda. Who
Speaker 2: is this guy with the leopard suits and the leopard.
Speaker 1: He's a detective in his self's madness. Kamikazi eighty nine
Speaker 1: starring Fospinda.
Speaker 2: He's got the leopard suit, Rabo. He just keeps saying
Speaker 2: that in these spots. I'm so glad that those radio
Speaker 2: ads are on the Blu ray of this because they
Speaker 2: are something. And there's a YouTube video out there of
Speaker 2: like all six of them I think he recorded, or
Speaker 2: it's just one after the other, and it's just cassavettis
Speaker 2: going absolutely batshit in these things.
Speaker 1: John Cassavetti's is clearly the hype man that you want
Speaker 1: in your corner for great near fosspenders outrageous final role.
Speaker 1: What does that mean to Americans in nineteen eighty two? Hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, you have the guy credit for being enthusiastic.
Speaker 1: At least he's he's that guys, go sell ice to
Speaker 1: the Eskimos. All right, I'll do it, all right, Hey,
Speaker 1: at least you got the right guy for it. But
Speaker 1: Cassavetti's just, hey, he must be. He's a fan of
Speaker 1: Foss Spender. Clearly, Cassavetti's pretty in tune, in touch director
Speaker 1: at his own right, so I would think he's probably
Speaker 1: familiar with his work.
Speaker 3: That's the thing. John Cassavetti's like I needed any more
Speaker 3: reasons to love him, because I already love him because
Speaker 3: he's a fucking brilliant ow tour and I really think
Speaker 3: he was the real deal. But he was the guy
Speaker 3: to put his money where his mouth because of course,
Speaker 3: as you guys now, I mean massive Timothy Carrey fan,
Speaker 3: and just even saying his name, I'm like, oh, but
Speaker 3: that's the thing. John gave him money for his film projects,
Speaker 3: and every film like the most conventional thing Timothy carry
Speaker 3: ever made was the world's greatest and if you know
Speaker 3: anything about that film is not conventional. But that's the thing,
Speaker 3: Like he really I think as Vive's a guy that
Speaker 3: truly loved He was an underdog. He loved the underdog.
Speaker 1: He loved real.
Speaker 3: Centim and I when I say uls to mountain, I'm
Speaker 3: not saying that in a potentially one has to be
Speaker 3: or house no bullshit.
Speaker 1: Sent them up.
Speaker 3: Filmmakers making the stories they want to make, making the
Speaker 3: films they want to make, not just hey, how is
Speaker 3: this going to do a test audiences? None of that bullshit.
Speaker 3: We were talking the real deal.
Speaker 1: A woman under the Influence. One might say that movie
Speaker 1: was a fucking rough watch, but it's a rough watch
Speaker 1: because Peter Falk and John Cassavetti's and Gina Rowland's, like
Speaker 1: all of them just doing exactly what you just said,
Speaker 1: being artists. And that's we talk about Peter Falk on
Speaker 1: the Columbo podcast all the time, just being a fucking
Speaker 1: stick in the mud. And look, I have not gotten
Speaker 1: to the level of success that I can do that,
Speaker 1: and I am glad that there are people out there
Speaker 1: in the world that do when they came, because there's
Speaker 1: good behind that with people being like a legit, like
Speaker 1: you said, Heather, the genuine, real deal and Fastpender is
Speaker 1: in that same camp of this. He's just a guy
Speaker 1: doing his own thing and fuck it, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what anybody else thinks. And I appreciate and respect that.
Speaker 1: And clearly Cassavetti's game recognizes game, as they would say, Hell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, real recognized is real if only Cassavettis was still
Speaker 3: alive to criticize that horrible Blu Ray art for Corral
Speaker 3: from Criterion Collection. I'm sorry. I know this is maybe
Speaker 3: not the time of place, but I hate that art
Speaker 3: so much. I want that Blue Ray because I love
Speaker 3: that movie and my copy of it is old and
Speaker 3: needs upgraded. Wait, oh my god, I can't with that art.
Speaker 3: I'll buy it eventually, But what's worse is that it's
Speaker 3: actually not AI art.
Speaker 2: I've read an interview with the guy who did that.
Speaker 2: That's his style of doing art, but it looks just
Speaker 2: like AI.
Speaker 3: Art one thousand percent. And now I feel bad that
Speaker 3: I hate criticizing other art like I love Chris Is saying,
Speaker 3: don't not the yung. Yes, I don't want to do that,
Speaker 3: but I'm let's just say, out of fear of that art.
Speaker 3: And I know that they were trying to go for
Speaker 3: a Toma Finland thing, which I get.
Speaker 1: I totally get.
Speaker 3: I love tom of Finland. I love Toma Finland when
Speaker 3: it doesn't look like AI.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, the skin looks so plastic and.
Speaker 3: He's got these huge titties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I need to get that on a soundboard. He's
Speaker 1: got huge titties, Heather just saying I've.
Speaker 3: Said so many things on the shower over the years
Speaker 3: that I'm like, I'll never This is one of the
Speaker 3: many reasons why everybody's hate Criterion. You should get that
Speaker 3: Heather drained. They're like, oh the titties you.
Speaker 2: Mean Yosemite Sam with titties aka from.
Speaker 3: Yeah Girls work. Hey, I got the show quoted on
Speaker 3: the onion av love with that one. That will be
Speaker 3: on my fucking grave at Yo City's here with titties.
Speaker 2: What got me on the Cassavetti thing was just the fellow,
Speaker 2: not only fellow director, fellow actor director. I tend to
Speaker 2: think of Cassavetties more of an actor. Now, Fastbender did
Speaker 2: act in some of his movies. Acting in other people's movies,
Speaker 2: I don't think was his regular bag. So it was
Speaker 2: pretty nice that he did this for Gream and then
Speaker 2: he's so fucking good.
Speaker 3: He is so good.
Speaker 2: Of course all the refrain from unnecessary comment lines that
Speaker 2: he just tosses off. But like the when he goes
Speaker 2: back to the building, to the Combine building and there's
Speaker 2: the dead body of the woman and there's a person
Speaker 2: out there who's just like, oh, yeah, suicide and he's suicide.
Speaker 2: That'd be the first suicide we've had in four years.
Speaker 2: She's I meant premature death and he's yeah, it's a
Speaker 2: good thing you remembered that. I'm like, whoa. And he's
Speaker 2: got that menace in his look. He does a really
Speaker 2: good job with that.
Speaker 3: He's so good about paying attention to all the details
Speaker 3: in a really nice, sort of subtle way. Because with
Speaker 3: that scene, I love how he takes her hand and
Speaker 3: that she's clutching a button and there's not a big
Speaker 3: to do. Ahai revealed that pays off, but it's a touch.
Speaker 3: It's a nice clue that it's, yeah, this suicide, my ass,
Speaker 3: this was yeah, premature deaf my ass as well. All
Speaker 3: the moves he makes are so smart as an actor
Speaker 3: here and on top of just being somebody who has
Speaker 3: a physical presence that's compelling. On top of that, because
Speaker 3: he's just got that aura, you can definitely see why,
Speaker 3: even for having a temperamental reputation, he had people that
Speaker 3: acted with him so many films, and if you're just
Speaker 3: a stone cold butthole with no charisma, you're not going
Speaker 3: to get great actors to continually work quickly.
Speaker 2: You do on the same people behind the camera in
Speaker 2: front of the camera. How many times did Michael Ballhause
Speaker 2: work with him?
Speaker 1: So many?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly had a shula And they say this film.
Speaker 2: Are beloved a ton un for Kaufman.
Speaker 3: I love him, yes, and he's so great in US.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Anton is Anton the chaotic good in
Speaker 3: this film. I love him so much and I love
Speaker 3: that he looks like an ice cream man.
Speaker 1: The vertical red and white pin striped suit. But it's
Speaker 1: not pin stripes like fat thick stripes. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I want that suit so badly, especially the hat.
Speaker 3: He's even got the hat.
Speaker 1: Hat is everything. That's the Hat's say, it's about the hat.
Speaker 1: We all know the power comes from the hat on
Speaker 1: top of his head. He's such just the whipping boy
Speaker 1: for Fastbender though. That's the only problem, right Fastpender is
Speaker 1: just a dick. But that's okay because he's our dick
Speaker 1: and that's fine.
Speaker 2: That's the way he is. He plays that role so well.
Speaker 2: You can play detectives in so many different ways, especially
Speaker 2: somebody like this who is burnt out. He does have
Speaker 2: the stomach problems. You know, he is drinking the Bromo
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff, but it's yeah, he's very consistent.
Speaker 2: And that's one thing I like about this role as well,
Speaker 2: is that you know what you're getting from this character,
Speaker 2: and it's just surprising how he is able to be
Speaker 2: that consistent and be that cold and you care about
Speaker 2: this character even though he is a dick to so
Speaker 2: many people, including our beloved Gunther.
Speaker 1: And I mentioned at the opening of this podcast Jo
Speaker 1: Nezbo's work, and if anyone enjoyed this movie, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: code check out the Snowman movie. That movie is a
Speaker 1: fucking nightmare. They're sweet Jesus, that movie is bad. As
Speaker 1: an actor in it whose name sounds oddly similar to
Speaker 1: Michael Fassbender who's playing the Harry Foulay character, which is
Speaker 1: essentially the yez Bo detective equivalent of Jansen, and they're
Speaker 1: very similar. It's not a sci fi thing. There's not
Speaker 1: the sci fi trappings of the dystopian world around it,
Speaker 1: which sets this apart from most things. Harry Hula is
Speaker 1: more of just a Nordic detective. It reminds me more
Speaker 1: of steg Larsen, who was doing like the Millennium series
Speaker 1: with Lizabeth Salander. It's more kind of in that direction
Speaker 1: in terms of the themes that it's dealing with. But
Speaker 1: the character of Jansen and Harry Hula are very similar.
Speaker 1: And it even says it on Wikipedia like this is
Speaker 1: Nordic Noir, which would inspire jo Nezvo. I was putting
Speaker 1: that together before I read that on Wikipedia, because again,
Speaker 1: just the way he's painted as this really curmudgeeny detective
Speaker 1: for anyone who has not checked him out, that Harry
Speaker 1: Hula character is books. He's either an alcoholic or a
Speaker 1: recovering alcoholic, but he's always a curmudgeon and he's always
Speaker 1: perturbed constantly, which plays into the character which is completely
Speaker 1: lost in the movie version of it, which is a
Speaker 1: shame because I hope they adapt it again at some
Speaker 1: point because it could be a really well done detective
Speaker 1: story that a lot of people would resonate with because
Speaker 1: of just the way the main character is painted almost
Speaker 1: Bosh in a way, because Bosh is a little curmudgeony
Speaker 1: sticks to his guns, and Titus Welover does a really
Speaker 1: good job of that. I'm a huge fan of detective stories,
Speaker 1: so I could continue talking as I know I'm sure
Speaker 1: three of us are fans of detective story, so I
Speaker 1: really resonated with the detective story part of this movie
Speaker 1: as well, especially the Nordic noir of it all as
Speaker 1: it's being called or coined.
Speaker 2: I definitely was getting a lot of Millennium Series while
Speaker 2: I was reading the book more than watching the movie.
Speaker 2: I think it might have been because of the magazine
Speaker 2: aspect of this. And we should probably talk about the
Speaker 2: thirty first floor and the differences between the book and
Speaker 2: the movie of this. As far as what is on
Speaker 2: the thirty first floor. I don't think you ever get
Speaker 2: to see the thirty first floor. You just know that
Speaker 2: it's there. And in the book you eventually find out
Speaker 2: from the guy who sent the note threatening the bomb
Speaker 2: that there was. He's the one who set us up
Speaker 2: the bomb. He tells about all of those insipid rags
Speaker 2: that I was talking about where you couldn't say what
Speaker 2: the truth is, where it's just placating people. He and
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of other incredibly smart and just on
Speaker 2: the cutting edge and coming up with all of these
Speaker 2: great social theories and on point when it comes to
Speaker 2: diagnosing the ills.
Speaker 1: Of our world.
Speaker 2: They were being placated by the people that run the
Speaker 2: magazine conglomerate. Hey, we really think that you're doing a
Speaker 2: great job. We really want to hear your voices, So
Speaker 2: we're going to dedicate a whole magazine to you so
Speaker 2: that you can come up with all of these great
Speaker 2: things and put these things out. And they come up
Speaker 2: with this weird pay structure so that basically they keep
Speaker 2: not putting out the magazine, or they'll do a very
Speaker 2: limited print run and everybody gets a copy, but they're
Speaker 2: not allowed to take it out of the building, and
Speaker 2: by doing that, they owe the company money every single
Speaker 2: time a magazine comes out, so they keep getting more
Speaker 2: and more in debt, right, and no one ever reads
Speaker 2: what they write, and they're writing all these wonderful things
Speaker 2: and trying to help society. But the magazine itself is
Speaker 2: just like, you know, we're keeping you under our thumb.
Speaker 2: You're up here on the thirty first floor, basically locked
Speaker 2: in a supply closet. Almost it feels very much like
Speaker 2: you have to go up a special staircase to get
Speaker 2: up there, and you guys stay up.
Speaker 4: There, you do your thing.
Speaker 2: And we're going to even say this building has thirty floors.
Speaker 2: We're not even going to talk about the thirty first floor.
Speaker 1: I love that idea of having this ominous presence that
Speaker 1: they keep mentioning. Have you heard of the thirty first floor?
Speaker 1: It's that kind of thing where it's there's this one
Speaker 1: big big brother in nineteen eighty four, right big brother,
Speaker 1: or or in something that has a really poor finale
Speaker 1: but feels similar to this anachronistically the prisoner again, who
Speaker 1: is number one? That's the question that's asked throughout that
Speaker 1: entire show, and in this it's similar, what is the
Speaker 1: thirty first floor? What is that? Where can we assume
Speaker 1: the thirty first floor is? Okay, it's the thirty first
Speaker 1: floor of this building. Outside of that, nobody can get
Speaker 1: a straight answer as to what exactly is going on.
Speaker 1: And to your point, when we figure out what it is,
Speaker 1: it's so dastardly that if it weren't so awful, you'd
Speaker 1: applaud them for being so clever. But it's so unbelievably
Speaker 1: repugnant and dastardly what they're doing, because effectively, it's stifling
Speaker 1: free speech by allowing it to exist in a pseudo vacuum,
Speaker 1: which is pretty clever. Who's going to listen to your
Speaker 1: magazine that only has ten issues, and each issue is
Speaker 1: only printed ten times one hundred people. And guess what,
Speaker 1: who fucking cares. That's how free speech dies when the
Speaker 1: hose is not necessarily turned off so much as just
Speaker 1: tripped into attrition. And that's I don't know, I found
Speaker 1: it clever. Again, it's frustrating the reality of the situation.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think the execution of what the thirty
Speaker 1: first floor is pretty dark, but I think it works
Speaker 1: pretty well for where the movie's kind of going and
Speaker 1: the book by the same token.
Speaker 2: Either what's the thirty first floor in the movie?
Speaker 3: The thirty first floor in the movie when we're first
Speaker 3: hear about it is the lady who's one of the
Speaker 3: associates of the combine who winds up very soon after
Speaker 3: unaliving herself, but she just, oh, the third floor. It's
Speaker 3: a little in Basically, she laughs at all. Oh, it's
Speaker 3: like an end joke we have and wait, there's a
Speaker 3: thirty first floor, and so Jansen starts looking into it,
Speaker 3: and basically, by the time the film gets close to
Speaker 3: the end, we find out the thirty first floor is
Speaker 3: where they've been keeping basically a handful of I think
Speaker 3: there's a term at one point used like politicos, but
Speaker 3: basically journalists who before the whole combine took over, who
Speaker 3: were vital journalists, were people asking great questions, doing great work,
Speaker 3: asking the real questions. And they were brought in as
Speaker 3: a ruse, being like, hey, we want your ideas, we
Speaker 3: want to put out something, and we want to give
Speaker 3: people good quality information and stop. They deserve to know
Speaker 3: the truth about things, and they're sold basically a billip goods.
Speaker 3: And instead of outright saying we're going to censor you,
Speaker 3: it's a slow death. And in fact, I believe the
Speaker 3: character Franco Niro's character refers to it as intellectual.
Speaker 2: Murder, because that's the thing in the note is for
Speaker 2: the murder on the thirty first floor, And you're thinking
Speaker 2: like a literal murder throughout the entire book and movie,
Speaker 2: and then you find no, it's the murder.
Speaker 3: It's the death of ideas, and it's also the death
Speaker 3: of a dream. And that's because instead of being outright
Speaker 3: told no, which is an easy thing to fight against,
Speaker 3: I feel like somebody tells you fuck you get out
Speaker 3: in the streets and fight and protest. But it's a
Speaker 3: little trick here. Once somebody gives you the illusion, and
Speaker 3: that's what the thirty first floor is, and that's the
Speaker 3: whole reveal of That's fascinating because by the time we
Speaker 3: get to the reveal, it almost has a mythical status.
Speaker 3: It feels like when you're watching the movie, it's you're
Speaker 3: almost like, is it going to be like the movie
Speaker 3: Death Machine or there's a giant robo dinosaur? What is
Speaker 3: going to be in the thirty first floor? It get
Speaker 3: the possibilities fills on this end list and instead it's
Speaker 3: something both seemingly smaller, but the reverb of it is
Speaker 3: so atrociously huge and it makes your heart break. For
Speaker 3: I think to me, one of the saddest kind of
Speaker 3: depth is people when somebody's either sold out when their
Speaker 3: heart was in a good place initially, or somebody who
Speaker 3: basically had the wind taken out of their sales slowly
Speaker 3: like that some heavy stuff, and the film, to its credit,
Speaker 3: it toes this great line of giving you everything we've
Speaker 3: been talking about, but it doesn't do it in a
Speaker 3: heavy handed way. It doesn't spoon to feed you anything either.
Speaker 3: It's not oppressively obtuse either. For the most part, there
Speaker 3: are some few things that do make you pause particularly
Speaker 3: the ending, which we'll get to. But I like that,
Speaker 3: like it doesn't it's not treating you, because that's the
Speaker 3: problem sometimes with any time of art form, if it
Speaker 3: gets overly political, it's easy to get tripe. That's why
Speaker 3: political music, it's either going to be the most inspirational
Speaker 3: thing in the world or you're going to be like, okay, dude,
Speaker 3: we get it. It's got to just feel the worst
Speaker 3: poetry you wrote when you were like seventeen.
Speaker 2: Settle down their rage against machine.
Speaker 1: I was waiting for. Do you know that those who
Speaker 1: burn crosses are also those who I forget what the
Speaker 1: fucking line is because everybody said it at this point,
Speaker 1: who cares, right, Like it's hollow.
Speaker 3: No, it's weird to be anti capitalists when you're on
Speaker 3: a major record label and making a lot of money.
Speaker 3: We mentioned Franco Niro. Okay, if his name wasn't in
Speaker 3: the cast, would any of us have known that was
Speaker 3: Franco Nero?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: I did neither.
Speaker 2: I didn't know it was him at the beginning when
Speaker 2: they actually showed his face, But then I went back
Speaker 2: and I watched it. I was like, of course that's
Speaker 2: Franco Niro. But yeah, I had no idea where he's weird,
Speaker 2: the one good glass, the one bad one, and he
Speaker 2: has that amazing goatee and everything. I'm just like, what
Speaker 2: the what is this guy's problem. He's the only one
Speaker 2: that's looking at Jensen. Everybody else is looking around and stuff.
Speaker 2: And I love how everybody's got like makeup on their
Speaker 2: face or like different things are dyed and stuff, and
Speaker 2: I'm just like, Oh, this is the future. We're doing this,
Speaker 2: So I'm surprised nobody had tattoos because that's really the future.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was floored.
Speaker 3: It wasn't until I watched a trailer for this after
Speaker 3: whalk midway through watching the movie, I took a break
Speaker 3: and I was like, you know what, I don't think
Speaker 3: I've seen the trailer for this or forever. And then
Speaker 3: I was like reminded. I'm like, fuck, that's Franko near
Speaker 3: That was the floored. I love Franco Nero too. It
Speaker 3: isn't the biggest part, but it's such a pivotal part,
Speaker 3: and the fact that we get to live in a
Speaker 3: world where franco'neiro acted right next to Rannerferner Fastpender. I
Speaker 3: feel like I just messed up this autorious name. I'm
Speaker 3: so fast Spender. I'm just gonna say Fastpender, but I'm
Speaker 3: sure somebody. Don't anybody come for me. And the soundtrack,
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I can't believe it. Take me this lot,
Speaker 3: Edgar Rose, and I knew I would because I love Tangerin.
Speaker 3: They're just especially eighty seven, You're getting into this era
Speaker 3: where every soundtrack they're doing, or anybody from that band
Speaker 3: is doing, is just fire. Is just pure fire in
Speaker 3: my opinion, and I loved those, and especially because there
Speaker 3: are times where it felt like a ham. It almost
Speaker 3: felt like a ham that was like slowly throttling you,
Speaker 3: and then other times it's like very poppy. It's really
Speaker 3: beautifully tailored to which scenes and stuff that you're in.
Speaker 3: But it's so perfect, and it's just the right amount
Speaker 3: of scent futurist sounding without it being to like cliched
Speaker 3: or to woo.
Speaker 1: But there's not of that.
Speaker 3: I'm on band camp by Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, it's great. It's got that future. It sounds futuristic
Speaker 2: without relying on the people bluff.
Speaker 1: There's one scene I'm surprised we haven't mentioned it where
Speaker 1: the music and the movie sync up perfectly. It's when
Speaker 1: foss Bender is playing croquet, I was thinking badminton, I
Speaker 1: was thinking squash. I think we're all thinking about something.
Speaker 1: I think only one of us is thinking about the
Speaker 1: thing that has the term shuttlecock in there, which is
Speaker 1: the funniest of the three. That's bad men. I think
Speaker 1: I love a good.
Speaker 3: Shuttle cock.
Speaker 1: To me too. But in that scene is where the
Speaker 1: music and the movie finally sync up for a moment
Speaker 1: of here's where it's a little futuristically weird, maybe a
Speaker 1: little too much. I'm not saying I didn't like it,
Speaker 1: but the Tangerine dream of it all works in the
Speaker 1: movie throughout, aside from a couple of times where I'm like,
Speaker 1: maybe there is a little beat boop too many, And
Speaker 1: that's one of the again, sometimes the movies is like,
Speaker 1: let's just be weird. That's the one scene where I'm like,
Speaker 1: I like that, it's weird, but what the fuck is
Speaker 1: going on? And no explanation needed, clearly we get it.
Speaker 1: But the Tangerine Dream score for the most part works
Speaker 1: for me. And yeah, Tangerine dream, I mean, my god,
Speaker 1: the Tangerine Dream score for what Sorcerer another or is
Speaker 1: it Sorcerer Safe Cracker. It's safe Cracker right to James
Speaker 1: Kahn movie.
Speaker 3: But they also did.
Speaker 1: They okay, god brilliant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they worked with Friedkin a few times, and
Speaker 2: they also work with Michael Mann on the keep.
Speaker 1: That's right there, we go.
Speaker 2: I wanted to call out two montages that they have.
Speaker 2: We We've got Jensen at the headquarters of the Combine,
Speaker 2: which is more TV magazine, And that was the one
Speaker 2: thing I definitely noticed while I was watching some of
Speaker 2: these other adaptations of this. So there's two Russian adaptations,
Speaker 2: a Hungarian and a check and I find it very
Speaker 2: interesting that it's all Eastern Europe former Communist block countries
Speaker 2: that are are adapting this. German one is the only
Speaker 2: one that puts it in this future realm, and the
Speaker 2: rest of them are fairly faithful with the time and setting.
Speaker 2: And it's weird too, because there's one that's an hour
Speaker 2: law the two Russian ones are well over two hours.
Speaker 2: I can't remember how long either the Hungarian or the
Speaker 2: check one was. I think it was just like an
Speaker 2: hour and a half. But I love when he's in
Speaker 2: the headquarters and he's on the And this was actually
Speaker 2: in the book The Pattern Noster and I did not
Speaker 2: know what a pattern noster was until just a few
Speaker 2: years ago, and I think I found out about it
Speaker 2: because of the podcast. And there was a movie the
Speaker 2: same woman that directed Me and Him, the classic Griffin
Speaker 2: dun comedy, whereas Penis is talking to him, she also
Speaker 2: directed a movie about a pattern noster. I think it
Speaker 2: was just called The Lift or the Elevator, and so
Speaker 2: I've had to look up what the hell this thing is.
Speaker 2: I've never seen one of these things in real life.
Speaker 2: I would love to see it. It feels so fucking dangerous,
Speaker 2: especially when he gets on and he has to jump
Speaker 2: onto it and stuff. I'm like, oh my god. But
Speaker 2: I love how he's going through each of the floors
Speaker 2: and he keeps getting different sequences of that, and then
Speaker 2: you get that echo of it just a few scenes
Speaker 2: later when he's in the apartment building and he's going
Speaker 2: from door to door and like looking inside of everybody's
Speaker 2: doors open. Get that naked couple that's just sitting there,
Speaker 2: the old people, You get the woman who's singing. But
Speaker 2: the greatest one, though, is that little girl who's got
Speaker 2: the blindfold on because she's counting, she's about to play.
Speaker 4: She's about to play Hide and go seek with her dead,
Speaker 4: and you see her dead in the corner of the frame,
Speaker 4: eyeing a sheet in a knot, and you know he's
Speaker 4: about to commit suicide.
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh my god, that's fucking dark. And then
Speaker 2: you get the little girl running out a few minutes later,
Speaker 2: going oh there's the everything's hanging in there riggling, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh my gosh, not another unexpected exodus.
Speaker 3: Both of those, I'm so glad you brought this up
Speaker 3: because they're both so beautifully executed. And on top of that,
Speaker 3: I did not know that was called a potternoscer. Also,
Speaker 3: thank you for reminding me of me and him.
Speaker 1: I've still never seen it, and I love Gryffin Done.
Speaker 3: I love Gryffin Done too. That's why I was on
Speaker 3: that episode, which you can listen to on Weirding my
Speaker 3: Media on the Projection Pope. To add to that, I
Speaker 3: love how Jansen shoots him down because he thinks this
Speaker 3: guy could be that either tied to Cosmopos or yeah,
Speaker 3: the very least. The whole thing was the I love
Speaker 3: how they kept calling this this shitty folder. That's basically
Speaker 3: letting me know, hey, you've been canned an.
Speaker 2: Award, you know, calling it the diploma.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the diploma, because now it looks like it just
Speaker 3: looks like a bad diploma. That's like spray pain and gold,
Speaker 3: or almost like a folder that you'd put you to
Speaker 3: trapper keeper or something that's been torn in half. And
Speaker 3: that was what the bomb threat was written on that
Speaker 3: it's oh wait, here's his folder. And he realized, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: this guy is not who I'm looking for because it's intact.
Speaker 3: And then he's canceled the ambulance. Yes, I think over
Speaker 3: the ambulance just to helpfully revive him until he realized, oh,
Speaker 3: this isn't the guy I'm looking for. His canceled it
Speaker 3: in an ample.
Speaker 2: Man, he's all so cold.
Speaker 1: He's a curmudgeon. You gotta love him though.
Speaker 3: Man, that little girl had some chilled though. I don't
Speaker 3: think I would have been as calm as she was
Speaker 3: about like, oh he's in the airbic. She was so
Speaker 3: peppy about it.
Speaker 2: Just forward to set the record straight. The name of
Speaker 2: the movie that was directed by Doris Dory is Men
Speaker 2: Are M A and E R with the over the
Speaker 2: A the diacritic that is the one with the pattern
Speaker 2: noster so it wasn't called the lift or the elevator.
Speaker 1: But just so you know, wasn't the lifts made by
Speaker 1: Dick Moss. Oh fucking come on, Dick Moss just well
Speaker 1: known stuntman, so really the cool director. Dick war was
Speaker 1: a sun Man.
Speaker 3: Son Billy Warlock start in society. Not named Dick Warlock,
Speaker 3: but Billy Warlocks still a cool name.
Speaker 1: Dick Moss is a good name too.
Speaker 3: It Dick Mass who also made some iconic music videos
Speaker 3: for Golden Earring. Okay, I've alluded to this, guys, I
Speaker 3: need to bingu your brains. There's something about Barbara, this character,
Speaker 3: this former TV hostess, with her amazing fashion sense, her
Speaker 3: high kicks that she does. She's in the pool and
Speaker 3: heels by the way she gets out of the pool
Speaker 3: and full heels is doing this high kick thing. She
Speaker 3: keeps sticking her tongue out.
Speaker 1: Oh the tongue.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it's she's almost that one. Oh god.
Speaker 3: What was that guitarist who replaced Chris Holmes and Wasp?
Speaker 3: I remember that guy, Johnny Rod. This is a heavy
Speaker 3: metal deep cut here, but she makes me think it
Speaker 3: was an eighties hair rock guy that keeps whipping out
Speaker 3: his tongue, being like.
Speaker 1: Hey, late like that like a lizard.
Speaker 3: She does that, and her whole mannerisms are fascinating. And
Speaker 3: then it doesn't she say she's erotic tension.
Speaker 1: She just I brought up erotic amorous noises. Yeah, amorous thoughts,
Speaker 1: I believe is her words. And if this woman's a
Speaker 1: stone cold super freak. And then we get to see
Speaker 1: that a lot of fars hanging out with her, and
Speaker 1: we realize that she is the quote unquote.
Speaker 3: Assistant aid to the head of the combine, but she's
Speaker 3: this mistress but it sounds a little ripey. Did you
Speaker 3: guys get that impression?
Speaker 2: But she yeah, is she the one that we run
Speaker 2: into in the hallway and her dress is basically off.
Speaker 2: She helped me button my dress back up, and I'm
Speaker 2: just like, oh, okay, Yeah, she just got attacked in
Speaker 2: her in his office.
Speaker 3: That guy's so creepy, and I love that. A lot
Speaker 3: of her big crime is she's growing vegetables.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't do that. You gotta only eat government
Speaker 1: issue cheese.
Speaker 2: It's illegal, don't you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how dare you grow your own vegetables? How dare
Speaker 1: you plant something in the ground that can grow naturally,
Speaker 1: and how dare you do something with it that could
Speaker 1: be illegal? Just in this movie. Yeah, but that's one
Speaker 1: of those weird things that again reinforces the thought process
Speaker 1: that went into making this movie and the book. Right,
Speaker 1: what's a way to make the government seem stifling? Take
Speaker 1: away the ability to grow your own food. That's a
Speaker 1: pretty good way to make it seem stifling and overwhelming.
Speaker 1: It's actually a pretty novel. I can't think of another
Speaker 1: thing where it's illegal to grow your own food as
Speaker 1: a plot point in something other than this. But it's
Speaker 1: such a weirdly dystopian idea. It's like, what's the thing
Speaker 1: about how to cook a baby that they make everybody
Speaker 1: read in high school?
Speaker 2: The Swift thing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Jonesie Swift thing. Yeah, Like, I know it's
Speaker 1: call how to Cook a Baby, but we're talking about
Speaker 1: the same thing.
Speaker 3: You got me there, you got me there, I got
Speaker 3: you there. See it's pictionaries.
Speaker 1: See we're here now, I got you there to cook
Speaker 1: the baby thing.
Speaker 3: I'm glad Mike said something because I was like, I missed,
Speaker 3: have missed that class.
Speaker 1: Well, then here in the Deep South, we have a
Speaker 1: different tradition on what kind of food we eat out
Speaker 1: at night? How to cook a baby? You're more central Southern,
Speaker 1: No that I'm talking the deep South. Yeah, I'm modest proposal,
Speaker 1: But that's again, that's goes back to that idea of
Speaker 1: like and when all else fails, what do we do? Okay,
Speaker 1: let's eat the young here. It's no, what do you do?
Speaker 1: Grow food? You can't even do that?
Speaker 3: So I'm sorry. I love your patois. He sounded like
Speaker 3: a character from in The Heathen Night.
Speaker 1: I ain't go even further, just be, I say, I
Speaker 1: just go for a full flog horn leghorn, just go
Speaker 1: all southern. Good Lord, Oh.
Speaker 3: My god, this Grits are giving me the papers.
Speaker 1: I do declare.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so can we discuss the ending?
Speaker 2: You're talking about the very actual ending?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got questions. I really requested it.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, let let me take us there a little bit.
Speaker 2: Here have a second bomb threat that happens, And there's
Speaker 2: no reason to believe this bomb threat any more than
Speaker 2: the first one. The guy confessed. He basically in the book, he's, oh,
Speaker 2: you'll get another one of these in a few days.
Speaker 2: Just ignore it. And so he's okay, and he does,
Speaker 2: and he's just no, Chief, I have no reason to
Speaker 2: believe that there is an actual bomb in the building.
Speaker 2: That doesn't make any sense. Okay, great, they don't evacuate
Speaker 2: or do they evacuate the building. I'm trying to remember
Speaker 2: because it's really fucking oh. They do evacuate the building
Speaker 2: as a matter of precaution, but they don't evacuate the
Speaker 2: thirty first floor.
Speaker 3: That's right, yeah, because that's the thing. Franco Niro's character
Speaker 3: contacts him. They do, you need to get up their
Speaker 3: people up there, their politicos up there.
Speaker 1: That's my faing, And so that's the thing.
Speaker 3: Jansen and Anton both go up there, and they realize
Speaker 3: they're gonna have to go up all the way upstairs
Speaker 3: because of course the power is shut off, and then
Speaker 3: Jansen ends up taking a helicopter to get automatically to
Speaker 3: the top. Anton takes the stairs, and I'm going to
Speaker 3: believe Anton died same And that'sy. And you notice that's
Speaker 3: the only time, I really, if I'm remembering correctly, at least,
Speaker 3: that we really ever hear Jansen get super loud, because
Speaker 3: you notice he's always really good about having an even tongue.
Speaker 3: Even when he's there, you still tell when he's irritated,
Speaker 3: but he doesn't get loud. He's not a loud everbody
Speaker 3: yell at you.
Speaker 1: Not like that guy.
Speaker 3: But then like when he calls up for Anton, and
Speaker 3: it's almost like his voice breaks a little bit. It
Speaker 3: is so goddamn Fastpender's going in this role. And but
Speaker 3: you realize they hear he got three or four people
Speaker 3: out of there. We hear on the news and they
Speaker 3: all died from burns. And if you're not already feeling
Speaker 3: like a veteran of the psychic War, already from living
Speaker 3: in as society, you do now. And you notice the
Speaker 3: framing of him at that lash slot because you mentioned
Speaker 3: the peel paint, but there's almost like bars. It almost
Speaker 3: looks like he's in a like in a jail sale
Speaker 3: for a second, and then the camera moves and you realize, okay, no,
Speaker 3: he's in his office and they're clearing it out and
Speaker 3: everybody's in hazmat suits except him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that whole thing with the hazmat suits, and they're
Speaker 2: just like, hey, you need to get out, we're cleaning
Speaker 2: this place. I'm like, okay, yeah, that's very strange. And
Speaker 2: Chris remind me, dude, he evacuates everybody with the thirty
Speaker 2: first floor in the book, right, yeah, and it ends
Speaker 2: really coldly. I just remember the last line in the
Speaker 2: book is when you realize that there were people still
Speaker 2: up there and the bomb does go off and you're
Speaker 2: just like, oh, fucking that's how it ends. Is just
Speaker 2: really a smack right in the face.
Speaker 1: And again, like, this is another movie that kind of
Speaker 1: goes back to the dystopian idea of it, but it
Speaker 1: does remind me a little bit of Fight Club in
Speaker 1: that way, right where it's just and here's the end,
Speaker 1: and that's the fucking end, and there you go, and
Speaker 1: the thing that you expected but hoped wouldn't happen happens
Speaker 1: in this movie, though, the stakes are so much worse
Speaker 1: because it's them finally doing away with like you mentioned already,
Speaker 1: the death of free thought. Here it is. Here is
Speaker 1: the death of free thought and knowledge in this society.
Speaker 1: They're being blown up, murdered intentionally because you know what,
Speaker 1: we can't keep oppressing them, so what do we have
Speaker 1: to do? We just kill them? Yeah, but just kill them.
Speaker 1: And if they don't exist on the books to begin with,
Speaker 1: then there's nobody that actually died and it's wow, what
Speaker 1: a like you said, like, what a horribly cold ending.
Speaker 1: But the reality of the way that the system thumbs
Speaker 1: up everybody, there's nothing wrong, and again in a society
Speaker 1: where the people that are being killed don't really exist
Speaker 1: and aren't being acknowledged to begin with thumbs up everybody.
Speaker 2: And that line from Franco Niro is I didn't plant
Speaker 2: the bomb. The CEO did it. Is the Blue panther
Speaker 2: himself winning and taking out all of these people intellectuals.
Speaker 1: Yes, again, to round people up and shoot them is
Speaker 1: one thing. To round people up and have them do
Speaker 1: their job and then just shoot them anyway, same thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know which is worse. They're both pretty awful.
Speaker 1: This movie, I think makes its point rather well. But
Speaker 1: to your point, Mike, I actually think that the ending
Speaker 1: in the book is a little bit more impactful because
Speaker 1: the book doesn't fucking hang anything on it. The book
Speaker 1: just says and that's it, the end, and you're just like,
Speaker 1: oh god, wow. I will say, though, the juxtaposition against
Speaker 1: a Mayora can exceptionalism with that photo at the end
Speaker 1: of Fast Understanding next to the astronaut, because again, he's doing.
Speaker 2: More than standing next to that astronaut, astronaut?
Speaker 1: What was it all about? Folks?
Speaker 3: I was okay, because we keep seeing him throughout the film,
Speaker 3: look at the astronauts.
Speaker 1: What's with the mask? At some point where the image
Speaker 1: of the mask yeah, and I'm.
Speaker 3: Like, Okay, that's fascinating, that's cool. What does the astronaut mean?
Speaker 3: Is this a reference to an image of the past
Speaker 3: that can project a sense of hope, a sense of discovery,
Speaker 3: a sense of exploration. I said sex because he then
Speaker 3: humps it, but it's like a grief hump, like because
Speaker 3: he's not happy. It's not Oh, I'm feeling sexy now
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get all up in them nassa parts. It's
Speaker 3: not like that. It's almost defeated, a sense of defeating.
Speaker 3: But he's humping and he rubs himself and then it's
Speaker 3: I don't even know how to describe the look on
Speaker 3: his face as this role. It's not happy, it's not
Speaker 3: overtly I hate this. I usually like going into these
Speaker 3: discussions having at least an idea of what is my
Speaker 3: interpretation of something. Honestly, I'm still mulling it over. I'm
Speaker 3: not quite sure what it means.
Speaker 1: I think the only thing I can compare it to
Speaker 1: directly is why Liza why. It reminded me of that.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it in a bad way, but in
Speaker 1: that scene at the end of the room, it's never
Speaker 1: explained why he's doing what he's doing with the dress.
Speaker 1: I can put my own theory upon it as to
Speaker 1: why he's doing what he's doing. The people who made
Speaker 1: the movie would seem to think they had no idea
Speaker 1: what the hell he was doing. And I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what foss Binder is doing here either. It's that same weird, sorrowful,
Speaker 1: mournful sexual energy that just it's not something that you
Speaker 1: see often, and seeing it here at that's just what
Speaker 1: the movie ends on is a hard hard not hard
Speaker 1: to deal with, it just it's one of the few
Speaker 1: parts of the movie where I'm like, what did I
Speaker 1: miss something like you said, had there? I normally like
Speaker 1: coming into these discussions with a sense of like where
Speaker 1: I thought the thing went, and right at the end,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm not really sure what the movie was
Speaker 1: saying right here at the end. I got the message
Speaker 1: ninety eight percent of the way through, but right here
Speaker 1: at the end, what are we trying to say? Or
Speaker 1: Mike are you any clearer than us?
Speaker 2: No, because he does go through such a range of
Speaker 2: emotions after he does that humping and even before. But yeah,
Speaker 2: he's very sad listening to the news. And then you
Speaker 2: get the whole conversation between Nixon and Armstrong, which was
Speaker 2: an interesting part for me because suddenly the subtitles switched
Speaker 2: from English to German, and I'm like, oh wait, they're
Speaker 2: speaking English. Okay, I can actually understand this, but yes, okay,
Speaker 2: we get that conversation. Then you get the humping, and
Speaker 2: then you get him just standing there with that cigarette,
Speaker 2: and there's moments where he like throws his head back
Speaker 2: and he laughs and he's just like shaking his head.
Speaker 2: It's just I don't know if he's like figuring more
Speaker 2: things out at that point, because he's a very smart
Speaker 2: detective and he's not one of these incompetent detectives where
Speaker 2: you're just like hey, Even though when I was reading
Speaker 2: the book, I was just like, hey, Jensen, they said
Speaker 2: the thirties first floor two times, and one of them
Speaker 2: they brushed off as a joke. But then as I'm
Speaker 2: reading the book more, I'm like, oh no, he realized
Speaker 2: that he heard that it's just a matter of how
Speaker 2: he's going to play this type of thing. I'm like,
Speaker 2: all right, he's not a dumb guy, and this Jensen
Speaker 2: isn't a dumb guy either, So yeah, I wish I
Speaker 2: knew what was going through his head. But I like
Speaker 2: endings like this where you're just like I was with
Speaker 2: you all the way through, and then when you got
Speaker 2: to that last bit, you threw me a bit of
Speaker 2: a curveball. I don't know if that's just fucking Fastbender
Speaker 2: himself is throwing as a curve ball or if that's
Speaker 2: him as Jensen throwing us a current ball.
Speaker 1: But I I like it. It's just I felt under
Speaker 1: prepared right there at the end for whatever the movie
Speaker 1: is going for. Wait a second, it almost of you.
Speaker 1: I was like Fastbenders just looking at the audience really
Speaker 1: and just do you like what you saw? Was that
Speaker 1: good for you? It was good for me. Literally smoking
Speaker 1: a cigarette, he doesn't light it post humping. He actually
Speaker 1: has it on him while doing the humping of the picture.
Speaker 1: But again he does just like stare through the cinema
Speaker 1: out into the audience in a way that I know
Speaker 1: that not a freeze frame, because I can see that
Speaker 1: moving a little bit, but it seems like a freeze frame.
Speaker 1: It does right towards the end. But yeah, no, it's
Speaker 1: what an interesting movie, what an interesting pick, and what
Speaker 1: a I don't know, what an interesting guy to lead
Speaker 1: the movie, because again to all the points that we've
Speaker 1: already made, this guy is also a director and look
Speaker 1: at look at what he's able to do here as
Speaker 1: an actor. What a talent, and what a genuine shame
Speaker 1: to that he passed away the year that this film
Speaker 1: came out, from an overdose of barbituates and cocaine, which
Speaker 1: is fuck good.
Speaker 3: God thirty seven. Yeah, I know why that's such a
Speaker 3: both fucking young. I'm so young. Everything that flows me
Speaker 3: is like God, all of the great art he made
Speaker 3: and he didn't even make it to forty. And now
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh God, what am I doing with my life?
Speaker 1: What am I doing with my life?
Speaker 3: I'll never make Coral, but no, this guy. I do
Speaker 3: love the ending too, and I actually I especially love
Speaker 3: it because it is making me think because and especially
Speaker 3: because I know there's I really there's something behind it.
Speaker 3: I hate it and it's the perfect kind of ending
Speaker 3: to throw up people off because have you guys ever
Speaker 3: had to hear people discuss anything that they immediately understand,
Speaker 3: they like bitch about it instead of being like, think
Speaker 3: about it. Maybe somebody's wanting you. They respect you. That's
Speaker 3: why I never liked Tolster, because he is a writer,
Speaker 3: will tell you every fight, everything, every detail. And to me,
Speaker 3: it's that's not an act of love, an act of
Speaker 3: love as an artist being like, I respect you as
Speaker 3: a being. I'm not going to spell anything out for
Speaker 3: you because you're not stupid. I might even throw you
Speaker 3: some shadows, some shapes, some mystery. It just to me
Speaker 3: is it's an act of respect and trust and love.
Speaker 3: And how oftener are you going to see a great
Speaker 3: true auteur hamp a giant astronaut mural?
Speaker 2: Yeah for people. I hope everybody that's listening to this
Speaker 2: podcast is familiar with him. I haven't seen that many
Speaker 2: of his movies, which is a real shame. I was
Speaker 2: talking to Sam Degan, I was like, why don't we
Speaker 2: do the Fastbender cast because so much about this I
Speaker 2: know absolutely nothing, but that's forty four films that he directed.
Speaker 2: And he was one of these guys like we've talked
Speaker 2: about with the Takashi Mike and some other people where
Speaker 2: they're just directing, directing, directing, and it's I'm amazed he
Speaker 2: made it to thirty seven with the pace that he
Speaker 2: was doing. You look at his filmography and you're just like,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine, ninety sixty nine, ninety sixty, nineteen seventy,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nineteen. I'm like, you're making three and four
Speaker 2: and five films a year, sir, How are you able
Speaker 2: to do this other than through arbituates and cocaine?
Speaker 1: The answer is there, and you're right in the nose
Speaker 1: as they would.
Speaker 3: Say, I'm making interesting films. Oh yeah, films that are great,
Speaker 3: were impactful films, because that's it. It's we always say
Speaker 3: it's quality, not necessarily quantity. But he was able to
Speaker 3: do both. That's that's that's like seeing a unicorrent, like,
Speaker 3: how was this man real? Because plenty of people do
Speaker 3: or Brichan's cocaine doesn't mean they're making good art most time,
Speaker 3: it means they're making shit art, to be honest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this was very deep stuff. I mentioned World
Speaker 2: on a Wire before and I'm really glad that's now available.
Speaker 2: I want to say again it might be criterion.
Speaker 3: Really experian. Yeah, and with a better cover at least, oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, much better cover, thank god. And that is based
Speaker 2: on the same book by oh, what's the name of
Speaker 2: the author, Daniel Galuis. I think it is same author,
Speaker 2: same book, and Galui's work is fantastic. He did one
Speaker 2: where every speaking of we just were talking about blindness
Speaker 2: in the Woman on the Beach episode, and that whole
Speaker 2: book takes place in darkness, so none of the characters
Speaker 2: can see. So just the way that he's able to
Speaker 2: describe things as if you were blind is just amazing.
Speaker 2: But the same book, that WorldWind Wire was based on,
Speaker 2: same thing as The Thirteenth Floor, the one with Vincent
Speaker 2: DiCaprio and Craig Birco, And when that came out, everybody's
Speaker 2: just like, oh, it's a rip off of the Matrix
Speaker 2: And no, that book's.
Speaker 4: Been around since.
Speaker 2: Know your shit before you start spouting off.
Speaker 1: I've never seen The Thirteenth Floor, though, I need to
Speaker 1: say him, I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: I think it's a really good movie. Yeah, we were
Speaker 2: in Mexico, actually it was a Florida trip and we
Speaker 2: had no entertainment.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 2: We had a TV that had a DVD player, so
Speaker 2: we ran over to a Walmart or something and just
Speaker 2: went through the five dollars bin I picked up the
Speaker 2: thirteenth floor, and I was so glad I did, because
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: It's a favorite of one of my favorite people, Philosopher Slavojik,
Speaker 1: loves the films. I also Craig Bierco, who I know
Speaker 1: has been on this show indeed at least in the
Speaker 1: past several times, or at least once, right.
Speaker 2: As a guest, as a interviewee at least once, and
Speaker 2: as a co host at least twice.
Speaker 1: It's better than the Matrix Quorina.
Speaker 2: I like the Matrix as well as that. I don't
Speaker 2: think you have to discount one because of the other,
Speaker 2: because they're definitely coming out things from different places. All Right,
Speaker 2: We're going to take a break and play preview for
Speaker 2: next week's show right after these brief messages.
Speaker 6: Crimes and Misdemeanors gets two thumbs up from Cisco and Ebert.
Speaker 6: Gene Shaman of The Today Show calls it an astonishing accomplishment.
Speaker 6: Vincent Camby The New York Times says Crimes and Misdemeanors
Speaker 6: hits the bulls eye a memorable villain. Jack Crowell of
Speaker 6: Newsweek writes, what ay Ellen whipsaws you between this may
Speaker 6: and laughter? Richard Chickle of Time Magazine finds it hilarious,
Speaker 6: and Peter Travis of Rolling Stone ads Crimes and Misdemeanors
Speaker 6: is so funny it hurts rated.
Speaker 1: PG.
Speaker 6: Thirteen now playing a selected theaters.
Speaker 2: That's right, We'll be back next week what they look
Speaker 2: at Crimes and Misdemeanors. Until then, I want to thank
Speaker 2: my co host Chris and Heather. So, Heather, what is
Speaker 2: the latest with you?
Speaker 3: I have recently finally on my to do list checked off.
Speaker 3: I've started doing video essays on my YouTube channel, with
Speaker 3: my inaugural one being an intro to the whim in
Speaker 3: Wonders of I Don't Know Why the German.
Speaker 2: It's like my really the vim and Vendor.
Speaker 1: God, Damn, I do love.
Speaker 3: It is about the beauty of Outrey Cinema and particularly
Speaker 3: the Grindhouse. I'm also working on some upcoming projects, including
Speaker 3: a commentary for a film that I love deeply and
Speaker 3: that's all I can say about it, but I'm very excited,
Speaker 3: and the Cruise. There's all sorts of other sundry goodies.
Speaker 3: You can find it my link tree linktree dot com
Speaker 3: for slash Mondoheather, find my Patreon, find my website, find
Speaker 3: my social media contexts. I need to add I am
Speaker 3: blue on Blue Sky now I need to add that
Speaker 3: to there. I will take that after this recording. But anyways, yes,
Speaker 3: find me there linktree dot com, sport slash Modoheather.
Speaker 2: Yes, I am so fucking woke. I'm no longer on
Speaker 2: X and on Blue Sky, but I've been there for
Speaker 2: a few months. It's just they haven't integrated with my
Speaker 2: social media posters, so I always forget to go there
Speaker 2: and Chris, what is happening with you, sir?
Speaker 1: I'm not on X either. No, I guess I am
Speaker 1: on X still, but I'm also on Blue Sky as well.
Speaker 1: But a social media for me just now less important
Speaker 1: than Weirdingwaymedia dot com, where this show and all the
Speaker 1: other shows that Mike and I work on that are
Speaker 1: other content creators. Slash Friends, slash Cohort, slash Merry Men, Women,
Speaker 1: theyvem's and everybody else can be found at Weirdingwaymedia dot com.
Speaker 1: And it's a great place to listen to inclusive storytellers
Speaker 1: telling great stories. And that's that's what we're doing here.
Speaker 1: That's what I do over at my show, the Culture Cast,
Speaker 1: and over at the only thing you can't find a
Speaker 1: weirdingway media because I know Michael plug it if I
Speaker 1: don't is Ranking on Bond, which can be found at
Speaker 1: patreon dot com slash Projection Booth or patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash Culture Cast at the ten dollars level or higher,
Speaker 1: and once a month, we, along with the host of
Speaker 1: Richard Adam's paranormal Bookshelf Richard Adam, talk all about James
Speaker 1: Bond once a month. Wouldn't you think of a podcast
Speaker 1: called Ranking on Bond is about James Bond's where you
Speaker 1: can find me? So there you go.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Chris, you pretty much took my entire outro.
Speaker 2: So let me just say that every donation that the
Speaker 2: Projection Booth gets helps us produce some more Ranking on
Speaker 2: Bond and also helps us take over the world.
Speaker 3: But you don't think the doctor a dad. I think
Speaker 3: they may have whoever, Yeah, I think they maybe the
Speaker 3: I kinda might be eventually. Map your eyes, think your
Speaker 6: Long way