Speaker 1: Weird.
Speaker 2: We welcome back Midnight Fears to Father Malone's weekly round up.
Speaker 2: I'm Father Malone and joining me for a bit of
Speaker 2: the crack for a bang on the air. She's my
Speaker 2: wild Irish rose, Miss Ripley. G Ripley is an English name.
Speaker 2: It means an overgrown patch of land. But you are
Speaker 2: not English. Your name for a badass alien stomper, and
Speaker 2: your last name is Malone. You're Irish by default, even
Speaker 2: though we both know you're Chinese. And it is Saint
Speaker 2: Patrick's Day. If you're listening to this on the day
Speaker 2: of release. This is recorded basically live. It's been a
Speaker 2: tumultuous weekend of indecision and distraction, so this is coming
Speaker 2: together at the last possible moment. Let's TCB Mama, get
Speaker 2: in the jet taking care of business. That's in the
Speaker 2: Elvis Way, not the Bachmann Turner overdriveway. It was a
Speaker 2: Grand Funk railroad music confusion. We'll have more of that
Speaker 2: in a moment. Thank you to all who subscribe to
Speaker 2: this show. You can do that on any platform you're
Speaker 2: listening to. Hit the like or the subscribe or the
Speaker 2: follow button, and if you're feeling generous in both time
Speaker 2: and efforts a five star review, or if you've got
Speaker 2: some of those republic credits, I'll take those over at
Speaker 2: patreon dot com slash follow alone. Subscribers there get episodes
Speaker 2: early and commercial free, and access to shows you can
Speaker 2: only find they're done out of the way. Now let's
Speaker 2: get back to that musical confusion. I promise that this
Speaker 2: will be an Irish themed episode. Shut up. On average,
Speaker 2: I only go on about the Irish like half the time,
Speaker 2: maybe more. The point is shut up, y'all. Remember Meatloaf,
Speaker 2: Not that the delicious mom or Dad has reached the
Speaker 2: end of their recipe tether, but the famed singer, actor
Speaker 2: and in general badass human being. Of course you do
Speaker 2: the rocky horror picture show Whatever Happened is Saturday Night
Speaker 2: bat out of Hell with that cover that seemed like
Speaker 2: an escape from the pages of Heavy Metal Magazine, most
Speaker 2: likely because it was created by Richard Corbin, who we
Speaker 2: talked about over on Anthology's Attack when we discussed Heavy
Speaker 2: Metal movie self plugging. Okay, his most famous song from
Speaker 2: that period is Paradise by the Dashboard Light. That song
Speaker 2: was written of Meatloaf. Songs really were written by Jim Steinman,
Speaker 2: He's always been described as the king of theatrical rock.
Speaker 2: All of Meatloaf's catalog feel like their songs and performances
Speaker 2: in search of a cohesive whole, a stage musical perhaps,
Speaker 2: and of course that's exactly what they were meant to be.
Speaker 2: Steinman had been writing versions of his magnum Opus Broadway
Speaker 2: musical since he was at Amherst. Back then, it was
Speaker 2: called The Dream Engine, and then it was called Neverland
Speaker 2: for a while, and it was about Peter Pan before
Speaker 2: ending up as a quasi concept album and eventually eventually
Speaker 2: its own musical called Bat Out of Hell.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I don't know why everything comes back to National Lampoon
Speaker 2: and Saturday Night Live, but National Lampoon had a successful
Speaker 2: improv show on Broadway. When it went to tour, several
Speaker 2: cast members dropped out because they had been hired to
Speaker 2: be on SNL. So Gilda Radner was replaced with a
Speaker 2: singer comedian actress named Ellen Foley. Belushi was replaced by Meatloaf,
Speaker 2: and of course Steinman was doing musical duties on the tour.
Speaker 2: While they were on that tour together, Steinmann and Meatloaf
Speaker 2: and Foley all worked out what would eventually be Bad
Speaker 2: out of Hell. When it came time to record Paradise
Speaker 2: by the Dashboard Light. It's Ellen Foley's voice in the duet,
Speaker 2: though everyone thinks it's Carla DeVito because she was in
Speaker 2: the promotional film that they showed on MTV seven thousand
Speaker 2: times because it was seven minutes long and it ate
Speaker 2: up a lot of airtime. Ellen Foley incidentally is the
Speaker 2: inspiration for the Clash's song Should I Stay or Should
Speaker 2: I Go? She sounds like trouble. I love her okay.
Speaker 2: That song, Paradise by the Dashboard Light, it's an ode
Speaker 2: to teen lust and rock and roll and sexual politics
Speaker 2: and regret so much regret. The Phil Rizudo play by
Speaker 2: play is ridiculous, by the way, obvious and dumb. I've
Speaker 2: made that point elsewhere, but it bears repeating. So that
Speaker 2: song is about a guy who wants to fuck a
Speaker 2: girl and she says yes, but only if they get married.
Speaker 2: So he says yes, and the song ends with both
Speaker 2: of them praying for the end of time so they
Speaker 2: can end their time with you. That was how the
Speaker 2: song ended. That was back in like nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 2: Then in nineteen ninety three, Lo and Behold Meet Love
Speaker 2: comes roaring back onto the charts. Remember that trilogy of
Speaker 2: pre Bad Boys Michael Bay directed videos. The first single
Speaker 2: is I'd do anything for Love, but I won't do
Speaker 2: that parenthesis. It's a sequel to Paradise by the Dashboard Light,
Speaker 2: but the girl only pops up at the very end. Okay,
Speaker 2: the first song ended with them hating each other. They're
Speaker 2: remembering a teenage fling, so that song ends with them
Speaker 2: already at their wits end, and that's in nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 2: This song forgets all about that. It's just him totally
Speaker 2: into the relationship. It's a Jim Steinman version of a
Speaker 2: hip hop tune, just endless bragging about the lengths he'd
Speaker 2: go for love, the tasks he'd accomplish for love, all
Speaker 2: these things he'd do, but not that he won't do that.
Speaker 2: What is that I'm asking you, listeners? This is hardly
Speaker 2: a burning question with the state of the world currently,
Speaker 2: but you know, if things do go sideways, I want
Speaker 2: the answer before we all turn into dust. This is
Speaker 2: how the song posits the question, like he's been asked
Speaker 2: to do some horrible thing that goes against the fundamental
Speaker 2: principally holds with regard to his partner. Not only has
Speaker 2: he seemingly been asked to do it, but the implication
Speaker 2: is she's doing the asking. If she didn't pop up
Speaker 2: at the end of the song, then it would just
Speaker 2: be a pulp fiction briefcase or a kiss me Deadly briefcase,
Speaker 2: just some sort of briefcase, some intellectual puzzle buried in
Speaker 2: a comeback anthem, or at least what passes for a
Speaker 2: meatloaf anthem. Instead, she pops up at the end of
Speaker 2: the song and tells him that it's inevitable that he's
Speaker 2: gonna cheat on her, and he says, no, I won't
Speaker 2: do that, So that's it. He would do anything for love,
Speaker 2: but he won't cheat for love. Has that ever been
Speaker 2: a scenario you have to fuck her or him to
Speaker 2: prove you love me? I mean, yeah, of course it's happened,
Speaker 2: But I just don't think bittersweet merchant Jim Steinman had
Speaker 2: that in mind thirty years. This question has been lurking
Speaker 2: in the recesses of my brain Steman even answered the
Speaker 2: question at one point, and I was even more confused.
Speaker 2: What do you think I'd like to know? Reach me
Speaker 2: at Father Malone seventy one at gmail dot com, or
Speaker 2: if you want to socialize at father Malone on the
Speaker 2: Insta and the Blue Sky and the threads. Hit me
Speaker 2: up on any of those avenues and you might show
Speaker 2: up on our newest segments.
Speaker 3: From around.
Speaker 2: Last week, I solicited some Xbox game opinions. You did
Speaker 2: not disappoint. I did receive one message warning me off
Speaker 2: these Star Wars Fallen Order games with Cameron Monahan as Calkestis.
Speaker 2: I was assured that it was too much mindless puzzle
Speaker 2: solving and frustrating physical bits like jumping and force bulling
Speaker 2: and shit, I'm a first person shooter kind of fella
Speaker 2: at heart. Remember Battlezone in the Arcade, that vector tank game.
Speaker 2: That one was my favorite first person shooter, so I
Speaker 2: could see in theory that those drawbacks might not exactly
Speaker 2: enhance a format I'm already not used to. But then
Speaker 2: I happened upon a cheap copy of that game, And
Speaker 2: let me tell you something, I have been playing this
Speaker 2: goddamn game non stop. I won't embarrass the listener who
Speaker 2: wrote in, so I'll just say his initials are HP.
Speaker 2: How wrong you were, sir. Shame on you. Don't you
Speaker 2: know that falling off a cliff face one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty times is worth my time if I'm also able
Speaker 2: to force push a stormtrooper into a massive hydraulic ram.
Speaker 2: The game does need a fast travel so you can
Speaker 2: get back to your ship quicker. I don't know why
Speaker 2: we have to retrace our steps through a massive fucking board.
Speaker 2: Just they have a ship, what's the point of having
Speaker 2: it if they can't come to you and pick you up.
Speaker 2: Even if you were inside they could blast through the walls. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I am really enjoying this game, and I mentioned the
Speaker 2: star of that game, Cameron Monahan. Now I've seen the
Speaker 2: entire run of Shameless, which he was spectacular on, and
Speaker 2: I've seen him on a few other things here and there.
Speaker 2: But my introduction to him was near the end of
Speaker 2: the first season of Gotham. He played a circus performer
Speaker 2: named Jerome Velaska who murdered his mother, was found guilty
Speaker 2: by reason of insanity, and then carted off to Arkham.
Speaker 2: He's the joker. By the end of the episode, you
Speaker 2: know he's the joke thanks to Monahan's super fucking creepy performance.
Speaker 2: I don't know if there was a rights issue on
Speaker 2: that show, but it seemed like they couldn't use certain characters,
Speaker 2: or at least call them by their proper names, so
Speaker 2: instead we get Jerome popping up over the next few
Speaker 2: seasons in the various guises of the Joker that we
Speaker 2: had already gotten over the years up to and including
Speaker 2: the new fifty two stitched on face version. So we
Speaker 2: got a goofy Joker, a scary Joker, an unhinged, lunatic Joker,
Speaker 2: and Cameron Monahan pulls each of them off, and then
Speaker 2: we met Jeremiah, Jerome's brother, the quiet calculated Genius. He's
Speaker 2: dosed by Jerome with a skin whitening, madness inducing serum
Speaker 2: that gave us an incarnation of the Joker I had
Speaker 2: never seen and now it's my favorite portrayal ever. It's
Speaker 2: a fashion plate Joker, but one who never seems to
Speaker 2: speak above a whisper, so all of his insanity is
Speaker 2: delivered in a very measured and thoughtful way. Is fucking horrifying,
Speaker 2: which is a long winded way of saying it's super
Speaker 2: weird to have a photorealistic character in video games or
Speaker 2: not characters, but the actors having an avatar of Cameron
Speaker 2: Monaghan and puppeteering him around the Star Wars universe is surreal,
Speaker 2: and yes there is too much running and jumping at
Speaker 2: just the right angle for my liking. Video game developers,
Speaker 2: could you put in a gen X button in each
Speaker 2: of the games, you know, for when you've explored enough
Speaker 2: of the level. I don't need all the metals and
Speaker 2: the secrets and the unlocked skins and whatever the fuck.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I just want to get back on the ship
Speaker 2: and go to another planet. And yes, we are moving on.
Speaker 2: That was going to be the segue. We're moving into
Speaker 2: the future or into the present. It's St Patrick's Day,
Speaker 2: Happy Saint Patrick's Day, all or as I grew up
Speaker 2: knowing it amateur hour. I once saw the Pogues on
Speaker 2: the East Coast at a random date and here in
Speaker 2: Las Vegas on Saint Patrick's Day. The difference was quite noticeable.
Speaker 2: In the Boston gig, if you had a Celtics or
Speaker 2: a Bruins jersey on, chances are that was your standard uniform.
Speaker 2: Same for scaley Cap. I know kids who grew it
Speaker 2: in the womb along with their central nervous system, and
Speaker 2: the fucking Pogues were playing. It was like a three
Speaker 2: hour Saint Patrick's Day in the middle of I don't
Speaker 2: even remember what month it was. It had all the
Speaker 2: highs and terrible vomiting lows that the holiday entails. The
Speaker 2: Las Vegas show was hilarious, just a bunch of sunburned
Speaker 2: desert rats wearing their Guinness sweatshirts and Ireland soccer jerseys,
Speaker 2: making their annual appearance. Fresh from the closet. They stood
Speaker 2: around to nurishing their two dark beers and only coming
Speaker 2: alive when Shane McGowan started singing about Christmas and this
Speaker 2: was Saint Patrick's Day. I was expecting the crowd to
Speaker 2: tear the theater down, and they would have in Chicago
Speaker 2: or New York or Boston. It's no secret I'm Irish.
Speaker 2: I've covered a bunch of Irish movies here on the show.
Speaker 2: I'm Irish American. In point of fact, I'm probably more
Speaker 2: Scottish than anything, but those relatives are mainly back in Scotland,
Speaker 2: and the Irish ones were the ones I grew up around.
Speaker 2: So I'm totally at ease with the thought of a
Speaker 2: brick being called Irish confetti, or that we all eventually
Speaker 2: succumb to Irish amnesia. You forget everything but the grudge,
Speaker 2: and it has definitely given me an appreciation of the
Speaker 2: portrayal of the Irish on screen. Throughout the decades. There
Speaker 2: seem to be three categories really mystical, musical, and car bombs.
Speaker 2: That's what's on tap for the residents and descendants of
Speaker 2: the Emerald Isle. It's rare to find a film without
Speaker 2: any of those, rare to have them feel in any
Speaker 2: way authentic. The two choices tonight have the flavor fuck.
Speaker 2: One of them is a masterpiece. The other is state
Speaker 2: of grace.
Speaker 4: A time of innocence, a state of grace. Terry Noonan
Speaker 4: never thought he'd come back to the old neighborhood.
Speaker 3: To the best friend he ever had, to the first
Speaker 3: girl he ever loved, To a shadowy world of violence,
Speaker 3: intimidation and fear.
Speaker 5: Where brother threatens brother, where love is darkened by betrayal,
Speaker 5: where now he's forced to make a choice between betraying
Speaker 5: his friends.
Speaker 4: And betraying himself.
Speaker 3: You believe in angels or the saintshood.
Speaker 2: This is such a thing as a state of grace,
Speaker 2: but it's got nothing to new with reality. In nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety I was seventeen and in the full flush of
Speaker 2: my Irish Mania. I mentioned the Pogues. If they weren't
Speaker 2: on my tape neck, then it was the water Boys,
Speaker 2: or the chieftains or Van Morrison. I was reading Brendan
Speaker 2: Bayen and W. B. Yates and suffering through Ulysses, and
Speaker 2: then a new flick was coming out about the Irish
Speaker 2: mob in Hell's Kitchen. I'm not saying I was truant
Speaker 2: on the day that State of Grace was released, but
Speaker 2: I did manage to see it a couple of times
Speaker 2: before the final bell rang at my high school that
Speaker 2: fine Friday. Let me give you the cast list. Sean Penn,
Speaker 2: Gary Oldman, Robin Wright, Ed Harris, John c Riley, John
Speaker 2: Tturo Burgess, Meredith and Thomas g Waits. That's Thomas g
Speaker 2: Waits from The Thing and the Warriors, and he's just
Speaker 2: an extra basically of that killer list of actors. When
Speaker 2: this movie came out, Sean Penn was the only real name.
Speaker 2: It was a new Way the first film of any
Speaker 2: of the other actors, But who the fuck new Gary
Speaker 2: Oldman outside of Sidon Nancy fanatics like me. But knowing
Speaker 2: Oldman was going to be in it just made it
Speaker 2: all the more spectacular. And tantalizing, and it was directed
Speaker 2: by Phil Juano, who had already made one of my
Speaker 2: favorite high school movies, Three o'clock High. Juanu had caught
Speaker 2: the eye of Steven Spielberg with his usc short film
Speaker 2: Last Chance Dance. He hired Juana to do two episodes
Speaker 2: of Amazing Stories and then hired him to do Three
Speaker 2: o'clock High. While he can do action a plenty, Juana
Speaker 2: is definitely in the Spielberg camp of movie making. He
Speaker 2: wouldn't be my go to when making a gritty crime drama.
Speaker 2: I suspect his hiring had way more to do with
Speaker 2: the film he'd completed previous to State of Grace. That
Speaker 2: was U two's concert film Rattle and Hum. It's kind
Speaker 2: of easy to bag on YouTube now, Hell it was
Speaker 2: easy back then. Fucking relax, Bono, you are bugging us,
Speaker 2: and I think you meant to. But that movie was
Speaker 2: a pretty big deal at the time. Concert films weren't
Speaker 2: unheard by the late eighties, but they were rare. So
Speaker 2: he's got Spielberg cred and an Irish connection what the
Speaker 2: hell right? Which makes it sound like I'm blaming Juannu
Speaker 2: for the film's shortcomings. Which is not true. I think
Speaker 2: the movie is as good as it is in large part,
Speaker 2: in massive part thanks to his prowess behind the camera.
Speaker 2: He is incapable of true grime, but he made an
Speaker 2: amazingly evocative film in terms of locations and how he
Speaker 2: lit them. This was a fourteen million dollar budget and
Speaker 2: every dime is on screen. There is no subbing in
Speaker 2: Vancouver for New York. Here, this is fucking New York,
Speaker 2: and Juanu shoots everywhere, coming up with fresh locations while
Speaker 2: always reminding you where you are with some distant landmark.
Speaker 2: These actors didn't need any help from him, but he
Speaker 2: could have been a hindrance. Instead, he lets all of
Speaker 2: the characters breathe sometimes allowing entire scenes to play out
Speaker 2: nearly wordlessly. Everyone on screen has amazing chemistry, as you
Speaker 2: would expect from actors of their caliber, but some of
Speaker 2: that chemistry leaked off the celluloid and into the real world.
Speaker 2: It was during this film that Sean Penn and Robin
Speaker 2: Wright met. They would eventually marry and have kids and
Speaker 2: such and such. Also, at the start of production, Phil
Speaker 2: Juanna's girlfriend was Uma Thurman, and just after production, Uma
Speaker 2: Thurman married Gary oldman, Phil Juanna visual stylist, and Cupid.
Speaker 2: This is overall a pretty good movie. It's a low
Speaker 2: level pot boiler about a former neighborhood kid who went
Speaker 2: off and became a cop and has now returned to
Speaker 2: infiltrate the gang that's run by his childhood friends. The
Speaker 2: dialogue is all sharp and well delivered, but the script
Speaker 2: can't figure out what it wants to be Mean Streets
Speaker 2: or the Godfather, so we get a weird mashup of
Speaker 2: both low level figures engaging in mostly petty crimes, but
Speaker 2: framed as some kind of grand opera. It's very unusual
Speaker 2: and it doesn't work, but I don't care. It doesn't
Speaker 2: have a wise old irishman ah faith in Bagora, nor
Speaker 2: does it have some musical subplot, nor is anything on
Speaker 2: screen related to the Irish Republican Army or gun running.
Speaker 2: The problem with the movie really is that it's based
Speaker 2: on a real group of criminals in Hell's Kitchen that
Speaker 2: operated from the sixties till right around the time the
Speaker 2: movie came out. Everyone calls them the Irish Mob, but
Speaker 2: if you were on the East Coast, more likely than
Speaker 2: not you knew them as the Westies. That's Mickey Spillane's gang.
Speaker 2: I'm not kidding. During the seventies, the Javit Center was
Speaker 2: being built basically in Hell's Kitchen, so the Westies were
Speaker 2: fighting off the Genovese crime family who were trying to
Speaker 2: move in and get those sweet construction jobs, and they
Speaker 2: managed to basically keep them out. But then there was
Speaker 2: a power battle within the Westies and some of them
Speaker 2: threw in with the Gambino crime family. Others were hiring
Speaker 2: Genevese hitman against to kill their own people. It was
Speaker 2: a big fucking mess, and it's the stuff of great
Speaker 2: fucking cinema. Instead. State of Grace, which is longer than
Speaker 2: two hours, I'd like to note, tells the story of
Speaker 2: one Irish family, two brothers and a sister, Ed Harris,
Speaker 2: head of the crime family, his younger brother Gary Oldman,
Speaker 2: the hot head lieutenant, and his sister Robin Wright, who
Speaker 2: has been out of the family business for some time,
Speaker 2: and she's the former flame of Sean Penn, who has
Speaker 2: recently returned and is an undercover cop. So it's taking
Speaker 2: the real life, batshit crazy version of the Westies, which
Speaker 2: really resembles The Godfather and instead tries to give us
Speaker 2: mean streets. I mentioned the movie doesn't have a musical subplot.
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean the soundtrack isn't fucking awesome. Though it's
Speaker 2: got the Pogues and Janet O'Connor, Van Morrison, You Two,
Speaker 2: Lyle Lovett and Guns n' Roses and Rolling Stones. Those
Speaker 2: all appear on the radio or jukebox and just nice
Speaker 2: to hear them peppered throughout this world. The score, on
Speaker 2: the other hand, might be the actual culprit weighing the
Speaker 2: movie down. It's rare to say that the work of
Speaker 2: Ennio Morricone might be a film's downfall, but on my
Speaker 2: most recent rewatch it became all too clear they should
Speaker 2: have dumped the score immediately. I think this might have
Speaker 2: been a youth problem. State of Grace is Juannu's second
Speaker 2: narrative film. You get a list of possible composers and
Speaker 2: there's any O Morricone's name. Are you not going to
Speaker 2: hire the man who wrote The Good, the Bad and
Speaker 2: the Ugly? Well, if you're doing an Irish crime film
Speaker 2: set in the heart of the Hell's kitchen, No, you
Speaker 2: fucking well don't. And Marconi's score is at odds with everything,
Speaker 2: or rather just hitting the fucking nail on the head,
Speaker 2: underscoring how serious and depressing the scenario is. Plus it's
Speaker 2: mostly just recycled score from the mission. Marconi was notorious
Speaker 2: for recycling his own music. That's a problem. But at
Speaker 2: the top of the list of things to appreciate here
Speaker 2: is Burgess Meredith. He plays an old pensioner eating stewed
Speaker 2: tomatoes out of a can that Sean Penn is sent
Speaker 2: to shake down. He's all the vitality and heartbreak you
Speaker 2: could imagine from the man in a role that is
Speaker 2: ending his career. It is fucking stellar. But is this
Speaker 2: the most stellar Irish American crime film I can recommend?
Speaker 2: On the day when everyone's wearing green and getting kissed
Speaker 2: and let's face it, vomiting. No oh for that, we've
Speaker 2: got to go to missus. Ripley gen hit at HP
Speaker 2: cod ship kill be go, thank you HP. That is
Speaker 2: not a float, that's tip O'Neill, tip O'Neil.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: Wait, before we get to your pick, young Ripley, we
Speaker 2: have to break. We got to take a break for
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Speaker 2: There are very few perfect films. The Coen Brothers have
Speaker 2: made a few of those few. I have and will
Speaker 2: always consider Racing Arizona as fine a cinematic achievement as
Speaker 2: anything by Jean Luca Edard easily diddo Barton Fink, how
Speaker 2: about Fargo, Oh Brother, where art thou Jesus Christ? One
Speaker 2: is enough you greedy bands? And there are others plural,
Speaker 2: not least of which is my favorite film by Joel
Speaker 2: and Ethan Cohen. Stop me if you've heard this one before.
Speaker 2: Two Jews from Minnesota write interact to the greatest Irish
Speaker 2: American gangster film of all time. This is Miller's crossing.
Speaker 4: From the makers of Blood Simple and Raising Arizona. A
Speaker 4: world where nothing is what it seems to be.
Speaker 3: Leo is he.
Speaker 4: Still the boss? The day I backed down from a fight.
Speaker 4: Casp is welcome to the rackets this town, of my
Speaker 4: place at the Tabor Casper? Can he muscle in?
Speaker 7: I'm sick.
Speaker 8: I'm taking a scrap from you, Leo and.
Speaker 4: Tom. Would he sell out a friend?
Speaker 9: You should be confront the Jenny Casper. That's what I've
Speaker 9: been trying to tell you.
Speaker 8: I can still trade body blows with any man in
Speaker 8: this town.
Speaker 4: Exceputa Verna. Is she Leo's girl?
Speaker 10: What is Celiah?
Speaker 4: I told him you were a Trump and he should
Speaker 4: dump him.
Speaker 3: I want everybody to be friends.
Speaker 4: You me, Leo, the name?
Speaker 3: Oh I am the day?
Speaker 4: Has he got it figured?
Speaker 3: You dumping Leo for the guy who put a bullet
Speaker 3: in your brother? Bernie?
Speaker 4: Will he turned the tables?
Speaker 3: Don't smart me. I want to watch you squirm.
Speaker 7: I want to see you sweat a little.
Speaker 3: Oh you gotta do to show you a friend? This
Speaker 3: give me Bernie burns.
Speaker 7: Tommy, you can't do this.
Speaker 3: You don't dump guys. It's not right, Tom, I get.
Speaker 1: Two was a face worse odds, never without reason.
Speaker 10: That's what you said. You didn't care about Leo.
Speaker 9: I said with throw It's not the same thing.
Speaker 8: I'm talking about friendship, I'm talking about character. I'm talking about.
Speaker 5: Albert Finney, Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gayhearten, John Torturo.
Speaker 3: I get die that about. I get.
Speaker 9: It's still alive, extreme.
Speaker 10: All over time at.
Speaker 4: No one is what they seem to be, opus down,
Speaker 4: black is white at Miller's Crossing.
Speaker 2: That score is by the mighty Carter Burwell. He's done
Speaker 2: all of their films, each won its own oddball and
Speaker 2: inimitable style. But like this film, this is my favorite
Speaker 2: of his work. I will note that the score incorporates
Speaker 2: the melody from an eighteenth century piece of music called
Speaker 2: the Lament for Limerick, a fact that broke my heart
Speaker 2: when I learned it years after listening to the soundtrack
Speaker 2: on repeat. That an American composer had so effortlessly captured
Speaker 2: the spirit of traditional Irish music within a big, grand
Speaker 2: orchestral score just warmed my lapsed Catholic heart. So I'm
Speaker 2: not sure why it bothered me to find out that
Speaker 2: he incorporated a bit of another piece. Maybe it was
Speaker 2: because I had to dig to find out that information.
Speaker 2: I mean, I didn't have any problem with the fact
Speaker 2: that the entire movie is basically influenced by Dashal Hammett's
Speaker 2: The Glass Key. That novel had a labyrinthine plot of
Speaker 2: double crosses and murders, and features a recurrent plot device
Speaker 2: of a hat. Hats would become a central image in
Speaker 2: Miller's Crossing, Starting with a credit sequence of a forest clearing,
Speaker 2: A hat lands in the frame long enough for the
Speaker 2: title to appear, before being buffeted away and disappearing into
Speaker 2: the wooded distance. The hat belongs to Tom Reagan played
Speaker 2: by Gabriel Byrne. He'll spend the entire movie losing and
Speaker 2: finding the hat. Tom sums up the hat business when
Speaker 2: describing a dream he had to fe fetal Verna. The
Speaker 2: dream is the credit sequence. By the way, what are
Speaker 2: you chewing over?
Speaker 9: Dream? I had once I was walking in the woods.
Speaker 9: I don't know why. Wincome omen blew me.
Speaker 10: Hat off, and you chased it right, You ran and around,
Speaker 10: finally caught up to it, and you picked it up.
Speaker 10: But it wasn't a hat anymore, and it changed into
Speaker 10: something else, something wonderful.
Speaker 9: Nah, it stayed ahead, and no, I didn't chase it.
Speaker 3: Nothing more foolish than a man chasing his hat.
Speaker 2: So that hat might be control or agency. Hell, it
Speaker 2: might represent luck in any event. Some things you just
Speaker 2: can't force, and Tom is the bo of that as
Speaker 2: his boss Leo, played absolutely magnificently by Albert Finney. I
Speaker 2: know he's had a long and storied career, but this
Speaker 2: is my favorite performance of his just all power and
Speaker 2: all vulnerability simultaneously. His boss Leo starts his crime syndicate
Speaker 2: down a path that will only lead to war and
Speaker 2: eventual destruction. That path begins in the opening scene with
Speaker 2: a speech by Johnny Casper played by the late fucking
Speaker 2: great John Polito. He hit on me once at a party.
Speaker 2: I was very flattered. Now this is how you emulate
Speaker 2: the godfather, old school gangsters sitting in leather chairs in
Speaker 2: back rooms with their goons hovering close by. Casper is
Speaker 2: the head of the up and coming Italian crime family,
Speaker 2: and he's looking to kill the bookie who's been losing
Speaker 2: him money by telling everyone about the upcoming boxing matches
Speaker 2: that he's had. Fixed problem is that that bookie, Bernie,
Speaker 2: is the brother of Verna, played with somehow simultaneous iciness
Speaker 2: and fire by Marsa gay Harden, and she is seeing
Speaker 2: Albert Finney's Leo. I love a film that tells you
Speaker 2: everything you need to know in it's opening scene, and
Speaker 2: I think the Coens do that better than anyone. Casper
Speaker 2: knows it's Bernie that's been betraying him because Bernie lacks ethics.
Speaker 8: It's getting's old businessman. Can't expect no return from a
Speaker 8: fixed fight. Now, if you can't trust a fix, what
Speaker 8: can you trust for a good return?
Speaker 7: You gotta go betting on cheeses.
Speaker 8: And then you're back with anarchy, right back in a jungle.
Speaker 4: That's why ethics is important.
Speaker 8: What separates us from the animals. Beiece a burden, BEI
Speaker 8: of prey ethics, whereas Bernie Burnbaum is a horse of
Speaker 8: a different color, ethics wise as in he ain't got anything.
Speaker 2: We'll spend the next less than two hours. I'd like
Speaker 2: to point out that this motherfucking masterpiece is a half
Speaker 2: hour shorter than State of Grace and costs two million less,
Speaker 2: and it's a period piece set in nineteen twenty nine
Speaker 2: New York or Chicago. They never really specify anyway. We'll
Speaker 2: spend the next two hours watching which if any of
Speaker 2: those characters have ethics, and just how important ethics are
Speaker 2: in this world. The script here is so incredibly tight
Speaker 2: and economical and rewards repeat viewings. These boys trust you'll
Speaker 2: get the gist on your first viewing, which is sometimes true.
Speaker 2: I know a few of their films I've walked away
Speaker 2: underwhelmed and only appreciated later. But this is a crackling
Speaker 2: good gangster film. And then you realize just how intricately
Speaker 2: plotted it is only after the fact, with characters basically
Speaker 2: telling you outright what they're secretly up to, and through
Speaker 2: some of the most stylized dialogue imaginable blending plenty of
Speaker 2: pulled from the pages of pulp periodicals to some invented
Speaker 2: slang that just hangs seamlessly beside each other. One of
Speaker 2: those invented phrases is no surprise, the high hat. I'm
Speaker 2: sick of you guys giving me the high hat. Next
Speaker 2: time you hear Tarantino is the king of dialogue, try
Speaker 2: a sampler of Miller's Crossing and Fargo, then tell me
Speaker 2: who the fucking masters are. As filmmakers, the Cohens sometimes
Speaker 2: get lumped into the Kubrick zone of cold technicians, irreverent
Speaker 2: to the point of absurdity when it comes to their characters,
Speaker 2: which is total bullshit. Every one of their films has
Speaker 2: a beating heart at its center. It's just that their
Speaker 2: emotions aren't freighted with any hint of sentimentality, nor do
Speaker 2: they shy away from showing the more unseemly parts of
Speaker 2: their character. Tom Reagan is kind of a dick. Everyone
Speaker 2: in this film is. But if that's all you see
Speaker 2: of them, I don't know how you function in this world.
Speaker 2: Like all of their films, Miller's Crossing has zero perfunctory characters.
Speaker 2: You get a sense that everyone has a rich life,
Speaker 2: even the grinning psychopath that Sam Raimi plays for one scene.
Speaker 2: Maybe you saw this back in the day, maybe you've
Speaker 2: never seen it. It's the one movie of theirs I
Speaker 2: never hear mentioned, and I can't figure out why. I
Speaker 2: guess if you make half a dozen perfect films, people
Speaker 2: start to get blaise. That's gonna do it, You fucking changelings,
Speaker 2: you fucking Banshees. Enjoy your Saint Patrick's Day. I hope
Speaker 2: it's so good you can remember none of it tomorrow.
Speaker 2: So then listen to this again. Give me those downloads
Speaker 2: you can't remember it remember anyway. For Rippley Gene, I'm
Speaker 2: found them alone. We're gonna leave you with the audio
Speaker 2: equivalent of a shot in the lagger, a quote and
Speaker 2: a song, very irish, See you all next week. Stay strong, everybody.
Speaker 1: Sorry, check us out? What the fuck is that?
Speaker 3: It's so.
Speaker 2: It's Frankie's idea.
Speaker 9: You got your favorite gun, right, you got so sick
Speaker 9: and tired of tossing away a perfectly good piece after
Speaker 9: every job.
Speaker 6: And you take your hands.
Speaker 5: And you take your gun, but you put the prints
Speaker 5: on the gun, you stash it.
Speaker 6: I just find a gun.
Speaker 3: They're looking for that, man, this.
Speaker 7: Is somebody's hands. What are you touching for? Made slim,
Speaker 7: no funny, scared all right, hands out of.
Speaker 9: That, said a way to pinks of creating away sleeps.
Speaker 3: That that isn't the wind in.
Speaker 7: The world every night, the gender in the on.
Speaker 9: The way downs.
Speaker 7: Many were sering the tone.
Speaker 2: It's a funny atma, the slimmering and strange and love of.
Speaker 3: The fest a wind.
Speaker 7: And I said the very sam jets tasy like classic,
Speaker 7: just like you me yes,