Speaker 1: Oh, gis Bolts. It's showtime.
Speaker 2: People say, good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas,
Speaker 3: hot popcorn, and no monsters in the protection booth.
Speaker 1: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 4: Cut it off.
Speaker 1: Today's my birthday. Nice to be very nice to see y'all.
Speaker 5: Listen.
Speaker 1: I got a very funny story.
Speaker 5: I gotta tell it.
Speaker 3: Have you ever been to an army hospital?
Speaker 2: When you see it live, there's more effect than a protest.
Speaker 5: Thirty I want to sixteen.
Speaker 6: I'm a very frank person, George. I'll lay it right
Speaker 6: on the line. Your script, although it is an excellent one,
Speaker 6: does not have the ingredients for a commercial success. You see,
Speaker 6: I must present the project to my investors, and that
Speaker 6: project must meet certain requirements.
Speaker 3: I mean like writhing love Garden.
Speaker 7: That's sick.
Speaker 3: You've got to wait till she says something.
Speaker 2: Can you just answer and you play it by year?
Speaker 7: That's our Do you like it here?
Speaker 2: Let no blasting?
Speaker 7: Please don't kill this hair.
Speaker 4: You know you're better than him.
Speaker 7: I need him for my bread and butter. If it
Speaker 7: wasn't for him, I'd still be out on the streets.
Speaker 8: Please, please, have mercy.
Speaker 4: On his soul.
Speaker 7: All right, you must be number thirteen. There's no thirteen?
Speaker 1: Who are you? O?
Speaker 4: No one?
Speaker 7: I don't exist, I don't understand. Could you try?
Speaker 2: Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host. Mike White
Speaker 2: joined me once again as Miss Heather Draine.
Speaker 4: Hello. Hello.
Speaker 2: Also back in the booth is mister Ben Buckingham. It
Speaker 2: a We are kicking off a month looking at lost
Speaker 2: or obscure films with William Sachs's nineteen seventy four film
Speaker 2: There Is No Thirteen. It is an experimental anti war
Speaker 2: film that Sacks shot with a blend of absurdist humor,
Speaker 2: surreal fantasy sequences, and biting commentary on the Vietnam War.
Speaker 2: It centers on draft named George Thomas as he reflects
Speaker 2: on his life. The film spirals into a series of bizarre,
Speaker 2: disjointed vignettes, almost like channels surfing through his mind. One
Speaker 2: of the reasons it's not widely noticed because it was
Speaker 2: effectively suppressed in the US. Sachs has said that it
Speaker 2: was shown at the Berlin Film Festival and got a
Speaker 2: strong response, but it was never given a proper theatric
Speaker 2: release in the States. There's some more about military or
Speaker 2: government pressure due to its anti war content, though that's
Speaker 2: possibly apocryphal. I can just hear our ratings drop whenever
Speaker 2: I do one of these Modi mays, whenever I say,
Speaker 2: if you don't at anything ruined, turn off the podcast
Speaker 2: and come back after you've seen the film. That's not
Speaker 2: going to be very easy with a lot of these films.
Speaker 2: So good luck, buddy, you're gonna need it. Hopefully you're
Speaker 2: a Patreon person and I'm sneaking these films to our Patreon. So, Heather,
Speaker 2: had you seen There Is No Thirteen before coming on
Speaker 2: the show to talk about it?
Speaker 4: No, because, as you just alluded to, this film is
Speaker 4: very hard to track down. I was familiar with it,
Speaker 4: and I was immediately intrigued when I saw it pop
Speaker 4: up and you had mentioned doing a show on it
Speaker 4: because i'd read the rialto report little. They did a
Speaker 4: little article on Geene Jennings's role in it, and I
Speaker 4: was like, Wow, this film sounds really interesting. I wonder
Speaker 4: if somebody considered themselves a bit of a deep cut person.
Speaker 4: I'm like, this is totally new to me, but it
Speaker 4: sounded like it was pretty much considered lost in that article.
Speaker 4: So when you brought it up, I was like, absolutely,
Speaker 4: I want to dive into this film, and I'm so
Speaker 4: glad I did. I'm looking forward to hearing what you
Speaker 4: guys have to say about.
Speaker 2: It, and Ben, how about yourself.
Speaker 1: I realized recently that I had heard of it in
Speaker 1: relation to Mark Damon no longer being an actor, that
Speaker 1: i'd heard it discussed in that context, but no stimulated
Speaker 1: memories or connections or anything. And when I I was
Speaker 1: looking through with the films you've had there, and I
Speaker 1: did a quick google and I was like, ah, lost
Speaker 1: Experimental Response to Vietnam War plus riz Ortolani. I'm in,
Speaker 1: I'm in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm trying to remember how I got a hold
Speaker 2: of this film. I know, I'm pretty sure that it
Speaker 2: is William sax himself who is the source of this,
Speaker 2: according to a lot of these articles we've read. I
Speaker 2: even saw I wanted to tell you whether I saw
Speaker 2: a picture of Alexander Trushinsky with William Sachs, and he
Speaker 2: was like, oh, yeah, you know, he showed me there
Speaker 2: is no thirteen. I'm like, of course, of course, Alexander,
Speaker 2: you always are in those right places at the right time.
Speaker 2: I'm like, that's pretty cool. But yeah, I can't remember
Speaker 2: how I got my hands on this. This was on
Speaker 2: a list that I found years and years ago of
Speaker 2: these are all missing films, and I just was very
Speaker 2: determined to try and track down as many as I
Speaker 2: possibly could, and yeah, managed to somehow. And then, yeah,
Speaker 2: I've been wanting to watch it for years and years.
Speaker 2: I finally used this as an excuse to do so.
Speaker 2: And I have to say, this movie is nothing like
Speaker 2: the movie that I had in my head when I
Speaker 2: read about the movie. It talks about there's a guy.
Speaker 2: He's in Vietnam and he has had sex with twelve
Speaker 2: women over his life, and he's reminiscing about those women
Speaker 2: and they will never be at number thirteen. So I
Speaker 2: pictured this is almost like a guy at a VA
Speaker 2: hospital or a guy like literally in a trench in
Speaker 2: Vietnam talking to somebody else, and this being a series
Speaker 2: of vignettes walking through from number one to number twelve,
Speaker 2: and then right at the end he gets blown up
Speaker 2: or something and then the title comes up. There is
Speaker 2: no thirteen. That's what I was picturing. This what I
Speaker 2: saw totally different than that. Wow. In fact, I want
Speaker 2: to ask you guys, do we ever see like number
Speaker 2: one through nine or we just see like ten, eleven,
Speaker 2: twelve kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Now we only see eleven and twelve. And I have
Speaker 1: written down a transcription of the conversation with the maybe thirteenth,
Speaker 1: which does show that she might not be thirteen. There
Speaker 1: might not be at thirteen. Maybe he is the thirteen
Speaker 1: that doesn't exist. I don't know, but yes, same exact
Speaker 1: same series of thoughts that you had. I had that myself,
Speaker 1: and I have come to the conclusion that that is
Speaker 1: all like marketing blurbs, attempting to sell it at the time,
Speaker 1: because that's the kind of film that they were making
Speaker 1: it at the time of that kind of like a
Speaker 1: little bit sexy, YadA YadA yadak. And then because it's
Speaker 1: just Spanish and no one has cared, no one's been
Speaker 1: saxes and being Internet savvy getting on Internet and writing
Speaker 1: what's there or anything, we're just stuck with what appears
Speaker 1: to be like a marketing pitch and it doesn't reflect
Speaker 1: the film at all.
Speaker 4: Really no, especially because like if somebody like you be
Speaker 4: listening to this and you google it and one of
Speaker 4: the first things pops up a prodes are going to
Speaker 4: be the way and it's just one sentence or a
Speaker 4: man reminiscence about at the first twelve women he had
Speaker 4: sex with. And that's really not with this, is it all?
Speaker 4: You know the earlier girls? Who knows? But it's not
Speaker 4: even the point. It's not even really the main threast
Speaker 4: of it. Also, what blew my mind, like just as
Speaker 4: a film started as is seeing names in the credits
Speaker 4: and I'm like, how in the hell is this so obscure?
Speaker 4: Because while Mark Damon's not like a huge name like
Speaker 4: a Redford or anything like that, Like this guy, before
Speaker 4: he went into producing and being a distributor at all
Speaker 4: of that, had several film credits to his name that
Speaker 4: are very respectable. I believe you said Baba's Black Sabbath.
Speaker 1: He's opposite Vincent Dryson House in Ussia. He's the staxy,
Speaker 1: romantic lead. He has been seen by many faces in
Speaker 1: the mid twentieth century. He is a big deal at
Speaker 1: that time.
Speaker 4: Harvey Lemback, Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Oh there you go. I knew you were going to
Speaker 2: bring up Harvey Lemback.
Speaker 4: You know me so well. You know how much I
Speaker 4: love Harvey lambag My, Oh my god, the smile on
Speaker 4: my face. When I saw his name in the credit,
Speaker 4: I was like, hell, yes, I think I literally wrote
Speaker 4: my notes the mant Harvey Limbeck. So whenever, whenever I
Speaker 4: shovel off this mortal croyl, people are gonna transcribe these
Speaker 4: like my chicken scratch and just be like Harvey lempbag.
Speaker 2: Somewhere in the Mondo Heather library, you know, just like
Speaker 2: what is going on here? Why is she so obsessed
Speaker 2: with Harvey Lembeck? Why is it say Heather plus Eric
Speaker 2: von Zipper forever?
Speaker 4: Now, now, Mike, let's not get it twisted. Let's cut
Speaker 4: the dick. You know that Timothy Carey is the one
Speaker 4: that would be hardy, but I would totally hang out
Speaker 4: with Eric Vonson's.
Speaker 7: I'm true thinking.
Speaker 6: What I'm thinking is that poor little sugar Cane is
Speaker 6: mixed up with undesirable Eric Vonziper is going to protect her.
Speaker 2: I think I adore she's nifty.
Speaker 4: That Skydivond looks like fun. Like to try it, Boss.
Speaker 1: Von Zeppa and chickles is better right right way go.
Speaker 4: I would be one of his rats or mice or
Speaker 4: whatever those girls will call it. But Harvey, like, oh
Speaker 4: my god, Ben, you mentioned riz Orlani and one of
Speaker 4: my favorite film composers, Like if Orderlani's with those guys,
Speaker 4: or even if I've never seen the movie, if I
Speaker 4: find a soundtrack that he's done, I'm like, I have
Speaker 4: to hear this. I want those And so this is
Speaker 4: it's like, I literally I have covered and written about
Speaker 4: films that are literally underground, films that are way easier,
Speaker 4: fine and attracted information. Then this one, like this should
Speaker 4: not be anywhere near the obscure level it is. It's bizarre.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so much of what's written online is just
Speaker 1: slightly reworded variations on the same three paragraph And then
Speaker 1: even if you listen to Bill sag as Wove sex
Speaker 1: talk or interviews or whatever, and he's saying pretty much
Speaker 1: those same thing. And I only manage to scrape a
Speaker 1: couple of little bits of info here and there, and
Speaker 1: so much of what I figured out is just oh
Speaker 1: this dot, this dot, this dot that like that was
Speaker 1: that the Sacks was in Rome working on anglicizing Italian
Speaker 1: films so they didn't look like they Italian because this
Speaker 1: market was so flooded. They didn't want them in America.
Speaker 1: So he was like changing the names and redubbing into it.
Speaker 1: He'd say, putting in like the sounds of cameras which operating,
Speaker 1: so it sounded like the dubbing was real. That's where
Speaker 1: he met his wife and Mark Damon. Of course Mark
Speaker 1: Damon was in with AIP and all that with the
Speaker 1: barber's connections in Italy and America backers and forwards. But
Speaker 1: then I was like, oh, okay that one of the
Speaker 1: editors plays primarily more a sound and dialogue editor in Italy.
Speaker 1: Which one was that? I think it was George was it?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 1: Michael Billingslea sorry who Like I look up, was like,
Speaker 1: doesn't sound very Italian. No, he's born in Zioux Falls, Idaho,
Speaker 1: but he died in Rome, Italy and he worked on
Speaker 1: like Cisplodynamite and Bertolucci's Last Angle in Paris nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: Stealing Beauty, Cavani's Night, Porter de Martinos Puma Man Deodato's
Speaker 1: Raids of Atlantas and Cut and Run Full She's new Gladiators.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, what who is He's an editor And
Speaker 1: I was like, okay. So the sound recording was done
Speaker 1: in Row that's in the credits of the film. So
Speaker 1: it's like you've got these weird like six degrees come
Speaker 1: out of thing of how it all moves around and
Speaker 1: why then So then that would of course would be
Speaker 1: why Riz is doing the score, because they did all
Speaker 1: the audio in Italy. I was like, somebody could have
Speaker 1: figured that out and put it in the Wikipedia before
Speaker 1: me and saved me like an hour. I'm going into
Speaker 1: letterbox and changing the blot synopsis this week. I've held
Speaker 1: off until we discuss it so we can get some
Speaker 1: sort of four dimenal idea or what is actually happening.
Speaker 1: But I'm definitely changing that fucking blot phenopsis this week
Speaker 1: because it's just it doesn't. It doesn't doesn't, so it's
Speaker 1: such an injustice.
Speaker 4: Rass Kelly's also in or whoever must forget she If
Speaker 4: you look at one of the posters the Time posters,
Speaker 4: her name is on the post's she sent the movie
Speaker 4: for five minutes, but this was her era where she
Speaker 4: she was in a few years before Greetings, like to
Speaker 4: Paul Miss Greetings. So I feel like it would make
Speaker 4: it interesting. There's a few films I kept thinking like
Speaker 4: this would pair well with those like that one, and
Speaker 4: weirdly enough, Robert Downy Senior's Pound. I fel like there's
Speaker 4: some sort of tonality. I don't know, they're films, but
Speaker 4: there's some kind of I don't know, there's like a
Speaker 4: tone about them that I think would match really well.
Speaker 2: Real scrappy, yeah, like this underground kind of thing. I mean,
Speaker 2: you feel like they were squeezing every single penny for
Speaker 2: this movie.
Speaker 4: And there's also like a theatricality to both of them
Speaker 4: and the way that surrealism is implemented. It's very very stagy.
Speaker 4: Course with this one, you have a lot of vaudeville
Speaker 4: themes with especially with the our our patrons saying our
Speaker 4: v leveg But so it's like you have like old
Speaker 4: American culture kind of tropes being played, like the Old
Speaker 4: West sequence. There's a sequence we realized on it like
Speaker 4: a film, like he's actually shooting a film, but it's
Speaker 4: at like a soda counter, which again seems like a
Speaker 4: very Americana kind of thing. It seems like a very
Speaker 4: Americana situation. It's fascinating the Italian influence because this is
Speaker 4: such a if. This film feels intensely American.
Speaker 2: Well, and speaking of de Palma, Ralph Bode, who did
Speaker 2: the cinematography for this one, he would end up going
Speaker 2: on to Dressed to Kill, and quite a lot of
Speaker 2: other things. I mean, he was working very hard until
Speaker 2: his death in two thousand and one. But like, why
Speaker 2: is this one so hard to find when the DP
Speaker 2: at least is doing like Don Juan DeMarco and Bad
Speaker 2: Girls and Made in America like super mainstream things Uncle Buck,
Speaker 2: for God's sakes, you know. But then he was also
Speaker 2: the DP on stuff like the Accused and Distant Thunder,
Speaker 2: like real well done Oscar Baby kind of stuff. And yeah,
Speaker 2: like this was I want to say a second time.
Speaker 2: And I know that we're watching as kind of a
Speaker 2: shitty cop be transferred over from like a three quarter
Speaker 2: you matic tape, and there's some real dropout here and there,
Speaker 2: But I mean, it does look good what we do
Speaker 2: get to see.
Speaker 1: I was actually surprised by how followed the quality of
Speaker 1: it was, ignoring tracking stuff and picking up someone's bobole
Speaker 1: phone signal a couple of point there was. I did
Speaker 1: feel like I was missing a lot though, in those details,
Speaker 1: because it feels like there's a lot happening in the
Speaker 1: missile scene in the background that's like little clues and
Speaker 1: things that is like more Americana pop culture kind of
Speaker 1: stuff and it's just too hard to tell the scene
Speaker 1: where he in twelve are in bed and the pillows
Speaker 1: these giant pillows with some image on them that looks
Speaker 1: like old children's books or westerns or something, and I'm
Speaker 1: just like, I Dad feels like it's really important and
Speaker 1: I just can't make it out. Do not know what
Speaker 1: it is? On that kind of note though, also like
Speaker 1: I looking up all these old white men Harvey Lembeck
Speaker 1: included and just being like, well, how many times is
Speaker 1: Harvey Lembeck in this film where he is just old
Speaker 1: white guys with mustachs. I think he is in it
Speaker 1: four or five times, like different characters quote as much.
Speaker 2: He's credited as old George in the credits, which is
Speaker 2: odd because I'm like, okay, so is he actually the
Speaker 2: older version of our main character kind of revisiting his past?
Speaker 2: Is he really the protagonist rather than younger George? And
Speaker 2: I think there's even another George in the credits, like
Speaker 2: the youngest George. But I know for sure there's two
Speaker 2: George's in the credits.
Speaker 1: So in the opening scene, the person doing the announcing
Speaker 1: and telling the joke, I believe that's Harvey Limbeck.
Speaker 4: It definitely sounded like him.
Speaker 1: I think that Mark Damon is in that chorus as
Speaker 1: one of the singer's last dances as George. So you
Speaker 1: have young and older George in the same sequence, and
Speaker 1: I do think they are the figments of their each
Speaker 1: their own imaginations. This film is that like existential surreal
Speaker 1: strangeness that they are like both coexisting and not coexisting together,
Speaker 1: that needed actually exists was something.
Speaker 2: That song that you're talking about is by Paul Serrato, who, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he has had a huge career, well not huge, but
Speaker 2: he's had a career as well.
Speaker 1: There's more online about him than this film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, there's a whole thing like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: he managed a paperback gallery in Greenwich Village where he
Speaker 2: met Jackie Curtis and I'm like, okay, yeah, and I
Speaker 2: went he has an official website. I'm like, okay, great,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, so does William Sachs. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know why Sachs could never get this one
Speaker 2: out there, because this is all original music for the film.
Speaker 2: And usually that's like always the sticking point where it's like,
Speaker 2: oh no, there was a song in here for thirty seconds,
Speaker 2: so we can't let you put this out, I'm like, what.
Speaker 1: I Supposedly the negative was lost, it was just one,
Speaker 1: which is probably likely. I did hear an interview with
Speaker 1: him where because it was released in Italy that he
Speaker 1: sent an internegative to Italy. So there's a possibility somewhere
Speaker 1: out there in Italy there is an intnegative that could
Speaker 1: be found and sourced. But there's just no drive for
Speaker 1: anybody to find it at this point, which is really
Speaker 1: quite bewildering. So I watched it twice, and the first
Speaker 1: time was I watched it with my partner and she
Speaker 1: was like that was good, not don't quite know what
Speaker 1: to make of it, bit fairly abstract, but like a
Speaker 1: good interesting film. And then I watched it a second time,
Speaker 1: and by the time I got the end of the
Speaker 1: second time, I was just like, I feel real bad vibes,
Speaker 1: like way more than I did the first time. And
Speaker 1: then I watched the Opening Secrets again. Immediately after watching
Speaker 1: the head it was just like, oh, this is a
Speaker 1: circle of hell. This film's got something. Even like the
Speaker 1: first time round, I was not quite got something as
Speaker 1: much as they might return into it and was like, oh,
Speaker 1: oh wait, this is and that and this and this
Speaker 1: and is that. And it was just like, oh man,
Speaker 1: oh man, this is something like there's so many films
Speaker 1: out there that have survived and lasted longer, Like I
Speaker 1: was trying to remember desperately what I thought of it,
Speaker 1: but it kept reminding me of the Jack Nicholson's directorial
Speaker 1: debut Drive. He said, for being this kind of like
Speaker 1: revolutionary response, like the youth man, this is what's happening
Speaker 1: in America at this time, experimental ever guard I remember
Speaker 1: waiting that film and being so bored by it and
Speaker 1: so annoyed by it, and this I did not have
Speaker 1: that experience at all. And I went, I watched three
Speaker 1: watch of trailer for Drive. He's there trying to stimulate
Speaker 1: some memory of it, and it was like it hard
Speaker 1: e gauge just from a trailer. But it's like the
Speaker 1: difference between and I think part of the reason why
Speaker 1: this has disappeared is because it is an experiential film,
Speaker 1: Like it's not a statement film. There's not a specific
Speaker 1: ideology or there's not it's it's rattling the cages just
Speaker 1: by the terrible weirdness and steff everence of experience for
Speaker 1: people at that time and ongoing of the destruction of
Speaker 1: that they are experienced just because people in powers it's
Speaker 1: like this, it's like that, And because there's nothing tangible
Speaker 1: or like to latch onto, it is harder for people
Speaker 1: to get excited about it. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: it means that sixty years, fifty years later, it still
Speaker 1: has this hunch because it's not tangled up in whatever
Speaker 1: little flame is burning in that person's heart at the
Speaker 1: time when they made the film. It actually feels like
Speaker 1: an experience of the world. And that's why I've been
Speaker 1: watching it the second time, realizing how the end just
Speaker 1: folds back into the beginning, that it's a circle of
Speaker 1: hell and there's some great, wonderful joys in there because
Speaker 1: there are positive memories, but it also just that way
Speaker 1: it keeps like cutting it all the whole way.
Speaker 4: That Zach fucked interconnects everything too, because it's like by
Speaker 4: the time you get to the ending, which I won't
Speaker 4: jump ahead to that quite yet because we're still in
Speaker 4: the early midiction. I know of the pond, right, I know,
Speaker 4: but it's like when it hits you, it's like my
Speaker 4: brain start going back to, oh god, this is all connected,
Speaker 4: because you know, when the film and it's so bruined
Speaker 4: the way it does it because at first, like you're like, okay,
Speaker 4: we definitely get the impression of the sky's of Crispin
Speaker 4: through Vietnam and he has he'll hallucinate like a like
Speaker 4: a severed foot and like a meat section of a
Speaker 4: grocery store and to a wall of bombs, which I
Speaker 4: looked up which was a very popular chain of grocery
Speaker 4: stores in New York that went out that got bought
Speaker 4: up and absorbed by A and P and then that clothes.
Speaker 4: So that was sad. I love old business history. But
Speaker 4: but you're like, okay, he's probably it's PTSD, and then
Speaker 4: by the time you get to the end, you're like,
Speaker 4: it's PTSD, all right, but you realize the severity of it.
Speaker 4: I do feel like it is a statement film, though,
Speaker 4: because I definitely feel like it's very it is anti war,
Speaker 4: and that's and sadly because humanity we can ever learn
Speaker 4: our lessons and species like, because I do get it's
Speaker 4: not it doesn't get lost in some dated rhetoric, which
Speaker 4: can be a problem with some films. The time, it's
Speaker 4: almost it's got just a universal universal message and way
Speaker 4: with that, but it's his whole speech about people in
Speaker 4: the bubbles and referring to cars as herds and all
Speaker 4: of this, and it's like, and it's always because people,
Speaker 4: you know, every day, people just go on in their
Speaker 4: lives and as long as they're in the bubble and
Speaker 4: they don't have to, they don't have it in their shores,
Speaker 4: it's like it doesn't exist. And that's that's sad. That's
Speaker 4: applicable I think any period of time. Again, unfortunately, because
Speaker 4: that's also how bad things really sneak up on people.
Speaker 4: They don't think. It's like awareness is good just in general.
Speaker 4: But the way everything is interconnected, I wouldn't say this
Speaker 4: is like a perfect film. It's a little draggy in parts,
Speaker 4: particularly the middle section, but there is a power to it.
Speaker 4: I love I love bed your whole thing of a
Speaker 4: circle of hell. That's definitely very present. But but if
Speaker 4: the way it's done is initially incredibly subtle, it's so
Speaker 4: easy for anybody doing this kind of message to to
Speaker 4: just go full tilt boogie and just go over the
Speaker 4: top with it, and instead he pulls back, and some
Speaker 4: of it's interlaced with like surrealist imagery, it's interlaced with
Speaker 4: these weird bits of vaudeville and old showbized kind of
Speaker 4: razzle dazzle, But in a way, by the time you
Speaker 4: get to the end, that almost makes it more powerful,
Speaker 4: because I think the danger if you show all of
Speaker 4: your cards at once from the beginning, by the time
Speaker 4: you get to the powerful ending, your numb You see,
Speaker 4: there's that that that that chance of being overexposed as
Speaker 4: a viewer. The way this film does it is really
Speaker 4: fascinating and it is really powerful because it is it
Speaker 4: ends up being quite the gut punch.
Speaker 2: You know. We mentioned some characters that show up multiple times,
Speaker 2: and there's also like he goes in towards the beginning
Speaker 2: to movie company and he's got a script and everything,
Speaker 2: that guy who runs the movie company. He comes back
Speaker 2: multiple times. But the one I really noticed was Bonnie Inch,
Speaker 2: who she seems to show up at least three times.
Speaker 2: I think she might be in that kind of adultish
Speaker 2: film towards the beginning where it's she's got a rose
Speaker 2: on her end.
Speaker 1: She's got the rose tattoo, and she's in the Orange
Speaker 1: Julius Diner, which happens immediately before that scene. She definitely
Speaker 1: returns in the Western Dina soda joint and she's serving
Speaker 1: him in the supermarket as well. With eleven I think
Speaker 1: it was yep, yeah, so there's at least goes four.
Speaker 2: Her only other credited role was another William Sachs film,
Speaker 2: with The Incredible Melting Man, where she played a nurse.
Speaker 2: And that's it. That was her film career. But yeah,
Speaker 2: she shows up multiple times in here, and I'm just like, Okay,
Speaker 2: what the she have to do with this? And then
Speaker 2: at first I thought I was like, well, is she
Speaker 2: like Girls one, three through ten or something like what
Speaker 2: is this?
Speaker 1: But she was. She was so much woman. She was
Speaker 1: all not the first nine or something to find stand.
Speaker 2: Just rolled all into one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's cool, it's her.
Speaker 4: The ask Tattoo in the credits a Spider Webb, who
Speaker 4: was this really renowned like pat who are in New
Speaker 4: York operating when that was illegal? Like he was like
Speaker 4: a cool, counterproachful underground figure who also with more classic
Speaker 4: adult connections here. I was good friends with people like
Speaker 4: Annie Sprinkle.
Speaker 1: I had here. Rosey's credited the Spider Web, who appeared
Speaker 1: in Albert Jacoma's nineteen eighty eight VHS film titled Tattoo
Speaker 1: Vampire and appeared in nineteen seventy five's SOS Screw on
Speaker 1: the Screen, which Ralph Bode was also director of photography on.
Speaker 4: Oh My God and I Love Screw on Screen. SOS
Speaker 4: is a fun if anybody likes countercultural era friends like
Speaker 4: that film has hardcore in it. It's it's not erotic.
Speaker 4: I mean it's Screw Magazine made it. Okay, let's just
Speaker 4: tell you every right there, but it's it is a
Speaker 4: lot of fun. I started funding online and see if
Speaker 4: there was like a copy of Tattoo Vampire because I
Speaker 4: saw that too, Like, I have to see this because
Speaker 4: I love I love shot on video Horror. It shares
Speaker 4: a title with a great blue Oyster cult song. I
Speaker 4: must see this. So if anybody can get a line
Speaker 4: on that.
Speaker 1: Let us know. This is the hard to find empathization
Speaker 1: in general that I was. I justified Williams. Sax's first
Speaker 1: three short films and like not.
Speaker 2: I found that interesting because there was an interview with
Speaker 2: him by I think it's Christopher Olsen where he says
Speaker 2: this is Sax says, I started making films in the
Speaker 2: London Film School, which was called the London School of
Speaker 2: Film Technique at the time. I was there one year
Speaker 2: and made three short films. The first was Dear Missus Smith,
Speaker 2: a three minute film about an injured soldier. He is
Speaker 2: picked up on a stretcher, carried for a short distance,
Speaker 2: and lowered into a pine box. The soldiers bring the lid.
Speaker 2: When the lid is lowered, everything goes black. The entire
Speaker 2: film was one shot from the POV of the dead
Speaker 2: soldier that's in this movie. I don't know if he
Speaker 2: just reused his own film, but that sequence is in
Speaker 2: this film. Like there's the two soldiers, the one skinny
Speaker 2: guy and the other guy who seems a little older,
Speaker 2: and he's got the cigarettes, and he offers the cigarette
Speaker 2: to the younger guy. Like that whole sequence is in
Speaker 2: this film.
Speaker 1: He has a tendency to cycle back around in interesting ways.
Speaker 1: I heard and curt An interview where you mentioned that
Speaker 1: he actually remade Breakfast at like a seventeen minute film,
Speaker 1: and I he was in San Francisco, and I was
Speaker 1: just like.
Speaker 4: Where you mean.
Speaker 1: There's two Breakfast short films that I kind of find.
Speaker 2: Breakfast about a US space capsule that lands on another planet.
Speaker 2: A giant pregnant woman picks it up, cracks it over
Speaker 2: the frying pan and a double yolked egg balls out
Speaker 2: and cooks while the star spangled banner plays. This film
Speaker 2: won a lot of prizes at film festivals.
Speaker 1: They must have been circulating it through like the school
Speaker 1: circulating it, because in an interview I listened to, he
Speaker 1: said he was already back in America when it was
Speaker 1: blowing up at festivals in Europe, and he was trying
Speaker 1: to get back there, and it ended up in Mexico
Speaker 1: for a bit, and then San Francisco or vice versa,
Speaker 1: and I don't know. He then managed to get back
Speaker 1: to Rome. That's when he started working there. Like the
Speaker 1: stories that this guy has, trying to keep track of
Speaker 1: them all is just like nuts. Because the reason he
Speaker 1: ended up in London was because he was in business
Speaker 1: school and he hated it. So he got kicked out
Speaker 1: because he hypnotized somebody and then couldn't dehypnotize that. They
Speaker 1: were like, it's actually illegal to do that, so we
Speaker 1: have to punish you. And so he like bailed on
Speaker 1: that and then joined the Air Force before this, before
Speaker 1: Vietnam had kicked off, and he joined the Air Force
Speaker 1: because I want to go and have adventures. I want
Speaker 1: to be a writer, and you figured, like, that's the
Speaker 1: easy way, and eat. The one thing I don't want
Speaker 1: to do is be a medic because I hate all
Speaker 1: like the blood and guts and everything, which is particularly
Speaker 1: ironic given his philographic and the like. But he found
Speaker 1: out if he did really well in the courses, then
Speaker 1: you could choose where he went to next, like for
Speaker 1: the second year, and so he went to London. And
Speaker 1: the first thing that happened to him when he got
Speaker 1: to London was the mortuary scene in this film where
Speaker 1: he was sent to go and footprint to the Prince
Speaker 1: of a foot of a pilot who had crashed their plane.
Speaker 1: And they always did prints of pilot's feet because quite
Speaker 1: often the only thing that survived was the feet in
Speaker 1: the boots. And so he was standing and the guy
Speaker 1: gets there and he's, okay, where's this guy? I've got
Speaker 1: a footprinted. Oh it's in the sink and it's just
Speaker 1: like a sink full of formealdide with a foot in it. He's, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: can I have two pairs of gloves? And the guy's no,
Speaker 1: it's cleaner than dinner plate. It's fine. I mean it's
Speaker 1: in for mal diy it's just like, basically most of
Speaker 1: that scene that's in the film really happened to him,
Speaker 1: and he attributes that to being his interest in body
Speaker 1: and pieces kind of stuff, which does recur a lot
Speaker 1: in these films and in the recurring kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Like I'm not a big fan of Incredible Melting Man.
Speaker 9: But oh my god, part of me would love to
Speaker 9: see an edit where you edit in everything of There
Speaker 9: Is No Thirteen as the internal world of the Melting.
Speaker 1: Man, because that's what it feels like, that this person
Speaker 1: who's being sent off on a mission and comes back
Speaker 1: disintegrated and is towing through all these chaotic, like interconnected
Speaker 1: pieces of fantasy and memory and everything, and there was
Speaker 1: something that he was he did keep coming back to
Speaker 1: with that, which is fascinating.
Speaker 4: His filmography is fascinating because like when I after watched Guests,
Speaker 4: I was looking up and I'm like, I know, like
Speaker 4: William Sacks, I'm like, oh my god, it's Van Dies Boulevard,
Speaker 4: which I long, I do love that movie, but that
Speaker 4: is do you want to talk about a million miles
Speaker 4: away like the man that gave us the film that
Speaker 4: gifted us characters like a choot, because nobody everybody's watched this,
Speaker 4: they'll get this. Nobody calls to to creep man, but
Speaker 4: it's fantaised boulevard. It's a lot of fun. That is
Speaker 4: bizarre to me. It's almost like if if the only
Speaker 4: thing you'd seen of Robert Downey Senior was readed lips
Speaker 4: like it's it's weird, very weird. Somebody like maybe somebody
Speaker 4: should do like we're getting a lot of like more
Speaker 4: obscure filmmakers and directors on Tourist getting their due with
Speaker 4: these sets like on Blue Ray. It'd be guice for
Speaker 4: something for Sax. We still have him that to sound.
Speaker 2: More fid We don't though, I believe that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was pancreatic cancer. I know, damn it passed,
Speaker 1: but I was always pancreatic cancer. I was not surprised.
Speaker 1: That's that shit will take you in a minute.
Speaker 4: Well never mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah him and Mark Damon, Yeah, I know. I was
Speaker 2: very surprised because I had been in contact with Sacks
Speaker 2: several times over the last few years. I wrote the
Speaker 2: liner notes for Incredible Melting Man, which I also agree
Speaker 2: is not the greatest film. But I asked him some
Speaker 2: questions about it, and then he was he was just
Speaker 2: being kind of a prick about stuff. Like I was
Speaker 2: trying to line up an interview with him for survival
Speaker 2: of the film Freaks, the documentary I helped produce a
Speaker 2: few years ago, and he was like, no, you're way
Speaker 2: too political and way too open about your political views.
Speaker 2: And I was just like, he was like, you post
Speaker 2: too much on your page and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but it's my page. I can post whatever the hell
Speaker 2: I want. He was like no, no, like, don't do
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. And I was like what And
Speaker 2: he was like and plus you, what was it like?
Speaker 2: You don't have voices from both sides? And I was
Speaker 2: just like yeah, because I I just eliminate anybody who
Speaker 2: is a Trump supporter. I'm sorry, but I can't handle
Speaker 2: people that are trying to, you know, openly put down
Speaker 2: people who I love, you know, people who I care about.
Speaker 2: Like if your whole political basis is based on hate,
Speaker 2: I can't really support you. I'm sorry. So we got
Speaker 2: into this whole back and forth about how much he
Speaker 2: loves to argue, and I was just like, yeah, I'd
Speaker 2: rather not argue about things. It was that whole almost
Speaker 2: debate me broke kind of thing, and I was just like, yeah, thanks,
Speaker 2: mister Sachs, I'm kind of done talking with you. But
Speaker 2: then I was like, well, maybe i'll ask him if
Speaker 2: he wants to be back on this episode. And I
Speaker 2: went to look and I was like, oh, yeah, he's dead. Whoops.
Speaker 4: We call it the tall matter of effect in our house,
Speaker 4: where there are certain people that you think are still
Speaker 4: alive for whatever reason, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 4: you'll be like, oh shit, I died a fe years ago.
Speaker 4: But then there are people that you think are dead,
Speaker 4: and then you still see something and you're like, oh
Speaker 4: my god, they're alive, and then you feel terrible.
Speaker 1: How did Gary Busey outlive? Wingshauser? How did that happen?
Speaker 4: You want to talk about it. I'm still grieving. I
Speaker 4: love wings Houser.
Speaker 1: I only found out yesterday and the first thing I
Speaker 1: did was like, wait, Gary Busey is still alive? Is he? Heat?
Speaker 1: My god? How did that happen?
Speaker 4: Beersey's got out love as well. He's got to be
Speaker 4: like the Keith Richards of character actors, Like it's where
Speaker 4: the Collective of conscience though, where like there are just
Speaker 4: certain people like that. Hearing that, he was like an
Speaker 4: argument bro though, because I can't. Oh, I can't deal
Speaker 4: with that kind of person.
Speaker 1: It's just really funny because listening to him talk for
Speaker 1: about half an hour'll be like, oh, God, this guy's
Speaker 1: a pritt, and then the other half hour I'm like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: I completely understand where he's coming from and why he's
Speaker 1: a prick. And really I think I would have got
Speaker 1: along with him. Really the next hour there like, ah,
Speaker 1: he's a prick. Oh, he's definitely had a strange life.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of stuff in this was like, well,
Speaker 1: this sounds and feels familiar of like having been in
Speaker 1: a lot of places, but it never clicking over into
Speaker 1: more than this side stuff. And then just the fact
Speaker 1: that one of the interviews where he was talking about
Speaker 1: how he liked being a film doctor more, which we
Speaker 1: haven't mentioned yet for those who don't know. Film doctors
Speaker 1: are the people that they call in to fix the
Speaker 1: film and it's gone wrong, the producers are unhappy or whatever.
Speaker 1: And he apparently with a very successful and popular and
Speaker 1: widely used film doctor. And there's a couple of them
Speaker 1: we know of, most of them being they won't reveal
Speaker 1: what they were obviously, and he said that he actually
Speaker 1: preferred being a film doctor because the producers left you
Speaker 1: alone and he could just get on with the job
Speaker 1: and do it without people messing about. Because to the producers,
Speaker 1: the disaster had already happened and he was the trusted
Speaker 1: person to fix it. But he was the filmmaker, then
Speaker 1: the producers would never leave him alone, and that'll always
Speaker 1: be getting into it and making his life difficult and hard.
Speaker 1: And he didn't work well with people doing that day
Speaker 1: that style, and so oh man, like you the amount
Speaker 1: of therapy that he probably didn't do to deal with
Speaker 1: being the person who he should hate. Like he's to
Speaker 1: get to do the job that he wants to do,
Speaker 1: he has to be the person who fucked up other
Speaker 1: people's films, and like he maybe saved a couple of films, sure,
Speaker 1: but like the psychic kind of that's that'll that'll do
Speaker 1: bad things to your head, like living for like that
Speaker 1: of thirty forty years. It's not I don't envy him
Speaker 1: at all. And there's so much stuff where it was
Speaker 1: like taking off here and redone this way and redone
Speaker 1: that way, like to the point where it's almost like
Speaker 1: every film is a different example of how you can
Speaker 1: be screwed over as an acre, whether it's like completely
Speaker 1: re editing it in the process or judgment aka Hit
Speaker 1: with a Z, which was just like relabeled and promote
Speaker 1: as a gang film Postboys in the Hood success because
Speaker 1: I had a young Cuba Gooding Junior in it, but
Speaker 1: is actually like a satire about the legal system and judges,
Speaker 1: which has a scene where Elliott Gould hypnotizes Karen Black
Speaker 1: and they can't dehypnotize it because he took that he's fans.
Speaker 1: But anyways, anyway, I gotta find Hit. When I saw,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm looking at it like nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: Elliott girled, Karen Black, Cuba Goody Junior. What were they?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: It was actually made in nineteen eighty seven and then
Speaker 1: only released because YadA, YadA, YadA. You know, he got
Speaker 1: screwed over so many different ways. And he does seem
Speaker 1: like he was a genuinely interesting, thoughtful person who really
Speaker 1: was doing some quite genuinely avant garde stuff, working with
Speaker 1: techniques and materials and things way ahead of its time,
Speaker 1: and he just licked out the fart crack of history.
Speaker 2: Well, at least we'll always have Galaxina.
Speaker 1: I only watched that for the first time. I think
Speaker 1: the only sex film i'd see I seven seen Venue
Speaker 1: is Boulevard, the only sax film i'd seen up until
Speaker 1: Really I'm trying to find it, but in Australia it's
Speaker 1: not here yet. I was thinking, will melt him? And
Speaker 1: I've watched recently Galaxina and I watched The Force Beyond?
Speaker 1: Have You Been The Force Beyond? Aka Secrets of the Gods.
Speaker 1: So it's his nineteen seventies paranormal documentary about aliens and
Speaker 1: Bigfoot and conspiracy stuff. And I was watching and I
Speaker 1: was like, this is incredible, And it took me until
Speaker 1: halfway through to realize that it was a satire. He
Speaker 1: was actually making fun of all the people, and it
Speaker 1: was like, oh, sorry, I have twenty first century brain
Speaker 1: and you can't tell the difference anymore. This feels normal.
Speaker 1: This is the way that will talk normally about this stuff,
Speaker 1: like a giant like green fond comes off diagonally a
Speaker 1: couple of screens like big Food Country or something like
Speaker 1: what is going on? And it was he was just
Speaker 1: like the way he slid from talking about UFOs, Bigfoot
Speaker 1: and everything at the time would have been slightly more
Speaker 1: like crazy and weird, whereas now it's oh no, he's like,
Speaker 1: why aren't you talking about Jack the Ripper two? But
Speaker 1: it's really fun and ridiculous and silly. And so then
Speaker 1: I watched after that, so I watched Galaxina, and I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, you know, this is not a great film,
Speaker 1: but I'm I feel like I have your comedic vibe
Speaker 1: carrying across from that, and was just in the right
Speaker 1: groove with Galaxina, and I like one of the interviews
Speaker 1: I heard with me, he was saying it like, one
Speaker 1: of the characters keep telling these bad jokes, and all
Speaker 1: these people thought that they were his bad jokes that
Speaker 1: he thought was good, and he's I failed in the
Speaker 1: writing at that time because they were meant to be
Speaker 1: bad jokes. They weren't meant to be funny, and everybody
Speaker 1: thought I was very bad jokes, bad bad jokes. I
Speaker 1: feel like that is almost his entire filmography was like, no,
Speaker 1: I was making this thing, but I either got screwed
Speaker 1: over or screwed it up myself, and I came out
Speaker 1: either too serious or too stupid, and you like couldn't
Speaker 1: get that balance, and this felt there is no thirteen
Speaker 1: I don't think he was looking for the balance there.
Speaker 1: But whatever his regurgitation blender, whatever that of his is,
Speaker 1: does work in There is no thirteen like it's it's
Speaker 1: not about balance. It's not about balance, because anything like that.
Speaker 1: It's just like that, the detonation of nostalgia and memories
Speaker 1: an Americana through genuinely as an avant garde, like advanced
Speaker 1: guard probing into something more. And that's like coming out
Speaker 1: of this film. I was like suddenly in Walter Benjamin
Speaker 1: and Guide Aboard and The Society of the Spectacle because
Speaker 1: it was like, ah, I am struggling to make sense
Speaker 1: of all this, but he feels like he's directly responding
Speaker 1: to these things. Sorry, how the cat going past? Don't
Speaker 1: knock over stuff, don't knock over stuff, like very much responded,
Speaker 1: But there was some of the quotes. I'm like, oh man,
Speaker 1: I was trying to find my book so I could
Speaker 1: make more sense of these, to get the original quotes.
Speaker 1: But like in Guide to Board Society of the Spectacle,
Speaker 1: he wrote, neither death nor procreation is grasped as a
Speaker 1: law of time. Time remains immobile, like an enclosed space,
Speaker 1: which feels like that that's a better description of the
Speaker 1: plots and offsis sort of film and then.
Speaker 2: A man recounts the thirteen women he's had sex with,
Speaker 2: which is really not here. I mean, we just get
Speaker 2: one scene where he's talking with the one girl and
Speaker 2: she's like, oh, give me your body count basically I
Speaker 2: don't know, nine, maybe ten, and then she's like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: maybe I'll be eleven. I'm like, oh, okay, cool. That's
Speaker 2: Margaret Markov. By the way, Margaret Markov and Jean Jennings
Speaker 2: look kind of similar to me in this, just because
Speaker 2: I guess they're both young blondes, but very very different deliveries.
Speaker 2: I have to say Geen Jennings is very much more
Speaker 2: sedate than Margaret Markov. But I really need to see
Speaker 2: Black Mama, White Mama, because I don't know if I've
Speaker 2: ever seen that one, and I know i've seen the arena,
Speaker 2: but she was very, very striking. I was really very
Speaker 2: taken by Markov when I saw her.
Speaker 4: She got that great hair. She was like this, like
Speaker 4: this main of just like waistlengthd blonde hair, and she
Speaker 4: has great precedence. There's something very kinetic about her that
Speaker 4: definitely sets her. It's always easy to cast people that
Speaker 4: look pretty, but you gotta have something else. You got
Speaker 4: to be able to bring something else to the screen,
Speaker 4: and she does. It's so funny though, because her character
Speaker 4: at first, I was like, is this a red flesh?
Speaker 4: I'm like, you first meet somebody and they're like, this
Speaker 4: is our property, and then it's like how many of
Speaker 4: you that.
Speaker 10: I'm like, oh, dude, get out. She's gonna be a
Speaker 10: bunny boiler before you know it. But obviously didn't quite
Speaker 10: go that way, thankfully. With Jean, I almost wondered if
Speaker 10: she was dubbed over because there's this weird accident Jean
Speaker 10: Jennings was she was in Florida. She was, and shemost
Speaker 10: sounds like there's like almost a European accident going on here.
Speaker 1: I know that too. It's it's quite but it feels
Speaker 1: like youthful wankerness, Like I am affecting this kind of
Speaker 1: personality because it feels so put on in like a
Speaker 1: way that does feel like she feels real at the
Speaker 1: same time as she feels like she's.
Speaker 4: Acting youthful bankardness.
Speaker 6: I know.
Speaker 1: The most beautiful.
Speaker 2: She has a speech about her parents dying in a
Speaker 2: firework factory accident.
Speaker 3: I'm in orphan.
Speaker 7: My parents were killed when the fireworks factory that they
Speaker 7: worked in. I'm sorry, that's okay. It must have been beautiful.
Speaker 1: Did it happen at night?
Speaker 7: Yes, And everybody said it was the most beautiful spect
Speaker 7: it had ever seen. People saw for hundreds of miles.
Speaker 2: Super stilted. After there, I was like, what the hell
Speaker 2: was that delivery?
Speaker 4: That was wild? That was wild? Because I'm like this,
Speaker 4: it was very beautiful, and it's like, what is this
Speaker 4: what we're quite hlordss a youthful wankardness and you're just
Speaker 4: getting this slight, weird bitch about I'm an orphan And
Speaker 4: he's like, I'm so sorry. She's oh, it's okay.
Speaker 1: It's just so beautiful.
Speaker 2: And like the first time, sorry to bounce back and
Speaker 2: forth between the two women, but the first time we
Speaker 2: see Margaret Markov, she's holding this giant inflatable light bulb.
Speaker 1: You mean lamp bo? Lamp bo? Doesn't does it lamp up? Again?
Speaker 1: The bad joke the lamp She's like, do you call
Speaker 1: the lampop? Just the lamp up? No light stop?
Speaker 7: What?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And I'm just like, well, what is this that? Yeah,
Speaker 2: what's the meaning of this giant lamp bulp, you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that was so strange for me, and that they go
Speaker 2: to a castle. I'm like, what that's like thirty four
Speaker 2: minutes in when they finally have this talk about his
Speaker 2: body count and then her saying they call me eleven.
Speaker 1: And then it cuts to like a close up shot
Speaker 1: of beach the water coming in, and I started having
Speaker 1: like flashbacks to the Terror and Targets because it's like
Speaker 1: they had that VHS like old sixties beachy weird sound,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, wait, is this is this going to
Speaker 1: start like breaking? Was it already doing like a targets
Speaker 1: or is that just is this a reference to Rogic?
Speaker 1: But because I'm just like I don't I don't even know, man,
Speaker 1: the second time rounds oh, that's that where the massacre happened.
Speaker 1: Maybe the stand in Vietnam that looks about as Vietnam
Speaker 1: as every British representation of Vietnam I've ever seen. Sy
Speaker 1: there's a big concrete bunker that means it's Asia what
Speaker 1: we have toughets of grass everywhere on a beach. Then
Speaker 1: it was like going back, like oh, okay, so this
Speaker 1: is the first time that we're starting to flip back
Speaker 1: to what might be the place where he experienced the
Speaker 1: trauma and violence that has put him where he is.
Speaker 1: But it's also coming after, like when you're talking about
Speaker 1: red flags, they're driving to the castle and there's the
Speaker 1: four three or four men naked being whipped on the
Speaker 1: roadside as they're driving there, Like that's well, is that
Speaker 1: we'll realizing?
Speaker 4: Probably lucky unless you've signed up for a fun resorts.
Speaker 1: William Sax himself said this isn't a horror film, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's not a horror film. It's melting mad
Speaker 1: as a horror film. But bad vibes, just bad bad
Speaker 1: vibes doing through.
Speaker 2: I got a little Messiah of Evil from this for
Speaker 2: some reason. Maybe it was the grocery store scene.
Speaker 1: I have that note right here. I'm like, Messiah of evil.
Speaker 1: What are they beat? I can't help them? There was
Speaker 1: it was yeah about the beach, but it was also
Speaker 1: like the empty world, like that the world felt dead,
Speaker 1: that everything had moved on, and it was just like
Speaker 1: the ghosts that hadn't caught up, which is like he
Speaker 1: feels like he's one of the living dead in parts,
Speaker 1: not as like a zombie living dead, but just and
Speaker 1: not not because of his pritical disability, Like he's definitely
Speaker 1: he'd just been sacrificed, and this is the ghost of
Speaker 1: a person who's been sacrificed for a greater meaning that
Speaker 1: is actually meaningless and not productive to anything positive.
Speaker 2: When they had that sequence of the person being caught
Speaker 2: carried on the stretcher, I was thinking, Oh, I wonder
Speaker 2: if that's him in that stretcher. And then when they
Speaker 2: put the pine box lid over it, I was just like, Oh, okay,
Speaker 2: so whoever we're watching is dead. And then I started
Speaker 2: to get thoughts of is this a Jacob's Ladder kind
Speaker 2: of thing? Is he dead? But he doesn't want to
Speaker 2: admit that he's dead? Is he dead? And this is
Speaker 2: all just a dream of his? Like is this his reminiscences?
Speaker 2: And way that it's all kind of jumbled together because
Speaker 2: there is this whole theme throughout the entire movie of
Speaker 2: him wanting to be a filmmaker and you know, showing
Speaker 2: up and he's like, oh, I've got the script. And
Speaker 2: then there's the want ad that he sees and that
Speaker 2: eventually takes him back to the VA Hospital. So I
Speaker 2: was like, Oh, maybe he's in the VA hospital. This
Speaker 2: entire time, because that's where we start, that's where we
Speaker 2: end up going. There's this whole thing too of him
Speaker 2: saying like, it's my birthday, and then we have a
Speaker 2: birthday party and we have all this other stuff, and
Speaker 2: I'm just like, Okay, it's all of these things coming
Speaker 2: together all at once. Maybe this is like his last birthday,
Speaker 2: but yeah, we never really get all of that, and
Speaker 2: obviously I don't want a clear cut explanation what's the
Speaker 2: fun in that? But it's just like, Okay, yeah, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of things to think about here. And then yeah,
Speaker 2: like him going to the VA hospital and being given
Speaker 2: that assignment of making that short film about feet and
Speaker 2: about footprinting. It's so interesting the way that he mixes
Speaker 2: like animation and college and all of these things into
Speaker 2: this little short film shows it to the doctors and
Speaker 2: just no response. Not that was good, not that was bad.
Speaker 2: They just all stand up and walk out, And I
Speaker 2: was like, well, I guess that's your response right there.
Speaker 1: But I love how I'd see it opens, because you've
Speaker 1: can hire to make this medical film about how to
Speaker 1: put print, how to print a foot, and the open
Speaker 1: presentation by saying I am finally going to make a
Speaker 1: medical film that's not boring. That could be part of
Speaker 1: the reason why they walked out. That could have been
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuffy doctors going, how dare you insult
Speaker 1: the fine art of medical? Sin them up?
Speaker 2: The doctor that hires him, who's taking the brain out
Speaker 2: of the dummy, and just his delivery, talking about deliveries.
Speaker 2: Holy shit, his is fantastic. I love him. Mighty small breed.
Speaker 1: Oh, such a big guy face free.
Speaker 6: Have you ever seen such a small breed in such
Speaker 6: a big guy?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 11: How did I?
Speaker 1: He was drunk?
Speaker 10: Thomas own.
Speaker 4: I love him too, my note, this is a man
Speaker 4: that owns and asked Scott un ironically, there's something very
Speaker 4: just like just all I don't know. It was like
Speaker 4: I like to describe him, but just like this great
Speaker 4: theatrical give Chriswell and Terry Thomas at a baby. I
Speaker 4: wanted more of him. Maybe not in this field though,
Speaker 4: like another film.
Speaker 1: Apparently is in The Mister Papa's Penguins, my character named Reginald.
Speaker 1: Really that's that Terry Thomas. I looked him up and
Speaker 1: he's like like lots of indies and shorts and occasional
Speaker 1: t movies and not much at all. And then suddenly
Speaker 1: right at the end these Creer, just before he died,
Speaker 1: he's in Mister Poppa's Penguins and then he plays the
Speaker 1: old ant Man. I think it was in the Adventures
Speaker 1: and Came and then he dies.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, the old man when they're trying the time
Speaker 2: travel experiments.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know. I haven't I haven't seen it.
Speaker 4: Wow, I haven't seen it either.
Speaker 2: I've seen it a thousand times. But yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: Wow, So there you go. You can see more of it.
Speaker 1: But the whole thing with the footprinting thing is fascinating
Speaker 1: because obviously he's taking it from a real thing that
Speaker 1: happened to him. But it has so much meaning for
Speaker 1: the film because if he had he is a boiler alert.
Speaker 1: We haven't even talked about it yet. But Ampu Tea,
Speaker 1: he seemingly doesn't have hands or feet, and how do
Speaker 1: you identify somebody? Your fingerprints are a form of identity,
Speaker 1: and he has lost all the ways that somebody wouldn't
Speaker 1: give him an identity in that clinical kind of way.
Speaker 1: So it's like he's it's it's almost him like being
Speaker 1: forced to confront a lack that he has in that regard,
Speaker 1: so much of the film feels like he's, like I said,
Speaker 1: you get these little like interjections of stuff that like
Speaker 1: our lose last memories, which could be the trauma trying
Speaker 1: to reassert itself in his delusions escapes from that reality
Speaker 1: or whatever. But then it also could be like that
Speaker 1: he's trying to just exist and be and is constantly
Speaker 1: being brought back to ways that he is not, that
Speaker 1: he doesn't exist in the society anymore, in this world,
Speaker 1: that all of these traditional markers have been removed from
Speaker 1: him as possibilities, like on a much more existential level,
Speaker 1: which is the old like very albu camou a real
Speaker 1: like just existential dread and Beckett. There's some Beckett vibes
Speaker 1: here as well, for just like impossible traps.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're right, I've totally forgot about that final
Speaker 2: shot where it's him in the bed with no arms
Speaker 2: and no legs. And then I'm also like, well, if
Speaker 2: he got his dick shot off, then there is no thirteen.
Speaker 2: But like her whole thing, when we meet that mysterious thirteen,
Speaker 2: she's just like.
Speaker 7: You must be number thirteen. There's no thirteen. Who are you? Oh?
Speaker 7: No one I don't exist. I don't understand. Could you
Speaker 7: try you?
Speaker 6: Mad?
Speaker 7: I touch you? No, you mustn't. If you touch me,
Speaker 7: I'll vanish. I don't exist. I'm nobody.
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 7: Because my father was killed in the warar before he
Speaker 7: met my mother.
Speaker 5: Well, if you did exist, would you have been number thirteen?
Speaker 5: Perhaps it doesn't really matter that you don't exist?
Speaker 7: Why not?
Speaker 5: I can't touch you anyway?
Speaker 2: Okay, So it's like your No. Thirteen is because you
Speaker 2: don't exist, as opposed to our main characters know thirteen
Speaker 2: because he's never going to have sex with this woman
Speaker 2: or maybe you have a sex again. I'm just like, okay,
Speaker 2: that's very very different way of thinking about these things.
Speaker 4: That's at thirteen days. I think that her father had
Speaker 4: been off to war.
Speaker 1: So even like the way that like he says why
Speaker 1: not first, then she says why not? They're like a
Speaker 1: yin and yang. It was sort of like a two
Speaker 1: halves of the same circle. So it's like the feminine
Speaker 1: representation of annihilation in this world and the masculine representation
Speaker 1: of annihilation, And it's like women don't really play a
Speaker 1: part of this film, despite what the blurbs say, and
Speaker 1: the film isn't trying to make a film with not
Speaker 1: about women. It's not trying to exclude women. It's there.
Speaker 1: It's just done in the same sort of it's a
Speaker 1: way like everything's very abcuse like it's not looking at
Speaker 1: things that it's talking about them. But then at the
Speaker 1: same time, like with the ending, do you remember like
Speaker 1: the beginnings, because when I watched this, I went back
Speaker 1: and watched it. What shit says when he's talking about
Speaker 1: what he says Whilight, I was like, says this is
Speaker 1: a bit fun because he says, I love where is
Speaker 1: it my notes of a mess? They've got to get
Speaker 1: better at notes. Okay, So, first of all, the film
Speaker 1: opens with a joke about dismemberment. The Harvey Lemnbeck character
Speaker 1: person whichever one he is at this point, if he's
Speaker 1: introducing vaudeville show, tells a joke about an Italian pow
Speaker 1: who needs to get a limb dismembered amputated, and he says, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm okay with that, but can you put it in
Speaker 1: with the bombs that you drop on Italy tonight? And
Speaker 1: they like the shore and then the next day, oh,
Speaker 1: we have to amputate this lim and same thing can
Speaker 1: you putting in with the bombs? And then like the
Speaker 1: third night they had okay and okay, as long as
Speaker 1: it can be anything. Nope, we're on to you. We've
Speaker 1: figured out that you're trying to escape one piece at
Speaker 1: a time. I was like, oh, oh my god. So
Speaker 1: the joke is not only about this memberment. It's about escape,
Speaker 1: it's about freedom, it's about returning home, even if you're in.
Speaker 8: Peace, and then immediately follows that by saying, I know
Speaker 8: there's one thing you people really like, people that can move.
Speaker 1: That's the line, people that can move. There's nothing you
Speaker 1: like better than watching people move, Like I, oh my,
Speaker 1: they just set up the whole film for us, and
Speaker 1: not be happy about it because it's a film about
Speaker 1: a guy you can't move. He's a sick bastard, it's all.
Speaker 1: And then it got straight to him in the hospital
Speaker 1: talking about have you ever been to an army hospital?
Speaker 1: And it's super grim and it's like you, I've completely
Speaker 1: forgot about that as I'm watching the films. It's like
Speaker 1: what we were saying before about like it's that doesn't
Speaker 1: like it's not really fore grounding and stuff, but like,
Speaker 1: oh no, it full grounds it immediately in three scenes
Speaker 1: of dialogue that eats separate, connected, and then immediately like
Speaker 1: exits that in such a way that you forget it
Speaker 1: unless you watch the film and then hit play immediately
Speaker 1: and you realize it's in this weird loop where the
Speaker 1: ending is immediately responding the beginning is immediately responding to
Speaker 1: an ending of a man who has no limit and
Speaker 1: can't move. We chokes about dismemberment and how audiences love
Speaker 1: people who move.
Speaker 2: Do you think maybe that's why he calls cars turds
Speaker 2: that he's just because they represent the movement that he
Speaker 2: can not have again. And then that crazy the Markov
Speaker 2: character where she's like, oh yeah, put on your helmet
Speaker 2: when they're driving the convertible and stuff, and just the
Speaker 2: freedom of the open road that they have other than
Speaker 2: him having to hold onto that lamp bulb super tight.
Speaker 4: Little thing about the tongue because he makes like a
Speaker 4: silly face and she's doing that again and she's like,
Speaker 4: you have a tongue, and that's quite rare.
Speaker 1: In these parts are tickling leading to violence as well?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that scene was strange. And then even when
Speaker 2: he's in the elevator the very first time, we see
Speaker 2: him and the elevator doors open up, and there's that
Speaker 2: gangster looking guy with a machine gun that shoots at him,
Speaker 2: and then they cut away and then he just walks
Speaker 2: onto the elevator. We get a couple of elevator scenes,
Speaker 2: because there's one later on when he's wandering the city
Speaker 2: again and he's doing that whole thing about the turds
Speaker 2: and talking about the air conditioners dripping on him and everything.
Speaker 2: There's another shot in an elevator with another old man.
Speaker 2: You know, you talked about those old men with cigars,
Speaker 2: and they are everywhere.
Speaker 1: In this Sometimes I miss the city.
Speaker 3: I hate it, but I still miss it. The streets
Speaker 3: smell like puke. The air is damp and heavy as
Speaker 3: he's out of the way. The people tea brains encased
Speaker 3: in physical human forms days are gray, and the air
Speaker 3: is heavy as it pushes millions of tea brains lower
Speaker 3: into themselves, ill venture to their overpriced, dilapidated pods. T
Speaker 3: brain rides home with other p brains and snake likes
Speaker 3: weltering turds piled one after another, reddish brown, with windows
Speaker 3: brown and horizontal stink flavor straws under concrete.
Speaker 2: There are turds above the flavor straws.
Speaker 3: There are turds everywhere, millions of turds piled one after
Speaker 3: and before another. Red turds, blue turds, green turds, truck turds,
Speaker 3: convertible turrets, little turds, big turds, but mostly yellow turds
Speaker 3: which pump out their black poison behind them, which is
Speaker 3: scooped up and swallowed by the pea brains and those
Speaker 3: not fortunate enough to have air bubbles.
Speaker 1: And something.
Speaker 4: It's hitty me like, because when you were talking earlier
Speaker 4: about just a lot of the troubles that Sax ran
Speaker 4: into throughout his whole career. Because our character here is
Speaker 4: a filmmaker, like he was going into filmmaking before he
Speaker 4: got called drafted. I'm assuming, and do you think there's
Speaker 4: almost like a parallel though of just I'll edit filmmakers
Speaker 4: and directors get caught off at the limb metaphorically because
Speaker 4: thinking about like how the way that his films reacted
Speaker 4: to the medical institution, even though it's like really creative,
Speaker 4: I was like, man, he got super ambitious for this.
Speaker 4: What is all what is basically just like a trial
Speaker 4: run film to see if he gets a job. But
Speaker 4: I also noticed he didn't actually use the severed foot
Speaker 4: that he was supposed to use. He did everything but that.
Speaker 2: And reuse the the end gag as well. No tad
Speaker 2: Tooo that one.
Speaker 4: I love that, I love. I can't help it. It's
Speaker 4: my maybe it's my inner like nineteen sixties, like no
Speaker 4: budgets exploitation self. I love, but with the end on it,
Speaker 4: it's so stupid. It just always makes me smile. And
Speaker 4: there's a little baby stepping and pie doing the footprint
Speaker 4: and just but it was so creative. I was actually like,
Speaker 4: you know what, this is smart because it's honestly like
Speaker 4: this is he's showing you how to footprint without actually
Speaker 4: being like, here's a literal severed human flo and that's
Speaker 4: the doctors are going to have to cut off each
Speaker 4: toe and ten diff it. It's like, God, damn, that was.
Speaker 2: His wife, I believe in that Formeldehyde and then she
Speaker 2: I think it was her with the scissors cutting off
Speaker 2: the paper toe. And I don't know if the girl
Speaker 2: in there, I don't think that was his daughter because
Speaker 2: they I think he met his wife on this film.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, Okay. I kind of wonder because usually with
Speaker 4: these kind of films that you fight out. Okay again,
Speaker 4: go back to Robert Daddy soon senior, you know, and pounds.
Speaker 1: He met his wife and row so they I think
Speaker 1: they had been married for a little bit dispoint, but
Speaker 1: I don't know if they would keep not done. I
Speaker 1: think it was a child that all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was credited to Randy Geller.
Speaker 7: R A. N.
Speaker 2: D Ee is a little girl in Georgie's film So
Speaker 2: and Bonnie Sachs as the girl in Fermaldehyde.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing about that film is that when he's
Speaker 1: meeting with the producers with his script and they're like, no,
Speaker 1: we just want pits and ass and Adam and Eve
Speaker 1: in the Garden of Eden, the nudity and all this
Speaker 1: kind of thing. It's sex seal spectacle. And he's trying
Speaker 1: to make something more meaningful. And then he's tasked with
Speaker 1: making a films for communicating information and he hands in
Speaker 1: something that's much more entertaining and feels aimed at kids.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a mirror image of the earlier one
Speaker 1: where he's the one failing to be meaningful in education.
Speaker 1: Even though it's great and it's fine, it's like it
Speaker 1: isn't what they ask for, and it's a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of stuffy doctors like they want the boring medical film.
Speaker 1: This is why, like when I said, like the complicated
Speaker 1: figure of sex is he's not dealing with stuff, but
Speaker 1: yet he's dealing with a lot of things from a
Speaker 1: lot more angles than some filmmakers. Like even when he's
Speaker 1: getting railing against this society of the spectacle and TNA
Speaker 1: and exploitation and everything, it's I don't know, matter of facts,
Speaker 1: not quite the right word, but it's there's a practicality
Speaker 1: to it that it's like, it doesn't feel like someone
Speaker 1: getting old, but the arts are important at the more,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do something else. And then like
Speaker 1: when he's tasked for doing something else, he does the
Speaker 1: like nice version of the things he didn't want to do.
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting, it's it's complicated, it's messy. Like it
Speaker 1: There's something that.
Speaker 4: The like the distributor producer character says that really stuck
Speaker 4: with me, because when when George tells the times are changing,
Speaker 4: and the guy says times are changing, but the audience
Speaker 4: isn't this producer stuck in the times. But given the
Speaker 4: treatment this film got outside of Italy. It's sadly true
Speaker 4: and it's fake as thinking about the whole thing. What's
Speaker 4: this film like intentionally oppressed too? In America? It's like
Speaker 4: the main Vietnam War centric film that came out the
Speaker 4: same year that this one did was Hearts and Mind,
Speaker 4: which now is very it's very easy to get hold
Speaker 4: of and Criterion has it out, But it was like
Speaker 4: that was a very controversial film and like Columbia refused
Speaker 4: to distribute it and it was basically suppressed. That's a
Speaker 4: sneaky way things get censored, I find in modern American
Speaker 4: times it's ever so much like something super obvious with
Speaker 4: the government says we've banned it. Instead, it's more nobody's
Speaker 4: going to distribute it.
Speaker 1: It's a free market. It work.
Speaker 2: Well. It's like Captain Milkshake from nineteen seventy. That's a
Speaker 2: virulent anti war film that other than the filmmaker's selling it,
Speaker 2: you can't get your hands on it, you know. And
Speaker 2: it was wonderful, this whole thing of this guy coming
Speaker 2: back from Vietnam and just not being able to handle it,
Speaker 2: and what was it. The stuff at home is shot
Speaker 2: in black and white. The stuff in the war is
Speaker 2: shot in color, because it's like that's the only time
Speaker 2: he actually felt alive was when he was in the wartime,
Speaker 2: and it's like it was nineteen seventy. You know, we're
Speaker 2: still like Ben you and were asking as far as
Speaker 2: like when was the war and like, I mean the
Speaker 2: beginning of the whole conflict. I honestly can't tell you,
Speaker 2: because there was all that the French involvement then eventually
Speaker 2: starts to move into the American involvement. But I remember
Speaker 2: even Kennedy's sending troops over there. So it had been
Speaker 2: going on for while, over a decade.
Speaker 1: I knew that it would have wrapping up around this time,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't sure exactly when it does seem seventy
Speaker 1: four was about when it was like really over as
Speaker 1: much as it could be. Is there were over sorry
Speaker 1: ran Bo tweets.
Speaker 2: Only over when I say it's over. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This was one of the first American films to really
Speaker 1: tackle it and not in a way of being like, oh,
Speaker 1: something and such was in the war move on. Most
Speaker 1: of the films were like that, and so it is
Speaker 1: entirely possible that it was leaned on. I have heard
Speaker 1: far stupidest stories about what Army Intelligence and the CIA
Speaker 1: was up to at this time with all of the
Speaker 1: spare time that they had, that somebody sitting there watching
Speaker 1: every film that comes out that relates to it, and going,
Speaker 1: they didn't even need to watch the whole film. You
Speaker 1: just watched the first five minutes, and you react to
Speaker 1: that because they're talking about the Vegan hospitals and you
Speaker 1: didn't talk You could talk about the war, you don't
Speaker 1: talk about the Vegeans, not like that. You don't talk
Speaker 1: about them in pieces. You don't show the hospitals and
Speaker 1: the suffering. But they didn't be even in the eating
Speaker 1: now they don't really want to still talk about that
Speaker 1: aspect of the aftermath. And so I can imagine like
Speaker 1: a very easily someone watching just the first five minutes
Speaker 1: of this film and going, let's lean on some people
Speaker 1: and make sure this doesn't appear. And even down to
Speaker 1: the stories with it going to Berlin Film Festival that
Speaker 1: you know, apocryphary, we are told that the jury love
Speaker 1: didn't thought it was the best film, but the people
Speaker 1: running the show were afraid there would be riots because
Speaker 1: there was such huge anti American sentiment that it very
Speaker 1: very familiar to our current time. That the pushback was
Speaker 1: just so intense that even though this film was obviously
Speaker 1: not pro like that they were. People were apparently turning
Speaker 1: the lights on the cinema's protests and were yelling over
Speaker 1: it and everything like that, just because it was American
Speaker 1: and about the war. It's really easy to imagine that
Speaker 1: it just got shuffled off to the side and no
Speaker 1: one noticed and no one cared because who would and
Speaker 1: it is it is just a it does seem likely
Speaker 1: to maybe given how much they've disappeared. But Hearts and Mind,
Speaker 1: this has a connection to Hearts and Mind. Cans Ralph
Speaker 1: b do the Bode, the cinematographer, was a second unit
Speaker 1: cameraman on Hearts and Mind, so that there's there's they're
Speaker 1: very present, like they would have been aware right at
Speaker 1: the heart of the conversation around all of this, and
Speaker 1: it's that actually makes it feel more fascinating, like there
Speaker 1: is only really a couple of bits that confront it
Speaker 1: head on, but those bits do it head on in
Speaker 1: a way that was not happening in the seventies and
Speaker 1: even now would feel a bit strange, like this, this
Speaker 1: is hissed off Monty Python.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it, especially
Speaker 2: with the way that it changes so often. I mean
Speaker 2: just thinking about like the Western scene where it's kind
Speaker 2: of western, kind of not. I mean it's taking place
Speaker 2: in a diner to the point where it has like
Speaker 2: the sliding door. It feels like it was a railroad
Speaker 2: car at some point, and it's like the whole thing
Speaker 2: of him having Harvey Lembeck playing music on the jukebox
Speaker 2: like as if it were a player piano. And then yeah,
Speaker 2: he ends up shooting one guy, but then there's the
Speaker 2: guy at the chessboard, and doesn't he end up just
Speaker 2: cutting that guy's hand off. So again with the dismemberment stuff,
Speaker 2: I'm just like, fuck yeah.
Speaker 1: Like that Bitty says it, it pulls out the player,
Speaker 1: chops his hand off and says, sorry, stranger, I thought
Speaker 1: you were cheating, which is just oh, that's like American
Speaker 1: collateral damage. Oh sorry, we invaded your country because we
Speaker 1: thought he might be a Domino, really davage. But I
Speaker 1: have to say I was like looking at that guy
Speaker 1: and being like, that guy looked so familiar. He gets
Speaker 1: his hand cut off, that is that is he's American.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if it's young Saint or Jan Saint.
Speaker 1: I'll say Jan Sat. He is the street preacher in
Speaker 1: Frank and Hooker.
Speaker 4: I am so glad you said that, because there's another
Speaker 4: head that way. Yes, because Beverly Bonner is credited for
Speaker 4: playing like a street walker. This is where I wish
Speaker 4: the print was cleaned up, because you can't really tell
Speaker 4: it's her, But Beverly Banner, Bond of Courses are beloved
Speaker 4: sex worker character in basket Cake amazing, I know, like
Speaker 4: the connections of this film are insane.
Speaker 1: And he would also play Santa in Jacob's Ladder.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, is there.
Speaker 1: Is no third Ain't actually like a weird like a
Speaker 1: is it like one of the in Stephen King's The
Speaker 1: doc Tower. It's like one of the beams. It connects
Speaker 1: the universe.
Speaker 4: It's going by the credits that which, by the way,
Speaker 4: there's so many great tracking shots in this fall beautiful,
Speaker 4: Like even even with the kind of not the best
Speaker 4: quality print we had to work with, you can still
Speaker 4: tell like the level of just carrot artistry. But there's
Speaker 4: a amazing track shot at the end when we get
Speaker 4: that just heartbreaking reveal and you realize, see you're in this,
Speaker 4: You're surround there's all kinds of people that are various
Speaker 4: levels of amputee and those are real veterans. This was
Speaker 4: shot at an actual hospital and it was late because
Speaker 4: there's like what in the thanks there's like a veterans
Speaker 4: group of like dismembered veterans, which again would not surprised
Speaker 4: mes sense like that doesn't make the country look good.
Speaker 4: If if this is what this is what we did
Speaker 4: to the young men that we sent off for this,
Speaker 4: so we'll just put them off to the side, forget
Speaker 4: them and again the bubble. That's where you get also
Speaker 4: is that like eleven and twelve are nurses. It's almost
Speaker 4: like a Wizard of Oz thing.
Speaker 1: The ending is one hundred percent doing the Wizard of World.
Speaker 1: They're all there, every person who has appeared is back
Speaker 1: there again, except it's not like the Wizard of Oz
Speaker 1: because it's like they're not they knew they wasn't like
Speaker 1: you were there and you were there and you were
Speaker 1: there because they all nowhere.
Speaker 4: It's not unhappy and what sort of it's but but
Speaker 4: almost in a wonder is we're eleven and twelve just
Speaker 4: like a fantasy.
Speaker 1: Personally, I think like I did see some people being like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's hard to tell what's Like a few people who
Speaker 1: have seen it's like, it's hard to tell what's real
Speaker 1: and not real, and I'm like, that's not the point.
Speaker 1: It's not. It's it's much more European in the way
Speaker 1: that it's approaching that way. It's like he's obviously sacked
Speaker 1: that there much he loves Fellini and all these people,
Speaker 1: and it is definitely leaning more to that honor. You
Speaker 1: don't have to explain things. It's not necessarily even though
Speaker 1: obviously the word absurdist mention a lot, I know it
Speaker 1: is actually more surrealist, and it even it just doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter. You just have to roll with it. And
Speaker 1: I think it's it's kind of like we mentioned Jacob's Ladder,
Speaker 1: and I've also seen a couple of people mention Johnny
Speaker 1: got He's gun and how this film is similar to that.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of ways that it's really significantly different.
Speaker 1: It's because Johnny got his gun, like you, sets you
Speaker 1: up from the beginning to know what's going on, so
Speaker 1: you can more like going with this person on a journey,
Speaker 1: whereas in this film, we're not going with him on
Speaker 1: a journey, were with him on whatever his quest is,
Speaker 1: and the structure reminded me a lot of modern video games,
Speaker 1: the way it's like these separate, little enclosed spaces and
Speaker 1: entering into them knowing that there's going to be something
Speaker 1: but not sure what it is, just to not coincidence exactly,
Speaker 1: but just fascinating how much it much like it feels
Speaker 1: more like that kind of structure, which in a video
Speaker 1: game we don't think about how chaotic and strange and
Speaker 1: separated all the parts are. You to roll with it,
Speaker 1: but it actually reminded me more of if there isn't
Speaker 1: a thirteen, feels like somewhere like halfway between Johnny Got
Speaker 1: His Gun and Ambrose. Abuse is an occurrence at our
Speaker 1: creek bridge, which is Jacob's ladder, but it's like the
Speaker 1: way that it differs from those is fascinating because it's
Speaker 1: like in an occurrence that our bridge character is fleeing something,
Speaker 1: they are trying to escape to something, whereas our hero
Speaker 1: in this film is so lost, like he's not even
Speaker 1: he is seemingly somewhat questing for something, but it's so
Speaker 1: fragmented and deavored and dismembered that he can't even put
Speaker 1: that together. And like in looking at thinking about this
Speaker 1: film and how it deals with violence and spectacle is
Speaker 1: also really fascinating because that is quite grotesque in parts
Speaker 1: literally in the mortuary sequence, that the great mortuary and
Speaker 1: auticition is pulling the brain out and making jokes about
Speaker 1: the guy's small brain to his large body and the
Speaker 1: hands and the feet and the meat. But it feels
Speaker 1: like a kind of five or six years before this,
Speaker 1: you have Bonnie and Clyde and the Wild Bunch, which
Speaker 1: he is universally seen has been, if not a response
Speaker 1: to Vietnam, at least like a side effect to Vietnam
Speaker 1: that you end up with his explosion of violence because
Speaker 1: of what people are experiencing and seeing what the news, etc.
Speaker 1: But also how the explosion of that kind of violence
Speaker 1: is also seen as a way of having This is
Speaker 1: where I was appearing to the water Benjamin and the
Speaker 1: guide bored. My brain was just breaking hat that it's
Speaker 1: this like the collapsing of histories and the returning to
Speaker 1: transferring the horror of the violence into nostalgia and displacing
Speaker 1: it into the past as a way to let it
Speaker 1: go and excuse it and forget it, and then having
Speaker 1: the film can ultimate scene be a Western quite violent.
Speaker 1: We have a dismemberment, we have like multiple people dead,
Speaker 1: but it's all encapsulated in this actual collapsing of history
Speaker 1: that it is seemingly like a train card Dino. Very modern,
Speaker 1: and that way also remind me Eliminade Joe, like it
Speaker 1: felt very check at time, the pop modern pop culture
Speaker 1: kind of collisions. I just I found that fascinating. How
Speaker 1: much of this film is like very society but very
Speaker 1: much like refusing to be that. Like there's no Catharsis
Speaker 1: in the Violin, there's no release, there's no here you go.
Speaker 1: So I film writer Katherine Russell, she's got a great
Speaker 1: book on narrative mortality and death and cinema in particularly
Speaker 1: new wave cinema, and she wrote that most of the
Speaker 1: violence in recent American film is grounded in a cyclical,
Speaker 1: repetitive schema of vengeance. And it's that final scene appears
Speaker 1: to be that like at the cyclical well, someone's coming
Speaker 1: back for revenge and this and that and all the
Speaker 1: sheriff for finishing, but it's all stripped of everything. It's
Speaker 1: not pretending to have anything that all the other films
Speaker 1: are like doing it. Just know this is you're just
Speaker 1: being confronted with this act of violent almost like a
Speaker 1: slightly more successful version of irreversible, of trying to strip
Speaker 1: out all the reasons and meanings for why you get
Speaker 1: to this cathartic act that you're allowed to enjoy as
Speaker 1: an audience. Instead, you're just displaced into this little mini
Speaker 1: prison filled with there fascinating.
Speaker 2: Just so you know, the comic strip that is on
Speaker 2: the pillow behind them, that is from Gasoline Alley, which
Speaker 2: is a long running comic from the US. I think
Speaker 2: it was started in nineteen eighteen and I don't know
Speaker 2: if it's still running today. I think it actually is.
Speaker 1: So there was a bunch of stuff on this So
Speaker 1: I'm just like, we need some old Americans here to
Speaker 1: explain who these people are. Because you were talking therese
Speaker 1: one that I looked up, the Orange Julius.
Speaker 2: Oh God, Orange Julius.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's Buddy Clayton, and I managed to, like
Speaker 1: almost like the shadow of information, figure out that he's
Speaker 1: an old board Field period. But there's so many. I
Speaker 1: bet money that all the old dudes old board Field dudes.
Speaker 1: But the majority of them, the Internet hasn't found a
Speaker 1: reason to remember them yet. So you just end up, Oh,
Speaker 1: they were in one documentary or something and related to vaudeville,
Speaker 1: and it's like, Okay, cool piece of information.
Speaker 2: And just so you know, the secret to Orange Julius
Speaker 2: is egg white powder and milk powder and sweat. That's
Speaker 2: the secret. Yeah. Yeah, despite the rumors to the contrary. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and yeah, Heather, you're right about these tracking shots. There
Speaker 2: are some amazing ones that are going on. I mean,
Speaker 2: like I was saying, the whole thing with the that
Speaker 2: short film that's in there, when the guys are walking
Speaker 2: and they're in Vietnam, then suddenly they're in New York,
Speaker 2: so the you've got that kind of great use of
Speaker 2: the camera. But yeah, those tracking shots, especially down the
Speaker 2: hallways at the VA hospital. I mean the very first one,
Speaker 2: the first time we see them back the way, and
Speaker 2: I love the way he slides into the frame and
Speaker 2: then starts telling that joke and then yeah, the camera
Speaker 2: just slowly pushing in on him rolling down the hallway
Speaker 2: is fantastic.
Speaker 4: Oh God. And then that shot when he's with number
Speaker 4: twelve in bed and they embrace and then it just
Speaker 4: starts pulling away and it's almost like you're an elabyrinth
Speaker 4: of lamps and lighting and mirrors that it's really it's
Speaker 4: disorienting and it's beautiful. And it also feels like, even
Speaker 4: even in your first watch, do you feel like this
Speaker 4: is going to lead to something bad? Though we can't
Speaker 4: going in again to bed your whole feeling about the
Speaker 4: vibe of this film. It's just there's just just havness.
Speaker 4: And again it's something like super obvious. It's really just
Speaker 4: riveting how everything is balanced.
Speaker 2: And at the end of the film, like after we
Speaker 2: visit George and we get back to the birthday song
Speaker 2: and then we kind of move away from him, move
Speaker 2: out ast all those people that we're talking about. Then
Speaker 2: we again go through the halls of the VA hospital,
Speaker 2: but this time it's teeming with life, as opposed to
Speaker 2: the first time, where it's just there's Lembeck, there's the
Speaker 2: dancers and the piano player and the singer. That's it.
Speaker 2: You know, it feels very abandoned all that that montage
Speaker 2: of all the empty hallways, empty areas, and now during
Speaker 2: the day it's just filled with all of these people.
Speaker 2: And I love how when the credits start, because I
Speaker 2: think we go we go back to an elevator and
Speaker 2: we stop there and that's when the credits roll, and
Speaker 2: then you still hear all the chatter and the voices
Speaker 2: and stuff. You hear all of the noise that's happening
Speaker 2: at the hospital.
Speaker 4: I'm so glad we got to do this and that
Speaker 4: we got to see it like I would I would
Speaker 4: love for this film to like get get more eyes
Speaker 4: on it, even if and it's something I can't implore
Speaker 4: because I do feel like, and I don't know if
Speaker 4: you guys have run into this, I do feel like
Speaker 4: there's like a newer sort of breed a film fan
Speaker 4: where it's like, if something isn't in this pristine restoration print,
Speaker 4: they they're like, oh, I can't watch that. I've literally
Speaker 4: met people that are like, oh I can't, and I'm
Speaker 4: just like and I'm just ideally, of course, like in
Speaker 4: a perfect way to be great. If everything was in
Speaker 4: this ideal situation. A lot of films aren't. There's still
Speaker 4: so many films that are just waiting. And in this case, well,
Speaker 4: probably if there's no negative, there's no negative, this is it.
Speaker 4: This is It's probably about as good it is going
Speaker 4: to get.
Speaker 1: This is the one place where I've been waiting for
Speaker 1: AI for that we have good quality. AI trained to
Speaker 1: look at something like this, and I'm sure maybe we'll
Speaker 1: never be able to get the pillar boxing get rid
Speaker 1: of that, but to look at the image and just
Speaker 1: actually make it, clean it up, get the detail back
Speaker 1: in there. So this is the one thing that I
Speaker 1: want AI Corp. To say these loss all, like the
Speaker 1: one most of all on Ario Bava's Rabbit Dogs, to
Speaker 1: go back and fix all those awful VHS lips that
Speaker 1: pop in every six seconds and make it a very
Speaker 1: difficult watch Like that is definitely going to happen. That
Speaker 1: is at least one plus, but there is definitely. I
Speaker 1: don't haven't run into those people yet, but there's times
Speaker 1: we'll watch something I actually no, I don't need to
Speaker 1: see this like this. I can wait until it pops up.
Speaker 1: But that's with stuff that I know will one day
Speaker 1: pop up, and it comes to these This is it guys.
Speaker 4: If you're listening to this and you feel like you
Speaker 4: might be like this, open your mind, open your right
Speaker 4: because sometimes like it's better is it ideal? Now? But
Speaker 4: what in life is ideal? Like sometimes you just take
Speaker 4: take the riches where you can get them, and it's
Speaker 4: better to get a chance to see something that's great
Speaker 4: and that opens kind of your film experience than just
Speaker 4: I don't know and seeing Patch Adams, and.
Speaker 2: I hope that nobody that listens to the projection booth
Speaker 2: is one of these people that's like, oh, if it's
Speaker 2: not streaming, it doesn't exist for me. It's like, look
Speaker 2: behind us, you know, look behind the three of us.
Speaker 2: I'm sure we all have piles of DVDs and Blu rays.
Speaker 2: You know. It's like, yeah, physical media, you need to
Speaker 2: have it in your life because go to fucking Netflix.
Speaker 2: Nothing before what nineteen seventy four is streaming on there?
Speaker 2: Like one movie from the seventies, maybe a few, And
Speaker 2: it's like, for Fox's sakes, guys.
Speaker 1: It's like media breth aiuans like just to survive on
Speaker 1: something that's not there.
Speaker 4: To me, streaming is like a it's like a great appetizer,
Speaker 4: but you don't always need an appetizer for your meal.
Speaker 4: Like it's great if it's there, but physical media is
Speaker 4: where it's at because streaming also nothing security. Things disappear
Speaker 4: all the time, and then you're just kind of left, oh, shoot,
Speaker 4: I was going to rewatch this movie. It's not there anymore.
Speaker 4: But if you own it. You don't have to worry
Speaker 4: about that.
Speaker 1: I think if you, if you are any people out
Speaker 1: there who are interested in this, but maybe do you
Speaker 1: struggle with those kind of impose limitations on quality watch
Speaker 1: video drome before this and then immediately mainline this film
Speaker 1: and just like you are experiencing a VHS broadcast from
Speaker 1: the inferiority of someone's hell, and it's perfect.
Speaker 4: I love that. I also support the projection booth to
Speaker 4: become a patron.
Speaker 1: I do have to say one thing before we wrap
Speaker 1: it up. There was one other person in the credits
Speaker 1: who when I saw that was like, what I know?
Speaker 1: That name Virginia Field, who was the assistant art director
Speaker 1: would go on to be the art director and production
Speaker 1: designer on Friday the thirteenth.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was like, actually that feels that's that's interesting. This
Speaker 1: that really tactile America Anna like nostalgia but dangerous. It
Speaker 1: was like, that makes a lot of sense that she
Speaker 1: would be involved in both. She also worked here on
Speaker 1: A Strangers Watching Exterminated too, I'm assuming the Harp that
Speaker 1: William Sachs made, and my own personal nostalgia filmography and
Speaker 1: Moving Violations. She was the art director on that was
Speaker 1: Virginia Field has imbued my childhood brain to a high
Speaker 1: degree with just two films.
Speaker 7: Is that the.
Speaker 4: Company that Fred Willard has a pardon?
Speaker 1: I can't remember Fred Willer, isn't it but that weird
Speaker 1: skinny guy and he gets the chainsaw and he's got
Speaker 1: the hockey mask.
Speaker 7: Go on.
Speaker 1: I was like, they all lose their licenses and so
Speaker 1: they have to go to a driving school. I think
Speaker 1: it's it's got like somebody's brother in it. Might be
Speaker 1: like Doyle Murray.
Speaker 4: That sounds like something I saw a lot as a
Speaker 4: little kid on Keyble. This is you just un likely some.
Speaker 1: Memory horror Police Academy Comedies nineteen eighty five, directed by
Speaker 1: Neil Israel, John Murray, not even not even Brian Jennifer Tilley, Jamesker.
Speaker 2: The woman that played the Where's the Beef Girl? The
Speaker 2: lady was in that, I think too.
Speaker 1: Clara Peller, Fred Willard, yep.
Speaker 4: Call blast Clara Peller Yeah.
Speaker 2: And Wendy Joe Sperber. Yeah. This the cast is amazing.
Speaker 4: Oh god, because there's this whole interaction with Wendy Josperber
Speaker 4: and Fred Willard about oh my god, oh my god, Ben,
Speaker 4: this is wild I saw this much as a kid,
Speaker 4: like this dangerous don cheetle.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was another Neil Israel pat Proft joint.
Speaker 2: I talked with those guys for what was that real genius?
Speaker 1: I think Sally Kellerman, Hey ga moving violations of rewatch
Speaker 1: coming up.
Speaker 2: All right, we're going to take a break and play
Speaker 2: a preview for next week's show right after these brief messages.
Speaker 2: Some people think Move is about movie. Some people think
Speaker 2: Move is about the system breaking.
Speaker 6: Down, the loasi, there's no respect for anything.
Speaker 2: Some people think Move is about the communication.
Speaker 3: Gap blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: Some people think Move.
Speaker 5: Is about the battle of the sexiest.
Speaker 6: I think you really are going crackers.
Speaker 3: You live so nice dream no Jewish brega wig law.
Speaker 6: Some people think Move is just an entertaining comedy.
Speaker 2: Some people think Move is more than that. Tell me
Speaker 2: when we start picking up weird laws, I come for
Speaker 2: you right in short.
Speaker 6: Some people think, and some people don't, and some.
Speaker 2: People just move. It's pure goove, move right it are
Speaker 2: That's right. Our look at obscure films continues next week.
Speaker 2: When we take a peek at Move, get ready to
Speaker 2: have that soundtrack song stuck in your head. Until then,
Speaker 2: I want to thank my co hosts Other and Ben,
Speaker 2: so Ben, what's going on with you, sir?
Speaker 1: Not a whole lot at the moment. In between things,
Speaker 1: I did a bunch of rushes for Apple Side of Vinegar,
Speaker 1: which is like taking Netflix by storm and stirring up
Speaker 1: various amounts of dialogue on either side about shitty Australians
Speaker 1: in the health industry. It looked good for the thousand
Speaker 1: or so hours have I watched of it, so I'd
Speaker 1: recommend that it's not a thousand hours long, just the
Speaker 1: rushes were Otherwise, I'm just on letterboxed as usual. You
Speaker 1: can find me. There is dissolve Pet, one word diss
Speaker 1: l ved pet, and I come say hi and like
Speaker 1: I'm trying to make sense more and I write on
Speaker 1: the bear with Me though sometimes I forget about the
Speaker 1: making scent part and Heather, what's keeping you?
Speaker 4: I'll use this chance to mention I have some essay
Speaker 4: work that has popped up the recent Arrow has released
Speaker 4: this beautiful edition of the Cell which has many great
Speaker 4: supplements and mad Thanks to Alexandra Hella Nichols for bringing
Speaker 4: me up board for that where I get to write
Speaker 4: about music video a work and how that plays into
Speaker 4: the film and its director and you can get that
Speaker 4: that is currently available now and terror Vision. I have
Speaker 4: essays on thirty release of Dance or Dive, which is
Speaker 4: a very fun if you love low budget mid eighties
Speaker 4: Las Vegas horror, monsters, ballet, modern dance guests please Cocaine,
Speaker 4: Oh my God, check it out. My essay is on
Speaker 4: that as well as their at least of the very
Speaker 4: technicolor gorgeous early eighties Korean horror film Suddenly in the Dark.
Speaker 4: So those we're both through terror Vision. For anything else
Speaker 4: in other sundries, go to my linktree Linktree dot com.
Speaker 4: Forward slash Mondo Heather.
Speaker 2: Thanks again folks for being on the show. Thanks to
Speaker 2: everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of
Speaker 2: me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the
Speaker 2: other shows that I work on. They're all available at
Speaker 2: Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If
Speaker 2: you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com.
Speaker 2: Slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps a Projection
Speaker 2: Booth take over the world.
Speaker 11: Time the first at the Crowning Rock, The Guy, a
Speaker 11: Boy with a Girl, They gud required to condy to
Speaker 11: return to contact of this stuffs to confist of the
Speaker 11: first man, Spectac