Speaker 1: Oh jeez, books shoot.
Speaker 2: People pay good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater, they are cold sodas,
Speaker 3: hot popcorn and no monsters.
Speaker 2: In the protection booths. Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 4: Or land Elios are not taking us out for the seasons.
Speaker 4: Amiga Syria. It goes west to Pendaca.
Speaker 5: Del menu amasacs, he said, goes to Marilla is.
Speaker 4: Let's see become more dee Paris, gabrila, petitoto, miel al mandras,
Speaker 4: ignasa la signor, turnkeys, curricula media ka extra.
Speaker 3: M calm and signors.
Speaker 4: They are panic, no innother and as it was you
Speaker 4: costa man, mister Thomas, cantaos amigo.
Speaker 3: It's the noise cartillombrujo mi dagi no ela combe noise.
Speaker 4: It sees the mas stalking sliply, said he the younger man.
Speaker 4: Well you stay, agena, said he say, okay, well you
Speaker 4: stay again, said.
Speaker 1: Sad Vitia.
Speaker 6: Sorry in nomine.
Speaker 3: Patrick, but conda bakss.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host. Mike White
Speaker 2: joined me once again. Mister rob sa Mary, you.
Speaker 6: Know I think lower classes are less sensitive to pain.
Speaker 6: It's true.
Speaker 2: Also joining us as mister Miguel Janzo.
Speaker 1: Hey, I'm here back to the Mediterranean area.
Speaker 2: This week we are looking at Louis Benwell's The Exterminating Angel,
Speaker 2: re leased in nineteen sixty two. The film stars unruly
Speaker 2: number of actors in an unusual situation. The situation really
Speaker 2: is the movie. So I'm going to give a spoiler
Speaker 2: warning before we go any further. If you do want
Speaker 2: anything ruined, go ahead, turn off the podcast and come
Speaker 2: back after you've seen the film. So, rob when was
Speaker 2: the first time we saw The Exterminating Angel? And what
Speaker 2: did you think?
Speaker 6: I have to think that this may have been another
Speaker 6: one of those that I got deeper in after. They
Speaker 6: talk a lot about working at the bookstore, and I
Speaker 6: worked at the bookstore. I had a coworker named Mike
Speaker 6: who was very much into film. He's the one who
Speaker 6: got me into Jurowski and Herzog and all of this.
Speaker 6: So I remember at the time it was always easier
Speaker 6: to get the later French films, those were much easier
Speaker 6: to get in the stage, the Mexican air films, there
Speaker 6: was a couple you could get. I remember I held
Speaker 6: off on Robinson Caruso for a long time, so I'm like,
Speaker 6: I don't know, but there was this, and I believe
Speaker 6: that if my memory serves, they were. Again we've talked
Speaker 6: about New Yorker, So New Yorker. I remember those box designs,
Speaker 6: and I think it was probably I went to Thomas
Speaker 6: Videos before I worked there, and I remember getting it,
Speaker 6: and I think at the time, kind of like the
Speaker 6: first time I watched Discreet Charm, I was like, I
Speaker 6: don't know if I get it. I don't know if
Speaker 6: I like it, but I like some of the humor.
Speaker 6: Like I say, opening, No, I don't personally feel that
Speaker 6: lower classes are less sensitive to pain. That is actually
Speaker 6: one of the quotes from the movie.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: I thought that's just how you felt about things and
Speaker 2: really needed to express it here in this podcast. Okay, Yes,
Speaker 2: I'm glad you clarified.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, I just want to make sure that
Speaker 6: people understand. You know, I'm not a class trader. I'm
Speaker 6: as poor as y'all. When you're not used to a
Speaker 6: movie that is plot driven. Basically, American film is very
Speaker 6: plot centric, So to see a movie like this for
Speaker 6: the first time, or like I said when I said
Speaker 6: discreet term, you can go back and listen to that episode,
Speaker 6: I was like, I don't understand what's going on, Like,
Speaker 6: why isn't this progressing? I mean this does progress, so
Speaker 6: seriously it does, but I think even more so than
Speaker 6: just green Chart. But it was just this feeling of
Speaker 6: I'm trying to get what's in here, I'm trying to
Speaker 6: understand certain aspects, and it's like, of course, on repeated viewings,
Speaker 6: much more really enjoy it. It's one of you know,
Speaker 6: my favorite suppose going to do a tier of when
Speaker 6: Will films, But sadly again it's like it's you know,
Speaker 6: Criterion has it. You can watch it on streaming or
Speaker 6: I used to have it on DVD and Blu ray.
Speaker 6: I think they did a Blu ray of it. But
Speaker 6: it's like all that Mexican era stuff, there's some of
Speaker 6: them that are still really hard to get in the States,
Speaker 6: even like Los Aldadaldos, you know, which should be lauded
Speaker 6: as an important film, and for some reason that thing
Speaker 6: is not available. So there must be some sort of
Speaker 6: rights issues with a lot of these, you know, Mexican
Speaker 6: era fil because I know that a lot of them
Speaker 6: he did for just a job. He was just working,
Speaker 6: so some of them don't have his quote unquote stamp
Speaker 6: on it in the way that this does and connects
Speaker 6: to other movies, like we talked about before we started rolling,
Speaker 6: and we'll obviously get into that.
Speaker 2: And Migaul, how about yourself when it was the first
Speaker 2: time we saw it? And what did you think?
Speaker 1: It wasn't TV in Spain? It was very you know,
Speaker 1: there was this movie. They were sawing it at night,
Speaker 1: the classic host Classics, and it was with my mother
Speaker 1: after dinner. You had this tuesdays that you watch films
Speaker 1: with your parents on TV, and ah, this is a
Speaker 1: very important film, they told me, and we were watching
Speaker 1: and of course I didn't understand the plot, but it
Speaker 1: was very funny. It was very funny, and somehow, if
Speaker 1: you're from Spain, I think you understand it. I mean
Speaker 1: in another way, because you laugh a lot. You understand
Speaker 1: the type of jokes, the type of howple get stuck.
Speaker 1: They are kind of very very kind of classical Mediterranean jokes.
Speaker 1: Know that they are there. So even if the plot
Speaker 1: was not, it was not a thriller, you know. But
Speaker 1: to be honest, the first time, you know, I think
Speaker 1: I was fifteen or fourteen, and he was like okay,
Speaker 1: And then it took me some time, and then I
Speaker 1: started to study film and I started making my own films,
Speaker 1: and in the last ten years I really understand it again.
Speaker 1: You know, I watch it like three or four times
Speaker 1: in my life, I guess four times, and I really know,
Speaker 1: I really kind of feel it and understand it in
Speaker 1: a very deep way. It's not that you don't have
Speaker 1: to qualify any symbol, so there is nothing behind the movie.
Speaker 1: You know, there is nothing secret, But I think I
Speaker 1: somehow connect with the humor, connect with what is portrayed there.
Speaker 1: You know, I know why he's doing that, and I
Speaker 1: kind of feel it and I understand what is it
Speaker 1: coming from.
Speaker 2: This was only maybe second third watch. I remember definitely
Speaker 2: watching the film before when we talked about this great
Speaker 2: Charm of the Bourgeoisie, just because I had heard that
Speaker 2: the two films were so similar. So I definitely checked
Speaker 2: that out then, but I didn't remember it very well.
Speaker 2: So it's really glad to be able to go back
Speaker 2: to this. I find it very interesting that this is
Speaker 2: based on I don't know if it was a play
Speaker 2: or another script, because at the very beginning it talks
Speaker 2: about how it's based on a cnadrama from Louis el
Speaker 2: Coriza and Louis Bounoil called the castaways of Providence Street
Speaker 2: and rob You brought up Robinson Crusoe, which is the
Speaker 2: ultimate castaway story. But I find it very interesting how
Speaker 2: this is the way this movie plays out reminds me
Speaker 2: of Itchcock's Life Vote, just it's got the little group
Speaker 2: of people in all of their interactions, any sort of
Speaker 2: tensions that come out. I mean, with Life Vote, you've
Speaker 2: got people from all these different strata. Here in this one,
Speaker 2: you have everybody who's everybody except for Julio the major Domo.
Speaker 2: Everyone is in the same class, but they still find
Speaker 2: things they're right about and a bitch about. And just
Speaker 2: the way that they're stuck in here also reminded me
Speaker 2: a little bit of melbur Tweet with the whole thing
Speaker 2: of all of the people that are stuck in this
Speaker 2: house and they can never leave. But that's a whole house.
Speaker 2: This is basically one room where they just cannot escape from.
Speaker 2: And it's such an interesting premise as far as the
Speaker 2: way that people's tensions rise, the way that they handle
Speaker 2: themselves in here, and then you add on top of
Speaker 2: it the way that it's being made the whole repetition thing.
Speaker 2: I find fascinating. It almost reminds me a little bit
Speaker 2: of Groundhog Day too. As far as the how long
Speaker 2: have these people been here, we have no idea. Towards
Speaker 2: the end of the movie. I'm just like, Okay, I've
Speaker 2: seen daytime and nighttime maybe four times, but it definitely
Speaker 2: feels like way more than four days. It feels like
Speaker 2: they've been stuck in this place for a month or more,
Speaker 2: just because of the but stink that they have. Of course,
Speaker 2: there's a dead body that they also are contending with
Speaker 2: and just trying to even go to the bathroom and
Speaker 2: the way that they talk about that will definitely talk
Speaker 2: about the vases in the closet kind of thing. But Yeah,
Speaker 2: fascinating film, and I was really glad to be able
Speaker 2: to come back to this one.
Speaker 1: I think it's amazing that I think we have to
Speaker 1: frame in more, yeah movies like the Marx Brothers, all
Speaker 1: the shortest movies that we have seen, even in the
Speaker 1: American and Hollywood context that makes no sense, and escalate
Speaker 1: in a very exaggerated and surreal way. But it happens
Speaker 1: a lot in Spain that you say, look, I have
Speaker 1: to leave you no, I have to leave this party,
Speaker 1: I know. Do you want to stay? Yes? Only five minutes?
Speaker 1: And next the scene is like six am.
Speaker 6: Like you you have to leave? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well yeah, in five minutes, I'm living. No, And then
Speaker 1: suddenly you realize that it's nine am, and it's like fuck,
Speaker 1: I had to leave at at eleven pm, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's nine a m. And you don't know why
Speaker 1: are you still there?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: And so it's just a very common feeling, you know.
Speaker 1: It's nothing strange or reality in that sense.
Speaker 6: I'm glad that Miguel brought up the absurd in the
Speaker 6: idea of Camu, but also I would say no exit,
Speaker 6: you know Sartre and the idea of being stuck in
Speaker 6: a place and you're like, I'm here, but you know
Speaker 6: what am I doing here? And obviously that can play
Speaker 6: into philosophical concepts of just human existence. Why are we here?
Speaker 6: What are we doing here? How do we get along together?
Speaker 6: The idea of creating these manners and what happens when
Speaker 6: the manners fall away? Or what do you do when
Speaker 6: you're under stress? Which I think I've talked about this
Speaker 6: before when we've talked about zombie movies and why I
Speaker 6: love the Romero films because it's not so much about
Speaker 6: the zombies, about putting people under a stressful situation and
Speaker 6: then seeing how they react versus who they think they are,
Speaker 6: versus what they become. There's a lot of that in there.
Speaker 6: I brought a couple of books here in my last SI,
Speaker 6: which is his autobiography. But as he notes in the
Speaker 6: front our guest Jehan Claulkerrier wrote with a series of
Speaker 6: interviews he did he said Exterminating Angel was made in Mexico,
Speaker 6: though I regret I was unable to shoot it in
Speaker 6: Paris or London with European actors and adequate costumes. Despite
Speaker 6: the beauty of the house where it was shot my
Speaker 6: effort to select actors who didn't look particularly Mexican, there
Speaker 6: were certain tawdriness in these aspects. Who couldn't get any
Speaker 6: really fine tablecloth or table napkins, for example, and the
Speaker 6: only one that I show on camera was barred from
Speaker 6: a makeup artists. The screenplay, however, was entirely original. It
Speaker 6: was a story of a group of friends who have
Speaker 6: dinner together after seeing a play. When they go into
Speaker 6: the living room after dinner, they find that for some
Speaker 6: inexplicable reason that can't leave. In the early stages, the
Speaker 6: working title was the Tassaways Providence Street. But then I
Speaker 6: remembered a magnificent title that Jose Beajureman had mentioned when
Speaker 6: we talked in Madrid in previous year about a play
Speaker 6: that he wanted to write. If I saw the Exterminating
Speaker 6: Angel on a marquis, I told him I would go
Speaker 6: in and see it on the spot. When I wrote
Speaker 6: him from Mexico asking him for news of the play,
Speaker 6: he replied to he hadn't written it yet, and that
Speaker 6: in any case, the title wasn't his. It came from
Speaker 6: a friend from the Apocalypse and therefore was in public domain.
Speaker 6: Apocalypse is in uppercase, so I don't know what that means.
Speaker 6: It doesn't seem like a title or anything.
Speaker 2: Probably from like Book of Revelation. I mean, the original
Speaker 2: Exterminating Angel, from what I was able to discern, was
Speaker 2: from the Book of Samuel. So I made the sacrifice
Speaker 2: and listened to a audio recording of the entire Book
Speaker 2: of Samuel, which was actually very fascinating. I was not
Speaker 2: familiar with Samuel, who actually is in the line of
Speaker 2: David and all this stuff, so I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: so it was interesting. There's a lot of stuff that
Speaker 2: happens in that book.
Speaker 6: There were many things in the film taken to directly
Speaker 6: from life. I went to a large dinner party in
Speaker 6: New York where the hostess had decided to amuse the
Speaker 6: guests by staging various surprises. For example, a waiter was
Speaker 6: stretched out to take a nap on the carpet in
Speaker 6: the middle of dinner while he was carrying a tray
Speaker 6: of food. Of course, the guests don't find the antics
Speaker 6: quite as amusing. She also brought in a bear in
Speaker 6: two Sheep, a scene in the film which has prompted
Speaker 6: several critics to symbolic excess, including that the bear is Bolshevism,
Speaker 6: waiting to ambush capitalistic society, which had been paralyzed by
Speaker 6: its own contradictions. As in the film. I've always been
Speaker 6: fascinated by repetition, which is why certain things tend to
Speaker 6: repeat themselves over and over again. I have no idea,
Speaker 6: but the phenomenon intrigues me enormously. There were at least
Speaker 6: a dozen repetitions in Exterminating Angel, two men introduce themselves,
Speaker 6: shake hands, say delighted, and then they meet each other
Speaker 6: a moment later and repeat the routine as if they've
Speaker 6: never met each other before, and the third time they
Speaker 6: greet each other with great enthusiasm like old friends. Another
Speaker 6: repetition inccurs when the guests enter the Great Hall and
Speaker 6: the host calls for the butler twice, and in fact
Speaker 6: it's the exact same scene, but shot from a different angle. Luis,
Speaker 6: the chief cameraman, said to me as we were filming,
Speaker 6: there's something very wrong here. What I asked, the scene
Speaker 6: where they enter the house, it's in here twice. Since
Speaker 6: he was the one who filmed both sequences, I still
Speaker 6: wonder how he could have possibly thought that it was
Speaker 6: such a colossal error that it escaped me and the editor.
Speaker 6: Sterminating Angel is one of the rare films that I've
Speaker 6: sat through more than once. Each time I regret its weakness,
Speaker 6: not to mention, is very short time we had to
Speaker 6: work on it. Basically, I simply see it as a
Speaker 6: group of people who can't do what they wanted to do,
Speaker 6: leave a room. It's that kind of dilemma, the possibility
Speaker 6: of satisfying a simple desire that often occurs in my
Speaker 6: movies and Lodge Door, for example, two people want to
Speaker 6: get together, but they can't, and that obscure object of desire.
Speaker 6: It's an aging man who can't satisfy his sexual desire. Similarly,
Speaker 6: Archibala de la Cruz tries in vain to commit suicide,
Speaker 6: while the characters of the discreet Charm of the Bourgeois
Speaker 6: he tried hard to eat dinner together but never managed to.
Speaker 1: This idea of a repetition, this idea of the failure
Speaker 1: of will, is a very recurrent thing in the failure
Speaker 1: of will. Instead of you a how is it calling
Speaker 1: English the triumph for the lenny of it and starts
Speaker 1: triumph of the will, drive of the will for us
Speaker 1: is the opposite. No, it's like the failure of will.
Speaker 1: And this is like happens every day.
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 1: I see my for instance, my father trying to push
Speaker 1: the whole family to the family car to go on vacation.
Speaker 1: Nothing moves. He has to call us twenty five times
Speaker 1: push it into the car. In his word. There is
Speaker 1: a word here that every family repeats, is what a
Speaker 1: cross or what the cruciffects? And I think if you
Speaker 1: think about the end of Simon of the Deserts, there
Speaker 1: is this discal party where Simon is with the wife.
Speaker 1: The wife is the evil.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: They finally get together and they are in this party
Speaker 1: and Simony is really hard and really wants to go.
Speaker 1: They said to the wife, please can we go? And
Speaker 1: the wife says, you will stay here until the party
Speaker 1: is over, and and my father are like, whoa, you know,
Speaker 1: the failure of will. I really cannot you know, do
Speaker 1: what I want. I'm always in a family that doesn't
Speaker 1: allow me to do anything, in a society that is
Speaker 1: super catholic, to have any agency. And I think that's
Speaker 1: why the this Exterminator Angel represents when in all the
Speaker 1: movies that kind of unbearable repetition of protocol, an unbearable
Speaker 1: repetition of things that I cannot do, you know that
Speaker 1: they really had to do because it's, you know, because
Speaker 1: my mother in law is coming to visit me and
Speaker 1: I really cannot escape this terrible like like a family dinner.
Speaker 1: They're really connected with that type of things, and all
Speaker 1: they speak cruss effects like impulse into your life every day.
Speaker 6: The thing that's interesting to me is, you know, Miguel,
Speaker 6: you have obviously the connection to your culture, and you
Speaker 6: know in that way with Gnoel who shares the heritage
Speaker 6: with you. I look at it as the son of
Speaker 6: a Scottish immigrant, and you were talking about it from
Speaker 6: the Kappac angle. I look at it from Protestant angle.
Speaker 6: My grandmother was very proper. There were certain things you
Speaker 6: did not say in public. There are certain things you
Speaker 6: did not talk about, and it was about keeping up appearances.
Speaker 6: It was about maintaining manners.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 6: One of the earliest memories I have, and this used
Speaker 6: to blow the mind of the workers at the fast
Speaker 6: food restaurants when I was in high school, was my
Speaker 6: grandmother sat me down when I don't know, four or
Speaker 6: five years old at dinner table and said, okay, put
Speaker 6: a bowl of ice cream in front of me and say, okay,
Speaker 6: what do we say? Please? May I, yes, you may,
Speaker 6: thank you, You're welcome, and just will run through manners.
Speaker 6: Until recently when I've or to kind of deconstruct some
Speaker 6: of this and allow for a little bit more flexibility
Speaker 6: in my life. I used to be like Hannibal Lecter
Speaker 6: when it came to manners, Like if somebody was very rude,
Speaker 6: you know, I would just you know, I want to,
Speaker 6: you know, rip their face off, you know, Yeah, I
Speaker 6: just have this very visceral reaction to rudeness and to impropriety,
Speaker 6: and you know, we just still talk about those things.
Speaker 6: And so to me, I think this is probably what
Speaker 6: Bwin wilds films, you know, if I were to get
Speaker 6: into my psychology, and why they resonate is that he's
Speaker 6: breaking down those bits. He's looking at the cultures in
Speaker 6: which we live in and the manners in which we
Speaker 6: have and going to what end, Like, what do these
Speaker 6: things do? Do they just cover up the you know,
Speaker 6: the snarling, vicious animal that's underneath. Maybe if we were
Speaker 6: a bit more honest with ourselves and with each other,
Speaker 6: then maybe we wouldn't tear each other apart. You know,
Speaker 6: I think he leaves us with those questions, and I
Speaker 6: think that's what great art does.
Speaker 1: Yes, still I think some sort of a comedian anarchist.
Speaker 1: So he felt all these constrictions, the social manners, as
Speaker 1: something imposed but that we cannot escape, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's really like a barden, and he likes to laugh
Speaker 1: about it. If we think about, for instance, the beginning
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, when he was in Madrid, he
Speaker 1: was studying with Lota and Dali in the student's residency.
Speaker 1: They were the three of them together, and it was
Speaker 1: a very strict society, but they were in a very
Speaker 1: liberal institution. So they will go every night dressless nuns.
Speaker 1: As to joke, and an Andalusian dog they use. All
Speaker 1: these jokes, All these jokes are related to repress desires
Speaker 1: to do whatever they wanted to do and escape from
Speaker 1: that kind of very strong Catholic society. You know that
Speaker 1: makes you, you know, repeat, you can really see the
Speaker 1: Andalusian dog is a collection of these jokes of how
Speaker 1: to escape through that very protocol society, which is the
Speaker 1: Catholic society. And I have the same grandma that you
Speaker 1: have Rob saying, Grandma, say, I think I have a
Speaker 1: picture here I show you. So that's the connection, you know,
Speaker 1: here he sees.
Speaker 6: See, but that's the connection Catholics and Protestants not so
Speaker 6: much different. There you go see exactly.
Speaker 2: Talking about religion. I find it very interesting. Well, first off,
Speaker 2: I find it interesting that this whole thing's supposed to
Speaker 2: be a dinner party. We never actually see them eat dinner.
Speaker 2: We see the one servant come in with the tray
Speaker 2: and fall over, which is big joke for everybody. Everybody's
Speaker 2: super happy, and it's all at the expense of this
Speaker 2: poor servant doesn't like jokes. So she goes into this
Speaker 2: little room and sees the bear there and these sheep
Speaker 2: that are under a table. Is like, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: no sheep, no bear, We're not going to play our joke.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, well, what the hell joke was this
Speaker 2: that you were doing the way you needed a bear
Speaker 2: in three sheep.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: And then we come back to the room eventually to
Speaker 2: the dining room, and nobody's there except for the one woman.
Speaker 2: And like I said at the beginning, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to try to give people names because it's just I
Speaker 2: think it's ridiculous, and I think that it's very much
Speaker 2: on purpose ridiculous that we have so many characters in
Speaker 2: this movie and they kind of seem to exchange with
Speaker 2: each other as well. But yeah, she picks up something
Speaker 2: and throws it through a window, and you cut to
Speaker 2: these two guys who are talking, and the one guy goes, ah,
Speaker 2: must have been the Jews, and I'm.
Speaker 6: Like, what didn't I I'm from And I thought about
Speaker 6: it as an inversion of like Chrystal knocks right, you know,
Speaker 6: So that was my you know, it's like, oh, you
Speaker 6: do it from the opposite angle.
Speaker 1: You know, it can be it can be yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: something Tom. You know, I think he was a joke collector,
Speaker 1: so they're probably a joke that comes in the last
Speaker 1: ten years of his life and say like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna write it down, put it somewhere.
Speaker 2: There was a great story that I heard Carrier talk
Speaker 2: about out when he was working with Bunwell, where they
Speaker 2: would work all day, they would stop at a certain point,
Speaker 2: go off, have a drink, come back together, and then
Speaker 2: they had to tell each other a story, like something
Speaker 2: completely made up, almost on the spot, and so that
Speaker 2: would kind of like just continue that cycle of imagination.
Speaker 2: Like to hear Bonwell talk about how he trained his
Speaker 2: imagination and the subconscious and was so into surrealism that
Speaker 2: he's like, no, I have to do these exercises because
Speaker 2: my imagination is a muscle and I need to have
Speaker 2: this muscle very well toned.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: He was very obsessed with muscles. He was a very
Speaker 1: athletic person and he needed that stamina.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: He was a person obsessed with energy. He was himself
Speaker 1: saying when I was a kid, there was an atlet
Speaker 1: do you know, when he was in Madrid, he was
Speaker 1: really trained. He was one of the leaders of the
Speaker 1: you know whatever football team. I don't know who was
Speaker 1: football or no, I think it was running team. He
Speaker 1: was an athlete. Basically he was flying in the walls
Speaker 1: of the resident, the students residency, I mean, and he
Speaker 1: was really obsessed with that, So I guess he needed
Speaker 1: that constant confrontation, dialectic confrontation and joking to keep It's
Speaker 1: like a little bit like, yeah, the third mind in
Speaker 1: the words of who said that it was Alam Ginsberg
Speaker 1: or it was William Borrows.
Speaker 6: I think it's with the third mind the board to
Speaker 6: get back to whatever plot we do have here. I
Speaker 6: just love the fact that all of the help appears
Speaker 6: to understand something.
Speaker 2: They sense it, like somebody says like reds from the
Speaker 2: sinking ship, though I don't think that's very fair.
Speaker 6: And I loved how like in my last side, which
Speaker 6: I read, he talked about like symbolic overreading. You know,
Speaker 6: he feels that critics are us, you know, who get
Speaker 6: into his movies overread. But I do have a feeling
Speaker 6: like when I look at the range of his work,
Speaker 6: that it always is those who are the most honest
Speaker 6: with themselves. This is where I think he shares with
Speaker 6: John Waller. You know, the heroes are those who are
Speaker 6: honest about their maladies or their filth or whatever.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 6: They're into feat or you know, and they embrace it
Speaker 6: than they're fine, you know. So to me, it's like
Speaker 6: the animals, the bear and the sheep are the most
Speaker 6: pure because they're pure instinct, which is what I think
Speaker 6: the surrealists also wrote about in the twenties, but also
Speaker 6: that the workers would be closer down to that, that
Speaker 6: they would be more engaged with their own base instinct,
Speaker 6: and therefore they could be more honest than those who
Speaker 6: have to keep up appearances. So of course they would
Speaker 6: understand that, oh, well there's something happening, we got to
Speaker 6: get the fuck out of here, you know. So whatever
Speaker 6: that thing is that's in the ether, if they could
Speaker 6: possibly pick up on it better than those who are
Speaker 6: in the ruling class who have to keep on these
Speaker 6: appearances and keep up the play. You know, they have
Speaker 6: to keep up the play even though they're not the
Speaker 6: play anymore.
Speaker 1: FilmLA are kind of inherit from you know. There a
Speaker 1: next step on another variant of neorealist films, you know,
Speaker 1: where the humble class are more conscious about the nature
Speaker 1: of power, the nature of destiny, the nature of faith,
Speaker 1: you know. And I believe Mediterranean films are very much
Speaker 1: tragic in the sense that the characters they are always
Speaker 1: managed by forces that they cannot control, you know, being God,
Speaker 1: the powers, political powers, or the rich you know. So
Speaker 1: I think the humble they cannot control these powers, and
Speaker 1: they are tragic. They just have to survive, you know,
Speaker 1: while the rich guys they don't because they are normally
Speaker 1: in control and they are normally in power, they don't
Speaker 1: understand that they have been doomed, that they are really
Speaker 1: in a situation they cannot control. And only when the
Speaker 1: film kind of evolves they realize the real condition, the
Speaker 1: real life content, which is like we cannot control faith,
Speaker 1: we cannot control anything. You know. There is a strong
Speaker 1: a force there is stronger than our d This force
Speaker 1: is kind of disintegrating us, exterminating us, you know, and
Speaker 1: this is I think the true exterminator angel. You know
Speaker 1: that even the richest people, they're gonna die, They're gonna
Speaker 1: be exterminated, They're gonna be controlled by a bigger force,
Speaker 1: you know. And if you look at the Spanish literature.
Speaker 1: We were talking in our chat about the Esque novels,
Speaker 1: the Big Carrext novel. This hero, the anti hero is
Speaker 1: a person that tries to survive in a situation he
Speaker 1: or she never has the control, you know. They yes
Speaker 1: have to leave. They are conscious that they don't have
Speaker 1: any power, and they fight to survive. And the result
Speaker 1: is not tragic. As many other Mexican films, the result
Speaker 1: is kind of dramatic or very sad, but the result
Speaker 1: in the case of Bunuel is really tragic comic, you know,
Speaker 1: because the humble understands there, hey, well, their own condition.
Speaker 2: I think Julio to be a fascinating character because he's
Speaker 2: a servant, but he's above the other servants, you know,
Speaker 2: and he's the only one that sticks around, and he's
Speaker 2: the last one who can leave the room. When he
Speaker 2: leaves and goes to get coffee and comes back, he's
Speaker 2: the last one that has left that room to come
Speaker 2: back in. And then they really find out when they
Speaker 2: tell him, hey, go get some spoons and he tries
Speaker 2: to leave the room, just can't do it. And then
Speaker 2: of course he starts to get into trouble, like hey,
Speaker 2: I told you to go get spoons. What the hell's
Speaker 2: going on. He's kind of the exception as far as
Speaker 2: the other people are now starting to have problems leaving
Speaker 2: the room, but yet he's the one that gets yelled
Speaker 2: at for that. I was also very surprised as far
Speaker 2: as that we leave the house at one point. I
Speaker 2: know it's a ways into this movie that we leave,
Speaker 2: but to have stuff outside of the house and the
Speaker 2: reactions from the rest of the town, the reactions from
Speaker 2: the rest of the servants. I really like that the
Speaker 2: servants all come back and they're just kind of out there,
Speaker 2: like I wonder what's going on inside drinking. They've got
Speaker 2: the little flasks and stuff, and I'm like, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: this is kind of nice. But yeah, it's just so
Speaker 2: unusual as far as you know, we're talking about religion
Speaker 2: and things, and even to think about I know this
Speaker 2: is in a religious order, but the guys who recognize
Speaker 2: each other and kind of give each other the high sign,
Speaker 2: I guess they're both Masons, is what I would think of.
Speaker 2: It's right around that same time that we and over
Speaker 2: and there's this woman sitting there and she opens up
Speaker 2: her purse and she's got chicken feet inside chicken feet
Speaker 2: and feathers and all this stuff, and then that will
Speaker 2: come back later on when they're trying to basically do
Speaker 2: magic and they start talking about the kabbala, It's like, WHOA,
Speaker 2: I didn't see this coming.
Speaker 1: Feels like sue yourself as small jokes, not that you
Speaker 1: know all this in the sense that all these rich
Speaker 1: people are kind of stuck in some sort of an
Speaker 1: absurd world that is not the real world, and that's
Speaker 1: why the servants can come and go while the others
Speaker 1: are kind of trying to find out what the real
Speaker 1: world is. And that's why only through their suffering the
Speaker 1: destruction of the world. I remember when they start drilling
Speaker 1: the wall, it's almost like a bustard kit on seeing,
Speaker 1: you know, to get water, because they don't even have water,
Speaker 1: and they start drilling the walls like a bastard kitten style.
Speaker 1: It seems like everyone around is kind of giving them
Speaker 1: some sort of lesson or saying. Even the service is
Speaker 1: telling them, like they have to discover by themselves what
Speaker 1: the real world is about, and the real world is
Speaker 1: that small games. They're small shared The scabal of thing
Speaker 1: means nothing when you have to survive and you are
Speaker 1: facing the real survival that you will never have to
Speaker 1: face aristocrats. And this is for me very funny because
Speaker 1: we empathize with the servants, but we never empathize with rich.
Speaker 1: We are glad they actually we had a little bit like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good they suffer, you know. And I don't think
Speaker 1: we are glad because a person suffers, but we are
Speaker 1: glad because somehow they realize about something. There is a
Speaker 1: very interesting painting in Taling. It's called the Dance of Death,
Speaker 1: and the Dance of Death every skeleton goes hand in
Speaker 1: hand with It's a medieval painting with a peasant. But
Speaker 1: if they all also are taken to death, the nobels
Speaker 1: say like, no, no, I don't have to go because
Speaker 1: I have this nobility title and I don't have to die.
Speaker 1: And the skeletons say, yes, you also die. All the rich,
Speaker 1: the poor, and the peasons they accept it. They just
Speaker 1: go with the skeletons. They accepted. The rich they can
Speaker 1: protest saying like I am accept I have this special
Speaker 1: paper saying that I don't have to go. They don't
Speaker 1: really accept the fate. This is funny because I think
Speaker 1: we take the position of the reality and we say like, yes,
Speaker 1: you have to pass through this, you have to learn
Speaker 1: from this. You also die. You are also weak, and
Speaker 1: this is something you know that is funny, you know,
Speaker 1: And we look at the bigger picture of the world
Speaker 1: and we see these big politicians and presidents that they
Speaker 1: believe they will never die, you know, and they will
Speaker 1: never know the truth that they are small and how
Speaker 1: and they are not almighty. And I think when you all,
Speaker 1: it's it's conscious that there is something even if he's
Speaker 1: somehow anti Catholic, but he's conscious there is something big
Speaker 1: on the top of everyone and you cannot you know,
Speaker 1: you are not almighty, and you will have to go
Speaker 1: through this process. And that's why the film becomes so
Speaker 1: funny in my opinion, because the rich got totally crashed
Speaker 1: and destroy.
Speaker 6: The thing that's interesting about him in his biography, in
Speaker 6: his background is that he was part of that class
Speaker 6: he was raised is, you know, relatively well off, even
Speaker 6: in a small town. I remember when we did the
Speaker 6: Discrete Charm episode. I think it's John Baxter who did
Speaker 6: the biography on him and talked about, you know, kind
Speaker 6: of his background in that way, and that I think
Speaker 6: it's probably that tension within him where he was raised
Speaker 6: in that probably around some of these types. So he
Speaker 6: of course is most apt to point at them and
Speaker 6: be you know, lacerating in his humor because he can
Speaker 6: point it out easier than I guess if you weren't
Speaker 6: raised around it, you would just be like, but you
Speaker 6: can get into the fine grain detail of how these
Speaker 6: people think, how they are in that way.
Speaker 1: But you had to consider as well that he was
Speaker 1: a war refugee and he suffered from this wealthy you know,
Speaker 1: because he went to a studying Madrid. The mother was
Speaker 1: paying him the studies and everything, and everything was going
Speaker 1: quite well. He goes to parties with Ali and you know,
Speaker 1: living the great life, and suddenly this Fanny civil war
Speaker 1: comes and he has to go to America. He goes
Speaker 1: to New York. He goes to Los Angeles because he
Speaker 1: has to find a very simple job, you know, translating
Speaker 1: films actually from the Golden Age until the next film
Speaker 1: Great Casino is sixteen years past. Almost he doesn't direct
Speaker 1: anything sixteen years you know. He helps a little bit
Speaker 1: with La Sourde and a little bit with a film
Speaker 1: that is shot in Madrid as a call director, or
Speaker 1: that he is sixteen years without directing, and he goes
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles, a guy that comes from a wealthy family,
Speaker 1: and he has to work as a translator. And then
Speaker 1: he goes to ask the help of a Dali, and
Speaker 1: Ali says, fuck you, you know, because if I help you,
Speaker 1: friends don't help each other economically, because then you will
Speaker 1: depend on me, and it's better. We will be better
Speaker 1: friends if we don't help each other. While Ali was
Speaker 1: organizing this big parties in New York, you know, with
Speaker 1: all the high class, and Bunuel was really really suffering
Speaker 1: the same destruction then the people from the Exterminator Angel
Speaker 1: suffering in that room.
Speaker 6: I think if the timeline I remember is he went
Speaker 6: to New York and ended up in la and he
Speaker 6: worked for MoMA, which this loops back to the Triumph
Speaker 6: of the Will in that he edited a version of
Speaker 6: The Triumph of the Will for Museum of Modern Art.
Speaker 6: I don't know if that's ever been released in some way,
Speaker 6: if anyone can see it. I heard it was just
Speaker 6: he did some sort of he just edited it down.
Speaker 6: He didn't do anything that was bizarre with it or
Speaker 6: anything like that. It was just this thing is too
Speaker 6: long in these speeches, so he condensed it or something
Speaker 6: like that. But when he was working at MoMA, word
Speaker 6: got around that he was an atheist, and this led
Speaker 6: to a scandal and he got fired and then he
Speaker 6: had to go find something. And then in la As
Speaker 6: you were saying, he couldn't really make a living, so
Speaker 6: he was like, where am I going to go? He
Speaker 6: couldn't go back to Spain because he hated Franco and
Speaker 6: you know, Larka disappeared and when you read my last sigh,
Speaker 6: like just Larka was so close to him. This is
Speaker 6: the thing that always bugs me about Will that I
Speaker 6: love so much. I mean, I love him so much
Speaker 6: as as a creative person, but I guess everybody has
Speaker 6: their foibles as the personality. Is that he could never
Speaker 6: get himself to accept the fact that Lorca was queer,
Speaker 6: Like it was just too it was a bridge too
Speaker 6: far for him. But in terms of writer, in terms
Speaker 6: of poet, and you know, they were best friends and
Speaker 6: he cared about him deeply, and when he was disappeared,
Speaker 6: you know, it was just such a loss. And I
Speaker 6: think that part of why existentialism and the absurd becomes
Speaker 6: so important is that it was built off of World
Speaker 6: War One. But it went even further after World War Two,
Speaker 6: where it was just like we lived through all of
Speaker 6: these shocks, nothing matters, everything is fucked basically, so would
Speaker 6: you lived through those horrible shocks. And he was born
Speaker 6: in like nineteen hundred, you really see him as kind
Speaker 6: of the embodiment of what happens when you've gone through
Speaker 6: that much horror between World War One, the Spanish Civil War,
Speaker 6: and World War Two. But he ends up in Mexico,
Speaker 6: and as you were saying, Miguel, it's like he has
Speaker 6: to be a journeyman. He has to be like, you know,
Speaker 6: the equivalent in film of like being an electrician or
Speaker 6: a you know, plumber, where it's just like I just work,
Speaker 6: I just have jobs. This isn't really so much about
Speaker 6: my own personal vision. Like his own personal vision sneaks
Speaker 6: in for time in some of those Mexican films, but
Speaker 6: he's not able to do what he did earlier or
Speaker 6: what he would later do in France, where you know,
Speaker 6: basically from Verdiana on from like sixty to mid sixties.
Speaker 6: Really I'd say, I don't know, maybe like Diary Chamber
Speaker 6: made forward to the end, you know, his last fifteen
Speaker 6: years or so of his career where it was just
Speaker 6: like he had producers and they gave him money and
Speaker 6: they say, here, just go do whatever you want. That's
Speaker 6: not what the Makin period was. And I think that's
Speaker 6: why there's certain movies in there that stand out in
Speaker 6: that period. And like I say, I haven't seen all
Speaker 6: of them because they're already your hands.
Speaker 1: Up if he calls them survival films, actually they are not.
Speaker 1: But you know, I had to do commercial films, so
Speaker 1: we call it the survival films. But it's very it's
Speaker 1: really amazing because this idea of I cannot do what
Speaker 1: I want to do in all the films, you know,
Speaker 1: from El to how is it called in English habit's
Speaker 1: mostly passion call, which is based on that book Calling,
Speaker 1: and I don't remember as mostly pasion like a patient
Speaker 1: abits or something. There is always this impossibility, you know,
Speaker 1: but also not only the impossibility or the failure of
Speaker 1: the will or failure will, but also the people dragged
Speaker 1: by their own passions that they cannot control. It's not
Speaker 1: only the imposition, how you know, power imposts gets on
Speaker 1: the top of you, but you don't even can control yourself,
Speaker 1: which is even more interesting, you know, because he was
Speaker 1: humble enough not to blame others and to say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I had all this period, you know, from
Speaker 1: MoMA and to to you know, where everybody was like,
Speaker 1: you know, destroying me. No, it was like, it's my own,
Speaker 1: my own internal flame, for my own fire that destroys me,
Speaker 1: because I cannot even control my own films. None. You
Speaker 1: can see that in I think one hundred percent of
Speaker 1: his films, you know, from everything, you know, the Obscure
Speaker 1: of the Laso to this sketto and Canto Laburgacia. You
Speaker 1: know about the woman that gets you know, she's from
Speaker 1: the aristocracy and she likes to prostitute herself in order
Speaker 1: to find certain freedom. In that warhouse no or Burdell no.
Speaker 1: And so there is always a flame inside and nobody
Speaker 1: can repress. And that is sometimes a crazy flame, flame
Speaker 1: of craziness because you cannot really you know, I think
Speaker 1: he himself put in control, you know, like if somebody
Speaker 1: had a little bit more of brains or logic, it
Speaker 1: will stop. But he was sent to the US and
Speaker 1: then to Mexico and then try to survive in Mexico.
Speaker 1: Then he goes to France, make one film in Spain
Speaker 1: to Franco aloud, which is Prillianna. I think it was
Speaker 1: sorted in Spain Piana. But it's as a filmmaker I
Speaker 1: understand sometimes he's like, God, I mean, I'm totally nuts
Speaker 1: because you know why I'm doing this. You know, where
Speaker 1: is this flame burning me? He suffer more than anything else.
Speaker 1: That's a very interesting thing. No, that he was not blaming.
Speaker 1: It's a guy. You read the memories. He never blames anyone. Actually,
Speaker 1: he was one of the best friends of the Franco.
Speaker 1: Favorite filmmaker which was a friend of him. That makes
Speaker 1: this movie about francois it's his name, you know, and
Speaker 1: they were friends and the end of their life, you know,
Speaker 1: and he knew he was kind of praising Franco and
Speaker 1: making all these films for Franco. Still, it's not blaming him.
Speaker 2: Abu Moos de Passion is Wathering Heights exactly.
Speaker 1: That is based on the novel of Yes.
Speaker 2: One of the really nice things that we have in
Speaker 2: this movie is the whole idea of them being trapped
Speaker 2: in this room by something they don't know what it is,
Speaker 2: and it's not like there's a physical barrier. They don't
Speaker 2: explain it, which I really appreciate that they don't explain
Speaker 2: exactly what's going on. You mentioned the Romero films. We
Speaker 2: don't know exactly why the zombies happened in any of
Speaker 2: those movies. There's always the theories, you know, when there's
Speaker 2: no more room in hell kind of thing, you know,
Speaker 2: to go back to Miguel's painting that he was talking
Speaker 2: about with the skeletons, it's like, yeah, we don't know
Speaker 2: exactly what's going on, and so it could be magic.
Speaker 2: And the way that they get out of this situation
Speaker 2: feels very much like a magical situation as far as, oh, look,
Speaker 2: everybody's sitting in the same spots that they were when
Speaker 2: this initially happened, which isn't true, so now we can
Speaker 2: leave again. It just they suddenly decide like, okay, everybody's
Speaker 2: in the same spots, let's go. But they're trying, like
Speaker 2: you know, witchcraft and all of these things to try
Speaker 2: to get out of the space, though it doesn't feel
Speaker 2: like they're trying very hard or very logically. We see
Speaker 2: them trying to get the water out of the pipes
Speaker 2: by breaking through the wall, like Miguel was saying, but
Speaker 2: they're not trying to break through the wall. They're not
Speaker 2: trying to get out that way. It's not like I
Speaker 2: ever see anybody try to open up a window and
Speaker 2: try to go out that way. There's no experimentation. They
Speaker 2: just kind of accept their fate, which I find to
Speaker 2: be fascinating. There was a movie from twenty thirteen called
Speaker 2: The Last Days Los Ultimos Dias, which was very interesting
Speaker 2: because it's kind of a post apocalyptic type movie. You know,
Speaker 2: it's kind of like what was that bird bath, bird,
Speaker 2: Watch bird whatever, where it's just like, Okay, something happens
Speaker 2: in the world, and one you can't look at these
Speaker 2: creatures bur alsoll attack you, like some of those things
Speaker 2: like a bird box, and so this is kind of
Speaker 2: a similar thing. It's like all of a sudden people
Speaker 2: start to not be able to go outside. Like it
Speaker 2: starts off at this company and there's a guy who's
Speaker 2: firing all these people, and there's one guy who gets fired.
Speaker 2: He's just like, no, I can't leave, and they're like what.
Speaker 2: They're like, this guy hasn't showered in days, he's been
Speaker 2: at the office, he sleeps here, What the hell's going on?
Speaker 2: And then they force him out of the building. Security
Speaker 2: takes him out, the guy dies, and it's again it's
Speaker 2: like there's no experimentation. At one point they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: this guy who was in a car he died because
Speaker 2: he's still outsides. I'm like, Okay, I don't know what
Speaker 2: the rules are, but after a while, I'm like, I
Speaker 2: don't care what the rules are. And same thing with
Speaker 2: this movie.
Speaker 6: I don't care what the rules are.
Speaker 2: They're stuck in a situation and this is all that
Speaker 2: they have and they have to abide by these rules.
Speaker 2: It's like one of these puzzle movies where it's like, okay, now,
Speaker 2: if we turn this thing to the left and then
Speaker 2: move over here, then something will happen. But with these guys,
Speaker 2: they're just like, we're stuck in this room. We have
Speaker 2: to put up with it. And they're stuck there. They
Speaker 2: don't really try to escape. It feels like they're ants
Speaker 2: in an ant colony.
Speaker 6: I also find funny that the people who society deems
Speaker 6: can enforce the rules, which are the police right in
Speaker 6: the military, they're outside, but they will do anything. They're
Speaker 6: standing around like they're not trying to open the door,
Speaker 6: they're not trying to figure out a way to get
Speaker 6: them out, but they're just hanging out. One of the
Speaker 6: things I find funny it's like their kids come and
Speaker 6: it's like here, here's the balloons for you. You know,
Speaker 6: it's like nobody's trying to do anything.
Speaker 2: Yes, send the kid in.
Speaker 1: But guys, it's not the world like that. It happens
Speaker 1: every day.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: You don't get divorced or you don't get you know,
Speaker 1: against some fascists. They don't can take in over the system,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like click like on Facebook,
Speaker 1: you know, like I know, I don't know, okay this No, no,
Speaker 1: don't do it. Don't click like you know you're gonna
Speaker 1: get prosecuted. They put you in jail. You know, you
Speaker 1: put a like there, oh Jesus Christ, No, I don't
Speaker 1: not gonna like it really happening, you know. Again, it's
Speaker 1: very spunnish kind of attitude we have. We say, like
Speaker 1: in Spain, there is a guy doing some you know,
Speaker 1: road work, and there is like seventy five people having
Speaker 1: their opinions if the guy is doing it well or not.
Speaker 1: Instead of helping there it's like no, no, but this
Speaker 1: guy said, no, do it more to the right. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're not doing it right. What is this thing,
Speaker 1: you know, but everybody is speaking and commenting like if
Speaker 1: we somehow where And that happens with the people in
Speaker 1: the aristocrats there. They are somehow spectators of their own destiny.
Speaker 1: You know, they cannot just stand up and live the house,
Speaker 1: because they got you know, they could just stand up
Speaker 1: or live. But sometimes we got dropped in our mental
Speaker 1: looks and we don't even say like, you know, like
Speaker 1: I have to stop smoking, or it's as simple as
Speaker 1: that on the smoke. You know, that's totally life, you know,
Speaker 1: it happens like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the cops are standing around like they've just been
Speaker 2: called to a school shooting or something. They just don't
Speaker 2: want to do anything.
Speaker 6: Or it's a hostage situation. That's the way I remember
Speaker 6: the first time I saw it. It feels like a
Speaker 6: police procedural for a hostage movie. You know, we're all
Speaker 6: standing outside and I am I waiting for someone to
Speaker 6: pick up a bullhorn and say, okay, what do you want?
Speaker 6: And they're like, nobody's doing anything. They're just standing there.
Speaker 6: They're drinking, they're you know, waiting the servants show up again.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 6: At one point I find that funny, like it's like eh,
Speaker 6: come back to work after whatever happened. I guess you know.
Speaker 1: That's the probably you delivery of screenplaying Hollywood. That will
Speaker 1: be pretty I mean the biggest hole. What what is
Speaker 1: the life? You know? In life we take a road
Speaker 1: and we don't turn right. You know how many times
Speaker 1: you go from home to the house and say like, hey,
Speaker 1: but have you walked left and there is a sub
Speaker 1: there with a great Ethiopian food. Oh man, I never
Speaker 1: enter in that sho why. I mean, it is like
Speaker 1: you could I die it someth.
Speaker 3: I just go.
Speaker 6: My ex and I were watching I tried to show
Speaker 6: her film and she made fun of me mercilessly for
Speaker 6: my love with film. And I remember that she said
Speaker 6: to me, you know, there's enough ambiguity in life. I
Speaker 6: don't want it in my art and in my entertainment.
Speaker 6: I got to deal with enough ambiguous things like this
Speaker 6: is not helping me. She's like, I want to watch
Speaker 6: old Case Files or the homicide Life on the Street.
Speaker 6: You know, Marathon, I don't want to watch this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wow. How many times people watch Home alone and they
Speaker 1: keep watching Home alone and there is this sense of security,
Speaker 1: you know that it is so much needed in the
Speaker 1: population and then it's a I think very few percentage
Speaker 1: of the population that are open to adventures, to new stuff.
Speaker 1: And the movie is about that, you know, everybody. The
Speaker 1: police could come, that the guys could jump all through
Speaker 1: the window, but they will never do it, as we
Speaker 1: will never do and we will keep watching home alone.
Speaker 1: And this is ABC, you know, and this is will
Speaker 1: feel secure. Security sometimes is something it's a very concept
Speaker 1: that we take like okay, like the police or the army.
Speaker 1: But security is corn flex in the morning. I don't
Speaker 1: have my favorite Cristmas. And you know, people you can
Speaker 1: kill for that, you know, really can cup for that,
Speaker 1: and you will put it in a movie. And that
Speaker 1: was that's surreal. It's not surreal. It all is happening
Speaker 1: every day, you know. So I find the exterminateardy Angel.
Speaker 1: It is a documentary. Don thing strange is there, you know,
Speaker 1: is that we want to see things that are very safe.
Speaker 1: We want to feel that safety, like your girlfriend. But
Speaker 1: actually life is like a stern angel. I see it
Speaker 1: totally normal. I see like a normal movie, like a
Speaker 1: documentary movie.
Speaker 6: I wanted to loop back, Mike to see because you
Speaker 6: had mentioned up the front things about luge door and
Speaker 6: there's a couple of great images in here that have
Speaker 6: stuff with me over the years, and I kind of
Speaker 6: wanted to get into that, Like I said, a symbolic overreading,
Speaker 6: but still, you know, does the bear represent the rise
Speaker 6: of communism Bolshevism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are some really good images in there, especially
Speaker 2: it's really quick. But the bear at one point is
Speaker 2: seen by some other people and he stands up on
Speaker 2: his back legs and I'm just like, oh wow, I
Speaker 2: didn't realize just how tall that bear is and how
Speaker 2: human he looks when he gets up on his hind legs.
Speaker 2: But yeah, he's interested because he just kind of hangs out.
Speaker 2: I kept thinking, like, Okay, that bear's going to eat
Speaker 2: those sheep, but no, that's the people that eat the sheep,
Speaker 2: and the way that they bring them in and just
Speaker 2: get them ready for the slaughter. And the one guy
Speaker 2: who's like nuzzling up against the sheep that's tied to
Speaker 2: like a piano leg and he's being super nice to it,
Speaker 2: and I'm just like, that sheep only has a few
Speaker 2: hours to live because these people are going to slaughter
Speaker 2: this poor thing because they have no food. They finally
Speaker 2: have water, and I love the whole thing too with
Speaker 2: the bathroom where they go into the closet and there's
Speaker 2: all those vases, just beautiful Chinese, huge vasas that are
Speaker 2: just stuck in a closet. But I'm the story that
Speaker 2: the ladies tell about when they go in to use
Speaker 2: the bathroom and how one saw an eagle and the
Speaker 2: other one had wind rush up in her face and
Speaker 2: leaves and things, And I guess I was related to
Speaker 2: people I guess in Bounuel's town where they would have
Speaker 2: the bathroom over a cliff and just everything would drop
Speaker 2: out so you could have these incredible vistas through the
Speaker 2: bottom of your toilet.
Speaker 6: It's a small thing where she talked about what he
Speaker 6: sees at the bottom of the toilet, which ties me
Speaker 6: to another absurdist or was another guy that I referenced
Speaker 6: too much, Bob Downey in Putney Swaped, where it's like
Speaker 6: we're gonna work gun selling the advertising that can come
Speaker 6: out of our toilets. But also like you were talking
Speaker 6: about the buzz so it's like, okay, you can read
Speaker 6: it symbolism where it's like, yeah, art is a very
Speaker 6: beautiful thing. You know, we care about art until we don't.
Speaker 6: And then the whole thing with them breaking up.
Speaker 2: Beautiful for me to coupon.
Speaker 6: Or the cello thing you know where they break up
Speaker 6: the cello and use it for firewood, you know, which
Speaker 6: to me is a great image. And again I want
Speaker 6: to say, is it a discreet term? There's some sort
Speaker 6: of thing with like a cello or you know, and
Speaker 6: minimum the use of classical music. Again, this this comes
Speaker 6: up with the conductor who you know, they you called
Speaker 6: him maestro.
Speaker 1: It's in the Golden Edge that suddenly he's listening to
Speaker 1: that concert and he has a terrible headache and he
Speaker 1: had to go to the garden. He can of get
Speaker 1: blots in this kind of bourgeois gardens with like Chauchet
Speaker 1: garden and start like oh, and he goes and I
Speaker 1: think finally he started leaking the feet of some statue
Speaker 1: on on a statue or something like that, because the
Speaker 1: guy cannot bear this shell or something. I think there
Speaker 1: is no serial symbolism there. I think there's surreally kind
Speaker 1: of these forces same symbolism as paste, Tito, you know
Speaker 1: what you do, you laugh, There is nothing symbolic there.
Speaker 1: I mean there is something deeper which is kind of
Speaker 1: this spontaneity of life these weird connections between the things
Speaker 1: that make you feel the freedom, freedom of something unseen precisely,
Speaker 1: the danger of something insecure, something that kind of bursts
Speaker 1: like a storm, like a light bulb or something. And
Speaker 1: I think this is what gets us, you know, in
Speaker 1: that moment, not that the guy had a terrible headache,
Speaker 1: you know, like see why why why is that you
Speaker 1: know that bursting, like like the bird you mentioned, like
Speaker 1: there is no there is not there is no domestication.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: We trend even when we write, to domesticate our ideas,
Speaker 1: to make them understandable, to go through logic. Try to
Speaker 1: kill that domestication or the pure idea as it comes.
Speaker 1: If it makes you love is powerful enough to be there.
Speaker 1: This is something as so poetical that it doesn't have
Speaker 1: our reference now because we are so used to the Bible.
Speaker 1: Nor there is a symbol and the meaning. But when
Speaker 1: there is something really poetical, we cannot there is no measure,
Speaker 1: We cannot pin it down. Something that is happening, and
Speaker 1: we are astonished and we are wondering what the hell. No,
Speaker 1: but we still feel it, still love still say this
Speaker 1: is wonderful, this is so it goes into our subconsciousness.
Speaker 6: The use of sheep throughout his movies keep coming up,
Speaker 6: and I know that as a kid, they always say, oh,
Speaker 6: count sheep, you know, go to sleep. So the idea
Speaker 6: of dreams and things like that, but also you could go, well,
Speaker 6: you know the sheep, the shepherd praised, you know, all
Speaker 6: of that piece. But the one in here that I
Speaker 6: really liked and I have like Sam, did Sam see
Speaker 6: this is the hand crawling on the floor. I was
Speaker 6: like that thing from Adam's family. And then also you
Speaker 6: know Evil Dead, so I was like, where they go
Speaker 6: after the hand that's crawling on the floor.
Speaker 2: I'm really curious because I heard a story that boon
Speaker 2: Weell was involved with the Beast with five Fingers. I
Speaker 2: cannot find anything to substantiate that, but it even came
Speaker 2: up during the audio commentary where there was comparisons of
Speaker 2: this with the Beast with five Fingers, and that boon
Speaker 2: Weell didn't like the skittering of the hand as if
Speaker 2: it was walking on its fingertips like Evil Dead to
Speaker 2: like thing those things, and he preferred the sliding hand,
Speaker 2: and that's what he's got in this one. And I
Speaker 2: like how the hand you know, well, for me, the
Speaker 2: hand is usually symbolic of a penis. We talked about
Speaker 2: the castration anxiety inside of the Star Wars films. But
Speaker 2: the hand is the conductor. I think it's the conductor
Speaker 2: whoever it is that that dies first, who's stuck in
Speaker 2: a closet in the hand just plops out and then
Speaker 2: the lady sees that, and she kind of freaks out,
Speaker 2: and then I think it's another night. She imagines now
Speaker 2: the hand is free, free form, free roaming, and comes
Speaker 2: after and goes up and starts a choker, and then
Speaker 2: she goes to like stab the hand, and she almost
Speaker 2: stabs the hand of one of her fellow guests, and
Speaker 2: it's like, okay, yeah, she's really starting to lose it.
Speaker 2: But that hand sequence, when it's sliding, I think it
Speaker 2: is actually scarier to have the hand slide than skid.
Speaker 6: Her because, like you were saying, like an evil dead too,
Speaker 6: it's always you know, walking and then it gets stabbed,
Speaker 6: you know in the boards. You know, it's always one
Speaker 6: of those images because like I say, I mean he
Speaker 6: has hands in Shenandelou, you know with the hand and
Speaker 6: the ants coming out, you know, oh.
Speaker 2: And the disembodied hand there that he's poking with a stick.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like on the sidewalk and the guy's
Speaker 2: poking at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just when the traffic accident. Knowing the Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we had it in the inside the box the biker,
Speaker 1: I think he had the hand. I don't remember, but
Speaker 1: I think it comes. It goes with this back biking
Speaker 1: and inside there is the hand. No again, something the
Speaker 1: uncontrollable hand again, something that you know, even you cannot
Speaker 1: control your body.
Speaker 2: Know if this is like increasing and they can't, they
Speaker 2: literally can't control the situation they're in. You know, I
Speaker 2: love that image that you're talking about with the rich people,
Speaker 2: because there's always the rich guy who thinks he can
Speaker 2: buy his way out of any situation. And here we
Speaker 2: have an entire room of rich people that think they
Speaker 2: can buy their way.
Speaker 3: Out of this.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm surprised they're not like, okay, all right,
Speaker 2: how much you get out of this room, you know,
Speaker 2: or worried about the stock market and like, oh I
Speaker 2: need a phone, I need to hear how United Affiliation
Speaker 2: is doing or whatever.
Speaker 1: I think that's the biggest truth. Yes, it's called momentum
Speaker 1: in Latin, which is remember that you die a little
Speaker 1: bit like the trumpets of Apocalypse that at the end
Speaker 1: nobody gets you know, nobody gets safe. Yes, it goes.
Speaker 1: And it was in the medieval times a way of
Speaker 1: saying like even these rich guys are fucking you will
Speaker 1: don't worries they will go. And I think somehow mentality
Speaker 1: in Spain is very medieval, because the God is kind
Speaker 1: of the father is not this father which is very cruel,
Speaker 1: sometimes loves you, sometimes destroys you. And I think this
Speaker 1: is also the relation that people have in Spain with
Speaker 1: the state. You know, we try to trick the state.
Speaker 1: The state tried to trick us. There is always you know,
Speaker 1: you will ask for a grant for a film and
Speaker 1: you always have to trick him. You have the you know,
Speaker 1: if there is this game of eruption, and you know,
Speaker 1: at the same time you hate the state or you
Speaker 1: hate the government, but someono how you love the government.
Speaker 1: You know, all this fight I think it comes from fieldalism,
Speaker 1: you know, like this father that tells you, you know,
Speaker 1: like now one day it's slopping you in the next
Speaker 1: day is bringing you the food.
Speaker 6: The thing that's really interesting to me also in watching
Speaker 6: this is that you know, I hadn't seen it in
Speaker 6: a while, ten years or more. And this thing is
Speaker 6: more badshit than I remember. Like I thought, it was
Speaker 6: a bit more subdued, to be honest, compared to even
Speaker 6: some of the later French film this one is a
Speaker 6: bit more hung crock, you know, and energetic that I remember.
Speaker 6: So it seems like when he went back to France.
Speaker 6: I mean things like Beldejoux or Discreet Charm or even
Speaker 6: Fantom of Liberty is a bit more French relaxed. It's
Speaker 6: not as the hyper. There's definite anxiety in there, I
Speaker 6: guess for lack but better. It's like there really is
Speaker 6: a tension in here that in some of the other movies.
Speaker 6: I don't feel as tensed as I do when I
Speaker 6: wants this one.
Speaker 1: I think Mexico reality was quite more brutal than than
Speaker 1: the French reality, also the Spanish reality. You know, when
Speaker 1: you do the most punk films are The Golden Age,
Speaker 1: and and and The Lucian Dog. You know, he starts
Speaker 1: really punk talking about passions, and then yes, and then
Speaker 1: I think the Consecration of the Mexican period is really punk.
Speaker 1: It's really strong, and it goes a little bit to
Speaker 1: France and you know, French dyke back in time, they
Speaker 1: were more intellectualist a little bit after the novel bag.
Speaker 1: I mean, they are very strong films and very powerful films,
Speaker 1: but I found the more elite films or more intellectual
Speaker 1: films Mexican period that they were more commercial. But you
Speaker 1: can see this kind of more Latin passion there and
Speaker 1: more you know, not so domesticated. That's the French period,
Speaker 1: I believe. I think you are totally right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I guess they're not connected. Maybe they are in
Speaker 6: certain ways. We're talking about manners. But I was watching
Speaker 6: a YouTube say about of all things Office Space, and
Speaker 6: it was talking about like the original ending of Office Space,
Speaker 6: the character it feels like a loop. There's a character
Speaker 6: who they cut that would basically be similar to the
Speaker 6: previous boss that he had at the other place. So
Speaker 6: it's like, you just can't win, you just loop yourself.
Speaker 6: And so to me, the ending of the movie where
Speaker 6: it's like, okay, they all get out, they go to
Speaker 6: the church, and now they can't get out of the church.
Speaker 6: It's happening again, and just that last shot of the
Speaker 6: sheep heading off towards the church, it's like, oh, we
Speaker 6: got a duty to do. We got to do our part. Yeah,
Speaker 6: the whole thing.
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, it was three sheep to feed this
Speaker 2: many people. Now you need this many sheep to feed
Speaker 2: all of the congregation. I guess that was the explanation
Speaker 2: that Juan Luis boon Weell provided that he said to
Speaker 2: his father had said, I'm so curious though, as far
Speaker 2: as the end scene with what I only can assume
Speaker 2: is a police massacre, the what's going on? They're shooting
Speaker 2: a bunch of people and I don't know what's happening
Speaker 2: with that. Do you guys? What do you guys make
Speaker 2: of that whole thing with the shots being fired and
Speaker 2: all the people running around, Because now suddenly the police
Speaker 2: are very active, but they're not helping again with any
Speaker 2: of the actual problems that are going on.
Speaker 6: I mean, if I wanted to read symbolism, I could say, well,
Speaker 6: it's it's those who are wealthy and don't have to
Speaker 6: deal with police violence. State of violence, you know, which
Speaker 6: is usually metered out on the less fortunate that they're
Speaker 6: locked away somewhere, and I think they're ineffectual, Like they
Speaker 6: could be effectual, they could do something, they could help
Speaker 6: start the revolution, but they're not going to You could
Speaker 6: read again this is the Bear and the Bolshevik piece,
Speaker 6: where you could read you know, class communist socialists, less
Speaker 6: thing in there. But to me, I mean not to
Speaker 6: say that there weren't violent, you know, revolutions throughout Europe
Speaker 6: before this point, but this movie, in that scene feels
Speaker 6: of a piece that maybe sixty eight that would be
Speaker 6: a commentary. It feels a few years early.
Speaker 1: I agree with Robert, I don't think you can find
Speaker 1: the kind of a political commentary so early. Probably for
Speaker 1: police sharing or you know, it's probably there's hunting the bear,
Speaker 1: some sort of you know, these things are not proper.
Speaker 1: You know, what happened here is not proper. So some
Speaker 1: some sort of coming back to the you know, most
Speaker 1: conservative you know forces, because that's what the police represents,
Speaker 1: like he we had to put some order here. We
Speaker 1: didn't do a ship, but you know, let's hunt the bears.
Speaker 1: Or maybe they couldn't, maybe they didn't even recognize them.
Speaker 1: You know what it is this you know a bunch
Speaker 1: of punks getting out of the you know, so much deprivation.
Speaker 1: You know that, you know, it's some it's somehow unbearable,
Speaker 1: you know, I won't say it's a simpol it's more
Speaker 1: like what I what I feel. But you know, to
Speaker 1: my probation, too much uncontrol, too much anarchy there, like
Speaker 1: it's not proper somehow.
Speaker 2: Before they get out, I think it's one of the
Speaker 2: last scenes before they actually break through the barrier, there's
Speaker 2: actual like going around to all of the different people
Speaker 2: and seeing a lot of their dreams, which you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's surrealist film, but we actually get to
Speaker 2: see some of their dreams. Some of them are just
Speaker 2: the one guy's face over the clouds and his face
Speaker 2: is spinning and the clouds are moving at the same time.
Speaker 2: And then I'm just like, oh, okay, this is nice
Speaker 2: that we finally get to see inside of them and
Speaker 2: what they're thinking about. And yeah, there's clouds. It's a
Speaker 2: lot of nature stuff. I wonder if it's just because
Speaker 2: they are not allowed right now to see nature, so
Speaker 2: they dream of Oh gosh, there's mountains. There's a whole
Speaker 2: thing with like some sawing that's going on over lightning
Speaker 2: and thunder. I mean, it's just some very strong dream
Speaker 2: imagery and you even get it almost like it's two
Speaker 2: people as if they were sharing the same dream.
Speaker 6: Which isn't that unusual within well filmed with people waking
Speaker 6: up in the dreams of others whose reality are we in.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what I make of the whole thing
Speaker 2: with the cops at the end, in just the way
Speaker 2: that they're shooting. I like the idea of them trying
Speaker 2: to hunt the bear because I don't know if we
Speaker 2: ever see what happens with that poor bear. I just
Speaker 2: feel bad for it because it feels like such a
Speaker 2: party favor type of thing. I'm like, who who brought
Speaker 2: the bear? Did you have to go to a store?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Okay, who brought the dog?
Speaker 2: How do you even get a bear in three sheets?
Speaker 2: To show up at a party? And that feels like
Speaker 2: the beginning of a joke.
Speaker 6: I just love the fact that, in my last sight
Speaker 6: he said that somebody actually did that, so he based
Speaker 6: that on someone. Yeah, about the bear and she do
Speaker 6: it party?
Speaker 2: She's so strange, what a party that would have been.
Speaker 1: He was kind of a way surprising people with the
Speaker 1: weird stuff, you know, like unpredictable stuff there.
Speaker 2: Well, it's like when he showed up and Dick Kevin
Speaker 2: had his little artwork that he threw out and was
Speaker 2: just like, oh yeah, that's my pet.
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, Well, rich people do this stravagun things,
Speaker 1: you know, as a way of feeling like the danger
Speaker 1: because they know everything is under control and they get
Speaker 1: really out of rail and control. But yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's very common, all this ideas rich people have, you know,
Speaker 1: like I don't know you have seen an oral, but
Speaker 1: it's the first movie. It came to my head like
Speaker 1: lately because of these extravaganzas that the rich people have
Speaker 1: and like I'm not I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do that. For them, everything is a joke, not because
Speaker 1: they can get out of it with no problems. So
Speaker 1: somebody brings a bear's like oh fantastic, you know why not,
Speaker 1: you know, exotic enough. And at the end, the poor
Speaker 1: animal is hunted by the police. Now the poor wild,
Speaker 1: innocent animal. But they could start hunting the rich, but
Speaker 1: not they probably hunt this poor animal.
Speaker 2: It's not clear, but the end of the movie it's
Speaker 2: almost like a triumph when you have the bells ringing
Speaker 2: and all this. It's like that's what you see and
Speaker 2: like it's a wonderful life or something that ends with
Speaker 2: like oh everything's great, now we've got the church bells going,
Speaker 2: and it's like, no, this is just starting another chapter.
Speaker 2: And it's like, what is this strange phenomenon? You mentioned
Speaker 2: the word simulkra and that immediately throws my mind to
Speaker 2: Philip K. Dick, and I'm just like, yeah, I can
Speaker 2: see Philip K. Dick writing a story about this. Just
Speaker 2: was like this weird thing happened one day. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's almost a science fiction premise where it's like these
Speaker 2: people were in this room and they couldn't leave the room,
Speaker 2: So now what you know, what's the situation. And that's
Speaker 2: the thing I like, is that butnwell it's like okay,
Speaker 2: well yeah that's our premise.
Speaker 3: Now where do we go with it?
Speaker 2: What's happening? And he doesn't talk about the barrier that
Speaker 2: much as far as the human relationships, and I think
Speaker 2: that's where it differs from like a science fiction story
Speaker 2: is they would be like, Okay, now we're going to
Speaker 2: get a robot or something to go through here, Like
Speaker 2: somebody you know, hires a chipmunk to try to go
Speaker 2: up to the house. Can I make it through the barrier?
Speaker 2: Like okay, well the rules here and like you know,
Speaker 2: having a whiteboard where you have to write down like
Speaker 2: well we tried this, and like no, they don't go
Speaker 2: through things logically. These people, once this happens, they're more
Speaker 2: concerned about themselves and more concerned about the relationships that
Speaker 2: are going on, more concerned about the carnality. I think
Speaker 2: there's a lot of fucking that happens in this movie.
Speaker 2: Not to be crude, but that's very true.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: One thing that I sent over because I wanted to
Speaker 6: talk a little bit. I mean, we've talked a little
Speaker 6: bit about influences, like cultural influences, like you know when
Speaker 6: you live through those great shocks, and but one of
Speaker 6: the things that I noted was a Suvice documentary last
Speaker 6: fall here in Albuquerque that was the is Tudo servants
Speaker 6: had they do a Spanish film series and it was
Speaker 6: called Benito Peris Banouel, and it talked about this writer
Speaker 6: who I didn't know, a Spanish writer, and talked about
Speaker 6: him as an influence, especially in this early era. Like
Speaker 6: they used footage from Lagdoor and then a lot of
Speaker 6: it from Extremity Angel. Basically the thesis of the director
Speaker 6: is basically that like once went back to Europe and
Speaker 6: he kind of moved away from this direct influence of
Speaker 6: this writer. So I'm not familiar with this. My Spanish
Speaker 6: is Galdos.
Speaker 1: Is that his name Benitopeter Galdos. Yes. The very amazing
Speaker 1: thing is that Benito Galdos was a quite realistic writer.
Speaker 1: You know, you read it in the high school. I
Speaker 1: don't read it from my high school time. So when
Speaker 1: you mentioned it, it was like, WHOA, he didn't know.
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to go back to him. And yes,
Speaker 1: he has a very fine or a very detailed psychological landscape.
Speaker 1: I mean he's able to portray psychological relations in a
Speaker 1: very deep way. And this is why I think people
Speaker 1: knew how God all nuances of desire and reluctance and
Speaker 1: all this kind of human relations. And then maybe that
Speaker 1: was passed through the real off in process and ex
Speaker 1: spontaneity and should realism and he got. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: should go back to Galdos. I don't know. It's a
Speaker 1: very famous writer here.
Speaker 6: The documentary was quite good hy written in terms of
Speaker 6: what it does, and what the director tries to do
Speaker 6: is try to blend the two, which is where the
Speaker 6: title comes from. You know that the idea that they
Speaker 6: shared these commonalities I found it really interesting. Like I said,
Speaker 6: I had no idea who this writer was. I only
Speaker 6: went because, you know, related to Bunuel and was down
Speaker 6: the street from our lips. So I thought, you know,
Speaker 6: this is this is worth checking out. So I would
Speaker 6: include that, like if you put the trailer up and
Speaker 6: link to that mic on the show notes, give people
Speaker 6: an opportunity to check that out. Hopefully it gets a
Speaker 6: bit of a broader release. I don't know if it's
Speaker 6: available anywhere else, but I know it's a Spanish director
Speaker 6: who created it, so and it's been out I think
Speaker 6: maybe about two years. So I think it was like
Speaker 6: two thousand and two or three that it came out.
Speaker 6: The one thing that was interesting that I remember in
Speaker 6: there was it wasn't that when Well at him. I
Speaker 6: guess there was an opportunity for him to meet him,
Speaker 6: but he didn't go, but Lorca did. And then Lorca
Speaker 6: told him there's this story that I guess like LRCA
Speaker 6: shares with when Well and they had been reading his work,
Speaker 6: like he said, maybe it was part of what they
Speaker 6: were doing. And you know when they were in the
Speaker 6: Residentia school or something, because I think it was around
Speaker 6: that period.
Speaker 1: Yes, I read they met once, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: He made two films from his novels. One is Tristana
Speaker 1: and the other is I don't remember the second one,
Speaker 1: and I think they met briefly.
Speaker 6: The other thing I wanted to point to you, I
Speaker 6: wanted to thank our old friend of the show, el
Speaker 6: Goro from Talk Without Rhythm podcast, because many years ago,
Speaker 6: I don't know how many years ago, and it's been
Speaker 6: current this thing around. But he sent me this book.
Speaker 6: He found this Whenwell book. This is from nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 6: It was written by Higginbobham from University of Texas in
Speaker 6: the late seventies. And so el Goro, who had been
Speaker 6: on the show many times, he found this in I
Speaker 6: think like a dollar bin some and was like, you
Speaker 6: want this book on Bouonewell And I was like sure.
Speaker 6: So he sent it to me and there's like I
Speaker 6: read from my last side, there's just a short piece
Speaker 6: at the end. I wanted to share. This says filmmaker
Speaker 6: is moralist. It says the division of Bounwell's master works
Speaker 6: into two groups, character studies and social satires is arbitrary,
Speaker 6: but can illustrate some important features of his art. It
Speaker 6: reveals that Boonwell evolves from preoccupation in the sixties with
Speaker 6: a series of character as Verdiama Simon Bildejer to a
Speaker 6: wider satiric view in the seventies, in which he made
Speaker 6: only one character study, Tristiana. Since then, Buonwell has concentrated
Speaker 6: upon the bourgeoisie as a social class, rather than representing
Speaker 6: it as an individual. Even in his last film, which
Speaker 6: stresses upon the individual, is diffused through two actresses and
Speaker 6: portraying the same role, which is obscure object of desire. Thus,
Speaker 6: Bonwell can be seen as developing away from the creation
Speaker 6: of characters in a larger canvas of a social panorama.
Speaker 6: It says, evaluating Bundwell's art will depend to a large
Speaker 6: extent on which of his films will best endure the
Speaker 6: passage of time and changes in cinema. Assessment is complicated
Speaker 6: by reviewers and critics who have for years proclaimed that
Speaker 6: his latest film, whatever it may be, is his best
Speaker 6: so far. Critical esteem appears to favor the films which
Speaker 6: focus upon a central character. Bounwell's dissect Society best when
Speaker 6: it looms as a matrix from which springs a personification
Speaker 6: of the bizarre behavior tolerated or demanded by its codes.
Speaker 6: The later satires, however, while depriving the viewer of the
Speaker 6: pleasure of identifying with the central character, continue to amaze
Speaker 6: by their technical brilliance and the ease in which Buonowell
Speaker 6: controls his craft. The originality of Bunwell's contribution has been
Speaker 6: to translate one of the richest artistic languages of his
Speaker 6: or of any time, Surrealism, into a film language, and
Speaker 6: thus make a film a compelling moral force. The era
Speaker 6: of Discovery, in which filmmakers were enthralled with the technical
Speaker 6: capacity of cinema, Boundwell never lost sight of this conception
Speaker 6: of film as a social instrument as well as a
Speaker 6: visual toy. He owes his determination to disturb and provoke
Speaker 6: rather than to merely display to surrealism, sustaining his early
Speaker 6: achievement over fifty years by making more accessible to the
Speaker 6: wider public. Bounwell constantly updates his vision of a society
Speaker 6: paralyzed by a worn out formulae. Like a kaleidoscope, his
Speaker 6: art renders his few basic themes in infinite variations. His
Speaker 6: visual probe into the obsessions of the humankind and the
Speaker 6: social consequences is as thorough as an inquiry into society today,
Speaker 6: and it can be that for the first time one
Speaker 6: of the great moralists of our cententury happens to be
Speaker 6: a filmmaker. The thing that's interesting about this book is
Speaker 6: that it was, like I said, published in seventy nine,
Speaker 6: and of course he is listed as one of the
Speaker 6: great film surrealists. But I think that if you want
Speaker 6: to talk about someone who took film surrealism and surrealism
Speaker 6: visual further into the mainstream, it would be interesting to
Speaker 6: take him up against Lynch and see how an American
Speaker 6: surrealist evolves in that way.
Speaker 1: I think both they were tackling very well the society
Speaker 1: they grow up in, you know, and they find that
Speaker 1: Lynch an amazing way of describing American society with these
Speaker 1: two sides, you know, the darkness and the surface. And
Speaker 1: I think in Buela there is also this shurface and darkness,
Speaker 1: which is the Catholic environment he grow We know where
Speaker 1: we were talking about this very strong forces coming from
Speaker 1: the subconscious to try to dismember and destroy what is
Speaker 1: always the conservative, a very conservative environment. And if you
Speaker 1: see that the two of them together, they don't have
Speaker 1: anything to do. They are totally different than the way
Speaker 1: they render the images, but somehow they drink from the
Speaker 1: same source. I say, it will be for another program, but.
Speaker 6: It was just something that I thought about because you know,
Speaker 6: this writer obviously writing in the late seventies, Bunuel was
Speaker 6: still live, he in dine till eighty three, and that
Speaker 6: he represents kind of the apex at that time of
Speaker 6: what film's realism was, you know, or the use of
Speaker 6: that type of imagery. The only other person that comes
Speaker 6: close to me in my mind outside of Lynch is
Speaker 6: like I said, films have been so scattered and so
Speaker 6: small over the years, has been to jodor Rowski. Certain
Speaker 6: ties I feel between them as well in terms of
Speaker 6: dealing with some of these issues.
Speaker 1: I never put on laoskil together. For me, they don't,
Speaker 1: for they are not part of the same landscape. For
Speaker 1: some reason, these seem to play a similar game, but
Speaker 1: back to they don't because also Mexicans and we were
Speaker 1: gonna talk about col Kitty, you know, and I think
Speaker 1: it's a total different landscape because I don't think Yodrowski
Speaker 1: is a tragic comedy is. He is much more critical,
Speaker 1: it's much more dry, but it's very funny. His films
Speaker 1: are really anchoring a Mediterranean culture of tragic comedy of
Speaker 1: you know, the survival person. And I don't think this
Speaker 1: connects at all with Holdowski, even if they are sharing
Speaker 1: the Catholic tradition, I don't find any similarity way they
Speaker 1: understand art.
Speaker 6: For instance, nine out of ten I would pick a
Speaker 6: Boomhell film over Dyoorowski film. But I do have a
Speaker 6: self spot for Holy Mountain.
Speaker 1: It was really interesting. I enjoyed a lot. It was amazing.
Speaker 1: The reference to Robe was bringing totally knew to me
Speaker 1: and very super interesting perspective of looking at them. Also, Mike,
Speaker 1: where you were conduct him. But it was great, But
Speaker 1: I think I'm a bit empty now we really put
Speaker 1: it was very beautiful because I think we really went
Speaker 1: to the essence of what brings emotionally from a wider
Speaker 1: perspective culture and philosophical perspective through I think it's a
Speaker 1: really beautiful program.
Speaker 2: All right, we're going to take a break and play
Speaker 2: a preview for next week's show. Right after these brief messages, Lack.
Speaker 1: Just agrees ab.
Speaker 3: Agress through any deal as a no bus. They shouted
Speaker 3: him that what's his hipkin buss? And my yes, I
Speaker 3: can't said, min my cousin you do.
Speaker 6: That's a cousin.
Speaker 3: You don't a spouse as he does. My girls, I
Speaker 3: hate to know me.
Speaker 8: You don't.
Speaker 7: Oh, dear boys to me, Mama heard the formula part like.
Speaker 3: He has a back load of do man, what he
Speaker 3: you mind? That's imagine us to about dies. You got
Speaker 3: air to bother? You just spookt.
Speaker 8: Ha been your son?
Speaker 3: Now water is shot? What? No flag of the watch astrong?
Speaker 1: As a kid here?
Speaker 3: Oh no, I don't know. Bruise take grazy.
Speaker 6: To be pushed down.
Speaker 2: That's right. We'll be back next week with a look
Speaker 2: at O Pagador de promise us. Until then, I want
Speaker 2: to thank my co host Rob and Miguel. So Rob,
Speaker 2: what's been keeping you busy lately, sir.
Speaker 6: I'm just enjoying my time up in the high desert.
Speaker 6: I think the last time I talked, they finished this novel.
Speaker 6: I'm outlining a few other things tray and ended that one.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 6: Maybe I'll put it out, maybe I won't. Who knows.
Speaker 6: Just writing and it's always good to be on the show.
Speaker 6: I think I've been on the show more this year
Speaker 6: than I have quite a well, so thanks Mike and Miguel.
Speaker 2: I don't think we've really chatted since the release of
Speaker 2: Infinite Summer. How is everything going for.
Speaker 1: You, Cohen, Well, I really want to go to the
Speaker 1: next step. I'm a bit tired of the film, but
Speaker 1: I'm reading a lot about Mickey Mouse and about Disney,
Speaker 1: and about the last days of our Walt Disney, which
Speaker 1: is very interesting with Epcott and all this corporate utahps.
Speaker 1: And we were talking about Simulacra before. This is a
Speaker 1: very big Simulacra and I think and I'm reading a
Speaker 1: lot about Walt Disney.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you again guys for being on the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear
Speaker 2: more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some
Speaker 2: of the other shows that I've worked on. They're all
Speaker 2: available at Willinglymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community.
Speaker 2: If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com.
Speaker 2: Slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the projection
Speaker 2: booths take over the world.
Speaker 9: Here it comes again, taste of jagged glass and rusty can.
Speaker 7: There are just black holes where the stars would be watching,
Speaker 7: Just black holes where the stars should have bes.
Speaker 5: Food caressing, you're incoloxon, swans of vangels come to kill
Speaker 5: your sons, and this is.
Speaker 7: A lab black holes where the star should have been,
Speaker 7: black oas where the stars would be watching.
Speaker 9: On, the strange noise stinging again in your beat, Cover
Speaker 9: this in menstress stream.
Speaker 8: Cover this black gold.
Speaker 3: Plunge, then.
Speaker 8: Choking gods, dripping food you minstrels stream.
Speaker 9: Rising up, the taste of rustic cat and dragging glass.
Speaker 3: Feeling against Here it comes.
Speaker 5: Againsts of loocas not I can served.
Speaker 8: Lang on everyone, please a little undern I'm thinking of it.
Speaker 1: And not.
Speaker 3: One of about it.
Speaker 8: Instead of it just the night out it I want
Speaker 8: a m les say.
Speaker 5: Let's say, I say, stay the sad time, the good.
Speaker 6: Raining, a.
Speaker 8: Little rest for a little bleeding kiss on skis on.
Speaker 5: A single, A bit in the prisoner, a prisoner by
Speaker 5: one of bucking up for a girl, A bit will
Speaker 5: embracement pa a beds kind of bit, I say, out
Speaker 5: of a side, SI gets on it.
Speaker 8: I'm sick of it.
Speaker 10: Here it comes again, teaste of jagged glass, rusty can.
Speaker 3: There are just.
Speaker 10: Black holes where the star should have been, just like
Speaker 10: holes with the star watching pis on it pis on it.
Speaker 8: I'm slick of it, sicker, I want to fucking in that.
Speaker 6: For the ell be.
Speaker 1: And no visit.
Speaker 8: No, well, it makes me love in spite of this.
Speaker 8: It makes me love
Speaker 3: Love,