Speaker 1: The Projection Booth podcast is sponsored by Scarecrow Video. Try
Speaker 1: out Scarecrow's rent by mail service. Choose from over one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand films and get Blu rays, four
Speaker 1: k's and DVD's delivered directly to your door. Visit scarecrow
Speaker 1: dot com today.
Speaker 2: Oh gez, folks, it's showtime.
Speaker 3: People say good money to see this movie when they
Speaker 3: go out to a theater. They want clothed sodas, hot
Speaker 3: popcorn in. No monsters in the projection booths.
Speaker 1: Everyone for tend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 4: Got it off.
Speaker 2: OSCA then just actually nanso for slash diac smo of
Speaker 2: oda shall yeah.
Speaker 5: M every day you remainder me snaps laps.
Speaker 2: Yaku, bait, takuruda so pakamash coskati.
Speaker 6: Rasa to guitarus go blutop.
Speaker 2: A sma san soda do.
Speaker 7: Plan play basic.
Speaker 2: Noish love babyropa ah be a girl, Yes, jerosla via
Speaker 2: blissa you know the love of Yes, clinics lesser.
Speaker 8: Shark y ven.
Speaker 9: Naru stab heaven, she erected.
Speaker 7: Tastyam set dream.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's be shsta bistromashnapay.
Speaker 6: A.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White,
Speaker 1: join me once again as mister Rob Saint Mary. I
Speaker 1: give the Bolsheviks a year two with the most Also
Speaker 1: back in the booth is mister Philip Marinello.
Speaker 8: You said we'd always choose dads together.
Speaker 1: We are kicking off Cheptember twenty twenty five with cozy Dents. However,
Speaker 1: there's no fiddle faddle here. Also known as Palishki, it
Speaker 1: is based on a book called Why Do I Do
Speaker 1: This to Myself?
Speaker 3: Guys?
Speaker 1: It's based on a book called joven no hori, which
Speaker 1: translates as the very simple title shit on Fire. Directed
Speaker 1: by Jan Erbecht and written by Peter Jarchowski, the film
Speaker 1: is a bittersweet coming of age tales set in the
Speaker 1: months from Christmas nineteen sixty seven up to the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight Prague Spring, which, if you weren't paying attention,
Speaker 1: that was January fifth, nineteen sixty eight. We will be
Speaker 1: spoiling this film as we go along, so if you
Speaker 1: don't want anything ruined, turn off the podcast and come
Speaker 1: on back after you've seen the film, we will still
Speaker 1: be here. So Rob, you were actually the one who
Speaker 1: brought this film to my attention. When did you first
Speaker 1: see it and what did you think when you first
Speaker 1: saw it?
Speaker 4: It was about two years ago around this time of year,
Speaker 4: so August September, and I have a friend of mine
Speaker 4: who's from Detroit, and I decided to go visit him
Speaker 4: in Prague.
Speaker 7: He always had this.
Speaker 4: Hey, anyone wants to come visit. I got extra bedroom.
Speaker 4: I was like, I raised aunt. So I got to
Speaker 4: spend ten days in Prague, who was lovely and just
Speaker 4: had a really wonderful time there. And as part of that,
Speaker 4: my friend Rick was showing me some movies. He's watched
Speaker 4: some check film. He's an American and he doesn't speak
Speaker 4: the language, he knows the culture. He traveled there when
Speaker 4: he was a kid. He's got friends and stuff like that,
Speaker 4: and he went there to go work with an artist
Speaker 4: originally who's pretty well known. But anyway, so we watched
Speaker 4: closely watch Trains, which I believe I had seen before
Speaker 4: and I think you've done on the show. And then
Speaker 4: he watched showed me this movie. Now what was funny
Speaker 4: is when he showed me this movie. The next day
Speaker 4: we went to go visit some of his friends and
Speaker 4: they're like, why are you showing him Christmas movie. They're like,
Speaker 4: that's like the progue national Christmas movie, Like it's August
Speaker 4: tell you doing. And so because of the Christmas themes,
Speaker 4: you know, as we get into it, and if you
Speaker 4: get a chance to see it, you'll understand why that is,
Speaker 4: because half the film is takes place in Christmas time.
Speaker 4: And so this has become looking at letterbox, I'm on
Speaker 4: letterbox now and looked at the reviews for this, and
Speaker 4: most of them are in Check. But there's those who
Speaker 4: put an English review in who are either Americans or
Speaker 4: they have some tie to in the English speaking world,
Speaker 4: and they say, yeah, this is just a holiday classical.
Speaker 7: Family gets together and watches this, which.
Speaker 4: Is really interesting when you consider that the movie kind
Speaker 4: of jokes about suicide three times, to which my friend
Speaker 4: Rick would say, you know what, the check they have
Speaker 4: a really dark sense of humor, and they do, but
Speaker 4: in a way, this one is kind of light. And
Speaker 4: I really enjoyed it, and I thought, hey, I don't know,
Speaker 4: if you know this movie, maybe you should.
Speaker 7: Do it for your check series.
Speaker 1: And Philip, was this a new one for you?
Speaker 8: Yeah, this was absolutely a new one. I was telling
Speaker 8: you before I recorded as a long Time Projection booth listener.
Speaker 8: I have added many chick films to my watch list
Speaker 8: over the years, but I've never watched along. Some are
Speaker 8: harder to find than others, but I just never had before.
Speaker 8: So when you're like, hey, this is what we're doing.
Speaker 8: I went into it relatively blind. I knew that it
Speaker 8: was about families over a holiday, but that's about it.
Speaker 8: And I loved it. This was quite a discovery.
Speaker 1: This was also a new one for me, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you brought this to my attention.
Speaker 3: Rob.
Speaker 1: I really was not familiar with the writer, not familiar
Speaker 1: with the director. They I think had aired up a
Speaker 1: few times and also adapted another one of the author's stories.
Speaker 1: I want to say for an earlier film. I now
Speaker 1: need to go back and see some of these other things.
Speaker 1: But I can see why this is a holiday classic,
Speaker 1: not just because it's set at the holiday time, right
Speaker 1: at this very critical moment, but also it reminds me
Speaker 1: a lot of a Christmas story. It reminds me of
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of vignettes strung together. We don't have
Speaker 1: a narrator, we don't have that what was the guy's
Speaker 1: name that the gene shepherd that did those.
Speaker 3: I can't remember.
Speaker 1: It's been a minute since I've seen a Christmas story,
Speaker 1: but I used to watch that ever Christmas pretty religiously,
Speaker 1: and I can see watching a movie like this because
Speaker 1: it has that same flavor of dysfunction amongst the family.
Speaker 1: But with this one, you've got a few families and
Speaker 1: just seeing the dysfunction amongst them, and how everyone interacts
Speaker 1: or doesn't interact, who hates each other, who gets along,
Speaker 1: how things change, alliances move, because not only do you
Speaker 1: have the family aspect, but then you've got the political
Speaker 1: aspect as well. Who's going to come out on top,
Speaker 1: who's on the bottom. Like you said, I give the
Speaker 1: Bolsheviks one year, maybe two tops. And this is right
Speaker 1: before the tanks roll in, and we actually have the
Speaker 1: scenes of not necessarily seeing the tanks, but hearing the
Speaker 1: air raid sirens and all these things, and just shit
Speaker 1: gets real.
Speaker 3: Real at the end of this, And yeah, it's a
Speaker 3: real eye opener.
Speaker 8: For me and Mary Christmas, God bless us everyone.
Speaker 4: The thing is, there is a narrator. There's a little
Speaker 4: bit at the beginning and the end.
Speaker 7: If I take it, it's the kid.
Speaker 4: And like I said that, I have a problem with
Speaker 4: the names of the characters. I just say that the
Speaker 4: one boy who's the boy in the communist family who
Speaker 4: in the very first scene is trying to hang himself
Speaker 4: our protagon. Yeah, and so you get the feeling that
Speaker 4: everything is viewed through his lens and because he's oh,
Speaker 4: I was almost sixteen when this happened, and that really
Speaker 4: you only get him voiceovering in the very beginning of
Speaker 4: the very end.
Speaker 7: That's it.
Speaker 4: There's not all this commentary through the rest. And then
Speaker 4: there's really only one other scene that I can think
Speaker 4: of off the top of my head where we get
Speaker 4: his interiority, where it's this is what he's feeling or
Speaker 4: thinking in the moment.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, oh god, I know exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 4: I kind of like that because one of the things
Speaker 4: that we often talk about is and voiceover can be good.
Speaker 4: I'm a big fan of when I know we've debated
Speaker 4: this and go back and listen to the Blade Runner episode,
Speaker 4: I really like the voiceover Blade Runners. But a lot
Speaker 4: of times a voiceover in a movie is a crutch.
Speaker 7: It's I don't know exactly what they do. So we're
Speaker 7: going to tie it all together with a voiceover.
Speaker 1: Just to clarify, I was not the one who doesn't
Speaker 1: like the voiceover in Blade Runner, so it was our
Speaker 1: third person who I believe doesn't like that.
Speaker 3: So I'm with you.
Speaker 1: You know, Sushi cold fish. That's why my wife always
Speaker 1: calls me. That's a classic.
Speaker 4: The other thing that's interesting in here, and I don't
Speaker 4: know if I think Mike, obviously you may have a
Speaker 4: little historical background. Philip, I'm not sure about your historical background.
Speaker 4: I don't know how much you need to know about
Speaker 4: check as the area, yeah, or the prog spring. I
Speaker 4: think it adds. There's a scene later I'll talk about that.
Speaker 4: It really adds if you get it. But as long
Speaker 4: as you understand they're under communism, they're under socialism, that's
Speaker 4: really all I think you really need to know. I
Speaker 4: don't think it really goes that far in depth. They
Speaker 4: and of course the audience they're expecting you're going to
Speaker 4: bring that anyway.
Speaker 1: The first blush too, I mentioned a Christmas story. The
Speaker 1: other thing this really reminded me of was better Off
Speaker 1: Dead with that suicide attempt at the beginning, or maybe
Speaker 1: even a little bit of Harold and Maud when he's
Speaker 1: laying in bed and his sister's coming in, like lifting
Speaker 1: his arm up and it keeps flopping down, and then
Speaker 1: he eventually sneaks up on her and scares her half
Speaker 1: to death. But yeah, it's got that great dark humor
Speaker 1: that I love so much.
Speaker 8: It was so funny, Like I can see why this
Speaker 8: would be a regular and if there was a good
Speaker 8: addition around. I don't know if i'd watch this every year,
Speaker 8: but I'd watch this. This would be such a fun
Speaker 8: movie to have people or be like, hey, let me
Speaker 8: introduce you to something, because I'm sure, like in Letterbox
Speaker 8: only not that many people have seen it.
Speaker 1: I was really confused when it came to the name
Speaker 1: of this movie being calling Cozy Dends because it's actually
Speaker 1: in English title. I did not know that because cozy
Speaker 1: in this case is spelled cos y, so we've got
Speaker 1: the English spelling of cozy. So for me as an American,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, cozy, coz y. So when I see
Speaker 1: Cozy Den's, I'm just like, oh, Cozy Dens, like putting
Speaker 1: an accent on it.
Speaker 8: I thought it was a foreign title too. It's like,
Speaker 8: all right, whatever, I'm not sure what this means, but okay, I.
Speaker 4: Like shit on fire. Shit on fire would be good.
Speaker 4: I think maybe that would cross over and be like, oh,
Speaker 4: shit on fire?
Speaker 8: Was that on fire?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, sign me up for that movie. Two tickets please.
Speaker 4: But when you talk about cozy dens, it makes sense
Speaker 4: because most of it takes place in one building. I
Speaker 4: don't want to call them capitalists so much, but the
Speaker 4: anti communist family lives at the top and they have more.
Speaker 4: And then there's the guy who's body in his family,
Speaker 4: who's where the narrator comes from, and he lives in
Speaker 4: the middle, and then in the bottom floor. I believe,
Speaker 4: if I'm remembering the architecture of the building, the bottom
Speaker 4: floor is the sister of the communists, and she's the
Speaker 4: single mom teacher at the school where all the kids go.
Speaker 4: If you look at it, it's three little animal dens.
Speaker 4: And that's how I looked at it. These are our
Speaker 4: little worlds, and we build our little worlds. And the
Speaker 4: thing that I find interesting is the crossover between the
Speaker 4: worlds that happen from time to time. Obviously they all
Speaker 4: become interlinked by the end, and also the fact that
Speaker 4: there's certain things it doesn't matter what strata you're in,
Speaker 4: it doesn't matter what if you're a communist if you're not.
Speaker 4: Especially those guys, the fathers and those two households, they
Speaker 4: both have a problem with their kid and they think
Speaker 4: that they're like leading to the downfall of society because
Speaker 4: this one's got a mc jagger poster and the other
Speaker 4: one wants to call dumpling something else and is dating,
Speaker 4: you know, a hippie boyfriend.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that was funny.
Speaker 3: Oh the speech that he gives is so good.
Speaker 4: And there's a lot of really like beautiful set pieces
Speaker 4: in here, in the way that they're written. And then
Speaker 4: the crossover between the three because it's like they're each
Speaker 4: having a Chris Missus demial and they cut back between
Speaker 4: the three of them and what's going on and then
Speaker 4: what's going on within each one. There's certain dynamics depending
Speaker 4: and that's why I really loved it is I'm just
Speaker 4: like it's just really well done. It's like really well
Speaker 4: written and acted and directed, and it's so for me,
Speaker 4: it just really comes together really nicely.
Speaker 8: Yeah, the relationships, like everything felt so like universal, like
Speaker 8: you can show anybody of this. It's not i don't know,
Speaker 8: like ten and up, Like it's pretty there's a very
Speaker 8: small amount of profanity, but there's the full spectrum of life,
Speaker 8: like you've got kids who've got parents who got middle aged,
Speaker 8: like all the single mom stuff like hilarious and heartbreaking,
Speaker 8: her trying over and over to find somebody, either finding
Speaker 8: weirdos or being sabotaged by her son, like that scene
Speaker 8: where he puts on the record player like that killed me.
Speaker 8: But it also gets funny, but it's also really sad,
Speaker 8: and it's sad for everybody involved, Like this woman is
Speaker 8: trying to find stability for her and her son, and
Speaker 8: in that scene that guy was trying, like not a
Speaker 8: great guy, but just all the humanity was bare. And
Speaker 8: you've got the love triangle with the young people, and
Speaker 8: you've got as a movie with movies featured well in it,
Speaker 8: the cinema that he has that the whole like square
Speaker 8: of people come out to watch him project on the sheet.
Speaker 8: There were so many beautiful and universal moments in this.
Speaker 8: I feel like this be watchable at any time. Obviously
Speaker 8: it's a great Christmas movie, but this is immensely watchable
Speaker 8: I think at any time.
Speaker 1: The whole influence of the West, with the like you said,
Speaker 1: the McJagger poster, all the needle drops in this. It's
Speaker 1: got a fantastic soundtrack and that I found pretty easy.
Speaker 1: There's a website called I Think It's Super Fun, and
Speaker 1: that's usually where I go when I want to buy
Speaker 1: music from some of these movies, which is great and
Speaker 1: pretty reasonably priced too, as long as I'm figuring out
Speaker 1: my international exchange rate.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting I mentioned how these guys had worked
Speaker 1: together before, the writer, director, and then even the novelist
Speaker 1: who was alive at the time that this was made.
Speaker 1: The novelist was the three of them. I don't know
Speaker 1: how many times they worked together, but they had worked
Speaker 1: together on a film from ninety three called Sakka le Leta,
Speaker 1: and that is a musical comedy. So it's in the
Speaker 1: fifties and just the changing face of the times.
Speaker 3: With the whole rock and roll thing.
Speaker 1: And yeah, the needle drops in this and all of
Speaker 1: the musical moments in this are just fantastic and some
Speaker 1: great songs. I really appreciated that they were not just
Speaker 1: using Western songs that had made it through the Iron Curtain.
Speaker 1: These were actual real people from the time. This was
Speaker 1: almost a little American graffiti esque. When it came to
Speaker 1: the soundtrack.
Speaker 4: And this is where if you understand a little bit
Speaker 4: of history it's helpful, is that you know, Czechoslovakia was
Speaker 4: kind of left alone. He had a little bit of openness.
Speaker 4: It could run its own affairs as well as it
Speaker 4: could go so far but not too far. And that's
Speaker 4: what happened with the Prugu Spring was it was finally
Speaker 4: like Russia was like, no, y'all gone too far, and
Speaker 4: then that's why they rolled the tanks in. So the
Speaker 4: fact that it is a little bit looser and hipper
Speaker 4: and feels a little more quote unquote West than maybe
Speaker 4: what you might be used to for living under communist
Speaker 4: movies from the East, I think it gives a perspective
Speaker 4: for Americans who don't understand or maybe would like to
Speaker 4: learn more. Not to say it's a documentary, there's historical
Speaker 4: aspects in there.
Speaker 3: It's nice. Yeah.
Speaker 8: I think American graffiti is actually a really great parallel
Speaker 8: for it, where it's like it's a place in time
Speaker 8: and then just people bumping into each other living life
Speaker 8: like vignettes like in a movie like that really is timeless.
Speaker 8: Each person has their own arc and many of them
Speaker 8: are fulfilling, but there's just really great lines. I don't
Speaker 8: know how accurate the subtitles were that I saw, but
Speaker 8: I laughed several times, like good, well written jokes and
Speaker 8: really good delivery.
Speaker 4: That's a good parallel I hadn't thought of because in
Speaker 4: a way, American graffiti is using Vietnam as the catastrophe.
Speaker 7: It's gonna pull people apart.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's like the change in time and how the
Speaker 8: change in culture also impacts people going through life.
Speaker 4: And that's really what the prug Spring ended up doing.
Speaker 4: Was it ended up being after that clamped down, and
Speaker 4: you have to get to nineteen eighty nine, the early
Speaker 4: nineties before all of this finally breaks apart and they
Speaker 4: get back to where they were in that period right
Speaker 4: before this. So there's like a twenty year period of
Speaker 4: darkness that kind of follows right after this. So in
Speaker 4: a way, like you were saying, that's very stupid, makes
Speaker 4: a lot of sense in that way.
Speaker 7: I read it that way.
Speaker 8: Yeah, probably were not playing John Wayne movies in public
Speaker 8: during that time.
Speaker 1: Now, and when it comes to the chickness of it,
Speaker 1: I mean, there are definitely some very check things. And
Speaker 1: here the whole thing with the carp and the bathtub,
Speaker 1: I remember watching the Cremator, and I was.
Speaker 3: Just like, what is this thing?
Speaker 1: Why is Copper can go like going out and getting
Speaker 1: this Pike or sorry Pike.
Speaker 3: I was thinking of Psycho Pike.
Speaker 8: You've been in fact, I've been infected by the fights.
Speaker 7: We've gone from Psycho Pike to Christmas carp So there
Speaker 7: you go.
Speaker 1: And yeah, he would he had this pike in his
Speaker 1: bathtub and I was just like, what is this whole
Speaker 1: thing is? Oh, it's the Christmas meal.
Speaker 7: And then I like this whole thing.
Speaker 1: There's a few jokes that play into this whole thing
Speaker 1: of said an.
Speaker 4: Uncle, like the father and the uncle that the two brothers.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, so he is back.
Speaker 8: And forth was hilario. When we first saw the fish,
Speaker 8: I thought, I was like, is he hallucinating? What is this?
Speaker 8: I'm I am not a check a fishinado? And I
Speaker 8: was like, oh, is he did he? Is he like
Speaker 8: having a hallucination? Did he pass out underwater? Is this
Speaker 8: fish gonna talk?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 8: I had no idea what was happening.
Speaker 4: I didn't know that either, like I said, until I
Speaker 4: watched the movie, and then I like, I said. My
Speaker 4: friend Rick, who lives in Czech Public explained to me,
Speaker 4: he goes, it's a Christmas tradition, that's the old Christmas tradition.
Speaker 4: And what it was is they would take they would
Speaker 4: catch a pike, now like a car a carb. Carp, yes, pike, yeah, carp.
Speaker 4: Pikes and carbs are off in bottom feeders anyway, So anyway,
Speaker 4: they take the carp and they put it in the
Speaker 4: bathtub for a few days. Now, the reason for this
Speaker 4: is that it's supposed to clean out the fish because
Speaker 4: usually they're gritty because they're down there feeding among the MUCKs.
Speaker 4: So they say it helps it to taste better. So
Speaker 4: that'sthom for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, inside and out.
Speaker 4: But the brothers, so the one is the father of
Speaker 4: the narrator, who is the guy who's I guess he's
Speaker 4: a commissar or something and he's something in the Communist party,
Speaker 4: is what you get. And his brother, who doesn't agree
Speaker 4: with him, just are at each other. So like the
Speaker 4: brother and the mother that comes over, so the grandmother
Speaker 4: of the boy, and he also has a little sister,
Speaker 4: so like the whole family. And then it's like the
Speaker 4: two men in the room, they're just at each other
Speaker 4: to just constantly trying.
Speaker 7: To one up some oh, I know this, and I
Speaker 7: know that, oh do you? And then it's oh, you
Speaker 7: can't do this, and it's just.
Speaker 4: Ridiculous, and the mother is that the grandmother is, oh, God,
Speaker 4: come on, guys, don't do this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they get to do this whole thing about
Speaker 1: holding their breath, and then that ends up with him
Speaker 1: in that bathtub holding his breath underwater because he would
Speaker 1: be cheating otherwise seeing that carp and then it's the
Speaker 1: whole thing. If that carp is here, what were we
Speaker 1: just eating? And then finding out that the dad is
Speaker 1: too chicken to kill the carp.
Speaker 8: Well, and I also love the payoff of like bickering,
Speaker 8: like sibling rivalry. Of the original bet was hey, like
Speaker 8: up to sixty seconds, I owe you if you can
Speaker 8: hold your breath for over a minute, like I'll pay
Speaker 8: you whatever per second, and after the whole thing is out,
Speaker 8: sixty one seconds, I owe you one. So like he
Speaker 8: put him through this whole ordeal and then like he
Speaker 8: gave him like the smallest amount possible. I thought that
Speaker 8: was hilarious.
Speaker 4: All these characters are very at times you're like, oh, God,
Speaker 4: really gotta be that way. But that father character, the
Speaker 4: I really love him because he's such a believer, like
Speaker 4: he wants to believe, Like the whole scene with the glasses,
Speaker 4: So he gives the wife this box full of unbreakable GLAMs.
Speaker 7: He's like, we've done it.
Speaker 1: He is so all about that technology that we have
Speaker 1: here in Europe. Fucked those Americans.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's we've done it. We're one up on them.
Speaker 4: We've made these unbreakable glasses. And the kid throws it
Speaker 4: and it shatters, because of course they're unbreakable to a point.
Speaker 4: But anyway, and then later in the movie, there's a
Speaker 4: whole thing with the spoons, which is the poster art
Speaker 4: for the movie. They're these spoons, and he gives everyone
Speaker 4: these spoons and he says, oh, this is great, great
Speaker 4: socialist technology.
Speaker 7: And they put the.
Speaker 4: Spoon in their tea or their coffee, and they're just
Speaker 4: like disintegrates and melts. And that's what In the end,
Speaker 4: there's this his arc is. It's just like he wants
Speaker 4: to believe in this what he wants to say. It
Speaker 4: may not be a perfect system, but I believe in it.
Speaker 4: I care about it, and and I want my kids
Speaker 4: to grow up in it, and I want good things.
Speaker 7: Out of it. And so he's bought in. He's really
Speaker 7: bought in, and.
Speaker 4: There's a part of me that just I know he's
Speaker 4: a little deluded, but I just want to give hi
Speaker 4: a hug. I'm like, sorry, dude, Okay, I can see
Speaker 4: your I can see you're a good guy.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like you said, these characters are all they're like little
Speaker 1: thumbnails of these people, but you feel like you know
Speaker 1: them so well by the end of this, and you,
Speaker 1: just like you said, you want to give him a hug.
Speaker 1: You love all of these guys, even the cantankerous guy
Speaker 1: who loves those dumplings so much. But when they're explaining
Speaker 1: Yoki and he's just getting so mad every time she
Speaker 1: says Yoki.
Speaker 4: Here, and with him too, it's and you get the
Speaker 4: feeling with all of them that it's like they've all
Speaker 4: been through something, and especially him, like when he's pushed
Speaker 4: far enough, he'll fucking tell you he's I was in
Speaker 4: a camp, like the fucking Nazis tortured me.
Speaker 7: I wrote that line.
Speaker 8: Now he says, I was interrogated by the Nazis. You
Speaker 8: can't beat me with something like Nyaki. And that's all
Speaker 8: the layers of good cinema. That's right, really funny, it's
Speaker 8: the climax of the scene. But like Rob, you're saying
Speaker 8: that belies like a very deep, like human truth and
Speaker 8: like his pain in that.
Speaker 4: Moment, And that's really what this is if you understand it.
Speaker 4: It's like these people in this period are dealing with
Speaker 4: the aftermath of World War Two and they're dealing with
Speaker 4: the aftermath of what came with Soviet occupation and it's
Speaker 4: coming out in these twisted ways because they can't deal
Speaker 4: with it straight ahead. They're stuck, so they have to
Speaker 4: figure out a way, like the birds, like that last
Speaker 4: image in the film, like the birds in the Little
Speaker 4: Bird Cake. It really is that they're just stuck and
Speaker 4: trying to make the best out of whatever the hell
Speaker 4: they got to deal with.
Speaker 1: There's that line about we had to have this grit
Speaker 1: the spirit, otherwise we would have been Germanified like forever ago.
Speaker 1: And through watching so many of these check films, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they've had problems for centuries. It's not just over the
Speaker 1: last eighty ninety years. It has gone on for so long,
Speaker 1: Like the Czech language itself almost perished from the earth
Speaker 1: because of all of these other countries that were infringing
Speaker 1: on them, what be at Austria, be it Germany, wherever.
Speaker 1: Even the term Czechoslovakia is three things all being forced together.
Speaker 1: They didn't want to be forced together, and eventually they
Speaker 1: broke apart. At least they didn't have the whole Bosnia
Speaker 1: Herzegovina kind of thing where they're fighting each other. I
Speaker 1: think the breakup was a lot more amenable than that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, these folks have been through the shit all
Speaker 1: the time, and yeah it just the one guy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: tortured by the Nazis and then he's going to go
Speaker 1: from the frying pan into the fire with the Communists
Speaker 1: in just a few days. Like we watching this film,
Speaker 1: whether you know it or not, whether you do have
Speaker 1: that knowledge of the product spring or not, when it happens,
Speaker 1: you're just like, oh, okay, yeah, this doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: it's very good at all. And you get those things
Speaker 1: like the communists. Who's presenting to the kids in the classroom,
Speaker 1: and he's just like, yeah, we do a lot of paperwork.
Speaker 1: Sounds like you have a fascinating life there, sir.
Speaker 7: But not only that. He then goes in to tell
Speaker 7: this story about how to the kids. He's like, oh,
Speaker 7: we heard there.
Speaker 4: Was a spy and he was rolling down a motorcycle.
Speaker 4: They had a leather backpack, and we waited for him
Speaker 4: and we shot him, so heroic. But then there was
Speaker 4: another guy on a motorcycle with a leather backpack, so
Speaker 4: we had to shoot him too because we didn't know
Speaker 4: which one spy. So that kind of thing just shows
Speaker 4: you this kind of callousness, this kind of we're following orders.
Speaker 4: Maybe we didn't get it right, but and he's the
Speaker 4: last one. He's the last one who comes to dinner
Speaker 4: for the single mom teacher and her son, and they
Speaker 4: toss him out.
Speaker 8: Very funny, very dark because like he's telling a group
Speaker 8: of I don't know, thirteen fourteen, fifteen year olds. We
Speaker 8: definitely at least killed one guy who was just a
Speaker 8: guy out in the countryside.
Speaker 4: I was thinking about Diamonds in the Night because you
Speaker 4: were talking about the Germanification and all of that stuff,
Speaker 4: and there's dayton Land but the Nazi takeover, and I
Speaker 4: think the links are on that episode.
Speaker 7: But I talked about the.
Speaker 4: Museum that I went to when I was in Frague
Speaker 4: to the to the Hydrich Terror, the memory of the
Speaker 4: Hydrich Terror in Operation Anthropoid, which were the Czech Partisans
Speaker 4: who killed the number three Nazi in the whole system,
Speaker 4: who was the He was like the governor of that area.
Speaker 7: And he was a right bastard.
Speaker 4: Ryan hart Heidrich, depending on the biographies you read, was
Speaker 4: so into it, like Key scared Hitler, Like Hitler's like
Speaker 4: oof that guy. And he was like one of the
Speaker 4: architects of the Final Solution and the extermination camps and
Speaker 4: all that stuff to use the right. So the Czech
Speaker 4: Partisans killed him, and then there was horrible reprisals that came.
Speaker 4: They came and took out like a whole village, like
Speaker 4: several thousand people or for taking him out, And so
Speaker 4: just remember, like when you're watching this, it's like, this
Speaker 4: is the kind of shit these people lived through, these
Speaker 4: characters and the kind of darkness, so you can understand
Speaker 4: why and when this is what my friend Rick would say,
Speaker 4: who lives there, he goes that's why they have this
Speaker 4: dark sensibility. It's whether it was a dark sense of humor,
Speaker 4: is because they've been through just fucking horrible suffering in
Speaker 4: the twentieth century.
Speaker 8: But in among that, I don't think we've said this yet.
Speaker 8: The protagonist at the very beginning, his suicide attempt is
Speaker 8: not because of existential disparates, because he's in love with
Speaker 8: his neighbor who is not returning his affections. And that's
Speaker 8: the heart of the movie that sets its off that
Speaker 8: like we can all get behind and understand, Like immediately
Speaker 8: he's looking at his neighbor and she even comes by
Speaker 8: in it, what are you doing?
Speaker 4: Helps him out of the rubble, Yeah, out of the
Speaker 4: rubble of the little goda or whatever they got back there,
Speaker 4: the gazebo that collapses in them a little bit.
Speaker 8: Not sturdy enough for a child to hang themselves on.
Speaker 8: Thankfully well that his.
Speaker 1: Dad does that at the end and has very similar
Speaker 1: results too.
Speaker 8: And I think and that was the fascinating parallel. So
Speaker 8: like the main kid being into his neighbor and just
Speaker 8: failing and failing, and two different suicide attempts for unrequited love.
Speaker 8: But then his father the suicide attempts, after all the
Speaker 8: stuff we're talking about, he realizes, oh, this is all happening.
Speaker 8: The world is the bad. So like he goes to
Speaker 8: do it for a completely different reason but also fails.
Speaker 8: So that all these different layers of humanity and history
Speaker 8: on top of each other and it's it turns now
Speaker 8: just incredibly well.
Speaker 4: I thought that his on the end was an unrequited
Speaker 4: love for the ideology.
Speaker 8: There you go. That's beautiful.
Speaker 4: That he was so upset that the Russians came in.
Speaker 4: He was like, like, he was perfectly happy being a
Speaker 4: socialist in the way that socialism was, but the fact
Speaker 4: that the Russians had to come in and impose on
Speaker 4: top it was like, that was a fucking bridge too far.
Speaker 3: He was like, no, too much for one man to take.
Speaker 4: But his son doesn't die, he gets he collapses the
Speaker 4: entire yes, because he's a grown man.
Speaker 7: Yeah, his brother comes and helps him dust him off
Speaker 7: out of the rubble.
Speaker 8: So his father and his brother, that was a great relationship,
Speaker 8: as well as so many of them. I loved how
Speaker 8: the film showed in the cozy dens like something we
Speaker 8: often don't have as much anymore, like physical proximity with
Speaker 8: affect and intertwinement with people who you have strong ideological
Speaker 8: disagreements on. Like now recording this in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 8: it's a lot harder to go through the holidays with
Speaker 8: people who are drastically ideologically different than you. But that
Speaker 8: was really, really refreshing to see. Even though they rib
Speaker 8: each other, they harass each other, they yell at each
Speaker 8: other whatever, but their family and that was a nice
Speaker 8: thing to see.
Speaker 4: Well, not only are they family, but they become like
Speaker 4: the whole building becomes family by the end because the
Speaker 4: single mom who's constantly looking for guys, she falls for
Speaker 4: the old thing where it's like you'll find love when
Speaker 4: you stop looking for it kind of thing. So she
Speaker 4: ends up with the man up in the top floor
Speaker 4: who sadly becomes a widower because his wife dies.
Speaker 8: Yeah, the girl who does not return the protagonists love,
Speaker 8: her mother dies and then her father marries the But
Speaker 8: that first suitor, I was cracking up, like the kid was.
Speaker 8: I was harassing him the whole time.
Speaker 4: I'm read teacher, his idea he's referred to I'm read teacher.
Speaker 8: I could not believe. And I'm sure that this is
Speaker 8: thinking about the process of writing this and shooting this.
Speaker 8: I just thought I came with the offer of quality sex,
Speaker 8: bamboo chopping, the milk and water position, long hours of homework,
Speaker 8: all in vain, like he just wanted to get a
Speaker 8: little bit and this kid would not let him. And
Speaker 8: just his frustration the milk and water whatever, like I
Speaker 8: was dying.
Speaker 4: It's funny the lead up too, where the like the
Speaker 4: little boy sitting at the table and he's playing with
Speaker 4: his erector set or whatever it is.
Speaker 7: He's playing with her, screwing these little things again, and.
Speaker 4: He's watching this guy try to mac on his mom
Speaker 4: with the paper weight he's looking at he's gazing at
Speaker 4: her and paperwaight and all this stuff and just trying
Speaker 4: to If the kid wasn't there, I'm sure everything would
Speaker 4: have been very successful. Every thing seemed it was going well.
Speaker 4: We had a little dance, they had a little music,
Speaker 4: they had a they had a little danger because he's
Speaker 4: got that box free of which to me reminded me
Speaker 4: of an E meter like the scientology. But he's like
Speaker 4: holding onto these cans. He's like, all right, hit the
Speaker 4: button and it's the kid. Let him go for a
Speaker 4: while too.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, like them.
Speaker 4: Yes, well you could tell the mother's frustrated too. It's
Speaker 4: not just comrade teacher that wants to get laid like mom's.
Speaker 4: I'd like to get laid too, So is it okay
Speaker 4: that we do it on Christmas? Takes the boy back
Speaker 4: to his room and it's keep messing around. I'm going
Speaker 4: to take your microscope away from you, which was his
Speaker 4: Christmas gift. Of course, his revenge, as you said, was
Speaker 4: a massively loud needle drop.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love the scene with the electricity. I love the
Speaker 1: speaking of cultural things. I want to know that whole
Speaker 1: story of the very harsh dead the Yoki dad. Why
Speaker 1: he's pouring that it looks like pewter or something into water.
Speaker 1: It almost seems like a decoration or like even fortune
Speaker 1: telling because when he looks at it, then he says
Speaker 1: his line about the Bolsheviks again, because that's like his refrain.
Speaker 4: I think that is a kind of divination. It may
Speaker 4: be a cultural thing. I don't know, but basically, he's
Speaker 4: pouring which looks like silver metal into a bowl of
Speaker 4: cold water, and it sizzles, and then he pulls the
Speaker 4: this weird pattern out and he looks at it.
Speaker 3: What is it?
Speaker 7: What is it telling you?
Speaker 4: I think is what the mother assays to him. So
Speaker 4: to me, I feel like that's like in line with
Speaker 4: I don't like reading tea leaves or something.
Speaker 3: You know, That's what it felt like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But at the same time, just maybe because it
Speaker 1: was Christmas, reminded me of like a snowflake or something.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, is this what you do at Christmas time?
Speaker 1: To make a decoration?
Speaker 8: Well, he was so practical too, like it was an
Speaker 8: odd thing because he was such this like intense guy,
Speaker 8: and then they had this that scene did come out
Speaker 8: of the.
Speaker 3: Blue a little bit for him.
Speaker 1: He's a very intense guy. In that whole scene of
Speaker 1: him and his family when his wife is doing the
Speaker 1: Lord's prayer and he's got that nationalistic song on. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that was the Czech national anthem. I
Speaker 1: wanted to shazam that to see what was going on there.
Speaker 1: And especially the daughter has this very pained look on
Speaker 1: her face, and the mother's just like it's okay, kind
Speaker 1: of like giving her the little looks.
Speaker 3: Like it'll be all right because it'll be okay.
Speaker 1: The family dynamic with them, with all of these families,
Speaker 1: but just the tension and especially that little thing that
Speaker 1: happens when he goes to try to sit down and
Speaker 1: she hasn't sat down yet, and he says, would you
Speaker 1: sit down first so I can follow the korum basically,
Speaker 1: and then she sits on.
Speaker 3: Then he gets to sit down.
Speaker 1: And it's just so tense everything with that family gets
Speaker 1: really tense a lot.
Speaker 4: Like I say, I didn't know my grandfather. He died
Speaker 4: when I was two, but my mom's from Scotland and
Speaker 4: my grandfather lived through the Blitz and was sunk by
Speaker 4: the Germans at least twice, maybe three times, well in
Speaker 4: the Merchant Navy and in Scotland, and he was very
Speaker 4: like proper by the rules. My mom would say if
Speaker 4: she's if I looked at my dad wrong, like at
Speaker 4: the table, he would just lean over.
Speaker 7: And just smack me out of the blue like he
Speaker 7: he was just fucking angry.
Speaker 4: And there's just like when you go through that kind
Speaker 4: of trauma and you don't know how to deal with it, right,
Speaker 4: it comes out like that. It comes out as just
Speaker 4: the scene that comes later where like on what is
Speaker 4: it on Christmas? They're being loud downstairs, so he comes
Speaker 4: down and starts yelling at Yeah, he's just fucking yelling
Speaker 4: at each other and he's shoes a yeah, and over
Speaker 4: what I hope you have another heart attack?
Speaker 8: Oh god, vicious And.
Speaker 7: It's like over what it's like you could be like, hey, dude,
Speaker 7: can turn it down.
Speaker 8: The music was a little bit loud.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's part they're celebrating, yeah, and it's like it
Speaker 4: didn't have to escalate that far that fast. But those
Speaker 4: kind of guys who survive that kind of trauma sometimes
Speaker 4: have that kind of way of reacting where it's just
Speaker 4: shut it down, fucking now.
Speaker 1: I was with this movie hardcore as I'm watching it.
Speaker 1: But the scene that you made mention of a little
Speaker 1: bit earlier on it happens around I think maybe the
Speaker 1: change from the first act to the second act where
Speaker 1: we do get into our main characters. Had Michelle I
Speaker 1: think it is Michael m I c ch e L.
Speaker 1: So there's no a in there, so is somebody named Michael.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to how you pronounce that.
Speaker 7: He's the main character.
Speaker 1: He's the main character, and he is part of that
Speaker 1: love triangle that we mentioned where you have that very
Speaker 1: hip dude and that hip dude. They're at like the
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's the post office or what.
Speaker 1: But he gets this box and he shows up off
Speaker 1: these brand new slick shoes that he's got early on
Speaker 1: in the movie, and they are these pointy boots, these
Speaker 1: like rock and roll boots, right, and our main character
Speaker 1: starts making fun of him, like Oh, how freaking girly
Speaker 1: these boots are. They look terrible and the girl's better
Speaker 1: than your shoes, and he's really ashamed of these clunky
Speaker 1: shoes that he's got. So here we are Christmas morning
Speaker 1: kind of thing, waiting for that red rider baby gun
Speaker 1: or in this case, a crossbow, which was amazing that
Speaker 1: they give a crossbow as a gift.
Speaker 3: It was just the little girl, it was amazing.
Speaker 8: And here's the sun.
Speaker 1: Here's our main character opening up the Christmas present. He
Speaker 1: opens it up and there's those fucking boots and he's just, oh,
Speaker 1: this is great, and the dad's just, oh, I love you, son,
Speaker 1: and they have this wonderful moment. Looks are exchange. Everyone's
Speaker 1: warm and happy and then hut, and you get here's
Speaker 1: what's actually in the package, and it's these Yeah.
Speaker 8: That got me.
Speaker 7: Oh it was so got me.
Speaker 4: It totally got me, because the rest of the movie
Speaker 4: we haven't had that.
Speaker 7: That is the only time that we have that in
Speaker 7: the movie.
Speaker 4: And so when it hits you're like, oh god, it's
Speaker 4: such a laugh and it's gutting at the same.
Speaker 8: Time because the cool kid like you don't he's not
Speaker 8: like a crummy guy. So it's not like we are
Speaker 8: on the protagonist's side, but it's not like, oh, this
Speaker 8: guy he ran him off the road a little bit.
Speaker 8: But that's also they were being rivals a little bit
Speaker 8: for her affections, so he never like crosses any lines
Speaker 8: or whatever. But we do want this kid to do well.
Speaker 8: And when he that scene, I was like, yeah, like,
Speaker 8: nice work, and then the cut to oh no, they
Speaker 8: not these cool cues.
Speaker 1: Here's these brown socks and these brown clunky boots that
Speaker 1: I got.
Speaker 3: And instead of his dad just being like starting to
Speaker 3: sing a.
Speaker 8: Rock and roll song and his dad's like, isn't that great?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he gives us same words but such a different inflection.
Speaker 4: The cool kid has his families in the States. It
Speaker 4: seems like they maybe send him back to the home
Speaker 4: country for school or something, or to be near grandma.
Speaker 4: He's the one who also has the film projector so
Speaker 4: he's the one projecting the movies out of bed sheet
Speaker 4: and the neighbors come.
Speaker 7: Out and watch and is it Jean Caban? Is that
Speaker 7: who it is? I think it is in the Grand Illusion.
Speaker 4: So the kid Michelle or Michael, he's the one who says,
Speaker 4: oh yeah, he's uses a homophobic slur to say that,
Speaker 4: and he looks like your boyfriend. He goes, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: because he's just like him. So there becomes this kind
Speaker 4: of making fun of each other rivalry thing, which leads.
Speaker 7: To the poster.
Speaker 1: I know that it's Mick Jagger, but he so looked
Speaker 1: like the main character for Velvet.
Speaker 4: Gold Mine because it's very psychedelic colors mc jagger. He
Speaker 4: tacks it up on his dad's communist corkboard and was
Speaker 4: with all the information and the the weekly dinner schedule.
Speaker 4: Of course, because everything is very regimental, it was typed out. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so he tacks up the mid Jagger posters fuck you
Speaker 4: to dad.
Speaker 8: The very genuine and very hilarious line. I also wrote
Speaker 8: that down. He said, I wanted to pass this bullet
Speaker 8: for this bulletin board down to you, you bastard, like
Speaker 8: like this is the order, this is I was hoping
Speaker 8: that you would carry on our traditions of posting the
Speaker 8: schedule of family schedule.
Speaker 1: But apparently it's not good. Oh man, it's not good
Speaker 1: enough for you, son. You gotta be a rebel and
Speaker 1: tack this poster up on my beloved bulletin board.
Speaker 8: And that was funny too, because when he tore it up,
Speaker 8: he's like, it's whatever this is from this guy who
Speaker 8: like is my friend, but I'm trying to get one
Speaker 8: over on him anyway. So that was also great. I
Speaker 8: loved the moment where they're playing John Wayne movie North
Speaker 8: to Alaska. Oh yeah, Mikhale's mom comes and just the
Speaker 8: very simple line delivery of I haven't been to the
Speaker 8: cinema in fifteen years. I haven't seen a movie and
Speaker 8: it's just as a movie lover like that was that
Speaker 8: really landed with me, because like, the cinema is magic.
Speaker 8: They're in such a hard time and going like, oh, like,
Speaker 8: I remember what it was like.
Speaker 7: To go to a movie.
Speaker 8: That was devastating. Imagine going fifteen years without seeing a movie.
Speaker 4: The only other person I can think of that did
Speaker 4: that he may have watched it on TV. But it
Speaker 4: was a little bit of trivia on our second episode
Speaker 4: that in the movie Seconds Rock Hudson plays a character
Speaker 4: called Wilson, and Brian Wilson was so out of it
Speaker 4: when he saw that in the late sixties in the
Speaker 4: theater he thought it was about him. He was so
Speaker 4: paranoid that he never saw another.
Speaker 7: Movie in the theater.
Speaker 4: They said until Et, because of course he had that
Speaker 4: whole period in there where he was a little off.
Speaker 4: So he next movie, Sound the Feord was et allegedly.
Speaker 4: This is the story there.
Speaker 1: This movie is just filled with one great scene after another.
Speaker 1: While we're talking about this, I've got the movie up
Speaker 1: in the background, and I'm just like, Yep, this was great, Yep,
Speaker 1: this is great. And they all run together like we're
Speaker 1: doing like the greatest hits as we're talking about this,
Speaker 1: But they're all of these just amazing things that are
Speaker 1: just strung together and really play well with one another.
Speaker 1: It just it builds and it weaves and waxes and
Speaker 1: waynes through this whole thing, and it is just so
Speaker 1: frickin funny and sad and melancholy and just so many
Speaker 1: fascinating things that are going on here.
Speaker 8: How about the magician suitor.
Speaker 3: That was great. I was about to say, that's so funny.
Speaker 1: I was just about to say, yeah, when they get
Speaker 1: to the mom doing those dates, and yeah, you get
Speaker 1: that guy in there with that amazing hair.
Speaker 8: Oh my god, he.
Speaker 4: Looks like a Kmart discount version of Seventh or Dali.
Speaker 7: I He's got this mustache.
Speaker 8: It's greasy, stranglery wha, he was Scott, what did he say?
Speaker 8: He had a great line like about being lonely because
Speaker 8: he's performance artist or whatever, like he chooses it, but
Speaker 8: it's lonely and it's hard, like he makes it out
Speaker 8: to be like he's sacrificing for this great thing. And
Speaker 8: he pulls some ping pong balls out of his mouth
Speaker 8: and he legitimately scares her when he pulls out the
Speaker 8: fake snake and she like screams. She does like a
Speaker 8: Sarah Palmer type scream when that snake comes out. It
Speaker 8: was just again like so many good parts.
Speaker 1: I am so glad you brought this to us, Rob.
Speaker 1: This was such a delight watching this.
Speaker 8: How about the scene where the widower walks into the
Speaker 8: classroom when they're talking about the students using profanity and
Speaker 8: she's got the their version of the F word on
Speaker 8: the board and he just looks at it and she
Speaker 8: like goes to stand in front of it because she's
Speaker 8: got a room full of all these educators and it's
Speaker 8: just that word written on the board in their language,
Speaker 8: and he looks at it like really perplexed, and she
Speaker 8: moves her body in front of it. Like again, that's
Speaker 8: like everybody gets that. That's that will be funny to
Speaker 8: anyone who you show this to.
Speaker 4: The other thing that it becomes that you have these
Speaker 4: families and these characters are so connected. Where I was
Speaker 4: talking about like the commissar or whatever, the narrator's dad
Speaker 4: who's the socialist, and the Christmas dude, this is the
Speaker 4: second Christmas, I guess, or is it. No, it's right
Speaker 4: before the prug spring.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it might be in New Year's dinner.
Speaker 7: No, it's the wedding. It's the wedding dinner.
Speaker 4: The teacher, the antie of his gets married to the
Speaker 4: guy upstairs who's the I was tortured by the Nazis.
Speaker 4: So he's feeling depressed because the girl he's still pining
Speaker 4: for the girl who's now literally a cousin now and
Speaker 4: by marriage, so he's still pining for her.
Speaker 7: He's like really upset, I can't really show it or whatever.
Speaker 7: He decides to stick his head in the oven.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he gets hammered on like the gift wine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, suicide another suicide joke.
Speaker 7: Sticks his head in the oven.
Speaker 4: And the man because they're upstairs in his place, and
Speaker 4: he's what in the electric oven, So they pull him
Speaker 4: out and he ends up having heat stroke and he
Speaker 4: has to go to the hospital, but when they first
Speaker 4: pull him out, his dad faints, Like his dad is
Speaker 4: so overcome by the fact that his son tried to
Speaker 4: kill himself because he obviously didn't know about the first
Speaker 4: one or he was like, whatever you find, but this
Speaker 4: one really fucked him up. So he ends up fainting,
Speaker 4: And that to me really shows, Yeah, I give my
Speaker 4: son a lot of shit, but I give him a
Speaker 4: lot of shit because this is the attitude that I
Speaker 4: grew up in at times with my folks, especially my mom,
Speaker 4: where it was just like I care about you, I
Speaker 4: want you to do good things, I want you to
Speaker 4: be on the right path, be tough for the tough world,
Speaker 4: and all that. In my mom's case, it's packed two suitcases,
Speaker 4: we're leaving and we're going to the States.
Speaker 7: You gotta be on it.
Speaker 4: So just the fact that he like falls over and
Speaker 4: faints and then he's like, oh great, he talks on
Speaker 4: the phone to the hospital. He's gonna be okay. They're
Speaker 4: gonna keep them a day or two. But it's a
Speaker 4: simple thing, but it really shows that connection.
Speaker 8: It was also very darkly funny that scene at the
Speaker 8: at When they hang up, they all start laughing about
Speaker 8: how silly he was for like how poor of a
Speaker 8: suicide attempt that was. They're like laughing so hard, like,
Speaker 8: h what a goofy little kid he tried to do
Speaker 8: this way, and like they're all four of them are
Speaker 8: laughing at his suicide attempt.
Speaker 4: And then about ten minutes later he's on the end
Speaker 4: of the road follow and.
Speaker 8: His brother's doing the same thing for him. It's like, oh,
Speaker 8: come on, brother, I think about this.
Speaker 4: And there was something recently with went onw a writer
Speaker 4: that I read where it was she was talking about
Speaker 4: Heathers and how people were like incensed by teenage suicide
Speaker 4: stuff and Heathers and it's, oh, it's a different time,
Speaker 4: like you could have those kind of jokes.
Speaker 8: Even in the old This is just a silly one
Speaker 8: office side. I remember not too long ago, what was
Speaker 8: it the old version of I think it was like
Speaker 8: the old version of You Got Man, like the Shop
Speaker 8: around the Corner, which I think also was a Christmas movie.
Speaker 8: There was a big old suicide attempt in that, and
Speaker 8: I was like, whoa, it's dark for studio Hollywood, but
Speaker 8: I mean it's this is probably the Christmas movie with
Speaker 8: the most suicide attempts, though.
Speaker 4: Well, it's a wonderful life. There's our American Christmas movie.
Speaker 4: It's got a suicide in it, so.
Speaker 8: Like a knowing to girl suicide attempt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't cut around that one very easily at all.
Speaker 4: Exactly. So what is it with Christmas and suicide? Let's
Speaker 4: look at that Christmas and suicide movies.
Speaker 8: It happens a lot around Christmas because it's like you're
Speaker 8: supposed to be happy, and when you're not, it just
Speaker 8: feels very discordant.
Speaker 4: I just find it funny that the Czech National Christmas
Speaker 4: movie as suicide in it in the American National Christmas
Speaker 4: Suicide great double feature.
Speaker 1: I've heard that a lot of suicides take place in
Speaker 1: the spring or like I've heard specifically February, because it's
Speaker 1: like you just sludge your way through the holidays and
Speaker 1: then it's okay, nothing's gonna get better.
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna end it now.
Speaker 1: But I would think, you know, go out on Christmas,
Speaker 1: ruin everybody's lives.
Speaker 4: And that credit card bill, that credit card bill, and
Speaker 4: go Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Oh, don't worry, Rob, We're gonna make so much money
Speaker 1: with these tariffs, We're gonna all get refund checks.
Speaker 3: It's going to be great.
Speaker 4: I'm just sad I don't live in Michigan anymore. You
Speaker 4: all have the ten cent bottle return. At least I
Speaker 4: could be making some money. So Michigan, you get ten
Speaker 4: cents ten cents?
Speaker 1: Yeah, wait a minute, you mean you get five cents
Speaker 1: here and ten cents there. You could round up bottles
Speaker 1: here and run them out to Michigan.
Speaker 3: Doesn't work. What a minute, It doesn't work. You get
Speaker 3: enough bottles together.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you overload your you're invertory and you blow your
Speaker 4: margins on gasoline.
Speaker 7: Trust me, it doesn't work. Now you're not talking that
Speaker 7: Michigan deposit bottle scam. Now now I'm off that anyway.
Speaker 4: If anyone thinks we're joking about suicide, we're not.
Speaker 7: It's a very serious topic.
Speaker 4: I've had friends who died from it, and there have
Speaker 4: been times in my life where I've been suicidal. But
Speaker 4: everything I always say, you can always talk about something
Speaker 4: in art, and it's all about context.
Speaker 8: And again, like you said, that's touched all of our
Speaker 8: lives in one way or another, and we can see
Speaker 8: the humanity in that.
Speaker 4: And that's what Ultimately, this movie is about it's about
Speaker 4: the humanity. It's about these folks.
Speaker 7: Even if you didn't.
Speaker 4: Live through this time and you don't have the historical context,
Speaker 4: I think you can really understand who these people are
Speaker 4: and what they're trying to do. Speaking of a historical
Speaker 4: piece in here, the little mock up that he makes
Speaker 4: of the monument to the Pilots in World War Two.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's fantastic.
Speaker 4: And this was already torn down by then as part
Speaker 4: of de Stalinization. But they show you a photo of
Speaker 4: this thing, and if you ever look up the historical
Speaker 4: thing as the Stalin prog Monument, it is a It
Speaker 4: was a massive granite monument of Stalin and a bunch
Speaker 4: of workers, and it was made on prison labor. Is
Speaker 4: horrible history of this thing that was made. As a
Speaker 4: matter of fact, the guy who designed it, I think
Speaker 4: it was either the day it was unveiled or right
Speaker 4: shortly after, decided to kill himself because he just didn't
Speaker 4: feel good about what he was tasked to do by
Speaker 4: the Communists and the fact that his characters we're honoring
Speaker 4: these murderers and these horrible people. Actually it was blown
Speaker 4: up in nineteen sixty three or something like that as
Speaker 4: part of destalinization. It was like after Stalin died, they said, oh,
Speaker 4: Stalin was so awful. When krus Steff came in and
Speaker 4: said this is he was terrible and look at all
Speaker 4: the stuff that he did, and we got to be
Speaker 4: honest about how awful that time was.
Speaker 1: That monument looks so similar to one that's in Portugal,
Speaker 1: but rather than all of these like soldier and a
Speaker 1: farmer and all these things, it's all of these people
Speaker 1: that would go off to basically colonize other places. And
Speaker 1: I don't know, but the people who led the tours,
Speaker 1: let me just say that out of Portugal it was
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, we went to this place and they
Speaker 1: have these huge maps where they show like all the
Speaker 1: expeditions to all these places. I'm like, we're talking about
Speaker 1: slavery and colonization and all of these horrible things. And
Speaker 1: they're just like, like we say albrigado when we mean
Speaker 1: thank you. And that's why the Japanese people say arigato.
Speaker 3: They got it from us.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh my god, like they the Japanese
Speaker 1: people I hated, you get.
Speaker 4: It's funny you bring this up because I just watched Silence,
Speaker 4: which is the Scorsese movie about the fortune. He's pretty
Speaker 4: such man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking at a picture of the Stalin Monument
Speaker 1: right now and it is amazing, like just the scale
Speaker 1: of it, and it's yeah under an article called the
Speaker 1: monument that destroyed its creator?
Speaker 4: So holy shit, do you ever go you get a
Speaker 4: chance to go to Prague? They have some beautiful, beautiful things.
Speaker 4: One of the things that was lovely because of the
Speaker 4: Nazis loving the check so much and believing they were
Speaker 4: part of the Greater German project. It didn't get bombed
Speaker 4: all that hard, so there's a lot of beautiful architecture
Speaker 4: that's still there that other cities didn't have. And they
Speaker 4: have a lot of beautiful monuments and castles and such.
Speaker 4: So it's a very beautiful city.
Speaker 7: Prague.
Speaker 1: There's a movie I've been trying to remember through this
Speaker 1: entire conversation because it also had rock and roll in it.
Speaker 1: It was from probably a little bit earlier, definitely earlier
Speaker 1: than this came out, what ninety nine, So this was
Speaker 1: I was in college, so it was probably late eighties,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking it's when father was away on business.
Speaker 1: And I want to say there's a whole rock and
Speaker 1: roll subplot in that. But ironically it was a lot
Speaker 1: to do with the t Do Stalin breakup and just
Speaker 1: how that affected I want to say it was Yugoslavia.
Speaker 1: So I would like to go back now and watch
Speaker 1: that and see how it compairs with Cozy Denz, just
Speaker 1: because I could see those two things kind of lining
Speaker 1: up a little bit more. Even though once Czechoslovakia, one's Yugoslavia,
Speaker 1: but both these countries that were really ravaged by communism
Speaker 1: and also countries that produced movies with some really dark
Speaker 1: humor to them.
Speaker 4: There's a couple of movies that I think I've talked
Speaker 4: to you about over the years about trying to do
Speaker 4: from the Balkans that I would love to do that
Speaker 4: definitely some dark humor working through their trauma.
Speaker 1: So we've talked about this before, or as far as
Speaker 1: seeing people's trauma on screen and just making that universality
Speaker 1: of it. Just like you were saying before, Philip, you
Speaker 1: don't have to know about the prog Spring to enjoy
Speaker 1: this film. You don't have to know all of these
Speaker 1: ins and outs. You don't have to know about Christmas
Speaker 1: carp in order to figure.
Speaker 3: This movie out.
Speaker 1: It is very universal and it's just great to see
Speaker 1: something from another country from twenty six years ago and
Speaker 1: just that speaks to us so loudly today.
Speaker 8: It's also crazy ninety nine is that long ago? Hearing
Speaker 8: you say that out loud. Yeah, it's got just over
Speaker 8: a ten thousand letterbox log. This is right for a
Speaker 8: like a Radiance or potentially Criterion, but like this would
Speaker 8: be a great clean it up. I mean, it's got
Speaker 8: a really good restoration. Put it together, do some interviews,
Speaker 8: get a commentary like this would be great. This would
Speaker 8: be a great discovery, like in addition to the international canon.
Speaker 4: One of the things that I try to do when
Speaker 4: I after I watched this movie and Mike decided you
Speaker 4: wanted to put on the show was I was trying
Speaker 4: to coordinate with a friend of my friend Rick in Prague,
Speaker 4: who actually would have been like the sister in here
Speaker 4: of the of like the Commissar's daughter, because my friend Rick,
Speaker 4: his friend Yika, grew up her dad was part of
Speaker 4: the party and all of that stuff, and so there
Speaker 4: was part of me that was hoping we could have
Speaker 4: an interview with someone whould bring a little history to
Speaker 4: it and explain this is what this is.
Speaker 7: And why do I like this movie? Why does check
Speaker 7: people like this movie? Let me tell you what it
Speaker 7: speaks to.
Speaker 4: But us being three guys who are not from there
Speaker 4: and not connected to the culture in that way outside
Speaker 4: of the cultural exports. It's really about families. It's really
Speaker 4: about understanding who these people are. I especially think of
Speaker 4: myself at my age. I have kids, but I can
Speaker 4: understand friend's money do I can see my parents, I
Speaker 4: can see myself. I can see just humanity in general
Speaker 4: in a lot of these characters.
Speaker 7: And that's what makes it beautiful.
Speaker 1: I didn't fuck up, did I did? I like, eliminate
Speaker 1: this possibility? What's that of having your Rick's friend on here?
Speaker 4: I asked her to do it, and I thought she
Speaker 4: would be hip to do it, and she's like, it
Speaker 4: would be nice, but I don't think so I don't
Speaker 4: feel like doing it.
Speaker 7: And I was like, oh, it's too bad.
Speaker 8: She didn't want to speak for an entire nation.
Speaker 1: The novelist of this, Peter Sabach, he passed away in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, I believe. But the director and the adapter,
Speaker 1: the screenwriter, they're still going strong, still making.
Speaker 8: It like they're still making stuff. I'm just I just
Speaker 8: looked that up.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and they're both working at Barndov.
Speaker 1: So I emailed both of them a couple times to say, hey,
Speaker 1: you want to come on the show and do this stuff,
Speaker 1: and never got any responses. There was again only quote
Speaker 1: unquote twenty six years ago. But yeah, they both have
Speaker 1: been making films for quite a bit. A little while here, we.
Speaker 4: Were talking before we were rolling, and Philip was saying, oh,
Speaker 4: I haven't seen a lot of Czech film. I'm like,
Speaker 4: usually the place that people come in or closely watched
Speaker 4: trains Uri Mensol because of he won an Oscar, and
Speaker 4: then Milosh Foreman because we know the American Foreman films.
Speaker 4: Obviously the Cuckoo's an Nest and amideis just those at least,
Speaker 4: and then all the other stuff.
Speaker 8: I didn't realize Cremator was Check. That's very high on
Speaker 8: my life.
Speaker 7: Oh, it's so good.
Speaker 4: The thing that's interesting about Check and this is film.
Speaker 4: And this is what I was alluding to earlier about
Speaker 4: the architecture is that starting in like the nineties, basically
Speaker 4: as soon as Communism fell, there was a lot of
Speaker 4: American and European English speaking productions that went there because
Speaker 4: it could fill in for any really old European city,
Speaker 4: you know, it could be Berlin or Vienna or whatever,
Speaker 4: because Berlin and Vienna don't look like they used to
Speaker 4: because they got bombed a shit and rebuilt with modern architecture.
Speaker 4: So it became Czech Republican specifically, product became a place
Speaker 4: for a lot of English language production films. So it's
Speaker 4: always been, especially i'd say in the last thirty years
Speaker 4: or so, really a hotbed of people coming there to shoot,
Speaker 4: but also their own productions, and they're usually pretty high quality,
Speaker 4: like this one. Like I said, it looks as good
Speaker 4: as something that you would see an American film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the director of this really started his career right
Speaker 1: around the.
Speaker 3: Time of Velvet Revolution.
Speaker 1: I imagine that that opened up new filmmaking avenues for both,
Speaker 1: Like you're saying, people coming into the country but then
Speaker 1: their own homegrown directors again. And yeah, I think he
Speaker 1: hopefully didn't have to make a lot of films under
Speaker 1: that regime and was able to prosper after that because
Speaker 1: he's according to the source of all truth IMDb, he's
Speaker 1: directed at least fifty four things between TV and movies, more.
Speaker 4: And a lot of his stuff is available, and I
Speaker 4: don't know if this is connected to any of this
Speaker 4: at all, but I was just thinking about the fact
Speaker 4: that out of the Velvet Revolution at the end of
Speaker 4: communism in Czechoslovakia was BLACKSHAWF Hovel and Hovell was a
Speaker 4: poet and a playwright, and he was very much into
Speaker 4: the Western arts. So he was like, like, he loved
Speaker 4: Frank Zappa, and he loved the Velvet Underground, and he
Speaker 4: loved rock and roll music, all of this stuff. So
Speaker 4: a lot of these guys came to visit, like Zappa
Speaker 4: became like unofficial cultural attache to Czech Republic until he
Speaker 4: passed a few years later. But there was always this
Speaker 4: connection back in that way. And one of the great things,
Speaker 4: like I say, if he ended up getting the Prague
Speaker 4: and we can put this link in the show notes,
Speaker 4: and I think I may have talked about this during
Speaker 4: when we did Diamonds in the Night is the Museum
Speaker 4: of Communism. And in Prague there's a thing called the
Speaker 4: Museum of Communism, and it shows you what life was
Speaker 4: like from nineteen forty eight when everything collapsed, talks about
Speaker 4: the product spring and talks about all the things that
Speaker 4: happened all the way through to the revolution to today,
Speaker 4: and it's a great museum and if anyone goes, and
Speaker 4: if you have an interest in that and learning more,
Speaker 4: it'll really give you a sense of what the day
Speaker 4: to day life was like and some of the challenges
Speaker 4: of living under that regime.
Speaker 1: And if you mentioned that you came from listening to
Speaker 1: the projection booth, they'll give you a ten percent discount
Speaker 1: on tickets.
Speaker 3: At the door.
Speaker 4: Maybe, Hey, it doesn't hurt to ask. It doesn't hurt
Speaker 4: to ask. I heard about it on the projection booth.
Speaker 4: They're like, oh, really, okay, Joe Breden.
Speaker 1: All right, We're going to take a break and play
Speaker 1: a preview for next week's show. Right after these brief messages,
Speaker 1: bring home the all new The Naked Gun on digital
Speaker 1: Now see Liam Neeson like you've never before as Frank
Speaker 1: Dreben Junior as he leads police squad in this outrageous
Speaker 1: comedy also starring the iconic Pam Anderson by the film
Speaker 1: critics are calling one of the funniest movies of the decade,
Speaker 1: and get nearly an hour of gut busting extras, including
Speaker 1: deleted scenes, outtakes, and more. Available at participating retailers rated
Speaker 1: PG thirteen.
Speaker 3: From Paramount Pictures.
Speaker 1: Looking for something superior to streaming a place with more
Speaker 1: than five times a selection available on all streaming services combined.
Speaker 1: Check out Scarecrow Videos Rent by mail service. Select from
Speaker 1: an unparalleled collection of over one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: films and get Blu rays, four k's and DVDs delivered
Speaker 1: directly to your door. Get in on it now at
Speaker 1: scarecrow dot com and rediscover the wonders of physical media.
Speaker 2: At ammond an Arizon scap.
Speaker 5: In your.
Speaker 4: Charge me.
Speaker 5: Arizona, Arizona, yet Nabi.
Speaker 7: Who shoos on tissues? Eigo keep su Chi by two, Prince.
Speaker 5: Chi Ado hog Fogo, Dravanad's disas is in applesder in garuolad,
Speaker 5: any policy piety start to such any steps on city.
Speaker 7: Barzila best no whiskuit.
Speaker 6: In Manito.
Speaker 1: And you we m s saviss.
Speaker 4: Go kit panjok bestream over sha kid.
Speaker 7: As to plan cuts, memory.
Speaker 5: Approach, became champion and the duck Badman my the p
Speaker 5: prosper trig whisky approach.
Speaker 4: Enata.
Speaker 8: That's right.
Speaker 1: We'll be back next week with a look at the
Speaker 1: old rich Slipsky Cam, the Lemonade Joe. Until then, I
Speaker 1: want to thank my co host Rob and Phillips. So Rob,
Speaker 1: what is going on in your world, sir?
Speaker 7: Not a whole lot.
Speaker 4: Let me say, I've just been writing. I'll have got
Speaker 4: a couple of novels that I ranked down the last year.
Speaker 3: Just a couple of novels. Yeah, nothing too hard, Yeah,
Speaker 3: nothing too difficulty.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't do anything. It's just me and my cat.
Speaker 4: This is what happens. And I'm going to be on
Speaker 4: the show more this over the next few months. You've
Speaker 4: missed me in the past. I don't know who's missing me.
Speaker 4: But I'll be back for a couple more episodes coming
Speaker 4: up over the next year. And yeah, just enjoying myself.
Speaker 4: And I'll give you the link because I've gotten off
Speaker 4: of all the social media, but I am on a
Speaker 4: letterbox now so you can look at my silly reviews
Speaker 4: of movies that I've watched.
Speaker 1: So I will be sure to link to your name
Speaker 1: in the show notes with your letterbox link.
Speaker 7: Thank you, mister Mike. I hope you're doing well as
Speaker 7: long as.
Speaker 3: You send it over to me, otherwise I'm not going
Speaker 3: to go search them.
Speaker 7: For it, we'll do.
Speaker 4: And also good to be on here with Philip. It's
Speaker 4: good to talk about Karp after talking about Pike.
Speaker 8: Philip, what's new with you? Sir? Can find me over
Speaker 8: at the Substance and Rob, I just found your letterbox
Speaker 8: followed you there. That's always great when we get people
Speaker 8: to join the very best social media community podcasting over
Speaker 8: at the Substance, Mike, is probably about time to have
Speaker 8: you back again some point. When we do a lot
Speaker 8: of films under our Substantive Cinema banner, but then we
Speaker 8: also do like our brand is the Substance, it's pretty broad.
Speaker 8: Recently we've had on New York Times film critic Alyssa
Speaker 8: Wilkinson talking about her book on Joan Didion and John Wayne.
Speaker 8: We recently had British American poet David Gate on his
Speaker 8: new book of poetry, A Rebellion of Hope. Wide variety
Speaker 8: of stuff here. We actually just covered our second abs
Speaker 8: Kuristami movie of the Year, and on our first one,
Speaker 8: The Wind Will Carry Us had not been announced and
Speaker 8: we're like, man, it'd be great if they put out
Speaker 8: the Wind Will Carry Us. The next month they announced it,
Speaker 8: so then we did Wind Will Carryus episode and at
Speaker 8: the end of that we're like, man, it'd be great
Speaker 8: if Criterion put together a package of the early Kiristami
Speaker 8: shorts and documentaries. And then a couple of days after
Speaker 8: we posted that episode, big that announcement came the return
Speaker 8: of Eclipse, which I'm so excited for. So we got
Speaker 8: to figure out with that guest Martin George Vich, Samy
Speaker 8: nooras Martin McFly, We've got to plan our third oar
Speaker 8: hat trick, Like, what are we going to call into
Speaker 8: being for our next episode? So find me over there.
Speaker 8: I'm on letterboxed and you can find me at the
Speaker 8: Substance Pod on whatever social media is. We're still on.
Speaker 1: Thanks again guys for being on the show. Thanks to
Speaker 1: everybody for listening. Do you want to support physical media
Speaker 1: and get great movies by mail, head over too scarecrow
Speaker 1: dot com and try Scarecrow Videos incredible rent by mail service,
Speaker 1: the largest publicly accessible collection in the world. You'll find
Speaker 1: films there entirely unavailable elsewhere. Get what you want, when
Speaker 1: you want it, without the scrolling. If you want to
Speaker 1: hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out
Speaker 1: some of the other shows that I work on. They
Speaker 1: are all available at wirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to
Speaker 1: our Patreon community. If you want to join the community,
Speaker 1: visit patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we
Speaker 1: get helps the Projection Booth take over the world.
Speaker 7: It's a money and he said jelly stable, so spooking.
Speaker 1: Do yeah money? Oh my god, spooky.
Speaker 3: What's that?
Speaker 4: Jes said, I so shop do thus stay lushing go.
Speaker 9: So God loveing.
Speaker 5: And basks.
Speaker 7: Yeah love me. Oh my god.
Speaker 4: This has got.
Speaker 2: The book spark pro woos himself as a cinema Brandy
Speaker 2: mission So granties are located books parking, but as a
Speaker 2: many book terra terristable