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Speaker 2: Remaining a live man like this man letting butterfly flappin
Speaker 2: in wing big ban in a forced man it go
Speaker 2: cause a tree fall, letting five thousand miles away man,
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Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: You got directed.
Speaker 3: Go back a night on the Pan.
Speaker 4: All right, Andrew Edwards, Welcome back to the Jay Burdens Show.
Speaker 3: How you doing, man good? I'm glad to be with
Speaker 3: you again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we are continuing our much vaunted UH movie
Speaker 4: review series. Uh, you picked the last one ish kind
Speaker 4: of You gave me a list and I just dictated
Speaker 4: to you were doing this week, and we are doing
Speaker 4: the nineteen ninety eight Comma or like comedy, maybe romance,
Speaker 4: maybe film Buffalo sixty six. So a little bit of
Speaker 4: context on this.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: This is one of my brother in law and my
Speaker 4: wife's favorite movies. They love it. I had, literally I
Speaker 4: had no preconceptions about either this movie or Vincent Gallo,
Speaker 4: the director, star writer, And the first time I went
Speaker 4: through it, I couldn't take it. I tapped out at
Speaker 4: about the fifty percent mark. It was just too bizarre,
Speaker 4: too weird, too uncomfortable. And then the second time I
Speaker 4: sat back through it and genuinely enjoyed it. I don't
Speaker 4: know if I necessarily have the greatest argument as to
Speaker 4: why I enjoyed it, but as part of that, I've
Speaker 4: sort of also become fascinated by Vincent Gallo as sort
Speaker 4: of the world's most insane film all tour. He is
Speaker 4: reviled by many people, which is sort of funny. But anyway, Andy,
Speaker 4: I'll kick it back to you. I'm curious to get
Speaker 4: your thoughts. We were talking a little bit about, you know,
Speaker 4: your kind of initial reaction upon seeing the movie.
Speaker 3: Yes, maybe for our listeners, I mean we give them
Speaker 3: a little bit of you know, the intro there isn't
Speaker 3: It's an indie movie, so it isn't like there's a
Speaker 3: highly complicated plot, and the emphasis is really on these characters.
Speaker 3: And I note a couple other things just to kind
Speaker 3: of set the table for anybody who does want to
Speaker 3: see this movie. I noticed going back, I must have
Speaker 3: seen this like in nineteen ninety eight. I think it
Speaker 3: was was that right, nineteen ninety eight. It comes out,
Speaker 3: but I don't remember any of it, and Burden says
Speaker 3: to me, we're doing this movie, so okay. So I
Speaker 3: sit down after a very long day, and likewise I
Speaker 3: didn't make it fifty percent. I wanted to tap out
Speaker 3: at about I don't know, like really the minute that
Speaker 3: Vincent Gallo's character gets out of jail, which is how
Speaker 3: the movie opens, you know, you're like, man, this guy
Speaker 3: is just gusting, Like this is not somebody that I
Speaker 3: can identify with, and and therein begins what is really
Speaker 3: a great movie in many ways, but is extremely difficult
Speaker 3: anyway for me. For me to get through. One thing
Speaker 3: to note is he's going for a kind of like
Speaker 3: seventies John Cassavetti's uh feel and vibe, and that's that's
Speaker 3: something pretty interesting because he he goes, he brings in
Speaker 3: Ben Gazara as his dad, who worked with famously John
Speaker 3: cassavettis on a number of movies, including what I think
Speaker 3: is Cassavetti's best, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and
Speaker 3: he's in some other ones. But I think that that
Speaker 3: plays into how the movie has has situated itself in
Speaker 3: like popular cultural, popular culture or history. Uh, he's Vincent Gallo,
Speaker 3: isn't like you were saying earlier. I mean, he's polarizing,
Speaker 3: but he's got a lot of respect from a lot
Speaker 3: of people too. So for the audience. Once again, guy
Speaker 3: gets out of prison and immediately wants to go over
Speaker 3: and see his parents, who this is all said in Buffalo,
Speaker 3: which is kind of awful, You know that, Like the
Speaker 3: weather is very gray, and it's just every everything about
Speaker 3: it is kind of depressing and weird, which may be accurate.
Speaker 3: I've never been to Buffalo, have you been?
Speaker 4: It's it's an accurate depiction. It is okay, I'd be sure.
Speaker 4: I don't know for sure. I'd be shocked if it
Speaker 4: wasn't filmed there, because if not, that is exactly what
Speaker 4: Buffalo looks like.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I looked into it a little bit and
Speaker 3: apparently it is at least almost all shot in Buffalo,
Speaker 3: and a ton of is shot actually in Vincent Gallo.
Speaker 3: The director writer is from Buffalo, and a lot of
Speaker 3: it is shot in his parents' house, in his actual
Speaker 3: the house that he grew up in. And I will
Speaker 3: maybe I'll set that the rest of that aside and
Speaker 3: finish this idea. So against for the listeners, like, not
Speaker 3: much really happens in terms of plot. He wants to
Speaker 3: go see his mom and dad. He immediately kidnaps this
Speaker 3: girl and then dig go over to his mom and
Speaker 3: dad's house and we find out that he's he's been
Speaker 3: in jail because he was sort of set up to
Speaker 3: take the fall for another guy in this betting scheme.
Speaker 3: He does his five or seven years or something, he
Speaker 3: gets out and there he is, he has nowhere he has.
Speaker 3: He's pretty young, and I mean, I guess he's supposed
Speaker 3: to be maybe thirty or something like late twenties. And
Speaker 3: from there, yeah, like what do you think, like, not
Speaker 3: much really happens. It's really about this guy's internal thing
Speaker 3: and the relationship between him and the girl.
Speaker 4: So you're right, and that is sort of the you know,
Speaker 4: the a plot right him you know, meeting this girl.
Speaker 4: It's sort of a inversion of the classic rom com
Speaker 4: trope where you know, he when he was away in jail.
Speaker 4: We find this out later in the narrative, used his
Speaker 4: mentally disabled friend Goon, who is a background character in this,
Speaker 4: to basically send his parents letters, right, you know, like
Speaker 4: postdated so that they would think that he is, you know,
Speaker 4: living this life as a you know, man of mystery, right,
Speaker 4: flying all around the world. And as part of this,
Speaker 4: he's married. So he gets out of jail, which is
Speaker 4: sort of played up in this kind of like sad
Speaker 4: pathetic way. You know, he's just you know, trying to
Speaker 4: The whole inciting incident is he's trying to find a bathroom, right.
Speaker 4: He runs into this dance studio and that's where he
Speaker 4: sees this girl, Leila, kidnaps her, demands that she drive
Speaker 4: him to his parents' house, and this is where you
Speaker 4: get kind of the comedy of it, because he is
Speaker 4: vacillating between completely normal conversations and insane threats, threatening to
Speaker 4: kill her, just badgering her constantly, and she is, relatively speaking,
Speaker 4: a normal person compared to you know, Vincent Gallo, kind
Speaker 4: of chewing the scenery and so, you know, that's the
Speaker 4: inciting incident to the main plot. But in the background,
Speaker 4: we find out that he was put away for betting
Speaker 4: on the Buffalo Bills at the I think it's isn't
Speaker 4: at the at the super Bowl. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 4: at this this notable super Bowl, he put ten thousand
Speaker 4: dollars on the Buffalo Bills to win. You know, the
Speaker 4: best kicker in the league misses the field goal right,
Speaker 4: screws the game, screws him. And so when he gets
Speaker 4: out and he's concocted this plan to you know, go
Speaker 4: find this kicker and shoot him. And so that's sort
Speaker 4: of the b plot. The background, the interactions between you know,
Speaker 4: Vincent Gallon and Leila are just off the rip, incredibly uncomfortable,
Speaker 4: like he's threatening her with the most insane threats over
Speaker 4: very minor things. This is a very quotable movie. One
Speaker 4: of the funniest parts is, you know he's kidnapped her,
Speaker 4: you know, from this dance studio, which is shot in
Speaker 4: kind of a comedic way, like he's just dragging this
Speaker 4: girl past like a bunch of eight year old girls
Speaker 4: like doing ballet. But he goes out to her car,
Speaker 4: he shoves her in the passenger seat, he gets in
Speaker 4: the driver's seat, and we find out that, you know,
Speaker 4: she drives, you know, a manual. Weirdly enough, this is
Speaker 4: funny that this car was at the time sort of
Speaker 4: a comedic ship box. Now those old eighties Corollas are
Speaker 4: worth like fifteen grand, bare minimum. Just a funny aside
Speaker 4: has this massive blowout right where he talks about I
Speaker 4: don't know how to drive shifter cars. I drive luxury cars.
Speaker 4: Do you know what a luxury car is? I drive cataloged,
Speaker 4: just berating this almost completely silent woman, which you're right,
Speaker 4: it's incredibly uncomfortable, but man, it is it is pretty funny.
Speaker 4: It is chewing the scenery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, God, there's so many scenes like that. I thought
Speaker 3: you were going to go for the one where he's
Speaker 3: talking about he's threatening her, you know what he will
Speaker 3: do if she runs off, But the whole time she
Speaker 3: never gives there's zero indication that she's ever going to
Speaker 3: run off, which is part of the comedy. Right Like
Speaker 3: he does kind of violently grab her, which I came
Speaker 3: back to towards the end in you know, sort of
Speaker 3: like a primitive sense. He establishes this like absolute base
Speaker 3: level relationship with her right there, and he there's sort
Speaker 3: of like this indication, well, you know, maybe he's going
Speaker 3: to abscond with her a raper, and it turns out
Speaker 3: to be the absolute opposite of that. Right at the end,
Speaker 3: his like, mommy problems are so profound that when when
Speaker 3: the time comes when this relationship gets like quote intimate,
Speaker 3: we can get there to that, because that's its whole
Speaker 3: other thing. But the way that heh he describes what
Speaker 3: he's going to do to her, you know, I'm going
Speaker 3: to take a big bite out of your cheek and
Speaker 3: then shot it out. He there's no capacity when this
Speaker 3: within this guy to actually do this to her, and
Speaker 3: there's no indication from her that she's actually going to leave,
Speaker 3: and so it sets this bizarre tension that is you're right,
Speaker 3: like kind of comedy gold where you wonder, like, what
Speaker 3: what are these people doing? What is really happening here?
Speaker 3: When she He's not going to come through on any
Speaker 3: of these threats. He's totally inept and she doesn't even
Speaker 3: want to leave and she's just met him. Like, what's
Speaker 3: going on with that part of it? What did you
Speaker 3: make of the Christina Ricci characters just kind of giving
Speaker 3: over to that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, it's interesting because she is, in a weird way,
Speaker 4: incredibly passive, right, she's just along for the ride, and
Speaker 4: you know, someone that's just artifsts, right, it's a moody
Speaker 4: or whatever. But I do think that it is It
Speaker 4: is incredibly interesting, especially because she seems to be basically
Speaker 4: the only person in the world who actually pays attention
Speaker 4: to Vincent Gallo in any capacity at all, and he's
Speaker 4: otherwise sort of, you know, completely ignored. And I think
Speaker 4: it's interesting because you sort of see this distinction between like,
Speaker 4: and it's funny me I haven't even using his real
Speaker 4: name because it is there are kind of questions about
Speaker 4: how autobiographical this movie is, right, but you know, Gallo's
Speaker 4: kind of very incomplete projected self image and how everyone
Speaker 4: else actually sees him because you know, up to the
Speaker 4: very beginning, you don't actually know really what's going on.
Speaker 4: You know, you are not given the sort of context
Speaker 4: about you know, taking the dive and the bet and
Speaker 4: all that, right, and so you know, you're sort of
Speaker 4: in real time learning that this guy is kind of
Speaker 4: just a massive loser. Like his best friend is special needs,
Speaker 4: his parents hate him, he doesn't really have anything going
Speaker 4: on in life other than you know, this relationship with
Speaker 4: with Leila. And what's interesting, and we'll get into this
Speaker 4: at the end of the movie, is that his sort
Speaker 4: of core motivation is sort of killing the guy who
Speaker 4: sent him to prison, right, this kicker. Yeah, and that
Speaker 4: is sort of the one animating thrust throughout this entire movie,
Speaker 4: and he is able to sort of discard that for
Speaker 4: this relationship in a way that's oddly touching given the
Speaker 4: griminess of this movie. Otherwise, I want I actually to
Speaker 4: get back to your much earlier point about you know,
Speaker 4: sort of the the echoes to the seventies. It's kind
Speaker 4: of interesting thing. So obviously this was the late nineties,
Speaker 4: so it's a little bit ahead of the curve. But
Speaker 4: in my mind, really the two thousands through the twenty
Speaker 4: tens are like kind of this this weird like the
Speaker 4: emergence of kind of retro futurism, Like you see this
Speaker 4: in car designs, right, Like the class like the new Mini,
Speaker 4: the Volkswagen Beetle, all of those being brought back as
Speaker 4: kind of echoes to a previous era. So in film
Speaker 4: as well, I mean to be honest, a lot of
Speaker 4: Tarantino's work is again calling back to the kind of
Speaker 4: grind house look. Robert Rodriguez, you know, basically made a
Speaker 4: career on doing exactly that. But I think it's interesting
Speaker 4: as well because I actually hadn't even thought about that,
Speaker 4: but once you mentioned it, like, there are multiple features
Speaker 4: of this that are basically out of you know, a
Speaker 4: movie twenty years earlier, right, the whole the whole fact
Speaker 4: that this guy, like, I mean to be honest, the
Speaker 4: way he's dressed, but the you know, the the prominence
Speaker 4: of bowling, right this, that whole scene is sort of
Speaker 4: dripping in it. And uh, yeah, it's funny. I would
Speaker 4: not have noticed that, but you're you're kind of spot
Speaker 4: on on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was one of the first things that I
Speaker 3: noticed because it's shot in film too. I mean, it
Speaker 3: must have been shot in film. I don't think that
Speaker 3: digital was really even available at that time. And you're right,
Speaker 3: I mean the clothes, the weird like platform boots, these
Speaker 3: red he's wearing this drab, kind of totally gray out
Speaker 3: fit and it's all skinny.
Speaker 4: The boots are kind of Thomas seven seven. You can
Speaker 4: see him where in those boots.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good point, they really are again. And then he
Speaker 3: has these like almost like ruby slippers, sort of just
Speaker 3: one splash of color. And uh, some of the techniques
Speaker 3: too that I actually liked. Some of the lighting techniques
Speaker 3: he seems to homage maybe maybe David Lynch with eraser Head,
Speaker 3: although David Lynch uses this technique later in his career too,
Speaker 3: where he a spotlight sort of erupts into the naturalistic
Speaker 3: lighting and you know, draws us into some sort of
Speaker 3: a dream scenario. That's one he uses that technique of
Speaker 3: where he which I thought was I have. I usually
Speaker 3: don't like that sort of stuff, you know, like gimmicks
Speaker 3: or whatever, especially maybe now as you point out, like
Speaker 3: it's it's almost like it's gone through one loop back
Speaker 3: and then another, and in each loop back it maybe
Speaker 3: gets a little bit I don't know if it's compressing
Speaker 3: into some like truth or if it's kind of getting deluded.
Speaker 3: I'm really not sure. But he uses this technique of
Speaker 3: many screens within the screen and I have to admit
Speaker 3: that was pretty all right.
Speaker 4: Andrew Edwards, Welcome back to the Jay Burdon Show.
Speaker 3: How you doing, man good. I'm glad to be with
Speaker 3: you again.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So we are continuing our much vaunted movie review series.
Speaker 4: You picked the last one ish kind of You gave
Speaker 4: me a list and I just dictated to you before
Speaker 4: doing this week, and we are doing the nineteen ninety
Speaker 4: eight Comma or like comedy, maybe romance, maybe film Buffalo
Speaker 4: sixty six. So a little bit of content text on this.
Speaker 4: This is one of my brother in law and my
Speaker 4: wife's favorite movies.
Speaker 3: They love it.
Speaker 4: I had, literally I had no preconceptions about either this
Speaker 4: movie or Vincent Gallo, the director, star writer, And the
Speaker 4: first time I went through it, I couldn't take it.
Speaker 4: I tapped out at about the fifty percent mark. It
Speaker 4: was just too bizarre, too weird, too uncomfortable. And then
Speaker 4: the second time I sat back through it and genuinely
Speaker 4: enjoyed it. I don't know if I necessarily have the
Speaker 4: greatest argument as to why I enjoyed it, but as
Speaker 4: part of that, I've sort of also become fascinated by
Speaker 4: Vincent Gallo as sort of the world's most insane film
Speaker 4: all Tour. He is reviled by many people, which is
Speaker 4: sort of funny. But anyway, Andy, I'll kick it back
Speaker 4: to you. I'm curious to get your thoughts. We're talking
Speaker 4: a little bit about, you know, your kind of initial
Speaker 4: reaction upon seeing the movie.
Speaker 3: Yes, maybe for our listeners, I mean we give them
Speaker 3: a little bit of you know, the intro there isn't
Speaker 3: it's it's an indie movie, so it isn't like there's
Speaker 3: a highly complicated plot, and the emphasis is really on
Speaker 3: these characters. And I note a couple other things just
Speaker 3: to kind of set the table for anybody who does
Speaker 3: want to see this movie. I noticed going back, I
Speaker 3: must have seen this like in nineteen ninety eight. I
Speaker 3: think it was was that right, nineteen ninety eight. It
Speaker 3: comes out, but I don't remember any of it, and
Speaker 3: Burden says to me, we're doing this movie, so okay.
Speaker 3: So I sit down after a very long day, and
Speaker 3: likewise I didn't make it fifty percent. I wanted to
Speaker 3: tap out at about I don't know, like really the
Speaker 3: minute that Vincent Gallo's character gets out of jail, which
Speaker 3: is how the movie opens, you know, you're like, man,
Speaker 3: this Guy is is is disgusting, Like this is not
Speaker 3: somebody that I can identify with, And therein begins what
Speaker 3: is really a great movie in many ways, but is
Speaker 3: extremely difficult anyway for me, for me to get through.
Speaker 3: One thing to note is he's going for a kind
Speaker 3: of like seventies John Cassavetti's feel and vibe, and that's
Speaker 3: that's something pretty interesting because he he goes, he brings
Speaker 3: in Ben Gazara as his dad, who worked with famously
Speaker 3: John cassavettis on a number of movies, including what I
Speaker 3: think is Cassavetti's best, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie,
Speaker 3: and he's in some other ones. But I think that
Speaker 3: that plays into how the movie has has situated itself
Speaker 3: in like popular cultural, popular culture or history. He's Vincent
Speaker 3: Gallo isn't like you were saying earlier. I mean, he's polarizing,
Speaker 3: but he's got a lot of respect from a lot
Speaker 3: of people too. So for the audience. Once again, guy
Speaker 3: gets out of prison and immediately wants to go over
Speaker 3: and see his parents, who this is all said in Buffalo,
Speaker 3: which is kind of awful. You know that, Like the
Speaker 3: weather is very gray and it's every everything about it
Speaker 3: is kind of depressing and weird, which may be accurate.
Speaker 3: I've never been to Buffalo, have you been?
Speaker 4: It's it's an accurate depiction, it is okay, I'd be sure.
Speaker 4: I don't know for sure. I'd be shocked if it
Speaker 4: wasn't filmed there, because if not, that is exactly what
Speaker 4: buffle looks like.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I looked into it a little bit and
Speaker 3: apparently it is at least almost all shot in Buffalo,
Speaker 3: and a ton of it is shot actually in Vincent Gallo.
Speaker 3: The director writer is from Buffalo, and a lot of
Speaker 3: it is shot in his parents' house, in his actual
Speaker 3: the house that he grew up in. And I will
Speaker 3: maybe I'll set that the rest of that aside and
Speaker 3: finish this idea. So against for the listeners, like, not
Speaker 3: much really happens in terms of plot. He wants to
Speaker 3: go see his mom and dad. He immediately kidnaps this
Speaker 3: girl and then dig go over to his mom and
Speaker 3: dad's house and we find out that he's been in
Speaker 3: jail because he was sort of set up to take
Speaker 3: the fall for another guy in this betting scheme. He
Speaker 3: does his five or seven years or something. He gets
Speaker 3: out and there he is he has nowhere he has.
Speaker 3: He's pretty young, and I mean I guess he's supposed
Speaker 3: to be maybe thirty or something like late twenties. And
Speaker 3: from there, yeah, like what do you think, Like, not
Speaker 3: much really happens. It's really about this guy's internal thing
Speaker 3: and the relationship between him and the girl.
Speaker 4: So you're right, and that is sort of the you know,
Speaker 4: the a plot, right him, you know, meeting this girl.
Speaker 4: It's sort of a inversion of the classic rom com
Speaker 4: trope where you know, he when he was away in jail.
Speaker 4: We find this out later in the narrative, used his
Speaker 4: mentally disabled friend Goon, who is a background character in this,
Speaker 4: to basically send his parents letters, right, you know, like
Speaker 4: postdated so that they would think that he is, you know,
Speaker 4: living this life as a you know, man of mystery, right,
Speaker 4: flying all around the world, and as part of this
Speaker 4: he's man. So he gets out of jail, which is
Speaker 4: sort of played up in this kind of like sad
Speaker 4: pathetic way. You know, he's just you know, trying to
Speaker 4: The whole inciting incident is he's trying to find a bathroom, right.
Speaker 4: He runs into this dance studio and that's where he
Speaker 4: sees this girl, Leila, kidnaps her, demands that she drive
Speaker 4: him to his parents' house, and this is where you
Speaker 4: get kind of the comedy of it, because he is
Speaker 4: vacillating between completely normal conversations and insane threats, threatening to
Speaker 4: kill her, just badgering her constantly, and she is, relatively speaking,
Speaker 4: a normal person compared to you know, Vincent Gallo, kind
Speaker 4: of chewing the scenery. And so, you know, that's the
Speaker 4: inciting incident to the main plot. But in the background,
Speaker 4: we find out that he was put away for betting
Speaker 4: on the Buffalo Bills at the I think it's isn't
Speaker 4: at the at the super Bowl, Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 4: at this this notable super Bowl. Yeah, he put ten
Speaker 4: thousand dollars on the Buffalo Bills to win. You know,
Speaker 4: the best kicker in the league misses the field goal right,
Speaker 4: screws the game, screws him. And so when he gets
Speaker 4: out and he's concocted this plan to you know, go
Speaker 4: find this kicker and shoot him. And so that's sort
Speaker 4: of the b plot. The background, the interactions between you know,
Speaker 4: Vincent gall and Layla are just off the rip, incredibly uncomfortable,
Speaker 4: like he's threatening her with the most insane threats over
Speaker 4: very minor things. This is a very quotable movie. One
Speaker 4: of the funniest parts is, you know, he's kidnapped her,
Speaker 4: you know, from this dance studio, which is shot in
Speaker 4: kind of a comedic way, like he's just dragging this
Speaker 4: girl past like a bunch of eight year old girls
Speaker 4: like doing ballet. But he goes out to her car,
Speaker 4: he shoves her in the passenger seat, he gets in
Speaker 4: the driver's seat, and we find out that, you know,
Speaker 4: she drives, you know, a manual. Weirdly enough, this is
Speaker 4: funny that this car was at the time sort of
Speaker 4: a comedic ship box, and now those old eighties Corollas
Speaker 4: are worth like fifteen grand bare minimum. Just a funny aside,
Speaker 4: has this massive blowout right where he talks about, I
Speaker 4: don't know how to drive shifter cars. I drive luxury cars.
Speaker 4: Do you know what a luxury car is? I drive catalogs,
Speaker 4: just berating this almost completely silent woman, which you're right,
Speaker 4: it's incredibly uncomfortable, but man, it is it is pretty funny.
Speaker 4: It is chewing the scenery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, God that there's so many scenes like that. I
Speaker 3: thought you were going to go for the one where
Speaker 3: he's talking about he's threatening her, you know what he
Speaker 3: will do if she runs off, But the whole time
Speaker 3: she never gives there's zero indication that she's ever going
Speaker 3: to run off, which is part of the comedy, right
Speaker 3: Like he does kind of violently grab her, which I
Speaker 3: came back to towards the end, and in you know,
Speaker 3: sort of like a primitive sense, he establishes this like
Speaker 3: absolute base level relationship with her right there, and he
Speaker 3: there's sort of like this indication, well, you know, maybe
Speaker 3: he's going to abscond with her a raper, and it
Speaker 3: turns out to be the absolute opposite of that. Right
Speaker 3: at the end, his like, mommy problems are so profound
Speaker 3: that when when the time comes when this relationship gets
Speaker 3: like quote intimate, we can get there to that, because
Speaker 3: that's its whole other thing. But the way that heh
Speaker 3: he describes what he's going to do to her, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm going to take a big bite out of your
Speaker 3: cheek and then shift it out. He there's no capacity
Speaker 3: when this within this guy to actually do this to her,
Speaker 3: and there's no indication from her that she's actually going
Speaker 3: to leave, and so it sets this bizarre tension that
Speaker 3: is You're right, like kind of comedy gold where you wonder, like,
Speaker 3: what are these people doing? What is really happening here?
Speaker 3: When she he's not going to come through on any
Speaker 3: of these threats. He's totally inept and she doesn't even
Speaker 3: want to leave and she's just met him. Like, what's
Speaker 3: going on with that part of it? What did you
Speaker 3: make of the Christina Ricci characters just kind of giving
Speaker 3: over to that? Yeah, Well, it's.
Speaker 4: Interesting because she is, in a weird way, incredibly passive, right,
Speaker 4: She's just along for the ride, and you know, some
Speaker 4: of that's just artificts right, it's a moody or whatever.
Speaker 4: But I do think that it is It is incredibly interesting,
Speaker 4: especially because she seems to be basically the only person
Speaker 4: in the world who actually pays attention to Vincent Gallo
Speaker 4: in any capacity at all, and he's otherwise sort of,
Speaker 4: you know, completely ignored. And I think it's interesting because
Speaker 4: you sort of see this distinction between like, and it's
Speaker 4: funny me I don't even using his real name because
Speaker 4: it is there are kind of questions about how autobiographical
Speaker 4: this movie is, right, but you know, Gallo's kind of
Speaker 4: very incomplete projected self image and how everyone else actually
Speaker 4: sees him, because you know, up to the very beginning,
Speaker 4: you don't actually know really what's going on. You know,
Speaker 4: you are not given the sort of context about you know,
Speaker 4: taking the dive and the bet and all that, right,
Speaker 4: and so you know, you're sort of in real time
Speaker 4: learning that this guy is kind of just a massive loser.
Speaker 4: Like his best friend is special needs, his parents hate him,
Speaker 4: he doesn't really have anything going on in life other
Speaker 4: than you know, this relationship with with Leila. And what's interesting,
Speaker 4: and we'll get into this at the end of the movie,
Speaker 4: is that his sort of core motivation is sort of
Speaker 4: killing the guy who sent him to prison, right this kicker,
Speaker 4: and that is sort of the one animating thrust throughout
Speaker 4: this entire movie, and he is able to sort of
Speaker 4: discard that for this relationship in a way that's oddly
Speaker 4: touching given the griminess of this movie. Otherwise, I want,
Speaker 4: I actually to get back to your much earlier point
Speaker 4: about you know, sort of the the echoes to the seventies.
Speaker 4: It's kind of interesting thing. So obviously this was the
Speaker 4: late nineties, so it's a little bit ahead of the curve.
Speaker 4: But in my mind, really the two thousands through the
Speaker 4: twenty tens are like kind of this this weird like
Speaker 4: the emergence of kind of retro futurism, Like you see
Speaker 4: this in card designs, right, like the class, like the
Speaker 4: new Mini, the Volkswagen Beetle, all of those being brought
Speaker 4: back as kind of echoes to a previous era, but
Speaker 4: also in in film as well, I mean to be honest,
Speaker 4: a lot of Tarantino's work is again calling back to
Speaker 4: the kind of grind house look. Robert Rodriguez, you know,
Speaker 4: basically made a career on doing exactly that. But I
Speaker 4: think it's interesting as well because I actually hadn't even
Speaker 4: thought about that, but once you mentioned it, Like, there
Speaker 4: are multiple features of this that are basically out of
Speaker 4: you know, a movie twenty years earlier, right, the whole
Speaker 4: the whole fact that this guy, like I mean to
Speaker 4: be honest, the way he's dressed, but the you know,
Speaker 4: the the prominence of bowling, right this that whole scene
Speaker 4: is sort of dripping in it, And uh, yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 4: I would not have noticed that, but you're you're kind
Speaker 4: of spot on on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was one of the first things that I
Speaker 3: noticed because it's shot in film too. I mean it
Speaker 3: must have been shot in film. I don't think that
Speaker 3: digital was really even available at that time. And you're right,
Speaker 3: I mean the clothes, the weird like platform boots, these
Speaker 3: red He's wearing this drab, kind of totally gray outfit
Speaker 3: and it's all skinny.
Speaker 4: The boots are kind of Thomas seven seven. You could
Speaker 4: see him wearing those boots.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good point, they really are again. And then he
Speaker 3: has these like almost like ruby slippers, sort of just
Speaker 3: one splash of color. And uh, some of the techniques
Speaker 3: too that I actually liked. Some of the lighting techniques
Speaker 3: he seems to homage maybe maybe David Lynch with eraser Head,
Speaker 3: although David Lynch uses this technique later in his career too,
Speaker 3: where he a spotlight sort of erupts into the naturalistic
Speaker 3: lighting and you know, draws us into some sort of
Speaker 3: a dream scenario. That's one he uses that technique of
Speaker 3: where he which I thought was I have. I usually
Speaker 3: don't like that sort of stuff, you know, like gimmicks
Speaker 3: or whatever, especially maybe now as you point out, like
Speaker 3: it's it's almost like it's gone through one loop back
Speaker 3: and then another, and in each loop back it maybe
Speaker 3: gets a little bit. I don't know if it's compressing
Speaker 3: into some like truth or if it's kind of getting diluted.
Speaker 3: I'm really not sure. But he uses this technique of
Speaker 3: many screens within the screen, and I have to admit
Speaker 3: that was pretty pretty useful and pretty cool way to
Speaker 3: kind of, you know, he would transition into backstory, and
Speaker 3: he would transition like kind of to show the interior
Speaker 3: of his character's mind. And I guess overall, you know,
Speaker 3: it seems like in reading up on the movie that
Speaker 3: Gallo wrote the script ten years earlier and didn't really
Speaker 3: expect to be the director. But I don't know how
Speaker 3: true that is when I think about Vincent Gallo and
Speaker 3: like what he has become. But then again, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I was hoping to go back to you because this
Speaker 3: aspect where you don't really know, like how much of
Speaker 3: this is Vincent Gallo and how much isn't and then
Speaker 3: how much because this has been you know, he's been
Speaker 3: queried on this point many many times. I don't think
Speaker 3: he's giving like the truth. I don't think Vincent Gallo
Speaker 3: the man is concerned about the truth. What do you
Speaker 3: think when you take this whole package in, I feel
Speaker 3: like this is more like the younger generation. He's kind
Speaker 3: of preempted gen X, and he's kind of picked up
Speaker 3: on your guy's stuff, like a layer deeper than maybe
Speaker 3: gen X experienperience is it where he's using irony and
Speaker 3: I begin, what do you think? What do you make
Speaker 3: of all that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so there are several things there. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: become kind of trite to refer to someone as almost
Speaker 4: a performance artist, but let's be honest, that's what Vincent
Speaker 4: Galo is doing. His personal website is insane and really funny,
Speaker 4: and you could just imagine him grinning because it has
Speaker 4: some of the most insane offensive one of one hand
Speaker 4: painted T shirts. For instance, It's like, and I'll have
Speaker 4: to beat this, but it's like, you know, like Barack Obama,
Speaker 4: it just says faggot giant red block letters. He has
Speaker 4: an application where you can apply for five hundred thousand
Speaker 4: dollars for a natural or artificial dose of his sperm,
Speaker 4: provided that you're attractive enough, and it's like a like,
Speaker 4: I'm not doing it. It's like a three page rant
Speaker 4: about who will and won't meet his criteria, including entire
Speaker 4: races and continence. He is not interested in so like
Speaker 4: you look at that and you're like, all right, clearly
Speaker 4: he is to a certain degree playing a bit right.
Speaker 4: He is, you know, deliberately sort of casting himself in
Speaker 4: opposition to Hollywood, you know, while at the same time,
Speaker 4: you know, being surrounded by you know, you know, high
Speaker 4: fashion all that. So he's not truly this sort of
Speaker 4: he's I don't believe he is truly the character he portrays.
Speaker 4: But as regards kind of like the the irony of it,
Speaker 4: I think that's a very interesting element one of the
Speaker 4: things that and that's sort of I guess in my
Speaker 4: mind what I find irritating in the conversation around this
Speaker 4: movie is you have a lot of kind of pearl
Speaker 4: clutching responses that say, oh, you know, Vincent Gallo is
Speaker 4: just horrible to women in this movie. This is a
Speaker 4: you know, a misogynistic movie. And it's like, well, I mean,
Speaker 4: if this person actually existed and actually did this shore
Speaker 4: but I think that that's almost a too direct reading
Speaker 4: of this film. And I think that you know, from
Speaker 4: my mind, what we're what we're sort of seeing is
Speaker 4: you know, this man who's sort of marked by profound abandonment.
Speaker 4: So the and I don't know if it's actually true,
Speaker 4: but it feels like the longest section of this movie.
Speaker 4: It is sort of like the cinematic equivalent of having
Speaker 4: your your fingernails pulled out, uh is you know the
Speaker 4: scene at his parents'.
Speaker 3: House, Yes, this girl, it's so bad.
Speaker 4: It goes on forever like, it's genuinely so uncomfortable. And
Speaker 4: his parents, particularly his mother, is literally obsessed with the
Speaker 4: Buffalo Bills. You know, their house is decorated in that manner.
Speaker 4: She's watching rerun while they're at the table. And to
Speaker 4: almost a comedic degree, his parents, particularly his mother, are
Speaker 4: uninterested in Billy, that's you know, the name of you know,
Speaker 4: Gallo's character. They're slightly interested in in Layla a little bit,
Speaker 4: not very much, but I mean really that is her
Speaker 4: entire life.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Again, this is sort of those you know, it's so
Speaker 4: over the top, it's sort of played for a joke.
Speaker 4: The moment where they you know, this girl asks, oh, well,
Speaker 4: can I see a picture of Billy And they're going
Speaker 4: through there, you know, their their photo album and it's
Speaker 4: just her with an increasingly obscure list of people connected
Speaker 4: to the Buffalo Ells. You know, it starts off with
Speaker 4: players then like you know, SYSI athletic directors, and then
Speaker 4: it gets to you know, like the caterer and the
Speaker 4: bus driver and of of course, right it's played for
Speaker 4: a joke. But when they finally go to see you know,
Speaker 4: Billy's photo, it's it's somewhere else. It's all folded up
Speaker 4: in gross and you know, we get this kind of
Speaker 4: again slightly comedic, over the top childhood trauma where his
Speaker 4: dad you know, chokes his puppy to death in front
Speaker 4: of him for barking too loudly. And interesting enough, that's shot.
Speaker 4: I don't know if it actually the aspect ratio changes,
Speaker 4: but that's another time where we see that sort of
Speaker 4: frame within a frame and it shot almost like eight
Speaker 4: millimeter film, right, like it has that sort of film
Speaker 4: autests are going to get on me for that, but
Speaker 4: it looks like you know, kind of a handheld you know,
Speaker 4: film camera. Yeah, you know, kind of interestingly done. And
Speaker 4: so with regards to the you know, kind of the
Speaker 4: irony of this, it's like, well, obviously he's sort of
Speaker 4: playing it up, hamming it up. This is comedic in
Speaker 4: a certain sense. You know, it's so over the top,
Speaker 4: and we'll see that, you know, even in the conclusion
Speaker 4: to the movie. But also I think that there is
Speaker 4: something interesting being said there about this kind of the
Speaker 4: culture of distraction and abandonment, right, this idea that you know,
Speaker 4: his his mother in particular, is so much more obsess
Speaker 4: with something that is fake and not real. You know,
Speaker 4: that is this kind of like TV you know experience
Speaker 4: that she is completely and totally disconnected from her son.
Speaker 4: And as these people have no doubt heard me complain
Speaker 4: about the last two weeks, we've been just buried in
Speaker 4: snow here, and so my wife and I have been
Speaker 4: walking to most places just because it's you know, safer.
Speaker 5: And more reliable.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: And while we were walking you know, through the ice,
Speaker 4: she was you know, she was talking about this movie
Speaker 4: and just kind of speculating about how it is could
Speaker 4: be reinterpreted, as you know, politics and culture have shifted, right,
Speaker 4: because there's a certain reading of this which is the
Speaker 4: kind of you know, very generic TV bad you know,
Speaker 4: it rots your brain kind of reading. But I think
Speaker 4: it's it's interesting one to the degree that like we
Speaker 4: genuinely see this exact same dynamic with many people of
Speaker 4: the kind of you know, boomer and silent generation with
Speaker 4: you know, news of all type, but also right, like
Speaker 4: the skinner box in your pocket, you know, this sort
Speaker 4: of like you know, device of distraction which kind of
Speaker 4: pulls you away from you know, your actual human connections.
Speaker 4: And clearly this is marked Billy, right, you were talking
Speaker 4: about again his kind of you know, mommy issues, right
Speaker 4: he is. That is the hole that he is sort
Speaker 4: of trying to fix. H one other moment, and you
Speaker 4: know you mentioned the kind of film gimmicks, and I'll
Speaker 4: kick it back to you. There's a there's sort of
Speaker 4: a bizarre scene. Uh, and Billy's dad is just lecherous
Speaker 4: this entire time, like almost a ludicrous degree.
Speaker 3: It's just like.
Speaker 4: Feeling up this moment. And you know, he invites her
Speaker 4: into another room to listen to him sing Yeah, and
Speaker 4: he basically just lip syncs Frank Sinatra, I believe on
Speaker 4: a record player for almost an unbroken two minutes as
Speaker 4: he stares into the camera like he's on stage at Vaudeville.
Speaker 4: Very bizarre scene. So I'll kick it back to you Edward.
Speaker 3: Yeah, extremely bizarre and very uncomfortable. Right, Like there's this
Speaker 3: the whole time. I maybe I saw this long time
Speaker 3: ago and I'm not sure that I ever did see
Speaker 3: the whole movie, but this time I'm just waiting for
Speaker 3: him to try and rape her or make a move
Speaker 3: on her. In some sense, there's this just awful undercurrent
Speaker 3: to the whole thing, like established at the level that
Speaker 3: now lecherous dad and young girl with you know, half
Speaker 3: of her chest exposed. They're back in this back room
Speaker 3: and Billy is just looking at the one picture that
Speaker 3: they have of him. She has that his mom has
Speaker 3: this whole catalog as as you mentioned, of all of
Speaker 3: her absurd buffalo Bill's connections, and they have one single
Speaker 3: picture of their son. And when they switch over to
Speaker 3: the Ben Gazzara character, his dad and by the way,
Speaker 3: evidently this is another one of these these crossover weird
Speaker 3: misunder I don't know how we understand this. Evidently, Vincent
Speaker 3: Gallow's dad really does have some incredibly beautiful singing voice,
Speaker 3: and he is this guy who's I mean, you imagine
Speaker 3: sitting in some you know, like depressing basement imagining what
Speaker 3: he could have been. And that's Vincent Gallow's actual experience
Speaker 3: of Evidently his dad is just this maniacal asshole, like
Speaker 3: over the top and real like that's what Vincent Gallow's
Speaker 3: experience of having a father is. And evidently his mother
Speaker 3: is not too far from this over the top vision
Speaker 3: that he presents in the film. But yeah, it thinking
Speaker 3: about it and talking about it with you now I
Speaker 3: realize Gallo is pulling more from David Lynch in terms
Speaker 3: of his style and technique than I ever noticed before.
Speaker 3: I have seen his other Is It Brown Bunny is
Speaker 3: his other kind of controversial film, and those are probably
Speaker 3: the only they may be his only two movies, but
Speaker 3: I have seen that one, but I did not realize
Speaker 3: how much of the Lynchian ethos esthetic that he is
Speaker 3: just borrowing from fully. And it's in that scene with
Speaker 3: the puppy, it's like it's almost just note for note
Speaker 3: Lynchi and how he's moved or altered the visual just
Speaker 3: enough and then gone into this type of absurd level
Speaker 3: of violence. And you know, part of the discomfort in
Speaker 3: watching it now I think wasn't wasn't like available to
Speaker 3: viewers in it wasn't available to me. Okay, this level
Speaker 3: where it's kind of common to hear of these just
Speaker 3: horror stories of how bad parents are. I mean, I
Speaker 3: don't I look at normal parents around me now and
Speaker 3: I have to I have to be critical of them.
Speaker 3: They're not hitting like a standard benchmark where and I'm
Speaker 3: talking about people at church, people who are otherwise pretty
Speaker 3: good citizens. I'm still looking over at them saying, Jesus,
Speaker 3: this parenting is really substandard. So if you go back,
Speaker 3: you know, this is thirty five years I one thing
Speaker 3: that stands out about this is and part of why
Speaker 3: Vincent Gallow must be kind of hated is, Dude, he
Speaker 3: saw this like narcissism of the female and the corruption
Speaker 3: of the mother figure, evidently through his own experience, which
Speaker 3: is horrible and tragic and probably explains why he's such
Speaker 3: an asshole himself now. But that was so like, that
Speaker 3: was thirty years ahead of the curve, and it's points
Speaker 3: like that where at the end of the movie, I
Speaker 3: really had that moment of I had to reevaluate a
Speaker 3: lot of my not very developed conceptions of Vincent Gallo
Speaker 3: as an artist, as you say, like he's a performance artist,
Speaker 3: he's associated, he's made albums, he's doing all sorts of
Speaker 3: really strange things and not strange and just unusual, and
Speaker 3: maybe maybe he deserves maybe some more credit than he's
Speaker 3: been given. Because I guarantee you that if we were
Speaker 3: to go back in the record and look at reviews,
Speaker 3: nobody could have I don't think taken on that vision
Speaker 3: of the mother as so just she's the worst to me.
Speaker 3: I mean that scene that you mentioned where they're at
Speaker 3: the table is so hard to take. And it's not
Speaker 3: because of like personal stuff related to me. I think
Speaker 3: it's every human being watches this and it's like, this
Speaker 3: dude has literally nothing. I mean, his mom doesn't even
Speaker 3: give a shit about him, and his dad, of course,
Speaker 3: is terrible.
Speaker 4: So two things there. One that's kind of interesting again
Speaker 4: about the character of his mother is that you know,
Speaker 4: his dad is this sort of you know, quiet but
Speaker 4: still domineering presence, but he occupies a very small space
Speaker 4: physically within the house. You know, he has his his
Speaker 4: room right where he goes to sing, but you Billy's
Speaker 4: mom runs the roost, right Her stuff is everywhere that
Speaker 4: you know, the Buffalo Bill's memorabilia is on every part
Speaker 4: of the house, and even you know, when Billy leaves,
Speaker 4: you know, she's in the kitchen and his dad is
Speaker 4: retreating back to kind of his little cave.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think that that's a very interesting dynamic to bring
Speaker 4: up as well. Now obviously there's again the kind of
Speaker 4: over the top, you know parts of this. One of
Speaker 4: the things that she brings up, you know, at the
Speaker 4: table is how upset she was that she was giving
Speaker 4: birth to Billy when the Bills were at the Super
Speaker 4: Bowl in nineteen sixty six and she missed, you know,
Speaker 4: the big moment. Yeah, and she says, you know, I
Speaker 4: think that's why. I think that was the curse. You know,
Speaker 4: I was there with them for the whole season, and
Speaker 4: then I wasn't and they lost the big game. But
Speaker 4: there's actually kind of a an interesting dynamic between you know,
Speaker 4: her and Layla, where Layla is, for some reason inexplicably
Speaker 4: trying to do a very good job of pretending to
Speaker 4: be you know, Billy's devoted fiance. You know, she's you know,
Speaker 4: saying how much she likes him, you know, telling the
Speaker 4: story of how they met, all the things that normal
Speaker 4: parents would be concerned with. She even says like, oh,
Speaker 4: we're having a baby, which is obviously not true. She's
Speaker 4: just lying. But throughout the entire thing.
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Speaker 4: Billy's dad is just like eyeing her up the entire
Speaker 4: time shamelessly, and Billy's mom is at the table turned
Speaker 4: the opposite direction, watching a taped game from twenty five
Speaker 4: years ago, right like getting up and cheering during the
Speaker 4: whole thing. And it's this this moment where you and
Speaker 4: I think you are supposed to both hate and sympathize
Speaker 4: with Billy because he is he's despicable, right, He's just
Speaker 4: the worst. And he even like halfway through this conversation
Speaker 4: he gets up to go burrate goon his best friend,
Speaker 4: who is You're living at home with his mom.
Speaker 3: He has like.
Speaker 4: That this shoot, the shot composition on this insane. He's
Speaker 4: got like like open containers of like giddy pigs in
Speaker 4: this like disgusting room. The shot is him shirtless with
Speaker 4: to be polite, his underwear slightly too far down his body,
Speaker 4: and it's shot from like his chest to like his knees,
Speaker 4: like you you he's just disgusting.
Speaker 3: Shot flats is awful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he's just in the other room berating this
Speaker 4: simple minded kid for you know, not giving him the
Speaker 4: information as to where this you know kicker who who
Speaker 4: you know flubbed the big game is.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: So, you know, Billy eventually, you know, gets that information,
Speaker 4: he decides to, you know, leave this is you know,
Speaker 4: roughly about the kind of fifty to fifty mark and
Speaker 4: you know, Billy goes to uh, you know the this
Speaker 4: you know, bowling Alley, and you know, it's his first
Speaker 4: time out of jail. The guy he talks to, you know,
Speaker 4: says like, oh, yeah, we kept your locker for you,
Speaker 4: all your stuff, and this is I don't want to
Speaker 4: say this is one of the most bizarre scenes, but
Speaker 4: it's up there. This is this scene is there's a
Speaker 4: whole lot going on. So we get a couple of things,
Speaker 4: which is one, you know, Billy goes in and we
Speaker 4: see his you know, his lockers undisturbed. He does seem
Speaker 4: to have some sort of you know, like friendship connection
Speaker 4: to the guy who runs it, right uh, And we
Speaker 4: get a couple of things in his locker. We get,
Speaker 4: you know, a whole bunch of sort of memorabilia of
Speaker 4: him as a highly talented youth bowler, bowl one who bowls.
Speaker 4: I don't know what the term of that is sort
Speaker 4: of echoing in what we see in his father's room, right,
Speaker 4: the idea of this kind of untapped potential derailed by life,
Speaker 4: and also Chekhov's school picture, right, a picture of a
Speaker 4: girl and when uh, you know, Leyla asks about he goes, oh,
Speaker 4: you know, it's some girlfriend I had. You know, I've
Speaker 4: had a lot of girlfriends or whatever.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: He starts bowling, and he's bowling a perfect game. He
Speaker 4: she asks if he can, if she can take a turn.
Speaker 4: She gets a strike, and at that moment, he's his
Speaker 4: concentration is ruined, right, he can't do anything. There's a
Speaker 4: very bizarre scene where she tap dances and seemingly this
Speaker 4: sort of dream state. Yeah for again like two minutes.
Speaker 4: I don't really have an explanation for that. It's a
Speaker 4: very odd scene.
Speaker 3: It is, well, it's it's again this like Lynch technique
Speaker 3: where right, like the spotlight, the unnatural spotlight hits the
Speaker 3: otherwise naturalistic lighting and we're just in the stream sequence.
Speaker 3: I don't mean to cut you off, but I just
Speaker 3: wanted to say there again, you're right the other since
Speaker 3: I did interrupt you, I just wanted to mention that
Speaker 3: that scene like changes the whole game for me with
Speaker 3: respect to Billy, because you realize, like, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: this dude has something like a really he's like, like
Speaker 3: you say, like a bowling savant or something. He's got
Speaker 3: this very like like they say the third place or whatever.
Speaker 3: He's he's a loser at school, he's a loser at home,
Speaker 3: but he goes to this bowling alley evidently and he
Speaker 3: becomes like this stud. I mean, the dude behind the
Speaker 3: counter is it seems to evidence like genuine admiration and respect,
Speaker 3: and Vincent Gallo kind of changes into this like a
Speaker 3: gangster suave, like like a like a real dude, and
Speaker 3: then he just hits strike after strike up to strike.
Speaker 3: And it occurred to me, like part of I don't
Speaker 3: mean to jump too far ahead, but it just occurred
Speaker 3: to me as I was watching this, like, oh, Billy's
Speaker 3: whole thing here in terms of like the parents that
Speaker 3: don't love him, and you know, his diminished avenues in
Speaker 3: life or what have you. He makes this bet on
Speaker 3: his mom's dream, you know, the Buffalo Bills is to
Speaker 3: come through, and this derails everything. When he had this
Speaker 3: opportunity if he really had the ten grand, which it's
Speaker 3: not clear if you ever even had the ten grand
Speaker 3: to make the bet which gets him in so much trouble.
Speaker 3: But he could have bet. He could have like, you know,
Speaker 3: the expression like bet on yourself, like believe in yourself,
Speaker 3: which in some way does manifest at the end of
Speaker 3: the film, where he's he's kind of been able to
Speaker 3: wend his way through the little you know, like the
Speaker 3: psychic forest that he's been dumped into by these completely
Speaker 3: insufficient parents who have left him. Like on the one hand,
Speaker 3: he has this vision of females in general, which is
Speaker 3: it's just putrid. I mean, you could not if you
Speaker 3: had this mom like and you and you wind up
Speaker 3: at all functional, it would be a miracle. And if
Speaker 3: you have this dad likewise, you know, to think that
Speaker 3: you could find it within yourself to be good at something.
Speaker 3: So I just wanted to throw in that for me.
Speaker 3: When he when he shows that he there's a part
Speaker 3: of him that is cool, that is capable, and and
Speaker 3: he has his talent of bowling, and he may have
Speaker 3: had the opportunity to to bet that ten grand on
Speaker 3: himself and go a whole other way anyway.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's that's sort of an interesting thing as well, right,
Speaker 4: that he was he was doomed by in a way
Speaker 4: kind of ultimately seeking you know, approval from his approval
Speaker 4: from his you know, neglectful mother, Like that is ultimately
Speaker 4: the thing that's sort of damned, you know, trying to
Speaker 4: you know, fill that void directly.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: So you're rounding out the scene at the bowling alley. Uh,
Speaker 4: there's another eminently quotable and incredibly bizarre scene where you know,
Speaker 4: he decides like I want you know, he drags her
Speaker 4: into a photo booth, you know, and basically it's like,
Speaker 4: all right, I gotta get I gotta have photos to
Speaker 4: send my my parents, right, and we gotta keep, you know,
Speaker 4: changing the background so it looks like we're in different
Speaker 4: places or at different times. That obviously that that has
Speaker 4: flawed with it. But it's this sort of scene where
Speaker 4: they're together, you know, in this cramp photo booth, kind
Speaker 4: of shot from the camera's pov in the photo booth,
Speaker 4: and you know, it goes through the first time, and
Speaker 4: he's just furious with her. It's like no, no, no,
Speaker 4: we're a couple that likes each other but doesn't touch.
Speaker 4: We span time together and just just says that in
Speaker 4: minor derivations throughout the entire thing. You know that he's
Speaker 4: interestingly enough because this will you know circle background. He's
Speaker 4: furious with her for wasting his money, right, the idea
Speaker 4: that we had to go through this process of getting photos.
Speaker 4: It's like fifty cents, right, in consequential amount of money. Uh.
Speaker 4: But yes, they they you know a bit, they leave
Speaker 4: the bowling alley, uh and you know head out to
Speaker 4: I believe they go to Denny's next. Is that the next?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: And so this is a again we see you know
Speaker 4: both you know, kind of Chekhov school portrait and this
Speaker 4: kind of view of you know, Billy as this this
Speaker 4: kind of social outcast, because you know, while they're there,
Speaker 4: he runs into this girl, right, the girl from the photo,
Speaker 4: and we find out that not only has she played,
Speaker 4: it's this kind of like comically awful shallow person dating
Speaker 4: some like like soulless corporate suit. You know it even
Speaker 4: kind of taunting. Billy is like, oh, you're that weirdo
Speaker 4: who followed me around. I don't even know your name.
Speaker 4: And you know, he's having this sort of hushed conversation
Speaker 4: with Laila while the other couple is making out in
Speaker 4: the back in this Denny's and it gets kind of
Speaker 4: more and more over the top, and it's never again,
Speaker 4: it's all out of focus really, So you're like watching
Speaker 4: this like very hushed, serious conversation while there's just this
Speaker 4: like flailing going on in the background. Again, Uh, incredibly
Speaker 4: uncomfortab Well, you know, they leave and they head basically
Speaker 4: you know, one of the things that they've talked about, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, while they're driving around, and while she's driving
Speaker 4: him around in her car is you know, she says like, oh,
Speaker 4: you know, like do you want to come back to
Speaker 4: my place? He you know, kind of throws her off,
Speaker 4: says no, and well we're at Denny's. He's been you know,
Speaker 4: constantly looking at the clock right trying to figure out like, okay,
Speaker 4: like when can I go to this this I think
Speaker 4: it's the strip club like off the side of the
Speaker 4: highway where this buffalo Bill's retired kicker you know, owns.
Speaker 4: And so, you know, when they leave the Denny's right.
Speaker 4: He basically like says like all right, like we're done,
Speaker 4: you can go home now, goes to the payphone, calls
Speaker 4: this strip club and finds out, oh, the guy's not
Speaker 4: into not He doesn't come in until two am. It's
Speaker 4: like eight or whatever. He's like, all right, fine, I
Speaker 4: guess we can go get a hotel. They go back
Speaker 4: to again. It just absolutely horrible hole in the wall motel.
Speaker 4: Like it's it's just grim and dirty, and the whole
Speaker 4: thing is like it almost has this green cast to it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and you know, the two of them go back. Clearly
Speaker 4: she is envisioning, you know, romantic entanglement. He is not
Speaker 4: at all. There's a very funny moment where he wants
Speaker 4: to go take a bath and so you know, he
Speaker 4: gets into the he gets into the bath and she's like, oh, hey,
Speaker 4: you know, can I come in? And he's just aghast.
Speaker 4: He's like, no, you cannot, you know, I want to
Speaker 4: be in the bath. And it's it's again, there's never
Speaker 4: any time for this, you know, to be comedic. It's
Speaker 4: just sort of something you notice. But you know, as
Speaker 4: she sort of wears him down, we see this you
Speaker 4: know evolution where it's like okay, we can come in,
Speaker 4: but you can't look. So she's like, you know, got
Speaker 4: her hands over her eyes, and then you know, it
Speaker 4: kind of cuts to the next stage of the conversation.
Speaker 4: They're in the bath together and you see her, you know,
Speaker 4: presumably wearing and then the pants over to Billy and
Speaker 4: he's wearing a shirt. It's just a very funny, like
Speaker 4: background joke through the whole thing. But as that, you know,
Speaker 4: as that develops, right, the two of them, I mean
Speaker 4: literally just sit in or like lay in bed next
Speaker 4: to each other. Again, they're they're sort of shot in
Speaker 4: this way where you can see he is incredibly uncomfortable
Speaker 4: with this. He's sort of you know, arms together on
Speaker 4: the opposite side. But you know, ultimately the time comes
Speaker 4: for him to go to you know, confront the man
Speaker 4: who sent him to jail maybe, and so as he
Speaker 4: he gets up to leave, you know, she's like, hey, like,
Speaker 4: what are you doing? You know, where are you going?
Speaker 4: AND's go, you know, I was going to bring you
Speaker 4: if I bring you some coffee, something that she had
Speaker 4: expressed interest in earlier, and she says like, okay, we'll
Speaker 4: just like if you're not going to come back, just
Speaker 4: tell me. He's like, yeah, I'll come back, and while
Speaker 4: going through his items in you know, this locker, this
Speaker 4: bowling alley, he pulled out, you know, a tiny little
Speaker 4: pocket pistol, right like one of those tiny little Saturday
Speaker 4: night specials. It is, again, kind of comediically small, and he's,
Speaker 4: you know, as he walks out of the hotel, which
Speaker 4: we realize now is across the street from this strip club. Uh,
Speaker 4: you know, we see him pull out the gun and
Speaker 4: is you know, as he walks in, he calls Goon again.
Speaker 4: Now I don't remember what Goon's actual name is, but
Speaker 4: a major theme in their interaction Rocky, yes, is that
Speaker 4: Goon doesn't want to be called Goon anymore. He wants
Speaker 4: to be called Rocky, and Billy has been making fun
Speaker 4: of him the entire time, again being very cruel to
Speaker 4: this disabled man. Ironically enough, by the way, I don't
Speaker 4: you notice this, One of the things he criticizes Goon
Speaker 4: slash Rocky for is always doing exactly what his mother
Speaker 4: tells him to, which I thought was a very interesting
Speaker 4: thing that you know, Billy identifies that in Goon, not
Speaker 4: in his own experience, but he stands outside and basically,
Speaker 4: you know, says, you know, all right, good, like you
Speaker 4: can have all my stuff, kind of signaling that he's
Speaker 4: going in on a one way mission. So we've covered
Speaker 4: a lot of ground there and before we get into
Speaker 4: kind of the the climax, I'm curious if there's anything
Speaker 4: you wanted to add.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, because one of the few things that
Speaker 3: I've I made some notes about was this issue of time.
Speaker 3: It pops up again and again and again. Where it
Speaker 3: really is made obvious in that scene in the little
Speaker 3: photo booth where he's saying something about you know, the present.
Speaker 3: He's screaming at her to put on some sort of
Speaker 3: facial expression that will evidence this idea of we span time,
Speaker 3: we're married, that's not you know, not you're a whore,
Speaker 3: not now any of this other stuff. Now you want
Speaker 3: to kiss me, We spend time, and he hits this,
Speaker 3: hits this beat over and over and over. There's you
Speaker 3: know