Speaker 1: Old you is, folks, It's show Died. People say good
Speaker 1: money to see this movie. When they go out to
Speaker 1: a theater.
Speaker 2: They want clod sodas, pop popcorn, and no monsters in
Speaker 2: the protection booth.
Speaker 3: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 4: Got it off.
Speaker 3: I'm chance the gardener in the garden.
Speaker 5: Years since I was a child, I worked in this garden.
Speaker 2: Then you really are a gardener? Oh yes, can I
Speaker 2: ask your name?
Speaker 1: Where the gardener?
Speaker 2: Mister Chancey Gardner?
Speaker 1: Are you related to Basil and Prodita Gardner?
Speaker 6: No, I'm not related to Basil and Podita gobbledygook, you.
Speaker 7: Know, chawsea.
Speaker 8: There's something about you.
Speaker 7: You all playing games.
Speaker 9: With words to protect yourself.
Speaker 6: Stuff with rice pudding between the ears on television. Mister president,
Speaker 6: you look much smaller, dam as a jackass. As long
Speaker 6: as the roots are not severed, all is well, and
Speaker 6: all will be well in the garden.
Speaker 10: In the gardener, hm whom mm?
Speaker 3: Being there?
Speaker 11: The story of the village idiot who convinced almost everybody,
Speaker 11: including the President of the United States, that he was
Speaker 11: a genius. It's very funny, but scary too because it
Speaker 11: could come true.
Speaker 3: He's very, very sexy, but.
Speaker 9: I think he's brilliant.
Speaker 10: It's always somewhat surprising to find men like yourself working
Speaker 10: so intimately with the President. Yet somehow I'm managing to
Speaker 10: remain relatively unknown. Yes, it is surprising. I can't write.
Speaker 7: I heard you speak say languages I can't read at all.
Speaker 1: I like to watch d read.
Speaker 12: Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White
Speaker 12: Treno once again is Ms.
Speaker 2: Susankuglinska Hey, and let me just say I like to watch.
Speaker 12: Also back in the booth is mister Morris Brushtinsky.
Speaker 7: There was a season for Everything. In the Projection Booth.
Speaker 12: We continue a month of Patreon requests with one from
Speaker 12: Jordan nash Hal Ashby's being There, based on the novel
Speaker 12: by yearsI Kosinski. It's the story of Chance, played by
Speaker 12: Peter Sellers. He's a developmentally delayed man who has lived
Speaker 12: in seclusion the ward of an old man who is
Speaker 12: recently deceased at the beginning of the film. He soon
Speaker 12: finds himself homeless and wandering the streets of Washington, d C.
Speaker 12: Where he runs into, or is run into, by Eve
Speaker 12: Rand played by Sherley McClain. He becomes mistaken for the
Speaker 12: wise Chauncey Gardner and begins mixing in the circles of
Speaker 12: some movers and shakers, including the President of the United States,
Speaker 12: as played by Jack Warden. We will be spoiling this
Speaker 12: film in as much as it can be, so if
Speaker 12: you don't want anything ruined, please turn off the podcast
Speaker 12: and come back after you've seen it. We will still
Speaker 12: be here. So, Morrison, when was the first time you
Speaker 12: saw being there and what did you think?
Speaker 7: I think it might have been a decade or so
Speaker 7: after the film came out. I do have very strong
Speaker 7: memories of the film coming out in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 7: I would have been about thirteen or fourteen years old
Speaker 7: at the time. It was one of those films that
Speaker 7: I thought, oh, that's too grown up, not interested. At
Speaker 7: the time, all I knew Peter Sellers for was the
Speaker 7: Pink Panther films, which I saw every time a knew
Speaker 7: one came out and the party and later on I
Speaker 7: do want to talk a little bit more about Peter
Speaker 7: Sellers as an actor, But the time when that came out,
Speaker 7: I just thought, Yep, this is not for me. And
Speaker 7: then I think shortly after this came out, the fiendish
Speaker 7: plot of Doctor Fu Manchu came out, and that was
Speaker 7: sort of like a PostScript. Everyone wanted to think that
Speaker 7: Being There was the last film that he ever made,
Speaker 7: but now, sorry, there's one that's not quite fashionable. And
Speaker 7: I've not seen the finish plot of Doctor Fu Manchu.
Speaker 7: I have no idea whether it's as bad as people
Speaker 7: say it is. But yeah, as I said, I saw
Speaker 7: it about a decade after it came out in the
Speaker 7: late eighties, maybe the early nineties, on VHS, and at
Speaker 7: the time I thought, yeah, this is really really good,
Speaker 7: but I still didn't quite get everything. Maybe in the
Speaker 7: two thousands I watched it again. I was recording a
Speaker 7: podcast with my friend Michael Persh about the album Remote
Speaker 7: Control by the banda Tubes and fi Waybill had long
Speaker 7: gone and said that Being There was a direct influence
Speaker 7: on that album by the Tubes, and I wanted to
Speaker 7: see what the connection was, and I think that was
Speaker 7: when I got it, and watching it again a couple
Speaker 7: of times for this podcast episode, I really get it.
Speaker 7: And there's just so much in there that in theory,
Speaker 7: we could have like a whole ten part podcast series
Speaker 7: just going through every theme that's covered. In this film.
Speaker 7: But suffice to say, I've had a journey with this film,
Speaker 7: going from apathetic to now being almost obsessed by it.
Speaker 7: So yeah, I really love it. Thanks for having me
Speaker 7: on for this one.
Speaker 12: And how about you, Susan.
Speaker 2: We're we're on the same agent. So I was a kid,
Speaker 2: there were so many amazing like kid movies and seventy nine, Like,
Speaker 2: there's no way I would have you know, been drawn
Speaker 2: to that. I remember the art, you know, I can
Speaker 2: remember the posters and that kind of thing. But then
Speaker 2: in the same thing where I'm sure the first time
Speaker 2: I saw it was during the heyday of VHS video rental,
Speaker 2: you know, when when you're in college and you're like
Speaker 2: catching up on all this stuff you didn't see when
Speaker 2: you're a kid. And I would have been too, Like
Speaker 2: I loved Peter Sellers as a kid in the Pink
Speaker 2: Panther movies. That was like huge for me, and so
Speaker 2: it would have been like a real you know, like
Speaker 2: I don't quite remember, I know, you know it. It
Speaker 2: would have been like just a recontextualization of Peter for me.
Speaker 2: And I love psychological portraits. So but I, you know,
Speaker 2: really kind of didn't think about it for a long
Speaker 2: time and only recently kind of deep dive, really deep
Speaker 2: dived into it over the last few years, and I
Speaker 2: had done a discussion of it on a different thing
Speaker 2: with cartoonist Joe Dator, who's a big Peter Sellers fan,
Speaker 2: and I'm kind of really like, you know, just sort
Speaker 2: of I was sort of embarrassed I hadn't kind of
Speaker 2: like hadn't stuck with me as much as I thought
Speaker 2: it should, because I really, like I said, I love
Speaker 2: psychological portraits of really unusual people, and it's just you know,
Speaker 2: it's a masterpiece as far as that goes. And Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm thrilled to be getting back to it.
Speaker 12: My parents took me to see this. I don't think
Speaker 12: they took me to see this. I was with them
Speaker 12: when they went to see this. How about that. So
Speaker 12: as I'm rewatching this movie the other night and we
Speaker 12: get to the masturbation scene, which I completely had forgotten
Speaker 12: because I saw this when I was seven years old.
Speaker 12: I didn't get it then, and even watching it now,
Speaker 12: I'm like, Okay, I can see why I didn't get it,
Speaker 12: because it's not really explicit, no crotch shots or anything
Speaker 12: like that. But I'm like, oh, okay, but I do
Speaker 12: remember just thinking what an unusual role for Peter Sellers, Because,
Speaker 12: like y'all, I grew up watching those Pink Panther movies.
Speaker 12: I'm more connected with Peter Sellers. When this is going
Speaker 12: to sound really bad, when he was in Yellow Face,
Speaker 12: not for the fiendish plot of Doctor Fu Manchu, but
Speaker 12: for Murder by Death, I really liked him in that.
Speaker 12: I really just enjoyed that movie. I did enjoy the
Speaker 12: Pink Panther films, but I do remember it being a
Speaker 12: case of diminishing returns. Especially wasn't there one where David
Speaker 12: Niven was in it? And he died midway through, and
Speaker 12: so Rich Little ended up doing David Niven's voice for
Speaker 12: the entire film. So yeah, it was. It was a strange,
Speaker 12: strange series of movies. But yeah, rewatching this movie, I
Speaker 12: really connected with it. I enjoyed listening to book. I
Speaker 12: love the differences that are between the book and the movie.
Speaker 12: I read the Aaron Hunter book about the progression of
Speaker 12: the screenplays, and that was fascinating as well, especially that
Speaker 12: the end of the movie wasn't in any of the screenplays,
Speaker 12: and it sounds like Ashby kind of came up with
Speaker 12: it not necessarily on the spot because they had to
Speaker 12: do a lot of prep work for it, but it
Speaker 12: wasn't something that had been planned out as much as
Speaker 12: the screenplays had. So yeah, I find this really fascinating
Speaker 12: and years of Kaczinski is a really interesting dude as well.
Speaker 12: I never really got into his work and just to
Speaker 12: find out more about him as a person, And it
Speaker 12: was just such a great confluence of events where you've got,
Speaker 12: you know, his book. Peter Sellers immediately glommed on to
Speaker 12: Chauncey Gardner. He was just like I am, This character
Speaker 12: tried for years to get made. He loved Harold and
Speaker 12: Maud and wanted Ashby to direct it. We didn't have
Speaker 12: the clout until after Coming Home came out, and then
Speaker 12: he was finally able to get this project off the ground.
Speaker 12: And according to pretty much everything I've read, it's like
Speaker 12: the last great, great, great great hal Ashby film. I mean,
Speaker 12: he made some other things afterwards, but he was not
Speaker 12: necessarily firing on all cylinders afterwards. And this was, you know,
Speaker 12: almost Peter Seller's last role, and he would pass away
Speaker 12: shortly after this. And I think Kazinsky, well, Kazinsky ended
Speaker 12: up committing suicide. More movies have been made out of
Speaker 12: his works, like Painted Bird from a few years ago,
Speaker 12: which I missed, but at the same time it sounds
Speaker 12: pretty harrowing, so I'm not really like, oh, let's go
Speaker 12: watch Painted Bird. But yeah, to have all of these
Speaker 12: elements come together with this level of talent, I mean,
Speaker 12: and it just hits every single thing that I like
Speaker 12: about film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is an example of really a budget things yeah,
Speaker 2: magically coming together. Because the book is good, but it's
Speaker 2: not amazing, you know, and it's I think a lot
Speaker 2: of people agree with that. It's it's an interesting idea
Speaker 2: and it's something you know that you know a lot
Speaker 2: of people think he kind of lifted from something else,
Speaker 2: but you know, it's an internal story like this sort
Speaker 2: of idiot rising. It's a good book. It's I shouldn't
Speaker 2: say it's you know, it's like a novella. It's a
Speaker 2: very easy read. I recommend everybody read it, actually, but
Speaker 2: the movie is way way, way better. And and then
Speaker 2: when you look at yeah, the evolition of the scripts
Speaker 2: and then what Peter Sellers brought to it, like nobody
Speaker 2: else could have brought to it, you know. So it's
Speaker 2: just like you just would have had a completely different
Speaker 2: movie if anybody on the planet did it, you know,
Speaker 2: besides Peter Sellers. So again, yeah, just magical, perfect, perfect
Speaker 2: combination of things that just by themselves was were great,
Speaker 2: but together it makes it a masterpiece, like a real masterpiece.
Speaker 7: One of the things that I thought was interesting though
Speaker 7: about Yozi Kazynski's script was he wanted to include some
Speaker 7: elements which weren't in the book. No problem, because that
Speaker 7: often happens by I think part of what makes the
Speaker 7: final film so great is that subtlety. There's nothing being
Speaker 7: really forced down your throat. It's like, here's a story,
Speaker 7: this is this character, the characters how they react to him,
Speaker 7: and it's all very subtle. And Yerzy Kazinsky wanted to
Speaker 7: include scenes of civil unrest and homeless protests and a
Speaker 7: stronger emphasis on the shady financiers who want to rule
Speaker 7: the country as it were, you know, like what we
Speaker 7: see in that final scene towards the end where they're discussing, well,
Speaker 7: the only way we're going to maintain the presidents that
Speaker 7: we want is if we get Chauncey Gardner to be
Speaker 7: the one with that greater emphasis. You sort of think well,
Speaker 7: coming back to your points, Susan, I actually sort of
Speaker 7: think that the book is rather good. It's just a
Speaker 7: different beast maybe to the film, but it maintains the
Speaker 7: subtlety that the film has and that Peter Sellers provides
Speaker 7: in his role as Chance the Gardener, and I just
Speaker 7: sort of found it really amazing that he was prepared
Speaker 7: for whatever political points he wanted to make in the
Speaker 7: film with extra stuff that was just to say, I
Speaker 7: think the audience is not smart enough to get the
Speaker 7: subtlety of hal Ashby's and Robert Jones' a Robert Jones's
Speaker 7: script in hal Ashby's direction, let's put this stuff in.
Speaker 7: But thank goodness that Robert Jones said, no, not happening
Speaker 7: like that, We're going to be more faithful to your book.
Speaker 7: I really like that about it.
Speaker 12: Yeah, because even in the novella, there's stuff towards the
Speaker 12: end where you do get some of the financiers, but
Speaker 12: there's a lot more when it comes to the Russians
Speaker 12: and the American government trying to find out who Chauncey
Speaker 12: Gardener is at the same time that the Russian government
Speaker 12: is trying to find out who Chauncey Gardener is because
Speaker 12: the president in this movie, the President quotes Gardner and
Speaker 12: jettison's him into the spotlight, and then he goes onto
Speaker 12: television and that just keeps he keeps going up and
Speaker 12: up and up and up, and right around that same
Speaker 12: time that the government is looking into him. The Russian
Speaker 12: because we have the Russian ambassador in this, this whole
Speaker 12: thing about you know, we're so close, yes, look our
Speaker 12: chairs are almost touching. That goes off into a whole
Speaker 12: other direction, and you get the Russians also trying to
Speaker 12: figure out what's going on. You don't really get even
Speaker 12: though Thomas Franklin I think it is the David Clinton character.
Speaker 12: He shows up a few times in the story, but
Speaker 12: he really doesn't connect to the story again. And then
Speaker 12: the Richard Deiser character, the doctor, he's not even in
Speaker 12: the novella. So Yeah, the decisions that they made, I
Speaker 12: thought were very very smart, and also that they were
Speaker 12: working in more of the racial stuff, which I've found
Speaker 12: to be very interesting, especially when you look at something
Speaker 12: like hal Ashby's The Landlord, which really puts a fine
Speaker 12: point on the disparity between black and white. And even
Speaker 12: in this when Chauncey's out in the world for the
Speaker 12: first time. Even before he meets Raphael's enemy. You get
Speaker 12: that great graffiti on the wall that says American shit
Speaker 12: because the white man's got a god complex. And then
Speaker 12: later on you hear from Louise and she starts talking
Speaker 12: about the white man. It's just like, all you have
Speaker 12: to be is white in this country and look at
Speaker 12: you know, the success that gets thrust upon you. I'm like,
Speaker 12: that's really poignant stuff. And that was found nowhere in
Speaker 12: the Kazinski stuff.
Speaker 7: That's the one part of the film where they decide, right, okay,
Speaker 7: we have a point to make here. Let's dispense with
Speaker 7: the subtlety. We really have to make that point, not
Speaker 7: just with that speech that Louise makes in that home
Speaker 7: that she's visiting or is in later on the film,
Speaker 7: and not only just on the graffiti on the walls,
Speaker 7: but also so on that moment just where Chauncey actually
Speaker 7: leaves the house, because all the time that he's in
Speaker 7: the house at the beginning of the film, and I
Speaker 7: know we're going to sort of speak a little bit
Speaker 7: more about that, but that moment that he leaves the
Speaker 7: house and we hear the dear Dato version of also
Speaker 7: Sprague Zarathustra the two thousand and one thing. We see
Speaker 7: that it's urban decay. We got houses destroyed, we've got
Speaker 7: cars destroyed, we've got homeless people, and all this time
Speaker 7: he's been isolated in this one, if not necessarily luxurious
Speaker 7: house the way that the Rams House is, but it's
Speaker 7: comfortable and he's led a comfortable life living there in
Speaker 7: these four walls with no idea as to what's outside
Speaker 7: that front door. And it also brought me to mind
Speaker 7: a little bit of another film that we covered on
Speaker 7: the show Mike, that was The Amiga Man. So whereas
Speaker 7: Neville played by Charlton Heston, is determined he's going to
Speaker 7: live in the luxury that he wants, while all around
Speaker 7: him is just an absolute waste slamp, and we never
Speaker 7: find anything out about the old Man, as he's called
Speaker 7: in the film, But why has he stayed where he's stayed?
Speaker 7: He's determined he's going to stay in this one place,
Speaker 7: despite the fact that all around him is crumbling down.
Speaker 7: And maybe he's a part of that, don't know, But
Speaker 7: I just found that an interesting parallel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, again, it's just a great progression because the book
Speaker 2: is like, like you said, it's a late touch. You know,
Speaker 2: you're just zipping through this story and you kind of
Speaker 2: get the idea, a sketch of this person, and then
Speaker 2: you look at the like the Kazinski script that he
Speaker 2: had written, and he really seems more interested in what's
Speaker 2: going on around the character of Chance like that, like
Speaker 2: it's a little more about this, like the building up
Speaker 2: of who he is by the people around him, and
Speaker 2: he's just the cipher in the middle. And clearly they
Speaker 2: took it to the next step, which was part which
Speaker 2: is like, let's center this much more on Chance, so
Speaker 2: we're seeing it more through his eyes, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. And it's just like the people are a
Speaker 2: little more peripheral, and that, you know, that worked really well,
Speaker 2: and that's how you could have that wonderful opening where
Speaker 2: he's just walking and you're walking. You're you're walking out
Speaker 2: into the world with him, going like, how is he
Speaker 2: going to take all this in? You know, just taking
Speaker 2: in this this You don't expect it, of course, because
Speaker 2: you're in this kind of this rich little house, and
Speaker 2: then you walk out and it's completely what you don't
Speaker 2: think it is, and so you're just seeing all this
Speaker 2: new stuff through his eyes and what the world is
Speaker 2: really like. And yeah, and that they layered it with
Speaker 2: this this racial layer. There's not a there's not a
Speaker 2: drop of that in the book. And it's just a
Speaker 2: really really good choice to layer that on top and
Speaker 2: make it a lot more of a you know, like
Speaker 2: a substantive point, you know, all together.
Speaker 12: Yeah, because Louise isn't even in the novella. She's she
Speaker 12: was there before, but now he's got more of a
Speaker 12: European maid that lives at the house that Chance really
Speaker 12: doesn't connect with. He talks about and this is his words,
Speaker 12: Black Louise, and he's like, well, black Liue, Louise moved
Speaker 12: back to Jamaica and she's down there. And then later
Speaker 12: on and the story finds out that she actually died
Speaker 12: years before, but he had no connection afterwards. And I
Speaker 12: read a very interesting article last night where and this
Speaker 12: was very tough for me to get my head around, because,
Speaker 12: like I said, I've been living with this movie for
Speaker 12: a long time, right since I was fucking seven years old.
Speaker 12: And they were saying, you know, if you don't know,
Speaker 12: if you walk into this movie cold, like maybe you
Speaker 12: just see the posters, you haven't seen the spots. You
Speaker 12: don't know anything about this movie, and you start watching it,
Speaker 12: you don't know that Chance is developmentally delayed. You watch
Speaker 12: him get up in the morning, watching television, going out
Speaker 12: to the garden, taking care of things. He's very well dressed,
Speaker 12: you know. Louise comes in brings him his food, and
Speaker 12: you think maybe he is the master of the house basically,
Speaker 12: And it isn't until the story starts to unfold more,
Speaker 12: especially when the two lawyers show up after the old
Speaker 12: man is dead, that you really start to figure, Oh,
Speaker 12: this guy has something going on with him that isn't
Speaker 12: quite right. He's not all there. And I found that
Speaker 12: to be very fascinating because basically Ashby is playing the
Speaker 12: same trick on us as the character will you know,
Speaker 12: even though it's not a trick, but we are as
Speaker 12: clueless about what Chance is as the people later on
Speaker 12: who meet Chauncey Gardner.
Speaker 2: Jessic a really quick little clue that I never noticed.
Speaker 2: So the very last time I watched it, just last
Speaker 2: night or whatever. At the very opening, he's dusting the
Speaker 2: limousine and that tire is flat, flat, flat, So it's
Speaker 2: like this, yeah, so it's like this old limousine and
Speaker 2: nobody's clearly driven it for you know, in a million years,
Speaker 2: I never noticed that before. But that's like a clue
Speaker 2: of just like, wait, what's going on here?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I still haven't seen that. Wow, I might have
Speaker 7: to have yet another watch after we finished recording this
Speaker 7: one thing that I thought was very deliberate, because you're
Speaker 7: talking Mike about Chance being developmentally delayed. There's one moment
Speaker 7: in the early scenes where he's watching the television and
Speaker 7: he's watching a scene with Sesame Street with Big Bird,
Speaker 7: and I think it's Buffy sent Marie.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 7: They always said that all the characters on Sesame Street
Speaker 7: are supposed to be children at various ages, and I
Speaker 7: think Big Bird is like three years old. This might
Speaker 7: have been making it too obvious, forcing it home too much.
Speaker 7: But there was a moment in Sesame Street where Big
Speaker 7: Bird does drawings of all his friends on Sesame Street
Speaker 7: and he's wanting to give mister Hooper his drawing, but
Speaker 7: where's mister Hooper And they're having to explain to him
Speaker 7: that he's died, but he doesn't get what does that mean?
Speaker 7: What does that mean? And I mean it may have
Speaker 7: actually been more appropriate to put that bit into the film,
Speaker 7: but that might have been really assuming that the audience
Speaker 7: is that's stupid. But putting Big Bird at the point
Speaker 7: where the film where Chance is watching the television, I
Speaker 7: think was no accident. It's not like, oh, will just
Speaker 7: take any bit out of Sesame Street. It had to
Speaker 7: be Big Bird because I think that Big Bird, as
Speaker 7: a three year old child, is at the same level
Speaker 7: of development, maybe though with a whole lot more empathy.
Speaker 7: And that's a word I think I'll be using a
Speaker 7: bit more in this show. Big Bird has more empathy
Speaker 7: than Chance does, but I think they're at the same
Speaker 7: stage of their understanding of the world. Big Bird lives
Speaker 7: on Sesame Street, nowhere else. That's all he knows. But
Speaker 7: well he's three years old. Who knows what happens if
Speaker 7: he leaves Sesame Street. Well, I mean he did in
Speaker 7: the follow that Bird film, But that's another story.
Speaker 2: Big Bird. Don't you remember we told you mister Hooper died.
Speaker 9: He's dead? Oh yeah, I remember.
Speaker 2: Well I'll give it to him when he comes.
Speaker 6: Back, Big Bird.
Speaker 3: When people die, they don't come back.
Speaker 7: Ever, Well, Big Bird, their dad, they they can't come back. Well,
Speaker 7: he won't be the same.
Speaker 2: You're right, big Bird.
Speaker 13: It's it's it'll never be the same around here with
Speaker 13: all of them.
Speaker 14: M But you know something, we can all be very
Speaker 14: happy that we had a chance to be with him.
Speaker 1: It's no.
Speaker 13: And to love him a lot when he was here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I'm gonna miss you, mister Looper.
Speaker 14: Pat's Hooper, Big Bird.
Speaker 12: The Chance lives basically in a walled garden, you know.
Speaker 12: And I know that there was at least one reviewer
Speaker 12: who kind of compared it to Candide with the whole
Speaker 12: gardener idea and stuff, and I'm like, okay, yeah, that works.
Speaker 12: Another writer compared Chauncey to Our Chance to the mc
Speaker 12: greek painting, you know, the man with the bowler hat
Speaker 12: and the big apple in front of his face where
Speaker 12: you don't know the man, and like, it's that whole
Speaker 12: cipher thing, right, And I just I really appreciate that
Speaker 12: this movie is so open to interpretation like that. But yeah,
Speaker 12: to go back to your point as far as God,
Speaker 12: when mister Hooper died, it just devastated me as a
Speaker 12: young person. And yes, Chance has no idea really about
Speaker 12: death when this movie opens, and that's the growth of
Speaker 12: the character for me, is that when he goes in
Speaker 12: front of it, and I know we're jumping all over
Speaker 12: the place, ladies and gentlemen. Really, I hope you've watched
Speaker 12: this movie. But when he he goes in front of
Speaker 12: the old in front of Ben, and he just says,
Speaker 12: are you dying?
Speaker 7: Ben?
Speaker 12: And just it's a little lacking to your word, more
Speaker 12: as a little lacking in empathy. But at the same time,
Speaker 12: it's just so direct and so simple. And I think
Speaker 12: that Ben actually appreciates that, because I'm sure people have
Speaker 12: been pussy footing around him and he's the one who
Speaker 12: knows he's dying, and everybody else says, no, no, you'll
Speaker 12: get better, You'll get better. And Chauncey's right there, Chances
Speaker 12: right there saying you know, are you dying? Ben? Is
Speaker 12: this your time? And actually sheds a tear after Ben dies.
Speaker 12: And I think he has grown as a person throughout
Speaker 12: this movie that he can now understand a little bit more.
Speaker 12: I mean, obviously you've seen death on television. He probably
Speaker 12: saw I don't remember when mister Hooper died, but he
Speaker 12: probably understands it to a point. But to actually have
Speaker 12: connection with another human being, and Ben basically becomes that
Speaker 12: father figure that who knows what the old man was
Speaker 12: like to Chance? And they barely talk about the old
Speaker 12: man in the book, and they barely talk about him
Speaker 12: in here. So again you get to project all of
Speaker 12: these ideas. You're like, well, was he was Chance the
Speaker 12: bastard son of the old man? Is that why he
Speaker 12: kept them around? Is that why there's no record of
Speaker 12: him anywhere in any of the paperwork. He doesn't have
Speaker 12: a Social Security card, he's never learned how to drive,
Speaker 12: there's no papers. But at the same time, and I know,
Speaker 12: we'll talk about the religious implications as we go along,
Speaker 12: But at the same time, he's never been to a dentist,
Speaker 12: he's never seen a doctor. He says, he's never been sick.
Speaker 12: Sounds like he's been in perfect health his entire life.
Speaker 12: The only time that he's ever been hurt is coming
Speaker 12: up in the next few minutes when he gets backed
Speaker 12: into by a car.
Speaker 2: It's very mysterious, now, kazinskiscript. He kind of that was
Speaker 2: a big mistake, was he came up with his whullbackstory.
Speaker 2: He's like, no, no, no, that's bad.
Speaker 12: Oh yeah, like a deathbed confession.
Speaker 2: Yeah, deathbed. And he was like, oh, I loved your mother,
Speaker 2: and it's like, no, no, no, no, this guy's cruel.
Speaker 2: He never taught him to he never taught him to write.
Speaker 2: He can't even sign his name. He's never left that house.
Speaker 2: That's neglect. That is straight up neglect. I mean that
Speaker 2: guy should have he should have been rescued from that house.
Speaker 2: So clearly, you know, this is part of why he's
Speaker 2: It could even, you know, in my imagination, could even
Speaker 2: be why he's slow because if a baby or a
Speaker 2: little child is not stimulated, you know, it sounds like
Speaker 2: the mother died at birth like that seems like very likely,
Speaker 2: and that he just was completely neglected by this horrible man.
Speaker 2: That's that's like my take from this. But so what
Speaker 2: happens is the old man gives them TVs because he's
Speaker 2: rich and TV is coming out as he's growing up,
Speaker 2: and he buys them every up to date, fancy TV
Speaker 2: you could possibly have. So there's a TV in every room,
Speaker 2: completely up to date, and that's how he learns every
Speaker 2: single solitary thing about life. And he's practicing shaking hands
Speaker 2: by watching TV. He's practicing how you back and forth
Speaker 2: with human beings by watching TV. And that's what really
Speaker 2: makes this movie a magical piece of cinema is these
Speaker 2: who the person and I'm forgetting her name? Who picked
Speaker 2: out the TV pieces? It was very, very brilliant and
Speaker 2: very important piece of this movie. Like that Sesame Street scene.
Speaker 2: That music is like so it's so melancholy, it's so
Speaker 2: minor key, and it's it's like it adds the sadness
Speaker 2: to the scene, even though you know it has nothing
Speaker 2: to do with the scene. Or when they're driving into
Speaker 2: the Ran mansion and that that you know, the song
Speaker 2: that what is that guy's name them Basketball Jones, Yes,
Speaker 2: chiechen Chok. It's a it's a novelty song, but weirdly enough,
Speaker 2: it's this beautifully poignant song. It's got a cartoon that's
Speaker 2: very almost defensive, because it's a depiction kind of in
Speaker 2: a style of like schoolhouse rock, but it has like
Speaker 2: kind of very older depictions of black people that you know,
Speaker 2: we find very offensiven. It's very exaggerated, but so it
Speaker 2: has this ugliness to it because of that. But then
Speaker 2: this beautiful sad song where this kid is just pleading,
Speaker 2: and it adds to that again, So there's this weird
Speaker 2: like whimsical there's cartoons there's children's shows, but then there's
Speaker 2: this melancholy to those scenes, you know, and even like
Speaker 2: mister Rogers playing when Like is visiting him, you know,
Speaker 2: there's just a lot of like. It adds a real
Speaker 2: real it kind of almost a dark side to the
Speaker 2: whole thing, I think. But it's all about him. Just
Speaker 2: that's all he knows is TV, and that's why he
Speaker 2: carries his flipper around. He's obsessed with TV's he was
Speaker 2: his best friend. It was the thing that raised him.
Speaker 7: It's the universe that the film has created for itself
Speaker 7: and the story has created for itself. But I find
Speaker 7: it interesting that maybe Chance doesn't actually know more than
Speaker 7: what he does through watching TV, because TV is not
Speaker 7: just a window towards watching I don't know, soap operas
Speaker 7: and the like, but there's news and there's current affairs
Speaker 7: and things like that, which he's obviously not watched. But
Speaker 7: for a character who's I don't know, we never find out.
Speaker 7: But given to Peter Solla's silver hair, let's presume he's
Speaker 7: in his forties or early fifties or something like that,
Speaker 7: and he he doesn't have a clue as to what
Speaker 7: is happening on in the wider world. He's find it
Speaker 7: unusual that he's learning things like how to shake hands
Speaker 7: at this late stage in life. While the film has
Speaker 7: a lot of really fascinating points to make, but I
Speaker 7: do struggle a little bit with the notion that even
Speaker 7: through just having the TV as a guide to the world,
Speaker 7: that chance isn't a little bit more developed in his
Speaker 7: knowledge of the wider world. You know, he's very polite,
Speaker 7: but you know, surely in watching TV, he would have
Speaker 7: watched situational dramas where there's conflict and there'll be one
Speaker 7: nice guy and one bad guy, and he would have
Speaker 7: known about it or behavior as well. But that could
Speaker 7: be his choice to only be nice. But surely he's
Speaker 7: been exposed to more than what we as an audience
Speaker 7: are seeing that he's been supposed to, if that makes
Speaker 7: any sense.
Speaker 12: The movie that I thought of while I was watching
Speaker 12: this time, which I obviously hadn't seen when I saw
Speaker 12: it in earlier viewings, especially when I was seven, was
Speaker 12: the film Bad Boy Bubby, which I saw that you
Speaker 12: wrote in the notes as well more as where that
Speaker 12: is another film where it's with that one though you
Speaker 12: get to see the overprotective parents who are basically trying
Speaker 12: to scare the kid into never going outside. You know,
Speaker 12: there's there's radiation out there, there's all these terrible things.
Speaker 12: I guess it's really it's kind of like dog toothed
Speaker 12: as well, where it's like we are keeping you kids
Speaker 12: isolated inside this yard, you know, never go outside of
Speaker 12: this yard. And it's basically the same thing with Bad
Speaker 12: Boy Bubby. But he's just kept in this little windowless
Speaker 12: room basically for almost his entire life until his folks
Speaker 12: end up dying. I think it is has been a
Speaker 12: little bit since I've seen it, and yeah, he knows nothing.
Speaker 12: He didn't even have television to raise him. He's completely
Speaker 12: clueless about anything, and he's kind of like the wild
Speaker 12: and borneo when he goes out on the streets.
Speaker 7: I avoided watching that film for many years. And I'm
Speaker 7: a huge Rolf to Hear fan. I've watched probably, if
Speaker 7: not everything, then eighty of rol to Hear his films.
Speaker 7: But the thing that it kept me away from Bad
Speaker 7: Boy Bubby was the couple of scenes of cat cruelty.
Speaker 7: I thought, no, I can't watch that, but you always
Speaker 7: knew what it was about, and thought, all right, we're
Speaker 7: talking about being there, I guess I now need to
Speaker 7: put on the DVD of that. So, yeah, I watched
Speaker 7: Bad Boy Bubby, and yes, you're right. I mean Bobby
Speaker 7: and Chance both developmentally delayed, and both take their cues
Speaker 7: from what's going on around them as to how they
Speaker 7: should behave and things that they say. So the Chance
Speaker 7: repeats catchphrases that he's heard on television, shakes hands the
Speaker 7: way he's sent them on television. Bobby takes he doesn't
Speaker 7: have television, but you know, he goes and gropes women's
Speaker 7: breasts because that's what he sees his father do to
Speaker 7: his mother. When he first leaves his house after killing
Speaker 7: his parents, he's nearly run over by a truck who
Speaker 7: tell him to get off the fucking road, and so
Speaker 7: he does the same thing to a policeman that approaches.
Speaker 7: And it's two very different characters, but neither have a
Speaker 7: clue as to what is appropriate to say or do
Speaker 7: in any given situation. I think the big difference between
Speaker 7: Chance and Bubby is a Chance is passive. He doesn't
Speaker 7: know what to say in any situation. People are talking politics,
Speaker 7: he doesn't know what that's about. But when they're asking
Speaker 7: him for opinion. I'll talk about the but is active
Speaker 7: he wage of thirty seven. He throws himself into things.
Speaker 7: It's not appropriate necessarily anything that he does, but he's
Speaker 7: attacking life with zeal, regardless of whether he finds his
Speaker 7: way into a band. He just does so much stuff.
Speaker 7: But life is cruel to him. People don't know how
Speaker 7: to react to him, just the way that people don't
Speaker 7: know how to react to Chance. Whereas Chance has fallen
Speaker 7: into a tub of cream, Bobby, for the first two
Speaker 7: thirds of the film has fallen into a tub of shit,
Speaker 7: if I can use that expression, if things are really
Speaker 7: really difficult for him until the latter third of the film.
Speaker 7: I won't spoil that because we're not doing that as
Speaker 7: a as a topic for this podcast, and I think
Speaker 7: people should go off and see that if they haven't.
Speaker 7: But I might be the last person left on the
Speaker 7: planet who was interested in the film, who hasn't, who
Speaker 7: hadn't seen it up until now. So the point of
Speaker 7: similarity is two characters who've lived for a stupid amount
Speaker 7: of time within four walls and have no idea what's
Speaker 7: on the outside. But how they approach the outside is very,
Speaker 7: very diff But I still think it would make a
Speaker 7: wonderful double bill at a repertory theater for sure.
Speaker 2: Getting back to Hill like the Handjesters, you know, I
Speaker 2: think he wrote just Chance. I think realized he has
Speaker 2: to he has to learn this stuff right now, Like
Speaker 2: I this is after the lawyers already came and kicked
Speaker 2: him out, and he was like, all right, I need
Speaker 2: to learn how to react to the outside world. I
Speaker 2: think that's what he was doing there. Let's just talk
Speaker 2: about this developmental delay kind of thing, you know, developmental disability,
Speaker 2: you know, and a lot of these kinds of movies
Speaker 2: they you know, they base it on reality. They do research,
Speaker 2: you know, like Gilbert Grape and rain Man, you know,
Speaker 2: they studied real people and the actors like really you know,
Speaker 2: took in what was what it was like to actually
Speaker 2: be a person with whatever it was they were going for.
Speaker 2: And here, you know, this is completely detached from reality.
Speaker 2: As far as the both Kazinski and Ashby and Sellers,
Speaker 2: none of them, this was not you know, they were
Speaker 2: not researching this. They were just like coming up with
Speaker 2: a character, a simple character. And so it's actually even debatable,
Speaker 2: like you know, maybe he was born just fine and
Speaker 2: you know, just pure neglect. He just had no input,
Speaker 2: no stimulus, you know, blah blah blah. You know, it
Speaker 2: really does happen to people. You know, there's some terrible
Speaker 2: tragic stories of children who've been raised like that, you know,
Speaker 2: and it's generally you actually you know, don't even learn
Speaker 2: really to speak well and that kind of thing when
Speaker 2: that really happens.
Speaker 12: But at least he's not like Nell, for God's sakes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fine on God, and.
Speaker 2: To come, Okay, I'm studying developmental psychology, so I can
Speaker 2: I can talk about this. But yeah, and I've actually
Speaker 2: worked with kids and stuff like that. But this is
Speaker 2: not just so the audience knows, because there's always a
Speaker 2: lot of chatter around this film like oh, he's autistic,
Speaker 2: and you know, he's not. Like I don't see that
Speaker 2: at all. And you really shouldn't base any of this on.
Speaker 2: This doesn't really meant to resemble anything real necessarily.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's he's slow, yeah, but it's you know, as far
Speaker 2: as like what I've ever seen, and I've seen a
Speaker 2: lot of you know, pretty wide range of delays, it
Speaker 2: doesn't really ring true of anything that you actually see.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 12: It was interesting too, the difference between Kazinski's original chance
Speaker 12: and the one that we see here eight, because the
Speaker 12: Kazinski original character in the book or the novella was
Speaker 12: much younger, and what they say looks like rocks a.
Speaker 2: Care grant, Ted Kennedy and carry Grant. It mix between
Speaker 2: Ted Kennedy, Yeah, which is really hard to imagine it
Speaker 2: after you've seen this film.
Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah, definitely, especially growing up with Ted Kennedy on
Speaker 12: you know, and I'm like, yeah, yeah, maybe Robert Kennedy senior,
Speaker 12: but you know, not not Ted to play this as
Speaker 12: an older character gives it a different spin. And also,
Speaker 12: the character is completely sexless. He has no desire for
Speaker 12: anyone man woman, animal, furniture and nothing like that. And
Speaker 12: in the novella he has no physical reaction when Eve
Speaker 12: or Ee in the book is groping him, there's no reaction.
Speaker 12: It is just completely dead down there, which then kind
Speaker 12: of puts a different, you know, take on this whole
Speaker 12: thing where it's just like all right, So he he's
Speaker 12: not even all there when it comes to his body either.
Speaker 12: He's just kind of this blank slate. So it's not
Speaker 12: like he's running around like falling in love or whining
Speaker 12: the fuck or do any of these things having any
Speaker 12: sort of urges or desires. And it's it is interesting
Speaker 12: that in the in the novella, he is the he's
Speaker 12: supposed to be basically like the young via young man,
Speaker 12: and here as an older man, it's like, Okay, well
Speaker 12: you don't really expect that from It fits a little
Speaker 12: bit better with the character. But at the same time,
Speaker 12: it's like the way that Eve the Sherlan Claim character
Speaker 12: falls for him, you would think that he was Cary
Speaker 12: Grant or you know, somebody just incredibly handsome. I mean,
Speaker 12: Peter Seller's just no slouch, but he's in his golden years,
Speaker 12: you know. And and she's almost taking Melvin Douglas, who's yes,
Speaker 12: much older than Peter Sellers, even though I think they
Speaker 12: were both in the war together at the same time
Speaker 12: they were in Burma, I want to say. But anyway,
Speaker 12: they she's taking, you know, going for like the let's say,
Speaker 12: the ninety year old man to the sixty five year
Speaker 12: old man, maybe seventy year old man. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 12: you're not really trading down too much, so but yeah,
Speaker 12: just that lack of sexuality for the character also puts
Speaker 12: him on the outside of things and makes him also
Speaker 12: more of a cipher.
Speaker 7: I thought that it was unusual that Peter Seller's character,
Speaker 7: I mean, you've already gone and sort of implied this
Speaker 7: both of you, because he's been well abused by never
Speaker 7: being exposed to the outside world, so he's delayed in
Speaker 7: terms of what he can learn. But I was sort
Speaker 7: of thinking, how, really, I mean, doesn't puberty hit all
Speaker 7: of us. He's three year old mentally or whatever. But
Speaker 7: he's also well before thirteen or fourteen from a physical perspective,
Speaker 7: because I mean, I don't really know a hell of
Speaker 7: a lot in that regard, but I would have sort
Speaker 7: of thought that every person would have some level of
Speaker 7: that once the hormones kick in. That would be something
Speaker 7: that if Eve is making a play for him, that's
Speaker 7: something that at least from a physical perspective, he would understand.
Speaker 7: But intuitively. But maybe, I mean, I've never read or
Speaker 7: watched The Tin Drum, but I all know.
Speaker 2: That's one of my favorite books in the world.
Speaker 7: All right, Well, maybe I need to get onto that,
Speaker 7: but I know the premise is that the character decides, right,
Speaker 7: I'm not going to grow any further, and I just
Speaker 7: sort of wonder whether that's the same with chance, you know,
Speaker 7: he's maybe he's not consciously decided it, or maybe he
Speaker 7: has I don't know, but he's not mentally gone any further.
Speaker 7: But he's also not physically developed any further. He's never
Speaker 7: hit puberty. He just wants to He just wants to
Speaker 7: watch television. And when Eve makes that second play for him,
Speaker 7: he's been watching something on television where a man and
Speaker 7: a woman are kissing passionately, so things, Oh that's what
Speaker 7: she wants, Okay, I'll do that. But he's still watching
Speaker 7: the television to see if he's getting it right. Not
Speaker 7: because he's passionate for her, but just because, oh, this
Speaker 7: is what she wants. I want to make her happy.
Speaker 7: And maybe that's actually some level of growth unto itself,
Speaker 7: that he wants to keep someone else happy, and that's
Speaker 7: a level of kindness. So he's no longer the blank
Speaker 7: slate that he was at the beginning of the film.
Speaker 7: He knows that she's treated him kindly, and that's something
Speaker 7: that he never experienced. He had the I mean, maybe
Speaker 7: apart from Louise making him his meals, but we don't
Speaker 7: really know what her relationship with him was. She might
Speaker 7: have just left the meals and gone on to do
Speaker 7: her work. But here he is with people who don't
Speaker 7: understand him, and they misinterpret him at every turn, but
Speaker 7: they're treating him nicely. So at this stage he understands, Oh,
Speaker 7: that's to be reciprocated. So oh she's oh she wants
Speaker 7: the case. Oh if that makes her happy, I'll do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 12: He's watching the Thomas Crown Affair, I believe, which was
Speaker 12: edited by Hal Ashby.
Speaker 7: Oh, there you go.
Speaker 12: He gives that very nervous laugh when he's talking about
Speaker 12: Joe that showed him the pictures of the naked men
Speaker 12: and women.
Speaker 5: Yes, I remember Joe. He was very fat, had short hair,
Speaker 5: and showed me pictures from a funny little book, some pictures, Yes,
Speaker 5: the men and women.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 12: That seems to be the only time he's ever really
Speaker 12: had experience with any sort of stimulus of that, any
Speaker 12: sort of pornography. But to your point, like, yeah, had
Speaker 12: he been watching different things on television, I think he's
Speaker 12: much more comfortable with the children's television because that's much
Speaker 12: more of his mental state, because you know, you can
Speaker 12: find hot Si Tatsi stuff on TV, but you know,
Speaker 12: obviously nothing as hot as what Joe was showing him
Speaker 12: when he came to repair the wall all those years ago.
Speaker 12: And then when Louise talks about how Chance was cursed
Speaker 12: by God. First I thought she was talking about that
Speaker 12: he has nothing between his legs basically, or that he's,
Speaker 12: you know, mister micro penis. And then it's like, oh, no,
Speaker 12: she's talking about the brains. She's talking about up here,
Speaker 12: not down here. So okay, Yeah, when she's like railing
Speaker 12: against him and just talking about how he's got what
Speaker 12: was it mashed.
Speaker 2: Potatoes was fitting between his ears? Between the ears? No,
Speaker 2: but in the beginning she does, she does allude to
Speaker 2: his thingy. And when she's leaving, she says, you need
Speaker 2: to find a woman, but you need to find an
Speaker 2: older woman because you don't, and she implies it he
Speaker 2: is a very small thing, like she does. That's like blatant,
Speaker 2: she really does. So that's definitely a thing you ought
Speaker 2: to find yourself, a lady, Chance, cass. It ought to
Speaker 2: be an old lady like good I you young and
Speaker 2: any good not with that little thing of you. She
Speaker 2: apparently like maybe knew him when he was young enough
Speaker 2: that she would change him. Who knows, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: That's what she's saying, but I mean, let me just
Speaker 2: say that, like TV back then for people who don't
Speaker 2: know who are a little younger than us, you know,
Speaker 2: and they make a point of this, I think in
Speaker 2: the book or in one of the scripts that they would,
Speaker 2: you know, when you came to a love scene, it
Speaker 2: would just cut off, like they couldn't show that stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, everything was much much and much more censored.
Speaker 2: So you could actually be a kid watching TV and
Speaker 2: never learn what sex is at all, you know, like
Speaker 2: if nobody ever told him, and so yeah, I think,
Speaker 2: you know, there's enough of a spectrum of asexuality sexuality
Speaker 2: that you know, he could have been on the asexual
Speaker 2: side of the spectrum just naturally, and then nobody ever,
Speaker 2: you know, he just had, you know, except for that
Speaker 2: those magazine pictures that guy showed him, which he kind
Speaker 2: of chuckles at. You know, he really had no reason
Speaker 2: to kind of like start up the sex drive, I
Speaker 2: would think, which is mercifully a good thing probably, you know.
Speaker 2: And then I think his first real moment is when
Speaker 2: I think he's always reciprocating. He knows the reciprocation game
Speaker 2: where you repeat the last thing a person says you know,
Speaker 2: you do these these things that make people feel happy
Speaker 2: by you know, repeating, But they just said doing what
Speaker 2: you see on TV that makes people happy. But it's
Speaker 2: the moment when when rand dies or when he says
Speaker 2: really it's I think it's when he says, you know,
Speaker 2: you're I'm sorry you're sick, which is a really beautiful moment.
Speaker 2: I think that's like where you're seeing the character arc
Speaker 2: change where you're like, oh, this isn't something he's on TV.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 12: Yeah, it sounds like the old man didn't spring for cable.
Speaker 12: I mean because cable ATV had been around since earlier
Speaker 12: in the seventies. I think, I know, it really came
Speaker 12: into the forour like in the early eighties, mid eighties, right,
Speaker 12: been a little bit before, like at least in my household,
Speaker 12: before we got the VCR, we had cable at least
Speaker 12: that's how I remember it, and we had on TV
Speaker 12: and these kind of things. But even then the movie
Speaker 12: channel was like the only one that was showing anything
Speaker 12: risque and then eventually like skin him Ax obviously, but
Speaker 12: it was difficult to see things and especially you know,
Speaker 12: trying to make it make out things during the scrambled channels,
Speaker 12: you know what I'm talking about, Like that was my
Speaker 12: early exposure to things. I want to say that this
Speaker 12: is a stretch because sometimes I think people, especially when
Speaker 12: it comes to Stanley Kubrick, people just go fucking crazy
Speaker 12: about I mean, see Room thirty, two thirty seven. But
Speaker 12: Peter Sellers having worked with Stanley Kubrick pretty often, I
Speaker 12: mean with Alita and Doctor Strange Love. And then to
Speaker 12: have that disco version of two thousand and one, the
Speaker 12: diodato version of also Sprocks Zarah Thrustra to be the
Speaker 12: song that plays when he comes out. I swear that
Speaker 12: that's a Kubrick reference, especially when he makes it to
Speaker 12: the end of the song and he sees himself on
Speaker 12: television and there's the whole Moonscape thing. It looks all
Speaker 12: like the moon, there's a big moon on one side
Speaker 12: and just like, oh okay, and it just feels very
Speaker 12: much like that's a real moment for him when he
Speaker 12: sees himself on television, that he's been watching television for
Speaker 12: all of these years, and to see yourself on that
Speaker 12: screen in the TV seller's window, I mean, that's huge.
Speaker 12: And I found interesting too that when he gets threatened
Speaker 12: by that black gang that that's also in front of
Speaker 12: a television store, a much more run down TV store,
Speaker 12: and then you know it's like the nicer area I
Speaker 12: guess he's in. It must be a nicer area if
Speaker 12: Eve is parking there. But yeah, that was a great
Speaker 12: moment when he finally sees himself on television and then
Speaker 12: there's no nervousness. Of course, you know it's probably not
Speaker 12: in his core. But when he goes onto a television program,
Speaker 12: he's like, well, I've been on television before.
Speaker 7: I'm feeling like such a dummy. Because it's only once
Speaker 7: he brought up that expression he sees himself on television
Speaker 7: that it hit me later on when he says in
Speaker 7: the film, oh, yeah, I've been on television before. I thinking, really, Ah,
Speaker 7: of course the play circuit camera, I hadn't. I'm a
Speaker 7: bit slow today.
Speaker 2: One one hundred percent on the Kubrick reference. I believe
Speaker 2: that's a one hundred percent Kubrick reference. And Peter sells
Speaker 2: he felt that too. The only he said once the
Speaker 2: only two movies he was proud of was This and Strangelove.
Speaker 2: Of course he loved Strangelove, he loved he loved Kubrick
Speaker 2: I mean, they had a hard time, but he loved it,
Speaker 2: you know, he enormous and he was so I think
Speaker 2: that's one hundred percent.
Speaker 7: I think it was a good thing that they used
Speaker 7: the diodato version, which was already in existence for Peter
Speaker 7: Sellers coming out of the house and exploring the brave
Speaker 7: new universe that is outside of the Old Man's House.
Speaker 7: To have done the original orchestral version would have been
Speaker 7: seen too much as a pastiche But it's appropriate because
Speaker 7: it's a soul funk version and it goes into places
Speaker 7: where it sounds almost sinister that it works perfectly for
Speaker 7: the environment that he's actually walking into. It makes the
Speaker 7: point far better than an orchestral version ever would have.
Speaker 7: But yeah, I'd love that use and hugely appropriate. I mean,
Speaker 7: I wonder if two thousand and one hadn't existed, or
Speaker 7: if he'd use the Blue Danube at the point of
Speaker 7: the Star Child and the Dawn of Man instead also
Speaker 7: spars Arathustra, whether they would have found a funk version
Speaker 7: of the Blue Danube or something like that. But just
Speaker 7: such a perfect piece of music and so grateful that
Speaker 7: it got made into that version. I think it's a
Speaker 7: really really good version of that piece of music.
Speaker 12: I don't know what it was about the seventies and
Speaker 12: redoing classical music as disco themes. I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 12: you guys remember fit the Beethoven koff down Disco Mountain.
Speaker 12: You know, like the whole star Zone forty five thing
Speaker 12: where they would do disco upbeat versions of classical things.
Speaker 12: It was such a.
Speaker 2: Star Wars theme song, Star Wars theme song.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, yea thing to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 7: Now look I don't see the diodato version of also
Speaker 7: spras Sertister. That's not disco to me. That's that's funk.
Speaker 7: That's a difference. But yeah, look I absolutely applaud that
Speaker 7: Walter Murphy of fifth of date Oven not on Disco Mountain.
Speaker 7: I might have a little bit more leniency for, but
Speaker 7: a fifth of Bethoven and Stars on forty five can
Speaker 7: bite my shiny metal. But did Dato doing also Sprung.
Speaker 7: It's clever and it's soulful, it's it's funky as hell.
Speaker 7: I love it, I really love it well.
Speaker 12: And when you think about it too, I mean, Wendy
Speaker 12: Carlos Williams was such a pioneer of doing the electronic
Speaker 12: versions of the music that she did for.
Speaker 2: Absolutely before that she did a whole album of like
Speaker 2: Bach or something.
Speaker 7: Yeah, she's really switched on bath yeah.
Speaker 2: Switched on back. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 12: It was like the thing for like Moog and like
Speaker 12: electronic pioneers to do classical music in this new form.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and to meta do. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you remember Tomda, but anyway, I always said this stuff
Speaker 2: was really cheesy. And you know, in the time, I
Speaker 2: love disco. I loved disco, but I did think that's
Speaker 2: was really cheesy. But this and yet this, like when
Speaker 2: you see this, even if you don't like that, that
Speaker 2: whole little movement there, you got to love with how
Speaker 2: it works in this film. It works perfectly. It just
Speaker 2: works perfectly.
Speaker 12: This whole segment of when he leaves the house for
Speaker 12: the first time, like I forgot about the things, where
Speaker 12: he sees the black lady on the street and he
Speaker 12: goes up and asks her for lunch. You know, that's
Speaker 12: a great moment. Or like you were saying before, when
Speaker 12: the one kid is threatening him with a knife, he
Speaker 12: pulls us his remote control and is trying to change
Speaker 12: the channel. And I'm glad that they don't do that
Speaker 12: for the whole movie, but they just have the remote there.
Speaker 12: And then it's interesting when he's using the remote on
Speaker 12: the TV that he's on, it's actually changing the channels
Speaker 12: on a small TV next to him, next to that TV.
Speaker 12: So it's like this remote does work out in the
Speaker 12: real world, but it doesn't work on real people.
Speaker 7: The other interesting thing at that point where he's being
Speaker 7: threatened by the gang member and he takes out his
Speaker 7: remote control, he doesn't look scared. He doesn't. He sees
Speaker 7: that knife and he doesn't see that as a threat,
Speaker 7: which is another interesting thing because you sort of wonder
Speaker 7: if he'd been watching all that TV, he surely would
Speaker 7: have seen something violent. Me no sex on TV, but
Speaker 7: all the violence that you can handle. And he sees
Speaker 7: this knife and it doesn't register to him. But oh,
Speaker 7: I've seen this on TV. Someone had a knife and
Speaker 7: they got hurt. But he doesn't register that.
Speaker 2: I think he's scared. That's why he hits the remote.
Speaker 2: It's like I want to see something else. I don't
Speaker 2: want to be here. I don't know. That's kind of
Speaker 2: my that's my take on it. But it's hard. It's
Speaker 2: hard to tell because he doesn't, you know, he never
Speaker 2: shows any emotions, so you never know, you really not know.
Speaker 12: That sequence also has the amazing image of him walking
Speaker 12: straight down the middle of the screen right towards the
Speaker 12: Capitol building, which was basically that inspiration for the poster
Speaker 12: that we see with him walking on air, which then
Speaker 12: I can't remember if I think it was Hunters one
Speaker 12: of his pieces where he has a screen grab of
Speaker 12: that and then a screen grab of Chance walking on
Speaker 12: water at the end of the film, and he's almost
Speaker 12: in the exact same position and the camera looks very
Speaker 12: similar as far as the height and everything, just to
Speaker 12: see him walking down the middle of the screen, one
Speaker 12: of them towards the capital basically, and the other one
Speaker 12: as he's walking back to the mansion and got the
Speaker 12: Biltmore mansion. I've been to the Biltmore mansion, but I
Speaker 12: barely remember it. It's funny that I remember seeing being
Speaker 12: there more than I remember actually going to that mansion,
Speaker 12: going all the way to North Carolina to go to
Speaker 12: that mansion, and my mom still talks about going there
Speaker 12: to this day.
Speaker 7: So I know nothing about that mansion. What's its claim
Speaker 7: to fame? Is it still like a public place.
Speaker 12: Or well it is now? You can I think you
Speaker 12: have to pay to go to it. It's been forever,
Speaker 12: like I said, but I want to say, was it Rockefellers, Handerbilt, Vanderbilt?
Speaker 12: Thank you? I always mix up all of those oligarchs.
Speaker 2: I don't know why old oligarchs.
Speaker 12: Was a JP Morgan was it?
Speaker 2: Which Robert barn was it?
Speaker 12: That was one of their places. So it's just amazing.
Speaker 12: The thing I remember the most from it because I
Speaker 12: was a younger kid when I was there, was that
Speaker 12: there were secret passageways all throughout there and like different
Speaker 12: ways to get around the house, and probably a lot
Speaker 12: of stuff for the servants so they could move around
Speaker 12: without having to disturb the upper echelon.
Speaker 2: It's so interesting how the television clips just anchor you
Speaker 2: into the present. You have like a silly postropedic mourning.
Speaker 2: Those of us who lived through that remember that commercial
Speaker 2: very well, and so it really these clips really anchor you,
Speaker 2: although they also just work in a both comedic and
Speaker 2: and adding emotion kind of way that is timeless. But
Speaker 2: then the environment he's in is always just completely out
Speaker 2: of time, like he could be it could be you
Speaker 2: know again, like what he's wearing, and it's just you know,
Speaker 2: you can't put your finger on when when it's happening.
Speaker 2: You know, it takes a lot to remember you're in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 7: One thing that we haven't touched on yet, which is
Speaker 7: really quite the central part of the story, is how
Speaker 7: everything that Chance says is misinterpreted by those people around
Speaker 7: him because oh, he must be metaphorical, because surely he's
Speaker 7: not talking about a garden. And that sort of makes
Speaker 7: me think that as narrow as chances vision is really
Speaker 7: the RAN's vision, and the people around them is just
Speaker 7: as narrow. I mean, they know a little bit more
Speaker 7: about the world, but they really know mostly about the
Speaker 7: world within the multiple walls. They live on this hugely
Speaker 7: wealthier state, and all they know is wealth. They don't
Speaker 7: know about the world that Luise inhabits. They would never
Speaker 7: recognize that Chance walks out onto it the beginning of
Speaker 7: the film, after he leaves the old Man's house and
Speaker 7: everything that he said, like, for instance, that there's that
Speaker 7: moment where they're all sitting down to dinner and there's
Speaker 7: like about ten thousand waiters and servants bringing them their
Speaker 7: meal and there's only four people at the dinner table.
Speaker 7: There's lengthy dinner table and Chances talking about how he
Speaker 7: was kicked out of the property, and Ben says, you
Speaker 7: were kicked out of your business, and Chance, oh, what
Speaker 7: does that mean. Yeah, sure, it's kicked out of the business.
Speaker 7: That's his interpretation. His world is different, but it's equally narrow.
Speaker 7: Just as Chance doesn't understand what certain things mean and
Speaker 7: how to behave under certain situations, I think neither do
Speaker 7: the Rams. They live in this bubble, and Chance that
Speaker 7: lived in a bubble. So I don't know whether you'd
Speaker 7: say whether it's appropriate that they all got together, but
Speaker 7: it's no one's trying to teach each other. Hey have
Speaker 7: a look at the wider world, because they both live
Speaker 7: in their own little space. I mean, the rants is bigger,
Speaker 7: but it's still narrow in lots of ways.
Speaker 1: Shaka when the all spell.
Speaker 4: Shaka.
Speaker 12: Indeed, they are so isolated from the real world, and
Speaker 12: especially you get to hear that quite a bit right
Speaker 12: at the end, when Jack Warden is reading some of
Speaker 12: the quotes that Ben Rand had written or said, and
Speaker 12: it's just that whole like I don't believe in welfare
Speaker 12: and all of these things. I'm like, oh, okay, Like
Speaker 12: I picture Ben as being this very nice, grandfatherly type
Speaker 12: of person. But then when you read some of the
Speaker 12: or when he says some of the things that Rand
Speaker 12: had said earlier in his life, you're like, oh, no, no,
Speaker 12: he is an Ola Gark Okay, all right. And I
Speaker 12: don't think it's any coincidence that they chose the name
Speaker 12: Rand for this, because as soon as I read, I
Speaker 12: was just like, well, kind of reminds me of the
Speaker 12: Rand Corporation, which was this you know, government thinks tank
Speaker 12: that the US used to use and they probably still do,
Speaker 12: that would do all this research on issues like the
Speaker 12: space race or Vietnam or the mutually Assured Destruction, you know,
Speaker 12: and they would like, I want to say, like Robert
Speaker 12: McNamara was part of it at one point, just like
Speaker 12: it's not a really like even Doctor Strangelove, like they
Speaker 12: call it the Bland Corporation, so it's like, you know,
Speaker 12: it's a known thing. And I was just like, yeah,
Speaker 12: I'm pretty sure that they named Ben Rand Rand because
Speaker 12: of this.
Speaker 7: And this is years before the fact, But Melvin Douglas
Speaker 7: looks like Rupert Murdoch does now, So I think if
Speaker 7: Rupert Murdoch was that age at that time, they would
Speaker 7: have deliberately made Melvin Douglas look like and it now
Speaker 7: it's just a film and coincidence.
Speaker 2: Is that like the non understanding, you know, we get
Speaker 2: our first taste of that when he when he meets
Speaker 2: those kids, the kids who think he's in a gang.
Speaker 2: You know that he's talking very ganglator. They're from such
Speaker 2: different planets. The kids can't comprehend him, he can't comprehend
Speaker 2: the kids. And then you're right, it's exactly the same thing,
Speaker 2: but a complete flip when he's in the Rand household.
Speaker 2: Like they're just from different planets, so they're just like
Speaker 2: not interpreting each other in the same way. And I
Speaker 2: think it's a really interesting choice. You don't get too
Speaker 2: much of a feel, you get a little, you know.
Speaker 2: I think in the book you're supposed to assume that
Speaker 2: that Ben Rand is, you know, like your typical jerky
Speaker 2: corporate guy, and they don't get too into it. It's
Speaker 2: just like a completely flat, you know, character. And it's
Speaker 2: really interesting that they make him very sympathetic because it's
Speaker 2: like the kind of movie where you would have expected
Speaker 2: the complete opposite. You'd expected Sherley McClain to be this
Speaker 2: like materialistic and she probably is, you know, you kind
Speaker 2: of do. She's wearing these fur coats, and you know,
Speaker 2: she obviously loves luxury, and she's obviously impressed by this
Speaker 2: guy that everybody else is impressed with. But yet they
Speaker 2: make them both like you feel like they're really in love,
Speaker 2: you know, which is a really interesting take for this
Speaker 2: kind of movie where you feel a real love between
Speaker 2: Ben Rand and Eve Rand. And then also just you
Speaker 2: feel like it's not judge. This movie doesn't judge them,
Speaker 2: you know. And until the end, like you said, during
Speaker 2: the funeral, you start to hear that's the first time
Speaker 2: where you're like, oh, he said that, you know, and
Speaker 2: you realize you know who he really is, and it's
Speaker 2: sort of like I think the movie's statement is a
Speaker 2: little bit like it's kind of refreshing maybe, and maybe
Speaker 2: that's it's a little bit of refreshing that they don't judge,
Speaker 2: you know, that's it kind of removes that part of
Speaker 2: it that people are people, that's their role, that's where
Speaker 2: they are.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 2: There were definitely some sympathetic things about Rand in that
Speaker 2: he wanted to start this company that would help the
Speaker 2: businessmen who were doing badly, so you know, he definitely had.
Speaker 2: You know, I think it's just kind of a neutral
Speaker 2: he turns out, you know in the wash, kind of
Speaker 2: a neutral character.
Speaker 12: Yeah. He wants to help the businessmen do better, not
Speaker 12: the common man do better.
Speaker 7: Of a trickle down economic smuk.
Speaker 12: Oh well yeah, which we know works. So and it
Speaker 12: is interesting that it's dice Art's doctor character that seems
Speaker 12: to start to recognize that Chance isn't everything that he
Speaker 12: seems to be to all of these other people, because
Speaker 12: he's kind of an outsider too. He's also a guest
Speaker 12: in the house, and there's that moment when Chauncey asks him,
Speaker 12: you know, are you going to like after Ben dies?
Speaker 12: He's just like, are you going to leave now? And
Speaker 12: it's like a little bit of a threat to dice
Speaker 12: Art's character, just like, hey, you know, I'm part of
Speaker 12: this household too, but yeah, I guess Rand is dead.
Speaker 12: I really don't have a leg to stand on. And
Speaker 12: I'm glad to like you're talking about how this could
Speaker 12: have been played so different. It could have been so arch,
Speaker 12: and it could have just been you know, just these
Speaker 12: nasty I'm trying to remember, like down and out in
Speaker 12: Beverly Hills type of people, where it's just like the
Speaker 12: clueless rich you know, or even like even like my
Speaker 12: man Godfrey. Right, you've got Godfrey coming in and just
Speaker 12: how airheaded everybody seems to be. Was that Carol Lombard
Speaker 12: in that one, I can't.
Speaker 7: Yes, yes, the original one was Carol.
Speaker 12: So you get like her and she's like, oh, look
Speaker 12: at what I brought to the party, and all this
Speaker 12: kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Scavenger hut, yes, exactly.
Speaker 12: Like they could have been those characters, you know, but
Speaker 12: luckily they're not. And Diysar could have been really like,
Speaker 12: you know, it could have been like, you know, like
Speaker 12: the nasty villain in some of those screwball comedies where
Speaker 12: it's just like this Deed's character, I've got his number,
Speaker 12: I'm going to expose him for being a fool, you know.
Speaker 12: But he is doing a little bit of that, and
Speaker 12: David Clennon's doing a little bit of that ironically, like
Speaker 12: what two years before the thing, when they would be
Speaker 12: down in Antarctica together, you know, serving on Outpost thirty one,
Speaker 12: them together, it's like they want to figure this stuff out.
Speaker 12: But it's not like he blows the whistle on him.
Speaker 12: I mean, his biggest thing is when he calls Chauncey
Speaker 12: Chance at the end of the movie, and you get
Speaker 12: that little recognition in Chances eyes and you get the recognition.
Speaker 12: Then back to dice Art.
Speaker 13: But it's not like, Aha, I have you. I will
Speaker 13: tell the media all about you. Because the nicest thing
Speaker 13: about this movie really it's like the act one of
Speaker 13: the story, because you could take this and go farther.
Speaker 13: You could have him elected as president and get to
Speaker 13: see what's going on with that, and then you know,
Speaker 13: in twenty twenty four, you could show like that he
Speaker 13: is an idiot and that everybody knows that he's an idiot,
Speaker 13: but yet he stays in power and appoints other idiots
Speaker 13: as his cabinet.
Speaker 7: Well, then you have yes Minister or yes Prime Minister.
Speaker 12: Or what America is right now.
Speaker 15: But Chauncey Gardner knew his television. He could recite all
Speaker 15: the commercials he was listening. Trump is just as much
Speaker 15: of a television addict, with just as little connection to
Speaker 15: non television reality. But while he is ruling this country
Speaker 15: based largely on what he's sees on TV, that reinforces
Speaker 15: what he already saw on TV, or reinforces what he
Speaker 15: thinks he already saw on TV. He's not even paying
Speaker 15: attention to the TV.
Speaker 2: In the other versions, nobody figures out what's going on.
Speaker 2: But here the doctor, which makes sense, you know, because
Speaker 2: like if he's developmental, you know, it makes sense the
Speaker 2: doctor will get But so he does want to tell Rand.
Speaker 2: But when he's getting close to death, he does kind
Speaker 2: of want to be like, you know what, I don't
Speaker 2: know if you really want Eve to end up with
Speaker 2: this guy or if you well, actually he wants to
Speaker 2: appoint him to his board and blah blah blah. And
Speaker 2: in fact you find out, you know, he really wants
Speaker 2: him to be like president, you know, in the book
Speaker 2: vice President, but in the movie actual president. And so
Speaker 2: the I think he does want to be like this
Speaker 2: is not a good thing. But then then when Brand
Speaker 2: says I'm dying happy because this guy's in my life,
Speaker 2: you know, like it's the only reason I'm dying at
Speaker 2: piece is because of this guy, he stops. So and
Speaker 2: let me say that I think that, you know, he
Speaker 2: has an interesting ending. We should talk about the ending,
Speaker 2: which I think is like kind of we're talking a
Speaker 2: little bit about like the future that goes that what
Speaker 2: happens after this movie, and I think, to me, the
Speaker 2: way I interpret the ending where he's just walking on water,
Speaker 2: it's a very nonsensical, almost non sequitor ending. Everybody always
Speaker 2: puzzles over it, and to me, it feels like it's
Speaker 2: it's ashby punctuating the fact that this is a fable
Speaker 2: and there is no future, like this couldn't really happen.
Speaker 2: There's no like it wouldn't really last because Eve would
Speaker 2: find out and everybody would figure out that this but
Speaker 2: it's just a fable. This is the end. Don't even
Speaker 2: think any further about this story. Like that's kind of
Speaker 2: that's my personal interpretation of that ending. Like I think
Speaker 2: that that's kind of in a way what he's kind
Speaker 2: of doing with that little fantasy bit there.
Speaker 12: Yeah, the walking on water, I like that. There are
Speaker 12: so many different interpretations of it. I mean, there's the
Speaker 12: road Runner or sorry, Wiley Coyote, I should say, interpretation
Speaker 12: of it where he runs out or you know, after
Speaker 12: the Roadrunner and then realizes that there is no gravity
Speaker 12: there or no no mountain that he's still on and
Speaker 12: then falls and it's just like, okay, if you don't
Speaker 12: buy into it, if you just are, I hate to
Speaker 12: say it that dumb You can just walk out there.
Speaker 12: If you don't know any better, then there you go.
Speaker 12: The interpretation I like is just like, we don't know
Speaker 12: where Chance came from. We don't know. Maybe he was
Speaker 12: born in a manger, who's never been sick, never went
Speaker 12: to the dentist, perfect human being. He's been locked away
Speaker 12: for all these years. Now he's out. Maybe the Messiah
Speaker 12: has come and this is the Messiah.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 12: It's like Michael moor Cock Behold the Man, where this
Speaker 12: time traveler goes back and meets Jesus only to find
Speaker 12: out that Jesus is a complete, babbling idiot and he
Speaker 12: basically has to take the place of Jesus and do
Speaker 12: all the things that Jesus does even though he knows
Speaker 12: he's going to end up nail to across. And for me,
Speaker 12: it's like, Okay, is this our new Jesus? Is it
Speaker 12: this idiot that can walk on water and has these
Speaker 12: mystical powers? But yeah, I like that one as well.
Speaker 12: But you know, I don't know if I have a
Speaker 12: leg to stand out other than the whole talk of
Speaker 12: the old man and all of this stuff. And I
Speaker 12: love the the misinterpretation of you know, the only thing
Speaker 12: I have left for me is the room upstairs. Oh,
Speaker 12: you're too young to talk about the room upstairs. I'm
Speaker 12: going to go to the room upstairs. And I'm surprised
Speaker 12: the Chance and be like, no, you can't have the
Speaker 12: room upstairs. That's my room.
Speaker 7: It's a nice room. Then in nineteen seventy nine, another
Speaker 7: really big film that came out that year was Life
Speaker 7: of Brian, and Brian is a character who everything he
Speaker 7: says is misinterpreted, well, not necessarily misinterpreted, but once they've decided.
Speaker 13: He dropped his shoe, the holy Isshue, the God of Jerusalem.
Speaker 12: We must wear it on our heads.
Speaker 7: Even when he tries to get explicit. Now back off,
Speaker 7: how shall we fuck off?
Speaker 10: Oh?
Speaker 7: Lord? You know, there's nothing that he says that people
Speaker 7: will believe the worst of him.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 7: They've decided he is the one. He's the one that
Speaker 7: they want to hear from. And just like in being there,
Speaker 7: at some point it stops being about misinterpretation of what
Speaker 7: Chance says, and they've said, right, we've already decided he's
Speaker 7: a messiah. I mean what the girlfriend of the lawyer says, Yeah,
Speaker 7: he certainly talks like a gardener. But I think he's
Speaker 7: a genius. They've made up their mind. There's nothing that
Speaker 7: he's going to say at any stage. It's apart from
Speaker 7: the doctor that's going to make them spend their heads
Speaker 7: away and think, hang on, this guy really is he's
Speaker 7: talking literally, he's not talking metaphorically. All he's talking about
Speaker 7: is gardens. I like that contrast. I think I was
Speaker 7: saying in a type message to you, Mike, that another
Speaker 7: film that I could see that this is similar to
Speaker 7: is one that we covered on the projection booth a
Speaker 7: few years ago, was The Big Dig where there's a
Speaker 7: main character who escapes from an asylum and he's got
Speaker 7: a passion for pneumatic drills. He comes out, steals a
Speaker 7: drill and goes into the center of Tel Aviv and
Speaker 7: starts digging up the road. And rather than anyone saying, hey,
Speaker 7: what the hell are you doing, let's take you away,
Speaker 7: everyone's trying to sort of work out which member of
Speaker 7: council had asked for the road to be dug up.
Speaker 7: And you've got a policeman pushing away the cars and
Speaker 7: say no, this is being dug up. No one's asking anything,
Speaker 7: And then people are blaming each other and then at
Speaker 7: the end they're all taking credit for it, and this guy,
Speaker 7: he's just a simple guy who's just digging up the road.
Speaker 7: It's the bureaucracy. It's a misinterpretation. And I really saw
Speaker 7: that as a good parallel to this story as well.
Speaker 7: I think I've done a number of films on the
Speaker 7: projection booth with you, Mike about misinterpretation. Simple simple people.
Speaker 7: That's my that's my passion.
Speaker 2: You know, Like I think of parallels, like Barry Linden
Speaker 2: is an idiot, like sort of an idiot who and
Speaker 2: then at The Jerk, which came out that the same era,
Speaker 2: which is what I'm my favorite movies, The jack It's
Speaker 2: the same story.
Speaker 12: The only thing that's missing is the aptigraph exactly.
Speaker 2: It's very similar, very similar kind of tale, which is
Speaker 2: kind of cool. And then, like you were saying about,
Speaker 2: you kind of remind me, Mike a little bit when
Speaker 2: you were talking before. This is like an anti omen
Speaker 2: like the Omen backwards, you know, like you know, in
Speaker 2: a way, there's a lot of interesting parallels. It's always
Speaker 2: an interesting story where you have a rise to power
Speaker 2: like this, we.
Speaker 7: Are to cure write a film festival.
Speaker 12: Simple people thrust into great situations. We're going to take
Speaker 12: a break and we'll be back with an interview with
Speaker 12: Aaron Hunter, the writer of authoring hal Ashby the myth
Speaker 12: of the New Hollywood Tour. Right after these brief messages.
Speaker 16: Get ready to dive deep into the life, career, and
Speaker 16: unforgettable moments of the one and only Chevy Chase. Join
Speaker 16: us on an exciting journey through the illustrious career of
Speaker 16: this comedy icon as we explore his groundbreaking roles, behind
Speaker 16: the scenes stories, and timeless contributions to the world of entertainment.
Speaker 16: Each episode of the Chasing chevy Chase podcast brings you
Speaker 16: expert analysis and nostalgic reflections on Chevy Chase's most iconic
Speaker 16: characters in classic films like National Lampoon's Vacation.
Speaker 3: Caddy Shack, and Fletch.
Speaker 16: Whether you're a diehard Chevy Chase aficionado or simply curious
Speaker 16: about the man behind the laughter, Chasing chevy Chase is
Speaker 16: your go to podcast for all things Chevy Chase. Tune
Speaker 16: in and join the conversation as we celebrate the life
Speaker 16: and legacy of a true Hollywood legend. Don't miss out.
Speaker 16: Subscribe now to Chasing Chevy Chase wherever you get your
Speaker 16: podcasts and let the adventure begin.
Speaker 12: I want to know a little bit more about you
Speaker 12: and how you got interested in film and writing about film.
Speaker 3: I was always interested in film. I'm a kind of
Speaker 3: gen X's Star Wars Baby. But academically I moved. I
Speaker 3: left the US. I just realized, actually today, it was
Speaker 3: about twenty five years ago this week, and I ended
Speaker 3: up in Budapest, Hungary, where I was teaching American studies.
Speaker 3: I had a master's degree in English and literature was
Speaker 3: my background, but I just started using film more and
Speaker 3: more in the classroom. It was academic course of study,
Speaker 3: but we used American culture and civilization, everything from talking
Speaker 3: about different decades to talking about race in America or
Speaker 3: education or gender, all these sorts of things as subject
Speaker 3: matter for them to write about. And it just became
Speaker 3: clear and clear to me that using film in those
Speaker 3: contexts conveyed a lot of the messages easier, at least
Speaker 3: for me. And so they ended up letting me put
Speaker 3: together a film class which was on the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: And while I was doing that and putting together the
Speaker 3: reading list, one of the things I noticed was that
Speaker 3: at that point, this would have been two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: I think that there was nothing. There was one article
Speaker 3: on Senses of Cinema. I think about hal Ashby, and
Speaker 3: that's what led me to start to think about putting
Speaker 3: it together as a PhD project. I was already thinking
Speaker 3: about going back for a PhD, and I had met
Speaker 3: my partner who I would eventually marry. She was an
Speaker 3: English teacher from Hungary who wanted to live in an
Speaker 3: English speaking country, and it all came together. We ended
Speaker 3: up first in Belfast and then down here in Dublin.
Speaker 12: Hal Ashby and the Seventies go together so well. It
Speaker 12: feels like that's such a natural marriage.
Speaker 3: That's more parent now than it was in the first
Speaker 3: couple decades of the construction of the seventies image, which
Speaker 3: really started in the late seventies, where it was more
Speaker 3: about the kind of I didn't want to say macho,
Speaker 3: but the sort of larger than life Maverick, directors, Peck
Speaker 3: and Pah and Friedkin and these kind of guys, even Altman,
Speaker 3: somebody who wouldn't take no for an answer, and a
Speaker 3: lot of the ways that seventies films were written about
Speaker 3: in the eighties and i'd say into the early two
Speaker 3: thousands was about topics that are coming back around now,
Speaker 3: but male loneliness that sort of disaffected young boomer late Vietnam,
Speaker 3: post Vietnam, distrust of the establishment kind of person, the
Speaker 3: Bobby Dupree or Travis Bickle, these kinds of characters. And
Speaker 3: one of the things that drew me to Ashby is
Speaker 3: that his films they fit that, but they're different. Harold
Speaker 3: is a different Big Year, and even the tough guys
Speaker 3: in the last detail, I think it's a different kind
Speaker 3: of projection of toughness that they have than somebody like
Speaker 3: Popeye Doyle or somebody like that. They're stock and they
Speaker 3: don't know what to do about it, but they're not.
Speaker 3: I don't want to, like overemphasize the differences, but I
Speaker 3: think he has a foot in that, but he's not
Speaker 3: fully in it, which is why I think in some
Speaker 3: of the earlier books he's not even really mentioned, or
Speaker 3: he's a footnote in a way. But I think, as
Speaker 3: in the last let's say, fifteen years, as the kind
Speaker 3: of understanding of the seventies filmography has expanded, and our
Speaker 3: awareness of the different filmmakers, female filmmakers and filmmakers of
Speaker 3: color that were making films that people were going to see,
Speaker 3: but that just weren't getting canonized early on. Then Ashby
Speaker 3: fits better or into that kind of broader constellation, if
Speaker 3: that makes sense.
Speaker 12: Do you think one reason why he wasn't as noticed
Speaker 12: or as laud it is because of the title of
Speaker 12: your book, The myth of the new Hollywood auteur wasn't
Speaker 12: because he was collaborating more with other people that he
Speaker 12: wasn't seen as that singular tough guide director.
Speaker 3: I think so, Yeah, definitely, I think they were all
Speaker 3: collaborating that much. But I think that there was a
Speaker 3: confluence of events that I talk about in the book
Speaker 3: and on all my books really of the changing nature
Speaker 3: of the studio system, a new guard, a new generation
Speaker 3: of directors, and the wider spread public understanding of tourism
Speaker 3: as a tourism became something that film critics wrote about,
Speaker 3: not just film academics, and as it became a marketing
Speaker 3: tool of film by and so on. That the confluence
Speaker 3: of all of those things by nineteen seventy one or
Speaker 3: two meant that those savvy filmmakers knew to adopt that
Speaker 3: mantle and then promote themselves under that mantle and Ashby
Speaker 3: was resistant to that. In an interview after interview where
Speaker 3: he's constantly deflecting his role onto his cinematographers or by Taller,
Speaker 3: his production designer. He's always talking about his role in
Speaker 3: the look of the film, his performers and so on.
Speaker 3: And I think the more we learn about how those
Speaker 3: films were made, the more we see that well Scorsese
Speaker 3: was doing that too, and Bogdanovitch was doing that too.
Speaker 3: They were just better at the time at playing the
Speaker 3: game of presenting themselves as singular visionary director.
Speaker 12: By Danovich was so good about it that so many
Speaker 12: people don't even know about Holly Platt, who I know,
Speaker 12: is somebody else that you wrote about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think Karina's podcast from a few years ago
Speaker 3: expanded the knowledge ba's about poly Platt. But yeah, Bogdanovitch
Speaker 3: was very good editor. I mean, he's a fantastic rack
Speaker 3: on tour, and he's a fantastic historian of film and
Speaker 3: very good at placing himself within that history, which he
Speaker 3: made four incredible films right out of the gate and
Speaker 3: then had a very good filmography. So he deserves to
Speaker 3: be in that history. But he certainly knew that.
Speaker 12: Why do you think that Ashby was so collaborative and
Speaker 12: was so open to that. Was that fromastasa as an
Speaker 12: editor or where did that come from?
Speaker 3: He talks about it as early as working on some
Speaker 3: of the first films where he was an assistant editor
Speaker 3: to Robert Swink on the William Wiler films, and Wyler
Speaker 3: and Swink coming in and saying to the whole if
Speaker 3: you have an idea, tell us, we probably won't use it,
Speaker 3: but we want to hear it. No idea is a
Speaker 3: bad idea until we decide it's a bad idea. And
Speaker 3: that was part of his his sort of apprenticeship in
Speaker 3: the industry, and then when he went to work with
Speaker 3: Norman Jewison. He's edited those films of Jewisen's in the
Speaker 3: sixty Cincinnati Kid and obviously In the Heat of the
Speaker 3: Night for which he won the Oscar and Thomas Crown affair.
Speaker 3: Jewison was fairly new too, and he was also, like Ashby,
Speaker 3: would become invested in using his crew to the best
Speaker 3: of their abilities and really letting them make suggestions. I'm
Speaker 3: working on a piece about the cinematography of In the
Speaker 3: Heat of the Night right now, and how much decision
Speaker 3: making Haskell Wexler had on that film to shoot it
Speaker 3: the way he wanted to shoot it in order to
Speaker 3: capture most specifically Partier's performance in Partier's presence on screen Jewison,
Speaker 3: it seems, from both what Jewison said about it and
Speaker 3: what Wexler said about it, basically let Wexler det up
Speaker 3: the cinematography on that choose the cameras, choose the lenses,
Speaker 3: choose the film, choose the lighting, and so on. So
Speaker 3: it's in that kind of twelve or thirteen years of
Speaker 3: working mostly with Wiler and then with Jewison, That's how
Speaker 3: he learned filmmaking works. And so I think he brought
Speaker 3: that approach with him because that's how he was trained,
Speaker 3: but also he saw the film's benefit from it. He
Speaker 3: always wanted to work with Haskell Wexler because they'd done
Speaker 3: a couple films with Jewison and they'd become friends, and
Speaker 3: they would remain friends until Ashby passed and Jeff Wexler
Speaker 3: Haskell's son. I think he worked on all of Ashby's
Speaker 3: films from Harold and Maud, so they were family friends
Speaker 3: and so on. But he couldn't get him until Bound
Speaker 3: for Glory and so on the Landlord. He got Gordon Willis,
Speaker 3: and then he wanted to work with Willis again all
Speaker 3: the time after that, but they were like East Coast
Speaker 3: West Coast Union things, and he was back on the
Speaker 3: East Coast after Harold and Maud wanted to get Gordon
Speaker 3: Willis again, but he was maybe working on The Godfather
Speaker 3: Part two, and so he hired Michael Chapman, who was
Speaker 3: like Gordon Willis's assistant, who'd never been a cinematographer on
Speaker 3: a film before. And Chapman was like what Okay talked about,
Speaker 3: not knowing exactly what he was doing. The people have
Speaker 3: praised my use of natural light on that film. I
Speaker 3: didn't know how to like this. I just used the
Speaker 3: light that was there and it worked and it looks
Speaker 3: great and stark and cold like that film does. And
Speaker 3: then he went on to do Taxi Driver and Raging
Speaker 3: Bowl and so many other great films. So yeah, I
Speaker 3: really appreciate Ashby's willingness to do that over and over
Speaker 3: and with some of his editors who are maybe lesser
Speaker 3: known than Michael Chapman. But he did the same thing
Speaker 3: which would bite him in the ass on some of
Speaker 3: Zadies films when he brought in some unproven editors who
Speaker 3: he tried to give a chance to but maybe didn't
Speaker 3: work out the way he'd hoped they would on some
Speaker 3: of those last few films.
Speaker 12: One of the things that I found fascinating about him
Speaker 12: was the whole idea of him shooting and editing two
Speaker 12: films at once, or editing two films at once. Was
Speaker 12: the first time doing that? Was that being there in
Speaker 12: secondhand hearts? Or had he done that before?
Speaker 3: That was the first time doing that? He was getting
Speaker 3: really burnt out. There's conflicting stories. When I wrote the
Speaker 3: I shouldn't probably say this, but who wrote the Ashby book?
Speaker 3: I was really committed to tali an alternate story to
Speaker 3: the Ashby burnt out on drugs, which was that's all
Speaker 3: part of Peter Biskins's narrative, and that's a lot of
Speaker 3: the kind of all those last four films aren't that
Speaker 3: good because of cocaine. And Nick Dawson's book. I don't
Speaker 3: know if you've read his biography of Ashby, but he
Speaker 3: goes into quite a lot of detail about just how
Speaker 3: burnt out Ashby was from working these kind of sixteen
Speaker 3: hour days for weeks and weeks because he would let
Speaker 3: his editors edit. I interviewed Bob Jones a couple of times,
Speaker 3: who edited, I think from the last detail Shampoo Bound
Speaker 3: for Glory and then worked as a writer on Being
Speaker 3: There and Coming Home, and he said, while he was
Speaker 3: editing those films, Ashby just let him be for days
Speaker 3: and days where he'd come down at the end of
Speaker 3: the day and just look at what was there. But
Speaker 3: for him it was then the fine tuning. So he
Speaker 3: would get his editor Don Zimmerman or Jones or whoever
Speaker 3: it was, would get the film where Ashby wanted it.
Speaker 3: And then he was so interested in rhythm and so
Speaker 3: interested in the precise moments in those cross cutting like
Speaker 3: so many of his films, and with those great cross
Speaker 3: cut like Harold and Maud where he's still in the
Speaker 3: hospital and he's driving the car and the cat Stephens
Speaker 3: song's playing and you're just shattered, or the end of
Speaker 3: Coming Home where you're cutting between Dern and John Voyd
Speaker 3: talking to the kids in the gym, and it's just
Speaker 3: so intense, and for him, all of the precision of
Speaker 3: that was what was important. And he would just spend
Speaker 3: because he's editing on film, on decks and a long
Speaker 3: time working on that, and he would feel burned out.
Speaker 3: And I think he felt really burnt out by the
Speaker 3: end of Coming Home, which also happened to be his
Speaker 3: sort of most celebrated film at the time anyway, and
Speaker 3: so going into Being There, Second Hand Hearts was actually
Speaker 3: filmed first and the Lorimar deal, which also would produce
Speaker 3: Looking to get out. That was his idea. He thought,
Speaker 3: I can stay fresh. If I start to feel burnt
Speaker 3: out on this one film, I'll go and work on
Speaker 3: the other film. I don't think it quite worked out
Speaker 3: the way he wanted to be because, as I was
Speaker 3: talking about earlier, the initial edits of Secondhand Hearts didn't
Speaker 3: work out as well as Zimmerman's editing on Being There.
Speaker 3: So he had to go back into Secondhand Hearts and
Speaker 3: rework it from the very beginning, which was a lot
Speaker 3: more laborious than he had hoped it would be.
Speaker 12: Tell me a little bit about the origins of Being
Speaker 12: There and the evolution of a screenplay, because the idea
Speaker 12: behind that of you teaching those screenplays and then how
Speaker 12: it became a book. I would love people to know
Speaker 12: more about that me too. Thanks for asking about it.
Speaker 3: That was a real Passion project, and I was shocked
Speaker 3: that my publisher, Katie Galloff, she's at Bloomsbury and she's amazing.
Speaker 3: So I have to give her props because I just
Speaker 3: went to her and I was like, I've got this
Speaker 3: quirky idea for a book. Do you think anybody would
Speaker 3: publish this? And she was like, I'll publish it. I
Speaker 3: didn't mean you got it wasn't asking and they were
Speaker 3: great about it. It's a big, fat book that's not
Speaker 3: typical of if these are my loop I have them here,
Speaker 3: but oh, we're on a podcast. But you can see
Speaker 3: anyway that being their books a lot bigger, both in
Speaker 3: its kind of dimensions and how thick it is, and
Speaker 3: so I really appreciate that they agreed to publish it.
Speaker 3: It was Yeah. So I teach a lot of screenwriting
Speaker 3: and I still do, like if any of my students
Speaker 3: listen to this, I still use the end of being
Speaker 3: there on the first day of class, because I talk
Speaker 3: about screenwriting is rewriting. No matter what process you have
Speaker 3: in your head, about writing in your ivory tower or
Speaker 3: your own individual genius, hold on to those things. They're
Speaker 3: great too, But if you want to go into this industry.
Speaker 3: You're going to get notes and you're going to have
Speaker 3: to respond to those notes, and those notes are going
Speaker 3: to help you. Sometimes they're going to be annoying, sometimes
Speaker 3: they're gonna seem ridiculous, but oftentimes they're gonna help you.
Speaker 3: So let's look at how this happened, and then the
Speaker 3: two Jones scripts, and then we watched the end of
Speaker 3: the film and it seemed to work. I started doing
Speaker 3: that around twenty fourteen, and I had a couple scripts.
Speaker 3: I have the Robert Town published or I don't know
Speaker 3: who published it, but it's the last Detail in Chinatown,
Speaker 3: A nice little publication of that script. I have some
Speaker 3: Hal Hartley scripts that I bought and a few other
Speaker 3: script books. What if there was not just one script
Speaker 3: but more. I wanted to put five drafts in, but
Speaker 3: they were like, you can't do that, met come on, huh.
Speaker 3: So they agreed on the three drafts. And there was
Speaker 3: a lot of talk during the kind of production phase
Speaker 3: of the book about how much I should include, should
Speaker 3: this be a work book? We went through a month
Speaker 3: or six weeks where it was going to be a workbook,
Speaker 3: where there were like questions and it was textbooky thing
Speaker 3: and I didn't really want it to be that because
Speaker 3: I wanted it, and this is what makes it a
Speaker 3: hard sell, I think, to be honest, but I wanted
Speaker 3: it to be a book that students could look at
Speaker 3: in a classroom but also on their own and track
Speaker 3: those changes themselves. So if you've looked at it, in
Speaker 3: the introduction and in the short intros to each of
Speaker 3: the scripts, I give a couple examples, but I really
Speaker 3: want that process of discovery is really important. So when
Speaker 3: I'm teaching screenwriting, I'll sign a script with the film
Speaker 3: and they're going to do what they're going to do
Speaker 3: because they're students. But I asked them read the script,
Speaker 3: watch the film, and then watch the film again with
Speaker 3: the script. And some of them do, I know, because
Speaker 3: they come to class and we often end up talking
Speaker 3: about the differences. Is this different in the film than
Speaker 3: it is on the page? And we can't always because
Speaker 3: of the nature of scripts and which script do you
Speaker 3: find online? And so on, we can't always come to
Speaker 3: a reason why the change was made, but we can
Speaker 3: at least talk about the effect of it in class
Speaker 3: for them as writers, and it ends up being really effective,
Speaker 3: I think, because I have them at the end of
Speaker 3: the semester write a kind of critical reflection of the
Speaker 3: process of writing their own script, and they often write
Speaker 3: about when I saw this change from the script to
Speaker 3: screen in this film, I realized the efficiency of dialogue,
Speaker 3: or I better understood the get in late and get
Speaker 3: out early rule of screenwriting, or whatever it might be.
Speaker 3: And so that was the impetus behind doing that book.
Speaker 3: It was a movie I love, a movie that I
Speaker 3: think the script is fantastic. I also had because Bob
Speaker 3: Jones had been so kind to me when I was
Speaker 3: just a sort of lowly PhD stud and he was
Speaker 3: so screwed over by the attribution of that script that
Speaker 3: I felt like I have no power to go to Hollywood,
Speaker 3: whoever owns being there now I think Warner Brothers and
Speaker 3: say put Bubs Jones's name in the titles. But I
Speaker 3: could put out a book with Bob Jones's name on
Speaker 3: the cover and give back a little to him that way,
Speaker 3: which I felt like he would deserve. The book came
Speaker 3: out six weeks after he died. I was a little
Speaker 3: bit bummed out about that, but I had a nice
Speaker 3: chat with some of his daughters and they were happy
Speaker 3: about it. That's not why I did it. But when
Speaker 3: something like that can happen as well, it's a nice
Speaker 3: side effect or a nice benefit.
Speaker 12: The idea of looking at the script and the evolution
Speaker 12: of those versus what we see. That's why bread and Butter.
Speaker 12: I love that kind of stuff, absolutely, sign just to
Speaker 12: track those changes. And now I'm curious about the other
Speaker 12: two scripts. Were they more intron between to those drafts,
Speaker 12: to those Jones drafts.
Speaker 3: The other two would have been two other Kazinski drafts.
Speaker 3: He wrote one right after the book came out. And
Speaker 3: it's funny because I get some of this wrong in
Speaker 3: the Ashby book, because I was researching all the films
Speaker 3: and I can only spend so many days in the
Speaker 3: archives on being There or the Landlord or whatever. But
Speaker 3: then when I went back to the hal Ashby archives
Speaker 3: and then got in touch with some of the Kazinski archives,
Speaker 3: I discovered that he was teaching a class at Yale
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy one on screenplay adaptation, and he used
Speaker 3: being There as his case study in the class, and
Speaker 3: so he wrote a script adaptation of his own book.
Speaker 3: I'm going to get this date wrong, but I think
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy one early seventies anyway, and it was a
Speaker 3: I think it was a summer school course at Yale
Speaker 3: on yeah screen adaptations, and it was around that time
Speaker 3: that Ashby and Sellers were interesting. It's a great story
Speaker 3: in talks about making the film, but neither of them
Speaker 3: had the wherewithal to get it made, and Kazinsky had
Speaker 3: heavier hitters in mind. I can't remember right now, but
Speaker 3: there were bigger named directors that he was trying to
Speaker 3: get to make the film back then. And then when Brownsberg,
Speaker 3: who was friends with Ashby and Kasinski, brought them together
Speaker 3: after coming home and they went through all of the
Speaker 3: process of getting Lauramar to agree to make the film,
Speaker 3: Kazinsky submitted another draft and that's the one that's in
Speaker 3: the book, and that's the one that's wild, I think,
Speaker 3: because it's got all of the cutaways to social protests,
Speaker 3: and it's got backstories of a lot of the minor characters,
Speaker 3: the lawyer, and a lot more stuff with the Secret
Speaker 3: Service agents and whimsical dialogue that they have as they're
Speaker 3: going around Rams mentioned there's a lot more people trying
Speaker 3: to find out chances background and it gets goofy and hygiency,
Speaker 3: and that one is still set in New York, which
Speaker 3: is where the novel was set. And then in the meantime,
Speaker 3: and I get this a little bit wrong. In the
Speaker 3: Ashby book, Mike Caller had gone to d C and
Speaker 3: he came back and said to Ashby, we have to
Speaker 3: move it to DC. I always thought that was Jones's decision,
Speaker 3: but it was actually Mike Haller's idea because he saw
Speaker 3: this the corridors of power right now in late seventies
Speaker 3: America visually are going to be more symbolically represented by
Speaker 3: the Capitol Building and the disparity of wealth in Washington,
Speaker 3: d C just still there but was massive, as you
Speaker 3: see in the film. And so Kazinski actually wrote another
Speaker 3: script in the summer of seventy eight where he cut
Speaker 3: out all of that social unrest, and he did said
Speaker 3: it in Washington d C at their request. It's his
Speaker 3: first and his third draft that I also wanted to include.
Speaker 3: But then even after that third draft, Ashby has said
Speaker 3: in a bunch of interviews like he wasn't feeling it.
Speaker 3: He said, it's really interesting that he felt like Kazinsky
Speaker 3: was afraid of his protagonist because he kept writing more
Speaker 3: and more about everything else except chance, and Kazinsky was
Speaker 3: also getting really frustrated because he wanted to write another
Speaker 3: novel because that's what he was really and so I
Speaker 3: don't know how amicable the split was after the film
Speaker 3: came out and was such a success, because innc he
Speaker 3: was I don't know much about him, but he was
Speaker 3: one of these kind of literary celebrities. When he's going
Speaker 3: to Studio fifty four and showing up on the Tonight
Speaker 3: Show all the time acting in Reds. He was just
Speaker 3: happy to be in the spotlight. So once the film
Speaker 3: came out and was celebrated, he was happy to go
Speaker 3: out and publicize as much as he could and take
Speaker 3: a lot of credit for it, of course, but he
Speaker 3: definitely stepped away late summer of seventy eight, and that's
Speaker 3: when a should be brought in Jones and he did
Speaker 3: the two drafts, So he did one by December, and
Speaker 3: then he and Ashby met over Christmas and Jones rewrote
Speaker 3: it based on that meeting for January, and they started
Speaker 3: shooting right after that.
Speaker 12: I found it interesting too that even into those later
Speaker 12: drafts that Kazinski still wasn't on board. It sounded like
Speaker 12: with Peter Seller, so that he was still writing a
Speaker 12: much younger, more handsome Chance, just like taking Warren Baby
Speaker 12: from Shampool and putting him into being there.
Speaker 3: I think he wanted Ryan O'Neill, Robert Redford one of
Speaker 3: these guys, and I get it. In the book, Chance
Speaker 3: is like a football player or something, and he's big,
Speaker 3: and he's strong, and he's vira or appears to be.
Speaker 3: And that's part of his appeal too in the book,
Speaker 3: that people are going to look at that kind of
Speaker 3: and a waspy, tight East Coast wasp figure. And of
Speaker 3: course he's brilliant, and I think it's one of those
Speaker 3: moments of movie magic. I don't think from everything I've read,
Speaker 3: I think Ashby was being a sound guy. He was
Speaker 3: also probably experimenting with his newfound power after coming home,
Speaker 3: and I like the way this feels. But he said
Speaker 3: always interview after interview, I made a deal with Sellers
Speaker 3: if I make this fill he's Chance and I respect
Speaker 3: him for that, and it made the movie different. It's
Speaker 3: a whole different experience to have him be a middle
Speaker 3: aged He's almost a sad sack who's holding it together
Speaker 3: because of his simple mindness. But Obviously by the end,
Speaker 3: when we get to that deathbed scene with rand you
Speaker 3: can see there's a pain in him that I don't think.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine Ryan O'Neill, as much as I like him,
Speaker 3: and what's up, Doc or whatever, he's not going to
Speaker 3: pull off that deathbed scene with the one tier and
Speaker 3: the red eyes and just I've seen it before, Robert.
Speaker 3: It's wonderful, and the age also gives it a kind
Speaker 3: of I don't know it somehow makes the hanging out
Speaker 3: with the Soviet ambassador more believable, going on talk shows
Speaker 3: and that kind of stuff. So it works in the book.
Speaker 3: But I'm glad they stuck with Sellers. But yeah, Kazinski,
Speaker 3: you're right. He was resistant to it and continued to
Speaker 3: write him almost specifically as young and broad shouldered and
Speaker 3: that sort of thing in the scripts, which is probably
Speaker 3: another bone of contention with Ashby.
Speaker 12: Well, he couldn't elect anyone younger than sixties president done anyway.
Speaker 3: Sixty would be a fountain of view of these days.
Speaker 12: When does the Richard Dyser character, When does the doctor
Speaker 12: enter into the mix?
Speaker 3: He's definitely in the Kazinski draft, that's in my book.
Speaker 3: So the first one he submitted to the production. He's
Speaker 3: an important character in that. I think he's in the
Speaker 3: I'd have to have a look. I can get back
Speaker 3: to you. I think he's in the first draft that
Speaker 3: he did in seventy one as well, because I think
Speaker 3: he changed the second half of the story so much,
Speaker 3: because Rand pretty much disappears from the book halfway through,
Speaker 3: and the ending of the book is so much different,
Speaker 3: so that notion of somebody inside the house having to
Speaker 3: be suspicious, which I think is important. I've been thinking.
Speaker 3: I watched it again the last couple of days, and
Speaker 3: I hadn't watched for a little while, and every time
Speaker 3: I watch it, my reading of it changes a little.
Speaker 3: As I'm sure has happened with you in films, you
Speaker 3: can't believe the story, you just can't believe it. And
Speaker 3: if the doctor's not there suspicious, of course you're going
Speaker 3: to have the president investigating him because he's some guide
Speaker 3: who just showed up. And then when the press finds out,
Speaker 3: they're going to investigate, who's this guy who just showed up?
Speaker 3: But for Alan B he has a personal connection and
Speaker 3: I think he has to be there for the audience
Speaker 3: to accept this. He's the outlier of the whole story
Speaker 3: that makes the story believable, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Does that make sense? And without him, I think the
Speaker 3: audience would have a harder time accepting it because somebody
Speaker 3: has to see that there's something going on here. Would
Speaker 3: you agree with us?
Speaker 12: I would. It feels like he he's the little kid
Speaker 12: from the EMPERORSU closed or something, but he can't scream
Speaker 12: about it because everybody else is playing along so much
Speaker 12: that it feels like he would get in trouble if
Speaker 12: he did.
Speaker 17: If he just was like, look at what you're doing,
Speaker 17: look at what you're talking about. Yeah, So why do
Speaker 17: you think when we ask you? Because I was wondering
Speaker 17: this on this recent rewatch, I've wondered it before, But
Speaker 17: why does he let him get away with it?
Speaker 3: At the end.
Speaker 12: We talked a little bit about that in our discussion,
Speaker 12: and one of the things that I was thinking was
Speaker 12: Chance coming to him and saying Eve is not going
Speaker 12: to close up the house, and basically and also asking
Speaker 12: are you done here? Basically it sounds like he's about
Speaker 12: to kick the doctor out right, but then maybe he'll
Speaker 12: let him stay, don't It's almost like the doctor is
Speaker 12: in the same position the Chance was at the beginning
Speaker 12: of the film.
Speaker 3: Oh nice.
Speaker 12: I like that because that old man dies, so that's
Speaker 12: his old man who's died.
Speaker 3: It fits with the tone of the film and it's
Speaker 3: I think again, part of what makes it all believable
Speaker 3: is that Alan b his curiosity is tweaked almost from
Speaker 3: the beginning, and Dysart's performance is really great. It's all
Speaker 3: in his expressions, in the way he looks at Chance,
Speaker 3: and compared to all the craziness of the CIA and
Speaker 3: the FBI investigations in the press, his is very gentle,
Speaker 3: and I think it comes out of a kind of
Speaker 3: paternalistic feeling he has towards Rand, his patient, who seems
Speaker 3: to also be his friend. He goes to the dinner
Speaker 3: with them and this sort of stuff, and he has
Speaker 3: to maybe as a man of science, I don't know,
Speaker 3: has to gratch this itch. But in the meantime, as
Speaker 3: he's doing that, both Rand, Benjamin Rand, and Ivrand tell
Speaker 3: him at different points, this guy makes me happy. I
Speaker 3: feel good with him. Brand says his dying right, this
Speaker 3: is the calmest or the happiest or something I've felt
Speaker 3: in a long time. And I think that taps into
Speaker 3: Alanbe's sense of concern and friendship as well. If I
Speaker 3: tell them the truth, I'm gonna take this away from them,
Speaker 3: and that makes it very gentle. Which the whole film,
Speaker 3: not the whole film, but much of the film is
Speaker 3: like this kind of fable and it fits into that tone.
Speaker 12: And I think, did you see any other potential missteps
Speaker 12: in those earlier drafts, even the Jones drafts before they
Speaker 12: got to the final film, other things where you're just like, ah,
Speaker 12: I'm really glad they avoided that trap.
Speaker 3: I like the way Ashby brings in like a smidgeon
Speaker 3: of sort of race politics. Enough she says it sure
Speaker 3: is a white man's world if this guy is gonna
Speaker 3: be on TV. And that great piece of graffiti when
Speaker 3: he first hears the house, it's magnificent, and it's just there.
Speaker 3: It's like a commentary on the film, which I think
Speaker 3: is really important to a newest shreading I have. But
Speaker 3: we can come back to that. Kazinski keeps changing her
Speaker 3: and so there's also a German maid. I don't want
Speaker 3: to say inga, but it might be ingrid, sorry, And
Speaker 3: from draft to draft, from the original book, who the
Speaker 3: maid is in the story keeps changing, and in one
Speaker 3: of the drafts he actually gives the old man a
Speaker 3: deathbed scene. I think this might be the what's in
Speaker 3: the book where he tells Chance that Chance is the
Speaker 3: son of the old man and a previous black who
Speaker 3: has since died, so that Chance, all of a sudden
Speaker 3: is like the biracial product of forbidden love, because that
Speaker 3: would have been whatever in the forties or fifties or
Speaker 3: something like that. I think that was a mistake, and
Speaker 3: I appreciate like what Kazinsky's trying to do there and
Speaker 3: trying to like break some taboos or push the story
Speaker 3: in different directions, but I don't think that's the story
Speaker 3: that being there is about, and that just whether his
Speaker 3: mother was black or not isn't even the issue. It's
Speaker 3: chances background at all, removing that enigma of it. I'd
Speaker 3: call that a misstep. I think in the Jones first
Speaker 3: Jones draft really a misstep because he had so much
Speaker 3: work to do, and this comes at the ending, which
Speaker 3: I talk about with my students. But at the ending
Speaker 3: of the Kazinsi drafts, you're not always sure if rand
Speaker 3: has died. Sometimes it's mentioned we don't see him die,
Speaker 3: but the men who become The Pallbearers in the film
Speaker 3: are always off site, somewhere in some kind of ancient
Speaker 3: smoking room around a fireplace, and in this his first draft,
Speaker 3: he kept them off site. He did include the funeral,
Speaker 3: so you have the President giving the eulogy and you
Speaker 3: have Chance wandering off, but he still has those guys
Speaker 3: off site, which some of my students actually like when
Speaker 3: they get to that, because they feel like it creates
Speaker 3: a greater mystery and they feel like having the puppet
Speaker 3: masters the Pallbears is a little on the nose, which
Speaker 3: I that's a sort of fair reading. But I like
Speaker 3: the centrality of the location of it all at the end,
Speaker 3: and I love the way again editing Ashby does that
Speaker 3: cross cut editing, and the way that the President's voice
Speaker 3: hangs over it all, and the acoustic depth from when
Speaker 3: we cut. There's four different volumes, maybe five. I was
Speaker 3: trying to listen if when he says life is a
Speaker 3: state of mind at the end, after he's dunked the
Speaker 3: umbrella in, they'd put some reverb on that or something.
Speaker 3: It sounds like another I don't know volume level. Then
Speaker 3: you have President, you have even Allen b you have
Speaker 3: the Pallbearers and you have Chance, and those are all
Speaker 3: four different volumes of his speech. Then I think that
Speaker 3: life of the state of mind, Life is a state
Speaker 3: of Mind is a fifth volume, and just that kind
Speaker 3: of subtle sound mixing is magnifics.
Speaker 12: That was interesting. The whole idea of keeping them off site.
Speaker 12: I almost wonder if the idea of the that looks
Speaker 12: like an Illuminati temple with the big eyeball. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 12: is this kind of playing into These guys are in
Speaker 12: power and they've been in power for as long as
Speaker 12: this country has been around. Like plying back to the
Speaker 12: Mason's I think.
Speaker 3: There's a YouTube video about that way.
Speaker 12: I wouldn't be surprised seeking down that rabbit.
Speaker 3: Local people want to go down at. Yeah, being there
Speaker 3: is an example that the illuminat and it's a movie man,
Speaker 3: but yeah, Matt video is out there.
Speaker 12: You're talking about your new reading as far as race goes,
Speaker 12: whether you're thinking these days, well so much about race,
Speaker 12: but the race feeds into it. So one of the
Speaker 12: big kind of criticisms of the film still is the
Speaker 12: blooper ending. And so if your listeners don't know the
Speaker 12: film ends on this real like elegaic, this beautiful spare
Speaker 12: piano and Chance.
Speaker 3: Walks on water out of nowhere, like there's nothing leading
Speaker 3: you to believe that this is even a possibility. And
Speaker 3: it's beautiful and it's cinematic, and I write about it
Speaker 3: in the first Ashley book gets all of the imaginations
Speaker 3: of everybody involves come together in this magnificent moment, and
Speaker 3: then you get a black screen, a little bit of
Speaker 3: old school TV fuzz and then the silly bloopers of
Speaker 3: Peter Seller's flubbing his lines, and a lot of people
Speaker 3: hate it. And if you go on YouTube, I was
Speaker 3: looking at it today you can see the original film
Speaker 3: the ending, which is also available on maybe on the
Speaker 3: criterions blu ray. So it's the ending when Chances off
Speaker 3: in the woods and Eve has come looking for him,
Speaker 3: and she says, Chauncey, I was looking for you. I
Speaker 3: was looking for you too, Eve, and they kiss and
Speaker 3: they walk off and they fill them with that and
Speaker 3: then it went. It was going to go into just
Speaker 3: the credits with some background sounds, and you can also
Speaker 3: see this on YouTube, some TV sounds in the background,
Speaker 3: but then the piano continues, and so down in the comments,
Speaker 3: everyone was I can't believe they didn't keep this ending.
Speaker 3: I hope in future DVDs they get rid of that
Speaker 3: stupid blooper ending. It breaks the spell, which is what
Speaker 3: Peter Seller said to it, and Ashby defended it. He
Speaker 3: continued to defend the blooper ending because it's in a
Speaker 3: letter that he wrote I put in one of the books.
Speaker 3: He went to the cinema a bunch of times and
Speaker 3: watched it, and he said, every time I watched it,
Speaker 3: everybody stayed at the end to watch the and it
Speaker 3: wasn't their intention, but they got to see the names
Speaker 3: of all the people who made the movie. That's interesting.
Speaker 3: But I was thinking about this breaks the spell, and
Speaker 3: this is a film that's come back. Maybe this is
Speaker 3: one reason why you're talking about on your podcast. Because
Speaker 3: of current and recent political situations, Chance should not be
Speaker 3: a leader of the free world. Chance should not be
Speaker 3: walking on water. And I think I've always thought that
Speaker 3: the one of the neat tricks that the film plays
Speaker 3: is that in the opening sequence, it tricks the audience
Speaker 3: into believing that Chance is a rich guy, because we
Speaker 3: have no dialogue and we have him in his silk
Speaker 3: pajamas and his beautiful estate, and yes he's doing labor,
Speaker 3: but he's doing it in the way that a retired
Speaker 3: gentleman might tend to his gardens in his old cars
Speaker 3: and stuff like that. And then we realize, oh he's Chance. Ooh,
Speaker 3: it tricked us. And that's very important, I think, because
Speaker 3: even though we're only tricked for five minutes, that helps
Speaker 3: us to understand how everyone else gets tricked throughout the film.
Speaker 3: And as we watch it, and we watch all these
Speaker 3: kind of idiots around him, and we were like, how
Speaker 3: could these people believe it? We also fall in love
Speaker 3: with him again as Chance, as this sort of furial
Speaker 3: wisdom maker, and so when he walks on water at
Speaker 3: the end, we're like, wow, he could do it. He
Speaker 3: could do it, and we've been tricked by it again,
Speaker 3: and I feel like the spell should be broken and
Speaker 3: we should ask ourselves, why does a Chance appeal to us?
Speaker 3: Because he does, He's in It's Peter Sell's performance is fantastic,
Speaker 3: dialogue's great. There's all kinds of reasons, but I think
Speaker 3: the film taps into something deeper in our own I'm
Speaker 3: probably saying too much, reading too much into this, but
Speaker 3: this is what occurred to me. Over the last couple
Speaker 3: of days. It taps into a kind of a desire
Speaker 3: for that simple wise man to save us or something
Speaker 3: like that, and you can see I'm still trying to
Speaker 3: figure this out. But and that spell should be broken
Speaker 3: because that's dangerous. Do you know what chance running the
Speaker 3: country some people do.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The other thing I really love watching it again this time,
Speaker 3: if you don't mind, is I really fell for Shirley MacLean.
Speaker 3: I've always liked her in it, but she's so good
Speaker 3: and understated. And there's a scene. It's the scene when
Speaker 3: she first kisses him and they're standing in the hallway,
Speaker 3: and that scene just feels like such a delicate seventies
Speaker 3: movie moment, and they play it so well, except for
Speaker 3: the scene where she's in the bedroom on the floor,
Speaker 3: which I like, I get hot and cold on that scene,
Speaker 3: the masturbation scene. But throughout the rest of the film
Speaker 3: she's just so understated, and she grows into it so much.
Speaker 3: From the scene in the limousine where she's like a
Speaker 3: little worried she's gonna get sued, she doesn't know what's
Speaker 3: going on, and then as she just develops this fondness
Speaker 3: for him, she acts it so well, and I really
Speaker 3: watching it this time felt like what I was saying
Speaker 3: about Alan b like we need him as the skeptic,
Speaker 3: but we need her not as the overly enthusiastic Rand
Speaker 3: and the president and all these people who are like
Speaker 3: willing to jump onto Chauncey, but just someone who sees
Speaker 3: this gentleness. It's probably part of why we fall for
Speaker 3: him again because she's so good. But her performance is
Speaker 3: just really lovely. And I think I got in previous
Speaker 3: viewings so caught up in Sellers and Jack Warden, who
Speaker 3: I always love, all these the kind of hyjinks of
Speaker 3: it that sometimes you miss how quiet and really restrained
Speaker 3: her performances.
Speaker 12: What are you working on these days?
Speaker 3: I have a couple projects. One is in line with
Speaker 3: this stuff, and it's a book about well, I hope
Speaker 3: it'll be a book about cinematography in the seventies, and
Speaker 3: so I want to talk about all these great figures,
Speaker 3: mostly men, almost all men. That's the area of Hollywood
Speaker 3: production that's still incredibly dominated by men. But Haskell Wexler,
Speaker 3: who I mentioned, Gordon Willis, Michael Chapman, Owen Roy's mean
Speaker 3: so many more that I'm forgetting right now, Lasso, Kolbots, Jakmunville, Mosh,
Speaker 3: these guys who did so much to shape the look
Speaker 3: of that era. And there was a lot of great
Speaker 3: stuff going on with new quiet handheld cameras, with the
Speaker 3: steady cam by the middle of the decade, all that
Speaker 3: sort of stuff. And how it was the cinematographers usually
Speaker 3: who would go to the directors and say, hey, can
Speaker 3: we try this Bill must Schigmann go into all men,
Speaker 3: let's flash the film. What Yeah, but it'll look cool
Speaker 3: if it works Petha, that sort of thing, and the
Speaker 3: director's going for And that's another part of that collaboration
Speaker 3: that we talked about at the beginning. And so that's
Speaker 3: actually the I'm working on a paper right now in
Speaker 3: the heat of the night, because I think that film
Speaker 3: and another film, Gunge and Hesse to Build gunfilm, those
Speaker 3: were two of the films that really like were the cinematographers.
Speaker 3: Clinton was at his name on Gungeon Hess where they
Speaker 3: decided we're going to shoot black skin in a way
Speaker 3: that you can see it because there's a whole history
Speaker 3: of Hollywood cinematography being geared towards whiteness, just in the
Speaker 3: way it highlighted greens and reds and things like that.
Speaker 3: And so both of those guys came from a black
Speaker 3: and white documentary background and when they switch to color,
Speaker 3: they're like, what is this? This doesn't work and I
Speaker 3: want this is Sydney Partier. He's going to look good
Speaker 3: in this film. And so that might be the first chapter,
Speaker 3: and I'll write about Lens Flair, so a mix of
Speaker 3: style and technology and the practitioners who brought it about.
Speaker 3: And then the other project is veering off in a
Speaker 3: different direction, and it's about male affection on screen, like
Speaker 3: mostly sort of platonic male or the lack of platonic
Speaker 3: male affection on screen. And that's going to be about
Speaker 3: film and television but in the twenty first century. So
Speaker 3: it's all kind of new area for me. But just
Speaker 3: that sort of I don't know, taboo of men expressing
Speaker 3: love and affection towards each other. So that's something I'm
Speaker 3: really excited about. But it's definitely a new avenue of
Speaker 3: research for me.
Speaker 12: Yeah, that one, Thund's really daunting.
Speaker 3: It is really daunting because you had to leave a
Speaker 3: lot out, just even in terms of like how you
Speaker 3: theorize gender and masculinity and this sort of stuff like
Speaker 3: queer studies and the bromance, which is not really what
Speaker 3: I want to talk about. I want to talk about
Speaker 3: non community. There'll be some comedy, but just the ways
Speaker 3: in which Hollywood and American indie cinema, American television prevent
Speaker 3: men from doing this or mock them for doing it.
Speaker 3: If that makes sense. Do you ever watch a friend
Speaker 3: We show Friends barely. I really wasn't a big fan.
Speaker 3: This is how I frame it for some people. There's
Speaker 3: an episode where joe and this won't be in the book,
Speaker 3: it might be in the introduction. Joey and Ross accidentally
Speaker 3: fall asleep on the couch together and they wake up
Speaker 3: and they're both like, this is the best nap I've
Speaker 3: ever had in my life. And the rest of the
Speaker 3: episode is them like, we should do it again. No,
Speaker 3: we can't do it again, but it's the best n
Speaker 3: app I've ever had in my life. I know, like
Speaker 3: when we get to a certain age, naps are important,
Speaker 3: and so they finally decide to do it, and they
Speaker 3: wake up and they feel so good, and they look
Speaker 3: up and the other friends are just standing there, arms crossed,
Speaker 3: looking at them with derision. And I find that fascinating
Speaker 3: because I feel like that's like in a microcosm, how
Speaker 3: Hollywood treats men being affectionate with each other. So it's
Speaker 3: just something like that.
Speaker 12: Is there a big place for me to keep up
Speaker 12: on you and your work?
Speaker 3: And you have a faculty page at Trinity College. It's
Speaker 3: fairly well updated. I have a YouTube channel that's been
Speaker 3: dormant for about a year, but I'm about to fire
Speaker 3: it up again. So that went on for about three
Speaker 3: years and I'm hoping to get it started again in
Speaker 3: the next couple of three weeks. Last year was very
Speaker 3: busy for me, so I kept saying next week, next week,
Speaker 3: and then I stopped. Sometimes I talk about my work
Speaker 3: a little bit there, but that's more just talking about
Speaker 3: movies and that sort of thing. But I'm on Blue Sky,
Speaker 3: so I've cut the other social media ties for now.
Speaker 3: If I have things come up, like if one of
Speaker 3: these book projects gets accepted, I'll certainly trumpet it there.
Speaker 12: Professor Hunter, thank you so much for your time. This
Speaker 12: is great.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for inviting me. I really appreciate it,
Speaker 3: and for reading my books.
Speaker 1: There's the place.
Speaker 8: I can get to where I'm safe from Mecida blues,
Speaker 8: and it's green, it's quogged. Oh the trouble ball.
Speaker 3: I had the bar you and love.
Speaker 8: You anything I got to do, got my head shot.
Speaker 8: See you keep all singing in.
Speaker 1: The blue rooms. Get fucking stayed here.
Speaker 8: Johnny's doded.
Speaker 12: All right, we are back, and we were talking about
Speaker 12: being there.
Speaker 2: As far as the ending, just quick, I think he
Speaker 2: had actually he was in conversation with somebody or something
Speaker 2: like that and kind of said, oh, you know, at
Speaker 2: this point in the movie, how could just walk on water?
Speaker 2: And then it was like ding ding ding ding. You know,
Speaker 2: he had that ending because he wasn't really feeling great
Speaker 2: about the endings he had. But I was thinking, you know,
Speaker 2: I think other people have said this, but coming home,
Speaker 2: you know, like it's very similar, you know, that ending
Speaker 2: of walking into water, that's very like it's kind of
Speaker 2: poignant when you think about it like that. That was
Speaker 2: another ending of a really amazing movie that he did.
Speaker 2: That's kind of weirdly similar.
Speaker 7: Speak about the ending of the film the credits where
Speaker 7: they show outtake after outtake, and I had read that
Speaker 7: Peter Sellers was very very unhappy about that, said, probably
Speaker 7: quite rightly, you've told this really effective tale and now
Speaker 7: you're cheapening it by showing some comedic out takes where
Speaker 7: I can't remember my lines, and I think I read
Speaker 7: that for the European release of the film, they just
Speaker 7: had the credits over TV static, which makes more sense
Speaker 7: if you're going to do that without it being a
Speaker 7: black screen with white credits going over it. But no,
Speaker 7: how did you two feel? Do you think it took
Speaker 7: away from the story? It was, Yeah, HiT's there.
Speaker 12: I kind of agree with Peter Sellers on that I
Speaker 12: don't know about this whole it ruined the spell kind
Speaker 12: of thing, but it's so different than the rest of
Speaker 12: the film, and it's so much more of what I
Speaker 12: associate with comedies, like very big comedies like big as
Speaker 12: an brash loud. You know. Obviously the most famous one
Speaker 12: for me is Cannibal Run.
Speaker 2: Because if I had enough time, I would take those
Speaker 2: rosary bleeds and stuck them up your nose.
Speaker 1: These bleeds and those bleeds there. If you're gonna take
Speaker 1: these up, take bleeds here.
Speaker 12: And then you watch some of like the Paul Figue
Speaker 12: stuff where you're just like, oh my god, this guy
Speaker 12: actually did not include every single punchline that was set
Speaker 12: on set, Like, oh, here's another twenty minutes of Melissa
Speaker 12: McCarthy just riffing so and some of those are actually funny,
Speaker 12: some of them aren't. But in uh, for me, like
Speaker 12: Cannibal Run, some of the best end credits ever. But
Speaker 12: that fits with the movie. It's not like, Oh, I
Speaker 12: had this idea in my head that Dom Delaize really
Speaker 12: was him. You know that he was kept in chaos,
Speaker 12: you know, none of this stuff. But I do agree
Speaker 12: that I think playing this over, playing the credits over
Speaker 12: black or static would have been a better choice. And
Speaker 12: I don't know if it cost him the Oscar, like
Speaker 12: Sellers was saying, I mean, he was up against some
Speaker 12: real heavy hitters that year. But yeah, I think it totally.
Speaker 12: It doesn't fit with the rest of the film. What
Speaker 12: do you think, in Susan, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I agree, it's it's very odd choice, really odd choice.
Speaker 2: I don't know what he was thinking, actually, you know,
Speaker 2: to me, it's like, why don't I don't even know
Speaker 2: why you'd want to see that? Really, I mean it's
Speaker 2: it's like not even that amusing, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I guess again, maybe he felt like, oh,
Speaker 2: everybody came here to see Peter Seller's cut up, you know,
Speaker 2: in a way, and I just feel like I need
Speaker 2: to do something to reward that people who are here
Speaker 2: to see, who are Sellers fans. You know, maybe that
Speaker 2: was the thought. I don't know, but I agree. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it's a shame.
Speaker 12: After two hours and seven minutes. We're going to use
Speaker 12: the last two minutes to.
Speaker 2: Show because you do get you immediately get to you
Speaker 2: feel like you're seeing you remember then you remember, oh,
Speaker 2: this is a man of a thousand voices, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, Like you just you know you immediately. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So it's really.
Speaker 12: Seller's performance in this is amazing. But there are certain
Speaker 12: moments where I'm just like I'm in awe of the performance,
Speaker 12: you know, like the use of the voice, that kind
Speaker 12: of flattening of the voice, that mid Atlantic type accent.
Speaker 12: You know, I think he based a lot of it
Speaker 12: on Stan Laurel, so I can kind of hear that.
Speaker 12: But when he's got the cigar and Rand is smoking
Speaker 12: the cigar and he's given one to chance, and you
Speaker 12: see him kind of like we were talking about how
Speaker 12: he's imitating people, he's kind of you know, monkey see
Speaker 12: monkey doo, and he still doesn't quite get it. And
Speaker 12: he just keeps trying to mess with the cigar, and
Speaker 12: then you get the match going and everything, and it's
Speaker 12: just like he doesn't know what the hell to do.
Speaker 12: And I just love that he's got that little bit
Speaker 12: of puzzlement on his face. He's not playing it to
Speaker 12: the rafters. You know, it's just very, very subtle. And
Speaker 12: that's the thing I like the most about this performance
Speaker 12: is just how subtle it is. But you know, he's
Speaker 12: this charric. I mean, he's inhabiting chance throughout the entire thing,
Speaker 12: and like you were saying at the end, when he's
Speaker 12: not doing that anymore, when he is flipping back into
Speaker 12: that character and trying to do the whole what you know,
Speaker 12: Raphael's message type of thing. I don't want to be
Speaker 12: reminded of that, because I've just seen this guy in
Speaker 12: this body and inhabiting this character for two hours and
Speaker 12: seven minutes. You know, I don't need the last two
Speaker 12: minutes to be oh, and here's the guy who actually
Speaker 12: did it. It's like, no, I know that he's an actor.
Speaker 12: I know that he has this amazing power. I've just
Speaker 12: witnessed it for all this time.
Speaker 7: This is one of those films where the lead actor.
Speaker 7: I watched that film and I don't see Petercella's acting.
Speaker 7: I see Chance the Gardener. That's that's it. It's very
Speaker 7: rare for me where I see someone that so inhabits
Speaker 7: I forget that it's an actor. But this is one
Speaker 7: of those rare cases. And everyone sort of talks about
Speaker 7: Peter Seller's comedic genius and his pencheon for using voices.
Speaker 7: I mean, I think you even use the word there mic,
Speaker 7: but I think there's so much in his face, just
Speaker 7: his facial expressions. It's a blank slate or where he
Speaker 7: shows fear because he's being asked a question on television
Speaker 7: that he doesn't know how he's going to respond, so things, Well,
Speaker 7: I better bring up the garden. It's the one thing
Speaker 7: I know. He just has that blank look on his face,
Speaker 7: and when he says things that the audience finds funny,
Speaker 7: but he's just saying completely straight face, and he looks
Speaker 7: and says, oh good, and he just says that little
Speaker 7: while everything about his face is perfect. That's where all
Speaker 7: the acting is not just in the voice. I wanted
Speaker 7: to sort of bring up one of the Peter Soller's
Speaker 7: film that I watched a few months ago. I think
Speaker 7: they were talking about this on the Pure Cinema podcast.
Speaker 7: They went and mentioned this Peter Solla's film from nineteen
Speaker 7: sixty one called Never Let Go, And this is one
Speaker 7: one I hadn't even heard of. And I always sort
Speaker 7: of associated Seller's with comedic roles, with maybe occasionally something
Speaker 7: that was comedic with a slight sense of drama. So
Speaker 7: like in Hoffman, that's no comedy, but it's not. His
Speaker 7: character isn't completely sinister or anything like that. He's just creepy.
Speaker 7: But in Never Let Go, he plays a really dangerous gangster,
Speaker 7: a really dangerous thug. And I think there's a scene
Speaker 7: late in the film where the main protagonist comes up
Speaker 7: against him and they get into a fistfight and they're
Speaker 7: beating the stuffing out of each other. I never thought
Speaker 7: I'd say Peter Seller's action film hero, but he is
Speaker 7: a nasty piece of shit, I think. I mean, if
Speaker 7: you just sort of think about Michael Gambon's character and
Speaker 7: the cook, the thief, he's nasty like that. But if
Speaker 7: you were to say to me, can you imagine Peter
Speaker 7: Seller's playing a character like that? Obvious said nah. But
Speaker 7: you watch this and you realize my god, he's a
Speaker 7: really seriously good actor. If he was only a man
Speaker 7: of multiple voices, he wouldn't have helped that roll up.
Speaker 7: But he does so well and a film that your
Speaker 7: affection of Susan as well.
Speaker 2: You know, he really had ambitions at that point in
Speaker 2: his career to be a serious actor. He wanted He
Speaker 2: was really resentful when he was in Casino Royal, the
Speaker 2: Bond movie, that he wasn't really being a serious Bond.
Speaker 11: You know.
Speaker 2: He thought he could be a serious Bond. You know,
Speaker 2: he wanted that, and so when he did that movie,
Speaker 2: it was, you know, I think, a purposeful attempt to
Speaker 2: move his career in a different direction, but actually got panned.
Speaker 2: And I agree that I think it's very good. I
Speaker 2: like it like I think it's very powerful acting. But
Speaker 2: people at the time thought he was chewing up the
Speaker 2: scenery like he got I don't know, for some reason,
Speaker 2: it just didn't do well and they felt like like
Speaker 2: he didn't go back to that because of the I
Speaker 2: believe that because of the criticism he got.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 12: I read something about that too, and yeah, that he
Speaker 12: was pretty sad about the reactions to those roles, and
Speaker 12: I don't know, Yeah, people said, yeah, that he was
Speaker 12: trueing up the scenery, and then I think some people
Speaker 12: weren't taking them seriously. They maybe he already had that
Speaker 12: reputation as being a comedian at that time, and it's
Speaker 12: just like, oh, look at what he's trying to do.
Speaker 12: He can't do it.
Speaker 7: He had already done like years of the Goons. So
Speaker 7: how surreal is that.
Speaker 2: He was an institution? I mean, if you lived, you know,
Speaker 2: in that time in the UK, everybody listened to the
Speaker 2: Goon Show. I mean, so that was the radio show
Speaker 2: he did with Spike Milligan. And I always forget the risk. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I always who I love, who I love, And I
Speaker 2: never remember his name. I mean, he was just you know,
Speaker 2: people knew who he was, and it was so over
Speaker 2: the top. It was so cartoonish. Yeah, it's a little
Speaker 2: bit like you know, Jim Carrey, you know, like it's
Speaker 2: like or Robin Williams, where it's like really really cartoonish
Speaker 2: and it takes a while to kind of like readjust
Speaker 2: but then you're like, oh, well, and that's the thing,
Speaker 2: is that kind of comedian you get so good at
Speaker 2: at a range being you know, doing arrange, you become
Speaker 2: an amazing actor people don't realize how hard comedy is,
Speaker 2: you know, and that's why those people can pull those
Speaker 2: kinds of things off.
Speaker 7: He Robin Williams was able to do both parts and
Speaker 7: no one bat an eyelid. I mean, I think, like
Speaker 7: I don't think it was his first film, but certainly
Speaker 7: his first big film in the world, according to garp
Speaker 7: and he does both comedy and drama in the one film.
Speaker 7: I mean, I think I heard him once say on
Speaker 7: a comedy album reality what a concept. Someone calls out
Speaker 7: for him to, hey, do MOREK and he says, I
Speaker 7: don't do MOREK here. That's why I come here to
Speaker 7: do something different. And that could really apply to his
Speaker 7: whole career. And I imagine that Robin Williams would have
Speaker 7: been a huge Peter Sollas fan. And it's just fortunate
Speaker 7: for Robin that he got to do a range of
Speaker 7: comedic and dramatic roles in such a shame that Peter
Speaker 7: Solace didn't get to do as much as he would
Speaker 7: have liked to have done. But just sort of coming
Speaker 7: back to being there for a second where he does
Speaker 7: get to do this so called serious role. I think
Speaker 7: that another film which won't get the kudos that it
Speaker 7: did at one time. It's not seen as being appropriate nowadays.
Speaker 7: But I love Blake it Wou's filmed the Party and
Speaker 7: I see a lot of Kharundai v. Bakshi his character
Speaker 7: in the party, in Chance the Gardener, they're both very
Speaker 7: humane people and there's chaos of sorts going on around them,
Speaker 7: but they're both lovely people that don't want to cause
Speaker 7: any fuss because of them. I'd like to think that
Speaker 7: Chance is in if not an extension of his character
Speaker 7: in the Party, but there's something of that character in
Speaker 7: his character, his humanity.
Speaker 12: The Chance is doing all of this without malice. You know,
Speaker 12: you're talking about like he doesn't want to inconvenience anybody,
Speaker 12: and he doesn't. He just wants to fit in a
Speaker 12: little and just basically he wants and he wants a television,
Speaker 12: you know, he wants for him those are the basic necessities, right,
Speaker 12: And once he finds it again. He had that at
Speaker 12: the old Man and he switches for another old man,
Speaker 12: and here he is. We get these parallels between there,
Speaker 12: we get the deaths of the two old men and everything.
Speaker 12: But he's so concerned. He's just like, is he going
Speaker 12: to close up the house. Is this going to happen
Speaker 12: to me again? He just wants this and he it's
Speaker 12: not like he's desperate and like, oh what am I
Speaker 12: going to do just to maintain my position? You know,
Speaker 12: he just wants to be. You know, I guess that's
Speaker 12: where the title comes from, you know, just being there.
Speaker 12: He just wants to be, wants to live, wants to
Speaker 12: do his thing, which is to watch TV and eat supper, lunch,
Speaker 12: breakfast whatever. That's it.
Speaker 2: Being there that he's just said. That title made me
Speaker 2: think of reading that script that Kazinski wrote. I mean,
Speaker 2: we I only read the seventy eight script. I think
Speaker 2: it was an earlier script I haven't read. But the
Speaker 2: last script he wrote before Brad Jones took over. Two
Speaker 2: unusual things in it that are a little annoying. I
Speaker 2: actually was surprised how much it did match the Ultimate
Speaker 2: movie actually. But one is that they keep he keeps
Speaker 2: using the word chance as if like kind of like
Speaker 2: as a joke, Like he keeps like having characters say
Speaker 2: the word chance over and ever again, which is like
Speaker 2: kind of strange, like all leading up to even when
Speaker 2: you're meeting Chance. And the second thing is he inserts
Speaker 2: himself did you see that he has, like on someone's
Speaker 2: bedside table, being the book being there, and the author's
Speaker 2: photo is seen in the movie, you know, in the
Speaker 2: script it's you're supposed to see the author's photo. And
Speaker 2: at one point in another part of the movie, it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: that we have plenty of great literature. Here's some Kozinski
Speaker 2: or something. It's just so funny. He just inserts himself
Speaker 2: right into I don't know, I thought that was hysterical.
Speaker 2: I've never seen anybody do that before.
Speaker 12: It's kind of like when Clive Cussler wrote himself into
Speaker 12: some of the Dirk Pit books.
Speaker 2: And you're just like, were doing this.
Speaker 12: It's this embarrassing, Just stop it. Yeah, there was a
Speaker 12: guy at one of the parties that I thought was
Speaker 12: Kazinski later on in the film, and I'm just like,
Speaker 12: I hope he's not biging a cameo. That's a little annoying.
Speaker 2: Kazensky again, like he was an interesting character. I mean,
Speaker 2: he you know, he's friends with Polanski. He grew up
Speaker 2: in you know, in Poland, in you know, during the
Speaker 2: war and survived by pretending to be a Catholic, you
Speaker 2: know that kind of thing.
Speaker 12: Well, and then there's some question about whether he yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's the thing too. Yeah, so he's like, so, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's That's actually an interesting thing is he's in a
Speaker 2: way could be kind of looked up on as a
Speaker 2: little bit of a cipher because he seems to have
Speaker 2: woven White a story for himself that yet he even had,
Speaker 2: you know, he came up with a degree from Columbia
Speaker 2: that didn't exist. There's a lot of accusations of plagiarism
Speaker 2: or lifting you know, gigantic things, themes and whatnot, and
Speaker 2: even to get into America. I think he like created
Speaker 2: a foundation and it was like he just was really
Speaker 2: good at lying. And so it's interesting to wonder a
Speaker 2: lot of people think, you know, he didn't know English
Speaker 2: well enough to have written a lot of the English
Speaker 2: works that he claims to have written. And plus the
Speaker 2: styles are different from work to work to work, So
Speaker 2: it is kind of interesting when you think about this
Speaker 2: story and compared to the author, the original author.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and I had no idea about any of that
Speaker 12: until I started looking into this, and I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 12: this is this is kind of fascinating, And it is
Speaker 12: funny that he was friends with Polanski because some of
Speaker 12: those the stories you know from like the Pianist and everything.
Speaker 12: I was just like, well, this kind of reminds me
Speaker 12: a little bit of what Kazinski was saying. Like I said,
Speaker 12: I haven't seen The Painted Bird yet, but yeah, from
Speaker 12: what I understand it was a lot of people were
Speaker 12: just like, yeah, no, this really didn't happen to this guy,
Speaker 12: and we have proof of him being here and here
Speaker 12: and here, not living in those Catholic missions or Catholic churches.
Speaker 12: So I'm like, Okay, you know, I don't know if
Speaker 12: it's all apocryphal or what it is, but I think
Speaker 12: that article was it in the.
Speaker 2: Voice of like eighty three or something like that a.
Speaker 12: Little bit after this, a few years after this, but yeah,
Speaker 12: I got to see him interviewed on Dekaviot and I
Speaker 12: really enjoyed on the extras on the Blue Ray having
Speaker 12: Gene Chalatte interviewing Peter Sellers. That was fantastic because Gene's Shalot,
Speaker 12: I mean, he's a living cartoon character, and then you
Speaker 12: have the other living cartoon character with Peter Sellers there
Speaker 12: and he's just cracking up Gene as usual. Very easy
Speaker 12: to crack him. Up, but it was a great interview.
Speaker 7: If the film were to be made and set in
Speaker 7: the twenty first century, where we're less dependent on say,
Speaker 7: network television, and everyone's getting their information, they're getting their
Speaker 7: entertainment and maybe their information from the internet, what would
Speaker 7: Chance be obsessed with. He'd be obsessed with gardening, and
Speaker 7: would he be actively looking for things? He is not
Speaker 7: necessarily intelligent or enough to be curious, but it's an
Speaker 7: interesting question if this if the story was remade and
Speaker 7: really and set in the twenty first century I wanted
Speaker 7: to have, that would go.
Speaker 2: I think you couldn't have the story. You wouldn't have
Speaker 2: That's why it's like we are. We've come into an
Speaker 2: age where you can't have the story can't exist unless
Speaker 2: he lived in a house with no internet. So that
Speaker 2: would be the only way, which of course could be
Speaker 2: obviously you would have to do that. But as far
Speaker 2: as like, if he had access to internet, forget all
Speaker 2: bets are off. You have access to the entire universe.
Speaker 2: So it's completely it's the opposite in a way. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know you could do a flip of this, you
Speaker 2: know where a person like you know, just I don't
Speaker 2: know believe like a person who wholly believes every single thing.
Speaker 2: Imagine something like that where they have no guidance whatsoever,
Speaker 2: they have no people raising them. They're so naive that
Speaker 2: they believe everything that they see on the internet and
Speaker 2: have this like crazy idea of what the world is
Speaker 2: like before they go out and see what it's really like.
Speaker 7: That would be a well, doesn't happen soon?
Speaker 2: It couldn't possibly happen. Nobody's living in a basement. No,
Speaker 2: that couldn't happen.
Speaker 12: Yeah, it would be another Jim Carrey film. They would
Speaker 12: have cameras on him at all times and just watching
Speaker 12: what he does or something. You'd be very into kombucha gardening.
Speaker 2: Definitely a The TV.
Speaker 12: Appearance that he has doesn't happen until an hour and
Speaker 12: twenty minutes into this film. And to your point from earlier,
Speaker 12: like everybody's watching it. We get to see every single
Speaker 12: person in the story, even going all the way back
Speaker 12: to David Clennan who came in as Thomas Franklin, the lawyer.
Speaker 12: We get to get back with his story. We see
Speaker 12: the President watching it, we see Louise watching it, we
Speaker 12: see Melvin Douglas's character watching it. So it's that whole thing,
Speaker 12: Like you're saying, like we had three channels, three main
Speaker 12: channels here, you know, like nobody's checking out, UHF, everybody's
Speaker 12: watching this one particular show. And I'd love to this
Speaker 12: whole theme of the president becoming impotent when chances on
Speaker 12: TV that he's so upset that he's when he says,
Speaker 12: what do you think about the president's stance on economics?
Speaker 12: And he's like, well, which one? And the audience loves that,
Speaker 12: just like, oh, the president can't make up his mind
Speaker 12: or whatever, and that seems to set Warden off. And
Speaker 12: then we come back to him one more time later
Speaker 12: on in the film and he still can't get it
Speaker 12: up for his wife, and she's just like, well, this
Speaker 12: happens to people, but maybe you should see somebody kind
Speaker 12: of say I love that. I love that his power
Speaker 12: is such that he kills the virility of the president.
Speaker 12: Basically the reason why the finance guys at the end
Speaker 12: are like, let's get rid of the president. I mean,
Speaker 12: it's not directly related to that, but he's seen as
Speaker 12: a very impotent human being. After they now have Chauncey
Speaker 12: Gardner where they can put him up on this pedestal Hey,
Speaker 12: he's got no past. Nobody knows who this guy is.
Speaker 12: This is going to be perfect. No one can, you know,
Speaker 12: dig out any of those things. There's no what was
Speaker 12: that monkey business with Gary Hart or like any of
Speaker 12: these like old scandals kind of thing. Not that they
Speaker 12: care about that stuff anymore. I mean, you know, you
Speaker 12: could write people and do all this stuff now and
Speaker 12: have thirty four felon accounts and still get elected. But
Speaker 12: back in nineteen seventy nine it was a much different story.
Speaker 12: And that this is right before the election of Reagan.
Speaker 12: You know, a person who ends up having dementia. I
Speaker 12: don't know when he started to get this dementia, but
Speaker 12: by nineteen eighty eight, full blown dementia. It's pretty funny.
Speaker 2: And getting his information from an astrologer. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's so it's so interesting like that Reagan. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 2: I think about that a lot. Yeah, you know, And
Speaker 2: I never noticed when I read the script, the written
Speaker 2: print script, because you can't quite hear everything very carefully
Speaker 2: in that funeral scene where the pall bearers are carrying,
Speaker 2: but they're actually saying rand wants him to be president.
Speaker 2: Like I didn't realize it took he took it that far.
Speaker 2: I knew Ran when I'm on the board, Rand wants
Speaker 2: him to be president of the United States. Like you
Speaker 2: actually hear them say that, or at least it's in
Speaker 2: the script. Maybe they changed it for the film, but
Speaker 2: you know, that was definitely one of the last versions
Speaker 2: of the script, and that's such a betrayal. Like you know,
Speaker 2: you sort of think about like how the President after
Speaker 2: he sees Rand, he's like, oh, we have all this
Speaker 2: information on Rand, like find out about this guy Gardner,
Speaker 2: you know, and then suddenly Rant's just like another person
Speaker 2: he has information on and then you know, but it's
Speaker 2: the opposite where he also, like to the president, they
Speaker 2: they only make a subtle reference to how the entire
Speaker 2: economy is apparently collapsing and it's just like a really
Speaker 2: bad time for America right now while this film is
Speaker 2: taking place, like unemployment is astronomical and people are paying
Speaker 2: a million dollars for groceries, and it sounds like, you know,
Speaker 2: everybody wants to replace this president, including everybody at the top.
Speaker 2: You know, they want him replaced. They actually say something
Speaker 2: like we can't have him run again or something like
Speaker 2: that that actually comes up. So yeah, it's it's even where,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, they really want him to be president.
Speaker 2: Rand really wants to be president. It's pretty pretty interesting.
Speaker 12: It's almost like the price of eggs work too high.
Speaker 2: It was a different time. It was also interesting is
Speaker 2: they never say what political affiliation they are, right, that
Speaker 2: never comes up. That would never happen. Now, I just
Speaker 2: want to talk about the music for a second, because
Speaker 2: Johnny Mandel. Yeah, so I think one of the you know,
Speaker 2: one of the important elements, you know, like the television
Speaker 2: clips are kind of a soundtrack the obviously the the
Speaker 2: the Deodata is that Deodata is that his name, Theodora.
Speaker 2: His stuff is like ecentric but punctuating this and of
Speaker 2: course all throughout in a very end, very beautifully is
Speaker 2: the music of Johnny Mandel, who wrote one of the
Speaker 2: most beautiful songs in cinema, Suicide is Painless, you know,
Speaker 2: from mash And this is based on Eric satis music.
Speaker 2: You know, if if you can hear that, it's it's
Speaker 2: sort of like it's based on I think not quite that,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I mean it's like, you know, he used
Speaker 2: Eric Satiz's greatest inspiration while I was writing this, and
Speaker 2: it's just I think it's just another element that makes
Speaker 2: this a masterpiece. I just think that music is heartbreaking
Speaker 2: and gorgeous and subtle and not over you know, not overdone.
Speaker 7: We've gone and spoken on the program before, Mike about
Speaker 7: the use of music in seventies cinema. You know, Trouble
Speaker 7: Man had that great Marvin Gaye score, and a couple
Speaker 7: of years before this, I think was it a couple
Speaker 7: of years when I mean, not that we've spoken about
Speaker 7: this on the show, but Sorcerer William Friedkin's use of
Speaker 7: Tangerine Dream and use of music in seventies cinema, and
Speaker 7: certainly John Williams had a lot to do bringing back
Speaker 7: orchestral music. It was big, it was brash, it was orchestral,
Speaker 7: and films like the Teknapellam one two three, which used
Speaker 7: I think a David Shire Funk score. Everything was big,
Speaker 7: regardless of whether as band or orchestral. And to your point, Susan,
Speaker 7: maybe apart from the Dear Dato moment at the beginning
Speaker 7: of the film, all the music there is noticeable, but
Speaker 7: it's quiet, and that maybe seems to go against the grains,
Speaker 7: certainly for what ended up being released as a mainstream
Speaker 7: feature in the seventies. I mean, I don't know. Probably
Speaker 7: people listening to this are thinking, you, dickhead. There's one
Speaker 7: hundred films we can name you without even doing any
Speaker 7: research that cataract that. But I mean, even if you
Speaker 7: watch the comparatively art house films of the Woody Allen
Speaker 7: of that period, they're using wacky nineteen twenties nineteen thirties
Speaker 7: jazz in a sort of wacky sort of context. It's
Speaker 7: there to be noticed. But here the music, you still
Speaker 7: do notice it, and it is beautiful, but it's not
Speaker 7: there to take over the story. And look, I'm a
Speaker 7: big believer in recognizing soundtracks and thinking that they should
Speaker 7: be a part of the story. I know there's some
Speaker 7: people who say that a good soundtrack is one that
Speaker 7: you don't notice. I don't believe that at all. But
Speaker 7: in this case, the music is heard, but it's subtle,
Speaker 7: just like the film is. And I think it would
Speaker 7: have been a completely different film than a film all
Speaker 7: the poorer if they would have used music that was
Speaker 7: there and the emotionally tug on your heart strings, Oh
Speaker 7: she's falling in love with chance? Oh chances being made
Speaker 7: fun of on TV or something I agree with you
Speaker 7: one hundred percent that that was of music. He was
Speaker 7: absolutely perfect and in a lot of ways went against
Speaker 7: the grain of what else is going on in seventy cinema.
Speaker 12: Hall ashually was no slouch when it came to music.
Speaker 12: I mean, two films before this, he was doing Bound
Speaker 12: for Glory, which is all about Woody Guthrie, so using
Speaker 12: all the Woody Guthrie music and then the score that
Speaker 12: he did well, the score quote unquote all of the
Speaker 12: Cat Stevens music that he was using for Harold and Maud.
Speaker 12: I mean, that is freaking brilliant, the use of that music,
Speaker 12: and especially now that I'm more used to Kat Stevens,
Speaker 12: Like seeing that movie the first time, I was like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 12: this is cool. But now having and I'm sorry I'm
Speaker 12: calling him to Kat Stevens, I'm dead naming him. I'm
Speaker 12: so sorry because I can never suffer. Thank you. To
Speaker 12: use use of Islam's music in the way that he
Speaker 12: did was just oh so good. And yeah, so he
Speaker 12: knows what he's doing. And obviously as a you know,
Speaker 12: the editor that he was, he's just all about like
Speaker 12: all right, the juxtaposition of these images with this music
Speaker 12: and I know that he did a whole one of
Speaker 12: his last gigs I think was doing stuff for the
Speaker 12: Rolling Stone, So he's just like, very very into the
Speaker 12: music stuff as well. And yeah, I agree like the
Speaker 12: score is subtle, but it comes in at the right time,
Speaker 12: you know. I love that you pointed out earlier, Susan,
Speaker 12: the use of basketball Jones of one of my favorite
Speaker 12: Chiech and Shong songs. And yeah, like you said this,
Speaker 12: the TV becomes the soundtrack for so much of this
Speaker 12: that the Mandel stuff when it does come in, it
Speaker 12: is noticeable. It does enhance, but so much of this
Speaker 12: is just the TV as that background and commenting on
Speaker 12: what's happening on. And the other thing that I haven't
Speaker 12: mentioned is that it's not like a raucous comedy like
Speaker 12: I was saying, it's not Canniball run. But it is
Speaker 12: a comedy and we're there and as the audience, we're
Speaker 12: the only ones allowed to laugh at this. No one
Speaker 12: inside of the movie is laughing at Chance. Like you
Speaker 12: get Louise being upset about Chance, you get Disart being
Speaker 12: a little bit upset him, and David Clennan, but no
Speaker 12: one's laughing at him. We're the ones that are laughing
Speaker 12: at him. We're the ones that see the humor in
Speaker 12: this situation. Nobody inside the screen sees that. We're the
Speaker 12: ones that are privy to something they're not privy too.
Speaker 7: Going away from being there for a second, but just
Speaker 7: because you were talking about the use of Cat Stevens
Speaker 7: songs in Harold and Mood, this week I watched for
Speaker 7: the second time my favorite film of the year, which
Speaker 7: was The Holdovers, which a lot of people have been saying,
Speaker 7: and I agree, is like a homage to a Plash's
Speaker 7: knew how Ashby's directorial style, and certainly, even if you
Speaker 7: didn't pick up on the hal Ashby aspect, the titles,
Speaker 7: everything about it shows that it is trying to be
Speaker 7: a seventies style film. But there's the use of music
Speaker 7: in the film, the folky music. Thinking, Oh, this is
Speaker 7: definitely trying to bring the use of Cat Stevens slash
Speaker 7: use of Islam into this film. There's I can't remember
Speaker 7: who who composes the songs for this film, but I
Speaker 7: think actually at one point I didn't remember this, but
Speaker 7: I was watching the film again this week with Joanne
Speaker 7: and she said, oh, that song that's out of Harold
Speaker 7: and mood. So there was a Cat Stevens song in
Speaker 7: the soundtrack of that. Did have either of you watched
Speaker 7: The Holdovers?
Speaker 2: Yeah, i'd seen it. It was was that two years ago?
Speaker 2: Am I crazy?
Speaker 14: No?
Speaker 7: I came out. Well, in Australia, we always get things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like it's been a really long time.
Speaker 2: It's a bit.
Speaker 7: Yeah, came out here at maybe fevery March of this year.
Speaker 7: Maybe it had a twenty twenty three season in the
Speaker 7: the US.
Speaker 2: No, you could be right. It just feels really long
Speaker 2: for me.
Speaker 7: But yeah, I'm very selective now with my Blu Ray
Speaker 7: purchases running out of space. But The Holdovers was one
Speaker 7: film I thought, no, I have to own a copy
Speaker 7: of this one and watched it because what else am
Speaker 7: I going to do on Christmas Eve? Watched it this
Speaker 7: week and I'm decided I'm going to watch it. That's
Speaker 7: going to be a Christmas Eve movie for me every year.
Speaker 7: Just absolutely beautiful, but very hal ashby and its approach
Speaker 7: and once again very subtle use of music and even
Speaker 7: trying to pay tribute through the style of Kat Stevens,
Speaker 7: slash use of Islam slash whatever. His birth name was,
Speaker 7: Stephen Georgio.
Speaker 2: I think just as a final fight on there. It's
Speaker 2: just taking us all the way back to the opening,
Speaker 2: opening opening. Maybe it's one of my favorite movie openings ever.
Speaker 2: And I'm really serious. It starts silent. You almost feel like,
Speaker 2: oh is my audio on? You know when you rewatch it,
Speaker 2: But then the TV clicks on. He has an alarm TV.
Speaker 2: It clicks on at six am or whatever, and that
Speaker 2: orchestra comes in and it is again. So this is
Speaker 2: just exactly what we're just talking about, like how he's
Speaker 2: a genius. That's hal Ashby. I mean, that's totally hawl
Speaker 2: Ashby came up with that. It's just gorgeous. I just
Speaker 2: love the opening to this movie. So anyway, that's taking
Speaker 2: us back to the beginning, and then the ending is
Speaker 2: perfect muscle. It's got a perfect first few minutes, perfect
Speaker 2: last few minutes, and everything in between's pretty good too.
Speaker 12: All Right, we're going to take another break and play
Speaker 12: PREV for next week's show right after these brief messages.
Speaker 14: Without getting emotional, to declaim loud and clear the cold
Speaker 14: and serious strophy you were about to hear, pay attention
Speaker 14: to its message and defend yourselves, or it will certainly
Speaker 14: be painfully seared like our brand on your troubled imagination?
Speaker 1: Eth does that feel? Does that feel? Let it fem
Speaker 1: out there?
Speaker 2: Sorday m hm. The one really what I did a
Speaker 2: nou su Johnson.
Speaker 12: And is a pacis a female O care the murder.
Speaker 2: Look at you.
Speaker 4: Man passes from an upper stage of savagery to a
Speaker 4: lower stage of barbarism.
Speaker 11: Weekend cheerly justifies the passion and fortune in young America.
Speaker 1: See it.
Speaker 12: That's right, everybody's working for the weekend. We'll be back
Speaker 12: next week with a discussion of the Jean Luke Godard film.
Speaker 12: Until then, I want to thank my co hosts, Susan
Speaker 12: and Morris. Morris, what is the latest with.
Speaker 7: You, sir? Well, At the time of recording this, I've
Speaker 7: just released the latest episode of Love That Album. I
Speaker 7: get together with a fellow from the Love That Album
Speaker 7: Facebook group community, ed Ross, a fellow jazz fanatic, and
Speaker 7: we decided to pick four albums from the ECM Record label,
Speaker 7: great label that was started up in Germany in nineteen
Speaker 7: sixty nine a run by follow called Manfred Eicher, who
Speaker 7: I believe is still very hands on with a company
Speaker 7: all these years later, and of so many great artists
Speaker 7: on that label, Pat Metheny, Keith Jarrett, John Abercrombie, Gary Burton,
Speaker 7: Ralph Towner, tons and tons and tons of others. So
Speaker 7: we pick four albums that we want to discuss and
Speaker 7: as love that album's way, as we also drift in
Speaker 7: and out of other topics and other albums from great
Speaker 7: musicians on the label. In See Here World. We actually
Speaker 7: took a break this month, but we'll be back in January.
Speaker 7: Tim's picked the next film, which is strictly speaking not
Speaker 7: really a music film, but music plays a strong art
Speaker 7: in the presentation, and that's nineteen eighty one's heavy Metal,
Speaker 7: So that'll be a next month's pick. But yeah, another
Speaker 7: good year, we hope ahead of us for both and Susan,
Speaker 7: how about yourself.
Speaker 2: Well, I've been taking a very big break because I've
Speaker 2: ended up going back to school. So just as inspiration
Speaker 2: for anybody else, I'm in my fifties and I'm getting
Speaker 2: a PhD. Man, I'm getting a PhD in developmental psychology. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because the kids are not all right and I'm gonna
Speaker 2: try to pitch it and hopefully get them back on track.
Speaker 2: But anyway, yeah, it's a fascinating area, and so that's
Speaker 2: what I'm doing. But yeah, just so people know, that's
Speaker 2: why I haven't been doing too much. Might do an
Speaker 2: occasional Kevin Geeks out here in New York City around there,
Speaker 2: but in Austin, Texas. Get a degree at a very
Speaker 2: late age. But everybody should give that a try if
Speaker 2: they can, because it's it's pretty it's pretty amazing actually
Speaker 2: to do this at this age, and I'm really really
Speaker 2: enjoying it, to tell you the truth.
Speaker 12: Well, thank you so much folks for being on the show.
Speaker 12: Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear
Speaker 12: more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some
Speaker 12: of the other shows that I work on. They are
Speaker 12: all available at Waitingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our
Speaker 12: Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit
Speaker 12: patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get
Speaker 12: helps some Projection Booth take over the.
Speaker 9: World things, boost recordings at the.
Speaker 8: Listening to.
Speaker 9: At times best Stu