Speaker 1: Get ready for.
Speaker 2: December five, twenty twenty four, allegedly according to that thing
Speaker 2: we call a calendar, And this is the o'celly effect.
Speaker 2: Of course, you already know that because you found the show.
Speaker 2: If you were listening to me live, you'd be hearing
Speaker 2: me just after eight pm Eastern time, and what we
Speaker 2: used to call America and all that good stuff on
Speaker 2: a Thursday or a Thursday. But guess what, you're probably
Speaker 2: hearing the podcast no matter how you're coming to the show.
Speaker 2: Welcome to it, And I obviously would love for you
Speaker 2: to come by and visit the site at ochelly dot com,
Speaker 2: be cause most of you catch it through your various podcatchers,
Speaker 2: dajore and all that. So anyway, put it all aside.
Speaker 2: I've got something completely different tonight. Is chucking to talk
Speaker 2: JFK stuff some more. No, I think I'm kind of
Speaker 2: done with that for now. Unless you guys call up
Speaker 2: on the Friday show and insist on talking about it,
Speaker 2: We're going to put it aside for now. Although I
Speaker 2: had an interesting meeting that I'll discuss with you guys
Speaker 2: tomorrow night. But I had the meeting today. I have
Speaker 2: to kind of process it mentally, However, this does connect
Speaker 2: to my recent activities. I was at Lancer and obviously,
Speaker 2: and I've been talking about it all well week and
Speaker 2: a half since i've been back, about right something like that. Anyway,
Speaker 2: whatever it is, as we get toward Christmas and everybody's
Speaker 2: sitting JFK burnout, I thought it would be great to
Speaker 2: change things up. I met a guy who happened to
Speaker 2: be hanging around with Mike Swanson at the conference. I
Speaker 2: think it was a Sunday night. I think it was Sunday,
Speaker 2: might have been Saturday. Who knows. My days bled together
Speaker 2: because I was the MC and I was also responsible
Speaker 2: for a bunch of other stuff at the conference, so
Speaker 2: it was what it was. But anyway, at the hotel
Speaker 2: bar there, it comes up that this guy wrote a
Speaker 2: book on Jack Nicholson. Yes, that Jack Nicholson, the actor, right,
Speaker 2: and gee, I'm interested in him and his movies for short.
Speaker 2: It's classic stuff and Nicholson's a legend and all that
Speaker 2: good stuff. I don't know too many people who've decided
Speaker 2: to write books about a guy like that. Plus I'm
Speaker 2: from New Jersey. Nicholson has some connections to Jersey. Just
Speaker 2: saying so you know that that automatically piques my interest.
Speaker 2: But also he's done podcasts about Stanley Kubrick. Maybe we'll
Speaker 2: get into both of these things in the next hour. Okay,
Speaker 2: So Scott Edwards, how are you doing tonight?
Speaker 3: Sir? Very good? How are you, Chuck?
Speaker 2: I'm okay, And I want to mention the title of
Speaker 2: that book. It's a Quintessential Jack, I think, is the
Speaker 2: main title. And let's just take a look at the
Speaker 2: cover real fast, because I know I just went through
Speaker 2: the links. I was just at it on Amazon, and
Speaker 2: believe me, if you check the show notes, you'll find
Speaker 2: the links to go get the book. Plus it's the
Speaker 2: publisher's website and all that. Yeah, Quintessential Jack. All right,
Speaker 2: So Quintessential Jack. The art of Jack Nicholson on screen
Speaker 2: there you go, title en subtitle, and it's a light
Speaker 2: blue book with a picture of Jack Rinning on it.
Speaker 2: By the way, So Scott, you know, first it was
Speaker 2: nice to meet you at Lancer. I want to say,
Speaker 2: you know, a cool guy to hang out with, even
Speaker 2: if you didn't have a reason for me to bring
Speaker 2: you on the show. But you do, Jack Nicholson, what
Speaker 2: possessed you? Because I note there's a lot of guys
Speaker 2: who are named Scott Edwards who had written books. But
Speaker 2: this looks like your only book, is that true?
Speaker 3: That's correct. It took about ten years of work and
Speaker 3: so I was pretty tired. I was done with it,
Speaker 3: and since then I've been promoting it and doing talks
Speaker 3: and things like that. So that's the only one. That
Speaker 3: may be the only one ever, it may not be,
Speaker 3: we'll see. But I've been a student of film since
Speaker 3: I as a kid, and then when in college that
Speaker 3: was one of the subjects I studied, and since then
Speaker 3: have been attending film festivals and other events that would
Speaker 3: get one next to some of the players who worked
Speaker 3: with Nicholson and other people like Stanley Kubrick. And it
Speaker 3: just came to me. Since I'm a copywriter for advertising
Speaker 3: agency here in Canton, Ohio called innes Majority, that is
Speaker 3: my career. There's your day job, that's my day job.
Speaker 3: And then so I write all the time. Wanted to
Speaker 3: do something that would be more permanent and decided to
Speaker 3: do a book on some aspect of film, and Jack
Speaker 3: Nicholson was just a subject that came into me. I thought, oh,
Speaker 3: that's that's pretty good, because he's had a long career.
Speaker 3: It's enough to cover he's been working. Oh, he had
Speaker 3: about a fifty year career, about seventy five roles. What
Speaker 3: a lot of people don't know. He also had six
Speaker 3: screenplays that were produced as films and he directed three films.
Speaker 2: Ah, now those are things that are unknown. I mean
Speaker 2: the first thing out of anybody's mouth. My whole life
Speaker 2: with Jack Nicholson pretty much is what Easy Rider right.
Speaker 2: And people start talking about that, But is that where
Speaker 2: we should begin the discussion or not.
Speaker 3: That was his big break. He was actually going to
Speaker 3: quit the business. He had been in the film industry
Speaker 3: for ten years, started working with Roger Corman, who does
Speaker 3: all those cheapy films. But the good thing about it
Speaker 3: that those who work on it is they get the
Speaker 3: chance to learn how to make films and get some credits,
Speaker 3: which is really important when you're starting to get into
Speaker 3: the industry. And he worked with Corman, had a pretty
Speaker 3: good start, and then things didn't go all that well
Speaker 3: as far as his career, and actually he gave himself
Speaker 3: one last year and that's what Easy Rider hit. It
Speaker 3: was a complete fluke he'd been working for you know,
Speaker 3: to think about if you're in your particular career, and
Speaker 3: after ten years, not only haven't you made it, but
Speaker 3: things that are actually have gotten kind of worse.
Speaker 2: Right, well, and look working with Corman. And by the way,
Speaker 2: that's a common thread there between Kubrick and Nicholson, right,
Speaker 2: because didn't Kubrick get his start also with Corman? Or
Speaker 2: am I mistaken about that?
Speaker 3: He did? Not? Francis for Copola?
Speaker 2: Did Coppola? That's who it was. I knew it was
Speaker 2: one of the big filmmakers, and I'm trying to think
Speaker 2: which one was. It was Coppola, right, And he would
Speaker 2: direct films that were done in a couple of days,
Speaker 2: that were done on a next to nothing budget, and
Speaker 2: those kind of films are where Nicholson started.
Speaker 3: That's right. He also was working at the regular studio
Speaker 3: system MGAMI started there, working their cartoon department, delivering cells
Speaker 3: from one building to another. And so he was working
Speaker 3: in these Corman films along with people like Bruce Dern,
Speaker 3: and there was this group of people who wanted to
Speaker 3: get a chance, Copla being one, and that's how they
Speaker 3: were able to get some credits and do some decent work.
Speaker 3: Because even though Roger Corman worked often on a shoestring,
Speaker 3: and he would have a habit of making two films
Speaker 3: together so that he could use the same suite of actors,
Speaker 3: the same sets, and economize that way. But it wasn't
Speaker 3: the case where the films themselves were terrible. They were
Speaker 3: still good films. It just happened to be low budget,
Speaker 3: and so really the actors and directors saw there was
Speaker 3: a tremendous opportunity. Ron Howard was another one who started
Speaker 3: as a director with Roger, and Jonathan Demi was another.
Speaker 3: And you know, many actors worked in his system, and
Speaker 3: they they always later on thanked Corman as being essential
Speaker 3: to their careers well.
Speaker 2: And Corman metastasizes because you know, even I I was
Speaker 2: listening to some reruns of the Talking Sopranos podcast right where,
Speaker 2: you know, you're talking about a TV show that was
Speaker 2: actually produced in New Jersey, in case you haven't noticed,
Speaker 2: I got a little thing for things from New Jersey
Speaker 2: because that's where I'm from. You know, I even followed
Speaker 2: Kevin Smith's career quite you know, carefully for a while
Speaker 2: there and all that. But the reality is that you know,
Speaker 2: Corman metastasizes into everything. It's like a lot of the
Speaker 2: people that started with him on those very low budget affairs.
Speaker 2: You know, legends grew from that. There's allegedly one movie
Speaker 2: was directed and put out all in the space of
Speaker 2: like a couple of days on a bet apparently. And yeah,
Speaker 2: he was well known for sharing the props, the actors,
Speaker 2: all kinds of stuff, everything, but the story itself shared
Speaker 2: from film to film in order to economize.
Speaker 3: And I don't think we've seen I mean too many.
Speaker 2: There's a couple of Hollywood legends like this, right, but
Speaker 2: not too many when we get more close to like now,
Speaker 2: like not going into that time period where Nicholson's starting, right,
Speaker 2: because wasn't it about you know, bigger productions. I don't
Speaker 2: think indie films and smaller films like that had even
Speaker 2: been getting a chance.
Speaker 3: Around this time.
Speaker 2: Or am I reading it wrong because I'm not a
Speaker 2: film a storian at all. I'm a casual observer. I'm
Speaker 2: more of a you know, I know about the media, news,
Speaker 2: media's history. I know a little bit about television history,
Speaker 2: but when it comes down to films, honestly, a lot
Speaker 2: of it I just have a vague understanding of. So
Speaker 2: was it really one of the last sort of ecano
Speaker 2: things to come around before the independent developments and the
Speaker 2: technology changed, you know, in recent years.
Speaker 3: In a way, yes, in a way, it was the
Speaker 3: start of the independent system.
Speaker 2: Oh okay.
Speaker 3: Roger was an independent production company, and his films would
Speaker 3: often be say driving movies or the second film on
Speaker 3: a double feature, that kind of thing. But there's still
Speaker 3: money in that. And his autobiography was how to make
Speaker 3: I forget how many movies, it said, but and never
Speaker 3: lose a dime, right, And that's where he was smart about.
Speaker 3: But the movies didn't look cheap. They weren't terrible like
Speaker 3: you know a lot of independent filmmakers where you say,
Speaker 3: like ed Wood or something, the movies are actually terrible.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Well Edwood's stuff is so terrible it's hilarious.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, Plan nine from out Space is
Speaker 2: obviously legendary, but I mean everything he did it was
Speaker 2: just this, you know, terribly like it doesn't matter, just
Speaker 2: just make it look sort of like it's what it's
Speaker 2: supposed to be. I mean, shower curtains and cardboard handles
Speaker 2: and all kinds of weird stuff. Ed Wood is is
Speaker 2: like a comedy built into every one of his little
Speaker 2: sci fi ventures or whatever. Well there was a cross
Speaker 2: dressing thing he did too, But anyway, ed Wood is
Speaker 2: an example of somebody doing a cheap and you know
Speaker 2: it's cheap, uh, you know, funny stuff. I mean, I
Speaker 2: love the story about Bela Lagosi and the last you
Speaker 2: know in quotes film he appears in where He's got
Speaker 2: you know, some of this loose footage that's pretty much meaningless,
Speaker 2: and then he folds it together with the dentist, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean those kind of things. I mean, of course
Speaker 2: I learned about that, I think in the nineties, but
Speaker 2: it was it was an amazing cult thing to get
Speaker 2: a whole of a copy of Plan nine from Outer
Speaker 2: Space in the VHS days. But you bring up drive ins,
Speaker 2: and I think because look, I was born in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy two, so I'm pretty sure my generation got the
Speaker 2: last legs of the drive in movie theater experience, like
Speaker 2: we got to see it go away, We got to
Speaker 2: see the very last gasps from that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: But I love that. And you couldn't project crap like
Speaker 2: ed Wood on a you know, on a giant screen
Speaker 2: like that with a playground in front of it and
Speaker 2: get away with it. I don't think people would stand
Speaker 2: for it. You know, when I was a kid in
Speaker 2: the seventies and the early eighties, I don't think people
Speaker 2: would have stood for it, especially because you know, at
Speaker 2: a certain point we got Star Wars on a giant
Speaker 2: drive in screen. How are you going to put Plan
Speaker 2: nine from Outer Space, you know, alongside of Star Wars
Speaker 2: or you know, or something else that has such a
Speaker 2: a thematic and cinematic effect, like The Godfather, which has
Speaker 2: that unique look. Like if you tune into The Godfather
Speaker 2: right now on a cable channel or on a streaming service,
Speaker 2: you can almost recognize it immediately because of the cinematic
Speaker 2: style that Coppola used, because of the cinematography, the way
Speaker 2: the film looks, the way it's kind of dated, even
Speaker 2: though it was being shot brand new. You know, he
Speaker 2: gave an aged look to the film at certain times
Speaker 2: and everything else. You put that up on a screen,
Speaker 2: and then you were to slap like an ed Wood
Speaker 2: feature up there, it would have been a horror show.
Speaker 2: People would have left, you know. I mean they did
Speaker 2: put out things like Kentucky Fried Movie and Creep Show
Speaker 2: too during this time period, which were kind of funny
Speaker 2: and you know, more low budget affairs than these other things.
Speaker 2: But what about that, I mean the drive in movie experience.
Speaker 2: Even when they talk about Easy Rider, I hear film
Speaker 2: historians kind of reminist is about that time period with
Speaker 2: the drive in theater. So I mean, it's definitely a
Speaker 2: different era when Nicholson gets his big break right right now.
Speaker 3: During that period, there were a lot of genre type
Speaker 3: films made by these lower budget producers like Roger Corman
Speaker 3: you would have, and biker exploitation films was a category
Speaker 3: of film that was popular at that time. Easy Rider
Speaker 3: could have easily been just another one of them, but
Speaker 3: instead there was something seen in it that was special.
Speaker 3: It was one awards at the Con Film Festival that year,
Speaker 3: and that's really what broke it is the news about
Speaker 3: that and Dennis Hopper also being pulled out as being
Speaker 3: first director at CON. So it really fell into that
Speaker 3: bike exploitation category. Somehow broke out there was something special
Speaker 3: about it, and it was probably just as much chance
Speaker 3: as anything else because there were other good biker movies
Speaker 3: at the time, and some of them had some notable
Speaker 3: names in it, like The Wild Angels with Peter Fonda
Speaker 3: and Nancy Sinatra, so they were not just crappily put
Speaker 3: together things. They were lower budgets. Certainly, you remember the
Speaker 3: was it Billy Jack? Remember that series? So you had
Speaker 3: you know there. They were popular and when you had
Speaker 3: driving and double features, you had to fill those features.
Speaker 3: And these were good production values. The thing about Roger
Speaker 3: Horman that was in contrast to some of the other
Speaker 3: cheaper ones is did it looked cheap? But he had enough.
Speaker 3: He was smart enough, and he was really well educated
Speaker 3: in economics, and he would find a way to get
Speaker 3: something that had been used in another film and was
Speaker 3: about to be torn down and use it right before that.
Speaker 3: So when you see those Edgar Allan Poe films that
Speaker 3: he had a tendency to make back then with Vincent
Speaker 3: Price he'd do too, and other films with Boris Karloff.
Speaker 3: He would do two films back to back on that
Speaker 3: same set and be able to burn the thing down
Speaker 3: in order to have this really insane kind of ending.
Speaker 3: But they were going to tear it down anyway, so
Speaker 3: he might as well burn it down and make it
Speaker 3: look like it's a big part of the film.
Speaker 2: Well, there you go, and you're talking about like the
Speaker 2: Black Cat and the Fall of the House of Usher, Right,
Speaker 2: I mean the ones that are named after, you know,
Speaker 2: some of the most best known Edgar Allen Poe titles
Speaker 2: that they turned into these weird kind of movies.
Speaker 3: Right, And Nicholson was in one of those, called The Raven.
Speaker 3: Didn't have much to do with the story itself. What
Speaker 3: Roger tended to do is use the bare bones of
Speaker 3: what was in the original stories and create something that
Speaker 3: had the advantage of using the Poe name because it's
Speaker 3: in the public domain of chorus being from eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 3: and putting together these ensemble pieces with people like Vincent
Speaker 3: Price or Us Carl Off, Peter Lourie and so on.
Speaker 2: Right, And I mean, let's see now, around the same
Speaker 2: time period, even that weird compilation movie Black Sabbath, which
Speaker 2: the band wound up naming itself after, came out and
Speaker 2: it sort of looked like one of those films as well,
Speaker 2: you know, similar to the stuff that you should find
Speaker 2: on the again the old VHS shelf with the likes
Speaker 2: of the Black Cat and The Fall of the House
Speaker 2: of Usher and all that. But yeah, I mean, did
Speaker 2: you ever see the movie Black Sabba by the way, Yes,
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 3: Some of those European films are also really great. Black
Speaker 3: Sunday with Barbara not Barbara Shelley, I can't think for
Speaker 3: her name off hand, but early there was a period
Speaker 3: in the early sixties where people like Roger Corman and
Speaker 3: some English and European directors put out some great stuff
Speaker 3: that would be considered genre films horror films, but had
Speaker 3: really excellent production values and come across really well. Even today.
Speaker 3: They're not really dated, right.
Speaker 2: And this is before the age of the slasher film,
Speaker 2: when you know Black Christmas and Halloween come in the
Speaker 2: later seventies. This is you know, a decade before that,
Speaker 2: and more right.
Speaker 3: You know, gothic type films they.
Speaker 2: Were, Yeah, they were more gothic than they wore horror. Right,
Speaker 2: It was like sort of semi creepy again, more like
Speaker 2: Edgar Allen Poe's writing. Indeed, even if it didn't follow
Speaker 2: the story as composed to say as opposed to say,
Speaker 2: you know what Clyde Barker winds up doing in the eighties.
Speaker 2: You know, his horror stuff was much more messy, much
Speaker 2: more graphic. You know, the weird things going on in
Speaker 2: some of these other films were just sort of creepy.
Speaker 2: And odd, you know, dark and dingy and all that,
Speaker 2: but really it was an art that was lost though
Speaker 2: it seems like, right, I mean, coming into the seventies
Speaker 2: when there's a lot of cheap genres including you you
Speaker 2: mentioned biker exploitation, Well what about black exploitation films? Right,
Speaker 2: those things were also made on a fairly cheap budget,
Speaker 2: and they pumped out a bunch of those as well,
Speaker 2: you know in the seventies, right.
Speaker 3: Right, that correct, that was a big genre during that
Speaker 3: period of time. And then it came back when Quentin
Speaker 3: Tarantino did the film with Pam Greer and based on
Speaker 3: the Foxy Brown character and that kind of thing, right
Speaker 3: called Jackie Brown.
Speaker 2: Jackie Brown. But he was introducing those elements constantly back
Speaker 2: into along with you know, I'm gonna make you laugh here,
Speaker 2: along with his constant need to show you a foot fetish,
Speaker 2: he was showing you, you know, some of the the
Speaker 2: blaxploitation stuff and stylistically also showing you some of the
Speaker 2: things that came with the Bruce Lee films even because
Speaker 2: that's he was definitely wearing his influences on his sleeve.
Speaker 2: But let's get back to Nicholson, because he gets his
Speaker 2: launch with Easy Rider, what is the next stage in
Speaker 2: his career? Right, that's his big break? But then what
Speaker 2: happens to him? Because you know, again it seemed like
Speaker 2: when I was a kid, it went from Easy Rider
Speaker 2: to here's the latest thing that Jack is doing, or hey,
Speaker 2: don't forget about what do you call it? The you know,
Speaker 2: the the the Stephen King movie right where he's the
Speaker 2: proprietor at the hotel and all that stuff, and that's
Speaker 2: a whole other experience.
Speaker 3: Right, the shining And that was in nineteen eighty. But
Speaker 3: the thing that happened after Easy Rider, Easy Writer broke him.
Speaker 3: That was his breakthrough. And then he became a star
Speaker 3: in his following movie, which was Five Easy Pieces made
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy, and that was part of an ongoing
Speaker 3: collaboration with the director called Bob Rafelson, who got his
Speaker 3: start creating the series The Monkeys and the actually Monkey
Speaker 3: money financed Easy Rider. That was the production company to
Speaker 3: put Easy Rider together, and then they went on to
Speaker 3: do Five Easy Pieces where Nicholson played opposite Karen Black
Speaker 3: and she was also nominated for Academy Award as was
Speaker 3: Jack for Five Easy Pieces. Him a star that film
Speaker 3: at the time, the Academy Awards was a big deal,
Speaker 3: and leading up to it, the famous scene, the diner
Speaker 3: scene where he's trying to order something off the menu
Speaker 3: and the waitress is not allowing him to do so,
Speaker 3: and at the end of it he clears all the
Speaker 3: stuff off the table. That scene was on every newscast
Speaker 3: leading up the Academy Awards. If you never saw the movie,
Speaker 3: you would have seen that scene fifty times in that
Speaker 3: couple weeks leading up to the Oscars. And that was
Speaker 3: that film, and after that he was in demand and
Speaker 3: just kept having hit after hit, although no matter what
Speaker 3: period of his career after that, he still made films
Speaker 3: that probably a lot of people never heard of nor saw,
Speaker 3: but are definitely worth viewing. And that was part of
Speaker 3: the impetus for me to do this book. It's set
Speaker 3: up in a way that each chapter is organized by,
Speaker 3: say a type of genre or a type of character,
Speaker 3: and you could read that chapter and then look at
Speaker 3: the three to six films that are discussed in that chapter,
Speaker 3: and it could just be doing it by random. And
Speaker 3: there is a chapter, for instance, about what we were
Speaker 3: just Discussinger Corman years called the School of Roger and
Speaker 3: There's another chapter called Hippies and Hogs and Horses. That's
Speaker 3: all the Westerns and the biker movies and that kind
Speaker 3: of thing. There's one devoted to rom coms later in
Speaker 3: his career. That's what he was doing. And so that's
Speaker 3: the way that the book works. It's organized in the
Speaker 3: fashion that the reader could use it as a viewing guide.
Speaker 3: Pick a chapter that's about a character that they you
Speaker 3: happen to like, you like westerns, Okay, read that chapter,
Speaker 3: doesn't matter what order you do it after you get
Speaker 3: out of the introductory chapter, and just look at those films.
Speaker 3: But I would say to anybody you think you know
Speaker 3: I'm not going to say you think you know Jack,
Speaker 3: you know where I'm going to go with that, But
Speaker 3: you don't a lot of films out there that are
Speaker 3: really worth seeing. You've never even heard of even toward
Speaker 3: the end of his career.
Speaker 2: M Well, you know, like I said, a lot of
Speaker 2: people point to these seminal kind of you know, big
Speaker 2: hits or cult hits one way or another, like they
Speaker 2: might mention Chinatown or you know, different stuff like this.
Speaker 2: But I'm just taking a look myself as I'm speaking
Speaker 2: to you. You know, it's some of his filmography, right,
Speaker 2: He did a couple of these biker films that looks
Speaker 2: like to me, you know, outside of Easy Rider. Before
Speaker 2: Easy Rider. Right.
Speaker 3: One was called Hell's Angels on Wheels, used the actual
Speaker 3: Oakland Hell's Angels motorcycle club with who was probably the
Speaker 3: most famous of the Hell's Angels at the time. It
Speaker 3: was Sunny Barger, who was my first interview subject for
Speaker 3: the book, and Nicholson was just another to him. Oh,
Speaker 3: I thought he was another biker. He knew what he
Speaker 3: was doing, right, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, and then you end up with like say Chinatown
Speaker 2: and even a weird appearance in the movie Tommy, right, yeah, God,
Speaker 2: and tell people about that.
Speaker 3: He actually was replacing Oliver Reed, the English actor who
Speaker 3: turned out couldn't sing. So Tommy was a musical of course,
Speaker 3: based on the Who's album, and they had Who in
Speaker 3: it along with some other professional singers Tina Turner, Elton
Speaker 3: John and others, but actors were also singing and Oliver
Speaker 3: couldn't cut it, replaced by Nicholson, and the director Ken
Speaker 3: Russell was thinking, oh, this guy, he's not a singer either,
Speaker 3: But it turned out he was able to avail himself
Speaker 3: very well and do a good job on the vocals
Speaker 3: and surprised Ken Russell and others.
Speaker 2: Right now, you know, way after the breaking out moment
Speaker 2: and everything else. I mean, literally two decades later he
Speaker 2: HiT's a patch of films that are extremely memorable for me. Again,
Speaker 2: I told you I'm a gen xer, right, so you
Speaker 2: know his role in the Witches of Eastwick and Broadcast
Speaker 2: News and Batman, right, and then in ninety two A
Speaker 2: Few Good Men, And you know, that's one of the
Speaker 2: most qu at least for fifteen years at least was
Speaker 2: one of the most quoted movies around, right, everybody still today,
Speaker 2: people you can't handle the truth, right, so you know.
Speaker 3: And I spoke to a few people who worked on
Speaker 3: that film, and I heard the same story a couple
Speaker 3: of times, so I'm definitely going to believe it. And
Speaker 3: Keifer Sullivan Sutherland was one and while he was another.
Speaker 3: And the story was that when they were doing the
Speaker 3: table read, which you've seen depicted in TV shows and stuff,
Speaker 3: all the actors get together. It's called that because they're
Speaker 3: reading around a table and they usually kind of take
Speaker 3: it a little easy, even though they're learning their role
Speaker 3: and they're doing it as if they're shooting the scene.
Speaker 3: But what was described to me was that Nicholson when
Speaker 3: he came in, he did his that scene, for instance,
Speaker 3: most famous scene in the courtroom, he did it like
Speaker 3: it did in the movie. And they said everybody took
Speaker 3: notice and it wasn't making it easy when they were
Speaker 3: doing the table read. He set the standard. And they
Speaker 3: also said Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise looked like he was
Speaker 3: about to craft his pants because here he was being
Speaker 3: made to look like, you know, he was slumming it.
Speaker 3: So everybody had to step it up to reach the
Speaker 3: level that Nicholson was committing, even at the level of
Speaker 3: the table read right, because of his intensity, you know.
Speaker 2: And by the way back to the Shining there, there's
Speaker 2: an intense movie altogether that Nicholson is the centerpiece on.
Speaker 2: And like I said, you know, if that's like nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty right, I'm a little kid back then, but that
Speaker 2: movie was super intense for me because of the weird,
Speaker 2: creepy aspects of it, all amped up mainly by Nicholson's
Speaker 2: you know behavior. And of course we've seen that quoted
Speaker 2: and repeated everywhere from The Simpsons onto you know, various entries,
Speaker 2: right you know, the here's Johnny thing, the uh, I
Speaker 2: don't know if you've probably seen the Simpsons thing, no beer,
Speaker 2: no whatever, mix Homer blah blah blah. But that's all about,
Speaker 2: you know, no, no rest and relaxation. Whatever it was
Speaker 2: he was saying about himself when he was typing that
Speaker 2: over and over again, right like he was so believable
Speaker 2: in that role. And uh, you know, and people of
Speaker 2: course mimicked the whole thing with him, with the acts
Speaker 2: and chasing his family. And I mean, obviously if you've
Speaker 2: never seen these films, you have to. But I'm just
Speaker 2: pointing to some of the highlights for me as as
Speaker 2: you know, as a viewer, how does a guy like
Speaker 2: this actually have these like small explosions. It seems like
Speaker 2: because throughout this very long career he's either getting massive
Speaker 2: critical acclaim or big box office or he's part of
Speaker 2: a big box office thing. I mean, he's the joker
Speaker 2: in Batman, and nobody can say that he didn't play
Speaker 2: a unique joker, you know. Among I mean, I do
Speaker 2: prefer what happened later, that's for sure. But for a
Speaker 2: guy trying to bend the comic book into reality, and
Speaker 2: I thought it was weird when they selected Jack Nicholson,
Speaker 2: but you know, he pulled that off in a uniquely
Speaker 2: Nicholson way. I mean, I don't even know what to
Speaker 2: say about the man's range right everywhere from being a
Speaker 2: psycho to being well another kind of psycho, right to
Speaker 2: you know, being an easygoing character. Matter of fact, I
Speaker 2: think there was even a movie I once saw where
Speaker 2: he was kind of a mob boss. But anyway, it
Speaker 2: just it goes all over the map. The guy's diverse
Speaker 2: and consistently huge, long career. I mean, is that really
Speaker 2: what made you say? I got to lay out this
Speaker 2: book and give people a real roadmap from beginning to
Speaker 2: end with his career.
Speaker 3: That's a big part of it, because, like you say,
Speaker 3: you look at the list and it's amazing the ones
Speaker 3: that you've seen and recognize as characters, how much different
Speaker 3: they can be, the range of character that he's playing,
Speaker 3: and in retrospect, it's interesting he brought up The Shining.
Speaker 3: When The Shining came out, it was a hit with audiences,
Speaker 3: but was land baseded by critics and most people definitely
Speaker 3: jumped on Nicholson's performance as being over the top and
Speaker 3: totally ridiculous. Now in retrospect, it's considered one of the
Speaker 3: top rated horror films, and he is an essential part
Speaker 3: of that, of course, playing the main character. But at
Speaker 3: the time it was Jack is just playing Jack. He's
Speaker 3: taking the money. And really that was the key to
Speaker 3: the role, is how he pushed himself to be that
Speaker 3: guy who was really becoming unhinged. And I don't know,
Speaker 3: I mean, how could you not be you say, over
Speaker 3: the time, Well, what's over the top when somebody's lost
Speaker 3: their mind.
Speaker 2: Well, see, that's the thing. I believed he was a
Speaker 2: guy who lost his mind. As a kid, I'm looking
Speaker 2: at him thinking to myself, this isn't you know, overacting
Speaker 2: or anything. I got sucked into it. I mean the
Speaker 2: atmosphere of the movie did that too, But Nicholson as
Speaker 2: the character. I mean a lot of people point to
Speaker 2: Shelley Winter and how she was reacting, and people have
Speaker 2: said that, you know, people were making her nuts off
Speaker 2: off camera, so that she reacted that way and everything else.
Speaker 2: I don't think Nicholson needed all that, although probably he
Speaker 2: was being prodded along too during that filming. But nonetheless,
Speaker 2: I mean, incredible range and I just now remember where
Speaker 2: he's a mob boss it's in a movie called The Departed,
Speaker 2: a totally different kind of character. Again, I don't remember
Speaker 2: how successful They Departed was exactly, but I think it
Speaker 2: was fairly successful with critics. Not necessarily that he was
Speaker 2: the main character, but he was a consistent character throughout
Speaker 2: the movie, right, right.
Speaker 3: And actually the character is based on Whitey Bulger, who
Speaker 3: was that guy who disappeared who was a mobster in
Speaker 3: Boston and he disappeared for I don't know, twenty five
Speaker 3: years something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Irish gangster that they based the movie Black
Speaker 2: Mass on. Yeah, and he.
Speaker 3: Was finally found. I think it's San Diego or something
Speaker 3: like that. And one of the funny things is he
Speaker 3: was seen going to see that Departed because somebody says, hey,
Speaker 3: isn't that guy who's been missing for twenty five years? Well.
Speaker 2: The other funny part about that, of course, is that, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, when when all the stuff came out, the
Speaker 2: guy was like cooperating, but he was cooperating to basically
Speaker 2: eliminate his criminal enemies, right, and Boston based Irish gangster,
Speaker 2: you know, or I should say, uh, New England based
Speaker 2: uh gangster Irish though, fascinating and uh, what is it.
Speaker 2: Johnny Depp is in both of those, right is he in? Uh?
Speaker 3: No, he was in that other film. Uh that was
Speaker 3: bored obviously about Whitey Bulger by name. Yeah, that's it, right, Uh,
Speaker 3: the Departed Wash Wahlberg.
Speaker 2: And right Wahlberg and uh and the other way. The
Speaker 2: thing was that that thing read as a dark comedy
Speaker 2: to me. Uh, I don't know what you thought of it,
Speaker 2: but and I don't know how they classified it, you know,
Speaker 2: film wise, but to me, it almost seemed like a
Speaker 2: dark comedy. And Nicholson's a big part of that. I
Speaker 2: find a lot of what he's doing in that movie
Speaker 2: to be yeah, darkly comedic.
Speaker 3: Right. That was his contribution to that. And I don't
Speaker 3: think that even the director knew that was going to happen.
Speaker 3: There was a scene where he pulls a gun in
Speaker 3: the diner, and that was not in the script. He
Speaker 3: decided that the day earlier it wasn't intense enough and
Speaker 3: he wasn't getting the reaction from I think it was
Speaker 3: DiCaprio and the scene, and so he just pulls his
Speaker 3: gun out and everybody's looking at h. I really, WHOA.
Speaker 3: This is a whole other level. And that's the kind
Speaker 3: of thing that he would do. He considers himself a
Speaker 3: method actor, and his costume and knowledge about the era
Speaker 3: the movie where it is, what was happening at that time,
Speaker 3: what the characters are like, if there were real people,
Speaker 3: what they were like, what they sounded like, what they
Speaker 3: dressed like. And one of the things that I heard
Speaker 3: from all the people that I interviewed who had worked
Speaker 3: with him is his commitment to research and finding out
Speaker 3: as much as possible and then going for it. That
Speaker 3: he never pulls any punches or go in and do
Speaker 3: whatever it takes to make that scene special or to
Speaker 3: make that character memorable. And that combination of the hard
Speaker 3: work in preparation and the intensity in giving the performance
Speaker 3: has been very successful for him. And that diversity of
Speaker 3: kind of roles that you talk about when you say, well,
Speaker 3: here's a pretty good year for you. For instance, how
Speaker 3: about it one year I do Chinatown and I do
Speaker 3: One Flow over the Cuckoo's Nest. That's a pretty good year.
Speaker 2: See I didn't even mention One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest,
Speaker 2: but I was about to go there and start jumping
Speaker 2: around because there's another one of these movies that I'm
Speaker 2: not so certain how big of a box office thing
Speaker 2: it was, but it became like a huge standard, right.
Speaker 2: It was one of those movies that it's like they
Speaker 2: started marking other movies by it. And he's had various
Speaker 2: time periods where I know, the critics loved him. Then
Speaker 2: he had other time periods where they didn't love him
Speaker 2: so much. But he consistently performs one way or another,
Speaker 2: which I find interesting. I mean, if you look at
Speaker 2: the string from eighty one to eighty five, right, I
Speaker 2: remember very carefully. Now, maybe they weren't into The Postman
Speaker 2: Always Rings twice, but Red's was a big thing with
Speaker 2: the critics, and in terms of endearment was huge with
Speaker 2: the critics, and I enjoyed Pritzy's honor. Now, I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe that wasn't as big with the critics, but it
Speaker 2: seems to me as though he's got a time period
Speaker 2: where there's almost a off again and on again romance
Speaker 2: with film critics, right, where sometimes he's great and other
Speaker 2: times he's, you know, ridiculous, but you let it sit
Speaker 2: for a little while, and the critics are proven wrong
Speaker 2: on the ridiculous angle every time. I mean, even going
Speaker 2: back to the Shining nowadays, nobody would argue with you
Speaker 2: that Nicholson did anything wrong right in that.
Speaker 3: Movie except for Stephen King.
Speaker 2: Well, Stephen King doesn't like it right, right.
Speaker 3: He didn't like it, and he was against Nicholson. And
Speaker 3: the longer from the production of the movie, the more
Speaker 3: he would make a big deal out of it. And
Speaker 3: I think a lot of it's for show. And as
Speaker 3: the saying is, he takes the money. It probably has
Speaker 3: made him more money than any single thing that he's done.
Speaker 3: Is that particular film. They did a terrible TV movie
Speaker 3: that King was involved in because he always had Oh well,
Speaker 3: I didn't like the way it was. I didn't like Nicholson,
Speaker 3: so he did his own version and it was horrible.
Speaker 3: It's unwatchable. It's humorous in spots, right, So Stephen King
Speaker 3: probably should stick to the writing part and not being
Speaker 3: the film critic part.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. And I'll tell you something else. I don't
Speaker 2: take anything Stephen King takes seriously after he did eleven
Speaker 2: twenty two sixty three. So, uh that that is a
Speaker 2: ridiculous one. Oh my goodness, Well good on you. I mean,
Speaker 2: unless you want to watch something about time travel. Uh,
Speaker 2: And if you want to watch time travel in the
Speaker 2: jfk Assassination. I suggest you go and look at the
Speaker 2: eighties or whatever rebooted Twilight Zone they did on it,
Speaker 2: because that is more entertaining than Stephen King's movie and
Speaker 2: won't take up as much of your day. Uh, because
Speaker 2: they made a little series out of that, I think
Speaker 2: for Hulu or whatever. But it was almost unwatchable to me.
Speaker 2: And by the way, the book is almost unreadable. And
Speaker 2: it's not because they're just blaming Oswald. It's just it's
Speaker 2: just a pointless waste of time. So there's my critics
Speaker 2: criticism for the day. But and he's still still active.
Speaker 2: It looks like to me he's producing stuff. And if
Speaker 2: you others right, I mean, how far since your book
Speaker 2: was published a few years ago, you had to have
Speaker 2: ended off what around twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: Yes, but he hasn't worked since then. He's last film
Speaker 3: was really as a favor. It was a rom com
Speaker 3: and he played a small role in it called how
Speaker 3: Do You Know? It had Owen Wilson and the Reese Witherspoon.
Speaker 3: I thought it was terrible, but I was obligated to
Speaker 3: watch it, you know, three or four times, because that's
Speaker 3: part of the process of doing the book, but he
Speaker 3: hasn't worked since then. He never said he retired. I
Speaker 3: think because and this is only a guess on my part,
Speaker 3: that just wanted to with dignity stop working but not
Speaker 3: bring attention to himself and says, you know, I'm going
Speaker 3: on on my last tour, you know, like the rock
Speaker 3: stars do with They're Never ending fur. Yeah, he just
Speaker 3: bowed out quietly. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The Rolling Stones I think was it nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 2: or something, we're supposed to start their final tour. I
Speaker 2: think they'll be on tour this year again or maybe next.
Speaker 2: We'll see if they you know, if two or three
Speaker 2: of them survive. I think they're gonna try. It just
Speaker 2: is the way it is. But what's fascinating is there's
Speaker 2: something called Blue Champagne coming up. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you know anything about that. It says that he's the
Speaker 2: producer for it, and I mean I know zero about it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, a couple other things where he gets some
Speaker 2: special thanks in Jill and Jack and supermnch and what's
Speaker 2: that sound on my head? It's just a thanks from
Speaker 2: the director, I guess in a short right.
Speaker 3: But he hasn't actually worked since I know, twenty early
Speaker 3: twenty ten something like that, right, right.
Speaker 2: And I mean with the retrospectives of Chinatown. I mean
Speaker 2: there's some new archibal footage out there, but maybe but
Speaker 2: outside of that, yeah, I mean, but still long, very
Speaker 2: long career. So let me transition into the other thing
Speaker 2: I wanted.
Speaker 3: To talk to you about, though, because.
Speaker 2: Listeners to my show are well familiar with the idea
Speaker 2: that you know, Stanley Kubrick is the guy who faked
Speaker 2: the moon landing footage. This kind of thing. Now, I
Speaker 2: don't discuss that on my show.
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, let's keep it that way. Yeah, there are
Speaker 3: two there are two things about Kubrick that I would
Speaker 3: wish people would just get tired of bringing up. That's
Speaker 3: one of them, okay. And the other one is how
Speaker 3: Kubrick supposedly contributed to the mental illness of Shelley Duvau
Speaker 3: after doing the Shining, which is easily debunked because after
Speaker 3: that she continued to work and even a few years
Speaker 3: after that created it was an executive producer was the
Speaker 3: one of the writers and host and actors on an
Speaker 3: HBO series, Fairytale Theater, which ran for about four or
Speaker 3: five seasons. This was after she supposedly was ruined by Kubrick.
Speaker 3: So I think even a logical looking at the situation
Speaker 3: would say, well, maybe that's not the case. How could
Speaker 3: you create a series and be the main creative force
Speaker 3: behind it when you've been ruined by the director four
Speaker 3: years earlier.
Speaker 2: I mean, I do believe that he might have done
Speaker 2: things to increase the tension, maybe gotten or exhausted, and
Speaker 2: maybe if you talked to her right after filming The Shining,
Speaker 2: you might have thought that he contributed to her problems, but.
Speaker 3: She would that part is true. And there's a documentary
Speaker 3: that Kubrick's daughter actually put together on The Shining, and
Speaker 3: you could see that Kubrick is actually put shoing at
Speaker 3: her pretty hard and not being all that nice to her.
Speaker 3: But every interview she ever did for the subject of
Speaker 3: Stanley Kuber came up, she always said that she was
Speaker 3: glad she worked on it, and that it was though
Speaker 3: very tough, because she had to cry all the time
Speaker 3: and be scared all the time in the film, So
Speaker 3: it was physically taxing every day to be in hysterics.
Speaker 3: Isn't that easy to do? And if you try doing it,
Speaker 3: you eventually become that way. So temporarily. She was probably
Speaker 3: negatively impacted by it. But in every interview I've ever
Speaker 3: seen or heard about, she always talked about Kubrick in
Speaker 3: a positive way and said, yeah, it was tough on me,
Speaker 3: but I was always glad I did it right.
Speaker 2: And the thing is, look, if The Shining was released
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty, a five year run from eighty two
Speaker 2: to eighty seven of a fairytale theater you're talking about,
Speaker 2: you know, they did some basic stuff, the frog prints,
Speaker 2: this kind of thing. You know, would she have been
Speaker 2: capable of participating in that production. Probably not if she
Speaker 2: was really in that bad of shape. So she did
Speaker 2: continue to work, and I know she had other roles too.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not going to go pull up her
Speaker 2: IMDb right now, but you know, okay, so those are
Speaker 2: the two things that you'd like people to stop saying,
Speaker 2: right Well, could you just give me one of the
Speaker 2: best reasons why the Kubrick faking the footage and all
Speaker 2: that makes no sense? Could you just do me that
Speaker 2: favor so I have that to keep with my listeners.
Speaker 3: For one thing, you wouldn't need a Stanley Kubrick to
Speaker 3: do that. Oh you would need is some something that
Speaker 3: technically would make that possible. He's a great director of
Speaker 3: narrative drama. You don't need that to do that job.
Speaker 3: Have anybody who has technical prowess and the amount of
Speaker 3: money that it would take to build a stage set
Speaker 3: that looks realistic and technicians to pull off shooting it.
Speaker 3: You don't need a great director to do that. So
Speaker 3: where that came from. I know there's little stippets of
Speaker 3: things like the sweater that Danny Lloyd is playing wearing
Speaker 3: in the Shining where it's got a Power eleven on
Speaker 3: it that's supposed to be a clue. But like a
Speaker 3: lot of those, Paul is dead clues, I think Paul's alive.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, that's another weird thing where they you know,
Speaker 2: this guy was replaced by somebody. There was a car accident,
Speaker 2: oh man, you know, and at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: I almost want to know what the point of it is.
Speaker 2: You know, if the moon landing was faked, like you said,
Speaker 2: you wouldn't need Stanley Kubrick, but you would need a
Speaker 2: good visual effects guy.
Speaker 3: Right right now, there's a book devoted to this that
Speaker 3: debunks everything, all the all the things that people bring
Speaker 3: up and say, oh, this is the proof and the
Speaker 3: why is the flag not moving? And all this other stuff.
Speaker 3: There's a book by a guy named Philip Platt P
Speaker 3: L a T. T. And it's about this debunking the hoax,
Speaker 3: and we used to look at that and he dresses
Speaker 3: everything with great logic and says, no, you know, it's
Speaker 3: different because there's no atmosphere. You know, there a lot
Speaker 3: of things that somebody who's smart enough, who isn't somebody
Speaker 3: who just likes making up crap because it sounds interesting.
Speaker 3: I don't know how it became a big deal, you know,
Speaker 3: it was I had heard it and then it just
Speaker 3: never died. But my thought about the final the final
Speaker 3: point made on this particular subject was you might have
Speaker 3: seen this footage, but buzz Aldron, who was the same
Speaker 3: guys stepped on the moon, right and it's still alive.
Speaker 3: He was being followed by some jerk off for the camera,
Speaker 3: endlessly being harangued about this prove that you're on the moon.
Speaker 3: So one point he turns around and he's, you know,
Speaker 3: eighty two years old at the time, and this guy's
Speaker 3: in the prime of his life. He's taller than buzz
Speaker 3: Old Buzz turns around, slugs the guy knocks him out
Speaker 3: and walks away. That's the ultimate answer to that particular question. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I do do a buzz alder, and that.
Speaker 2: Guy does a podcast now by the way, and continues
Speaker 2: on with he does, and it just you know, people
Speaker 2: ask me about what about this? Oh my god, I
Speaker 2: it's one of those things I just shake my head at,
Speaker 2: you know. But anyway, what inspired the work on the
Speaker 2: podcast though about? I mean, there's a lot of people
Speaker 2: who've done stuff about that, but you've also done the
Speaker 2: participated in this podcast. What happened there with you?
Speaker 3: Well, I've always been on a couple episodes of it.
Speaker 3: There are over seventy episodes of the podcast called Kubrick's
Speaker 3: Universe the Late Yeah Kubricks Universe, and it's any podcasting
Speaker 3: way that you choose to get yours, as well as
Speaker 3: on YouTube. The latest edition was a chat with Shelley
Speaker 3: Duval that they put together and were able to the
Speaker 3: sound quality of it wasn't great at the time, but
Speaker 3: there's been advancements and another overused turn ai Or allowed
Speaker 3: people to work on that interview and get it so
Speaker 3: you could hear Shelley's comments during that that was the
Speaker 3: latest edition, and like I said, there've been over seventy.
Speaker 3: There's a segment of a series of shows that have
Speaker 3: been devoted to each of the thirteen films that Kubrick directed.
Speaker 3: Four of those have been put out and the remainder
Speaker 3: of them have yet to be had the post production
Speaker 3: done on them, and so they'll be out. So my
Speaker 3: only participation thus far has been in those first couple.
Speaker 3: I'm on the other ones. But the way it works
Speaker 3: is it's a group of people were either been a
Speaker 3: part of the industry. There's a film critic, they're authors
Speaker 3: on film, but also people are students of Stanley Kubrick's
Speaker 3: work get together once a week as part of something
Speaker 3: called Stanley Kubrick Appreciation Society, and we have a topic
Speaker 3: each week and go over it. And sometimes it's reading
Speaker 3: together a book about making a bis Wade shut. Sometimes
Speaker 3: it's the it will be we'll watch a documentary together
Speaker 3: and comment on that, take breaks, and the part of
Speaker 3: the history of this is that we did in an
Speaker 3: episode each on the thirteen films. So I'm not really
Speaker 3: involved in the podcast itself other than being part of
Speaker 3: the discussion of the round robin discussion that became a
Speaker 3: couple of these thus far. But every week. You know,
Speaker 3: it's really great to talk with people who have a
Speaker 3: really intense interest in the same subject. And you know
Speaker 3: this for having been involved and JFK. Lancer and some
Speaker 3: of the in your show, that there's really something great
Speaker 3: about people coming together who have a lot of knowledge
Speaker 3: about a particular subject and respect one another's opinions so
Speaker 3: that we when we get together, it's by zoom and
Speaker 3: there might be anywhere between seven to twelve people on
Speaker 3: a particular week having these get togethers and discussions for
Speaker 3: about an hour half each week, and we learn from
Speaker 3: one another. Everybody's got a different insight. Somebody spoke with
Speaker 3: somebody who knew this, somebody read this book, somebody saw
Speaker 3: this documentary, and it's really great to see how it's
Speaker 3: a complementary process where all these people take a turn
Speaker 3: and talk about their particular insight and then that I'll
Speaker 3: bring a thought from somebody else. So well, now that
Speaker 3: you mention this, there's that, and it's tremendously enjoyable. I'm
Speaker 3: glad that I really stumbled upon it, and I'm glad
Speaker 3: that I'm part of it. Just about every week this
Speaker 3: discussion and some of which have turned into podcasts.
Speaker 2: Right well, I'll tell you if we tried that in
Speaker 2: JFK Land, though, you can never put seven of us together.
Speaker 3: Because real yeah, light with each other.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering about, you know, the coverage of Eyes Wide
Speaker 2: Shut though, because there again is something else that used
Speaker 2: to come up in what was alternative media a lot
Speaker 2: because of its you know, connection to the the elites,
Speaker 2: you know, and this kind of thing. There's been a
Speaker 2: bit of a metamorphosis in conspiracy culture, i will call it.
Speaker 2: Over the past few years. Things have changed a lot.
Speaker 2: And you know, it might have been that they were
Speaker 2: discussing this is what you know, rich people do and
Speaker 2: the sex parties and all that kind of stuff. You know,
Speaker 2: did you guys do an episode on that yet or
Speaker 2: is that coming in the future. Do you know?
Speaker 3: We've just we've discussed Eyes Wide Shut actually over the
Speaker 3: last few months, pardon me, and we're doing a group watch. Well,
Speaker 3: we take a couple of scenes and then discuss the scenes.
Speaker 3: I mean, it is a Christmas movie after all, so
Speaker 3: it's that time of year to really joy Eyes Wide
Speaker 3: Shut as part of your family viewing. And so we'll
Speaker 3: be discussing that, and one of the aspects, as you
Speaker 3: bring up, is the social stratification different levels that we
Speaker 3: really don't think of as being part of the way
Speaker 3: things are in the US and think of that, we think, oh,
Speaker 3: that's something that people in England are like and people
Speaker 3: in India. But we do have that. And in the
Speaker 3: film the doctor played by he lives in the upper
Speaker 3: west side of Central Park, so he obviously has a
Speaker 3: lot of money.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, have to live there. I mean, I
Speaker 2: lived in New York City, but I lived on the
Speaker 2: Lower east Side and was lucky to have landed there.
Speaker 2: But the upper west side, forget it. You're talking about
Speaker 2: a whole lot of cash to own something over there
Speaker 2: or to even rent it. Yeah. Good.
Speaker 3: And even though that's the case, he's the doctor of
Speaker 3: people who are at a higher level than he is,
Speaker 3: represented by the Sydney Pollack character. So he who is
Speaker 3: I think a venture capitalist or something like that. So
Speaker 3: Tom Cruise is at a high level compared to you
Speaker 3: and I, but the Polla character is higher level social
Speaker 3: stratification than Cruise is. And then the people at the party,
Speaker 3: one of whom is the Sydney Pollack character, are those
Speaker 3: at yet another high level, which is the people who
Speaker 3: run everything. So that's what you're talking about where people
Speaker 3: are thinking about, say the illuminati and that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: And that's certainly a valid interpretation of what's going on
Speaker 3: there because in the scene in the pool room where
Speaker 3: Sidney Pollack is warning the Tom Cruise character, you don't
Speaker 3: know what you're up against. If you knew who these
Speaker 3: people were, you wouldn't be able to sleep well at night.
Speaker 3: And that's his way of saying, you know, these are
Speaker 3: presidents and prime ministers and people who run corporations and
Speaker 3: so on, and those are the people who are there, right,
Speaker 3: and that's what they do. And as you see in
Speaker 3: the movie, you know, some people get killed and then
Speaker 3: they're forgotten. Well you get away with that sort of
Speaker 3: thing if you're at that level.
Speaker 2: Well see, and there you go. There is the privilege
Speaker 2: that you get at different levels of the strata, right.
Speaker 2: And that's an interesting thing that I mean, was that
Speaker 2: Kubrick's intent with this to really give people a metaphorical
Speaker 2: glance at it? Or do you think he was going
Speaker 2: for a literal glance? I mean, what are your thoughts
Speaker 2: on it?
Speaker 3: I think that that's definitely part of one of the
Speaker 3: subtexts of the film, and it's not the first time
Speaker 3: he's taken on that kind of subject. Has a Glory,
Speaker 3: for instance, which happens to be my favorite of the
Speaker 3: Kubrick films, had that as an essential feature, which was
Speaker 3: if you've ever seen the films that takes place during
Speaker 3: World War One in France, and you have the generals
Speaker 3: all living in this opulence set up in this palace,
Speaker 3: and then you cut to the scenes of the people
Speaker 3: who are really doing the work in the fox holes
Speaker 3: and they're living, in a literal sense, in mud, whereas
Speaker 3: these people are living in these palaces and there's this
Speaker 3: real contrast between how clean and big and it's all marble,
Speaker 3: and they have the best food and everything looks like,
Speaker 3: you know, like a wonderland basically, and then the people
Speaker 3: in the who are fighting the war are living terribly
Speaker 3: and they're just being sacrificed day after day worthlessly. Well.
Speaker 2: I think there was a lot of nuances and statements
Speaker 2: in a film that you know, some people often ignore,
Speaker 2: which I feel like it's two films and one which
Speaker 2: is full metal Jacket. You know, I wonder if you
Speaker 2: have any views on that because to me that was
Speaker 2: that is my favorite Kubrick film, by the way, because
Speaker 2: it speaks to a lot of the things that that
Speaker 2: I believe are relevant and have carried through well beyond
Speaker 2: the period that he's representing there, which is obviously the
Speaker 2: Vietnam War and all that. And I feel a personal
Speaker 2: connection to some of the stuff going on in that film.
Speaker 2: But he's got various statements going on there, you know
Speaker 2: in my mind? What do you have any thoughts on
Speaker 2: Full Metal Jacket?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's an interesting film. I don't hope you've seen
Speaker 3: any of the part of me analysis film is done
Speaker 3: by a guy named Rob Ager. He's done a lot
Speaker 3: of Kubrick and other work, and he does a lot
Speaker 3: of them are free on YouTube to see, but he
Speaker 3: also sells them on a site, and he does a
Speaker 3: good deal of analysis on Full Metal Jacket and the
Speaker 3: two film part. One of the theories is that the Pile character,
Speaker 3: the guy who offs himself in the bathroom, that he
Speaker 3: is he becomes or is represented by the animal mother
Speaker 3: character in the second half, the guy played by Adam Baldwin,
Speaker 3: and that that character represents what Pile could have become
Speaker 3: if he continued to commit himself because he was becoming
Speaker 3: a better soldier, he was catching on, but by that
Speaker 3: time he had been ruined. And so part of the
Speaker 3: theory is that he's really almost like a reincarnation of
Speaker 3: the Pile character in the second half. Okay, a lot
Speaker 3: of interesting things going on in that film. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: people sometimes take the second half and go, oh, it's
Speaker 3: not that hot, But really, when you really think about
Speaker 3: what's going on there and what's happening to these characters
Speaker 3: who've become attached to in the first half, it is
Speaker 3: harrowing and quite interesting. I'm not sure why people write
Speaker 3: it off so frequently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I don't know how they could write
Speaker 2: off the second half, considering we got to follow the
Speaker 2: Joker character from boot Camp into you know, a position
Speaker 2: where he's running around, you know, being a journalist. But
Speaker 2: then he winds up doing that whole thing where he
Speaker 2: executes the sniper. Who is this you know, lone little girl,
Speaker 2: you know, the way I interpret it there, who's just
Speaker 2: you know, hiding among the ruins of a place that
Speaker 2: once was probably populated and everything else. I mean, there
Speaker 2: is a lot of statements going on there. When he
Speaker 2: you know, turns around and she's saying shoot me and
Speaker 2: he does it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: There's a lot happening in that film. I don't see
Speaker 2: how you can disconnect the two, but it does feel
Speaker 2: like two films in one nonetheless, right.
Speaker 3: And I think that's intentional to have it be a
Speaker 3: different flavor. But people always say, or very often say, hey,
Speaker 3: I love the first half and the second half not
Speaker 3: so much. But I think you have to have that
Speaker 3: other half in order for the first half to work.
Speaker 3: You have to see where they go. You see in
Speaker 3: all this training, you see what it does to them, Well,
Speaker 3: how do they handle the situations they're in later? You
Speaker 3: have to get that part of the story and this
Speaker 3: idea of looking at things in an alternative way, like
Speaker 3: you talk about as doing this process. When we're doing
Speaker 3: analysis of the films in the Stanley Kubrick Appreciation Society
Speaker 3: and when we did the particular podcast that's not released
Speaker 3: yet on Full Metal Jacket. Before we recorded that week,
Speaker 3: I had seen and this was just totally out of nowhere,
Speaker 3: and it made me think about the film differently in
Speaker 3: a very strange way that I had just all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, somebody posted an article on social media about
Speaker 3: the use of music by Kubrick, and you remember the
Speaker 3: end of Doctor Stranger. Loved this ironic ending. We're having
Speaker 3: all the blasts going off and we hear the song
Speaker 3: We'll Meet Again by Vera Lynn at the end of
Speaker 3: Full Metal Jacket. The song being used is the theme
Speaker 3: of the original Mickey Mouse Club and what we're seeing
Speaker 3: when that happens is we're seeing the platoon return during
Speaker 3: the evening. Everything's on fire and it's a very interesting
Speaker 3: and eerie effect. Well, in this article, there happened to
Speaker 3: be a still photo from that scene, and I had
Speaker 3: this thought that and I have to say, it hit
Speaker 3: me so intensely that when I discussed it during the podcast,
Speaker 3: I actually broke down because of how emotionally it grabbed me.
Speaker 3: Was that My interpretation of it was that if you
Speaker 3: look at that image, if you remember, since you say
Speaker 3: it's your favorite Kubrick movie, you've seen enough to know
Speaker 3: what I'm talking about. The soldiers are all in silhouette,
Speaker 3: you don't see them, and they're singing.
Speaker 2: And that fire is all in the background, like you said,
Speaker 2: and they start to sing the Mickey Mouse theme like
Speaker 2: as they're walking right, this is the scene you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Right, And when I saw it as a still image,
Speaker 3: I interpreted in my mind in a totally different way
Speaker 3: than having seen it in the movie many times, and
Speaker 3: it hit me, oh, they're ghosts because the sniper took
Speaker 3: everybody out except a couple, and you saw what you know,
Speaker 3: then he had to take out the sniper. Well, it's
Speaker 3: still daylight at that point, it's still hours left before
Speaker 3: this scene happens. Well, I'm looking and going none of
Speaker 3: them made it their ghost and they returned to their
Speaker 3: most idealized state of their young lives, which was when
Speaker 3: there were little kids rushing home to watch The Mickey
Speaker 3: Mouse Club. So that's the afterlife.
Speaker 2: That's That is a heavy thought that I never ever
Speaker 2: had before.
Speaker 3: So I'm not saying that there was any intention on
Speaker 3: the on Kubrick's part to do this. This is merely
Speaker 3: something that came into my head as a way of
Speaker 3: viewing it. But when you look at it and think
Speaker 3: of it in those terms, it actually makes a eerie
Speaker 3: kind of sense, which is what he says. None of
Speaker 3: them made it. They all were killed and their ghosts
Speaker 3: now and he did that. You know, the Shining was
Speaker 3: a ghost story and it's ultimate and that's why you're
Speaker 3: seeing them the way they are, where you're not seeing
Speaker 3: them as.
Speaker 2: People, or perhaps they're traveling, you know, among the fire
Speaker 2: because they're going to a greater fire. It's all over,
Speaker 2: and now it's time to you know, might as well
Speaker 2: sing Mickey Mouse on your way to Hell. I mean
Speaker 2: that that is the only thing. I remember having that
Speaker 2: thought at one point, like with the fires all around,
Speaker 2: But then I thought maybe it was a statement about
Speaker 2: the devastation. I mean, there's a lot of ways to
Speaker 2: look at.
Speaker 3: This, Yeah, And that's one of the great things that's
Speaker 3: interesting about Kubrick's films. There's always something there. And he
Speaker 3: never got to the point where he would do interviews
Speaker 3: and explain. People would ask, well, what's the meaning of
Speaker 3: the end of two thousand and one and all that
Speaker 3: sort of thing, right, and he would, I mean, not
Speaker 3: too many interviews to begin with. But then what he
Speaker 3: did he would avoid getting that specific because he thought
Speaker 3: that it would ruin it and not be as interesting
Speaker 3: if the viewer wasn't putting themselves and their own thoughts
Speaker 3: into it. He actually encourages that wants that, or you're
Speaker 3: making your own interpretation and you're an active part of
Speaker 3: the process rather than going, well, you know at the
Speaker 3: end of the movie meant it's not as interesting, it's
Speaker 3: not as intriguing. You wouldn't be talking about it fifty
Speaker 3: years later, for two thousand and one or nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: was shine. He wouldn't be talking about these things if
Speaker 3: they were so obvious, and if he had gone out
Speaker 3: explained everything or written a book about his films or whatever.
Speaker 3: And he never did any of those things right.
Speaker 2: And for the same reason, I think that David Chase
Speaker 2: doesn't give you the answer to what actually happened at
Speaker 2: the end of The Sopranos still right, what is it
Speaker 2: fifteen years later and he's not answering that question. Why
Speaker 2: because people are still discussing it and interpreting it. Is
Speaker 2: that you know, he didn't hear the shot, so he's dead,
Speaker 2: just like you discussed in a previous episode, etc. I
Speaker 2: know it's comparing TV to film, but I feel like
Speaker 2: it's almost the same thing where I'm not going to
Speaker 2: give him the answers, let them get him on their
Speaker 2: own and let them figure it out. And meanwhile people
Speaker 2: will keep discussing it and rediscovering it and having to
Speaker 2: examine it and go over it and that might be
Speaker 2: what it's all about. So I want to thank you
Speaker 2: because he spent more than an hour with me. And
Speaker 2: again you're the author of the book Quintessential Jack The
Speaker 2: Art of Jack Nicholson on Screen Scott Edwards. And I'm
Speaker 2: also going to give you a link to a Facebook page,
Speaker 2: the publisher's page on this and the Amazon link to
Speaker 2: go buy it, unless you have another preferred link you
Speaker 2: could send me that for them to buy it from.
Speaker 3: The publisher is the best vet because it's actually on
Speaker 3: sale twenty percent off everything at the publisher's site through
Speaker 3: the end of the year, and it's just the code
Speaker 3: is Holiday twenty four and you get that twenty percent.
Speaker 2: Great, okay, So you know what, I'll drop the Amazon
Speaker 2: link and Holiday twenty four all together as one word,
Speaker 2: right is the okay holiday.
Speaker 3: They show it on the site too, so even if
Speaker 3: you don't remember it, it's easy to find.
Speaker 2: Oh excellent, So you can get a discount if you
Speaker 2: go to the publisher's website and by Quintessential Jack The
Speaker 2: Art of Jack Nicholson on Screen by Scott Edwards. And
Speaker 2: again chance meeting at Lancer and I have a feeling
Speaker 2: that I might want you to return and answer some questions,
Speaker 2: maybe from some listeners, et cetera. There's somebody in the
Speaker 2: chat room mentioning that they liked the Billy Jack thing.
Speaker 2: I think that was back when we were talking about
Speaker 2: the biker movies. Let's see, Kubrick may have only advised
Speaker 2: on the apollo op. Okay, Well, look, you can take
Speaker 2: it anyway you want, but I don't believe that Stanley
Speaker 2: Kubrick gave us that footage. I'll tell you that much
Speaker 2: with absolute certainty. But he did give us a lot
Speaker 2: of films, and Jack Nicholson gave us a lot of characters,
Speaker 2: and Scott Edwards gave us a lot to think about.
Speaker 1: So there you go, Revelation through conversation.
Speaker 2: If you've expressed my caller schools there anyone else who
Speaker 2: happens to get on the air of Jelly dot com,
Speaker 2: do not necessarily reflect views little Lly dot com or
Speaker 2: check Go Chilly, and we are not responsible for any
Speaker 2: stupidity which might ensued.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Revelation through conversation.
Speaker 2: Go ahead call it.
Speaker 4: Just sit in the truth about the JAFA assassination.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, what do you want to know? Dy Baker's
Speaker 2: wild claim Oswald girlfriends you knew Ruby and Barry answer weapons. Really,
Speaker 2: I imagine I could claim I have four wheels. It
Speaker 2: doesn't make me a wagon.
Speaker 1: But okay, Oswald was on the bility and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to prevent the murder of John Kennedy.
Speaker 5: Come on now has a real effort on the day
Speaker 5: of assassination.
Speaker 2: Go to Amazon dot com enter Judith Baker in her
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Speaker 6: Thank you information O Chili dot com.
Speaker 7: Yo yo. This Doug Campbell, host of the Dallas Action
Speaker 7: podcast presented by Wall Street Window, and you are listening
Speaker 7: to the o'chill effect revelation through conversation in.
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Speaker 3: This is James Corbin at corpor Report dot com and
Speaker 3: you're listening to the ocell Affected dot.
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