Speaker 1: Oh he is, folks, it's show tied.
Speaker 2: People say good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater.
Speaker 4: They want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters.
Speaker 5: In the Protection Booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't.
Speaker 4: Boring, got it off?
Speaker 6: Today we begin a new era.
Speaker 7: I have existed from the morning of the world, and
Speaker 7: I shall exist until the last star falls from the night.
Speaker 7: Although I have taken the form of gaias Conningular, I
Speaker 7: am no man, as I.
Speaker 4: Am old man, and therefore I am a god.
Speaker 8: Oh yes, now the fun begins.
Speaker 9: If only all Rome had just watched never.
Speaker 10: Who I am a great season.
Speaker 3: Hello, Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike,
Speaker 3: why too, hen me once again as mister Rob Saint Mary.
Speaker 11: Shall I be remembered as Caligula the Dull.
Speaker 3: Also back in the Booth is Miss Heather Drain.
Speaker 12: Hello. Hello.
Speaker 3: On this special episode of the Projection Booth, we are
Speaker 3: going back to the Well. This may be the first
Speaker 3: ever time we've discussed a movie for a third time,
Speaker 3: but much like the Saga of the Magnificent Amberson's or
Speaker 3: the Other Side of the Wind, we are continuing to
Speaker 3: document the troubled history of the nineteen eighty film Caligula.
Speaker 13: Caligula isn't just artistically that it's also offensive and it's
Speaker 13: gratuitous scenes of torture and perversion. This movie makes it real,
Speaker 13: specially out of castrations, disembowlments, crucifixions and other forms of
Speaker 13: torture that the camera lingers over and lingers over, and
Speaker 13: what a piece of trash.
Speaker 3: When we first spoke about this film almost ten years ago,
Speaker 3: exactly where we were joined by Maitland McDonough to discuss
Speaker 3: the movie, while Ranjit Sandu gave us the sordid history
Speaker 3: behind the production and talked about his book Two hundred
Speaker 3: Degrees of Failure, and filmmaker Alexander Tushinski discussed the career
Speaker 3: of Tinto Brass and the original intentions Brass had for
Speaker 3: this finish film. We came back together in twenty eighteen
Speaker 3: to discuss the recent rediscovery of the original footage of
Speaker 3: Khaligla and the plans Penthouse and Alexander had to restore
Speaker 3: the film to Tinto Brass's original version. This is where
Speaker 3: we left things. I recorded Alexander's interview and then a
Speaker 3: week later I talked with Kelly and like in the
Speaker 3: interim is when the bigger news broke about her almost
Speaker 3: losing the company and then getting the company back, and
Speaker 3: then the funding it sounds like is going to be
Speaker 3: there for this restoration of Caligula. And I just want
Speaker 3: to make sure that folks understand is that this will
Speaker 3: probably be Alexander at some point taking that workprint that
Speaker 3: he's talked about, the work print of Caligula where I
Speaker 3: think he said like eighty nine minutes of it were done,
Speaker 3: and then kind of using the original elements to recreate that,
Speaker 3: and then the rest of the film will be done
Speaker 3: in the style of Tinto Brass unless Brassless notes or
Speaker 3: Brass himself, who is still a very viable filmmaker, unless
Speaker 3: that happens, It'll be done in the style of Tinto Brass,
Speaker 3: and I think that Alexander knows his style well enough
Speaker 3: to be able to do that. It's kind of like
Speaker 3: Walter murch coming in and redoing Touch of Evil based
Speaker 3: upon the memos kind of thing. So I'm very very
Speaker 3: excited about this because it does sound I don't want
Speaker 3: to get my hopes up, because you know, things happen,
Speaker 3: but in a world where either side of the Wind
Speaker 3: might actually have its premiere very soon. I'm very excited
Speaker 3: that Tinto Brass's Caligula with name over the title kind
Speaker 3: of thing, that Tinto Brass's Caligula might finally actually see
Speaker 3: the light of day. Now we are back when we
Speaker 3: were talking about the version of Caligula that played in
Speaker 3: con in twenty twenty three, once referred to as Caligula
Speaker 3: mmxx or Caligula twenty twenty. But this is twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four and it's now called Caligula the Ultimate Cut, and
Speaker 3: it was produced by a person named Thomas Nagovit. We
Speaker 3: will be discussing the film as well as what's happened
Speaker 3: to this project over the last six years. We'll also
Speaker 3: be spoiling the film as we go along, so if
Speaker 3: you don't want anything ruin, go ahead and find the movie.
Speaker 3: It's coming out on Blu Ray a few times, including
Speaker 3: the Umbrella Entertainment version, which features commentary from our own
Speaker 3: Heather Train. One more thing, we might get some things
Speaker 3: wrong as we talk about this, just because we have
Speaker 3: been caliguled up one side and down the other. I
Speaker 3: feel a little bit like Proculus. At my wedding night.
Speaker 3: I've had a lot of Caligula coming in and out
Speaker 3: of these eyes and ears, and I get a little
Speaker 3: bit of details wrong or any of us. Please forgive us, Heather.
Speaker 3: I'm so curious. How did you get involved in this
Speaker 3: new release and what did you think when you first
Speaker 3: saw Caligula the Ultimate Cut?
Speaker 12: First of all, how much do I give a rational answer?
Speaker 12: Would you just reference what may be the greatest fisting
Speaker 12: saying and all of said him at history?
Speaker 3: I don't know some of the I think Fred Halstead
Speaker 3: hasn't beat.
Speaker 11: But it's again children's entertainment. Come on, this is what
Speaker 11: we specialize here on the projection booths. Between this and solo,
Speaker 11: it's just children's entertainment.
Speaker 14: Mine.
Speaker 12: This is what I've bested about talking with Rob Vonville podcast.
Speaker 12: Is that dry humor and that slightly beautifully shaded void
Speaker 12: of view. I do love Frett Holston. We'll save that
Speaker 12: for another show. As far as how I got into
Speaker 12: this particular cut of the film, or how did I
Speaker 12: get into Colligula in general?
Speaker 3: Either one. If you want to talk about Caligula, because
Speaker 3: this is your first Caligula with us, we wanted to
Speaker 3: bring you on here. Maitland is okay, She's fine. It's
Speaker 3: been a little tough getting hold of her lately, but
Speaker 3: I think she's doing our right. I've seen posts and
Speaker 3: still on her substack. But either with you doing the
Speaker 3: audio commentary, we're like, great, let's get Heather over here
Speaker 3: and have her talk about this. But yeah, please tell
Speaker 3: me your history with Calligila, if you would.
Speaker 12: I remember hearing about Calliguila as a little kid. I
Speaker 12: remember seeing the vhs and the mature section at our
Speaker 12: local video star, because Walker Corner Video did not have
Speaker 12: an adult section, they had a mature Some of those
Speaker 12: videos were probably more on the immature range because there
Speaker 12: was like a lot of Beach Bundy type stuff. It
Speaker 12: was all softcore, but they had I remember seeing the
Speaker 12: cover for Caligula and that great iconic art, and yeah,
Speaker 12: I was already reading a lot about film. If ooh,
Speaker 12: that's aid infamous film. Even as a little kid, I
Speaker 12: knew this is the film. Chirs Malcolm McDowell, Sir John
Speaker 12: gilgot Helen Mary and you've got these Shakespearean trained actors
Speaker 12: and it's pehouse and it's lurned And I remember seeing
Speaker 12: Inside Edition or it's like tabloid shows doing a piece
Speaker 12: on it, like the late eighties feel like Video Search
Speaker 12: of Miami and one of their catalogs had some variation
Speaker 12: cut of it at some point, because I used to
Speaker 12: get their catalogs even though I was too poor to
Speaker 12: order anything, and I was also like, well under eighteen,
Speaker 12: I couldn't order from But I loved seeing the movies,
Speaker 12: and when I finally did get to see it, I
Speaker 12: was not disappointed. It's see the Goociona cut is for
Speaker 12: all of its flaws, you still get to see there's
Speaker 12: so much brilliance in the movie that cannot be restrained
Speaker 12: by any cut of it, and especially McDowell, the Danello
Speaker 12: di Natti sets, and honestly, I think there are performers
Speaker 12: there that don't get enough respect that should, including Teresa
Speaker 12: and Savoya, John Steiper especially. So I'm a huge fan
Speaker 12: of Caligula, which is why when I got approached from
Speaker 12: somebody by Umbrella if I wanted to contribute a commentary,
Speaker 12: I of course jumped on it. Now I do have
Speaker 12: to give a shout out to Alexandra Heller Nichols because
Speaker 12: she threw my name in that hat. I would not
Speaker 12: have gotten that gig without her vouching for me. So
Speaker 12: I hope she likes you. When ever happened? Really, Jesus,
Speaker 12: hope they don't hate it. But I did my best.
Speaker 12: But and so that's how I got to see the
Speaker 12: old Simth cut, and it was fascinating. It is a
Speaker 12: fascinating thing to see. I think it's interesting and I
Speaker 12: can't really think of any other film that's white has
Speaker 12: the storied history of having so many variations of it
Speaker 12: as far as edits the whole drama of it being
Speaker 12: basically stolen from the director. Because the other thing that
Speaker 12: helped me get my name in that hat was I'm
Speaker 12: a noted Tito Brass fan. I'm a huge Tino Brass
Speaker 12: fair girl. I don't know as much as Alexander Trushinsky,
Speaker 12: who I know you got to interview Bow. Alex is
Speaker 12: amazing and incredible, but I love Tinta Brass. He's a
Speaker 12: my kind of artist. So I was curious to see
Speaker 12: how this cut was going to play out. I knew
Speaker 12: it was going to be different than the Mission Caligula
Speaker 12: cut on which may be sad, but it's still okay.
Speaker 12: Getting to see this footage restored and presented in a
Speaker 12: different way had be very intrigued. But I'll reserve my
Speaker 12: further thoughts as we go into it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I should say, even before I asked Rob what
Speaker 3: he thought of the Ultimate cut. Part of the reason
Speaker 3: we're doing this episode is just to set the record straight,
Speaker 3: because I think there are still people out there that
Speaker 3: think that this new cut, the Ultimate cut, is Alexander's
Speaker 3: version of this. It's not, and we'll definitely talk about
Speaker 3: that in the second half of the show, but just
Speaker 3: to put that out there right here and now, just
Speaker 3: a few minutes in. It's an interesting follow up to
Speaker 3: what we talked about with Mission Caligula, but this is
Speaker 3: not where we thought we were going to be going. So, Rob,
Speaker 3: what did you think when you finally got to see
Speaker 3: this Ultimate cut?
Speaker 11: Thing that was interesting for me is that there's scenes
Speaker 11: in the film that are directly what we know that
Speaker 11: Alexander told us about, such as the Simon says seen
Speaker 11: the gods removing the head scene, things that there were
Speaker 11: stills for but we didn't see. So for me, there's
Speaker 11: aspects of that are really interesting. Another aspect of this
Speaker 11: that I like are some of the performances ad depth,
Speaker 11: and there's even a character in here that I don't
Speaker 11: remember from the theatrical version that we'll talk about that
Speaker 11: I think adds a bit to McDowell's performance in his
Speaker 11: characterization that I think is interesting. So it has a
Speaker 11: lot of extra things in. It runs an extra I
Speaker 11: think thirty minutes compared to the original theatricals, so it's
Speaker 11: three hours now. And then there are aspects of it
Speaker 11: in terms of the edit that I find a bit
Speaker 11: ponderous at times, and editing choices and things like that,
Speaker 11: And we can talk about all that. That's more for
Speaker 11: the second half, But for me, it's again like Heather
Speaker 11: was saying, it's seeing another version of something that you're
Speaker 11: familiar with, and it still leaves me hungry for that.
Speaker 11: As close as we could get tinto brass version that
Speaker 11: I would absolutely love to see, I would look. That
Speaker 11: is a hang up that I have, But I went
Speaker 11: in watching it against what was previously given to us,
Speaker 11: meaning the gucci Oni version and the Blu ray, which
Speaker 11: is a little bit different when they cut out some
Speaker 11: of the softcore or some of the hardcore from what
Speaker 11: I remember. But it definitely has some merits on its own,
Speaker 11: and it has some deficiencies on its own too. That's
Speaker 11: to be expected with any time you tinker with it
Speaker 11: with any piece of heart.
Speaker 3: Sorry, it's close. I don't know if it's got a cigar,
Speaker 3: but it's close. There are some interesting choices, Like you said,
Speaker 3: even when it comes to the long opening scroll, I
Speaker 3: understand us wanting to have a scroll at the beginning
Speaker 3: to talk a little bit about the history of the film,
Speaker 3: though some of the things that are in that opening scroll,
Speaker 3: I'm just like, really, then to start it off with
Speaker 3: the animated and I'm just like, oh, okay, we're going
Speaker 3: really different because that animated sequence, which not a big
Speaker 3: fan of the style of the animation, some of it
Speaker 3: looks kind of I don't know off to me, but
Speaker 3: I guess it is a dream sequence, so you can't
Speaker 3: really put rules on a dream sequence. I'd like some
Speaker 3: of this stuff that they have when it comes to
Speaker 3: the little Caligula dance and everything, and I'm just like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this explains a little bit more. I know we're saving
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff for the second half of the discussion,
Speaker 3: so I'm not going to get too far into it.
Speaker 3: But the dream sequence was there in one version of
Speaker 3: course screenplay, it wasn't there in another. But at least
Speaker 3: it makes a lot more sense to have this dream
Speaker 3: version here rather than to make it be I remember,
Speaker 3: and I listened to our earlier episodes on this because
Speaker 3: I refuse to go back and watch the Gucci one
Speaker 3: version again. But where it was the dream was nymphocent
Speaker 3: in the forest, and then it's uh, I had this
Speaker 3: horrible dream, like what wait what?
Speaker 11: Speaking of that animated sequence, I was looking at it,
Speaker 11: and I went back and actually looked at the press
Speaker 11: notes after, and the press notes at least the version
Speaker 11: that we got is only really two pages, so there's
Speaker 11: not a lot in there. But I was looking at it.
Speaker 11: I go, God, this looks really familiar, Like this animation
Speaker 11: design style is really familiar, and I realized it's Dave McKean.
Speaker 11: And I loved Dave McKean's work from Arkham Asylum, the
Speaker 11: graphic novel, the Batman Story, and he also did those
Speaker 11: covers in the eighties and nineties for Sandman. He has
Speaker 11: a very specific painter style, and so I like his art.
Speaker 11: I just it just seemed to me almost like the
Speaker 11: dream sequence. I understand what he was doing by creating
Speaker 11: this and putting it in the film, but part of
Speaker 11: it I don't necessarily know. If it pays off as well,
Speaker 11: because really, ultimately what it's about is just paranoia. It's
Speaker 11: really about the paranoia of power is really the story,
Speaker 11: and I don't think you need to get that far
Speaker 11: into it because it's like Poligula as Joseph Stalin, He's
Speaker 11: just I'm in power and now everyone wants to kill me.
Speaker 11: Some might but not everyone. There's this I've got to
Speaker 11: take everyone out before they take me out attitude, and
Speaker 11: that just ramps. So that's just the story ramp. But
Speaker 11: I don't know if the dream sequence really adds much
Speaker 11: or helps to play in, although it does add with
Speaker 11: some of the symbology later with the bird and things
Speaker 11: like that.
Speaker 12: Dave McKeon and Thomas and mcgovin, their pats had crossed
Speaker 12: before this project. They worked together on a exhibition and
Speaker 12: that's the thing is like mcgovan has this amazing background
Speaker 12: as an art preservationist and historian and for something called
Speaker 12: he did this program called Keno Geist that was this
Speaker 12: two day event and part of that was called Nitrate
Speaker 12: and Keino Guys, and that included they had some of
Speaker 12: like Keyan short films and the whole thing was celebrating
Speaker 12: basically silent film art too, which is super cool, so
Speaker 12: they definitely at cross. I'm a huge day of McKeen fan.
Speaker 15: Two.
Speaker 12: It's weird the innimation. I don't think I initially clocked
Speaker 12: as Dave mckeenon because, like Rob and like anybody that
Speaker 12: grew up at least three fourced goth in the nineties,
Speaker 12: like the Samman comics, and especially the cover art is
Speaker 12: just like iconic. But it's cool. It's cool. I don't
Speaker 12: That's one of the big changes that I actually I'm
Speaker 12: okay with because there wasn't really like any raw footage
Speaker 12: found for that. And it is important to note because
Speaker 12: I think the whole thing with Colligils's paranoia is it's
Speaker 12: and I'm trying to remember if this was like touched
Speaker 12: upon that well in the GUCCIONI cut, But basically, like
Speaker 12: the whole history is, every emperor dies young and get
Speaker 12: and does not die a natural death, and his whole
Speaker 12: family other than his sisters, were exiled. That's the thing.
Speaker 12: Tiberia's excel his mother and his two brothers off to
Speaker 12: an island where they starved to death. So you can
Speaker 12: understand why he's paranoid and why he's not settled. I
Speaker 12: think I go a little bit more into the nuts
Speaker 12: and bolts and that when we get to the Tiberia section.
Speaker 3: I don't think there was a dream sequence shot though,
Speaker 3: because there is a dream sequence a little bit in
Speaker 3: the October twenty, nineteen seventy five script, but the July
Speaker 3: seventy sixth script, and it begins with him waking up
Speaker 3: just like we had in the earlier version, and really,
Speaker 3: from what I understand, it was supposed to start very
Speaker 3: similar to Selon Kitty, with a out of focus shot
Speaker 3: that you just stay in while the credits play, and
Speaker 3: then eventually it becomes in focus, and that's Kalig waking
Speaker 3: up with Driscilla next to him and he's had this
Speaker 3: horrible dream, and that's right out of that opening of
Speaker 3: that July seventy six script. And so I guess it's
Speaker 3: just really which version you're reading as far as which
Speaker 3: one you want to say this is the true one.
Speaker 3: But I would say I know. Brass said that there
Speaker 3: were seven versions of the script written, and that was
Speaker 3: before Malcolm mcdalbrod and his person too work on the
Speaker 3: script a little bit as well, and I guess that's
Speaker 3: what helped cause a lot of friction between Brass and
Speaker 3: though I don't see those two really getting along too well.
Speaker 12: Talking about two, oh, there's a lot of I think
Speaker 12: I know. One of Gorse scripts, Tinto was complaining that
Speaker 12: there was too much like gay, which Tito I don't
Speaker 12: think is homophobias. He's had, He had Salon Giddy has
Speaker 12: a very positive gay character in it. But it's it's
Speaker 12: got to be more than just buggery. You gotta have
Speaker 12: some mixture. Oh it odd and I think just those
Speaker 12: are two. I hate using the alpha beta parvalance is
Speaker 12: because of all the in cell ball shit out there.
Speaker 12: But they are too like strong. Those are two very
Speaker 12: strong finkers, two very brilliant, and they're very in very
Speaker 12: distinctive ways. But also one's incredibly American, the one's incredibly Italian.
Speaker 12: And sometimes those two can marry beautifully, but when they don't, it's, yeah,
Speaker 12: you get Gorse little bit che quote. Did you guys
Speaker 12: read where he one of his comments about Tito was, oh,
Speaker 12: that he should have been called Tinto's z inc And
Speaker 12: it's that's the best singer you got, Garny, come on
Speaker 12: like that.
Speaker 11: Here's the thing, that's here's the thing that's interesting in
Speaker 11: my We were messaging a bit before the show earlier today,
Speaker 11: and this is the third time we've had a bite
Speaker 11: at this apple, and this is the first time that
Speaker 11: it came to mind. And I know Camu enough, but
Speaker 11: it was like I didn't put it together that Albert
Speaker 11: Kimu had written a play of Poligula. And so there's
Speaker 11: part of me that although I haven't seen the play,
Speaker 11: I have not read the play. I understand the synopsis,
Speaker 11: and the synopsis follows much the same, But really I
Speaker 11: wonder how much Gorvidal was looking at Camu's treatment and
Speaker 11: borrowing from it, because ultimately what sets him off in
Speaker 11: that play from the synopsis I read is the death
Speaker 11: of Drusilla that basically, once Drusilla dies, he's fuck it.
Speaker 11: I can do whatever I want. I don't care anymore.
Speaker 11: I've given up on trying to be nice to anyone,
Speaker 11: and I'm just gonna be the id and I'm going
Speaker 11: to do anything I want. And so that becomes really
Speaker 11: the push the incident within the Camu play. But here
Speaker 11: it seems more like what the push for him is
Speaker 11: more of the paranoia, in that he's more scared of
Speaker 11: Tiberius and then Jemalus and all these other people trying
Speaker 11: to turn against him. So it seems more of paranoia
Speaker 11: and exercise in paranoia than it is a I've lost
Speaker 11: the love of my life and therefore everyone suffers.
Speaker 12: I love that what you sent that to as, I
Speaker 12: was like, I'm floored. I was like, oh God, this
Speaker 12: that's why I love when Rob but the talk and
Speaker 12: Rob as you bring up these things, and especially I
Speaker 12: think between that and Gore Vidal does need to be like,
Speaker 12: I mean absolutely praise for he incorporated a lot of
Speaker 12: legit historical research that shines in all versions of this
Speaker 12: That is everything going to bee hundred percent. Now, let's
Speaker 12: face it, history is not one hundred percent because it's
Speaker 12: written by the victors. But he sourced a lot of
Speaker 12: it from Suetonius. There were two main historians of this era,
Speaker 12: and that was Setonius and Cassio Dio. And like the
Speaker 12: whole thing with Tiberius, like the whole thing with the
Speaker 12: minnows so creepy, like the little fishes and all that,
Speaker 12: and it's and Peter Atole looks he looks like he
Speaker 12: he looks like he's like the living dead. And that's
Speaker 12: the already like it looks like a zombie and it's
Speaker 12: just so appropriately just like ghastly. But that's the thing,
Speaker 12: those were real legits. I guess rumors that he was
Speaker 12: basically like a pedophile. Caligial was brought in as a slave,
Speaker 12: he treated him as a slave. There is no telling
Speaker 12: if that's true what Caligula as a little boy, as
Speaker 12: a young man had to witness an endure also with
Speaker 12: the full knowledge that this is the man that was
Speaker 12: responsible for basically slowly murdering his family, like most of
Speaker 12: his family, including his mother. I don't see how that
Speaker 12: would not make any body paranoid and insane. I'm not
Speaker 12: justifying any crazy, but and I love that there's that touch.
Speaker 12: I think Malcolm McDowell, who is one of our greatest
Speaker 12: living actors, I'm a huge I know well he didn't
Speaker 12: feel like he has performance shined in the other cuts.
Speaker 12: It's back in McDowell. The man's gonna shine in a
Speaker 12: subway shop like he's got you put them in a
Speaker 12: subway ordering a meatball sandwich. Dude is gonna shine. That's
Speaker 12: what he does. Because here there are times where he
Speaker 12: has such a sensitivity in his eyes and such emotion.
Speaker 12: But he also has that cheeky side to and also
Speaker 12: just that bratty monster, and he has all of this,
Speaker 12: but I love I think in some ways the whole
Speaker 12: stuff with Tiberius in this film is the most compelling.
Speaker 11: You were talking about the research, and one of the
Speaker 11: things Goorvidal wrote a lot of historical novels that were
Speaker 11: he did research and did all that stuff. And one
Speaker 11: of the things that's interesting about ancient Roman writing, especially
Speaker 11: in this period like where Christianity's coming in, is you
Speaker 11: have to remember also that some of the stuff is written,
Speaker 11: as you were saying, how they're by the victors, and
Speaker 11: who would become the victors would be a Christianized Romans.
Speaker 11: So there's some historians of ancient Rome that say, you
Speaker 11: know what, the whole thing with the orgies and the
Speaker 11: sexual stuff and that's all overblown. They made them sound
Speaker 11: way worse than they were in order to make them
Speaker 11: the New Guard, sound much better than they were. There
Speaker 11: was this balance of making the Old Guard seem like
Speaker 11: they were just the most evil and horrible people.
Speaker 1: That ever walked the face of the earth.
Speaker 11: So the question becomes how much and we're never going
Speaker 11: to know, But the question becomes how much of this
Speaker 11: is real or not. But ultimately, I think the bigger
Speaker 11: question is this question that's asked about how power corrupts,
Speaker 11: how power can make you paranoid looking over your shoulder
Speaker 11: all the time, And I think that's really the key
Speaker 11: theme I think, really through the whole piece.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should say that Suetnis didn't write his history
Speaker 3: of the Caesars until one twenty one a d. Which
Speaker 3: was already so many years removed from Caligula. And I
Speaker 3: know that I'm not an expert on any sort of
Speaker 3: Roman history, but the from what I understand, a lot
Speaker 3: of these histories, like you said, Rob, they're written by
Speaker 3: the victors, and they're coloring things the way that they
Speaker 3: want to color. Both Suetonas and Tacitus might have written
Speaker 3: things that they thought were correct. We know how easily
Speaker 3: facing it changed here in twenty twenty four, So I
Speaker 3: don't know about forty nine AD type of stuff, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I from what I understand, Wow, Nero actually wasn't that
Speaker 3: bad of a guy. He didn't play the fiddle while
Speaker 3: he was burning Rome down, these kind of things. But
Speaker 3: it's the next emperor or the one after that is
Speaker 3: look at that guy. Look at his record. Look at
Speaker 3: what horrible things did he played the fiddle? Well, Rome
Speaker 3: was burned, he set fire to Rome and played the fiddles?
Speaker 3: What are you talking about? So some of these things
Speaker 3: like oh Coligula was so crazy? What is his horse
Speaker 3: to be a senator? Maybe he did, maybe he didn't.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but yes, it's part of this narrative.
Speaker 11: And that's the great thing about historical or allegory, or
Speaker 11: even why I love horror film and science fiction is
Speaker 11: because it takes something that could be very contemporary, and
Speaker 11: if you were trying to talk about it in a
Speaker 11: contemporary way, probably be pedantic and no one would pay
Speaker 11: attention and be like it is boring. But when you
Speaker 11: couch it into these other terms of history or science fiction, horror, whatever,
Speaker 11: you can actually have a really interesting discussion on themes.
Speaker 11: And ultimately, I don't care about historical accuracy of as
Speaker 11: I care about I guess what Verna Hertzog would call it,
Speaker 11: the asthetic truth? Is it true in terms of how
Speaker 11: it feels? And you know it reacts as opposed as
Speaker 11: a true true.
Speaker 3: And going back to some of that conflict between gor
Speaker 3: Vidal and Tinto Brass, part of it too was brass,
Speaker 3: was like, you're spending way too much time on Tiberias.
Speaker 3: This is not the Tiberius movie. This is the Collegular movie.
Speaker 3: What are you doing with all this Tiberia stuff? And
Speaker 3: I seem to remember back in the first discussion we
Speaker 3: had about Caligula, me complaining about just how long the
Speaker 3: Tiberia stuff goes on for. And even though they added
Speaker 3: more to the Tiberia section, but they also took away
Speaker 3: things from the Tiberia section, but that Tiberia section still runs.
Speaker 3: I think close to a solid half an hour between
Speaker 3: when Caligula gets told, hey, you need to go to
Speaker 3: care and after Tiberius is murdered. I think that's a
Speaker 3: solid half hour of screen time with all of this
Speaker 3: stuff going on, if not more. And it just takes
Speaker 3: fucking forever to get through this. And just hearing Peter
Speaker 3: O'Toole that you like so saydes it's good to have both,
Speaker 3: I'm just like, God, this is going on forever.
Speaker 12: I loved that. I thought that the back and all
Speaker 12: of it. Ah, I think especially because saying it clear,
Speaker 12: saying it a very clear, because the Imperial Edition of
Speaker 12: Poliguila is a set that I love it. I'm glad
Speaker 12: I have it, and I thought that looks great, and
Speaker 12: then do you see this restoration of it. But it's
Speaker 12: I think there's arguably stuff that's way more transaggressive and obsteem.
Speaker 12: If it's film, it's not seen, but some crazy stuff
Speaker 12: going on compared to the stuff COOCCIONI shot, which I
Speaker 12: know as much as people are like, oh it's poured,
Speaker 12: it's pretty straight erotica. It's nothing crazy. You've got somebody
Speaker 12: with a conjoined deformed twins and there's like a weird
Speaker 12: dildo spinning wheel that looks honestly painful and like it
Speaker 12: would probably I actually looks like something I saw on
Speaker 12: a Joe sort of film, and I think about it.
Speaker 12: Even then I was like, girl, do not get near leaf.
Speaker 12: Do not put your vagina near that. It will hurt you,
Speaker 12: and not in a fun way. But I loved it
Speaker 12: both for the complete outray of it, but I also
Speaker 12: to me, I think I like the causeum it sets up,
Speaker 12: this is what he has had deep year around. It's
Speaker 12: to me, I think it's essential to see like the
Speaker 12: origin of Caligula, but the madness, but also just the
Speaker 12: madness of government, which is really what the film to
Speaker 12: me is really bad. People say it's about therruption of power,
Speaker 12: but it's also look at the nobody. They're all snakes.
Speaker 12: There's not one hero in any of the political thing
Speaker 12: a Caligular, if anything, is mocking them. The more he
Speaker 12: insane he gets, the more it's just it's like, in
Speaker 12: his own weird way, he's just calling them out and
Speaker 12: be like my horse. Yeah, and Titus is just as good,
Speaker 12: if not better than a lot of your sheep, who
Speaker 12: will quickly put a knife in someone's bag as you
Speaker 12: will to pat him on it. Wow. I'm glad things
Speaker 12: have changed though, so that's good.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 11: The point I had made, I think it was in
Speaker 11: the first episode we did, is that Caligula becomes like
Speaker 11: I had this bully in high school that it seemed
Speaker 11: like he wanted to push you. It was like he
Speaker 11: wanted a reaction out of you. And it's what he
Speaker 11: does here where it's I'm just going to keep doing
Speaker 11: this and I want to see if someone's going to
Speaker 11: push back, and eventually they do, but it takes a
Speaker 11: long time, and it's almost someone with a death wish,
Speaker 11: where it's I want to die, but I'm not going
Speaker 11: to kill myself. I'm gonna make you do it. I'm
Speaker 11: going to make you kill me. I'm not going to
Speaker 11: kill myself. I want to see how far I could
Speaker 11: push you.
Speaker 3: Instead of death by cop, it's death by Centurion exactly.
Speaker 12: Yes, that's a new metal band far fan that I love.
Speaker 12: You know what's funny, though, we've all known bullies like
Speaker 12: that in real life. Who was like, I hate that,
Speaker 12: I hate that Berth. Then nobody likes that guy in
Speaker 12: real life. But for some reason, Caligula in the movie.
Speaker 12: Maybe it's because it's Malcolm McDowell's, but Betha mcdeal's like
Speaker 12: the Beth.
Speaker 11: The Caligula that McDowell plays in here is Alex's fever
Speaker 11: dream from Clockwork Orange, because there's that scene where he's
Speaker 11: in prison, he's reading the Great Book, he's reading the
Speaker 11: Big Book, and he's imagining himself taking part in scourging
Speaker 11: Christ on the way to the Cross and all of
Speaker 11: that stuff. And for me, there's one scene in here
Speaker 11: that's cut completely different from the theatrical version that completely
Speaker 11: changes a little bit of that for me. And this
Speaker 11: is right around now where we're talking about Tiberias of
Speaker 11: Nerva and I'm glad that there is more Nerva. I
Speaker 11: actually understand why he's there more in this cut as
Speaker 11: opposed to the theatrical version. But the thing that I miss,
Speaker 11: because I'm so used to theatrical version, is where McDowell's like, Nerva,
Speaker 11: what's going on? Where he's like this little kid and
Speaker 11: he's all excited that this guy's dying and is do
Speaker 11: you see isis? Is she coming for you? And he's
Speaker 11: all very excited about experiencing death by proxy through this guy,
Speaker 11: which again also ties into what I was saying before
Speaker 11: about the bully who wants to be offed by someone,
Speaker 11: where he's like, oh, tell me about it, And in
Speaker 11: this version he's much more serious. He's not as in
Speaker 11: that child space. He's not in that Alex space. This
Speaker 11: is what I would call it, where he's so excited
Speaker 11: by misdeeds and horribleness, and it's like he's getting all
Speaker 11: excited by wha real horror show.
Speaker 3: And I'm not exactly sure why that scene is missing.
Speaker 3: There's a couple theories that I have. One is that
Speaker 3: there's something in the opening scroll that says none of
Speaker 3: these shots have ever been seen before, which I disagree
Speaker 3: with because there's a couple shots. I was watching this
Speaker 3: with ultimate cut on the TV and then one of
Speaker 3: the older versions on my laptop, and there were a
Speaker 3: couple times I was like, Okay, these SYNCD up pretty
Speaker 3: good because I had to keep fast forwarding rewinding, and
Speaker 3: then eventually I would find like a sink point. But
Speaker 3: it was interesting. It was like, rather than a close up,
Speaker 3: I'm seeing a long shot rather than a medium shot,
Speaker 3: I'm seeing an extreme close up rather than from this angle,
Speaker 3: I'm seeing it from that angle. But maybe they didn't
Speaker 3: have other angles for the Nerva suicide scene, because we
Speaker 3: do get the first part of the suicide scene, which
Speaker 3: Alexander told us about from Mission Caligula. Now we get
Speaker 3: to see that, but we don't get that scene that
Speaker 3: you're talking about, Like you just said, we don't get
Speaker 3: that whole Oh do you see isis? And my theory
Speaker 3: is one maybe that's because Nagovin's gone on record saying
Speaker 3: we can't show oh colegular murdering somebody at that point,
Speaker 3: because he eventually just pushes nerve it down. It's interesting
Speaker 3: in the script, though, the at least the October twenty,
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy five script, he and that scene is in there,
Speaker 3: and he instead of pushing Nerve it down, he kicks
Speaker 3: him in the head. But by that point Nerv is
Speaker 3: already dead and he just slides into the pool. So
Speaker 3: I'm looking at the July seventy sixth script and I'm
Speaker 3: still seeing that. Tell me about isis scene, because I
Speaker 3: thought maybe Nagovin was just really stuck to I'm only
Speaker 3: going to follow this script because it's definitely shorter. The
Speaker 3: July one is one hundred and thirty eight pages, whereas
Speaker 3: the seventy five October one is one hundred and ninety pages,
Speaker 3: which is closer to the running time of what this
Speaker 3: movie is now, which is what two hours and fifty
Speaker 3: seven minutes.
Speaker 12: I think there was some audio stuff that they had
Speaker 12: to finagle with as far as what they had access
Speaker 12: to with this building the ultimate cut, and I know
Speaker 12: there were like some certain audio issues, particularly with the
Speaker 12: Nerva see because I think, you know, I'm a little rusty,
Speaker 12: I'm when I read this interview, but I feel like
Speaker 12: they had to use a little bit of AI.
Speaker 1: To clean out I did, yes, which.
Speaker 12: I don't feel great about. I'm not a fan of it,
Speaker 12: but as a whole, and I think it's a complete
Speaker 12: scourge to the arts. But that's not saying thing about
Speaker 12: this film. But what but I guess it makes I
Speaker 12: guess I could see that that was the audio foles
Speaker 12: that they had, or the audio rules that they had
Speaker 12: access to, because if you watch the group of COACCIONI
Speaker 12: cut either any of them, the audio seems fine in
Speaker 12: their minner. I don't have a problem with it at all.
Speaker 3: But it was the new stuff is what they had
Speaker 3: problems with the sound.
Speaker 12: So that might be why. That's also maybe that was
Speaker 12: just like a section that was just ungovernable as far
Speaker 12: would be my guest, just because I know they were
Speaker 12: having audio issues with that sequence.
Speaker 3: Here's Thomas Negavin from a Century Guild podcast.
Speaker 9: The audio clean up process. So Italian stages. Funnily enough,
Speaker 9: this is something Malcolm had talked about in an interview,
Speaker 9: that he'd be doing a really intense take and then
Speaker 9: he'd hear's someone curse in the background because of the
Speaker 9: machine ran over their foot or something. And so what
Speaker 9: basically happened on Italian sets is they never intended to
Speaker 9: use location audio. Now, the problem is they were building
Speaker 9: sets while they were filming, and so one of the
Speaker 9: problems with that is that you'll have someone working and
Speaker 9: there's hammering in the background. So that's not a noise
Speaker 9: reduction solution, and it's not even something that you could
Speaker 9: really do with precise editing. You probably couldn't to some degree,
Speaker 9: but it would take forever and be really complicated. Some
Speaker 9: of the things that happened with AI technology that Peter
Speaker 9: Jackson was using for get Back that allowed the computer
Speaker 9: learning to separate human voice from its surroundings. It's not
Speaker 9: noise reduction. It's not a frequency like it was literally
Speaker 9: sculpting pieces. The scene with John Gielgood in the bath
Speaker 9: was a scene that I thought, that's the one we're
Speaker 9: going to make the excuses for. We're going to have
Speaker 9: to put a disclaimer at the front end saying this
Speaker 9: was made from blah blah blah sources. And by the
Speaker 9: end of this thing, the length of time that it
Speaker 9: took just that last year, the technology changed so much
Speaker 9: that we were able to get his voice sounding immaculate.
Speaker 9: And the Irony Kevin was our audio magician on this,
Speaker 9: and he said this to me, this was his idea
Speaker 9: that I'm sharing. It's really funny. That was the worst
Speaker 9: sounding scene and now at the end, it's that's the
Speaker 9: best sounding scene.
Speaker 3: It just feels like it cuts at a weird spot
Speaker 3: after that initial conversation and before the nerva. Do you
Speaker 3: see isis part? It's almost like a quick fade out, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that might be it exactly. And I'm with you as
Speaker 3: far as like making things with AI, and but I
Speaker 3: use AI all the time with some of the stuff
Speaker 3: that I do, especially like finding ums and US and
Speaker 3: removing those from speech like that is now a thing
Speaker 3: that I can do with AI. So it makes my
Speaker 3: life a lot easier because I'm in quite a bit
Speaker 3: and I'm curious to see what AI is going to
Speaker 3: do to this section as I'm purposefully sticking in ums
Speaker 3: and US.
Speaker 12: I will say this, like Nick Govin and his editor
Speaker 12: Aaron Shops, they worked very hard on this cut and
Speaker 12: it shows, and they're very transparent about what was used
Speaker 12: because the only I know, the only I think, the
Speaker 12: only the major digital thing they really did was there
Speaker 12: are some things that got a little fleshed out, the
Speaker 12: ale of Capri things the most obvious with the exterior
Speaker 12: of it, because that's not in any version. And there
Speaker 12: were some some of the sets where they said you
Speaker 12: could see in the raw footage just black or the sets,
Speaker 12: the set is ending and it wasn't finished because those
Speaker 12: that design that film, it's amazing it got made. When
Speaker 12: you read about the making of Curricula, I don't think
Speaker 12: the film probably personally, I don't think it needs it.
Speaker 12: But it doesn't hurt it.
Speaker 1: No, it doesn't.
Speaker 15: So my cents.
Speaker 3: Here's Thomas Negavin and Aaron Shapps from a Century Guild podcast.
Speaker 9: The work that we did digitally was for Danillo Donati.
Speaker 9: So when people that are choosing to be negative about
Speaker 9: it are saying, why would you go in and do that,
Speaker 9: it's because we respect that set designers so much. We
Speaker 9: know he didn't get a chance to finish. You see
Speaker 9: the quality and then you see right where it ends.
Speaker 5: One thing that we saw on you may have noticed
Speaker 5: if you've seen the theatrical cut, there are really no
Speaker 5: exterior establishing shots of any location whatsoever. And in the
Speaker 5: seventies that would have been done using matte paintings. Instead
Speaker 5: of doing that, there were a couple instances where we
Speaker 5: wanted an establishing shot outside and so that was created digitally.
Speaker 5: It would have just been a mate painting had we
Speaker 5: done it in the seventies, That's how they would have
Speaker 5: done it. For one in particular, what we were able
Speaker 5: to do is we wanted.
Speaker 16: An establishing shots before you get to peter o'tooles Tiberius's villa,
Speaker 16: and our effects guy John He was able to actually
Speaker 16: take an image of what the coasts of Italy would
Speaker 16: look like from Capri and create a digital essentially a.
Speaker 5: Digital matte painting with that. So again, really it's just
Speaker 5: a matter of either completing sets that Denillo didn't have
Speaker 5: a chance to complete because of the insane shooting schedule
Speaker 5: and how behind everything was from day one, or just
Speaker 5: an establishing shots. We haven't tinkered digitally with anything, just
Speaker 5: completed things that we're in.
Speaker 12: Aren't fans of the Tiberias? Did you guys at least
Speaker 12: enjoy the seeing jammelis the little does? Is it just me?
Speaker 12: Jameli's looks like the Luchota of Vesconte death and Venice kid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the most beautiful boy in the world. Isn't that
Speaker 3: the documentary about that kid?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 12: I hope that they documentary looks really good. I still
Speaker 12: need to see it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd like to see that myself too.
Speaker 17: It looks good, But I thought, Jamella is like, there's
Speaker 17: the thing that casting in this film is because even
Speaker 17: with like the like more minor players like cam Like,
Speaker 17: everybody's so striking and everybody just fits their parts so perfectly,
Speaker 17: like this poor You see this kid and he looks
Speaker 17: like death than Venice kid.
Speaker 12: But more sickly, and you just you're like this poor
Speaker 12: kid like he is, I don't feel like he's had it.
Speaker 12: He's had it a little better than Caligula, but he
Speaker 12: had Look at Tiberius, is this guy's not a guardian?
Speaker 18: Like?
Speaker 12: I wouldn't let this man near Mike houseplants?
Speaker 11: Oh yeah, my little house plants?
Speaker 3: So are you?
Speaker 11: Would you like to drink my little house plants? Dance
Speaker 11: dance for me? My little house plants entertained me.
Speaker 12: I had the weird the women with the babies, and
Speaker 12: the just it's so.
Speaker 3: Reminded me of Fury round with the Morton Joe and
Speaker 3: all of his mother's there and pumping all the milk.
Speaker 12: Oh my god. Yeah, Tiberius makes the Morton Joe look
Speaker 12: like Tony danz On, who's the boss? I will say,
Speaker 12: I wish we did get more John Gilgood, but I
Speaker 12: love it. Mike that you point out tho at least
Speaker 12: we get a little more of him. Yeah, and this,
Speaker 12: and also Gilgood has the best quotes, the two best
Speaker 12: quotes I have seen about this movie that's not from
Speaker 12: Tinto himself because one of them, and perversely Penthouse useless
Speaker 12: in their press releases, which I find sets because he
Speaker 12: said I've known coffins that were warmer than Roman bats,
Speaker 12: which is one of Also, he was I think the
Speaker 12: only major mainstream actors that were okay with the X
Speaker 12: rated stuff. Helen Mirren had very funny attitude about it.
Speaker 12: Can we all she's got? We'll get into hurt a
Speaker 12: little bit, but God bless Helen Man. But also John,
Speaker 12: you look Good ran into beca mcdowas while start but
Speaker 12: running into him and he's own Malcolm. It's wonderful. I'm
Speaker 12: in a polo. I've seen it three times, that you
Speaker 12: look good body. It was just hilarious. He loved it.
Speaker 12: He was so chuffed about being in a dirty movie.
Speaker 12: Now that's a trooper like divine and John Gilgod, oh,
Speaker 12: sir John Golgod, excuse me.
Speaker 11: Think about when it was made stage nudity at that point,
Speaker 11: was you know what you had harryet O Calcutta. You
Speaker 11: had Maroth's sod and then you had the whole free
Speaker 11: love hangover, so this was still part of that. People
Speaker 11: really didn't start getting really conservative until Reagan came in
Speaker 11: to a certain extent and Thatcher. So this was before
Speaker 11: all that. People were still in that exuberant surround, I think.
Speaker 12: Especially because they weren't the ones actually doing the sex too,
Speaker 12: because that double standard never has never sadly gone away.
Speaker 12: This is hads Harry Reems almost getting grease and then
Speaker 12: replacing him with said Caesar, like I couldn't hate greats
Speaker 12: anymore than already do. Peter O'Toole is very hammy here,
Speaker 12: but it's but it's perfect, It's perfect. He looks like
Speaker 12: he loved it so much. I could see him being like,
Speaker 12: I need another stiphanitic soul.
Speaker 11: It would have reminded me of his performance in here,
Speaker 11: probably the closest performance I've seen of his. It's like
Speaker 11: this in this era would have been ruling class, where
Speaker 11: he's just unhinged. And you know, it feels like if
Speaker 11: McDowell is leveraging Alex from a clockwork, Orange o'tooles leveraging
Speaker 11: his character from the group.
Speaker 12: I love that. I love it so much. Yeah, that's yeah,
Speaker 12: it's such a gem. And I look back to that
Speaker 12: plays Macro. I won't go to much of him because
Speaker 12: it's to the commentary huh, but he has such a grass.
Speaker 12: He looks like who you would cast in that role. Like,
Speaker 12: he looks very strong and trustworthy, and he's very economic
Speaker 12: and condensed and his bossuage. This is a guy that
Speaker 12: physically is always thinking and being on top of shit.
Speaker 12: It's such as I'm glad we're talking about Thistuf. I
Speaker 12: feel like there's a lot of smaller performances that get
Speaker 12: overshadowed by this movie, and it's infamy that these that
Speaker 12: should get praised.
Speaker 11: It's very controlled, and it goes with the idea of
Speaker 11: him being military, like that fits so well. And that
Speaker 11: was one of the things that I put in the
Speaker 11: notes here about, like you were saying, those smaller characters
Speaker 11: in this version, we get them more fleshed out. So,
Speaker 11: for example, I think Macro and Longinis in here we
Speaker 11: really get the sense of them being put under by
Speaker 11: Caligula more than in theatrical version. Like in theatrical version,
Speaker 11: it's he just keeps telling them to do shit. But
Speaker 11: in here there's like a lot of there's like size
Speaker 11: and side eyes, and ah Jesus, you can tell that
Speaker 11: they're just tired of putting up with his shit, and
Speaker 11: it gets more obvious as you get further along. And
Speaker 11: that's what I think is those side characters, those smaller characters,
Speaker 11: really help to really pave his end. That you can
Speaker 11: read them more now than you could in the other version.
Speaker 11: They were there, but they we didn't get the sense
Speaker 11: that they were put upon as much as they are
Speaker 11: in this version.
Speaker 3: Going back to that first Collegular episode we did, I
Speaker 3: could hear, and I remember they didn't understand the movie.
Speaker 3: I didn't know what the hell was going on. There
Speaker 3: was that whole thing I'm talking about in that episode
Speaker 3: about his beard and how his beard's there. Sometimes it disappears,
Speaker 3: other times it's because it was all fucking out of order.
Speaker 3: I'm not surprised I didn't understand it. I had nothing
Speaker 3: to latch onto. It was a confusing film. Stuff that
Speaker 3: was in the middle was at the beginning and vice verse,
Speaker 3: and I'm just like, what the hell's going on? This
Speaker 3: version of it lets me have a story, and it
Speaker 3: does remove we said it's almost three hours long for
Speaker 3: lack of just for quickness, we'll say three hours long.
Speaker 3: And you understand what's happening. You get to introductions of
Speaker 3: these character, you get arcs of these characters. You see
Speaker 3: Nerva before he commits suicide instead of just a few
Speaker 3: seconds of them. You get what Macro's doing, what he's
Speaker 3: what's happening with his wife. You get more when it
Speaker 3: comes to which guards are are hurting other people, and
Speaker 3: what's happening with Proculus and then his soon to be
Speaker 3: wife and all this. I'm just like, oh, I understand now.
Speaker 3: This was like a revelation to me to be able
Speaker 3: to actually follow the story, because I will be honest,
Speaker 3: I could not follow that original version whatsoever.
Speaker 11: You brought up the Proculus and Lydia Pish in here.
Speaker 11: We get that Bill, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well we get them throughout this whole movie. Yeah,
Speaker 3: which was.
Speaker 11: Great, right, so that when you get to the wedding scene,
Speaker 11: it's even more like sadistic because you think, oh, he's
Speaker 11: just weird and he's just going to go do this thing,
Speaker 11: and you can actually see the plotting. It's oh, he's
Speaker 11: introduced to him there and then he says a little
Speaker 11: thing to him there, and then he says something to
Speaker 11: him there and then bam, he's I'm here for your
Speaker 11: wedding gift. So there's like half of that is cut
Speaker 11: out of the theatrical version, and I think I can't
Speaker 11: remember timing wise, if this version of the actual scene
Speaker 11: itself is longer, it sure as hell fell longer, and
Speaker 11: that it's one of those things where it's I want
Speaker 11: this to be painful for you as I view, want
Speaker 11: you to realize how fucking horrible this person is now.
Speaker 3: And I can't remember. Do we get to see the
Speaker 3: fate of Proculus in this version? I don't think we do.
Speaker 3: I don't think we see him hung up and like
Speaker 3: he's in that almost like puppet show type thing.
Speaker 12: I feel like that's in there?
Speaker 4: Is it in there?
Speaker 3: That's what I was saying at the beginning. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to make any claims. I'm gonna I've got a
Speaker 3: version of it up, so fast forward and see if
Speaker 3: I can find that.
Speaker 12: Yeah, because that's and this is the beauty of doing
Speaker 12: this film that it's various, kuy is. It gets hot
Speaker 12: and heady, and especially when you start going into international,
Speaker 12: that's actually the cool thing, not the and I'm not
Speaker 12: doing this a plug. Thing with the Umbrella is they
Speaker 12: actually are having like some of the foreign cuts because
Speaker 12: like they're like the Australian release obviously dismissing some of
Speaker 12: the works righted stuff and it was missing other stuff,
Speaker 12: but then had scenes that were in no other versions
Speaker 12: that weren't in the US versions, that weren't here. It's fascinating.
Speaker 12: But this is why GOP bless people Alexander and and
Speaker 12: Thomas and there for having to make take this bounty,
Speaker 12: this cornucopia of beautiful mess and try to make sense
Speaker 12: of it because it's there's so much great stuff there.
Speaker 12: It's just trying to And I don't think I even
Speaker 12: fully realized how out of sorts the cut that I
Speaker 12: was used to the X ray the atrical cut until
Speaker 12: I started researching both Mission Caligula and then especially diving
Speaker 12: into the ultimate cut. And then when you go back
Speaker 12: to the Gucciani one, you're like, holy shit, some of
Speaker 12: this is it's almost it borders on random, and there's
Speaker 12: still good stuff in there. But then you can see
Speaker 12: we're the Guccioni corner pit house lens for lack of
Speaker 12: a better term, is coming in there with except that
Speaker 12: the nymph footage and that pastoral with the misty fog.
Speaker 12: Some of that is some of those gorgeous visual stuff
Speaker 12: in the whole film, like with with Drew Silla and
Speaker 12: Cligula running around and being playful, but the nymphs it
Speaker 12: gets a little too Okay, is this about to turn
Speaker 12: into a loop com Damn Bob, calm down. Okay.
Speaker 11: This is one of the things that I wrote in
Speaker 11: my notes and I talked I think a little bit
Speaker 11: about this in one of the previous episodes.
Speaker 1: But can we look at the.
Speaker 11: Three main men of porn in that horn publishers in
Speaker 11: that era, right, So you had Hefner and Playboy, you
Speaker 11: had Guccioni and Penthouse, and you had Larry Flinton Hussler. Okay,
Speaker 11: So when I look at this movie, this is a
Speaker 11: movie that only Guccioni could make. And there's several things
Speaker 11: that like esthetically connected to those to his magazine and
Speaker 11: like you were talking about, like the nymph stuff and
Speaker 11: all of that, and like him trying to elevate this
Speaker 11: to like some gauzy, gaudy art because really, like Hefner,
Speaker 11: like all three of them were raised in some sort
Speaker 11: of culture and some sort of religious background. But the
Speaker 11: thing is that, as far as I know, they all
Speaker 11: threw it off. Larry Flint had his evangelical era that ended,
Speaker 11: and then he became more of an antithist and even
Speaker 11: an atheist to be honest. But Larry Flint was always
Speaker 11: very working class. It was always like, what would the
Speaker 11: truckers like?
Speaker 1: To see?
Speaker 11: What can I give the truckers? That's what Hustler was
Speaker 11: all about. Hefner just wanted to make basically esquire with
Speaker 11: naked ladies. That was his thing, and he was very
Speaker 11: waspy in his aesthetic. So you get Guccioni, who's Italian background,
Speaker 11: raised in the church, and you look at this and
Speaker 11: you go, this feels like somebody with that background of
Speaker 11: going to these churches with saints and everything that is
Speaker 11: Catholicism written large in its design. And then of course
Speaker 11: there's that connection obviously with the Roman Empire and then
Speaker 11: eventually what became the Roman Catholic Church. But it's just
Speaker 11: even his magazine has the exact same esthetic of just
Speaker 11: over the top gauzyness to it that when I was
Speaker 11: young growing up, I couldn't relate to it as much
Speaker 11: like it was just it was trying to be too
Speaker 11: pretty and downscale. It's say it was a weird mix.
Speaker 11: I don't know if you ever because I worked in
Speaker 11: a bookstore where we sold all kinds of books, but
Speaker 11: we obviously had these magazines. You could lay them out
Speaker 11: and even if I didn't tell you which one they
Speaker 11: were from, I'd be like, Okay, which photo is from
Speaker 11: which magazine? You could always tell.
Speaker 12: This is so fascy because I knew. I've actually known
Speaker 12: plenty of guys that preferred Penthouse over Playboy and Hustler
Speaker 12: for that because at one time I remember even an
Speaker 12: ex on nine years and years ago, I've ever been like,
Speaker 12: oh I love Larry Flant that I am. I have
Speaker 12: a Larry girl through and through, but it was like,
Speaker 12: oh God, and yeah, I get it. Hustlers but more gynecological,
Speaker 12: but goocchierny style. And he does have a distinctive style,
Speaker 12: and I think some of it is very is very lovely.
Speaker 12: The seventies were very that era of that gauze look
Speaker 12: though too you look at just Shake and with the
Speaker 12: fashion photography, but then going into Emmanuel, I feel like
Speaker 12: Emmanuel has that look. His ver story of THEO or
Speaker 12: all of its flaws. It has that too. The work
Speaker 12: of David Hambleton has that. Look, we won't go into that,
Speaker 12: but I'm sure him a type period. It's all I'm sorry,
Speaker 12: I just didn't have made that tire. But but it's
Speaker 12: such a but it is. I can see why he
Speaker 12: if he could have just let be because Petrous actually
Speaker 12: had a production credit on films before this, Benhill says,
Speaker 12: a production credit on Day of the Locusts, and which
Speaker 12: thank god he didn't mess with it. He imagined try
Speaker 12: being like, I need more sexy ladies and David the locust.
Speaker 11: Yeah right, it's nineteen thirties California. Give me more gus
Speaker 11: on the legt.
Speaker 12: I need more lesbians, but they got to be pretty.
Speaker 12: I don't want that pretty lady in lesbians. But I
Speaker 12: don't know why I have him talking like that. But
Speaker 12: and yeah, the thing with Tinto, and this is why
Speaker 12: it will always buffel because Tinto Brass before Caligula was considered
Speaker 12: art house, and he is art house. I will die
Speaker 12: on that hill because Selon Kitty is art house. It
Speaker 12: gets sometimes now labeled as Nazi PlayStation. If you watch it,
Speaker 12: it's art house. And at Tinto is a creative anarchist.
Speaker 12: He is an art anarchist. Sexuality is anarchy, especially when
Speaker 12: you were somebody who was raised in an era of
Speaker 12: extreme repression and religious repression and political repression like you
Speaker 12: were in Italy, and especially the time period that Tinto
Speaker 12: grew up. He before all of this, had his film's
Speaker 12: victim of censorship. He had weathered all that, and to me,
Speaker 12: it's just he is a true artist and GUCCIONI it
Speaker 12: was an artist. I'm not going to say he wasn't,
Speaker 12: but it could not. He couldn't get its little fingers
Speaker 12: out of a cookie jar.
Speaker 11: I did subject myself Mike, to going back and watching
Speaker 11: the GUCCIONI coach against this one, and it became very obvious,
Speaker 11: which part because before it felt a bit more integrated
Speaker 11: in my mind. I don't know why, but they just did.
Speaker 11: And when I watched it this time, I go, oh, okay,
Speaker 11: I see it now. I'm like, I see what's going
Speaker 11: on now, I see what he was doing. So it
Speaker 11: became much more obvious on a new viewing after I
Speaker 11: watched this new edit, just how much GUCCIONI okay, slow
Speaker 11: most shot of someone like their ass coming out of
Speaker 11: the water okay, give me that, and then like the
Speaker 11: ladies behind the wall looking in on them and all
Speaker 11: of just all of this stuff. You can see it now,
Speaker 11: you can see it so much more.
Speaker 12: I actually had somebody responded me on Twitter when Umbrella
Speaker 12: announces beeing like oh no nudity or sex, no thank you,
Speaker 12: and it's dude, it's still calligulut. Okay, there's still plenty
Speaker 12: of craziness going on. And in fact, there's still the
Speaker 12: whole Temple of Iso scene. You still see a lot
Speaker 12: of the pets in that. And I so bad for
Speaker 12: the Penthouse that because it's like GUCCIONI basically promised him,
Speaker 12: you go, your actresses, you're gonna be in this big film,
Speaker 12: and they were, but he didn't. He wasn't transparent with
Speaker 12: them about any of the explicit stuff. And that's shady.
Speaker 12: That's shady, and that's the thing. Those girls, particularly like
Speaker 12: Anika de Lorenzo and Lorian Wegner, they suffered the reputations.
Speaker 12: I know Anika sued him, I think two or three times.
Speaker 12: There's something she seared him a lot, and I get it.
Speaker 12: It's funny, Larry, out of all three of those guys
Speaker 12: ended up, I think having the cleanest reptas so guy
Speaker 12: because god Dare's like after Happner have a few guys
Speaker 12: have seeing him the secrets of Playboy stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 12: it's not good.
Speaker 11: It shows the dirtiest among them was the cleanest. Actually,
Speaker 11: the dirtiest among them would have been well, if you
Speaker 11: go to the Four Horsemen of published Goldstein. Yeah, but
Speaker 11: Goldstein's for secondary tier in certain ways. But Flint his
Speaker 11: stuff was always more in your face. And I find
Speaker 11: it funny that as you were saying that, he ends
Speaker 11: up being just like ethical.
Speaker 12: And even Al wasn't. I feel like Al gold Zee
Speaker 12: still looks better retrospectively. Screw had that great political pro
Speaker 12: punk attitude and he was very like he was like
Speaker 12: openly bisexual. He brought that brought that stuff in the
Speaker 12: early seventies and when Review gave films and so I'm
Speaker 12: totally I'm an Al gold see Larry flat Girl, you
Speaker 12: go to the two majors, things start getting a lot.
Speaker 12: I think part of it too, is that I think
Speaker 12: if Al and Larry never acted like they were perfect,
Speaker 12: they would both the must go out of their way
Speaker 12: to show all of their flaws in humanity. And I
Speaker 12: always trust people more than do that. Anybody tries to
Speaker 12: act well, I'm above that. Watch your ass because it's
Speaker 12: gonna get stupid and it's gonna get leath the.
Speaker 3: New did they that your Twitter follower was objecting to
Speaker 3: or the sex was? It was just so tacked out
Speaker 3: just going back, And though I didn't rewatch the original
Speaker 3: Guccione version of it, I have watched all these other
Speaker 3: deleted scenes and extras and all this stuff, and listening
Speaker 3: to our original episodes, I forgot about things like there's
Speaker 3: that sun statue or placard in Caligula's room and he
Speaker 3: goes up to at one point and looks through it,
Speaker 3: and then in the Guccione version they cut to what's
Speaker 3: on the other side, and it's these two girls looking
Speaker 3: through the other side and they just start making out
Speaker 3: and having sex. It's like one of those and maybe
Speaker 3: people will remember this, maybe they don't. But lesbian scenes
Speaker 3: imporn in the seventies, eighties, nineties was so easy because
Speaker 3: he didn't have to worry about a cumshut. You could
Speaker 3: just have these two girls making out for hours. It
Speaker 3: felt just put on your favorite lesbian foreign scene. Go
Speaker 3: do some laundry, comeback, don't worry they'll still be at it,
Speaker 3: and it just felt like one of those. And then
Speaker 3: some of the other sex scenes where it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: we're on this boat and here's this orgy, but we'll
Speaker 3: just cutting in new things and here's more hardcore footage
Speaker 3: and it's just boring after a while because there just
Speaker 3: wasn't anything to it. I don't know, it just felt
Speaker 3: so unmotivated, even though it's I think Timo Brassan is
Speaker 3: there's a documentary that David Gregory shot and it's called
Speaker 3: Orgy of Power, and his line in there and I
Speaker 3: think he used it even twice, was he was about
Speaker 3: making a movie about an orgy of power, and then
Speaker 3: GUCCIONI was about making a movie about the power of
Speaker 3: an orgy. And I think that's perfectly summing up what
Speaker 3: Guccione's version was versus what we're seeing now with this
Speaker 3: ultimate cut.
Speaker 11: And if there's one thing that changes from a sex
Speaker 11: scene to a non sex scene that talks about this idea,
Speaker 11: and I know you're gonna.
Speaker 3: Be like, what does that have to do with it?
Speaker 11: Is And I can't remember the exact scene, but it's
Speaker 11: Macro's wife and if I remember Guccier version, she's laying
Speaker 11: on like this lounge and there's all these men around
Speaker 11: her jerking off, and then they unload. And in this
Speaker 11: version there's still her with the men around her, but
Speaker 11: that's not in it. But what he does in terms
Speaker 11: of power and I can make you sit here while
Speaker 11: I do this thing is Malcolm McDowell comes in and
Speaker 11: he's in front of them. You don't see him, but
Speaker 11: he's over in the corner taking a pee while he's
Speaker 11: having this conversation with them, which reminded me of the
Speaker 11: stories of LBJ where LBJ would take meetings in the
Speaker 11: bathroom while he took a dump. He would make people
Speaker 11: come in and talk to him while he was on
Speaker 11: the toilet.
Speaker 3: That's Billy, Bob Thornton and Fargo.
Speaker 11: Yeah, And it was his way of going, I don't
Speaker 11: care like you got to sit here and smell my shit,
Speaker 11: oh kind of attitude. So there's the difference between the
Speaker 11: power of orgies and the orgy of r there.
Speaker 12: It's the Lligula's world. We're all living in it.
Speaker 3: You're talking about the masturbation over Enya and you're talking
Speaker 3: about this peeing scene, and I see all of this
Speaker 3: stuff in my head because I've seen all of these
Speaker 3: shots and I don't know if I've seen them in
Speaker 3: the Guccio neigh vers or just an outtakes, because I've
Speaker 3: watched hours and hours of outtakes that are out there,
Speaker 3: I think on the Imperial Edition, plus in some of
Speaker 3: these documentaries we'll get little clips. My head is reeling
Speaker 3: from Caligula right now, and it's going to take a
Speaker 3: long time to get out of it. And I can't
Speaker 3: even imagine. Alexander talked about ninety six hours worth of
Speaker 3: footage and you just to see these outtakes that go
Speaker 3: on for so long. Oh, here's this woman with a
Speaker 3: swan and she's touching the swan, or here's this woman
Speaker 3: with a snake, and you get twenty minutes of this
Speaker 3: type of stuff and it's all just b roll type
Speaker 3: of footage. But it's okay. If they wanted to cut
Speaker 3: into that, they could have. They had that option. But
Speaker 3: as me doing research on this, I'm just like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, I'm calligulid out. My brain is just so
Speaker 3: such mush. I can't even imagine what had either Alexander
Speaker 3: or now with this. Why am I forgetting? Tell me
Speaker 3: the editor's name for Aaron Shaff's version. Yeah, I feel
Speaker 3: bad for Aaron having to sit through all of this footage,
Speaker 3: and I would have felt bad for Alexander having to
Speaker 3: sit through all of this footage, because it just must
Speaker 3: have felt like some sort of Sisapian.
Speaker 12: Task within a short amount of time. Given that footage,
Speaker 12: if somebody took if anybody else took ten years to
Speaker 12: piece together, to repiece together with that much raw, I
Speaker 12: don't think anybody would question it. I don't think anybody
Speaker 12: would be like, oh, look at you, what do you
Speaker 12: think this is bleetwood masks tossed. They'd be like, no,
Speaker 12: of course, like that's a lot. So yeah, no, Aaron,
Speaker 12: and I think he did a beautiful job editing this together. Yeah,
Speaker 12: I can't imagine, and I understand because Mike, when I
Speaker 12: finished this is a little inside Baseball. When I finished
Speaker 12: that commentary, I felt like I had run a marathon.
Speaker 12: I bet I felt sapped, and it was a total
Speaker 12: thing of love. I am beyond great Bulay got to
Speaker 12: do it, and I hope anybody that gets to hear
Speaker 12: it enjoys it. Truly, but it and even then, even afterwards,
Speaker 12: there are still things that would come to me where
Speaker 12: I'm like, shit, I didn't get to cover this part
Speaker 12: of that part because there's so many connected layers and
Speaker 12: factors to this story that are just so riveting. Sometimes
Speaker 12: I'm part of my brain is still shit I write
Speaker 12: about this at some point? Should I write about this?
Speaker 12: Does the world need another article about it? Probably not,
Speaker 12: But because there's already a great Rajet's book out there,
Speaker 12: and he's he knows way more about this film than me.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, Renjit says that he will now never finish this
Speaker 3: book because this new cut would make him have to
Speaker 3: revisit it, and he's just no, I'm done with that.
Speaker 3: So he's all dedicated my papers to a museum or
Speaker 3: something and someday somebody will be able to read this,
Speaker 3: but he does not plan freshing yet.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 12: That is a heartbreak because he he like, when I've
Speaker 12: researched this and just see me about of work, oh god, yeah,
Speaker 12: and and labor he put into that. I was awestruck
Speaker 12: and I was completely floored. And that's a loss. That
Speaker 12: the loss right there, because I hate hearing Matt and
Speaker 12: that's it's almost like I feel like there's a like
Speaker 12: I hate saying curse. I hate it when people going, oh,
Speaker 12: it's a cursed movie, like curse okay, But then there
Speaker 12: are some times where it's almost like God, there is
Speaker 12: like some like sticky substance to Calligula where it's like
Speaker 12: there are people that got hurt, and even after even
Speaker 12: long after that, even long after fact Guccioni being yah,
Speaker 12: there's still that weirdness to it. And then you research
Speaker 12: the history like Franco Russollini Franco got he got just
Speaker 12: as boned by Guccioni as Tito did. Franco Rossaus' respected
Speaker 12: producer one had worked with Arthouse, had worked with Peter
Speaker 12: Palell Pasolini, and then just god, he was one of
Speaker 12: people that ended up having to sue Guccioni. And it's
Speaker 12: just just so many figures. It's not just the Penthouse pets.
Speaker 12: It's all of the major actors ended up being fine.
Speaker 12: I think like they've all done right. Got Helen Mirren
Speaker 12: ended up having this amazing reds which is so cool.
Speaker 12: It's so cool to see like all of us already
Speaker 12: knew because come on, we love Peter Breadaway and we
Speaker 12: know she was hot. Sam thought to Molly that. But
Speaker 12: there's like the side people that never really recovered. In
Speaker 12: some ways, I feel like this film did the Tinto's
Speaker 12: career what you would say maybe le Bett did to
Speaker 12: barad Check. Even though like leb Bette is a brilliant film,
Speaker 12: it's our house's masterpiece, it took him from being a
Speaker 12: very respected art house director to being like, Oh, he's
Speaker 12: a guy that makes fut And I think that's how
Speaker 12: people even researching for this film. I feel like I
Speaker 12: would still see not from necessarily the film from Thomas
Speaker 12: or Eric, but other people writing about, Oh, we're so
Speaker 12: glat to have this cut, and they'd almost some of
Speaker 12: this writers would be very dismissive of Tinto and be like, oh,
Speaker 12: softcore porn and it's excuse me, do you research? Did
Speaker 12: you even bother to read as wiki for them trying
Speaker 12: to like the roma softcore porn and there's not rock
Speaker 12: the Rottica. But I think it's important for very watching
Speaker 12: The Ultimate Cut to know the source material and to
Speaker 12: know and respect the artists that built all of these bones.
Speaker 12: I know Thomas and Aaron have talked a lot about
Speaker 12: Danilo Donati the incredible set, and as everybody should, he's
Speaker 12: a genius. But let's give some props Tino Brass.
Speaker 3: Speaking of Passolini, I never made the connection that Paulo
Speaker 3: Bonicelli is the one that plays Correa. Who it's him
Speaker 3: John Steiner that we see so much plodding towards the end,
Speaker 3: And that's my boy from a salo, the mister Manja himself,
Speaker 3: the guy that looks a lot like Sebastian Cabot in
Speaker 3: Solo one and twenty Days of Sodom.
Speaker 4: No, I'm kim.
Speaker 3: Sebast He totally looks like mister French to me, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: at least in that movie.
Speaker 12: Oh God, my next the next time we watched Salah,
Speaker 12: that's gonna be totally in my head. If he did
Speaker 12: an album and Sebastian Cabot did an album, and now
Speaker 12: I'm gonna just picture being songs about eating shit Panja.
Speaker 11: It's about Manja.
Speaker 3: And I did check the proculus on the ropes that
Speaker 3: is not in this version of it.
Speaker 12: Isn't liar, I don't know. I sure did the coming
Speaker 12: seem like I'm getting them switched up now because it's
Speaker 12: this is definitely get all the cuts babies. Actually, an
Speaker 12: umbrella one will have a.
Speaker 15: Lot of cuts.
Speaker 11: I have to thank you Mike for giving enough lead
Speaker 11: time on this, because if I would have had to
Speaker 11: have turned this around, I was planning to rewatch all
Speaker 11: of it, and I was gonna go back and listen
Speaker 11: to the old episodes, like I had to take a
Speaker 11: month off after I get some of that, just because
Speaker 11: if I would have done all that and then we
Speaker 11: would have card it like it's a movie. I don't
Speaker 11: know what's one is sah, but it's a movie. It's
Speaker 11: got stuff in it.
Speaker 12: We see Rob blinking and there's like little help me
Speaker 12: written on the eelids and it's like you're're like wireds
Speaker 12: apping it like it's Johnny God is Gone. That's dark. No,
Speaker 12: that's the But you guys find that the vascat thing.
Speaker 12: Have you ever had a film and it's various iterations
Speaker 12: impact Do you like this? Because I don't think I have.
Speaker 12: That's just such a singular thing to me, This world
Speaker 12: of Caligula, whether it's the Ultimate Cut or the Extra like,
Speaker 12: it's it's a mosaic that's compelling and messy and flawed,
Speaker 12: but it all comes together this just utterly, just extreme way.
Speaker 3: I think Ultimate Cut will assup the other versions, though
Speaker 3: I wish it wouldn't because even though this is called
Speaker 3: the Ultimate cut, and I know ultimate has two very
Speaker 3: mainstream meanings, one being the last thing and the other
Speaker 3: one being all bets are off. Everything is in here.
Speaker 3: It's stuffed to the gills. It is the ultimate, so
Speaker 3: you could go no further, which basically is the exact
Speaker 3: same thing. I hope that this is not the Ultimate cut.
Speaker 3: I hope that there are more cuts to this because
Speaker 3: I would like to see some of those longer scenes.
Speaker 3: I'd like to see some of the stuff that's in
Speaker 3: the Guccione version married with what's in this version. I
Speaker 3: love to your point from earlier, Heather, how clean this
Speaker 3: version is and just how nice it looks. Sometimes the
Speaker 3: music gets a little ponderous. I think this movie is
Speaker 3: really missing a lot of the humor and some of
Speaker 3: the joy of the what would have been in a
Speaker 3: tinto Brass film. One of the things that stuck with
Speaker 3: me that I really didn't like was some of the
Speaker 3: sound effects that they use in here. There's one when
Speaker 3: it's Caligula goes out on the town, he comes back
Speaker 3: and he goes down this there's a slide into the jail.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a woman that slides down the slide and
Speaker 3: she ends up getting I think raped by a dwarf.
Speaker 3: And there's this sound effect that they play and I'm
Speaker 3: just like, oh my god, I've heard this sound effect
Speaker 3: a million times. Why are you using this? So I
Speaker 3: went to a friend of mine who knows a lot
Speaker 3: about sound and I was just like, hey, can you
Speaker 3: recognize this? And he gave me like the whole history
Speaker 3: of the track and stuff. So from what I understand,
Speaker 3: it's called three Screams Exterior Close Perspective from volume seven
Speaker 3: of Screams that can be found on the premiere edition
Speaker 3: Volume one by Hollywood Edge. And I'm going to play
Speaker 3: the scream when we put this episode out, and everybody's
Speaker 3: going to recognize it because you've all heard it a
Speaker 3: thousand times. So when that happens in this movie, I'm
Speaker 3: just like, whoa, you just took me way out of it.
Speaker 11: So this is like the Wilhelm.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 3: It's almost like the women's scream Wilhelm.
Speaker 9: My.
Speaker 12: This is why I feel like you were like the
Speaker 12: hold my beer guy to so many researchers, so many
Speaker 12: of our people out of there, because god damn. And
Speaker 12: also a quick side note, obviously because I recorded a
Speaker 12: commentary several months to the point where I was almost like,
Speaker 12: I hope we're going to use it. But I feel
Speaker 12: like Proculus's death wasn't the cut I saw because the
Speaker 12: reason I remember that because I remember making as I
Speaker 12: made a joke at the coppentary because she urinates one
Speaker 12: of the I know it's laur And Wicker's character. I
Speaker 12: remember what her character, this name now she urinated on it.
Speaker 12: She reinates on his dead body. And I made a
Speaker 12: joke because GUCCIONI was a big He was big and
Speaker 12: a pistol. It's fined. I'm not key shaving. But unless
Speaker 12: I just have made that joke so much over the
Speaker 12: years that my memory has complained, which is baby possibility.
Speaker 12: But I feel like I was in the cut I saw.
Speaker 12: So maybe are there different ultimate cuts of the ultimate cut?
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a good question. I'm going to go through
Speaker 3: it one more time.
Speaker 11: That's the pen ultimate cut.
Speaker 3: That wedding scene, the rape at the wedding scene, the
Speaker 3: preman Oca stuff happens almost exactly midway through this cut.
Speaker 3: And I know that because that's where I can start
Speaker 3: with my fast forwarding to go through the rest of
Speaker 3: this and see ol triple check now to make sure
Speaker 3: that's not in there.
Speaker 12: I believe you, I just don't now. I'm just like
Speaker 12: I wish I could go back to that lane and
Speaker 12: I made done with this every five mite out book,
Speaker 12: my old book from that era, and go through it,
Speaker 12: because I would have had that in there.
Speaker 3: The most impact of the Ultimate Cut is in now
Speaker 3: the second half of the film, starting at one thirty.
Speaker 3: You can go through there and things like when Caligula
Speaker 3: is signing the orders. Like one of the most for
Speaker 3: me famous scenes in the guccione version, I'll just call
Speaker 3: it the Gucciono version, was him saying, by the name
Speaker 3: of Caesar and all the centers of her own blah
Speaker 3: blah blah, and he passes the law right, and Jase Stampson,
Speaker 3: he's doing the exact same thing that he saw Tiberius
Speaker 3: doing before, which he wanted to do and thought I
Speaker 3: was going to be a great honor. But then you
Speaker 3: saw how Tiberius was just fucking sick of it. You
Speaker 3: don't get him doing that whole by the power of room,
Speaker 3: but like how he just goes through it ends before
Speaker 3: he starts to get crazy with it. That's when he
Speaker 3: starts to step across the tops of all these recks
Speaker 3: and is doing his little dance across the racks and
Speaker 3: starting to really fuck with Longinis. It really feels like
Speaker 3: in the second half of the movie, it is the
Speaker 3: how can I make long Ginas's life miserable? Which is
Speaker 3: one of the reasons why he gets killed, And yeah,
Speaker 3: that's where you get a lot of these interesting things,
Speaker 3: the birth of his quote unquote son and some of
Speaker 3: these other things you get. One of the things that
Speaker 3: I like in this new version two is the use
Speaker 3: of the bird omen and how that comes back quite often.
Speaker 3: And like you said, Rob, that's in that opening animation
Speaker 3: as well, So you start off with that, but then
Speaker 3: you really carry that through. And that was the thing
Speaker 3: with the Guccioni version is I just didn't feel like
Speaker 3: it knew how to tell a story. These bird moments
Speaker 3: are very important. These are massive omens for him. So
Speaker 3: when he sees the bird at the very beginning after
Speaker 3: the dream sequence, he freaks the fuck out. I'm like, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: that makes sense now because it's he's going to see
Speaker 3: a bird before Drusilla dies, and he's going to see
Speaker 3: a bird before he dies. So yeah, that makes a
Speaker 3: lot of sense, and this one just makes sense now
Speaker 3: and I can understand this film. Do I think it's
Speaker 3: the best film.
Speaker 4: In the world.
Speaker 3: No, I think it still has a little bit to
Speaker 3: go before it gets to be even more. It's definitely
Speaker 3: an improvement over what we had.
Speaker 11: The side character you were talking about in the back
Speaker 11: half of the film that comes in is the mute
Speaker 11: Oh yeah, Deef, the mute guard. And how when I
Speaker 11: watched it against the theatrical version, I realized, Oh, this
Speaker 11: character's in there, but he doesn't really interact with him
Speaker 11: that much. He's in a couple of scenes. But within
Speaker 11: this version, you really get a sense that it's almost
Speaker 11: like he builds a friendship with this guy. And that's
Speaker 11: interesting in that while he's destroying everything else around him,
Speaker 11: he's finding companionship with this odd mute character. And it
Speaker 11: just adds more to McDowell's characterization and just the character
Speaker 11: Gill as a hole. So I really love that. That's
Speaker 11: something I really love in this version. That's not that
Speaker 11: wasn't any other versions.
Speaker 3: Malcolm mcdell on Mark Morin's WTF podcast. He was like, Oh,
Speaker 3: it's great. Collan Muhra and she was in the movie
Speaker 3: for fifteen minutes before she's in there an hour now.
Speaker 3: And I feel that's the same for everybody. By removing
Speaker 3: all of the and I hate to use this word
Speaker 3: because I think it's overused, but gratuitous sex, because it
Speaker 3: was gratuitous, unnecessary sex. By removing all of that, it
Speaker 3: gives all of these actors such a time to shine.
Speaker 3: And I'll tell you who else gets a lot of
Speaker 3: screen time that didn't before Incitatus. So finally we get
Speaker 3: to see a lot more of Caligulous Horse, like this
Speaker 3: major thing, the scandal of like him having his horse
Speaker 3: in Congress and are in the Senate and boom, here's
Speaker 3: Incitatas and we get a whole lot more of him,
Speaker 3: and like even Caligula sleeping in bed with them and
Speaker 3: bringing him to all of these parties and yeah, he's
Speaker 3: just he's a major character now, all hail and sata.
Speaker 12: Yeah, yes, justice for Instatas. Give I love so much
Speaker 12: both of you bringing all of this up, because that
Speaker 12: is I think one of the biggest gifts of this cut,
Speaker 12: and there are some gifts in this cut. I'm glad
Speaker 12: it's out there because we are getting more of these performances.
Speaker 12: We're also getting to see more of Landinis Jean Steiner.
Speaker 12: I feel like, does that get enough praise? He was
Speaker 12: a brilliant actor. He's brilliant in this. I love the
Speaker 12: way he SLINKs around and he was great. And he
Speaker 12: was in Salon Kitty if he worked with Tinto off
Speaker 12: and on up until God was it was it perma
Speaker 12: FoST He did a lot. I think now it was
Speaker 12: snack box. But he of course he's also in Mario
Speaker 12: Baba's Shock. He's in Tinebray, which also so is Lorena DiAngelo,
Speaker 12: who's wore Proculus's wife. And it's Steiner's great and from
Speaker 12: all accounts a great guy. Like every even the pets,
Speaker 12: because I've ever seen every floor riper said that one
Speaker 12: of the few this is poor curls cut I do.
Speaker 12: I'm like, also justice for the pets. But one of
Speaker 12: the few people that actually was really warm to them
Speaker 12: was John Steiner, and he had he invited them over
Speaker 12: for dinner to him and his wife's place in Italy
Speaker 12: for dinner. Nothing on toureds, nothing, sort of just being like, hey,
Speaker 12: welcome to Italy. Just and she just said nothing but pracious.
Speaker 1: What a gentleman.
Speaker 12: So John Steyer's the man, we get more of him.
Speaker 12: Of course, mor Heele also something I loved. And this
Speaker 12: was a rarity because even though Teresa and Saboy was
Speaker 12: usually dubbed in almost all of her Italian movie, which
Speaker 12: that was the standard in Italian cinema, is just everybody
Speaker 12: was dubbed.
Speaker 3: That they even recorded on set audio is a remarkable thing.
Speaker 12: Yeah, but we get to hear her actual voice in
Speaker 12: this cut, which she is bizarrely dubbed in the Guccioni one,
Speaker 12: and she's brightish. I can understand dubbing like some of
Speaker 12: the Italian actors because some of them, even the great
Speaker 12: is it Ariana Asti, who's Macro's wife. She brilliant actress,
Speaker 12: has a very respectable career in art. House had to
Speaker 12: speak her lines phonetically English without her language. But is
Speaker 12: this great voice? Her voice is fine? Why she tucked
Speaker 12: in this? It's like when you watch Star Crash and
Speaker 12: it's like, why is Joe Spinea right by Joe.
Speaker 3: That New York thing going on?
Speaker 12: It's gorgeous.
Speaker 3: I know, I know, I love him. That's half the
Speaker 3: ticket is his voice.
Speaker 12: But yeah, his voice is the ticket. Babe, the other half.
Speaker 3: His physicality is fantastic.
Speaker 12: It's everything about Joe. I'm like testice for Joe Spanl now.
Speaker 12: But but it's so cool. And I feel like Teresa
Speaker 12: Savoid is one that gets overlooked, and I think she
Speaker 12: holds her own. I think she really does. Drew Silla,
Speaker 12: she of course lovely look that and nets. Everybody focuses
Speaker 12: on that when you read everything. Oh the girl that
Speaker 12: played I'm China. She was known for playing these nip
Speaker 12: beets in Italy, but she has quiet strength. She is
Speaker 12: totally the rock. Driustilla is that one rock of lot,
Speaker 12: like of the rock of a lot of I'd really
Speaker 12: just say that that Brett Michaels show, Yeah he does.
Speaker 12: This is ridiculous. Why did they Why did I get
Speaker 12: that commentary? It's amazing they let me do anything but
Speaker 12: mentioning Brett Michaels over here. But You'restilla really is like
Speaker 12: the rock and she is definitely. They think the biggest
Speaker 12: thread to sanity were Caligula. And what's interesting is and
Speaker 12: it's you can get that depression here, but it sest
Speaker 12: was a big no no in ancient Rome. I know
Speaker 12: some people are like, oh, those Romans were decadent. The
Speaker 12: decadences depends on how you went to find it, but
Speaker 12: they weren't that decadent. And Sest does a major taboo
Speaker 12: in almost every culture for reasons, which is why she's, yeah,
Speaker 12: we're not going to marry, we're not Egyptian. If it's
Speaker 12: and and it's interest because there's that parallel with Osiris
Speaker 12: and Isis. They give the mythology, they it's an interesting
Speaker 12: the relationship has that Egyptian way. He keeps mentioning Egypt
Speaker 12: and there's a lot of Egyptian and sort of references there,
Speaker 12: which I.
Speaker 11: Think is cool, which in this version feels like there's
Speaker 11: more of it. I remember references in the theatrical Guccioni
Speaker 11: version to Isis and things like that, but it just
Speaker 11: didn't seem like he was that much of an Egypto
Speaker 11: file as he is in here, where he's just, oh,
Speaker 11: Egypt's so great, Maybe I should just move to Egypt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the whole wedding scene with the Pharaoh and the
Speaker 3: Nubis and all that, and then even when he gains power,
Speaker 3: he's just like, and the worship of Isis shall be legal.
Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, great, Yeah, that wasn't there before.
Speaker 11: And that's completely normal, its historical when that the Romans
Speaker 11: took over everything. They stole the whole pantheon from the Greek,
Speaker 11: so it's like they had a tendency to incorporate all
Speaker 11: this stuff.
Speaker 3: Which makes it so hard when you're playing Jeopardy and
Speaker 3: you think Aries and it's actually Mars and you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: they said Greek and that Roman or vice versa. Yeah,
Speaker 3: same damn guys.
Speaker 11: Same guys, different names exactly.
Speaker 3: So I just triple checked and no, death of Why
Speaker 3: am I blanking on the guy's name Raculus? Death of Proculus?
Speaker 3: And the version that I'm watching right now, which is
Speaker 3: called the Ultimate Cut and it says twenty twenty three
Speaker 3: in Parenz after it, but we'll see.
Speaker 12: So I'm gonna make up. I gotta find that because
Speaker 12: now I'm like, did I again build right? Not to
Speaker 12: keep this? But I god, damn, what is it with
Speaker 12: researching this?
Speaker 3: Fucking they make it impossible for us.
Speaker 12: So you guys mentioned the whole title of the Ultimate
Speaker 12: Cut at this film having the title, do you feel
Speaker 12: like that maybe the hindrance for some people? It's almost
Speaker 12: it's like, how for Coppolo when he made his version Dracula.
Speaker 12: He didn't call it Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula. He called
Speaker 12: it bram Stokers.
Speaker 3: But there was a lawsuit about that, if memory serves,
Speaker 3: that's why he had to call it bram Stokers, and
Speaker 3: that's why they had to call it Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
Speaker 3: Or it might have just been like, let's do mary
Speaker 3: Shelley's frankensn But I remember there was a lawsuit around
Speaker 3: one of those two.
Speaker 1: Fascinating.
Speaker 12: I didn't know that, But I always had a problem
Speaker 12: with that title personally, even though they're film. That's a
Speaker 12: film I do have some love for, But it's it's
Speaker 12: due that ain't what's that. It can never be star
Speaker 12: He's dead. It's your version, and that's fine.
Speaker 1: That's fine.
Speaker 11: It's always told that whenever they put the author above
Speaker 11: the title, that's a warning every movie that's like the
Speaker 11: title the author, and then that those movies are terrible.
Speaker 3: So the only exception for that rule is John Carpenter's whatever.
Speaker 11: Yeah, but it wasn't a book. I was talking about
Speaker 11: the novelists. That's true, you know, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Because I know Brass had a lot of problems when
Speaker 3: it was like gorve Dal's. But he did make a
Speaker 3: good part. If you take nine directors and all give
Speaker 3: them the same script, you're gonna get nine different movies.
Speaker 3: It's not a writer's medium, it's a director's medium. So
Speaker 3: that's why he was gorby Dal's name off of there. Also,
Speaker 3: I think after a while they were having a pissing match,
Speaker 3: going back to Guccione's love of golden showers.
Speaker 11: Yeah, please have a pissess.
Speaker 3: I would be live it you.
Speaker 12: He's all lay in the tub, go ahead, he did that.
Speaker 12: Man had some plastic in that drack. He was ready.
Speaker 12: He is the boy Scout a p.
Speaker 4: Scouts pes.
Speaker 12: That's also a new band name. But now the Gorviadal
Speaker 12: struggle is definitely thinging. I love him if some of
Speaker 12: Malcolm McDowell's comments about Vidal too, and that script is hilarious.
Speaker 12: It is. It almost made me feel pet bring Verdal's roast.
Speaker 11: I'm going to take a slight jog here speaking of Gorvadale.
Speaker 11: Did you know that there was a Gorfadale biopic?
Speaker 3: I did not know that. Who's playing Garde?
Speaker 11: Kevin Spacey?
Speaker 10: Wow?
Speaker 11: And when all the awfulness of Kevin Spacey came out
Speaker 11: Netflix said, we just bought a fifty million dollar paper.
Speaker 1: Weight dead over there.
Speaker 11: So there was a film that was made, I think
Speaker 11: it was in twenty sixteen or seventeen, and then they
Speaker 11: put it on the shelf.
Speaker 3: So is it right next to Batwoman or Backgirl?
Speaker 11: It seems like it was a tax right off. But
Speaker 11: I've seen images from it, but they're like, yeah, that's
Speaker 11: never getting released. Oh man, wow, because because I guess
Speaker 11: in the screenplay there's some note to Gorvidal and his
Speaker 11: dalliances with young men, and of course Spacey and his
Speaker 11: oh that's awkward.
Speaker 12: There's method acting, and then there's just why it does
Speaker 12: comfort that becomes very loud discomfort.
Speaker 3: I want to know what you guys think about the
Speaker 3: end of this movie, because that was one thing I
Speaker 3: paid attention to quite a bit going back, and I
Speaker 3: guess I rewatched the vital version or the Guccioni version
Speaker 3: via watching it on my screen, so that's why I'm
Speaker 3: also familiar with it. But I was more paying attention
Speaker 3: to the ultimate cut and seeing what the differences were.
Speaker 3: But the end of this I'm okay with it, but
Speaker 3: I really like the end. Some of the end images
Speaker 3: in the Guccioni version. I really enjoy the whole thing
Speaker 3: of the washing of the blood and just like, how
Speaker 3: quickly we're going to cover up this crime. This one
Speaker 3: does have the let's put the crown onto Claudius and
Speaker 3: just oh, hey, al Claudius, and that's pretty much where
Speaker 3: it ends. I really like the whole idea of the
Speaker 3: cleaning up of the colligular crime and then Incitatus coming
Speaker 3: out and running around and then taking off, and I
Speaker 3: was just like, Okay, yeah, I want a little bit more.
Speaker 3: I felt like they could have put both of those together.
Speaker 3: But I don't know if again, if that's I'm only
Speaker 3: using things from this ninety six hours of footage and
Speaker 3: I'm not going to use anything that was used before,
Speaker 3: or what.
Speaker 11: The ending for me, the two different endings, it's the
Speaker 11: theatrical Guccioni cut feels like I was talking about before,
Speaker 11: Remember the thing about the bully who wants to be killed.
Speaker 11: There's almost a feeling that I get from the way
Speaker 11: McDonald plays it in that cut when he says scrotum,
Speaker 11: he's happy that this is happening. It's finally it's arrived.
Speaker 11: And in the other version, the new one, it feels
Speaker 11: a bit more somber in his play, and it's much bloodier.
Speaker 11: And the thing that I do like when I thought
Speaker 11: about it politically, and we talk about this, is that
Speaker 11: Claudius throughout this entire film is played up as a
Speaker 11: bigger fool an idiot in this version than he is
Speaker 11: in the theatrical Guccioni versions. And because of that, when
Speaker 11: he's finally crowned by the kingmakers, by the power brokers
Speaker 11: to keep these emperors, it feels much more like, Okay,
Speaker 11: we've made our new choice, and it's you know, I
Speaker 11: get this feeling that it's like, even if you are Caligular,
Speaker 11: or even if you are Claudius, that doesn't matter. It's
Speaker 11: the people who are the power brokers that run the show,
Speaker 11: and eventually they'll get tired of you and they'll get
Speaker 11: rid of you and they'll bring the new guy in.
Speaker 11: So I really like the ending in this one because
Speaker 11: with that it felt much more definite. As opposed to
Speaker 11: the theatre Guccioni version, where he was just like, all right,
Speaker 11: just throw the crown on him and go this, it
Speaker 11: felt much more like hail and bring him out, and
Speaker 11: there was more to do with it, just.
Speaker 3: To keep in I keep going back to those scripts,
Speaker 3: and the July seventy six to one has Proculus stabbing
Speaker 3: Coligilia in the chest. Colliguilia goes, I live, and then
Speaker 3: one of the hard steps of Zonia she falls dead.
Speaker 3: One of the guards picks up Julia, their child and
Speaker 3: bashes her head on a wall, which is very upsetting.
Speaker 3: And no matter which version you watch of this, and
Speaker 3: then we've got Caligula, I still live, and Carrera hurry
Speaker 3: towards Caligular sword drawn. Caligulia is now struggling to get
Speaker 3: to his feet. He is half e wrecked when Carrea
Speaker 3: viciously slashes his crotch. Colegular howls and pain. Then Longina
Speaker 3: stabs again, and that's it. That's the end of the script.
Speaker 3: It's the other one from October of seventy five war.
Speaker 3: You get more of the idea around the aale, this
Speaker 3: new Caesar, Hail Claudius, and you get the death mask
Speaker 3: of Caligula at the very end, and the last shot
Speaker 3: is long shot. The funeral procession has now become fantastic,
Speaker 3: and the line which should have ended realistically with Caligula
Speaker 3: seems to be an endless procession. Of grotesquely masked figures
Speaker 3: of tyrants. And they really talk about those death masks
Speaker 3: so much in this version, because even at the very
Speaker 3: beginning of the script there's a little note that says,
Speaker 3: let's see note. The audience needs to know two things
Speaker 3: that the film cannot make clear short of using cards. One,
Speaker 3: that Caligula and Tiberius were actually first century AD Roman emperors,
Speaker 3: and that the events shown in the film took place
Speaker 3: pretty much as recorded. Second, that the Roman funerals figures
Speaker 3: wearing the death mask of ancestors would proceed over the
Speaker 3: dead body. This information could be supplied in voiceover while
Speaker 3: the camera reveals the ruins of the palace of Tiberius
Speaker 3: and Caligula as they look today, as well as the Forum,
Speaker 3: Senate House Circus Maximus, not to mention the still extant
Speaker 3: underground corridor where Caligula was murdered.
Speaker 12: God, that's incredible. Yeah, Like that takes me think of
Speaker 12: some of the imagery we've seen that the nightmare at
Speaker 12: the beginning. Yeah, and the animation that would have been
Speaker 12: a very cool with all the death masks. I would
Speaker 12: have enjoyed that immensely. I did just say one thing,
Speaker 12: whatever version is it is brutal, the brutality, and there
Speaker 12: is like such a sadness because honestly, what crimes has
Speaker 12: Sesonia done? What crimes has that kid done? That little girl?
Speaker 12: What has she done wrong? The giant, you love the giant,
Speaker 12: he's just doing a job. And it's just the innocent
Speaker 12: always suffer. But that's how they would But that's also
Speaker 12: a very true to form back then. It's like you
Speaker 12: would kill, you'd often want to kill the family, so
Speaker 12: there couldn't be a little one waiting to take place.
Speaker 12: That's yeah, yeah, so it's brutal. Actually it's funny because
Speaker 12: we don't really get it in the film, but Tiberia's
Speaker 12: for ally Counts was a very reluctant emperor for that
Speaker 12: reason that he didn't want He really didn't want to
Speaker 12: be emperor, and was that very beloved. But obviously I
Speaker 12: had a lot of laws. But you can see where
Speaker 12: somebody wouldn't because it just seems like a way to
Speaker 12: just basically put a big target on yourself.
Speaker 11: Let them hate me as long as they fear me.
Speaker 3: Well, that's supposed to be the name of the documentary
Speaker 3: coming out about this is let them hate Me.
Speaker 12: It'll be interesting It's one of those things like when
Speaker 12: you see like a great documentary on a band that
Speaker 12: has a lot of like animosity and then some of
Speaker 12: the people are gone. Is what are the logistics of
Speaker 12: getting a truly objective story. It's gonna be tricky in
Speaker 12: my opinion, But I'm interested, I'm curious, I'm hopeful. I
Speaker 12: don't know. It's it's like this film, right if I'm
Speaker 12: curious and I love it, I have hesitations, I have
Speaker 12: sadness about it. Again, It's like, how many because other
Speaker 12: films that have like different edits and got play films
Speaker 12: have gotten tampered with that's far from now you ready
Speaker 12: to look at Eric bon Stroheim and what happened to
Speaker 12: Greed and see that? But how many films have repercussions
Speaker 12: years after the fact for people, even researchers like you're
Speaker 12: talking about or she were they It's like, he's not
Speaker 12: going to finish this book. That's it's just it's bonkers
Speaker 12: to me, Like it's I can't think of any work
Speaker 12: of art that has that just showed you about it.
Speaker 12: It's almost there's some bad ju ju with it. I
Speaker 12: don't know if I believe in that is a proper
Speaker 12: thing with this film, but there is there's something to
Speaker 12: it that's I think that's what also fascinates me about
Speaker 12: it is what is it? What is it with this?
Speaker 12: What it's all? It's like The Kennedys minus the brain worm.
Speaker 1: But it won't stay dead.
Speaker 12: What if we all kissed under the parasitic brain worm?
Speaker 3: Speaking of animosity and tampering, let's go ahead and take
Speaker 3: a break and we're going to play a pair of interviews.
Speaker 3: First up, we'll hear from Caroline kirkandall the precedent of
Speaker 3: Penthouse Global Licensing. And after that we'll hear from our
Speaker 3: old friend Alexander Tushinsky, director of Mission Caligula. Right after
Speaker 3: these brief messages.
Speaker 10: Hello everyone, this is Malcolm McDowell.
Speaker 6: I just want to say that this is a request
Speaker 6: to listeners of the Projection Booth podcast to become patrons
Speaker 6: of the show via Patreon dot com, p A T
Speaker 6: eo n dot com slash Projection Booth.
Speaker 10: That's pretty simple. I think you can do that.
Speaker 6: It's a great show and Mike he provides hours of
Speaker 6: great entertainment. So now it's time to give back my
Speaker 6: little drovies. Settle down and take a listen. And have
Speaker 6: a sip of the old molocco, and then you'll be
Speaker 6: ready for a little of the old in out, in out,
Speaker 6: real hard show.
Speaker 1: Bye bye.
Speaker 3: Tell me a little bit about you and your background,
Speaker 3: because you seem to have a very interesting background, especially
Speaker 3: all of the positions that you've held over the last
Speaker 3: even just ten years.
Speaker 15: Yes, unconventional, I suppose it's a word for it. I
Speaker 15: joined my father's company out of grad school in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 15: He had the Hospitality Management Company headquartered in New Orleans.
Speaker 15: At the time, he owned and operated nightclubs and restaurants,
Speaker 15: and shortly thereafter he bought into the Penthouse Club brand.
Speaker 15: He purchased the trademarks for the Penthouse Club. We purchased
Speaker 15: the entire licensing division from the former owner of Penthouse,
Speaker 15: Kelly Holland, and worked with her for a while running
Speaker 15: the licensing division. Unfortunately, Kelly file for bankruptcy. We found
Speaker 15: ourselves in a position to want to work positively with
Speaker 15: the new owners to maintain some semblance of control over
Speaker 15: the marks and ensuring that the brand continued to evolve.
Speaker 15: We were really fortunate and that they were very receptive
Speaker 15: to working with us. Ultimately, we ended up pooling the
Speaker 15: trademarks we had purchased related to the club with the
Speaker 15: other Penhouse marks and assets, including Caligula, but also things
Speaker 15: like Omni into one joint venture which is Penhouse Global Licensing,
Speaker 15: despite non as formal licensing experienced.
Speaker 12: I though, I started to head that up and here
Speaker 12: we are.
Speaker 15: However, many years later, when was this Do you remember
Speaker 15: when we originally purchased the marks? I think that was
Speaker 15: in twenty seventeen, and then a year and a half later,
Speaker 15: like mid twenty eighteen, I think the bankruptcy happened and
Speaker 15: we formed a JB.
Speaker 3: How involved were you with this colligular project and how
Speaker 3: did you become aware of it?
Speaker 15: When the bankruptcy happened and we inherited all these assets
Speaker 15: and we started talking about what were potential money makers
Speaker 15: for this new Penhouse. Colhila came up, and I know
Speaker 15: that Kelly at one point had attempted to bring the
Speaker 15: movie back in some capacity and unfortunately just never had
Speaker 15: the funding for it. So it had been something that
Speaker 15: others had been thinking about. One of my colleagues knows
Speaker 15: Tom Nagovin personally their family friends from years ago, and
Speaker 15: he said, well, if you guys are serious about restoring
Speaker 15: the film, then you have to speak to Tom. There's
Speaker 15: nobody better than to talk to him about it. So
Speaker 15: we did, and Tom pitched what was originally just a
Speaker 15: film restoration, because all the materials had been stored in
Speaker 15: storagelockers and other places in la for decades without anybody
Speaker 15: you've had checking in on them, and so jump, let
Speaker 15: me just see what's there and then we can go
Speaker 15: from there and see what we can do. So what
Speaker 15: started as an archival attempt to maintain the integrity of
Speaker 15: the original film assets turned into what we now know
Speaker 15: is this incredible reconstruction of the film. I didn't really
Speaker 15: become involved with the project. I know Tom, and the
Speaker 15: first time i'm him was at the la Art Show.
Speaker 15: We displayed a bunch of photographs tinto brass photographs and
Speaker 15: stuff like that at the Laar Show. And then this
Speaker 15: was pre COVID and COVID hit and Tom got very
Speaker 15: busy were he on the restoration And then I didn't
Speaker 15: really hear from him, not that I needed to, but
Speaker 15: he was just busy doing his thing. He did a
Speaker 15: great job of maintaining updates and letting everybody know how
Speaker 15: things were going and what was constable. The project did
Speaker 15: take longer than we thought. We weren't really sure what
Speaker 15: we were going to get at the end of it.
Speaker 15: But I remember getting a phone call from Tom, I
Speaker 15: think it was probably February of twenty twenty three, saying, listen,
Speaker 15: I finished the movie and I think it's going to
Speaker 15: go to can What do we do? And so that
Speaker 15: was really when I started to get involved, and since
Speaker 15: then have just helped him manage all the post production
Speaker 15: involved with bringing a finished film to market, getting in
Speaker 15: the hands of agents and distributors and all that fun stuff.
Speaker 3: I think you're talking about licenses and rights, and now
Speaker 3: you probably have to worry about global rights and who
Speaker 3: sells it and who shows it. The ins and outs
Speaker 3: of that must be incredibly tough.
Speaker 15: The learning crew was very steep. I'll say that, even
Speaker 15: though I did have a fair amount of licensing experience
Speaker 15: at that point, the film world is very different. But
Speaker 15: we got really lucky and that Tom, through his personal connections,
Speaker 15: got the film in the hands of Goodfellas, which is
Speaker 15: an international film agency. So they had read to represent
Speaker 15: the film, and so we gave it to them and
Speaker 15: they went out and sold it to different territories and
Speaker 15: have been really wonderful at just managing all of those
Speaker 15: contracts and hopefully just start sending us checks now every quarder.
Speaker 3: I can't even imagine how much a project like this
Speaker 3: cost to do the restoration, because you've got all of
Speaker 3: those different the sound needs to be rescued, the digital
Speaker 3: effects need to be added. Just so many things add
Speaker 3: up with a project like this, And like you said,
Speaker 3: the timeline was span it from where you originally thought
Speaker 3: it would be.
Speaker 15: Yeah, exactly. I don't have a hard number to give you,
Speaker 15: And in talking with Tom about it, I know that
Speaker 15: it was significantly more than what we had anticipated, just
Speaker 15: because again we thought we were just restoring a film.
Speaker 15: We certainly didn't understand the post production costs associated with
Speaker 15: marketing the film and getting it as festivals and showing
Speaker 15: it to buyers and engaging Malcolm McDowell and stuff like that.
Speaker 15: But it was and again my first film, so I
Speaker 15: have no ability to qualify, but I do think it
Speaker 15: was more extensive than we were planning on and maybe
Speaker 15: many people would assume just for a generic film restoration.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine it was just Thomas working on this.
Speaker 3: It must have been other people. He must have had
Speaker 3: some sort of big team.
Speaker 15: For this, I would think, yes, he definitely did. He
Speaker 15: Tom ran the project and then outsourced a lot of
Speaker 15: the technical work through various teams during twenty twenty, so
Speaker 15: everybody was on lockdown. It was a fortunate, unfortunate thing
Speaker 15: that these were all people who were already very dialed
Speaker 15: into working remotely or a different aspect. A challenge to
Speaker 15: creating a film with people all over the world with
Speaker 15: very little in person overlap. But yes, I had the
Speaker 15: pleasure of meeting several people that he collaborated with Dave
Speaker 15: McKean on the illustrations, the beginning sequences, and some of
Speaker 15: the musicians who created original scores. I met them in
Speaker 15: France last year. And like super cool people, a Tom
Speaker 15: has a rolodex like a million miles long of just
Speaker 15: super weird, super cool, super fun people.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, how's it been for you getting immersed in
Speaker 3: this film world?
Speaker 15: Personally?
Speaker 12: I loved it.
Speaker 15: It was challenging in the sense that I really had
Speaker 15: no idea what I was doing, but it's nice to
Speaker 15: learn a skill when you have mentors like Tom and
Speaker 15: Goodfellas and our United States agency that sold the film
Speaker 15: in the United States, they're called submarine and draft house
Speaker 15: whoes that are should be or kicked it up the
Speaker 15: United States. They have been incredible as far as just
Speaker 15: like educating me and letting me know this is bad,
Speaker 15: this is good, do this, don't do that. That's been great,
Speaker 15: But personally I love it. I would love to have
Speaker 15: the opportunity to do this again. I don't know that
Speaker 15: Penthouse is sitting on any secret footage of any other
Speaker 15: films that we could possibly restore, but should be opportunity
Speaker 15: present itself. This has been really fun and I'd love
Speaker 15: to do it again.
Speaker 3: The movie is infamous, and I know there were a
Speaker 3: lot of lawsuits that happened after it came out while
Speaker 3: it was being made. Was all of that settled? Did
Speaker 3: you have to worry about old grievances and old claims
Speaker 3: to things or had that all been worked out?
Speaker 15: Technically speaking, we didn't really have to worry about anything
Speaker 15: because so much had happened, just like legally from a
Speaker 15: bankruptcy standpoint, since before and after Bob Guccioni passed away
Speaker 15: that there were no legitimate claims to any of the assets.
Speaker 15: But there's a lot that goes into managing relationships with people,
Speaker 15: and it's a very small world. Guccioni's world is very small,
Speaker 15: the Tom's world is very small. So we wanted to
Speaker 15: be really respectful of everybody, especially the actors and members
Speaker 15: of the crew who are still alive, and so we did,
Speaker 15: unfortunately run into an issue with Tinto Reth, the original director.
Speaker 15: His estate has a lot of food out there they're
Speaker 15: claiming they have right to which they don't. In order
Speaker 15: to bring a film to market, Goodfellas, our agency, our
Speaker 15: distributors did require a lot of contractual information, basically testifying
Speaker 15: to the fact that we own the film and going
Speaker 15: back through the chain of title and just looking at
Speaker 15: the many different ways that it had been moved around
Speaker 15: from Penthouse entity to Penhouse entity, to the new owner
Speaker 15: of Penhouse and another new owner of pen House. It
Speaker 15: was a lot, but lucky for us, a lot of
Speaker 15: people within kind House love to keep paper records and stuff,
Speaker 15: so we did a lot of scaring and a lot
Speaker 15: of combing through old files and old folders, but we
Speaker 15: have a pretty robust archive at this point of everything
Speaker 15: from me contracts to photographs, whatever it is. I think
Speaker 15: Tom probably used like fifty percent of what we had
Speaker 15: to make the film. It was an immense amount of stuff.
Speaker 3: That whole chain of title thing must have just been
Speaker 3: a knight. At least you had the records.
Speaker 15: Yeah, yeah, No, we were able to provide everything they needed,
Speaker 15: all the ctrifications for all the different countries. We feel
Speaker 15: very confident in our rights and are hopeful that in
Speaker 15: some way we'll be able to continue to use Coligula
Speaker 15: and colicgular related assets going forward. Not necessarily to make
Speaker 15: another film, but maybe there's just been off show. Maybe
Speaker 15: there's some way to keep that storyline, keep those characters alive.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I had heard that Thomas was talking about doing
Speaker 3: a documentary about this as well.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 15: I think in a perfect world we would have four
Speaker 15: Tom's and he would be able to do all of
Speaker 15: this simultaneously.
Speaker 10: And you can.
Speaker 15: Imagine there's so much about understanding. What's great about this
Speaker 15: reconstruction is understanding what a dumpster fire the first one
Speaker 15: was so the idea to do this documentary that really
Speaker 15: takes you deep into the everyday.
Speaker 12: Life on the set.
Speaker 15: It explains the headspace of all of the creatives back then.
Speaker 15: It gives you such a better understanding of what was
Speaker 15: happening rather than just this is a film that was
Speaker 15: made in nineteen seventy nine. This is the film that
Speaker 15: was made in twenty twenty three. Comparing contrast, I'm hopeful
Speaker 15: that it happens. Tom is, He's one guy. I know,
Speaker 15: we like to pretend that he didn't have a family
Speaker 15: or any other commitments. For the past year or so,
Speaker 15: we've really monopolized his time. I do hope that one
Speaker 15: day we'll have a documentary that goes into more detail
Speaker 15: on all the drama, all the juicy bids related to
Speaker 15: the original film.
Speaker 3: You were speaking about some of the other potential properties reserves.
Speaker 3: Bob Guccioni was also involved in some other film productions.
Speaker 3: Didn't he have something to do with even like Chinatown?
Speaker 15: If he did, I have no idea tell him, honestly,
Speaker 15: would know, just because Tom is like the math of
Speaker 15: repository for all information related to Bob Guccioni's life. Unfortunately,
Speaker 15: I have no idea. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: I didn't expect that you become the be all and
Speaker 3: all expert on Bob Guccioni's life.
Speaker 15: Everybody has a story about Bob right and at a
Speaker 15: certain point you just have to appreciate that everybody's lived
Speaker 15: history is their lived history, and where the truth lies
Speaker 15: is somewhere in between everybody's memories and their stories. And
Speaker 15: I personally have not spent enough time with those people
Speaker 15: so that you can begin to say, Okay, I think
Speaker 15: this is the commonalities because everyone loves to talk about
Speaker 15: what an eccentric he was, and how extravagant he was,
Speaker 15: and just all the way in which he was on
Speaker 15: either end of whatever spectrum, just good bad, nothing even
Speaker 15: killed her in between. So yeah, the truth about all that,
Speaker 15: I don't know, but I know Tom. It's been something
Speaker 15: that Tom's been interested in for a long time, and
Speaker 15: he's probably the better person to ask.
Speaker 3: Singer. Remember, you have background working for the International Narcotics
Speaker 3: and Law Enforcement Bureau, so to go from that side
Speaker 3: of the law to I know, penhouse is legal, but
Speaker 3: it's stealing in sin. But it must be just an
Speaker 3: interesting contrast between those two.
Speaker 15: Yes, there's really no easy explanation for that other than
Speaker 15: I was one of those people that didn't really know
Speaker 15: what I wanted to do with my life, and I
Speaker 15: felt like going to grad school would answer that question. Instead,
Speaker 15: it just prolonged making a decision by a full two
Speaker 15: years and a lot of money. By the time I
Speaker 15: had graduated, my most recent experience, I had been working
Speaker 15: for the State Department on a Central American regional security
Speaker 15: team that did a lot of work in drug trafficking,
Speaker 15: human trafficking, stuff like that, which I find academically incredibly interesting. Professionally,
Speaker 15: I had a hard time figuring out how to maintain
Speaker 15: the idea of working for the U. Not that I
Speaker 15: have anything against the US government, more so it was
Speaker 15: just being a very small cog and a big wheel
Speaker 15: and having just didn't seem like the best use of
Speaker 15: my time. I also had lived in Costa Rica for
Speaker 15: three years prior to grad school, and I really wanted
Speaker 15: to move back to Central America. Staying in DC just
Speaker 15: didn't feel like I was going to be able to
Speaker 15: do that. But anyway, the truth is I couldn't get
Speaker 15: a job after grad school. I couldn't find one that
Speaker 15: I really liked and that within My dad came to me,
Speaker 15: and he was in a position with his company where
Speaker 15: he had spent the past thirty years working exclusively in nightclubs,
Speaker 15: and rather than thinking about retiring and taking a step back,
Speaker 15: he did the exact opposite of what probably most meant
Speaker 15: his age would do, and wanted to figure out a
Speaker 15: way to diversify within the hospitality space and grow the company.
Speaker 15: So he had just purchased a restaurant. I had some
Speaker 15: international business experience, so I thought, maybe there's a way
Speaker 15: to turn this into something that I find interesting and
Speaker 15: it also gets me a paycheck. And yeah, the adult side,
Speaker 15: it was shocking in a lot of ways, mostly because
Speaker 15: I didn't even know what my father did until I
Speaker 15: was like laid into high school. Not in a naive way,
Speaker 15: just in the way that kids don't really care how
Speaker 15: their parents are spending time. But when I did find out,
Speaker 15: I think if I had been a guy, may had
Speaker 15: been different. I would have thought all that, it is
Speaker 15: super cool and I want to do this every day,
Speaker 15: And I didn't. I just wasn't interested. But then I
Speaker 15: got into it, and eventually it just becomes I see
Speaker 15: boobs every day, and I have a penhouse of aversion
Speaker 15: from Germany sitting on my desk and it's just a
Speaker 15: naked woman. And then there for six weeks, every time
Speaker 15: someone who walks in my office, it's like a jump
Speaker 15: scare and they're like oh, and I'm like, oh, sorry,
Speaker 15: I guess I should cover that up at this point.
Speaker 15: It doesn't really affect me the licensing part. There are
Speaker 15: aspects of the licensing that are super interesting. Trademark law,
Speaker 15: ip law, it doesn't it doesn't really matter what what
Speaker 15: kind of marks they are what. Therefore, that all is
Speaker 15: very interesting. Every day is different, and I think this
Speaker 15: colligular thing is a great example. When we got involve
Speaker 15: with the new owners of Penhouse, we had no idea
Speaker 15: that our office or me personally would be managing the
Speaker 15: release of the film. Could not have imagined and here
Speaker 15: we are. So every day is different.
Speaker 3: So how about you? What's next for you?
Speaker 15: I'm really excited about a potential club deal we have
Speaker 15: in London. I never made it back to Central America,
Speaker 15: so now I want to move to Europe. That's my
Speaker 15: new goal. We're going to visit London a couple of weeks.
Speaker 15: We've got a site picked out. Fingers are crossed that
Speaker 15: it works out, and then hopefully I would spend some
Speaker 15: time out there opening that up, and who knows, seeing
Speaker 15: what weekends you overseas. If I can find a legitimate
Speaker 15: way to extend my stay beyond the club opening, that
Speaker 15: would be nice. But It's an interesting time to being
Speaker 15: in hospitality in America, in the world, really, it's especially
Speaker 15: in New Orleans. We've got a lot of exciting things
Speaker 15: coming up. The Super Bowls here next year, so we're
Speaker 15: super pumped for that. But it's been a really slow summer.
Speaker 15: We're seeing a lot of people are getting squeezed and
Speaker 15: so they're spending fewer dollars out at restaurants at bars,
Speaker 15: and we're doing a lot of internal kind of questioning
Speaker 15: what does this model look like, Can we sustain things
Speaker 15: like this or do we need to make some changes.
Speaker 3: Ms kirkandall, thank you so much for your time. This
Speaker 3: is fantastic.
Speaker 15: You're so welcome. I hope it was helpful interesting in anyway.
Speaker 15: I'm sorry I don't have the most amount of poligiar knowledge,
Speaker 15: but if you do have specific questions, I'm happy to
Speaker 15: go through the penthouse. People were still in touch with
Speaker 15: employees who a new Bob and stuff like that, So
Speaker 15: happy to try and dig up more specific stuff for you.
Speaker 3: Alexander Tushinsky we spoke six years ago after the production
Speaker 3: of Mission Caligular. We talked a little bit after that
Speaker 3: movie came out, so that there were some things that
Speaker 3: had happened between when the movie was released and when
Speaker 3: we actually spoke, but six years what happened right after?
Speaker 3: Can you tell me a little bit of what the
Speaker 3: post of Mission Cligular was.
Speaker 1: When Mission Cligular came out, that was quite an intense
Speaker 1: time for me. I had just discovered a lot of
Speaker 1: material in the Pentos archive in the prior years. In
Speaker 1: the film, I presented the project to reconstruct Tinto Brass
Speaker 1: edit of Calicula in his style and with his participation
Speaker 1: if he likes so that was a big condition for
Speaker 1: me that Tinto Buss participates in the Pentos archive. I
Speaker 1: had discovered Tinto Bass work print of the film, which
Speaker 1: essentially goes until the scene in which Macro gets killed
Speaker 1: with this huge killing machine, and my idea was to
Speaker 1: finish that work print together with Tinto if possible, and
Speaker 1: there was a lot of excitement after that episode. I
Speaker 1: decided to upload Mission Curricular on YouTube and Vimeo with
Speaker 1: the permission of the rights holders, which was a good
Speaker 1: idea in retrospective because I see a lot of people
Speaker 1: have watched it. However, the project didn't come to pass.
Speaker 1: There was a change in ownership with Penthouse and it's
Speaker 1: basically the project to reconstruct Tinto's work print didn't happen.
Speaker 1: That's what I can say. And that's twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: and since then I've done my own films. I've done
Speaker 1: quite a lot of things since then, but I guess
Speaker 1: we're talking about the calcular related things. In the immediate aftermath,
Speaker 1: I did two independent films, Gas Shaped Light and feedsom
Speaker 1: Lee Even which are somewhat more serious and somewhat more
Speaker 1: dark than my usual films. And I did this because
Speaker 1: my mood wasn't the best at that time. And I'm
Speaker 1: very proud of these films. I'm happy how they turned out.
Speaker 1: But that's what happened in the immediate aftermath.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had heard that Penthouse had gone through new
Speaker 3: ownership and that Kelly Allen was no longer CEO. What
Speaker 3: do you know about that? Because I had heard Hornhou
Speaker 3: bought them out, but I don't know if that's just
Speaker 3: Shorthand for something else.
Speaker 1: First of all, I can say I got along with
Speaker 1: her very well, and as you can see in Mission Callriqula,
Speaker 1: she really wanted to make this possible for Tintobus to
Speaker 1: edit the film again. The way he likes. Then there
Speaker 1: was a change in ownership as she lost ownership of
Speaker 1: the company. In one period she was there, I was
Speaker 1: talking to her and then there were other people basically,
Speaker 1: and I told him who I was. But my ideas
Speaker 1: are what the project is. But as I said, ultimately
Speaker 1: it didn't happen to me. It was honestly a bit
Speaker 1: surprising when suddenly this such other project was brought up,
Speaker 1: and at first I thought it's related to what I
Speaker 1: want to do. I remember I had a few discussions
Speaker 1: back in twenty nineteen where I made clear I'm only
Speaker 1: interested to participate in a project where I had two conditions.
Speaker 1: The first condition is that I'm in charge of digitizing
Speaker 1: the footage. I had a lot of conversations already when
Speaker 1: discovering the footage and so on with labs how to
Speaker 1: do it by degrees. I'm a Bachelor of Engineering Audio
Speaker 1: visual Media, so I know about that side. And the
Speaker 1: footage was in a lot of boxes with a sorting
Speaker 1: that was not that intuitive, but I did know it
Speaker 1: quite well after a lot of research. So I thought,
Speaker 1: I have to be in charge of the digitizing to
Speaker 1: make sure that everything is digitized. Some parts of the
Speaker 1: film survived in thirty five millimeter negative, some in positive,
Speaker 1: some in sixteen millimeter. And the second condition was that
Speaker 1: there is no outside interference on the editing, and that
Speaker 1: Tintobuss has to be approached that if possible, he has
Speaker 1: to participate. My big dream was Tintobuss turned ninety last year,
Speaker 1: and I remember I had the big dream for Tinto
Speaker 1: Brass's ninetieth birthday to release a film that finally says
Speaker 1: directed by Tinto Brass in the credits, and if Tinto
Speaker 1: Brass would have said no, my idea was, I would
Speaker 1: reconstruct the work print, so I have the first half
Speaker 1: of the film approximately, I would reconstruct the second half
Speaker 1: based on my research in a style that I feel
Speaker 1: is very appropriate to his, and then release that as
Speaker 1: a reconstruction, as a complete and reconstructed work print, be
Speaker 1: very honest about what it is. And it was very
Speaker 1: important for me to try to get Tinto to participate.
Speaker 3: How would you describe Tintobrass's style. You've said before on
Speaker 3: the show that he was very influential to your filmmaking,
Speaker 3: and I'm curious how would you define that kind of
Speaker 3: either editing style or shooting style, like what makes a
Speaker 3: Tinto Brass film a Tinto Brass film.
Speaker 1: In preparation for this conversation, I did look up my
Speaker 1: old notes and I found my first notes about the
Speaker 1: editing of Calicula are from two thousand and seven, when
Speaker 1: I was eighteen years old. This is a long time
Speaker 1: and Tinto Buss's editing style has been very influential for me.
Speaker 1: I think if people want to really get an idea
Speaker 1: of his style, there's a lot of nineteen sixties films
Speaker 1: he did, or the films alone Kitty. I think a
Speaker 1: friend of mine described it as impressionist one that I
Speaker 1: do agree. There is a lot of quick cuts. To me,
Speaker 1: it flows very naturally. There is zooms in it that
Speaker 1: I think today are not that usual in the visual
Speaker 1: language of most filmmakers, but they are masterfully done. And
Speaker 1: it's basically these quick edits that form an impression of
Speaker 1: the scene. I would say very playful. That's a word
Speaker 1: that I could use. I think there are two films
Speaker 1: to watch. One is called called kore Inngola in English
Speaker 1: deadly sweet from the sixties, where he went to London
Speaker 1: doing a low budget thriller crime film where he's just
Speaker 1: so playful with the camera. The story is very simple,
Speaker 1: but the style is elaborate. And then there's a film
Speaker 1: Salone Kitty, which it did right before Caligula Away. He
Speaker 1: had a bigger budget. And when I first watched Cinto
Speaker 1: Bass's films, I was so impressed by the style because
Speaker 1: I thought that's the style of visuals that I like.
Speaker 1: I could say I didn't model my visual style after his.
Speaker 1: It was more I had those ideas and I found him,
Speaker 1: and that became something I really appreciated. And so when
Speaker 1: I started doing films, I was very influenced also to
Speaker 1: use zooms, to use quick cuts, and my own editing
Speaker 1: style has been sometimes described to be reminiscent of his.
Speaker 1: So I would say these quick unexpected cuts, interesting camera angles,
Speaker 1: and an overall flow. Also, the soundtrack often flows very
Speaker 1: well with the visual. When I think of Salone Kitty,
Speaker 1: there is a sequence where a song is played on
Speaker 1: the morning after which kind of reminds me of the
Speaker 1: film Cabaret bit. And then you can just see how
Speaker 1: one pan leads the next pan that leads to a zoom,
Speaker 1: and it all moved very naturally. When I looked at
Speaker 1: the raw footage for clicular, I'm jumping ahead a little
Speaker 1: bit in the topic. But when I looked at the
Speaker 1: raw footage or clicular in the archive, I got to
Speaker 1: say I was hard to look at it and not
Speaker 1: be able to edit it immediately. Because Tinto filmed multiple cameras.
Speaker 1: I personally have used two cameras, and some films he
Speaker 1: sometimes used more than that. And you can see they
Speaker 1: cover a scene from various angles. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: footage that was never intended to be seen that just
Speaker 1: one camera adjusting or so. You have a lot of
Speaker 1: zooms that look not very well, but then you have
Speaker 1: zooms that look really good, and those were the ones
Speaker 1: that were supposed to go in the film. You can
Speaker 1: see that. I admired that style very much, and I
Speaker 1: would say there's one film, The Key, Yeah, that A.
Speaker 1: Tinto did in the early eighties. It also still preserves
Speaker 1: this style. He has the style even in his later films,
Speaker 1: but I would say until The Key, those films really
Speaker 1: have the most distinct version of his visual style.
Speaker 3: I know it must not be a very pleasant thing
Speaker 3: to revisit, but I do want to take you back.
Speaker 3: You moved off of the project, or you just told
Speaker 3: you're not going to be a part of this. How
Speaker 3: does that actually go down for you?
Speaker 1: As Basically, I made my two conditions clear. I want
Speaker 1: to be the one overlooking the digitization to know where
Speaker 1: everything goes, and the editing has to happen without outside interference.
Speaker 1: When I said this was it, I was not involved
Speaker 1: in it. I made clear I don't want to be
Speaker 1: involved in anything that doesn't reconstruct Tintobras's vision. It was
Speaker 1: a very difficult time. I got to say. It wasn't easy.
Speaker 1: It wasn't pleasant, though I did a lot of creative
Speaker 1: things for myself, so I thought something has come out
Speaker 1: of it. I didn't do nothing. I did do some
Speaker 1: of my own films, which makes me very happy. But
Speaker 1: over the years I never really wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: this at all. And when you contacted me, I contemplate,
Speaker 1: but I recalled our conversations and I thought, okay, I'll
Speaker 1: open up about this. But it's still not easy. I
Speaker 1: can tell you a moving memory that I don't know
Speaker 1: about told people, but it was a very positive memory. Actually,
Speaker 1: when I went to Penthouse in la in twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: to look at the archive, and when I discovered a
Speaker 1: work print which was a video copy of a sixteen
Speaker 1: millimeter print that had been cut into thousands of pieces.
Speaker 1: I explained that in the mission Calicular episode, and then
Speaker 1: I went to Italy to show it to Tinto and
Speaker 1: it was I was sa one of the most moving
Speaker 1: moments I had when since the seventies, for the first
Speaker 1: time he was able to actually watch his edit, and
Speaker 1: I was astonished how well he remembered it. That basically,
Speaker 1: we watch a scene and he finishes a line while
Speaker 1: it is spoken in the film, and so on. I
Speaker 1: think he hadn't rewatched Clicular for a long time. The
Speaker 1: edition that had come out of the theatrical edition has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with what he wanted. And at that moment,
Speaker 1: I was so optimistic we could do something. I can
Speaker 1: tell you my technical proposal I had back then. Because
Speaker 1: Tinto is born in thirty three, he is now I
Speaker 1: think he's ninety one already. How the time passes, So
Speaker 1: I thought, reconstruct this film. The work print was in
Speaker 1: black and white, but a lot of the color footage
Speaker 1: still exists, most of it as negative film, but as
Speaker 1: far as I was able to see, but I wasn't
Speaker 1: able to see all the boxes. Not all the negatives survived,
Speaker 1: but there was also positive film thirty five millimeter and
Speaker 1: some sixteen millimeters reductions for the making of documentary they
Speaker 1: had done in the seventies, so I wanted to scan
Speaker 1: everything positive negative sixteen millimeter. This would have been a
Speaker 1: major part of the restoration. To then find out which
Speaker 1: is the best footage for each individual shot, then take
Speaker 1: the sixteen milimeters black and white work print that I
Speaker 1: had a video copy of and reconstruct that in color.
Speaker 1: And that my idea was, I would do a preliminary
Speaker 1: assembly of the rest of the film in the way
Speaker 1: that I feel Tinto would like because it's such a
Speaker 1: technical process, going through different materials and then visiting him
Speaker 1: for as long as it takes for a few hours
Speaker 1: per day to sit there with him. He can say
Speaker 1: any changes, he can say anything should be different, and
Speaker 1: so on, with hard drives of all the footage until
Speaker 1: the film is done. And I always had the feeling,
Speaker 1: if we get to do it that way, he would
Speaker 1: be the hero. Obviously it would be his film coming out.
Speaker 1: I would be an assistant editor and those in the
Speaker 1: know would know what I had done. But I would
Speaker 1: have been really happy about that, I got to say.
Speaker 1: So that was my hope and Tinto is still around,
Speaker 1: but I think what happened really wasn't easy for any
Speaker 1: of us. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 3: I'm surprised that Tinto is even able to speak these days,
Speaker 3: because I just read how dement it he is in
Speaker 3: every article all about this new cut that's come out.
Speaker 3: That's the new producer of the Ultimate Cut, Thomas at.
Speaker 1: Nigovin, Oh, what does he base it off? Has he
Speaker 1: met Tinto?
Speaker 3: He bases it off of a documentary from twenty thirteen
Speaker 3: called Is Tinto Brass?
Speaker 1: And he says the documentary would claim that Tinto has
Speaker 1: mental problems.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've read that time and again at least four
Speaker 3: or five sources.
Speaker 1: It was present when Is Tinto Brass had its world
Speaker 1: premiere at Venice Film Festival in twenty thirteen. Tinto told
Speaker 1: me about it, and then I got an invite and
Speaker 1: I watched Is Tinto Brass sitting in Venice at the
Speaker 1: film Festival, sitting right behind Tinto, and Tinto was happy,
Speaker 1: and I was also invited to the after parties. Tinto
Speaker 1: would talk to people approached him. It was actually quite
Speaker 1: a funny experience because sometimes people thought I didn't know Tinto,
Speaker 1: and they try to introduce Tinto. Oh why are you
Speaker 1: trying to introduce to me? We know each other. To me,
Speaker 1: this is a very bizarre claim, is the way is
Speaker 1: Tinto Brass that I watched in twenty thirteen at the
Speaker 1: Venice Film Festival makes no such claim. Tinto talks about
Speaker 1: his life, talks about all these things. He was sitting
Speaker 1: right in front of me. I was sitting in the
Speaker 1: row behind him. Then at a party people talked to him.
Speaker 1: Maybe they changed the film after the world premiere, but
Speaker 1: I doubt it. And I got to say when I
Speaker 1: talked to Tinto, when we talked about his ms and
Speaker 1: all that his memory was so good. And I remember
Speaker 1: when I first met with him, it was I believe
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, and I was so excited. I showed him
Speaker 1: some papers I had written about his film Near was
Speaker 1: Ubianco and I showed him the Calligular Thesis, and we
Speaker 1: talked about so many things. And then there was this
Speaker 1: retrospective of his works that happened at an independent film
Speaker 1: festival in Hollywood, where I actually had the idea and
Speaker 1: told the festival people, Hey, wouldn't it be an idea
Speaker 1: to approach Tinto? So I had a lot to do
Speaker 1: with him. His memory was so oh good. When we
Speaker 1: talked about the work print of Caligula, I was amazed
Speaker 1: how he was able to finish the lines that are spoken.
Speaker 1: He gradually got more excited about this as it went on,
Speaker 1: and there's a person approaching the scene, and right before
Speaker 1: the person is approaching, he was like, oh, now this
Speaker 1: one is coming in, and so on, and he was
Speaker 1: happy to see the edits again and so on. Once. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't go around making any claims about the man's mental
Speaker 1: health based on I don't even know what it's based on.
Speaker 1: So the film I saw didn't make any claim in
Speaker 1: that way. If it would have made such claims, Tinto
Speaker 1: would have reflected who was sitting there. And I remember
Speaker 1: he was welcomed as the Maestro of Cinema at Venice
Speaker 1: Film Festival and to meet was so excited to be
Speaker 1: a guest there at the screening, and those were good days.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 1: I had a lot of conversations with Tinto over the
Speaker 1: years about curricula and various levels of detail. I also
Speaker 1: did some unpublished interviews with Tinto. I did one on
Speaker 1: camera which could have been published at some later points
Speaker 1: or so I would say Tinto has always been very
Speaker 1: clear when speaking about his films, when speaking about his art,
Speaker 1: I'm not in a position to judge anybody's mental capacities.
Speaker 1: As a visitor and friend, I went there and nothing
Speaker 1: weird occurred to me. He was just a kind, old
Speaker 1: gentleman who loved talking about the films he had done
Speaker 1: and who took interest in what I'm doing. Just a
Speaker 1: nice man. I didn't know if it's anything, so to me,
Speaker 1: this is all very bizarre to claim Otherwise.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds like he was very excited by the
Speaker 3: idea of finally being able to revisit Caligula and be
Speaker 3: able to make this the project that he wanted.
Speaker 1: When I was eighteen, I felt so intense about this.
Speaker 1: I still feel intense about it, though over the years
Speaker 1: I tried not to think so much about it. But
Speaker 1: basically I thought, with Salon Kitty Tin, who had a
Speaker 1: bigger budget and he was able to use his cinematic language.
Speaker 1: With Caligula, he had an even bigger budget and even
Speaker 1: more sets and more actors who were internationally famous, what
Speaker 1: kind of film he could have done there, with his style,
Speaker 1: with its editing. So I got very excited on two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven and I wrote my thesis. It stood
Speaker 1: Gout Media University, who actually had a media in twenty
Speaker 1: eleven my bachelor thesis. I updated it over the years
Speaker 1: and on the internet there is a most recent version
Speaker 1: which is a few years afterwards. Then I got in
Speaker 1: contact with Tinto. I met one of his friends at
Speaker 1: an LA film festival and he put me in touch.
Speaker 1: I gave Tinto a call. I was so nervous, and
Speaker 1: we met in Rome. It was beautiful and we talked
Speaker 1: about his sixties and seventies films. He did a film
Speaker 1: called drop Out and one called Labakanza, which I had
Speaker 1: never seen, which I wanted to prepare for the festival
Speaker 1: in La, which he was very happy to do, and
Speaker 1: gradually I brought up the caligular topic. There is a
Speaker 1: documentary around the time that the Imperial Edition DVD box
Speaker 1: that was done in two thousand and seven. I remember
Speaker 1: I was excited of getting it and underwhelmed and I
Speaker 1: watched it because it was still largely the same cut,
Speaker 1: though the pieces of the word print there were interesting.
Speaker 1: And on that documentary called I Believe the Orgy of Power,
Speaker 1: Tinto is saying that he really has no interest in
Speaker 1: revisiting Clicula, and that was his stance for a long time.
Speaker 1: When I first brought it up, he was skeptical, and understandably,
Speaker 1: Then I showed him a reconstruction I had done I
Speaker 1: had attempted with the footage available at that point, which
Speaker 1: got him more positive about it. And I did an
Speaker 1: interview with him that was shown on the Internet and
Speaker 1: people got excited already in twenty thirteen. I believe what
Speaker 1: he said, if he can get access to the entire footage,
Speaker 1: it has to be done. It has to be I
Speaker 1: think he used even these words, it has to be done,
Speaker 1: something like that, and though it is a very delicate topic,
Speaker 1: of course. And then when I got in contact with
Speaker 1: Kelly Holland, which was say a big coincidence. I got
Speaker 1: in contact with her shortly after she had acquired Penthouse,
Speaker 1: and she was so open to this project. She allowed
Speaker 1: me to go into the archive to actually see what
Speaker 1: they have at in Mission calicular. We see how it goes.
Speaker 1: Because I went to Penthouse in twenty sixteen and I
Speaker 1: was given a box with a few video tapes basically saying, look,
Speaker 1: this is the material we have about Calicula. Some hard
Speaker 1: distant videotapes which are basically the masters for the Imperial
Speaker 1: Edition DVD box set, and then calling around of your
Speaker 1: people and so on. It was quite exciting. We were
Speaker 1: able to locate the warehouse where the entire raw footage
Speaker 1: was stored boxes up on boxes Mission calicular, you can
Speaker 1: see the pictures I took on those days. It so
Speaker 1: was such excitement. It felt like Christmas and Birthday and
Speaker 1: all kinds of celebrations in one. And you know there is,
Speaker 1: for example, the Russ Lloyd cut off a film which
Speaker 1: is not of such great interest to me personally because
Speaker 1: I want to reconstruct Hinto's vision. But for example, when
Speaker 1: Tinto started editing Russ Lloyd and the team apparently started
Speaker 1: editing the film parallel to his, which she actually wasn't
Speaker 1: okay with from my knowledge, And when Tinto wasn't able
Speaker 1: to continue editing, Ross Lloyd finished his Rosslloyd cut. But
Speaker 1: then the producers in the seventies didn't like that cut
Speaker 1: and shelve it and had Nino Barakli I believe, come
Speaker 1: in to do some more editing. And there were just
Speaker 1: cans with the Ross Lloyd cuts in black and white
Speaker 1: thirty five millimeter film. I was thinking, if I did
Speaker 1: this film, if we succeed with this project, we would
Speaker 1: include so much bonus feature. It would be the reconstructed
Speaker 1: hopefully their director's cut. If Tinto would participate and he
Speaker 1: has the last word in editing, will do Tinto buses
Speaker 1: director's cut on one disc. Another disc will be the
Speaker 1: Ross Lloyd cut just for completionists and completely unknown edit
Speaker 1: of the film. I found a silent thirty five millimeter
Speaker 1: and white footage for the Rosslloyd cut. The audio must
Speaker 1: have been somewhere else. Basically, these boxes were packed, and
Speaker 1: I would say, if you looked at them as an outsider,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't make so much sense. But if you knew
Speaker 1: the production history, it started to make sense to me.
Speaker 1: These boxes were packed chronologically. They first packed the footage
Speaker 1: that they were done with at this point and so on.
Speaker 1: That was impression I got. So I thought, we'll do
Speaker 1: the Tinto vas cut hopefully if he participates, then we
Speaker 1: do the Rouzlloyd cut as a bonus feature. Then we
Speaker 1: might do the nineteen eighty R rated cut. Was it
Speaker 1: eighty or eighty one? Eighty two eighty three? Sian So
Speaker 1: I had the idea to do all these things to
Speaker 1: add so much bonus material. There has always been these
Speaker 1: rumors about a longer cut off Caliculus greening in Caun.
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert on those rumors, because, as I said,
Speaker 1: I was mostly interested in the production of the film,
Speaker 1: not in the post production that happened when Tinto couldn't continue.
Speaker 1: But I believe that it might be the footage that
Speaker 1: was cut out of the con version. To my knowledge,
Speaker 1: though I never confirmed, the impression was that at the
Speaker 1: trade fair in cann they did show a longer version
Speaker 1: of the film which included more hardcore pornography Bob Gucci
Speaker 1: owners shot after the fact, so from my understanding, it
Speaker 1: would be basically the regular theatrical version plus more pornography.
Speaker 1: But I didn't get to watch that. An exciting and
Speaker 1: at the same time sometimes somewhat frustrating experience, because when
Speaker 1: you handle thirty five millimeter film you have to have
Speaker 1: specialized machines to even view it, and I only had
Speaker 1: access to such machines briefly, so I was able to
Speaker 1: unspool some roles for a foot or two and look
Speaker 1: at the pictures get an impression on was on it.
Speaker 1: Then I was able to watch a few reels, which
Speaker 1: was really interesting. Now combining multiple visits to the archive.
Speaker 1: This the process of film preser is so interesting, especially
Speaker 1: when you think about things like the audio, and that
Speaker 1: you have so many things around audio. You've got the
Speaker 1: production audio, you've got the ADR recordings, you've got sound
Speaker 1: effects music. The music in the version of Caligi that
Speaker 1: we've seen is so different than when I'm sure that
Speaker 1: Tindergrass wanted and just to be able to bring back
Speaker 1: that score would have been a real triumph. When Tinto
Speaker 1: was in the midst of editing Callig You Love Fjorenzo Kapi,
Speaker 1: the composer, was assigned as the composer for the film,
Speaker 1: and Fiorenzo Capi had done music for other films of
Speaker 1: Tinto already, for example Saloon Kitty. When you watch Salon Kitty,
Speaker 1: a lot of the soundtrack. The film is set in
Speaker 1: the late thirties early forties, and the soundtrack sound so
Speaker 1: period correct. For a long time, I tried to find
Speaker 1: the waltz from Salon Kitty, until I realized it's an
Speaker 1: original composition for the movie. By now soundtrack has been
Speaker 1: released and from an understand ending when Tinto did the film,
Speaker 1: there were some temporary soundtracks in place already. I was
Speaker 1: able to locate them also, which just gave the rhythm
Speaker 1: for some scenes that had choreographies at them, and then
Speaker 1: the final soundtrack would have largely been done after the
Speaker 1: film is edited. That's why I thought I want to
Speaker 1: have control over scanning and digitizing this archive, because it
Speaker 1: was such a complex combination. Of course, we have the
Speaker 1: final film with the final sound mix as it stands,
Speaker 1: where you we have voices and music and everything together.
Speaker 1: Then we have the individual redubbing reels. I remember a
Speaker 1: lot of them where not in the best condition. They
Speaker 1: have full code thirty five millimeter magnetic film, basically like
Speaker 1: a cassette tape, just thirty five millimeter wide with perforation.
Speaker 1: They gave off a very vinegary odor, which is a
Speaker 1: sign that they're decomposing, but those can usually be played
Speaker 1: back one more time if you bake them at a
Speaker 1: high heat. So the idea was to also digitized the
Speaker 1: entire audio and the onset audio as well. Though in
Speaker 1: a lot of Tinto Brass's films, in the Italian films
Speaker 1: of the seventies, the onset audio wasn't recorded with the
Speaker 1: same care you would record it these days, because oftentimes
Speaker 1: it was expected that the film would be redubbed, and
Speaker 1: mostly it's just a temporary track to have a reference.
Speaker 1: But the idea was to digitize the onset audio, the
Speaker 1: post dubbing audio, and so on, assemble the film in
Speaker 1: the reconstruction I assembled to showed you a few people
Speaker 1: back then, with the permission of your rights holders, I
Speaker 1: used some parts of Buono Nikolay's score for the final film,
Speaker 1: and just some parts I felt are more appropriate, just
Speaker 1: as a temporary placeholder. When you watch the theatrical cut
Speaker 1: of Caliculi, it starts out with procoffee of Romeo and
Speaker 1: Juliet's with this very grand classical music that wasn't supposed
Speaker 1: to how the film starts at all. I was able
Speaker 1: to recover struck the opening. It starts with a blurry
Speaker 1: frame of Calicular's face. You have the credits underneath, and
Speaker 1: it's very quiet, just a little bit of soundtrack underneath it.
Speaker 1: And then suddenly it goes and focus on Calicular wakes
Speaker 1: up from the nightmare. So that's the opening of the film,
Speaker 1: for example, and that sets off a very different tone.
Speaker 1: And I remember when I talked about doing this project,
Speaker 1: coming from a technical background. Also, I was very much
Speaker 1: thinking how do we approach this. I had the hope
Speaker 1: that for a lot of the actors we would be
Speaker 1: able to use their redubbed lines Peter O'Toole for example,
Speaker 1: Surgeon Gielgud and so on. They came back after the
Speaker 1: film was edited for its theatrical version to redo their lines.
Speaker 1: We have very clear deliveries of them, but some of
Speaker 1: their lines were not redubbed because the theatrical cut got
Speaker 1: rid of some scenes. So I thought for some other lines,
Speaker 1: we'll use the on set audio and digitally clean it up.
Speaker 1: For example, the actor who portrays Mac Crow and the
Speaker 1: actor Coo Portray's career, they had some strong Italian accents.
Speaker 1: They are Italian actors, and they were always supposed to
Speaker 1: be dubbed by some English or American actor, so I
Speaker 1: thought some party would have to readub But basically my
Speaker 1: idea was to rescue as much of the original audio
Speaker 1: as possible, which was also have. This all explains why
Speaker 1: this would have been a very big and tough project
Speaker 1: to do, and I'm very perfectionist. When I look at
Speaker 1: Tinto Brasse's edits, for example, the work print, my idea
Speaker 1: was to reconstruct it in color from the negative footage
Speaker 1: down to the last frame. So if a shot survives
Speaker 1: in the negative, two frames short, I'm going to find
Speaker 1: that shot in the positive and put those frames back there.
Speaker 1: So I'm really a perfectionist when it comes to that,
Speaker 1: And I felt that if Tinto is participating, it's his
Speaker 1: cut anyway, and if Tinto wouldn't want to participate, and
Speaker 1: if I reconstruct the film, I would do it as
Speaker 1: faithfully as I can in his spirit, while always being
Speaker 1: transparent that this is just an informed reconstruction. And it
Speaker 1: was important to me that the final result in either
Speaker 1: case should be a film that represents what Tintobrass was
Speaker 1: going for in the seventies, as much as it's possible
Speaker 1: to say. If he had done it himself now after decades,
Speaker 1: it would have been his film. If I would have
Speaker 1: done it, it would have been an informed reconstruction.
Speaker 3: What sounds like you would have maybe needed more than
Speaker 3: just you to do this. What kind of team would
Speaker 3: you have put together for this?
Speaker 1: I was actually in conversation with some professional technicians and
Speaker 1: that was a wonderful time. And I don't know in
Speaker 1: how much detail I can go. I should go. But
Speaker 1: basically I felt there were some people who were very
Speaker 1: knowledgeable about this, who were very on board with this.
Speaker 1: There was a time, even after Mission Caligula, I was
Speaker 1: very optimistic this could be done to a high technical standard.
Speaker 3: Do you even show that a little bit in Mission Caligula?
Speaker 3: I remember one sequence particularly where you had the black
Speaker 3: and white footage and then you do a pushover and
Speaker 3: you've got the colored footage there, So you're showing split
Speaker 3: screen of new, pristine looking footage on one side and
Speaker 3: then the black and white workprint on the other, And
Speaker 3: I'm just like, wow, if this is a promise of
Speaker 3: things to come, that's going to be pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: That particular shot was the same in Tinto's workprint and
Speaker 1: in the released cut. When Russ Lloyd did his cut
Speaker 1: in the seventies and then Tinto wasn't there anymore. He
Speaker 1: was dismissed that people after Rouss Lloyd took some shots
Speaker 1: from Tinto's cut and put them back into the final film.
Speaker 1: So a few shots that already had in color, but
Speaker 1: most of it would have been you. I got to say,
Speaker 1: the Rouss Lloyd cut it wasn't interesting look using a
Speaker 1: lot of different footage, but I used interesting in a
Speaker 1: neutral way. I vastly preferred, but Tinto busted.
Speaker 3: You talk about the print that you put together that
Speaker 3: you were reviewed with Tinto, and with that using still frames,
Speaker 3: reconstructing things that way inside a mission. Colleagul, though you
Speaker 3: have the sequence of Caligula and Longiness and everybody else
Speaker 3: at that big party doing the whole thing of Caesar says.
Speaker 3: Sign of what you were showing to Tinto is that
Speaker 3: what you had reconstructed the idea of the stills with
Speaker 3: the subtitles.
Speaker 1: Yes, the version that I showed him around twenty thirteen
Speaker 1: was trying to tighten the editing using alternate footage where
Speaker 1: I found it and where the footage was missing. I
Speaker 1: used stills and subtitles to give an indication of what
Speaker 1: was to come. It was ever supposed to be released
Speaker 1: that way, and it hasn't been released that way. But
Speaker 1: this was my idea and basically, if I talk about
Speaker 1: it from my old personal experience, it was a huge
Speaker 1: puzzle and a hugely exciting research project. Do's imagine when
Speaker 1: you get the still frames, when you suddenly find the
Speaker 1: footage in motion and you see it for the first time.
Speaker 1: It is there are scenes in the film that have
Speaker 1: waded into intended the film, then Temple of Jupiter in
Speaker 1: the third act that are not in the theatrical version,
Speaker 1: where Calicular jumps into all these coins, which is shot
Speaker 1: in slow motion in the treasury, and so on. And
Speaker 1: there's one scene which I was able to reconstruct. This
Speaker 1: was a tough reconstruction. You see it in Mission Curricular
Speaker 1: on the ship in the end there is this already seen.
Speaker 1: Everybody is standing completely still when Calcular walks onto the
Speaker 1: ship and she asks are we ready or so? And
Speaker 1: then he shouts back and then everyone starts moving. And
Speaker 1: to reconstruct that first I had subtitles. Then I found
Speaker 1: in the making documentary I believe of Calicular from the
Speaker 1: seventies at some point. I believe it was there. My
Speaker 1: memory is not as clear about this because I've not
Speaker 1: thoughts about it in five years or so. But in
Speaker 1: the making of documentary, I believe there was a part
Speaker 1: where you hear Malcolm McDowell's shouting action and then I
Speaker 1: realized waits from this shot, so I put it there.
Speaker 1: And with a lot of scenes, I couldn't wait to
Speaker 1: have the negatives digitized and the positives if some negative
Speaker 1: footage is missing, and you shall I explain what negative
Speaker 1: and positive is to some listeners.
Speaker 3: So negative footage is whenever there's killing or rapes or anything,
Speaker 3: and positive footage is like when they're outdoors and there's
Speaker 3: sunshine and things.
Speaker 1: Right. I just imagine if someone assumes that, like what
Speaker 1: kind of person I would sound? I want to use
Speaker 1: the negative footage wherever possible. And so all film connoisseurs,
Speaker 1: I apologize and make you to grief. But when you
Speaker 1: shoot a film, it's shot up on negative film stock.
Speaker 1: You know it from photography where for example, the darkest
Speaker 1: part is white for example in the footage, and then
Speaker 1: when you make a copy of that negative, it becomes
Speaker 1: the positive. So when you have a film pri and
Speaker 1: Queen and Theaters, it's made from a copy of the negative,
Speaker 1: which is positive, and you can project that, and the
Speaker 1: process has an inherent quality loss to it, because the
Speaker 1: negative has the highest quality. A positive copy has a
Speaker 1: loss in quality. If you make an internegative from a
Speaker 1: positive copy, it is even grainier. And when Tinto edited
Speaker 1: Callicula in the seventies, they did thirty five millimeters positive
Speaker 1: copies of all the footage. You usually don't edit the
Speaker 1: film with the negative footage initially because when editing you
Speaker 1: cut it apart, it gets dusty, it gets dirty. You'll
Speaker 1: put it together, you cut it apart, you work with it,
Speaker 1: and only when you finalize the edit that's made from
Speaker 1: positive footage. Then in a lab the negative is edited
Speaker 1: in a way to conform that on the lab condition
Speaker 1: so it doesn't get dirty. So the lap is usually
Speaker 1: the most protected, and in Calicular's case, Tinto edited the
Speaker 1: film on thirty five millimeter positive material. I'm pretty certain
Speaker 1: about that. Then his work print was taken apart and
Speaker 1: the copy was made on sixteen millimeter film. That was
Speaker 1: the copy of his work print that I found, And
Speaker 1: I found in the archived a lot of thirty five
Speaker 1: millimeter positive material left over from editing, and then there
Speaker 1: were parts of the negative. But a lot of the
Speaker 1: negative obviously has already cut apart to include parts used
Speaker 1: in the theatrical cut. So the negative of Calicula, I
Speaker 1: don't know how much survived. Large parts survived, but I
Speaker 1: figured when I edit the film, we'll scan everything. The
Speaker 1: negative footage has the highest resolution, the best quality, so
Speaker 1: we're going to use that wherever possible. But if Tinto
Speaker 1: chose a different shot in his work print that's no
Speaker 1: longer available in the negative footage, or of which maybe
Speaker 1: only half survives negative footage, we'll go to the thirty
Speaker 1: five millimeter positive footage. We're going to clean it up
Speaker 1: and use it substituted from there. It would have meant
Speaker 1: some shots. It might have been more grainy than others,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it would have been very noticeable.
Speaker 1: I felt that a lot of film stock was a
Speaker 1: much better condition than I had anticipated. To be honest,
Speaker 1: I was very looking forward to having it all scanned
Speaker 1: in lab conditions and having a huge database. I was
Speaker 1: also thinking about all the bonus material. I can tell
Speaker 1: you a few ideas that were going through my mind
Speaker 1: at that point because the archive was exciting or suggesting
Speaker 1: it to Kelly Holland, if I do this project, I
Speaker 1: might have a blog or a podcast or something where
Speaker 1: I show weekly discoveries from the archive, maybe parts of
Speaker 1: the raw footage that are not used in the film
Speaker 1: but that are interesting, or paperwork or still photos. There
Speaker 1: were more than ten thousand still photos in that archive,
Speaker 1: behind the scenes photos and so on. Yeah, because my
Speaker 1: idea used the negative footage the highest quality wherever possible.
Speaker 1: I guess there are many proper film restorations done that way,
Speaker 1: where they source footage from various isn't assemble the best
Speaker 1: possible version that adheres to the artistic intention.
Speaker 3: I keep thinking of jigsaw puzzles, especially because this was
Speaker 3: right before the pandemic, and I keep thinking this would
Speaker 3: have been Alexander's pandemic project, his major jigsaw puzzle that
Speaker 3: he's doing throughout that time. When you do a puzzle,
Speaker 3: you've got the box cover and you know what you're
Speaker 3: aiming for, and it feels like you were the one
Speaker 3: that designed the box cover. By finding the work print
Speaker 3: the first eighty four minutes, piecing together all of these
Speaker 3: other scenes that would have been inside of Tinto's version
Speaker 3: of it, so it feels like you were aiming at
Speaker 3: your own box cover. In a way.
Speaker 1: All I did was reconstructing what I could find out
Speaker 1: about Tinto's version, and of course the first half with
Speaker 1: the discovery of his work print, that was very exciting
Speaker 1: because that removed all the guests work except for the
Speaker 1: beginning I think read to five minutes in the beginning
Speaker 1: we're missing, but I was able to record construct something
Speaker 1: already and it worked quite well, and the second half
Speaker 1: of the film I have an idea of what it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be like. I also a conversation with
Speaker 1: Tinto and so on. Though I have to say my
Speaker 1: vast preference would have been to do something and then
Speaker 1: go to Tinto and if he has completely different ideas,
Speaker 1: we throw what I did out and do what he wants.
Speaker 1: That was my idea. I was actually very exciting to
Speaker 1: revisit it with him. My idea was to do all
Speaker 1: the preparation work, and as I said, I wanted to
Speaker 1: do a preliminary edit of the entire film that I
Speaker 1: feel works well, where I would just have taken his
Speaker 1: first eighty four minutes and then the second half with
Speaker 1: the footage that I found. Because it's such a huge
Speaker 1: and technical process, you have to go through all the
Speaker 1: different versions of the material and so on. So that
Speaker 1: would have been ten hours a day or whatever it takes.
Speaker 1: When that is done, traveled to him and casually go
Speaker 1: over it with him day by day. Tell me enough
Speaker 1: how much I looked forward to that opportunity, and so
Speaker 1: to me, it was always very clear that Tintobrass has
Speaker 1: to be involved. He has to be asked. I felt,
Speaker 1: if he decides not to do it as I said,
Speaker 1: I would have done a reconstruction that would have been
Speaker 1: very clear about what it is. But to me, it
Speaker 1: was important that he should be in.
Speaker 3: After you were removed from the project, did anybody ask
Speaker 3: you for your box cover? Did anybody say, hey, you
Speaker 3: already have a reconstruction, can we use this?
Speaker 1: Early on, when this other project started, I got contacted
Speaker 1: and asked if I could just show the work print
Speaker 1: or my research. Basically I hadn't taken any physical material
Speaker 1: from the archive. It was a video copy of file
Speaker 1: that I had with the permission of Kelly Holland that
Speaker 1: I restored, and basically I was very skeptical, what is
Speaker 1: happening here and why would I hand out the research?
Speaker 1: What's going on? And I mentioned that this is all
Speaker 1: stuff that I have done over big years, pretty valuable
Speaker 1: to me. And I had also never gotten paid for
Speaker 1: anything all my calicular research. I can say I never
Speaker 1: got paid for anything I did over these years. Everything
Speaker 1: happened out of idealism. Some people actually reached out to
Speaker 1: me over the years and asked me if I had
Speaker 1: made money from this. No, not even mission calicular is monetized.
Speaker 1: It's for free on YouTube. You can just watch it.
Speaker 1: And so basically I felt uncomfortable handing out the research
Speaker 1: the work print without knowing what happens to it. I
Speaker 1: want to keep Tinto's vision intact. But after my first hesitation,
Speaker 1: I never got asked again, so no one really tried.
Speaker 3: So what ended up being your pandemic project? What happened
Speaker 3: during twenty twenty twenty one? As you're in the world
Speaker 3: being shut down, just like I was, just like everybody listening.
Speaker 1: Was actually there was a project. I'm pretty excited it happened.
Speaker 1: I did a feature of them called fatzen Legen, which
Speaker 1: I shot in Paris in twenty nineteen in late twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: which was completely improvised, and I felt a little bit
Speaker 1: as if I'm doing a nineteen sixties film where you
Speaker 1: just improvise everything on the go, and I came back
Speaker 1: with so much footage. When the first lockdowns hit, I
Speaker 1: was in Los Angeles for a film premiere in February
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty. I returned to Germany on March thirteen
Speaker 1: or fourteen, twenty twenty, right into the lockdown, but I
Speaker 1: went straight at home and started to edit the film
Speaker 1: for about a year. I had so much time to
Speaker 1: edit it, and I'm very happy how that turned out.
Speaker 1: And to me, that's for silver lining, because if I
Speaker 1: had done Caligula, I couldn't have done that film. I
Speaker 1: would have loved to do Cliicula, but as I was
Speaker 1: unable to reconstruct Tinto's version, I just thought, okay, whatever,
Speaker 1: I'll go to Paris. I'll improvise a film, and I'm
Speaker 1: extremely proud of it. It's largely improvised. I tried to
Speaker 1: make it as elegant as possible, and when I came back,
Speaker 1: I had a huge bunch of footage and I myself
Speaker 1: had no idea how to put it together. It was
Speaker 1: a digsaw puzzle that developed, and that was my idea
Speaker 1: when doing it. So the first knockdown I didn't even
Speaker 1: notice much because I was sitting at home. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: remember there was a meme someone sent me which was
Speaker 1: so accurate. You saw a guy in a dark room
Speaker 1: sitting in front of the computer and it said film editor.
Speaker 1: Underneath this the same picture film editor in Lockdown.
Speaker 3: In the years since, we did both Caligular Air Mission
Speaker 3: Caligular episodes of the Projection Booth. I've been inundated with
Speaker 3: people sending me updates about this new cut, the ultimate
Speaker 3: cut is what they're calling yet so much so that
Speaker 3: I've had the black people because it's just I can't
Speaker 3: be as invested in this as other people are. I'm
Speaker 3: sure you've experienced the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's actually one of the reasons why I'm so grateful
Speaker 1: that we were able to do this interview today, because
Speaker 1: I get so many message and many messages are basically, oh,
Speaker 1: you have to be so happy. Without you, this wouldn't exist,
Speaker 1: and so on, and I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't realize some of them might have the mistaken belief
Speaker 1: that this new cut reconstructs Tintobrass's version. Tinder Boss himself
Speaker 1: distances himself from that version publicly did so in an article.
Speaker 1: Then I have those people say, oh, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if you're not involved. It's great that the film comes
Speaker 1: out in a new cut. But basically, my aim was
Speaker 1: always to release a film that adheres to the artistic
Speaker 1: intentions of the director who was assigned to do it,
Speaker 1: who spent a lot of time to do it, And
Speaker 1: basically that's why I'm also not interested in the new
Speaker 1: cut myself, I couldn't want it. I think I don't
Speaker 1: want to watch it because to me, it's just another
Speaker 1: version of the film that yet again does something different
Speaker 1: than what the director aimed for. And I was always
Speaker 1: when I looked at the post production in the seventies.
Speaker 1: That's what I can comment on. When Tinto Bus was dismissed,
Speaker 1: they tried to change the tone. They re ordered scenes,
Speaker 1: they removed scenes, and so on. They edited it in
Speaker 1: a slower way, so the entire film felt more so
Speaker 1: though moving. I wondered why no one had the idea
Speaker 1: to just go and at least attempt to have the
Speaker 1: same scene order. We have these scenes that the director shot,
Speaker 1: put them in the right correct order. Though, I feel
Speaker 1: any editor working on that material has to have a
Speaker 1: very deep knowledge of Tinto's films. I can tell when
Speaker 1: I looked at the raw footage. To me, it's obvious
Speaker 1: because when you look at my raw footage, it's also
Speaker 1: very similar. With video, it doesn't matter how much to
Speaker 1: your film. So very often I just leave a camera
Speaker 1: running and you have a very beautiful zoom, and then
Speaker 1: you have a really awkward zoom, which is just setting
Speaker 1: it up for a different view and so on. And
Speaker 1: when you looked at the footage of Calicula, I saw
Speaker 1: all these incredibly beautiful moments, and then I saw these
Speaker 1: moments that were obviously never meant to be included, which
Speaker 1: looked awkward, as on the camera operator readjusting his lens
Speaker 1: and so on, And I felt you have to watch
Speaker 1: Tinto's films thoroughly to get an idea of how he
Speaker 1: uses that, which shots to use which. When I watched
Speaker 1: his work print and when I watched the raw footage,
Speaker 1: I can tell you that there is a very elegantly
Speaker 1: filmed motion picture there with Clicula, which just hadn't come out.
Speaker 1: And I've not watched the new edition. As I said,
Speaker 1: I don't intend to watch it. But if that doesn't
Speaker 1: adhere to Tinto Buss's intentions, I think the motion picture
Speaker 1: that Tinto wanted is still hidden.
Speaker 3: I think I would almost be curious for you to
Speaker 3: take some of the footage that's been released in this
Speaker 3: ultimate cut and then go back to your work print again,
Speaker 3: which I'm sure you have no interest in doing. But
Speaker 3: there are now more things such as the Caesar says
Speaker 3: sequences there maybe not edited in the way that Tinto
Speaker 3: would have done it. But it is interesting to see
Speaker 3: some of these things that I've only heard about and
Speaker 3: that you've shown me via Mission Caligula to be able
Speaker 3: to say, oh, okay, this is the scene. This is
Speaker 3: what Alexander was talking about, like with Nervo as far
Speaker 3: as his suicide. But it is interesting now to finally
Speaker 3: see a little bit more of what you've brought to
Speaker 3: light in the past.
Speaker 1: There are two sequences that I personally have a high
Speaker 1: interest in. There is a sequence in the Temple of
Speaker 1: Jupiter which was cut entirely from the final theatrical film,
Speaker 1: where Caligula is supposed to sacrifice a bull and instead
Speaker 1: he kills a priest and then talks about Jupiter. And
Speaker 1: then he's raising fun where they collect coins and he
Speaker 1: jumps into those coins. When I reconstructed it, I knew
Speaker 1: one camera angle of that. I wonder how it's done here.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately it's not done here.
Speaker 1: What how is this Centle of Jupiter done?
Speaker 4: Then?
Speaker 3: I don't remember there being a Temple of Jupiter sequence
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 1: In this new version, we have Calicular declare himself a
Speaker 1: god in the Senate. Then it cuts to Calicular in
Speaker 1: Sesonia speaking while Cesnia is massaging him, standing on him
Speaker 1: and so on. Then we cut to the temple of
Speaker 1: Jupiter where he replaces the statue's heads with his. I
Speaker 1: think after that there's a scene where he yes exactly
Speaker 1: and when he is at a temple of Jupiter replacing
Speaker 1: the statue heads with his, he is doing his weird
Speaker 1: dance at the end of the scene, mocking long Ginas.
Speaker 1: The whole film in the second half gets a more
Speaker 1: satirical tone, which it felt was brilliantly done by Tinto,
Speaker 1: because the film is very provocative and somehow also funny
Speaker 1: in some bits and pieces and horrible in other bits
Speaker 1: and pieces, meaning very violent and so on. Caligula does
Speaker 1: this stance in the temple, and then he's raising money
Speaker 1: for the war on Britain, and then all these people
Speaker 1: walk around throw coins in this box and Calicula in
Speaker 1: the little giant. They walk up the stairs and put
Speaker 1: it in the treasury, and then Caligula jumps into the
Speaker 1: coins in the treasury, and then we cut to the
Speaker 1: scene where he's supposed to sacrifice a bull, and instead
Speaker 1: he kills the priest, and then he goes to bisiness.
Speaker 1: Treasury is now mine and then he looks Alongina saying,
Speaker 1: and you want to raise taxes. There's this entire sequence
Speaker 1: where he replaces the statues' heads, whereas Longinas talks about
Speaker 1: taxes that could be increased to fund the war, and
Speaker 1: Calicula says, if we increase a taxi to people won't
Speaker 1: like it, so takes a treasure instead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that last bit with the bull and everything is
Speaker 3: not there. The replacing of the heads is there now,
Speaker 3: but not this the ball and the gold coins weird.
Speaker 1: The replacing of the head, from my understanding, was so important.
Speaker 1: Curricula says he's a god. Everyone along with it. He
Speaker 1: takes the money from the treasury and so on. But
Speaker 1: with all this kind of more satirical overtones and bits,
Speaker 1: it's clear that he's not serious about it. He's trying
Speaker 1: to provoke them. He's now taking the money from the
Speaker 1: religious cult there and so on, And to me, that
Speaker 1: was a key sequence. And then this leads to the
Speaker 1: brothel ship scene, which starts so surreally with everybody standing
Speaker 1: still and Caliicular walks onto it in short action. This
Speaker 1: entire block of scenes to me was so important that
Speaker 1: it was entirely missing from the theatrical cut, because I
Speaker 1: believe the editors who were hired by Penthouse after Tinto
Speaker 1: left in the seventies, they wanted to make the film
Speaker 1: as serious as possible, and they got rid of everything
Speaker 1: that could be perceived as satirical and so on. So
Speaker 1: that was my impression I had back then.
Speaker 3: I would say that this new version follows in that
Speaker 3: more our tone, that it is not very funny at
Speaker 3: all all. The music is pretty bombastic at times and
Speaker 3: much more almost like a horror town at times.
Speaker 1: I remember, in the relief theatrical cut, we have the
Speaker 1: scene of the structure where Tiberius walks around his registructure
Speaker 1: with all these people performing on various acts, as he
Speaker 1: calls them living statues. In the theatrical cut there is
Speaker 1: some very gloomy, eerie sounding soundtrack underneath this entire scene,
Speaker 1: and it starts with this horrible thing where the soldier
Speaker 1: is forced to drink the wine and he's killed after
Speaker 1: Tiberius has returns and so on. And I realized when
Speaker 1: I looked at what Tinto had done in his work print,
Speaker 1: you saw shots of musicians with their instrument there. When
Speaker 1: I reconstructed this work print, I realized would have been
Speaker 1: in contrast to what we see, but so to say plausible,
Speaker 1: Tiberius has the structure and his musicians to kind of
Speaker 1: beat rhythmic Roman music. There while we observe all these things,
Speaker 1: I watched it with Tinto, we discussed it. There is
Speaker 1: also one sequence that was very important to me, when
Speaker 1: Caligula arrives in the beginning the entire scene where Calcula
Speaker 1: wakes up from his dream, and in the opening, we
Speaker 1: have the still frame of his face very blurry, very
Speaker 1: close up. It's a different take than the theatrical cut.
Speaker 1: And then he's talking about his dream. The camera slowly
Speaker 1: moves away, and then he arrives on Capri. We have
Speaker 1: these slaves working on the rocks and Caligula gets carried up.
Speaker 1: And that was a sequence that was missing in the
Speaker 1: work print. It just wasn't there. The pieces for the
Speaker 1: scene were gone, so I reconstructed that from scratch. I
Speaker 1: did have quite a lot of digital raw footage for
Speaker 1: that bit, and I discussed it with Tinto all so
Speaker 1: basically we have what I came up with and what
Speaker 1: Tinto seemed quite pleased about. Though obviously if you would
Speaker 1: have been involved, he would have gone over it with
Speaker 1: me again and he would have done it. Basically, Cliicular
Speaker 1: walks down this corridor with Nerva. In the theatrical cut,
Speaker 1: we hear some screams behind the curtain. But the way
Speaker 1: that I reconstructed it, you actually see a lot of
Speaker 1: scenes behind these curcles intercut very briefly. Some of them
Speaker 1: are very violent looking. Some of them are so over
Speaker 1: the top that they're just taking you out of the illusion,
Speaker 1: which is part of what was supposed to be done.
Speaker 1: And you have people running around behind there and getting
Speaker 1: tortured and so on while Caligula walks up and talks
Speaker 1: to Nerva. I wonder how was this done? If I
Speaker 1: may ask.
Speaker 3: Basically to get to create more of a pan across
Speaker 3: a landscape, and then there's a statue in the foreground,
Speaker 3: and then it's a dissolve into the hallway where we
Speaker 3: see Caligula and Nerva coming up. I don't think that
Speaker 3: you hear the sounds of the screams.
Speaker 1: Oh, that was a very tinto shot. A lot of
Speaker 1: raw footed there what happens behind the curtains. And I
Speaker 1: didn't put it into Mission Cliicular largely because I wanted
Speaker 1: to keep Mission Calcular PG. When I released it, on
Speaker 1: YouTube and SOW. But also we did that episode. You
Speaker 1: were so excited about Mission Calicular and you asked me
Speaker 1: when it can be seen that I briefly afterwards put
Speaker 1: it on Vimeo and YouTube with the permission of the
Speaker 1: Right Soldiers. And I'm very happy that this is out
Speaker 1: because I put a lot of moments from Sindo's work
Speaker 1: print in there. So when I pieced back Tinto's work print,
Speaker 1: as I said, it's a black and white sixty millimeter
Speaker 1: copy that was transferred to video, and I had that
Speaker 1: video copy. I made a digital copy of that when
Speaker 1: Kelly Holland was around the company. Then there was also
Speaker 1: a second work print on a very old video tape,
Speaker 1: which was almost the final cuts of the film. But
Speaker 1: there were some black and white shots, and by comparing
Speaker 1: the splice marks, I realized that they're actually also from
Speaker 1: Tinto's work print. So I had to piece back the
Speaker 1: black and white w and I believe in the workprint
Speaker 1: the first shot from Capri is there where actually we
Speaker 1: see the slaves working with the rocks and so on.
Speaker 1: So that was certainly a shot that Tinto wanted in it.
Speaker 1: When you think of the workprint beginning, is there Caligula
Speaker 1: waking up and so on. Then when Macro comes in
Speaker 1: and talks to him, there are gaps. Basically, the workprint
Speaker 1: got taken apart after Tinto was dismissed, and I believe
Speaker 1: it was put back into the raw footage and they
Speaker 1: started to do it, and then someone had the idea,
Speaker 1: let's make a backup copy. So some shots were already
Speaker 1: put back into the raw footage, So some shots are missing.
Speaker 1: So we have a few bits and pieces of arriving
Speaker 1: on carpri and on the corridor. Once you have Tiberius
Speaker 1: as pool, the work print is largely complete, and it
Speaker 1: had a very good flow to it. Some bits and
Speaker 1: pieces might have to be just streamlined a little bit.
Speaker 1: Someone in some angle moving an arm, and in the
Speaker 1: other angle the movement is starting anew. These were things
Speaker 1: that Tinto would have done when he went over the
Speaker 1: workprint again. And then when we go to the scene
Speaker 1: where Proculus is on the machine, on the killing machine,
Speaker 1: when Macro is killed, it's clear that this was a
Speaker 1: sequence that Tinto was in the midst of editing when
Speaker 1: he had to believe basically, when he was dismissed from
Speaker 1: the editing, because that sequence was largely unfinished. There were
Speaker 1: the same action repeated from a few shots, so it
Speaker 1: was clear that Tinto, since the midst of editing, had
Speaker 1: already gathered the material but couldn't find finish it. So
Speaker 1: when I did my reconstruction, I reconstructed that scene as
Speaker 1: much as possible from the work print footage of Tinto,
Speaker 1: and from that scene on. The rest was done by
Speaker 1: me in a style that I felt works without access
Speaker 1: to much raw footage, just as a kind of demonstration.
Speaker 3: Do you feel that Caligula was mad or that he
Speaker 3: was just screwing around with people and just pushing it
Speaker 3: as far as he could, just see how far power
Speaker 3: can go.
Speaker 1: I believe it's actually one of the topics of the
Speaker 1: film that it's open to interpretation because he's doing a
Speaker 1: lot of very horrible acts. He could say no sane
Speaker 1: person would do it. At the same time, I'm not
Speaker 1: an expert on any of those mental conditions, if it's pychopathic, sociopathic,
Speaker 1: or whatever. But I feel in the first half of
Speaker 1: the film he gets absorbed in all the power he has,
Speaker 1: and the horrible rape scene with Proculus and Livia, I
Speaker 1: feel is a combination because he just does it and
Speaker 1: no one dares to interfere. And I feel the film
Speaker 1: is not so much about Calicular himself. It's more about
Speaker 1: the structure of power. And I find it interesting he
Speaker 1: walks into the wedding, he rapes both the bright and
Speaker 1: the groom, and nobody including them, try to resist or
Speaker 1: fight back, even though it's obvious that a lot of
Speaker 1: people are very uncomfortable, and that's just the structure of power.
Speaker 1: People know he can't do this, he is allowed to
Speaker 1: do this, and as I see the film, until his illness,
Speaker 1: he might not be insane that he's certainly a very
Speaker 1: cruel person without empathy. If this is my interpretation, I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about what Tinto wanted. And he gets swept
Speaker 1: up in this power and all these acts that he
Speaker 1: can do, and then she realizes how everybody just does
Speaker 1: everything he does, and I feel the second half is
Speaker 1: pretty anarchist, pretty provocative. He tries to disassemble this whole system.
Speaker 1: He tries to get more and more outrageous. There's one scene, well,
Speaker 1: he says, I don't know what else I can do
Speaker 1: to provoke them at which is very important in the
Speaker 1: Caesar says, then I think, as these are senators. Well,
Speaker 1: if there's important, why do they allow me to do
Speaker 1: all the things? I don't know how to provoke them?
Speaker 1: And I felt the ending of the film. I've often
Speaker 1: thought about it. We have this system that we see
Speaker 1: that's apparently pretty broken because Curricular can do a lot
Speaker 1: of cruel acts and nobody stops him, and the people
Speaker 1: were supposed to act in the interests of the people
Speaker 1: act in their own interest. The senators and so on.
Speaker 1: They just do anything Clicular does to be safe. And
Speaker 1: instead of changing that system, they get rid of him
Speaker 1: and appoint Claudius, who in real life apparently was quite
Speaker 1: different that in the film. He's portrayed as someone with
Speaker 1: some mental deficits, and they appoint him to have another figurehead.
Speaker 1: So the whole system stays. So I had the feeling
Speaker 1: that Curricular that's not only a feeling. Tint To himself
Speaker 1: said it. Clicular is a very political film. I find
Speaker 1: it narratively quite well done, the film that Tinto wanted
Speaker 1: to do. Basically, it starts and we always have hits
Speaker 1: that are a bit weird. He has this affair with
Speaker 1: his sister, but in the beginning he's a scared young man.
Speaker 1: But again there is something a little bit of or
Speaker 1: to say narratively, And when we see Tiberius, he tries
Speaker 1: to behave the best he can and he's scared, So
Speaker 1: in the beginning I would say there is an element
Speaker 1: of sympathy. Then when Nerva commits suicide, Calicular is curious,
Speaker 1: but at the end he gets this aggressive fit where
Speaker 1: he pushes Nerva under Liar, where he shows Liar with
Speaker 1: I feel is showing a kind of more cruel side
Speaker 1: to him. I feel the further we go, the more
Speaker 1: hints we get. And when Tiberius is supposedly dead and
Speaker 1: Calicular stands there with the mirror and Fiberius wakes up again,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting scene. We feel that Calicula wants to strike,
Speaker 1: but somehow he can, And when Macro arrives, we get
Speaker 1: an impression again that he's more a likable guy who
Speaker 1: can't bring himself to kill Tiberias. And I found it
Speaker 1: interesting in the first half a lot of the things
Speaker 1: he does when he has Macro arrested, even though he
Speaker 1: has Jamelis arrested, it could be in the frame work
Speaker 1: of that cruel world there be justified because to him
Speaker 1: it's killed or be killed in this society that's depicted
Speaker 1: in the film. Macro had Siberia's killed, maybe Macro will
Speaker 1: kill Calicular if Curricular doesn't go the way he likes
Speaker 1: with Jamelus in his view, removing a threat to his
Speaker 1: legitimacy and so on, and talking about the film not
Speaker 1: about real life. My ethics and real life are different.
Speaker 1: In the film, it might appear from the character's perspective
Speaker 1: more justified. Then he does these things like the rape.
Speaker 1: I feel the rape. That's a real culmination to me.
Speaker 1: It's a fever dream of power, and it goes to
Speaker 1: his head and he just becomes cruel to people just
Speaker 1: because he can.
Speaker 12: I feel.
Speaker 1: The fever in itself is not as important as the
Speaker 1: sequence where he then walks through the streets of Rome,
Speaker 1: which is actually one of my favorite scenes, although Tintom
Speaker 1: Denver got to edit it. But that scene where he
Speaker 1: walks through the streets of Rome for the first time
Speaker 1: he actually sees the people of Rome. It's first encounter
Speaker 1: with the actual people. And though I interpret it, he
Speaker 1: realizes that all these senators around him, they don't act
Speaker 1: in the interest of these people there. It's a separate world.
Speaker 1: They just like to stay in power. So he does
Speaker 1: one outrageous thing after the other to provoke them and
Speaker 1: to shake up this entire structure. And so i'll talk
Speaker 1: about mad or not. I think it's a provocative political film.
Speaker 1: That's what it is, and the main character is serving
Speaker 1: that provocative political message. Basically in the end, she does
Speaker 1: all he can to provoke these senators and so on,
Speaker 1: she acts mad in front of them, but they don't
Speaker 1: dare to dispose of him, tell him no or so.
Speaker 1: Instead they just have him killed and replaced by someone
Speaker 1: they are not brave enough to confront someone.
Speaker 3: That's something I hate to be the very bad news again. Possibly,
Speaker 3: but the sequence when merv kills himself in the ultimate cut,
Speaker 3: there is no shot of Caligula pushing him under. So
Speaker 3: there's an odd sequence where, nervous in the pool, he
Speaker 3: has given more of the talk that you've talked about,
Speaker 3: as far as it's not that sequence that we see
Speaker 3: in the finished film. It is much more of him
Speaker 3: calling out Tiberius. But Tiberius does put his hand forward,
Speaker 3: his fist forward, and I think that what's missing is
Speaker 3: maybe Nerva kissing the ring, because it looks like he's
Speaker 3: holding out his fist for Nerva to do that, but
Speaker 3: you just get a close up of Peter O'Toole's face
Speaker 3: looking at Malcolm McDowell, and then eventually they stop, takes
Speaker 3: back his hand. You don't see what happened to his hand,
Speaker 3: and then they walk off, leaving Nerva in that bloody pool,
Speaker 3: and then the scene fades out, so there is no
Speaker 3: more to that.
Speaker 1: With the ring. I recall he holds out the hand,
Speaker 1: and in Tinto's work printed was done in this beautiful
Speaker 1: pan where you pan across the arm and so on,
Speaker 1: But I remember that Nerva doesn't kiss the ring there.
Speaker 1: But then I felt it was a moving moment where
Speaker 1: Peter O'Toole character, where Tiberius leaves and Calicular stays by himself.
Speaker 1: I felt there was an incredible sadness in Tiberius in
Speaker 1: that sequence. I guess one of the major differences in
Speaker 1: the released theatrical cut versus what Tinto intended was it
Speaker 1: in the initial scenes where we meet Tiberius with the
Speaker 1: pool and with this reddish structure, he's supposed to be
Speaker 1: drunk and you see him drinking repeatedly, which was the
Speaker 1: emphasize in the editing back then. So I feel when
Speaker 1: Nerva commits suicide. Tiberius is not drunk, he's sober, and
Speaker 1: we see a much more contemplative side of him, and
Speaker 1: it moves in that his friend has killed himself. Well,
Speaker 1: I find it important afterwards when Calicular gets to Nerva
Speaker 1: and asks about isis and so on many gets mad.
Speaker 1: I felt that's a very important moment for the character development.
Speaker 1: I just wonder why so much as missing? Why is this?
Speaker 1: I'm partial here, of course I want Tinto's version to
Speaker 1: be out, But why is this called the ultimate cut
Speaker 1: if it doesn't include all the scenes?
Speaker 3: That's a very good question. It is almost three hours long,
Speaker 3: and you really feel how long this is.
Speaker 1: When I discovered the work print, I reconstructed a workprint
Speaker 1: which is the first half. Then I put the second
Speaker 1: half together from the footaget that was available, and that
Speaker 1: version was around one hundred and sixty eight minutes long.
Speaker 1: So it is shorter, but it includes more scenes. Apparently
Speaker 1: is passively with windows editing style, likely because he intercuts
Speaker 1: things and they are edited in a very quick way.
Speaker 1: I would say every listener who listens to this, they
Speaker 1: should watch Salon Kitty, not for the content, just for
Speaker 1: the editing style. And I feel from Varsalon Kitty, also
Speaker 1: from mirosu Bianc, another Tinto film, or from Cocoa Gola.
Speaker 1: If you just disregard to storyline, if you just follow
Speaker 1: how is it edited? You can see how quickly a
Speaker 1: lot of things are done, at how one scene intercuts
Speaker 1: to the next. Because honestly, if you didn't know about this,
Speaker 1: so this cut is longer than the preliminary reconstruction I had,
Speaker 1: but includes less scenes, it's just interesting, let's put it
Speaker 1: that way.
Speaker 3: So obviously, I know that you don't want to stirrup
Speaker 3: any hornets nests, you don't want to upset anybody with this,
Speaker 3: and I know that you've tried to distance yourself from
Speaker 3: this new ultimate cut just because it is such a
Speaker 3: heartache for you. But I was curious if I read
Speaker 3: any quotes about this project, would you be up for
Speaker 3: possibly giving me your first impressions as to the validity
Speaker 3: or possible not validity of these depends on the quote?
Speaker 3: All right, sounds good. There has been discussion about who
Speaker 3: actually discuss the footage. There was one article that says
Speaker 3: that the producer of this new version is the one
Speaker 3: that found the treasure trove of material that doesn't sound
Speaker 3: like Mischion caligular whatsoever.
Speaker 1: This is quite an interesting quote. I would say, to
Speaker 1: give benefit of the doubt, it's hopefully a misunderstanding. And
Speaker 1: because the footage was put away in the early eighties,
Speaker 1: I believe it was occasionally accessed again, at least in parts,
Speaker 1: also for the Imperial Edition in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: But when I went to see Kelly Holland in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen a penthouse, no one had done any idea where
Speaker 1: this footage was, and as I said, I had to
Speaker 1: pull some strings to figure out and so on. It
Speaker 1: was quite adventurous to finally find this archive. And according
Speaker 1: to Kelly Holland, the footage was about to be destroyed
Speaker 1: because apparently it was forgotten about and not paid for
Speaker 1: a long time. That's what she says in Mission calicular.
Speaker 1: I don't know the exact quote, but you can watch
Speaker 1: it in the documentary. So essentially the footage was all there,
Speaker 1: and they say when this new project happened, the company
Speaker 1: knew where the footage was because I had told Kelly
Speaker 1: Holland and so on. It was not a secret. So
Speaker 1: I wouldn't go so far to say I discovered the footage.
Speaker 1: I rediscovered it after many years in twenty sixteen, let's
Speaker 1: put it that way. And back then it moved me
Speaker 1: very much when Kelly Holland told me that if I
Speaker 1: hadn't come in at that time, the footage would have
Speaker 1: been destroyed likely and that might make me feel, oh,
Speaker 1: right place, right time. Everything is in a flow, and
Speaker 1: here's the work for now, we get Tinto involved in.
Speaker 1: Tinto is still around, he can still do his cuts,
Speaker 1: and basically the people who are doing this new cut,
Speaker 1: but hadn't even heard of them until two years after
Speaker 1: discovering the footage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been trying my best to find the pedigree. Obviously,
Speaker 3: you've put in decades of work on this project before
Speaker 3: you even had the chance to really dive in and
Speaker 3: complete it. But yeah, I'm just trying to find how
Speaker 3: the project got put in the hands of someone that
Speaker 3: I could not find any sort of restoration background or
Speaker 3: history at all.
Speaker 1: I have no ideas, to be honest, This new project
Speaker 1: appeared out of the blue for me as well. And
Speaker 1: again I don't want to go into much detail, but
Speaker 1: initially I had assumed these are people who are supposed
Speaker 1: to assist in my restoration or something like that, until
Speaker 1: I found out that basically, yeah, this is what it
Speaker 1: is now.
Speaker 3: I had also read that Nathaniel Thompson knew where this
Speaker 3: footage was and was able to provide that information to Penthouse. Finally,
Speaker 3: is that true?
Speaker 1: She was the one I contacted when Penthouse said there
Speaker 1: is no footage and so on, and he had worked
Speaker 1: on the Imperial Edition, and I get along with sim
Speaker 1: very well. I remember the first time I went to
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, I met with him. He was one
Speaker 1: of the people I really admired for his work on
Speaker 1: the Imperial Edition. He had very little time back then
Speaker 1: when doing it, so he couldn't put more together. And
Speaker 1: so I contacted him and asked, oh, do you know
Speaker 1: where the footage was and so on, and then he
Speaker 1: had some memorisons. All that led to the rediscovery of
Speaker 1: the footage, which is why I'm also saying I helped
Speaker 1: to rediscover it sort of Penthouse where it was.
Speaker 3: We were talking about that Capri scene and one quote
Speaker 3: I read about that, because there are some digital effects
Speaker 3: in this new version as well. I'm not sure if
Speaker 3: you're aware of that, but the producer of this new
Speaker 3: version was talking about how he replaced or extended backgrounds
Speaker 3: in this new version, and he said, quote, it's respectful
Speaker 3: of the performers and the audience is to take the
Speaker 3: parts that look like a high school play and make
Speaker 3: it match the parts of the set that were completed
Speaker 3: as the Nati envisioned. For the transition to Capri, we
Speaker 3: drew the shoreline has a look from the real Tiberius's villa.
Speaker 3: In other scenes, Donati painted elaborate backdrops and would never
Speaker 3: have just hung a pink curtain to represent the landscape.
Speaker 3: So we're keeping in line with both the rest of
Speaker 3: this film but also the set designs he'd made for
Speaker 3: other films. I'm a fan of Danillo Donati and wanted
Speaker 3: the audience to see what he intended for them to see.
Speaker 1: This is actually a very puzzling quote to me when
Speaker 1: I think of it. Donati did the set design for
Speaker 1: Felini's Casanova a little bit prior, and that film has
Speaker 1: some more abstract scenes in it. I remember a scene
Speaker 1: where Casanova is on a boat and the seed is
Speaker 1: made of plastic sheets that are moving. To me, this
Speaker 1: sounds as if you take Felini's Casanova and replace the
Speaker 1: plastic sheets with cgi water of the sea and the
Speaker 1: scene with the backdrop. We're really talking about a matter
Speaker 1: of taste here. Some people would prefer a photorealistic island,
Speaker 1: some people prefer a more theatrical staging. The film was
Speaker 1: shot with the sets the way they are, so I
Speaker 1: think they should stay the way they are. And if
Speaker 1: they hardly were alive and we could ask him, that
Speaker 1: might be a different story. But here I really don't
Speaker 1: see the point in this. And again, why is it
Speaker 1: called the ultimate cut? If you change the footage, if
Speaker 1: you remove some These are not angry questions. These is
Speaker 1: genuine curiosity. Why do you change things instead of trying
Speaker 1: to make it the way they were intended to. I'm
Speaker 1: a historian as well as a filmmaker. I have two degrees,
Speaker 1: a Bachelor in Audiovisual Media and a Bachelor of Master
Speaker 1: in history. And with Calicula, I felt I want to
Speaker 1: preserve what was shot, and I think I know which
Speaker 1: scene he means with the backdrop with this white cloth,
Speaker 1: which I felt was a brilliant scene because it shows
Speaker 1: this morning mood and it looks like a theater stage play.
Speaker 1: I know with the Capri scene in the film Yoca Lego,
Speaker 1: Lie In the Italian edition they put a shot of
Speaker 1: the Isle of Capri for the transition, But the way
Speaker 1: that Tinto could have done it wouldn't have involved any
Speaker 1: look at the island of Capri. It would have been impressionist.
Speaker 1: It starts with Caligula being carried up the slope, so
Speaker 1: to be quite honest to me personally, doing any digital
Speaker 1: trickery with the footage, except for cleaning it up, would
Speaker 1: be a big no go. Tinto did the film with
Speaker 1: a certain vision in mind. Basically what was filmed. Tinto
Speaker 1: made it work, and the Capri scene works. I just
Speaker 1: watched a few days ago, just for my reference, the
Speaker 1: beginning of the work print again and it works well.
Speaker 1: Macro talks about going to Capri, we cut to Caligula
Speaker 1: being carried up there. It's very clear where it is.
Speaker 1: We don't need an establishing shot of the island, and
Speaker 1: I feel this is the special thing about the film. Clicular,
Speaker 1: a lot of it looks quite artificial, quite stagy. And
Speaker 1: then there is a scene where he walked through the
Speaker 1: scenes of Rome which were filmed in a thermi carame
Speaker 1: is the German word thermi in Rome in the ruins,
Speaker 1: and that looks very real. Again, we suddenly have this
Speaker 1: dirty surroundings. So I felt in Caligula he's getting from
Speaker 1: the more artificial looking surroundings into the real world in
Speaker 1: that scene suddenly, and it all makes sense.
Speaker 3: It's not like the movie was taken away from Tinto
Speaker 3: during the art direction phase or the set direction phase.
Speaker 3: It was during the editing phase. So it feels like
Speaker 3: that would be where you want to concentrate your efforts.
Speaker 1: When you think of Tinto's working style, he was great
Speaker 1: with improvisation, which is why I like his style so much.
Speaker 1: When he watched called Couring Gola deadly sweet, He's just
Speaker 1: in London capturing things, and a lot of it was
Speaker 1: just what spur of the moment, spontaneous and with the
Speaker 1: set design of Caliguia, no matter what happened there or
Speaker 1: let's say, if a set should it be more complete
Speaker 1: or not, I don't even know about this. I was
Speaker 1: more concerned with how the film was actually shot. Tinto
Speaker 1: shot the film the way he felt works, and if
Speaker 1: something in the set didn't work for whatever reason, Tinta
Speaker 1: would have put around it. So I feel it must
Speaker 1: be respected the film that was shot. And I think
Speaker 1: if you just put the film together the way it
Speaker 1: was intended by the director, which is not simple. But
Speaker 1: if you do this, it starts all making sense and
Speaker 1: you don't have to add anything in cgi the idea
Speaker 1: never occurred to me to add any element.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even when you're on Capri and you're in Tiberius's area,
Speaker 3: there's that shot of the whole presenium almost and it
Speaker 3: does feel very much like what it is, which is
Speaker 3: in a very elaborate sound stage.
Speaker 1: And basically that's what I mean. A lot of the
Speaker 1: film is done also in parts almost like a theater
Speaker 1: play with more stylized thing. What I find interesting when
Speaker 1: Caliicula is on the balcony of the Imperial Palace and
Speaker 1: there are a few scenes where he's on that balcony,
Speaker 1: the backdrop is clearly painted. Parts of the film actually
Speaker 1: remind me of a play, of a more experimental play.
Speaker 1: Other parts are very filmmaking. Really, it all makes sense
Speaker 1: and it starts the flow if you put it together.
Speaker 3: That really checks out, especially when you think of Sizanna
Speaker 3: giving birth basically on stage, and she is a centerpiece
Speaker 3: of that whole stage production of the birth of Caligula's daughter.
Speaker 1: Yes, and that felt let's say I feel that when
Speaker 1: you watch Felini's Casanova, you have this very artificial look
Speaker 1: to many sets. It doesn't look like the real world,
Speaker 1: and I feel that we would have similar effect in Caligula.
Speaker 1: A lot of it is more stylized, more abstract. I
Speaker 1: was always very interested in Bresch's theory about theater and
Speaker 1: getting some detachment by making things deliberately take you out
Speaker 1: of the illusion of reality and so on. So when
Speaker 1: you edit the film the way the director intended to,
Speaker 1: it becomes quite a complex piece of art that would
Speaker 1: be discussed very differently.
Speaker 3: We're talking a little bit about the death of Mirva
Speaker 3: as well, and the producer of the new version of
Speaker 3: the Ultimate Cut also said for Perligula to have a
Speaker 3: story arc, it's important that he not be a murderer
Speaker 3: until he gets the ring. So talking about Tiberius's ring,
Speaker 3: even when he's trying to kill the corrupt Tiberius, he
Speaker 3: can't do it if power corrupts. He has to have
Speaker 3: a first act of someone who doesn't have it in
Speaker 3: him until the power gets into his blood. Then in
Speaker 3: the third act, when he loses the only person in
Speaker 3: the world he trusts, he loses it completely.
Speaker 1: That's a matter of interpretation. One might say with Nerva's suicide,
Speaker 1: suddenly he's alone with Nerva and he gets power over
Speaker 1: Nerva who's dying, and he uses that power, he gets
Speaker 1: anger and pushes him down. I don't see why that
Speaker 1: moment would be out of line. Also, I think, again,
Speaker 1: it's not a story arc like that in the film
Speaker 1: that was intended.
Speaker 3: And I guess Nerva's going to die anyway, so it's
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's murder or assisted suicide.
Speaker 1: What did you think of the CGI?
Speaker 3: It wasn't intrusive. The most intrusive thing was that opening
Speaker 3: dream sequence that just felt so tonally off. But then yeah,
Speaker 3: just there were still things like in my notes last night,
Speaker 3: when I was watching the Ultimate Cut, I was just like,
Speaker 3: that was a weird fade out. That was a weird crosst.
Speaker 3: There were a couple things, and there's one shot in
Speaker 3: particular where I was like, oh wow, the quality just
Speaker 3: degraded significantly. I was able to see some things from
Speaker 3: Mission caligular things that you had talked about where I
Speaker 3: was like, Okay, this is good to finally see this,
Speaker 3: and then yeah, weird things where yeah, we fade out
Speaker 3: before we have Caligular talking with Nerva. We've got the
Speaker 3: treasury scene is missing, so it's just, yeah, it's very
Speaker 3: weird what he chose to keep and lead out. So
Speaker 3: the one thing I found very, let's say, disheartening about
Speaker 3: this is that even the producer of The Ultimate Cut
Speaker 3: seems to not necessarily take Tinto Brass and his talent
Speaker 3: and his reputation very seriously. Someone on Facebook posted, if
Speaker 3: you were to make a movie called Oriana The Secretary
Speaker 3: with the Great Ass or something like that, then then
Speaker 3: listen to Tinto otherwise no, and then the producer responded, Okay,
Speaker 3: that did make me laugh out loud. Excellent point.
Speaker 1: To be honest, I find these words quite hard to hear,
Speaker 1: and I find it sad because I feel that every
Speaker 1: film restoration has to respect the director's talents, abilities, and style,
Speaker 1: and to accurately gauge the director's talent, abilities, and style.
Speaker 1: That's also very important to me. This quote basically is
Speaker 1: making fun. If a film is an erotic film, it's
Speaker 1: not to be taken seriously or something like that. I
Speaker 1: think this is about Tinto's reputation as a maker of
Speaker 1: erotic films. He did a lot of erotic films since
Speaker 1: the eighties. Tinto's reputation as a filmmaker in the sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies, he was very highly regarded his talents. His
Speaker 1: very first film in kilavore E Perduto, screened at the
Speaker 1: Venice Film Festival in sixty three. I believe then Umberto Eco,
Speaker 1: who is very famous. Obviously people know, he commissioned Tinto
Speaker 1: to do two short films for La Rinaldo di Milano
Speaker 1: called Tempolbo and Timpo Lavativo, which were screened in La
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve, where Tinto basically tries his hand as
Speaker 1: a completely new experimental filmic language, which worked very well.
Speaker 1: When I think of how highly regarded his films were.
Speaker 1: His film Lorelo screened at the Berlin Film Festival, and
Speaker 1: Tinto a few years later became a member of the
Speaker 1: jury at the Berlin Film Festival in the early seventies.
Speaker 1: His film Lover Cancer greened at Venice Film Festival in
Speaker 1: the early seventies and it received an award that believe
Speaker 1: it was the Critics Prize. Is that when you see Caligula.
Speaker 1: At that time, people regarded Tinto as an avant gardistic filmmaker.
Speaker 1: Who has done this provocative film salone, Kitty and Caligula
Speaker 1: would have continued this, and it's something for years I
Speaker 1: tried to make people aware of Tinto's film career that
Speaker 1: there's basically two phases, erotic films in the second half
Speaker 1: of the career and different films in the first half
Speaker 1: of his career, even though there is a lot of
Speaker 1: overlap and his style continues and so on. And I
Speaker 1: feel if you researched Tinto and his filmography, you immediately
Speaker 1: find all these films that even at their time of release,
Speaker 1: were artistically very highly regarded. And I feel that the
Speaker 1: footage for caliicular that I watched in the work print,
Speaker 1: it would have continued that legacy of Tinto and his experimental,
Speaker 1: often experimental editing that flows. I would say that's something
Speaker 1: that all of Tinto's films have in common, and his
Speaker 1: early films and also a lot of his late films
Speaker 1: is just his brieflowing style. When proach any kind of restoration,
Speaker 1: I want to approach it with a respect for the
Speaker 1: artist's intentions and for the artist's talents. And it never
Speaker 1: once occurred to me too in quotation marks improve upon
Speaker 1: anything of Caligula. That was something I was very aware
Speaker 1: of when I'm working on this. Tinto would have had
Speaker 1: the last word if he were involved, it would be clear.
Speaker 1: If he wouldn't have been involved, I would have made
Speaker 1: a film informed on the work print and on his intentions,
Speaker 1: without putting my damp onto it. So to say, well,
Speaker 1: I've felt Caligula would have been released the way that
Speaker 1: Tinto Dous wanted it, it would be seen as a
Speaker 1: very different film. It would be seen as a huge
Speaker 1: provocative political film, an anarchist film. I think it would
Speaker 1: have been taken much more seriously artistically because a lot
Speaker 1: of violence of the film and a lot of the
Speaker 1: unpleasant scenes, they do make sense in the context that
Speaker 1: Tinto put them in. And this is something that makes
Speaker 1: me very sad that this vision beers still unrealized. The
Speaker 1: silver lining on all this is that I was able
Speaker 1: to release Mission Curricular, and I remember when I edited
Speaker 1: that film, and then you and I had our long
Speaker 1: conversations about Mission Curricular back a few years ago. I
Speaker 1: want to put as many interesting moments in there as possible,
Speaker 1: or people who like the film were really diving deeply
Speaker 1: into that film. Of course, Mission Curricular state PG. I
Speaker 1: didn't put any of the violence scenes in it ra
Speaker 1: any of that. But if you really study the editing
Speaker 1: of Curricular, and then if you go through Mission Curricular,
Speaker 1: you will see in the black and white work print
Speaker 1: some scene transitions and some things that people just speculated
Speaker 1: about prior. So at least I find in Mission Curricular
Speaker 1: you can still see where this project would have been going,
Speaker 1: and what does intensions wear. I think I think the
Speaker 1: only thing I really want people to know is that
Speaker 1: Mission Curricular and the idea to do a director's cut
Speaker 1: off calicular to reconstruct one is entirely different from what
Speaker 1: has come out now.
Speaker 3: So how about you? Are you able to put Caligula
Speaker 3: behind you? Or do you even want to put that
Speaker 3: behind you because you've spent so many years invested in
Speaker 3: this film.
Speaker 1: This is a really good question. Let's say if someone
Speaker 1: approached me today and said, I want to make it
Speaker 1: possible to do this cut, we'll try to get tinto
Speaker 1: involved and so on, I would be as excited as
Speaker 1: I was years ago. Though I don't know the condition
Speaker 1: the archive is in a few years ago, someone sent
Speaker 1: me a picture of the footage being scanned, which was
Speaker 1: apparently put up on social media where you could see
Speaker 1: a half frame in the beginning being sliced off, a
Speaker 1: half frame in the end sliced off. And I'm very
Speaker 1: thorough about getting every frame. But I don't know about
Speaker 1: the condition of the archive. But I think the excitement
Speaker 1: could be reawokened, but it would have to be serious
Speaker 1: because I talk to other people who are very involved
Speaker 1: in calige. You line various ways, and they all thought
Speaker 1: told me, there is this up and down. You get
Speaker 1: a lot of hope up and then stopped the hope
Speaker 1: and stop. Let's say, in my daily life, I don't
Speaker 1: try to think about it too much. I feel this
Speaker 1: interview is very important to me to get this viewpoint out,
Speaker 1: and I feel that listeners should also watch Mission calicular,
Speaker 1: listen to our prior conversations to get an idea of
Speaker 1: what the film was, what it was supposed to be. Like,
Speaker 1: I tend to not think about it too often. When
Speaker 1: I think about it, it's, let's say, a tragic work
Speaker 1: of art that exists in a ruined state. To me,
Speaker 1: when I look at this in a more metaphorical way,
Speaker 1: like a ruined from an ancient building or so, you
Speaker 1: can still gauge what the film was supposed to be like.
Speaker 1: But you don't really see the entire construction. And when
Speaker 1: you watch the theatrical cut, I don't know the new cut,
Speaker 1: but I guess this involves any cut that doesn't follow
Speaker 1: Tinto's intentions. It's basically impossible to see what Tinto was
Speaker 1: going for because so much was shot, so many interesting
Speaker 1: camera angle. When I looked at the work print, some
Speaker 1: parts just surprised me. When I saw them, I knew
Speaker 1: they existed, but then I saw them and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is how he did it. But I guess with
Speaker 1: Mission Curricular, there is enough out there so people can
Speaker 1: get an opinion. Though I find it said that you
Speaker 1: can't just intuitively watch Curricular the director's cut or curricular
Speaker 1: that reconstructed to us work print.
Speaker 3: I know you are never one to not be busy.
Speaker 3: What are you working on these days?
Speaker 1: I did a documentary which when I did my film
Speaker 1: Fits and Leave in Paris, we did a lot of
Speaker 1: behind scenes footage and I did a lot of documentaries
Speaker 1: about old artists, some of them have since passed away.
Speaker 1: That was Roger Ball and the Mohave Desert. That film
Speaker 1: was actually running for the Oscars in twenty eighteen. It
Speaker 1: was in competition. It didn't get to the short list,
Speaker 1: but it was in competition for short documentary, and I
Speaker 1: realized have so much footage of friends of mine who
Speaker 1: have since passed away and so on. So I decided
Speaker 1: to do a documentary called Cutting Squares, which is not
Speaker 1: yet released. It did have its world premiere in la
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago, which is an autobiographical look at
Speaker 1: my filmmaking and at the people I met there, and
Speaker 1: I got very positive feedback about it. It features a
Speaker 1: lot of encounter with interesting people, including hellwert Burger's very
Speaker 1: last time in front of film camera. I did a
Speaker 1: film with hellwood Berger called Revolution, which installed for various reasons.
Speaker 1: But I put a lot of putag into this documentary,
Speaker 1: so that is getting quite some interest and it makes
Speaker 1: me very happy.
Speaker 3: I think you might have been working out Revolution the
Speaker 3: last time that.
Speaker 1: We talked exactly basically that film. It started in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: I had written the screenplay in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: and normally I do my films very quickly, but this
Speaker 1: film Revolution, there were a few roadblocks happening scheduling wise
Speaker 1: and so on, and they had to recast a role,
Speaker 1: and then the Caligular thing happened, and basically I put
Speaker 1: that on ice. It's the only film of mine that
Speaker 1: I've ever put on ice. Parts of it I did
Speaker 1: as a film called gas Shaped Light, about a toxic relationship.
Speaker 1: Gas Shaped Light I did shortly after the Caligular project
Speaker 1: fell apart. It's about a relationship where a man is
Speaker 1: together with seemingly nice girl who keeps twisting his words
Speaker 1: around and making it more more difficult, which kind of
Speaker 1: was a darker film than my others. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I'm going to continue working on Revolution, but now
Speaker 1: the footage of Family Dagger is out in the film
Speaker 1: Cutting Square, so I'm happy about that to them. Right now,
Speaker 1: actually working to get potentially my PhD in history, I
Speaker 1: started some family history research. My family is from Covina.
Speaker 1: Originally it is a completely different chapter. I started to
Speaker 1: research my great grandfather more and I found so much
Speaker 1: that I might be able to turn it into a
Speaker 1: PhD thesis. So I'm working a lot in archive these days.
Speaker 1: I just spent combined several weeks over some stays at
Speaker 1: the Vienna State Archives finding so many documents about my
Speaker 1: family history about who was related to this and so on.
Speaker 1: This is very exciting work for me.
Speaker 3: I don't want to put words in your mouth, but
Speaker 3: I'm curious if the experience you had around the new
Speaker 3: cut of Caligula, if that informed Gas Shaped Light.
Speaker 1: Let's say it informed my mood at that time. Let's
Speaker 1: put it that the one thing in Gas Shaped Light,
Speaker 1: the lead character is called Alex. When people watch it,
Speaker 1: they oh, this happened to you. I got to say
Speaker 1: this was a joke on set that kind of got
Speaker 1: out of hand where I was like, oh, how do
Speaker 1: we name I love to use improvisation in my films.
Speaker 1: I thought, how do we name the main actor and
Speaker 1: the main character? And the actor was joking, oh, let's
Speaker 1: call him Alex, and I said, oh, that's funny. Then
Speaker 1: we shot the first season Alex, and that it stay.
Speaker 1: I would say Gas Shaped Light is look into my
Speaker 1: mood those days. But there were different things happening. When
Speaker 1: I did a film called fatsen Leven The Year After,
Speaker 1: which is also about a relationship breaking apart and being toxic.
Speaker 1: At least there the lead character doesn't have a name
Speaker 1: and she looks completely unlike me, which I found nice.
Speaker 1: So people WoT we didn't assume that it's me. Basically,
Speaker 1: I often put my moods and my thoughts into my
Speaker 1: sholms with but I never put it directly. I never
Speaker 1: make a film that says, oh, this happened to me.
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to show you what happened to me.
Speaker 1: It's more a general gist, a general loot, some thoughts
Speaker 1: and so on, and things I observe and all get condensed.
Speaker 1: You cano much see what I'm at or what my
Speaker 1: mindset is when you look at my films of ich
Speaker 1: respective time.
Speaker 3: Alexander, where's the best place for people to keep up
Speaker 3: with you in your work?
Speaker 1: Well, you can follow my Facebook account or on Instagram,
Speaker 1: and I have a website. You can just type in
Speaker 1: my name and you find my website, and when something
Speaker 1: new happens, I'll just post it.
Speaker 3: Alexander, we need to get you back on the show
Speaker 3: for something else other than painful memories of Caligula. We
Speaker 3: need to speak more than every six years or so.
Speaker 3: But I look forward to that next time of being
Speaker 3: able to have a better conversation with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you me too. It was a pleasure, even though
Speaker 1: it was a topic that's unpleasant. It felt very pleasant
Speaker 1: to talk to you.
Speaker 3: Still, well, I'm glad you went there. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: All Right, we're back when we were talking about Caligula
Speaker 3: The Ultimate Cut. First up, I should say that the
Speaker 3: producer of The Ultimate Cut, Thomas the Govin, who assembled
Speaker 3: a team to work on the editing, color grading, score,
Speaker 3: digital facts, et cetera, was approached for an interview for
Speaker 3: this episode but declined. This is in no way a
Speaker 3: hit piece on Nagovian. I've never actually met him and
Speaker 3: we've only had limited interaction on Facebook Messenger. He may
Speaker 3: have sent me an email back in twenty nineteen, and
Speaker 3: his email address prefilled itself when I was trying to
Speaker 3: write to him about this episode, so that definitely holds
Speaker 3: some water. I know that he emailed Rob, so it
Speaker 3: makes sense, and he said in his email that he
Speaker 3: was going to email me. But yeah, I even donated
Speaker 3: to his calligular book on Kickstarter, and we can discuss
Speaker 3: that a little bit later in the show if we
Speaker 3: feel like it. But yeah, talk a little bit about
Speaker 3: Thomas Dgovin and what we know about this guy.
Speaker 11: I was gonna mention that my interactions with him was
Speaker 11: a bit more than you so he had emailed me
Speaker 11: after we had done the two colligular episodes and he
Speaker 11: told me that he was working with someone notable and
Speaker 11: wanted to put together this book and there were some
Speaker 11: other things, and so I actually have a phone call
Speaker 11: with him. I think we have had two song calls
Speaker 11: with it. And it was actually before this I even
Speaker 11: knew that this new version was coming together, because I
Speaker 11: didn't know anything was happening. I went back and I
Speaker 11: looked at the date stamps I'm an email, and it
Speaker 11: was it was like the end of last year or
Speaker 11: something like. I wasn't plugged in to the fact that
Speaker 11: this thing had played at camp. I didn't know that.
Speaker 11: I'm out of it, Like I don't follow film as
Speaker 11: close as they used to. And I emailed him and
Speaker 11: I never heard back. So I just figured dead letter office,
Speaker 11: you know, as happens with emails. So I always found
Speaker 11: him to be straight with me, tell me what was
Speaker 11: going on. He was asking me for assistance and could
Speaker 11: I connect him with people, and I said, sure, you know,
Speaker 11: whatever you need, let me know. And you know, as
Speaker 11: in the past when we've done commentary tracks or things
Speaker 11: like that, I was always more than willing to help
Speaker 11: people if something came out of it or not, because
Speaker 11: just being a gigantic film nerd, I always want things
Speaker 11: to work out as best they can. And this one,
Speaker 11: being as long and beandering as it's been with all
Speaker 11: of the various players and facets, as we've discussed over
Speaker 11: two episodes plus on here, I just thought it would
Speaker 11: be great to see something coming it. But like I said,
Speaker 11: I haven't talked to him probably since before COVID so
Speaker 11: may it's been like twenty nineteen or early twenty twenty,
Speaker 11: something like that.
Speaker 3: And I know back then he had talked about pairing
Speaker 3: with Elis Marengue, the guy that did Begotten and Shadow
Speaker 3: of the Vampire. It was a quote in an interview
Speaker 3: he had with Fangoria. But I don't think that Marengi's
Speaker 3: name is on this new version. I don't know if
Speaker 3: they had a falling out or what happened with that.
Speaker 3: If Negovin would go on record, that would be one
Speaker 3: of the questions I would have asked him, is what
Speaker 3: happened with that? Because I'm curious. I'm also curious about
Speaker 3: Negovin's pedigree to your point from earlier, how the as
Speaker 3: far as him having knowing McKeon and stuff. It feels
Speaker 3: like his rolodex. And I think Caroline Kirkandhal even says
Speaker 3: this his rolodex is crazy. He knows a ton of people,
Speaker 3: and he's been connected through the art world for so long.
Speaker 3: I know he's made a couple of short films. It
Speaker 3: just feels like such a strange choice to have Negovin
Speaker 3: take this project over. But at the same time, I think, again,
Speaker 3: right place, right time. He was approached by somebody at
Speaker 3: the same place that Carolyn Kirkandal works at, as she said,
Speaker 3: and so it was like, all right, this, let's go
Speaker 3: ahead with this. And I just one other thing I
Speaker 3: should say is that I over the years, I've had
Speaker 3: so many people, especially one person and I can't remember
Speaker 3: his name because I blocked him on Facebook, because this
Speaker 3: motherfucker would just not stop messaging me about killing Gula.
Speaker 3: Like every few months it would just be like, hey,
Speaker 3: this is happening, and it would always be like he
Speaker 3: was angry about stuff. And after a while it's just
Speaker 3: I am so not invested in this nearly as much
Speaker 3: as you are. Please stop sending me this stuff. And
Speaker 3: then it was just more and more, and after a
Speaker 3: while I was just like I got a block.
Speaker 12: Yeah, sorry, yeah, that's crazy. Also, I forgive you for
Speaker 12: blocking may minds now I'm jogging out. People obviously get
Speaker 12: very passionate about it, so thatimes too passionate though, though
Speaker 12: that's a yeah. No, I was so curious researching because No,
Speaker 12: Thompas has a fascinating career. I mean, he's even done
Speaker 12: music and is recorded on like a wax cylinder, which
Speaker 12: is a very old school format, and it's definitely an
Speaker 12: interesting guy and it's it is. He's not the most
Speaker 12: obvious choice on the outset, but it is an interesting
Speaker 12: one and he obviously the thing I really did admire
Speaker 12: researching when I was working on the commentary is the
Speaker 12: amount of time him and Erran and he gives his
Speaker 12: editor a lot, and as he should, but he does,
Speaker 12: and I love that because I think sometimes it's easy
Speaker 12: for people and because I don't even know what you
Speaker 12: call him. He's a director of sorts. But it's it's
Speaker 12: almost a film in some ways, as like a motherless
Speaker 12: child realistically, just it is what it is. But if
Speaker 12: anybody hell anything, I guess I should say, usually don't
Speaker 12: give the editors props, but the editors are the ones
Speaker 12: that build the spine of the piece, They build the
Speaker 12: rhythm of the piece. I think editors get vastly underrated sometimes,
Speaker 12: so it's cool to see that. And I know they'd
Speaker 12: worked together in some of the short film projects beforehand.
Speaker 12: I will I do hate it that he's had a
Speaker 12: part of this.
Speaker 1: It would be cool.
Speaker 12: It would have been cool to have that, especially because
Speaker 12: I know there are some people that have some confusion
Speaker 12: about this project. And yeah, it's not the Tinto cut,
Speaker 12: and it's never unless something magical happens. It's to me,
Speaker 12: it's basically having the Tinto version or anything close to that.
Speaker 12: It's like tears in the rain, It's gone, it's gone.
Speaker 12: We would have I think Mission Caligula probably would have
Speaker 12: been that cut, just because Alexander studied Tinto and worked
Speaker 12: directly with Tinto and had him on board with that.
Speaker 12: And I'm not really privy, Yeah, I'm not. Obviously I
Speaker 12: wasn't part of any phone calls or anything to know
Speaker 12: what machination how the deck of cards fell down and
Speaker 12: got resect on. That's the closest thing I could find.
Speaker 12: And I found this actually from one of my original
Speaker 12: note cards. As far as thom I found this from
Speaker 12: an interview Thomas did for synaps dot Co, where he
Speaker 12: said a friend of his who worked at Penthouse Global Licensing,
Speaker 12: which is a division that handles legacy materials, had changed
Speaker 12: hands a number of times, including Penthouse itself, which is
Speaker 12: an allusion to Kelly Holland getting which sounds like that
Speaker 12: was messy. She's a fascinating lighting. She's one the more
Speaker 12: I've read up, I would love to talk to her.
Speaker 12: I just find her really, especially as she was one
Speaker 12: of the very few female directors an adult before she
Speaker 12: was in Penthouse. She also has done a ton of
Speaker 12: animal rights stuff and the fact that just to quick
Speaker 12: aside to give her some major prompts because I feel
Speaker 12: like she gets disparaged, like when you do find her
Speaker 12: online about her Penthouse front is that she entered the
Speaker 12: company loving Bob Gucciani and even with that, when she
Speaker 12: entered this project with Alexander Reykigni the flaws of what
Speaker 12: he did, and to me, it's like I almost felt
Speaker 12: like maybe her working with Alexander was like doing an
Speaker 12: alms or something like try to atone for the sins
Speaker 12: of the father sort of thing, And I don't know,
Speaker 12: I find I have a lot of respect for people
Speaker 12: who can look at their heroes and be that objective.
Speaker 11: She's great on the second episode. If you go back
Speaker 11: and listen to her interview with us, She's just a
Speaker 11: fascinating person.
Speaker 3: Brin. She did write an article called It'll Never Happen
Speaker 3: on his colligulid dot org site. At one point he
Speaker 3: talks about how she wanted him to write about the
Speaker 3: history of and House and he said, it's not going
Speaker 3: to be pretty. And he basically told her what a
Speaker 3: you know, GUCCIONI is and she's, oh, yeah, no, that's okay,
Speaker 3: I want the full truth. And I was like, that's
Speaker 3: very admirable.
Speaker 12: It's extremely It's sad to say that the memorable because
Speaker 12: that's how everybody should be, but we know, we all
Speaker 12: know that is the rareer. So yeah, I have a
Speaker 12: lot of respect for her, and she's somebody I would
Speaker 12: love just to have a couple of and just talk with.
Speaker 12: She's cool. Basically the testing what you were saying, Mike,
Speaker 12: it just sounds like in the interview he got hit
Speaker 12: up by this this contact a Penthouse global and it's
Speaker 12: I can't imagine anybody. It's a huge thing to undertake.
Speaker 12: But god, what a cool, what a fascinating thing. I
Speaker 12: don't know if I could blame anybody for taking such
Speaker 12: a gig, right, but I do wish we had, of course,
Speaker 12: I think we all do. If you love a cinema,
Speaker 12: if you would want that team Doe cut just we
Speaker 12: all dream about, Okay, where's London after midnight? But like
Speaker 12: finding that print and somebody's at it, having the full
Speaker 12: like cut greed dreaming is free at least. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 11: One thing about his background that I think really comes
Speaker 11: through in this version or Good or Hill is because
Speaker 11: he has that visual arts background, I feel like we
Speaker 11: get a lot of wide shots.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 11: He wants us to be immersed in these sets, and
Speaker 11: while it's fine, it just feels. As we've talked about
Speaker 11: many times here, one of the technical aspects of making
Speaker 11: film really is all in the editing and to the
Speaker 11: length of the shots, why they're there when you're cutting
Speaker 11: to something else, and what does the order mean, What
Speaker 11: does the order mean within that section, what does that
Speaker 11: order mean within the hole? And the thing is that
Speaker 11: while it wasn't complete, we at least had a ninety
Speaker 11: minute workprint to work from, so he could have at
Speaker 11: least looked at that ninety minutes, and like I say,
Speaker 11: I have no way of knowing, because I've never watched
Speaker 11: the ninety minute work print that Alexander has and to
Speaker 11: compare it against this and to go, Okay, this is
Speaker 11: where it is, and this is this matches and this
Speaker 11: is what it should be. But at the same time,
Speaker 11: the question becomes if he's basing it against a script.
Speaker 11: The script is not final film either. For example, you
Speaker 11: had done Graduate recently, and this was something I didn't
Speaker 11: know and I can't remember if it was on the
Speaker 11: show or if it was what I picked up from
Speaker 11: the Criterion, And when I rewatched it and listening to
Speaker 11: the commentary, was there were voiceovers in there where those
Speaker 11: I'man and Garfunkel songs are and Mike Nichols, I don't
Speaker 11: need these voiceovers. It gives me real the fucking voiceover. Put
Speaker 11: the Simon and Garfunkel song in, and that works better
Speaker 11: than having all these voiceover and offscreen dialogues going on
Speaker 11: over these driving scenes. Ultimately, even if it's in the script,
Speaker 11: even if it's on the page, it doesn't end up
Speaker 11: on the stage. That's the difference between film and a play.
Speaker 11: So there's part of me that I give him his
Speaker 11: props for going, Okay, we're going to work from the
Speaker 11: Dials script and we're going to try and be as
Speaker 11: faithful as this, But even that is now guaranteed that
Speaker 11: you're going to come up with a completed version that
Speaker 11: is what was intended.
Speaker 1: Either.
Speaker 11: These are all lots of things to think about, and
Speaker 11: as I was looking at this, one of the things
Speaker 11: and I don't know if we got a truncated marketing
Speaker 11: packet or if it was just two pages. I want
Speaker 11: to hope that it was bigger.
Speaker 3: That's what the PR company sent to me.
Speaker 11: So I want to hope that there was more because
Speaker 11: one of the sales points of this film is one
Speaker 11: new footage, right, And I'm just like, yeah, And I
Speaker 11: don't care that it's one hundred percent in shots. That
Speaker 11: doesn't excite me. I was thinking about this as a
Speaker 11: comparable and I'm a huge fan of the Stooges, and
Speaker 11: i had the Stooges Complete Funhouse Sessions, which is eight
Speaker 11: hours of everything they recorded, and I go, this would
Speaker 11: be the equivalent of someone taking that and going, I'm
Speaker 11: going to make my own version of the Funhouse album.
Speaker 11: I'm going to take this take and that take the
Speaker 11: band already say if they couldn't have completed it, maybe
Speaker 11: they said okay, they sequenced the first four tracks off
Speaker 11: the album as an equivalent and said, okay, these four songs,
Speaker 11: and I don't care about that. I'm sequencing this entirely
Speaker 11: the way that Icy fit, based on what Icy fit,
Speaker 11: because that's the thing that I think, really when I
Speaker 11: look at this against something like what Walter Merch did
Speaker 11: with Touch of Evil, Grant and it wells wasn't around,
Speaker 11: but he left a really long memo on every scene
Speaker 11: and what he wanted. So I'm in this place where
Speaker 11: I appreciate this version for all the goal and new
Speaker 11: stuff that's in it and looks great and all that,
Speaker 11: but I don't know if it gets us any closer
Speaker 11: than the Guccioni version in the certain ways. It's confusing
Speaker 11: at times.
Speaker 12: There were two of the Vidal scripts I read, but
Speaker 12: Thursday there's so many, and it's not really trying to
Speaker 12: deal with some weird variation between a mad lib and
Speaker 12: ration on of trying to piece something like this together
Speaker 12: with so many different disparate narratives, elements, weird narratives, sometimes
Speaker 12: not even just out and that's not just to get
Speaker 12: dealt to it just calligulan in general, it's so much
Speaker 12: and Rob, I do love that you mentioned the White
Speaker 12: Shots though. The White Shots, I think, and I think
Speaker 12: one of the one of the biggest pluses of The
Speaker 12: Ultimate Cut. It is one hundred percent a love letter
Speaker 12: to Donatis sets. You could tell there is a love
Speaker 12: But even in a lot of the interviews that I
Speaker 12: read that with Thomas is like the Ya Dinatis mentioned
Speaker 12: a lot, as he should be.
Speaker 3: He's a fan of most of it, except for the
Speaker 3: stuff that he replaced with CG.
Speaker 12: But oh, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I just Negovin strikes me as Braddy with some of
Speaker 3: the stuff that he said. And I've people sending me
Speaker 3: stuff like crazy. So there's just quote after quote. And
Speaker 3: he even told me in our very brief Facebook conversation
Speaker 3: he's just, oh, Tinto brask he's got dementia. And I
Speaker 3: saw this documentary, this obscure documentary in twenty thirteen. Of
Speaker 3: course I had to look it up, and I'm just like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: is Tinto Brass? Let me download this? Okay, watch it
Speaker 3: all right? Yeah, Tinto seems fine. But everything that Negovin says,
Speaker 3: is just I watched this documentary in twenty thirteen, and
Speaker 3: it shows clearly that he has dementia. And I'm just like,
Speaker 3: what documentary did you watch? Because that's not the version
Speaker 3: that I saw. I saw a brass acting recounting stories,
Speaker 3: very clear, very lucid. Of course that's twenty thirteen, right,
Speaker 3: that's eleven years ago. But I know other people that
Speaker 3: have talked to him and they're just like, Okay, that's great,
Speaker 3: he's doing fine. Of course, Alexander talked with him very recently,
Speaker 3: and it's not that recently because now apparently Tinto's wife
Speaker 3: controls all the communications, but a few years ago when
Speaker 3: this project was kicking off, and that's very different than
Speaker 3: the story that Magovin tells, where he's just The first
Speaker 3: thing I did was I reached out to Tinto, and
Speaker 3: I tried everything that I could, and I was told
Speaker 3: over a year later that he received all these things,
Speaker 3: but his wife dismissed it. I was in contact with
Speaker 3: her after that. She was open to the idea, but
Speaker 3: I had been told and later learned from a documentary
Speaker 3: on him, that he had dementia. I asked if I
Speaker 3: could speak directly with Tinto. The answer was no, So
Speaker 3: that's where it stalled. I couldn't encourage the rights holder
Speaker 3: to send money to somebody who couldn't get on a
Speaker 3: phone call. I suspect that it's partially his health, but
Speaker 3: it's also likely that it is just a terrible sore
Speaker 3: spot for everybody involved, which I completely agree, and Brass
Speaker 3: talks about that on the Orgy Power documentary that I
Speaker 3: don't know what I would do. The ship is sale,
Speaker 3: but I don't know what the truth is around there.
Speaker 3: I know that Michelle Levoco, Brass's lawyer at the time,
Speaker 3: was saying that Tinto Brass did not participate in the
Speaker 3: new version of his not made any offers. He is
Speaker 3: old but very lucid, and any involvement in this new
Speaker 3: edition is false. Here's Thomas Negavan from the Team Human podcast.
Speaker 9: The first thing that I did was I contacted Tinto Brass,
Speaker 9: and the very second person I contacted was Malcolm McDowell's manager,
Speaker 9: and I said, look, I have this project on my lap.
Speaker 9: I'm a tourist here. This is before I started forming
Speaker 9: any opinions on anything. I said, I am a tourist here,
Speaker 9: this is your art. You should dictate the course of this.
Speaker 9: This is before I understood how much everyone hated each
Speaker 9: other and all of this, and so it was such
Speaker 9: a traumatic thing for tinto. My understanding is that that's
Speaker 9: why that got ignored. I didn't hear from them until
Speaker 9: like eight or nine months later, when I kept kind
Speaker 9: of pummeling and people were trying to bridge that gap.
Speaker 11: This is where it gets interesting for me. Why am
Speaker 11: I interested in doing a third episode with you on
Speaker 11: this thing? I'm going to start with this thing. This
Speaker 11: is going to sound like I'm victim blaming, but I'm not.
Speaker 11: And what I mean by that is that every filmmaker
Speaker 11: has their own way of how they create, and I
Speaker 11: feel like he was a victim of his own method.
Speaker 11: On the truth, yes, because the way Alexander talks about
Speaker 11: he was rolling multiple cameras, he was doing multiple takes
Speaker 11: in various different ways. Like I say, when we look
Speaker 11: at that ending, compare the ending of how Malcolm Max
Speaker 11: versus this new version, two different characterizations. Some of the
Speaker 11: other scenes within the films obviously, But the thing is
Speaker 11: that's all commendable. I commend him for going you know what,
Speaker 11: you know what, the most cheapest part of this entire
Speaker 11: production is blow and film because blow and film in
Speaker 11: that era was cheap. Film stock was cheap compared to
Speaker 11: paying salaries and building those sets and all that. And
Speaker 11: when I think about his process up against other filmmakers, So,
Speaker 11: for example, a guy who's very controlled, Martin Scorsese. He
Speaker 11: knows exactly what he's gonna get, He storyboards everything. He
Speaker 11: doesn't really shoot extra coverage. Another guy like that is
Speaker 11: Clinton Eastwood. He's like the king of the one take.
Speaker 11: He knows exactly what he wants, he shoots exactly he wants.
Speaker 11: He does not do all this coverage. And so there's
Speaker 11: part of me that feels like Tinto is just a
Speaker 11: victim of his own process here. And I just think
Speaker 11: about how there's famous stories throughout film history. One of
Speaker 11: my favorites, one of my heroes, Melvin Van Peebles, who
Speaker 11: gave the finger to Columbia when they told him, Hey,
Speaker 11: you're gonna shoot a different ending of Watermelon Man, Right, Oh,
Speaker 11: I got it, I'm gonna shoot it. And then he
Speaker 11: didn't and turns the film and they go, where's that ending,
Speaker 11: and he's I'm just shooting that fucking ending. Fuck you,
Speaker 11: I'm out of here and Forster Murders release the film
Speaker 11: the way he wanted it. So really for me, what
Speaker 11: I think why I keep coming back to Caligula, why
Speaker 11: I'm so fascinated by all these various cuts, and I
Speaker 11: give Thomas' credit for putting this cut together, is that
Speaker 11: it ultimately comes down to the idea of like creative
Speaker 11: expression within a system for filmmakers, and how do you
Speaker 11: do it when there's so many things going on? Do
Speaker 11: you really need to have orson wells ironclad Citizen Kane
Speaker 11: contract where even Ted Turner couldn't polarize it forty years later?
Speaker 11: Do you need to be so strict? Do you only
Speaker 11: shoot what you shoot and get rid of everything and
Speaker 11: force them to release your thing? Granted he had this
Speaker 11: film taken away from him, I know that, I know
Speaker 11: the history of it. Or is there somewhere in the
Speaker 11: middle where you just got to go?
Speaker 3: You know what?
Speaker 11: This is such a big process with so many money
Speaker 11: men and everybody's got their hands in it that even
Speaker 11: if you try to make it your vision, I don't
Speaker 11: think it's possible because there's just way too many shifts
Speaker 11: in that kitchen.
Speaker 3: So many big egos in there. I completely agree with
Speaker 3: you as far as the way that Brass Shoots left
Speaker 3: him open to this, which is a horrible thing. But
Speaker 3: he said very plainly in that Orgy of Power documentary,
Speaker 3: it is just like direct half the job. The other
Speaker 3: half is the editing, and I do all of my
Speaker 3: work in my editing. That's where I actually bring a
Speaker 3: project to life, which I'm like, yeah, okay, there's a
Speaker 3: great quote. I got it in here where he won
Speaker 3: a lawsuit in Italy, and that's one thing that Renji
Speaker 3: definitely documents all of those lawsuits. Oh my god. So
Speaker 3: I think they were like twenty nine or thirty lawsuits
Speaker 3: that were all around this. Oh, just crazy. And so
Speaker 3: he won the lawsuit in Italy where the director's right
Speaker 3: is guaranteed over the producers, and he said, I had
Speaker 3: a hard time convincing the judges that I couldn't be
Speaker 3: responsible for a film for which I had shot about
Speaker 3: one hundred and sixty thousand meters but only four thousand
Speaker 3: or forty five hundred were ultimately used. And this is
Speaker 3: very prophetic what he says. One could have made so
Speaker 3: many different films depending on who chose the material and
Speaker 3: utilized it.
Speaker 1: Oh jeez.
Speaker 12: Yeah, Tito is such a fucking brilliant editor. Look at
Speaker 12: any of his films. Look at Celon Kitty. That film
Speaker 12: is a masterpiece. The way it is pieced together, it is,
Speaker 12: it's one of them. It's a film my visit, even
Speaker 12: though some of it is so unpleasant, but it's just
Speaker 12: such a fucking beautiful film. Look at the how Tinto's
Speaker 12: a wonderful editor. And I feel like anybody would have
Speaker 12: been open though, because to being preyed upon, because GUCCIONI
Speaker 12: I don't think Gucciini knew what he wanted. I think
Speaker 12: he thought he knew what he wanted. With Tinto, I
Speaker 12: think it's almost like he had a devil and an
Speaker 12: angel on his shoulder, an art angel was like Solon Kitty.
Speaker 12: It's a great film. Oh my god, cor Fitzal, Malcolm McDowell,
Speaker 12: Denalo Donati, oh, FRANKL. Russellini. This guy's produced, Yeah, he
Speaker 12: can produce with us. He's worked with Pasolini, Sir John Gill.
Speaker 12: Just getting all of these pieces and then but then
Speaker 12: the little devils. Some of these extras they're unclay looking,
Speaker 12: they're not sexy, they're not pretty. We need that penthouse.
Speaker 12: She and and I think he also wanted some of
Speaker 12: that porno chic pie because that was the thing this
Speaker 12: was like, this was about at the end, at the
Speaker 12: era where people if there was ever going to be
Speaker 12: a crossover, it was going to be in the late seventies.
Speaker 12: And because this film started principles shooting, I believe in
Speaker 12: seventy six, and you know, seventy six, seventy seven, and
Speaker 12: it never happened, obviously, And granted, there are so many
Speaker 12: adult films that honestly are so much better made than
Speaker 12: what resulted with any version. As much as I love
Speaker 12: the altimit cut, but I love the film as a whole.
Speaker 12: That's not at all a mark against against Aaron or Thomas.
Speaker 12: It's just like we've all said, you're trying to make
Speaker 12: a puzzle out of pieces that you're missing.
Speaker 11: Guccioni ultimately is responsible, and to me, he violates the
Speaker 11: rule that I had when I used to run newsery,
Speaker 11: what I used to hire borders and people to work with,
Speaker 11: where it's higher, well, trust in your people, because if not,
Speaker 11: why why are you even doing it? You may as
Speaker 11: well just fucking do everything yourself. If you don't trust
Speaker 11: the people that you've hired.
Speaker 12: Exactly exactly. And the perversity of it all though is that.
Speaker 12: And I even hate voicing this, but realistically he shouldn't
Speaker 12: have tampered with it. That's not a debate. That's absolutely
Speaker 12: not a for debate. Do not fuck with art, do
Speaker 12: not fuck with artists, do not censor, do not tamper
Speaker 12: it's it's a vital If he had left it alone,
Speaker 12: it wouldn't be as infamous and famous as it is though.
Speaker 12: That's the messed up thing about it, right, is Guccioi's
Speaker 12: hampering with it and adding in all the hardcore and
Speaker 12: having us cut. That's what played forty seconds Street. That's
Speaker 12: what got all the pressed, that's what got all the publicity.
Speaker 12: And that's sad, what a sad statement on our culture,
Speaker 12: right that an actual, just true blue art film that
Speaker 12: wouldn't get all that, And it wouldn't because a lot
Speaker 12: of them didn't like I mean, people know about self
Speaker 12: even reading some of the reviews of Salo and Kitty
Speaker 12: or how even I read I found news articles when
Speaker 12: they were making this film from the American press and
Speaker 12: that at the time they didn't even know what Salon
Speaker 12: Kinny was about. They were just just no respect and
Speaker 12: no understanding even then. America has such we have such
Speaker 12: a model history of how we regard art anyways from
Speaker 12: our own artists, much less overseas artists. And that's what
Speaker 12: I think. That's maybe the biggest fact that breaks my heart.
Speaker 12: And I have obviously I have no proma explicit Scott.
Speaker 12: I've been on several projection, but talking about explicit films,
Speaker 12: I love cinema, but it's done well. I don't care
Speaker 12: about the genre. But I may say said that it's
Speaker 12: like if Tinto had been left alone, would as many
Speaker 12: people be talking about it.
Speaker 3: I feel bad for Alexander. I feel bad that Malcolm
Speaker 3: McDowell called them a nerd from Czechoslovakia.
Speaker 12: That's terrible. And I love Malcolm McDowell. I would give
Speaker 12: him a kidney, But I don't call now Alexander in
Speaker 12: your interview with him. If you're listening this, you've already
Speaker 12: heard it. Yeah, brilliant. Alexander is so eloquent and so
Speaker 12: intelligent and passionate researching this. I gain so much respect
Speaker 12: for him and the hard work he's done, and as
Speaker 12: proud as I am if any work I've done about Tinto,
Speaker 12: because I love Alexander's the man on top of being
Speaker 12: very talented and respective filmmaker in his own right, I
Speaker 12: would be proud to be un heard from Czechoslovakia. I
Speaker 12: I mean, I was like Alexander Trushynski.
Speaker 3: And not to disparage journalists, rob but so many journalists
Speaker 3: just take the easy way and they just quote from
Speaker 3: other articles rather than doing the wrong research and just
Speaker 3: even like fact checking certain articles that I've read online.
Speaker 3: I've actually gone right to the right too the writers
Speaker 3: and said I think you're wrong on this. There's one
Speaker 3: where it was Todd Gilchrest and he took this very well,
Speaker 3: and he actually did went back in his records and
Speaker 3: looked and was like, no, you're right, because he wrote
Speaker 3: at one point that in the two thousand and seven
Speaker 3: DVD released this is the Imperial Edition, he said that
Speaker 3: it was produced by Negovin, And so I went back
Speaker 3: to Nathaniel Thompson as well, who actually produced that version,
Speaker 3: and was just like, did Ntagovin have anything to do
Speaker 3: with this? He's like no, I didn't even know who
Speaker 3: that guy was until a few years ago. So I'm like, okay,
Speaker 3: so we got that cleared up, which is good, But
Speaker 3: just some of the things like I can't picking on
Speaker 3: Negovan a little bit. He just was so pitthy about things,
Speaker 3: Like he was like, well, the footage wasn't lost. The
Speaker 3: footage of all this stuff, this ninety six hours wasn't
Speaker 3: lost because obviously they had it for the Imperial Edition.
Speaker 3: And it's like, yeah, but then they lost track of it.
Speaker 3: Nathaniel Thompson knew where it was, and eventually Alexander was
Speaker 3: able to talk with him, and then was able to
Speaker 3: talk with Penthouse, able to talk to Kelly and say,
Speaker 3: this is where that footage is, and they were able
Speaker 3: to get it from that Iron Mountain facility. Govan is
Speaker 3: just like, well, did you see the stuff? Did you
Speaker 3: see the boxes? You know, this is an interesting, dramatic story.
Speaker 3: He says, I absolutely believe that's what the owner of
Speaker 3: Penhouse at the time told and he won't even say
Speaker 3: Tushinsky's name told Alexander. If you think about how high
Speaker 3: end storage facilities work with companies that have a public
Speaker 3: phone number, you might see some cracks in that story.
Speaker 3: And I'm just like, oh wow, so now you're calling
Speaker 3: Alexander a liar. That's great.
Speaker 11: It's a good marketing angle to play the hero. But
Speaker 11: the thing that I'm hung up on in the marketing
Speaker 11: around that is one hundred percent new footage. I don't
Speaker 11: fucking care. No, that it's one hundred percent new footage
Speaker 11: doesn't mean anything to me. The question is is does
Speaker 11: it make sense within the story you're trying to tell
Speaker 11: and does it comport it to what the filmmaker's intent was.
Speaker 11: That's all that matters to me. I mean, like I said,
Speaker 11: Touch of Evil, as far as I know, might have
Speaker 11: some new footage.
Speaker 17: I don't.
Speaker 11: I don't have to go back and rewatch the versions.
Speaker 11: But guess what you know, Touch of Well, it's completely different,
Speaker 11: everything from different angle. It's like, and you're not exciting
Speaker 11: to me like that? What does that mean?
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means.
Speaker 3: I use the right shots. I'm okay if you recycle
Speaker 3: stuff from the Guccio and A version, so I'm fine
Speaker 3: if you have a mixture. Prayer to the fan edit
Speaker 3: gods as well as to the powers that be. I
Speaker 3: hope this isn't the ultimate cut. I hope that this
Speaker 3: isn't the last time we hear about this, because I
Speaker 3: would really like to still see. But then I hear,
Speaker 3: I hear all these spurious rumors about Nagov, and I'm
Speaker 3: not going to repeat any of them here, but I'm
Speaker 3: just I hope that bringing the restoration process that all
Speaker 3: of those materials were kept and kept in really good condition.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 3: I hope they didn't do something silly like let's just
Speaker 3: go ahead and open up these all these audio cans
Speaker 3: just to have the the actual materials fall apart. You know.
Speaker 3: We're just like, it's so delicate. The film restoration is
Speaker 3: such a delicate art. We've talked about that for over
Speaker 3: the last how long has this podcast been going thirteen years,
Speaker 3: We've been talking about that over the last thirteen years
Speaker 3: of just how delicate film is and how film needs
Speaker 3: to be handled properly and restored. So I just hope
Speaker 3: that during this restoration process that that stuff was kept
Speaker 3: safe and that there is an opportunity if we do
Speaker 3: want to try and again with a version that is
Speaker 3: closer to tinto Brass, that we can do that.
Speaker 11: And part of me is concerned that Penas, whoever runs
Speaker 11: it now, doesn't give a shit about keeping all of
Speaker 11: the outtakes in ninety plus hours, because that takes up
Speaker 11: a lot of space and respecial facility that can hold
Speaker 11: all that oh in the catalog it and to hold
Speaker 11: it for years, and then you have tragedies like the
Speaker 11: Universal Fire fifteen years ago, where there was all these
Speaker 11: original master recordings. They're gone. You can't remix that, and
Speaker 11: you might be able to in the AI world, but
Speaker 11: still you can't go back to the original digital magnetic
Speaker 11: masters of things that we're twenty yars ago.
Speaker 12: I know all three of us are definitely great in
Speaker 12: anybody listening to this. Obviously your film Lover Too, Press
Speaker 12: is so important and so key, especially because film is
Speaker 12: such an infant format or other types of art, not
Speaker 12: just silent films. But when I was researching Michael Finlay
Speaker 12: is one of my tours. He's got lost films in
Speaker 12: the sevenies like that, not long ago. It's heartbreaking.
Speaker 3: Well, I just recently heard about this biopic on gor
Speaker 3: Vi Dal that sounds like it's lost.
Speaker 11: Some of it is deliberable, like what is there the
Speaker 11: uh yeah, there's the back Girl movie. Like they just
Speaker 11: create things to destroy them so that they can tew
Speaker 11: a tags right off. Yeah sure, yeah, But like I said,
Speaker 11: one of my degrees, I got a graduate certificate in
Speaker 11: archival administration. And even before it's probably because I watched
Speaker 11: Bucking Indiana Jones too many times when I was a kid.
Speaker 11: But it belongs in a museum, Like I honestly have
Speaker 11: this feeling there's so much stuff we're going to end
Speaker 11: up hundreds of years from now. It's all we won't
Speaker 11: be alive, but are will continue and once of our
Speaker 11: culture because we don't care enough because it costs too much.
Speaker 12: That's why it's important to fight the good fight. And
Speaker 12: I think that's actually like something they're doing a podcast
Speaker 12: as part of that, because you're keeping it fresh in
Speaker 12: people's lines. If people aren't informed about stuff that have
Speaker 12: they can how can they know? Like this is something
Speaker 12: we need to preserve, and that's why I think it's cool.
Speaker 12: But talking about the different cuts of this film, that's
Speaker 12: why I hope all of the materials are preserved. I'm
Speaker 12: glad we have this cut. I'm glad we have the
Speaker 12: GUCCIONI cut. For for all of its flaws, there's still
Speaker 12: some there's great stuff. There's great stuff in all of them.
Speaker 12: I wish there was a meeting of the middle. It's
Speaker 12: part of me wishes we had that too, because man
Speaker 12: like getting to hear Teresa's voice, getting to see more
Speaker 12: of the performances, not having to see seeing sex scenes
Speaker 12: that were far worse than when Kurchie up and he
Speaker 12: did it to some give him fate praise on that
Speaker 12: It's the Faint as a praise that shit didn't belong
Speaker 12: and especially reading about the credit Laurie Wagner, he and
Speaker 12: the girls use egg whites to look like they were excited,
Speaker 12: which I don't think is very sanitary to put in
Speaker 12: another's It seems like a very good way to get
Speaker 12: an East infection. So say, everybody's learning from this point,
Speaker 12: don't preserve a film and do not on another's. But seriously,
Speaker 12: I hope to God that they preserved a tune, especially
Speaker 12: because a lot of companies anything that the corporation automatically
Speaker 12: does not have the best futation when it comes to
Speaker 12: film preservation. It's honestly amazing that we even have this
Speaker 12: or that even Mission Colligula goten as far as it did,
Speaker 12: and that was thanks to Kelly for them having a
Speaker 12: CEO at the time that actually seemed to give a
Speaker 12: shit about art. It's cool, I don't know, it's cool
Speaker 12: to have the variations of it. I mean, so, I
Speaker 12: do think the minute Tinto got pushed out of that
Speaker 12: film is the minute realistically we lost the chance to version.
Speaker 12: You can't go back like lots wise, at this far back,
Speaker 12: I'll just get me a little piles of salt. So
Speaker 12: I don't know it does. I think, to me, what
Speaker 12: makes me sad is just all the people that have
Speaker 12: been hurt by this film now, and I want to
Speaker 12: say the phil I don't mean just the old bit cut.
Speaker 12: I just mean this whole thing, and I am but
Speaker 12: I'm glad at least with those who are still with
Speaker 12: us we can still hail them. Don't write off Alexander Trushynsky.
Speaker 12: Don't necessarily write off the Ultimate Cut either, Like, don't
Speaker 12: write off anybody. Give everybody, but especially get people like
Speaker 12: alex Give regime because he did all that work. Thank
Speaker 12: God for his website, which is an exhaustive tribute and
Speaker 12: so exquisitely researched perfectly, and to tinto who I feel like,
Speaker 12: even stuff I've still written about this film now, about
Speaker 12: this particular cut I feel like still gets disparaged, and
Speaker 12: I think that's out of bullshit. All of the beauty,
Speaker 12: all of the good stuff in here is because of
Speaker 12: having a director that had that vision and that had
Speaker 12: faith in his performers, and that's why all of the
Speaker 12: actors loved Tinto. I mean, Seiner would have been multiple times.
Speaker 12: Malcolm mcdale got along with him.
Speaker 15: Great.
Speaker 12: Helen Mirren in that twenty thirteen documentary goes on camera
Speaker 12: and rapes about him and Tinta his wife, and honestly,
Speaker 12: is Tinto Bread's a documentary. It's hit or miss, but yeah,
Speaker 12: he's he seems loose to He seemed lucid to me.
Speaker 12: I had some narrative problems with some event documentary because
Speaker 12: I felt like it leaned. Part of it leanked a
Speaker 12: little too heavy to the persona if that document didn't
Speaker 12: know what side of the bread it wanted butter because
Speaker 12: you'd have these great interviews with people and these great
Speaker 12: shots of some of his like really experimental stuff from
Speaker 12: the sixties that was so cool to have because a
Speaker 12: lot of that defined for Americans, and you're like, yeah,
Speaker 12: that's cool. And then it's like there's Tinto with his
Speaker 12: hand on some girl's ass smoking a cigar, and it's like, wait, what, like,
Speaker 12: come on movie?
Speaker 11: They turned it into the South of the Equator version
Speaker 11: of a Rushmeyer documentary.
Speaker 3: Yes. I reached out to Nico b Over at cult
Speaker 3: EPX and was asking him because I would love to
Speaker 3: see what is a Vacation and drop out those two films.
Speaker 12: With They've looked incredible. I love to see you with
Speaker 12: Vanessa Redgrave and Franco and Nero. Yeah, they look so good.
Speaker 12: I would love to see those too. Yeah, Nico would
Speaker 12: do He's done such a great job with so many
Speaker 12: of Tito's films too. I would love to see him
Speaker 12: do that. Nico Bee is so cool. We have a
Speaker 12: lot of love for that company, and they've We've.
Speaker 3: Got a brand new version of Cheeky that's coming out
Speaker 3: within the next few months, and he said that in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five they're going to have restorations of the
Speaker 3: Key Action and Yankee and unfortunately no Dropout or lav
Speaker 3: A Conza. So I was really open for those because
Speaker 3: you can find those in real shitty versions with no subtitles,
Speaker 3: all dubbed Italian, which doesn't make a whole lot of
Speaker 3: sense because I don't think Vanessa Redgrave's speaking Italian, and
Speaker 3: I think since they shot those in England that Narro
Speaker 3: was probably speaking English as well. Because we know we.
Speaker 12: Can do it yeah, no, his English is fine. God,
Speaker 12: that would be great.
Speaker 4: I am.
Speaker 12: I am looking forward to having like the Key, and
Speaker 12: especially because my copy of actions. I have a DVD
Speaker 12: of it and it's all right, but seeing the cold
Speaker 12: Epics treatment, that'll be a that'll be a butt for sure.
Speaker 3: I think I wanted to do The Howl next year.
Speaker 12: I love the how that was what would be? That
Speaker 12: was the first Tinto film I ever wrote about years ago,
Speaker 12: I don't I can't remember if the editor then it
Speaker 12: was a lot of time ago. Sometimes we'd use messed
Speaker 12: up and sometimes he wouldn't, and that tell me. But
Speaker 12: still setting contributor copies. It was very, very weird. It's
Speaker 12: sort of like a ancestor to the Panic movement. Maybe
Speaker 12: that's just me and my own crist is that I
Speaker 12: really felly get some sort of spiritual ancestor to some
Speaker 12: of the early works of Potoow Skin a Ball. It's
Speaker 12: got that energy to it. I mean, it's still in
Speaker 12: a very teinto way, but it's it's brilliant.
Speaker 11: It's com I've seen the greatest films of my generation.
Speaker 11: Disembowl No, sorry that wrong?
Speaker 18: How right?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear his biopiccre shell too.
Speaker 11: Mine, Yes, and nobody.
Speaker 12: Wants, but that's good to hear at least, and that's
Speaker 12: maybe a good silver lighting. And in the sadness, we
Speaker 12: still get fruition. We still get to compleate teeth of
Speaker 12: films that weren't tampered with a bum coucierty out there
Speaker 12: hopefully went more. Hopefully some you know, cult up with stuff.
Speaker 12: Maybe somebody else could get a hold and do restorations
Speaker 12: proper for the vacanza and yeah, all of that make
Speaker 12: it maybe a cute little set, you know, because I
Speaker 12: mean both of them, you know, Vanessa Redgrave and Frank
Speaker 12: of Nero. What a fascinating couple, and like they did
Speaker 12: these two films with tintos like so so needs.
Speaker 11: Redcraf is still live, right, red Grave and Nero are
Speaker 11: still alive and still married, I guess.
Speaker 12: Which is amazing that that's something. I call it the
Speaker 12: Tall Man. That's a little tribute to fantasts.
Speaker 3: I thought it was to Jeff Goldbloom, but oh no,
Speaker 3: the tall guy.
Speaker 12: That's the tall guy. I mean, that's cool. He's now
Speaker 12: angus sums. I love that we have that. And if anything,
Speaker 12: this is kind of a cool, like hardcore film person likes.
Speaker 12: I do like the fact that we have they have
Speaker 12: different versions at hand, because the Imperial I mean, the
Speaker 12: Gucci already cut and the Girl Dish are very easy fine,
Speaker 12: like these are not. Yeah, and so if somebody wants
Speaker 12: to do a comparison, they can.
Speaker 3: That's the thing I like about the box set that
Speaker 3: you're coming out on, is the whole idea of having
Speaker 3: these multiple versions. Yeah, Rob and I have talked about
Speaker 3: this multiple times as far as like, what do I
Speaker 3: love about Blade Runner. I can watch the version I like.
Speaker 3: Rob can watch the version he likes. You can watch
Speaker 3: the version you like. We all have it. They are
Speaker 3: still out there, they are preserved. So yes, great, here's
Speaker 3: this caligulous set with all of these different versions. We
Speaker 3: are not limited in our choice. I just wish there
Speaker 3: was one more that had Kushinsky's name on it. But
Speaker 3: at the same time, at least where they're not saying,
Speaker 3: well that version doesn't exist anymore, you can never see that.
Speaker 3: So yeah, we'll be talking even more about that later
Speaker 3: on this year. I know that my friend Peter Flynn
Speaker 3: is working on a documentary about lost versions of Star Wars.
Speaker 3: So those are the ones that you talked about film mode.
Speaker 3: You know, this is being suppressed by the artist and
Speaker 3: the company that owns the rights now.
Speaker 11: So so I'm going to ask everyone right now to
Speaker 11: put on their calendar twenty thirty join us back for
Speaker 11: episode four of Caligula with the Alexander.
Speaker 12: That would be amazing, See you.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't that be great. I don't know if he can
Speaker 3: do it, just because his heart was probably broken, you know,
Speaker 3: I imagine being in that position. We were so hopeful
Speaker 3: we that Mission Colorgular episode. We were just like, this
Speaker 3: gotta be right.
Speaker 12: Anytimes somebody has their heart broken with some creative project
Speaker 12: that they've worked so hard on, that's the kind of
Speaker 12: loss that hits me. That haunts me all those when
Speaker 12: you're putting that much kind of work and love into
Speaker 12: something that part of you that's your DNA and something
Speaker 12: almost having outset interference in whatever form that's it's a
Speaker 12: it's like an invasion, kind of like an invasion way.
Speaker 12: I mean, that's like I think about how Danto his
Speaker 12: wife's probably taken it over so he doesn't have to
Speaker 12: hear it anymore. She's like, I'll block it, but he's like,
Speaker 12: I'll be the I mean, yeah, because God, I mean,
Speaker 12: the man sent of time, like, let him enjoy his
Speaker 12: golden ears. I can't even imagine. But yeah, no, but
Speaker 12: I love that Alexander has channeled everything he's gone through
Speaker 12: into art. And that's what artists do. If anything, if
Speaker 12: there is a positive thing to be gained from from
Speaker 12: his story of this, is that to anybody, especially a creative,
Speaker 12: always create. Don't let it stop. You, don't let if
Speaker 12: it's like, Okay, this horrible, shitty thing has happened, your
Speaker 12: heart is broken, and okay, let's make some mark. Let's
Speaker 12: channel that. Don't let it fester inside you, don't repress it,
Speaker 12: don't let it make you bitter, don't let it become
Speaker 12: like a cancer. You know, you make art, that's what
Speaker 12: you do, and that's what he did. And I love
Speaker 12: that to me, just it makes me respect him even more.
Speaker 12: That's what we all need to do. It's like, sometimes
Speaker 12: life is getting his things and you can't know his
Speaker 12: control it, and some of it hurts really fucking bad.
Speaker 12: But let's go make some art. Let's go make something.
Speaker 12: Let's create something, Let's preserve something, let's talk about it.
Speaker 12: That's healthy. We're all healing in this beautiful mess, the
Speaker 12: catg and you know, make life your own senate and
Speaker 12: the people of Rome. There's my ted talk.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine talking three hours is about one movie
Speaker 3: when it comes to a commentary. Now, talking three hours
Speaker 3: with you two or close to it, that is easy.
Speaker 3: But doing a solo common terry for three freaking hours, Heather,
Speaker 3: that's nuts.
Speaker 12: I don't know if you guys got have gone through
Speaker 12: this without X Chris. I mean, Mike you you have
Speaker 12: done some commentaries any any boutique labels, like you should
Speaker 12: also get Rob on some of these because Rob is
Speaker 12: fucking brilliant. And I still there are lines that you've
Speaker 12: said and stuff we've done. It still like Live with
Speaker 12: Me with the Smoker episode. I mean, let's go back
Speaker 12: to list that episode. That's a fucking I'm so I
Speaker 12: still wa it ever that I've been a part of.
Speaker 12: But it was hard, and I think the hardest part
Speaker 12: was trying to not sound like the micro machine but
Speaker 12: also keep it because I was trying to keep like
Speaker 12: things in a natural because I want to be conversational
Speaker 12: anything I do. I told you guys that in text prior,
Speaker 12: but even like with my writing because I feel like.
Speaker 1: If you talk at people.
Speaker 12: If you write at them, you're not writing with them,
Speaker 12: then you're gonna risk of being condescending and talking down.
Speaker 12: And I hate that. My favorite writers write with you
Speaker 12: and sometimes make you do the work because of it.
Speaker 12: But it's a sign of love and it's a sign
Speaker 12: of respect. It was definitely the most challenging commentary I've
Speaker 12: ever done, and there were still things that got left
Speaker 12: out because I really wanted to make it rash here.
Speaker 12: You don't just want to be repeating the same shit
Speaker 12: other people, but there's so much which already out there
Speaker 12: about it. But also do things. Here's something where I
Speaker 12: could point out that Thomas and Aaron did that's different here,
Speaker 12: and I did that, and I go into their backgrounds
Speaker 12: a little bit. Then it's like, this is how Egyptian
Speaker 12: religion was treated when Caligula was emperor because the temple advice,
Speaker 12: that whole thing in the movie that was at least
Speaker 12: according as Legitius is any history books are right because
Speaker 12: of the whole ventory thing, like it was outlawed until
Speaker 12: he became emperor and he made it legal. So and
Speaker 12: in fact there were moves that like go on in
Speaker 12: Cologulis Ran. It made him initially very popular because there
Speaker 12: were some some a lot of rulings that Tiberius had
Speaker 12: done but did not like. Yeah, I'm so trying to
Speaker 12: do that. Also give credit to a lot of the
Speaker 12: actors that I don't get, like Teresa, like even some
Speaker 12: of the everybody's been very sweet, like when you read
Speaker 12: from the other main actors, but even they sound sometimes
Speaker 12: sound a little dismissive. And I'm like, she held her own, like,
Speaker 12: let's give her some part, and she did not do
Speaker 12: that much after this movie, and she died kind of
Speaker 12: very early. Yeah, definitely an interesting actress. I think she's
Speaker 12: a lot better than people give a credit for. I
Speaker 12: thought she was great in Salon Kitty too. I always
Speaker 12: try to uncover layers that others looked at with any
Speaker 12: kind of film research. So I hope I did that
Speaker 12: and didn't and hopefully.
Speaker 1: To this.
Speaker 12: Oh my god, okay, go CHERI. Yeah, that's how it
Speaker 12: felt in my head. It felt like a bear and
Speaker 12: felt like a race. Hopefully kept the cool on the outside.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Heather, Thank you Rob. Thanks both of you
Speaker 3: for joining me on this third revisitation to Calligula. So yeah,
Speaker 3: like you said, Rob, maybe in a few years we'll
Speaker 3: meet again and talk about Little Boots. So until then, Heather,
Speaker 3: what else are you working on these days?
Speaker 12: No more caligular For now, I will take a moment
Speaker 12: to plug by Patreon. That's at patreon dot com. Mondoheather.
Speaker 12: I recently covered the Japanese Evil Dead, which I recommend.
Speaker 12: I am currently working out a new piece for the
Speaker 12: Patreon where I'm going to be. I'm currently writing about
Speaker 12: Alfred Soul's Tanya's Islands.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's a classic.
Speaker 12: Yeah in some ways, but I love Alfred Soul and
Speaker 12: I think his career, his whole career, deserves an article.
Speaker 12: And maybe that's for the future.
Speaker 3: I don't know if this project is still happening, but
Speaker 3: if you go back and you listen to some of
Speaker 3: those episodes that Ashley West was on April, we're working
Speaker 3: on a movie about or a series I should say
Speaker 3: about Soul, and it was focused really around deep Sleep,
Speaker 3: but there were other things in there as well, So yeah,
Speaker 3: exciting stuff. I know your dog's excited.
Speaker 12: Listen to him. He's like me, we'd love yeah Soul,
Speaker 12: we love not Realita retword but but no some boroking
Speaker 12: on that at of course, A seconds fight are finally
Speaker 12: getting to release the beautiful restoration set of The Hitcher,
Speaker 12: and I have an essay on that release, which is
Speaker 12: something I'm massively excited about and something that I'm very
Speaker 12: excited that is available for pre order and through Saturn's
Speaker 12: Core is Our World Is Drowning and Growing to Hell,
Speaker 12: which is a compilation of this underground director named Richard Baylor,
Speaker 12: who was an American director that moved to England, Ipswich
Speaker 12: in particular, and made in might you know some of
Speaker 12: the most evocative and just completely unique underground cinema. They're
Speaker 12: very dark here, you know, a lot of it's very
Speaker 12: horror jacent, but they all have a very light punk flavor.
Speaker 12: And he has such a great eye. He gets compared
Speaker 12: to cinema of transgression. I shouldn't think he's better than
Speaker 12: a lot of uh, but he's just different. It's an
Speaker 12: easy thing to invoke, I think, with underground cinema all
Speaker 12: but it's like not everything cinema transgressions. But Richard Baylor
Speaker 12: is amazing. And I do a commentary as well as
Speaker 12: contributed an essay for that Everything Else Linktrede dot Com,
Speaker 12: Forward Slash Mondo Hoover and.
Speaker 3: Rob how about yourself. What have you been up to.
Speaker 11: I've been notoriously lazy. I've just written a script and
Speaker 11: been working on some mating projects for myself. But I've
Speaker 11: got nothing that anyone can interact with online because I
Speaker 11: pulls up in the desert, So come find me.
Speaker 12: That sounds like the Hitcher?
Speaker 3: Is that a spirit walk?
Speaker 14: There? You go?
Speaker 11: No, it's all good, though, I said, it's it's it's
Speaker 11: where I'm at right now, and that's okay. You know,
Speaker 11: you have moments you're doing a lot of work in
Speaker 11: somewhere you're not doing a lot, and I just don't
Speaker 11: have a lot going on right now, and I'm enjoying it,
Speaker 11: and that's okay.
Speaker 3: And people can still buy your book All about Orbit magazine,
Speaker 3: which is a fantastic read, and highly recommend it.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 11: And as a matter of fact, this fall will be
Speaker 11: twenty five years since the end of Orbit, so that
Speaker 11: was nineteen nine.
Speaker 14: Cow.
Speaker 11: So if if you're a detroiter and you're nostalgic and
Speaker 11: you haven't checked it out, go get a copy, preferably
Speaker 11: from Wayne State Breast. Don't buy it from the big store.
Speaker 11: If you can help it.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, guys, for being on the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear
Speaker 3: more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some
Speaker 3: of the other shows that I work on. They are
Speaker 3: all available at weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our
Speaker 3: Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit
Speaker 3: patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get
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Speaker 14: I want to.
Speaker 19: See you cruel as a giant line in my big
Speaker 19: bike with police sal rides and a huhred gods.
Speaker 18: Looking drop dead delicious, dressed up to the night.
Speaker 19: In the skins of several species, in declib as a
Speaker 19: set fire to your houses and your cars. I'll be
Speaker 19: dancing like a dervish vespas.
Speaker 4: Is this what you have fell? Racing around.
Speaker 14: Like a bike.
Speaker 18: It's the ball, my clear juless, It's the fall of Rome,
Speaker 18: my chula Si. I'll display you in my game show
Speaker 18: on CEV.
Speaker 19: Called Humanation and hipocurcy.
Speaker 4: Thornorgy call dissolute and adam.
Speaker 18: Every kind deviation on.
Speaker 19: The man so worshed me cold down on.
Speaker 2: Or Alan leash another.
Speaker 19: Gemic coorizy is this watching power feels.
Speaker 4: Racing around my fas like a bike.
Speaker 18: It's the phone I can like Gilson.
Speaker 2: It's the phone, like Gilson, My.
Speaker 20: Big just a little tray, be calling on your hands
Speaker 20: and waves like slaves?
Speaker 14: And am I so desirable?
Speaker 4: Your are so destructible?
Speaker 20: Do you think his eyes ever gonna end?
Speaker 19: Dance with me, Lass Burney, once you dance with me
Speaker 19: while I am wires falling.
Speaker 4: Like Nero. Let's make music to the.
Speaker 14: D my calling the less.
Speaker 20: I go.
Speaker 4: You love sh