Speaker 1: Oh geez, folks.
Speaker 2: It should die.
Speaker 3: People say good money to see this movie. When they
Speaker 3: go out to a theater.
Speaker 4: They want clod sodas pop popcorn in no monsters in
Speaker 4: a protection booth.
Speaker 5: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 4: Ut it off.
Speaker 3: Listen.
Speaker 4: Listen to the words of Anthony Perkins, one of the
Speaker 4: stars who stand on the Beach.
Speaker 3: Listen, listen.
Speaker 6: Oh you don't know, Julian, You just don't know. He
Speaker 6: didn't see a face when I told her, Sho, you
Speaker 6: don't thought I was a murderer or something. I know
Speaker 6: I was was what I felt I had to do.
Speaker 6: How do you tell a woman you love that she
Speaker 6: has to kill herself and a baby.
Speaker 4: If you never see another motion picture in your life,
Speaker 4: you must see On the Beach, starring Gregory pet Ava Gardner,
Speaker 4: Red Astaire and Anthony Perkins as the lover who faced
Speaker 4: what no other lover ever faced before. You must see
Speaker 4: you on the beat. You must see on the Beaty,
Speaker 4: you must see on.
Speaker 5: The Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Pike
Speaker 5: White Jermy once again as mister Morrish bursh Sinski.
Speaker 7: I'm just wondering how we're going to get through four
Speaker 7: hundred bottles of sherry in this podcast.
Speaker 5: Also back in the booth is mister Jonathan Melville.
Speaker 2: They're still time brother.
Speaker 5: This week we are taking a Patreon request from John
Speaker 5: Adam with nineteen fifty nine's On the Beach, based on
Speaker 5: the book of the same name by Nevill Shoot. It's
Speaker 5: the story of a US submarine that arrives in Melbourne,
Speaker 5: Australia after a nuclear holocaust in the Northern Hemisphere. The
Speaker 5: radiation from the war has started coming south and the
Speaker 5: people of Melbourne have only a few months left. The
Speaker 5: film looks at a small group of naval officers and
Speaker 5: their significant others during the last days. We will be
Speaker 5: spoiling this film insofar as it can be, so if
Speaker 5: you don't want anything ruined, please turn off the podcast.
Speaker 5: Come back after you've seen the movie and or remake.
Speaker 5: You have been warned. Jonathan, when was the first time
Speaker 5: you saw.
Speaker 3: On the Beach?
Speaker 2: The original one? And what did you think? First time
Speaker 2: was just a week or two ago. I actually bought
Speaker 2: the Blu ray years ago. It came out in the UK.
Speaker 2: I think it's Signal one. I think they're called or
Speaker 2: Signature one. I bought it maybe five six years ago,
Speaker 2: so it's just one of those ones that's been sitting
Speaker 2: on the shelf. I'll watch it one day, and so
Speaker 2: this opportunity came on to talk about it, so here
Speaker 2: we are. And I did enjoy it, but I must
Speaker 2: submit the first time I watched it, I did find
Speaker 2: myself drifting a little bit. I think it's the fact
Speaker 2: that the scenes are so some of them just be
Speaker 2: like individual scenes that aren't kind of part of a
Speaker 2: bigger narrative. And I think I was, like my brain,
Speaker 2: I just wasn't quite engaging with it, so it took
Speaker 2: me a little while to get into the style. And
Speaker 2: then watching it again, I think it worked a lot better.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, I think I'm going to enjoy talking
Speaker 2: about it and Morrison about yourself.
Speaker 7: Like Jonathan and Iley watched it recently for the first time.
Speaker 7: I think after you said, hey, want to join me
Speaker 7: from this year from Melbourne, I'd like to get your
Speaker 7: oppression of it. And I don't know if this was
Speaker 7: a mistake or not. Bud, I read the book before
Speaker 7: I watched the film, and I'm actually surprised that I
Speaker 7: didn't read this years ago. One of my best friends
Speaker 7: growing up was a huge fan of On the Beach,
Speaker 7: and I think probably most Australian kids in high school,
Speaker 7: not in my high school day or read through a
Speaker 7: tan like Alice, which was the other big nevill shoot book,
Speaker 7: over tons of them. Those seem to be the two
Speaker 7: biggest ones known in this country. And yeah, so I'm
Speaker 7: surprised I didn't read the book earlier on.
Speaker 2: But watching the.
Speaker 7: Film, the tone was a little bit different, and there's
Speaker 7: one big character discrepancy which I know we're going to
Speaker 7: get into later on in the discussion, and I felt that,
Speaker 7: if not exactly put me off, but I was questioning
Speaker 7: maybe the difference between the book and the film, and
Speaker 7: I've found I was really absorbed in the book and
Speaker 7: it's tone of maybe, I don't know if you want
Speaker 7: to call it the banality of everyday life. After people
Speaker 7: are aware they've only gone five months to live, are
Speaker 7: they going to start destroying everything, which is something that
Speaker 7: happens at the beginning of the two thousand version lawlessness
Speaker 7: abides or people just going to pretend like, oh, it's
Speaker 7: another day, And there was a lot more of that
Speaker 7: tone I think in the book. I know we're probably
Speaker 7: going to talk a lot more about the book later on,
Speaker 7: but just one point I wanted to bring up, where
Speaker 7: the Peter and Mary, the central couple played in the
Speaker 7: film by Anthony Perkins and Donna Anderson. There's a lot
Speaker 7: more in the book of them talking about trees that
Speaker 7: they're going to plant in their backyard and gee, it's
Speaker 7: going to look nice one year from now, and they
Speaker 7: both know that there's no future. But there's something that
Speaker 7: I found really intriguing in the book about this denial
Speaker 7: of what their future is. And that's a common thing
Speaker 7: amongst the characters in the book which drew me in,
Speaker 7: and I feel that there's less of that in the film,
Speaker 7: and it's doesn't that's not what makes it a bad
Speaker 7: film or a good film or whatever. But after being
Speaker 7: used to one thing in the book, I found myself
Speaker 7: maybe a little bit raising of the eyebrow when I
Speaker 7: came to watch the film, But that notwithstanding, there was
Speaker 7: If I had watched the film first, I would have
Speaker 7: basically thought that it's a very brave film to be
Speaker 7: made in nineteen fifty nine. It's not the sort of
Speaker 7: film that you imagine America or Hollywood is going to
Speaker 7: make the end of the world. I know that the
Speaker 7: book was very popular at the time, so it was
Speaker 7: a golden opportunity for them to look into that. But still,
Speaker 7: I think for a film that ends the way it
Speaker 7: does inevitably, it was probably a very brave film for
Speaker 7: Hollywood to come up with.
Speaker 5: This was the first time launched. For me as well,
Speaker 5: I had heard about this movie for years, heard about
Speaker 5: the book. I didn't know about the remake whatsoever. Intels
Speaker 5: it's starting to look into this and yeah, I'm excited
Speaker 5: to talk about that as well as with some more differences,
Speaker 5: because this is going to be a little difficult for
Speaker 5: me as far as keeping everything straight between the book,
Speaker 5: the movie, and the remake and or I guess I
Speaker 5: should say mini series. It was a two parter, just
Speaker 5: to make sure that I don't misspeak about what the
Speaker 5: details of one or the other, because yeah, you're right,
Speaker 5: they are very similar, but there are some crucial differences
Speaker 5: and it is very interesting how they approach the material
Speaker 5: so many years later with that mini series.
Speaker 3: But yeah, the time between.
Speaker 5: The book coming out and the movie coming out pretty short,
Speaker 5: not just two years between, so I can imagine this
Speaker 5: must have been a huge hit to be able to
Speaker 5: just spur Hollywood to jump on that so quickly.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think that's what I'd read as well, was yeah,
Speaker 7: maybe a year or two and all the more so,
Speaker 7: I guess because Hollywood, are they going to really be
Speaker 7: making a film about a country at the opposite end
Speaker 7: of the globe, and who knows if they really understand
Speaker 7: what Australia is like nowadays? Is imagine that if they're
Speaker 7: going to be making a film outside of the American
Speaker 7: board as, it's going to be maybe set somewhere in
Speaker 7: Europe or in England or anything like that. Whenever it
Speaker 7: was ten years ago, has it been? I think, Mike,
Speaker 7: since I did my first projection Booth and the first
Speaker 7: film that you invited me on to discuss was Waken Fright,
Speaker 7: and both films not Australian produced.
Speaker 3: There outsiders views of.
Speaker 7: Waken Fright, But I know, having populated a whole bunch
Speaker 7: of Australian film discussion groups on Facebook, that I think
Speaker 7: most Australians consider Waken Fright to be an Australian film,
Speaker 7: despite the fact that it was directed by a Canadian
Speaker 7: and written by a Breast. But it really has that
Speaker 7: flavor of what a side of Australian life was like,
Speaker 7: whereas this is definitely a whole Hollywood film that just
Speaker 7: happens to have been filmed here in Melbourne and surrounds.
Speaker 7: And actually, that's one thing that I thought was peculiar,
Speaker 7: given that at the time Australia had really just about
Speaker 7: no film industry to speak of. The film revival was
Speaker 7: still another ten years away. I was really quite surprised that,
Speaker 7: for authenticity Stanley Kramer would bring his production to Melbourne,
Speaker 7: because outside of Melbourne, who'd have known. So I had
Speaker 7: something of a little bit of a squee moment all
Speaker 7: throughout the film, just like I recognize that place I
Speaker 7: recognize in the early scene with Tony Perkins catching a
Speaker 7: tram down Elizabeth Street in the center of the CBD
Speaker 7: making his way to Navy Headquarters, which was at the
Speaker 7: time the General post Office Sarah and Melbourne hasn't but
Speaker 7: nowadays it's a shopping center. But looking at Elizabeth Street,
Speaker 7: how it looked then and how it looks now, there
Speaker 7: are shops that are different. One of the shops that
Speaker 7: they show in the film is one where my wife
Speaker 7: Joanne worked for a brief period of times. They got
Speaker 7: very excited seeing that. But you look down there and
Speaker 7: you flint the street station in the distance and rest
Speaker 7: of all is it the street And it's not very
Speaker 7: recognizable to how it looks today. So I know that's
Speaker 7: a little bit trivial sounding in a discussion of a
Speaker 7: movie about an apocalypse.
Speaker 3: You take what you can get, at the least I
Speaker 3: did as a.
Speaker 5: Non Australian and with another nan Australian here with Jonathan Jonathan,
Speaker 5: how important or how impactful is the Australian ness of
Speaker 5: this film, because I've got my opinion, but I want
Speaker 5: to hear yours first.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, actually I when I was five, we emigrated to
Speaker 2: Australia in Scotland to Brisbane. Oh we didn't last very long,
Speaker 2: because you can tell by that accident. We only lasted
Speaker 2: about a year. But then I went back again in
Speaker 2: two thousand, I think it was two thousand, and I
Speaker 2: lived in Melbourne for a little while. So I've been
Speaker 2: down that street and I seem to remember there was
Speaker 2: a quite cool little comic shot nearby where they get off.
Speaker 3: The tram that's no longer there, unfortunately.
Speaker 7: Well that was actually where our great friend Lee Gambin
Speaker 7: worked for period at that comic shop where it moved
Speaker 7: and was not very happy there.
Speaker 3: But anyway dint of the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I don't know. I've got a thing about Australia.
Speaker 2: I love Australia basically, and I love films and TV
Speaker 2: from Australia. Waking Fright when that was kind of re
Speaker 2: released and rediscovered, that was a huge thing for me.
Speaker 2: And also I just remember years ago watching Siege of
Speaker 2: pinch Gut, the Hammer film. I think that was filmed
Speaker 2: in maybe sid is it Sydney, which is a fantastic
Speaker 2: little black and white film. And yeah, seeing Australia on
Speaker 2: the screen was interesting. But it is that kind of
Speaker 2: the American view of Australia, isn't it. The accents? Of course,
Speaker 2: there's not many Australian accents in there, and we don't
Speaker 2: see too much of it. So I think it's a
Speaker 2: mixed thing. I think it's great to have Australia on
Speaker 2: the screen because there's not enough Australia, I think, on
Speaker 2: the big screen. But yeah, just having some sort of
Speaker 2: experience and being there, just seeing people on the bikes
Speaker 2: at the start of the film, on their bicycles, I
Speaker 2: did for a moment I was thinking, it's not really like, then,
Speaker 2: or are they seeing of course the patrol has run
Speaker 2: out and everybody's own bikes, and I think it was
Speaker 2: the lots of It was a long time ago, so
Speaker 2: maybe there were more bikes that they tell you.
Speaker 7: But that's something that they made a big point about
Speaker 7: in the book, how everyone had reverted to horses and
Speaker 7: to bicycles because the shortage of petrol, So that.
Speaker 3: Was very much part of the story.
Speaker 2: I think there's someone in a suit to maybe a
Speaker 2: buller hot that I saw, which is just it's a
Speaker 2: very interesting visual.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for me, I was interested in this being an
Speaker 5: Australian story, but as I was watching and I was like,
Speaker 5: does it matter that it's set in Australia. Could Los
Speaker 5: Angeles or an American city have doubled for Melbourne, because yeah,
Speaker 5: you're saying there's very few Australian accents. It took until
Speaker 5: that scene where that guy is adderwalling waltzing Matilda. There's
Speaker 5: a beautiful singer inside of the but the guy goes,
Speaker 5: whoa that guy? Oh, I want to punch that guy
Speaker 5: in the face. But it took until that scene for Andrew,
Speaker 5: my wife sitting next to me, to go, oh, this
Speaker 5: is Australia, and I said, you couldn't tell by Tony
Speaker 5: Perkins's thick Australian accent. They just feeds in and out.
Speaker 5: It's right up there with the great British accent that
Speaker 5: Kevin Castner had.
Speaker 7: I've got to say, probably the worst Australian accent that
Speaker 7: I think I've heard on screen came from in Evil Angels.
Speaker 7: Meryl Streep's Australian accent is shit. And this is no
Speaker 7: disrespect of her as an actress. I think she's absolutely marvelous,
Speaker 7: But yeah, Australian accent didn't work there at all.
Speaker 5: Maybe the dingo wait your baby.
Speaker 7: Australian film viewers we tend to be sensitive perhaps this
Speaker 7: sort of thing. And I know that in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 7: the whole notion of films being shot in cities that
Speaker 7: they're not setting is no big deal. I know that
Speaker 7: a lot of Australian locations are used for American films
Speaker 7: or Canadian I know Toronto is a substitute for a
Speaker 7: lot of American cities in the film, So this could
Speaker 7: have been filmed anywhere, And to be honest, I'm surprised
Speaker 7: if they got the budget to make this here. But
Speaker 7: once again, as an Australian watching this, and as a
Speaker 7: Melbourneite who loves seeing his city on film, I did
Speaker 7: get very excited about that, but I thought I shouldn't
Speaker 7: be making a big deal about what's probably the least
Speaker 7: important aspect of this film. I will tell one more
Speaker 7: story that I read and I absolutely loved. Over the
Speaker 7: last few years, I've been spending a lot of time
Speaker 7: with my mother watching old Fred Astaire films. It's something
Speaker 7: that she absolutely adores, seeing his choreography and the dancing
Speaker 7: and the musical numbers, and then to see him in
Speaker 7: this film with something special and I we'll get to
Speaker 7: the act bit so, but one story I really like
Speaker 7: when Aver Gardner comes to pick up Gregory Peck from
Speaker 7: Frankston Station, which really does exist, and they shot it
Speaker 7: near Frankston Station, even though he wasn't in the scene.
Speaker 7: Fred Astair was on set and according to the newspapers
Speaker 7: of the day, there was a crowd of people who
Speaker 7: came to watch the actors and the filming and doing
Speaker 7: their stuff, because to have these Hollywood actors in our
Speaker 7: hometown was a big deal. So Fred Astare was there
Speaker 7: on the set and people were calling a hey, Fred,
Speaker 7: do us do a dance, Give us a dance, sing
Speaker 7: us a song? And he actually did. I love, love
Speaker 7: love that story. I mean, he just seems like he
Speaker 7: must have been like a lovely fellow. But I'm superficial
Speaker 7: that way.
Speaker 5: The only reason too, I'm saying like Melbourne is very important,
Speaker 5: as in city at the end of the world kind
Speaker 5: of thing, end of time and of this whole era
Speaker 5: for all of humanity. I think I mentioned in the
Speaker 5: book christ Church might be a few days later, like
Speaker 5: New Zealand's got one or two more days, and then
Speaker 5: if there's any poor SAPs living down in Antarctica, they
Speaker 5: might get like another week. But as far as this movie,
Speaker 5: in this book, it is so much just about the
Speaker 5: human relationships. It is just so centered on these five characters.
Speaker 5: And for me, it's like it doesn't matter, You're just
Speaker 5: interested more in the characters. So that's why I was
Speaker 5: talking about the any city could have doubled for this city.
Speaker 5: But I understand it was a very important event for
Speaker 5: Australia and Melbourne, especially to have this crew coming in
Speaker 5: and actually using local talent, quite a bit of local
Speaker 5: talent from what I understand, and just trying to think
Speaker 5: provided a little bit of injection into that idea of
Speaker 5: having a film presence in Melbourne.
Speaker 7: I know that days there are a few Australian character
Speaker 7: actors like John Tight and Lola Brooks who we see
Speaker 7: and the Navy Office scene where Anthony Perkins first goes,
Speaker 7: and the moment I heard them speak, I thought, oh,
Speaker 7: they're so obviously Australian as opposed to Anthony Perkins, who
Speaker 7: is so definitely not. But I found it really weird
Speaker 7: that Australia's most recognizable of that era Australian actor was
Speaker 7: John Mellion and he's playing an American.
Speaker 2: Why after that guy is incredible?
Speaker 7: For years I don't know if you coord any of
Speaker 7: this while you were living here, Jonathan, But as well
Speaker 7: as acting in the whole bunch of films, but for
Speaker 7: about twenty years or so, he was the voice behind
Speaker 7: a series of TV ads for a particular brand of beer,
Speaker 7: Victoria Better, and the music was iconic, and you'd have
Speaker 7: John Mellion basically talking over the music, talking about all
Speaker 7: these particular activities that one could do to earn himself
Speaker 7: this beer.
Speaker 8: How does it happen you're coaching the crew or printing
Speaker 8: the news or straining.
Speaker 3: Till you thought you would burst. You sure got a thirst.
Speaker 8: Harden first needs a big cold beer, and the best
Speaker 8: cold beer is thick Victoria bitter. You know how you're
Speaker 8: treating their springs or fixing the trains, or trying too
Speaker 8: hard to come first, You sure got a first. Hardned
Speaker 8: first needs a big cold beer, and the best cold
Speaker 8: beer is big, a long cold bick. It can come
Speaker 8: at any time you're taking a bow or feeding a cow.
Speaker 2: Matter of fact, I got it now.
Speaker 8: Horn first needs a big cold beer, and the best
Speaker 8: cold beer is bigger Victoria bitter.
Speaker 7: John Mellian was a so that for like about twenty
Speaker 7: twenty five years, tons of ads. It wasn't like the
Speaker 7: one ad. He just just kept on coring, Hey, we've
Speaker 7: written another series of rhymes for you, John, Yep, I'm
Speaker 7: up for it. And that was. That's probably what he's
Speaker 7: mouse known for. Not Crocodile Dundee, not Rider Wild Pony,
Speaker 7: which was the very first wellt Disney film to be
Speaker 7: made in Australia, not The Picture show Man.
Speaker 3: It's those TV ads for beer.
Speaker 2: I actually didn't recognize him the first time I watched it.
Speaker 2: It was only when I watched it the second time
Speaker 2: with the commentary on, I realized he was because he's
Speaker 2: just so young and obviously with the American accent, which
Speaker 2: was not bad. It wasn't the worst American accent.
Speaker 5: No, I think that's better the cumber Batch and the Doctor.
Speaker 2: Strange with this myself, just all these character actors that
Speaker 2: pop up, guy Dorman, who is obviously huge, and things
Speaker 2: like the Ebcress File and things like that, and I
Speaker 2: think the Prisoner, I think he was an episode of
Speaker 2: The Prisoner, wasn't he? And yeah, no, just seeing these
Speaker 2: guys in the back just odds to the If you're
Speaker 2: fond of Australian films, it's love wait to see.
Speaker 5: The Other thing about the australianness of this all is
Speaker 5: that there is a level of society that is going
Speaker 5: on at this point where I think everybody knows that
Speaker 5: they only have a limited amount of time, but they're
Speaker 5: still very civil to each other and there still is society.
Speaker 5: Like when we first see that street shot El Melbourne
Speaker 5: with all of the people on horses, carriages, the electrotram
Speaker 5: just going about their day. The one guy who's trying
Speaker 5: to close the door of the vehicle that's open and
Speaker 5: just keep Melbourne tidy type of thing. I don't know
Speaker 5: if America was in the same position, I imagine it'd just
Speaker 5: be blood running in the streets. I think it would
Speaker 5: be way closer to the two thousand version of the
Speaker 5: story than this nineteen fifty nine version. Maybe that's just
Speaker 5: because of time. Maybe American nineteen fifty nine would have
Speaker 5: been a little bit more civil, But I just kept thinking, oh, no,
Speaker 5: America couldn't handle running while knowing that there's only just
Speaker 5: a few more months to go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, watching it, that was one of the big things
Speaker 2: that jumped out to me singly at the start of it,
Speaker 2: was the civility and the just the way everybody's accepted it,
Speaker 2: really that it's coming. And I'm also slightly changed, going
Speaker 2: back to something Mike said earlier about focusing on these
Speaker 2: sort of four or five different characters, and I think
Speaker 2: that's what maybe caused me to be a little bit
Speaker 2: distanced from it at the start, was because I wasn't
Speaker 2: quite sure who we were really focusing on. And I
Speaker 2: think it kept it would have quite a long scene
Speaker 2: with somebody, and then he'd move to Anti Perkins and
Speaker 2: it would be there scene, and then another character and
Speaker 2: then it would do this all the time. And I
Speaker 2: think I was maybe just expecting that kind of Gregory
Speaker 2: Peck's character would be the hero. And again, it's all
Speaker 2: just things I was expecting, you know, I'm not saying
Speaker 2: she should have been, but and that he would just
Speaker 2: be the through line in every scene. So that is
Speaker 2: just something that I just picking up on what you
Speaker 2: were mentioning about. What maybe yeah, just caused me to
Speaker 2: pause a little bit and think, what what's happening? Why
Speaker 2: are we getting so many small scenes? And it is
Speaker 2: that thing of daily life though, And I suppose it
Speaker 2: goes back to that of yeah, they're looking after the baby,
Speaker 2: they've got to buy make the he's making the milk
Speaker 2: in the morning for the baby, and yeah, all these
Speaker 2: different things happening, and people are just so relaxed about
Speaker 2: it all and whilst terrified inside of course.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and just denying everything, like more So was talking
Speaker 5: about earlier with the we're gonna cut down this tree
Speaker 5: and we're gonna plant these flowers and isn't it going
Speaker 5: to be lovely? And just everybody that we meet has
Speaker 5: something that they are really denying assimbly. Other than Moira
Speaker 5: the Avid Gardner character, but especially in the book, she
Speaker 5: just seems to be the one who's most grounded in reality,
Speaker 5: and she's just blitzed out of her mind the whole time.
Speaker 5: She just drinks like a fish. And it's odd that
Speaker 5: in the book at least there's this whole talk about like,
Speaker 5: don't you want to get a job, don't you want
Speaker 5: to have a skill. She ends up going and takes
Speaker 5: like a stenography course and learns how to take shorthand
Speaker 5: and all these things, And I'm like, what are you do?
Speaker 5: Like maybe I would do something like that if I
Speaker 5: only had a few months, Like maybe I would learn
Speaker 5: how to play the guitar or something like that. But
Speaker 5: I'm just like, what are you doing to her? Dwight
Speaker 5: the Gregory pet character, Like what are you doing to
Speaker 5: her talking to her about making improvements in your life
Speaker 5: and getting your shit together because she's just going to
Speaker 5: die in a few months.
Speaker 3: But I guess that's giving you hope.
Speaker 5: So this movie, for me, just presents this real interesting
Speaker 5: philosophical question as to if you only have a limited
Speaker 5: amount of time, what are you going to do at
Speaker 5: that time? And how is society going to handle this
Speaker 5: type of news.
Speaker 2: Well, I suppose what did we do during the pandemic?
Speaker 2: We're making banana bread and putting you on Twitter. We
Speaker 2: didn't know where the pandemic was going, but we're all
Speaker 2: just saying that on going. Hey, look, come learning any skill.
Speaker 2: So maybe there's something in that.
Speaker 3: Is I'll refer to.
Speaker 7: The key difference between the book and the film, and
Speaker 7: they take this even further in the remake is a
Speaker 7: relationship between the Gregory pet character and the Ava Gardner character.
Speaker 7: So between Dwight and Moira, and she basically feels I
Speaker 7: need someone to hold on to. I'm going to seduce you.
Speaker 7: And like the first part of the film, they're just
Speaker 7: behaving as friends but trying to deny their lust or
Speaker 7: need for human contact. And he goes and tells her, look,
Speaker 7: I still have a wife and children in the US,
Speaker 7: and that's just the way it is. But after he
Speaker 7: comes back from his submarine mission to the Northern Hemisphere
Speaker 7: to determine if there are still people living, they just
Speaker 7: fall into each other's arms.
Speaker 3: But the charade.
Speaker 7: Of him being loyal to his dead family goes all
Speaker 7: the way through the book. Their relationship is never consummated
Speaker 7: and not only that, but there's one part of the
Speaker 7: book where he walks into a couple of department stores
Speaker 7: to buy toys to bring back for his children. He's
Speaker 7: going all out on this notion that maybe they're still alive.
Speaker 7: I don't think he believes that they're still alive. But
Speaker 7: if he lives his daily life like everyone else is doing,
Speaker 7: then they don't have to think about the inevitable end
Speaker 7: that's coming X number of months from now, And that
Speaker 7: tells us a lot about his character and the fact
Speaker 7: that Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner's characters in the film
Speaker 7: just decide, fuck it, we're falling into each other's arms
Speaker 7: and goes with the rest of the film.
Speaker 3: As a romantic relationship.
Speaker 7: It just changes a whole lot about how we see
Speaker 7: Captain Dwight. If you're a hopeless romantic and think that's
Speaker 7: Hollywood got it right, fine and fair. But Neville shoot
Speaker 7: hated that change, and even Gregory peckusonas Stanley Kramer, who
Speaker 7: I understand was an issues filmmaker, said you can't bring
Speaker 7: this romance into it. No, we need a romance. And
Speaker 7: he's still a Hollywood filmmaker at heart. A nineteen fifties
Speaker 7: Hollywood filmmaker, and I think that when I was watching
Speaker 7: the film after having read the book, that relationship was
Speaker 7: the one really big thing that gnawed at me. Other
Speaker 7: things that were different. It doesn't matter, films and books
Speaker 7: are not supposed to be identical, but that character change
Speaker 7: really chewed at me. In the nineteen to fifty nine
Speaker 7: version of the film, the captain decides, right, my men
Speaker 7: want to go back to die in the US, or
Speaker 7: to die on the submarine on the way over to
Speaker 7: the US, but Australia is not their home, and he
Speaker 7: goes with the ship, which is what a captain would do.
Speaker 7: But in the final moments of the two thousand remake,
Speaker 7: Amanda Santi decides, no, they want to go back, that's
Speaker 7: their business. I'm staying around to be with this hot babe,
Speaker 7: Rachel Ward. And the final moment is just seeing the
Speaker 7: two of them fall into each other's arms at the
Speaker 7: very end of it, after having lust filled moments the
Speaker 7: rest of the story, and that just did not ring true.
Speaker 7: At least on the one hand, you might say, yeah,
Speaker 7: I'm going to spend the last few weeks that I
Speaker 7: have with someone who I can have some romance with
Speaker 7: or some lust with or whatever, But what about the
Speaker 7: captain always going down with the ship. He's a military man,
Speaker 7: bottom line, and anyone else. Yeah, I could have seen
Speaker 7: them staying behind, but not that character. It just didn't
Speaker 7: ring true to me. So yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 7: good things about the remake, and I'm sure we'll get
Speaker 7: to that, but that non resolution, that was just not
Speaker 7: one of them for me.
Speaker 5: So, just for the folks listening at home, I just
Speaker 5: wanted to go through these characters a little bit as
Speaker 5: far as and got to help you if you haven't
Speaker 5: seen the movie, because you're probably completely lost by now.
Speaker 3: But just wanted to talk.
Speaker 5: So we've got really for me the movie, and this
Speaker 5: talks a lot, I think to what you were saying, Jonathan,
Speaker 5: as far as these vignettes as we go along, it
Speaker 5: feels like it really maintains the novel structure as far
Speaker 5: as we're going to spend some time with this person,
Speaker 5: then we're going to move over here and spend time
Speaker 5: with this person, and we just meander through these folks
Speaker 5: lives and then time will jump a few weeks a month.
Speaker 3: Kind of thing.
Speaker 5: Now we join them again and see how they're doing
Speaker 5: with this end of the world scenario. We've got Gregory
Speaker 5: Pack as Dwight Towers, the commander of this naval vessel.
Speaker 5: It's called the Scorpion in the book. It's called the
Speaker 5: Sawfish in the movie of the first movie. At least
Speaker 5: I think it's called like the Cherokee or something in
Speaker 5: the remake. But I kept hearing the commenter on the
Speaker 5: commentary version. I kept thinking he was saying swordfish the
Speaker 5: whole time instead of sawfish, So I was like, did
Speaker 5: they name it something else again? But anyway, he's the
Speaker 5: commander of that very straight laced, all American boy type
Speaker 5: of thing. But for me, really the heart of this
Speaker 5: movie is Anthony Perkins as Peter Holmes and Donna Anderson
Speaker 5: as Mary Holmes. And they're this married couple that have
Speaker 5: a little girl, and so much of this for me
Speaker 5: is the relationship between these two, and it feels like
Speaker 5: Peter Holmes is the only character, maybe with the exception
Speaker 5: of kred Astaire as Julian Osborne. He feels like he's
Speaker 5: the only one that has a real I'll grasp on
Speaker 5: life other than like I was seeing that Eva Gardner
Speaker 5: character Moira Davidson. Now she correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 5: But she's just a friend of the family in the
Speaker 5: book and in the original movie, like she's not related
Speaker 5: to Mary Holmes, but in the remake their sisters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if I recall correctly, I thought she was in
Speaker 3: the book. Wasn't she?
Speaker 7: It was John Osborn in the book. Wasn't she John's
Speaker 7: cousin or something like that? And I have a feeling,
Speaker 7: but it's been a couple of months. I don't remember
Speaker 7: what I for breakfast this morning, never mind what I
Speaker 7: read two months ago. But yeah, I have a feeling
Speaker 7: that he was like a cousin to her and he
Speaker 7: doesn't want to see her get hurt. But they changed
Speaker 7: that too in the nineteen fifty nine version, where she
Speaker 7: and fred Astaire might have had a relationship at some
Speaker 7: stage earlier on that didn't work out.
Speaker 5: And I wasn't getting that in the book at all. Yeah,
Speaker 5: because fred A Steer in this role, he looks old
Speaker 5: enough to be her father. Not that I'm casting expursion
Speaker 5: that's on any grampy shaggers or anything, but that was
Speaker 5: I was just like, Okay, yeah, I can't see them
Speaker 5: being a couple at any point.
Speaker 3: Ava Gardner.
Speaker 5: Her performance got a lot of flack but I think
Speaker 5: it's okay. She plays drunk a lot in this movie
Speaker 5: because that's what she does. She just drinks and drinks,
Speaker 5: and the use of her character, the use of Moira
Speaker 5: in the book is very interesting because they bring John
Speaker 5: and John Peter in the movie. They have a party
Speaker 5: at the beginning of the book where they're like, hey, commander,
Speaker 5: you know you're here alone.
Speaker 2: Why don't you come to our house. We're going to
Speaker 2: put on a little.
Speaker 5: Shindig, And they keep talking about the last time they
Speaker 5: invited somebody over, he just kept crying, and they want
Speaker 5: to avoid this guest of theirs stop crying, so they
Speaker 5: bring Moira along as a distraction, and then she's the
Speaker 5: one who ends up crying, at least in the movie.
Speaker 5: To Gregory peck once she really gets blitzed towards the
Speaker 5: end of the night and really let's lose with what
Speaker 5: she's feeling, and especially in the book, she talks a
Speaker 5: lot about how she thought there would be time and
Speaker 5: that she possibly wanted a family one day, but now
Speaker 5: there's no time. So again really showing John Slash Peter
Speaker 5: and Mary as being this idyllic type of thing, and
Speaker 5: then you get to see inside of their relationship and
Speaker 5: see that it isn't as perfect as it is because
Speaker 5: she is in complete denial about stuff.
Speaker 2: She says to Dwight to forget who she really is.
Speaker 2: She doesn't like herself, and I thought that was a
Speaker 2: really interesting point where it's just all these things are
Speaker 2: coming to the surface on't it. We all these different characters,
Speaker 2: which of course it would if you've only got days
Speaker 2: or months last of your life, so you're going to
Speaker 2: analyze yourself to death literally, But yeah, No, she's an
Speaker 2: interesting character and she's fine. She was fine. I think
Speaker 2: quite believes that relationship. But I was told too because
Speaker 2: that was the film.
Speaker 5: That's the most surprising thing for me is when you
Speaker 5: find out that Gregory Peck still is lighting that candle
Speaker 5: for his wife and kids, because do you think, at
Speaker 5: least I think when I watched this, when I read
Speaker 5: the book, I was just like, Oh, this is our hero.
Speaker 5: This guy is going to be the one that really
Speaker 5: takes charge, and that we get to follow and really
Speaker 5: see how life outside of America is. This stranger in
Speaker 5: a strange land coming in and then when he reveals
Speaker 5: that he's like, oh, my wife's name is Sharon, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 5: something's wrong here, and then the way he talks about
Speaker 5: how his kids are this age and no war happening
Speaker 5: at all, and then you start to realize, oh, he
Speaker 5: still thinks they're alive, or still talks about them as
Speaker 5: if they were alive. And then yeah, that scene that
Speaker 5: you're talking about, Morris, where he's going around to all
Speaker 5: the shops and he's trying to find a pogo stick for.
Speaker 3: His little girl. That's heartbreaking.
Speaker 5: He's buying all of these presents for his kids and
Speaker 5: you're just like, dude, they are not there anymore.
Speaker 3: And that trauma.
Speaker 5: Really comes out a lot more in the two thousand version,
Speaker 5: but I don't know if it needs to be as
Speaker 5: big as it is, and we'll definitely talk about that,
Speaker 5: but yeah, just when we start to realize, oh, he
Speaker 5: really thinks about this stuff, and the counterpoint for him
Speaker 5: is like I said, Tony Perkins, but then also Fred
Speaker 5: Astaire and the first time we see him, he's just
Speaker 5: on this tirade.
Speaker 3: About how the world is and what happened.
Speaker 8: It wasn't an accident.
Speaker 2: I didn't say that.
Speaker 9: It was carefully planned down to the tiniest mechanical and
Speaker 9: emotional detail, but it was a mistake, and it was
Speaker 9: a mute In the end, somehow God at the time
Speaker 9: for examination, we shall find that our so called civilization
Speaker 9: was glodiously destroyed by a handful of vacuum tubes and transistors.
Speaker 5: That's the thing I like too about the book and
Speaker 5: also with this movie, is that there's no backstory as
Speaker 5: far as oh, the Americans did this and the Russians
Speaker 5: did this, and it's just a whole matter of we
Speaker 5: don't know what's going on. Like I think Osbourne in
Speaker 5: the book has a whole theory about how Russia has
Speaker 5: no seaport and it wanted Shanghai, so it ends up
Speaker 5: bombing Shanghai with this coule bolt bomb that I don't
Speaker 5: know if it's supposed to have more of a half
Speaker 5: life or less of a half.
Speaker 3: Life, or how that's working.
Speaker 5: But he just has this whole theory and then everybody
Speaker 5: else is like, no, nobody knows what the fuck happened.
Speaker 5: And that's what I kind of like, is that they're
Speaker 5: living in reality where there was no news service. It
Speaker 5: happens so quickly that nobody knows and the only person
Speaker 5: that might possibly know what was going on was a
Speaker 5: guy who was trapped in a submarine, however, many hundreds
Speaker 5: of feet below the water, and he was just as
Speaker 5: clueless as everybody else.
Speaker 7: I like how Osborne's character fred Astaire's approach to him,
Speaker 7: but is quite better. Like the scene in the House
Speaker 7: I think was particularly strong and powerful. Like at the
Speaker 7: party early on, and he's had a few too many
Speaker 7: to drink and he's telling the other party guests, this
Speaker 7: is how things got so screwed up in the world,
Speaker 7: and your theories are all bunk, and trust me, I
Speaker 7: know what's going on. And he does the same thing
Speaker 7: when he's going on the mission on the Swordfish to
Speaker 7: the Northern Hemisphere to checker where there might possibly be
Speaker 7: a sign of life, and only to be disappointed. But
Speaker 7: a stare I was starting to say before for someone
Speaker 7: who like me, my perception of him is this one thing.
Speaker 7: And I never saw Was he in The Towering Inferno
Speaker 7: or the p Sudden Adventure, I don't remember which he
Speaker 7: was in one of those.
Speaker 2: Two Towering and Bruno I think, right.
Speaker 7: I never got to see that, So I don't know
Speaker 7: what he's like outside of the MGM musical genre, if
Speaker 7: you want to call it that.
Speaker 3: But holy Moley.
Speaker 7: If you're not going to use Australian actors in these
Speaker 7: central bars. And I understand that they couldn't because they
Speaker 7: wanted to. Hollywood wanted to get its return back with
Speaker 7: famous actors. But holy shit, Fred Astaire was so good
Speaker 7: and so believable. He was furious at how the world
Speaker 7: had gone his character. I don't remember if he said
Speaker 7: this in the film, but I think he said something
Speaker 7: in the book about surely people weren't stupid enough to
Speaker 7: finally go that last distance and start nuking each other,
Speaker 7: but they did. And his bitterness at how selfish and
Speaker 7: stupid the politicians and the warmongers could get. It's just
Speaker 7: so completely believable, and I just love what he does.
Speaker 7: Contrasts and I like Brian Brown, who plays the same
Speaker 7: character in the remake, but he pushes that cynicism and
Speaker 7: bitterness maybe a little bit too far away. Trying to
Speaker 7: contrast him between as being the guy who's wanting to
Speaker 7: tell the armed forces sticky mission up your ass, you
Speaker 7: don't know what the hell you're talking about. I'm the
Speaker 7: scientist in the room. But he's weak at the knees
Speaker 7: when he sees Rachel Ward and said come and take
Speaker 7: me back. So he's going from being rational to irrational.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 7: So that's probably a not needed digression, just more to
Speaker 7: compare Brian Brown and Fred Astaire. But in this case,
Speaker 7: I think Fred Astare his version of the character, really
Speaker 7: did it for me. I just loved what he did.
Speaker 7: I was so impressed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, same here. I wasn't expecting. I'd taken a lot
Speaker 2: of my blue ear discs out of the cases are
Speaker 2: well ago for space savings, so I hadn't read the cover.
Speaker 2: I didn't know the film that when I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my what and I wondered, is this a cameo
Speaker 2: or what? But no, I thought he was fantastic as well,
Speaker 2: particularly in that opening scene that he has.
Speaker 3: I think he's meant to be English, isn't he in this?
Speaker 3: I don't think it's ever explicitly studd and.
Speaker 2: No, you're right, it's not. I just thought he was
Speaker 2: putting on an English accent at the start, which then disappears.
Speaker 2: Like most of the accents of this movie the first
Speaker 2: few scenes, they try hard and then they give up.
Speaker 2: But yeah, he makes it a line I wrote down.
Speaker 2: I think it's from the later scene in the submarine
Speaker 2: where he says the war started when everyone decided to
Speaker 2: protect themselves with weapons they couldn't use without destroying themselves,
Speaker 2: and it was all just an accident probably, And then
Speaker 2: he sells that really that kind of yeah, what were
Speaker 2: we doing? It was all just stupidity, not so much anger.
Speaker 2: It was just the sadness or he just resigned to
Speaker 2: the fact, doesn't he now? Of course again as you
Speaker 2: have to beat but down in the alcohol and yeah,
Speaker 2: and then of course we'll talk about the car scenes later,
Speaker 2: but as the world explodes a rundoms.
Speaker 5: You mentioned the mission to Seattle, and that's really the
Speaker 5: main action of this film. There's not a lot of
Speaker 5: things that happened, but like you were saying, Jonathan, this
Speaker 5: scene leads to leads to the scene. There's not like
Speaker 5: a big thrust as far as like, oh, this is
Speaker 5: our project or anything, but because they're all just waiting
Speaker 5: around to talk basically, sorry to laugh, but it's just
Speaker 5: super cynical. Everybody is just Okay, we know that we
Speaker 5: have a limited time span. What are we going to
Speaker 5: do with it? And so really the mission for Peck
Speaker 5: gives him purpose and allows us to see how he
Speaker 5: interacts with the Fredasteric character, with the Tony Perkins character,
Speaker 5: and with all the rest of the men on the
Speaker 5: submarine as they go all the way up from Australia
Speaker 5: to Seattle to try to find out what this radio
Speaker 5: signal is that they've been receiving these messages that are
Speaker 5: sent out where it's just random words coming through on
Speaker 5: morse code and they're wondering, what the hell is this thing.
Speaker 5: So they have to investigate, and luckily with Peck, he
Speaker 5: runs a nuclear submarine and as fuel it can do this.
Speaker 5: He gives him purpose and allows him to also do
Speaker 5: some investigation as far as are the radiation levels going
Speaker 5: down in the northern hemisphere, because there's a theory about
Speaker 5: how it's rained enough that it's going to clean the air,
Speaker 5: clean that the radiation out of the system. And so
Speaker 5: that's why Fred Astaire is there because he's the well
Speaker 5: known scientists able to go up there and find out
Speaker 5: what are the radiation levels and see.
Speaker 3: If this theory is really true.
Speaker 5: So that becomes like really the thrust of the film.
Speaker 5: But it's interesting that it doesn't take that long. It's
Speaker 5: not really that much of this what is it two
Speaker 5: hour and seventeen minute movie is this mission. You would
Speaker 5: think as a normal movie watcher, Oh, this is going
Speaker 5: to be the thing that takes us all the way
Speaker 5: to the end of the film and what we see there.
Speaker 5: But no, it's really just a step over in the
Speaker 5: middle of the movie.
Speaker 7: Well, as I think you said earlier on Mike, this
Speaker 7: film is really more about human relationships. The background is
Speaker 7: the world is going to end. How do people behave
Speaker 7: but two hours and seventeen minutes, so that may not
Speaker 7: have washed, or rather two hundred pages of that might
Speaker 7: not have washed, so making the character's navy men, which means,
Speaker 7: unlike say the army, they can travel back and forth.
Speaker 7: But yeah, I firmly see this as a film about
Speaker 7: relationships under troubling circumstances. And even so much as we
Speaker 7: get the relationships between the characters on the on the
Speaker 7: boat and I'm trying to remember I think it was
Speaker 7: in the remake, not in the original one, where two
Speaker 7: guys are playing a game of cards and one wants
Speaker 7: to win his money back, and tempers have fled, possibly
Speaker 7: more than they otherwise would have been if the end
Speaker 7: of the world wasn't coming, So tempers do flow, and
Speaker 7: which seems to be more of a theme of the
Speaker 7: remake possibly and the if they'd had a card game
Speaker 7: in the original film, that would have been oh can
Speaker 7: I get Can I play you again to.
Speaker 3: Get my money back?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: Sorry, old chap, Oh never mind you unfair and square
Speaker 3: that way.
Speaker 2: I suppose those two old guys again in the club
Speaker 2: talking about the Porte or the Wayne.
Speaker 7: It was port four hundred bottles support, which is what
Speaker 7: I was drinking tonight. I saw those two guys as
Speaker 7: pretty much the throwback to the Commonwealth. These were old
Speaker 7: school British guys. Those two characters may well have been British,
Speaker 7: the one who said, Oh, I can't believe I've had
Speaker 7: we got four months to get through four hundred bottles
Speaker 7: of sharing or port How are we going to do
Speaker 7: it all? Oh jeeves, all take another buckle home with
Speaker 7: me to not?
Speaker 3: Is that rightly? Just disgraceful? Like I didn't know what
Speaker 3: the character's names were. I was calling them Stetler and Woldorf.
Speaker 5: But good names for them, definitely. And the third guy
Speaker 5: in there, the guy who's waiting on them, I've found
Speaker 5: him the most interesting. And that was the thing I
Speaker 5: like about this movie version is that they have these
Speaker 5: so like that guy, the port drinker, and the main
Speaker 5: guy is in the book, but I think he's just
Speaker 5: there from one scene maybe. And then the whole thing
Speaker 5: about Anthony Perkins commander, the guy who gives him the
Speaker 5: mission at the beginning, him and his I guess it's
Speaker 5: his secretary. The relationship between them, I don't think is
Speaker 5: in the book at all. And I love that relationship.
Speaker 5: I love this whole thing. And there's a question are
Speaker 5: they in love. I really don't think so. I think
Speaker 5: they've just been coworkers for so long and there's a
Speaker 5: mutual respect, and I really like that they have those
Speaker 5: scenes in there, and especially you're talking about the two
Speaker 5: old guys Statler and Waldorf, for are perfect names for
Speaker 5: them them. At the end, they're not there, but the
Speaker 5: guy who was waiting on them still is there. And
Speaker 5: just that empty club in the shots of the empty streets,
Speaker 5: and just seeing that entropy that happens, especially towards the end,
Speaker 5: once they do get back from that mission to Seattle,
Speaker 5: that's when it really starts to play in and you
Speaker 5: get those things with the Salvation Army and it's oh, now,
Speaker 5: it's I don't want to complain about this film, because
Speaker 5: I actually do like it, but it feels like it's
Speaker 5: very civil for so long, and then the entropy comes
Speaker 5: towards the end. It's not I don't think enough necessarily,
Speaker 5: and then it's also just I don't want to say
Speaker 5: an afterthought, it's just not as much emphasis put on that.
Speaker 5: For me, what I'm interested to see is really the destruction.
Speaker 5: I don't know what it is about End of the
Speaker 5: World movies, but I'm always fascinated by apocalypse films and
Speaker 5: just like, all right, what it happened? And just playing
Speaker 5: those mental games and seeing in Australia is a perfect
Speaker 5: thing because it's got one of the best End of
Speaker 5: the World series ever with the Mad Max films. I
Speaker 5: think that's where we're going. I'm waiting for Wez to
Speaker 5: pop up on the beach and just be like, all right,
Speaker 5: let's start raiding the roads. I'm expecting folks on the
Speaker 5: beach to be more like the folks that run the
Speaker 5: village and the cars of the Paris, the roving bands
Speaker 5: of teens with their crazy cars and just committing atrocities
Speaker 5: like wild.
Speaker 2: So is this basically a prequel to my Marx? Do
Speaker 2: you think they could be? No?
Speaker 3: Petrol. There's no gazzoline.
Speaker 2: Some of them must have survived in Sydney or Melbourne.
Speaker 10: Brother and spawns the war Boys.
Speaker 8: One.
Speaker 7: I aspected this that we haven't referred to yet and
Speaker 7: is part of why I said that this is a
Speaker 7: brave film in a way for Hollywood to have made
Speaker 7: in nineteen fifty nine. Is the illusion, even if it's
Speaker 7: not explicitly mentioned the word euthanasia. So Anthony Perkins character
Speaker 7: Peter knows he's going on this mission to Seattle to
Speaker 7: see if there's still life there, but he knows that
Speaker 7: no matter what happens, they're all going to go. So
Speaker 7: he wants to make sure that his wife and daughter
Speaker 7: don't suffer any more than they have to. So he
Speaker 7: knows that the symptoms are going to last for days,
Speaker 7: and they're going to be in pain and vomiting, and
Speaker 7: it's just going to be absolutely terrible, particularly for their
Speaker 7: daughter who doesn't know what is going on. So he
Speaker 7: goes through a few privileged channels to try and get
Speaker 7: early access to suicide pills, and there's that pretty heartbreaking
Speaker 7: scene where he has to tell Donna Anderson, his wife,
Speaker 7: that while he's gone, if she's feeling any of the
Speaker 7: radiation sickness symptoms. Then she's to take this tablet and
Speaker 7: give one or an injection to their daughter, and she
Speaker 7: goes nuts saying, I'm not going to murder our daughter?
Speaker 3: Is that what you want?
Speaker 7: And that was one moment, or one of the few
Speaker 7: moments in the film where we're talking about Ava Gardner
Speaker 7: being someone who acknowledges the truth of what's going on.
Speaker 3: But there seems to.
Speaker 7: Be the one moment of the film where a character
Speaker 7: goes absolutely nuts at the suggestion, look, we're going to die.
Speaker 7: Whatever you say, I choose to believe in that we're
Speaker 7: going to survive this. But she absolutely point blank refuses
Speaker 7: the acceptance of that and is not prepared to do
Speaker 7: what her husband suggests, which is to youth andize herself
Speaker 7: and their daughter if he's not there to be with them.
Speaker 7: And I know there are a lot of apocalypse films
Speaker 7: in the nineteen fifties because of Cold War tensions and
Speaker 7: sci fi was exploring that sort of avenue, but for
Speaker 7: a mainstream Hollywood film to bring in a topic like
Speaker 7: youth in Asia, I don't think anyone was doing that
Speaker 7: sort of thing at the time, And do either review
Speaker 7: know of anything from.
Speaker 2: That era, American or otherwise. No, no, And it definitely
Speaker 2: is one of the most important scenes of the film
Speaker 2: that when he's advising her to take the tablets, and
Speaker 2: also just the fact that it's not even just a
Speaker 2: passing one scene. Let's talk about it and then we'll never
Speaker 2: mention it. Really, it's all the way through the film,
Speaker 2: isn't it. It's right up until they're handing the little boxes.
Speaker 2: I think in the street, I think towards the end.
Speaker 2: But yeah, no, that's amazingly well done scene. I think
Speaker 2: the two of them worked really well there, and I
Speaker 2: think almost forgot that the accidents were terrible in that moment.
Speaker 2: It was so good. So yeah, it just as you say,
Speaker 2: it really stands out because it's so unique.
Speaker 5: The picture that he has to paint for her in
Speaker 5: the book, with the imagine that you die before the
Speaker 5: baby dies, and then she would just sit there and
Speaker 5: suffer with the radiation sickness and probably vomit and starved
Speaker 5: to death, and it was just like, you will go
Speaker 5: at this rate of speed, but our daughter is younger,
Speaker 5: it'll take her a few more days to die. Was
Speaker 5: just really heartbreaking. And that's where it's like Okay, I
Speaker 5: think this relationship really is at the heart of the story.
Speaker 5: But then it's nice that they have the different relationships
Speaker 5: to counter post that as well. And the mission to Seattle,
Speaker 5: that's another heartbreaking scene because it's this whole thing of, well,
Speaker 5: we're going to go up there and we're going to
Speaker 5: find out who's typing out these messages because a few
Speaker 5: things that happen along the way. There's the one crew
Speaker 5: member who just leaves and goes out.
Speaker 3: On his own. In this one, he swims.
Speaker 5: I think in the remake he's got a little dinghy
Speaker 5: that he's going out on not to cast dispersions. When
Speaker 5: they get up to Seattle and we finally get revealed
Speaker 5: what had been going on that it's a fucking coke
Speaker 5: bottle and a window shade that the one guy before says, like.
Speaker 3: There's random words.
Speaker 5: Whoever's doing this doesn't know how to operate a radio.
Speaker 5: The whole thing about the ten thousand monkeys all in
Speaker 5: a room with typewriters things comes up and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 5: it ends up being exactly that, that they are just
Speaker 5: chasing ghosts and there's never been anybody. The last person
Speaker 5: to man that radio, we don't know when they died,
Speaker 5: but it was probably pretty quickly, and quite a few
Speaker 5: months ago.
Speaker 8: This is a thousand monkeys working at a thousand typewriters.
Speaker 5: Soon they'll have written the greatest novel known to men.
Speaker 2: Let's see, it was the best of times.
Speaker 3: It was the burst of times.
Speaker 2: Stupid muddy. It's a clever idea, that, isn't it, Just
Speaker 2: to have something making a noise and they have to
Speaker 2: go and investigate. But yeah, so sad when it cuts
Speaker 2: back to them and he's reading out the reports. It's
Speaker 2: just as you said, the coke bottle. And then it
Speaker 2: is that thing of all right, okay, let's go back
Speaker 2: to the other story now that you're saying about. Not
Speaker 2: that it should, but it could have been more central,
Speaker 2: and that's thriller, I think. And the remake it's a
Speaker 2: bit more of a thrillery, isn't it, with scanners and
Speaker 2: whatever else we have down there beeping away? And then
Speaker 2: this one it's just all right, okay, let's go back
Speaker 2: to Melbourne now. But I did like watching him walking
Speaker 2: through the industrial complex. And it's a Hollywood film, so
Speaker 2: they're not going to have dead bodies everywhere, but in
Speaker 2: a way, it might have been nice, if that's the
Speaker 2: right word, to see a little bit more destruction or
Speaker 2: cars that had crashed on the road to the way
Speaker 2: they are or would happen. But at the same time, yes,
Speaker 2: that desolate Hi Iang and things. Certainly it's impressive, so
Speaker 2: that is good.
Speaker 7: Did they explained it in the film by someone saying, oh,
Speaker 7: everyone's just going to go hound to die, even do.
Speaker 2: Always go somewhere to die? There's some maybe there's some
Speaker 2: comment about which is true, but anyway, yeah, no, you
Speaker 2: have to make I think it's John Melly and it
Speaker 2: goes out who swims, isn't it? Into San Francisco and
Speaker 2: those are yeah, just all those I love you were
Speaker 2: talking about Bucklips films. It is those moments where you
Speaker 2: see the streets of a city that are used to
Speaker 2: seeing so busy being empty, like in twenty eight Days
Speaker 2: Later and I guess in London and many other films.
Speaker 2: And then listening to the commentary you're talking about they
Speaker 2: had to stop the chap for thirty seconds film all
Speaker 2: that stuff, but it just yeah, see San Francisco empty.
Speaker 2: Haven't been there as well?
Speaker 7: It's speaking now I'm trying to remember Mike when we
Speaker 7: have a the Omega men.
Speaker 3: Was that sit in Elior was a send friend?
Speaker 7: I can't remember, as I was going to say, oh,
Speaker 7: another sand Fran empty city film, But certainly the feeling
Speaker 7: you get from the beginning of that film is just newspapers.
Speaker 7: It always seems to be newspapers flying around the empty city,
Speaker 7: and I think that's the case in the remake of
Speaker 7: On the Beach as well. Newspapers just flying everywhere. But
Speaker 7: realistical or not, but there's certainly something that's pretty spooky
Speaker 7: about seeing a city that you're used to seeing traffic
Speaker 7: and people going about their daily business that there's no
Speaker 7: one there. So realistic or not, I think it's cinematically
Speaker 7: better move.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's ironic that in twenty twenty five there would
Speaker 5: not be newspapers floating around on the streets because they're
Speaker 5: just not around it anymore. But yeah, otherwise, please keep
Speaker 5: your newspapers together a little bit more. I love the
Speaker 5: story about when they were filming in Melbourne and they
Speaker 5: were trying to get those empty street shots and the
Speaker 5: city went out and cleaned up all the streets and
Speaker 5: they're like, no, we on garbage up here on the streets.
Speaker 5: They had like artificially garbage up some of the streets
Speaker 5: and then clean.
Speaker 3: Them up again after they left.
Speaker 5: But yeah, those scenes of them looking at San Francisco,
Speaker 5: and it's really heartbreaking to see all that, and then yeah,
Speaker 5: the whole thing of them finding that what was sending
Speaker 5: those signals. And then, like I said, it's a turning
Speaker 5: point in the film because after that, we've had things
Speaker 5: like Freda Stairs race car being introduced before, but then
Speaker 5: afterwards it just becomes maybe a little too much. Just
Speaker 5: a lot of people racing cars in this and it's
Speaker 5: funny that there's a boat race at the beginning and
Speaker 5: then there's the car races at the end, and they're
Speaker 5: so different as far as like the boat race is
Speaker 5: just full of life, and it's Ava Gardner and the
Speaker 5: Gargery pack just laughing and getting together and just really
Speaker 5: starting to see that spark of romance between them and
Speaker 5: just that the way that they could be a couple
Speaker 5: when you see that in the book. But then towards
Speaker 5: the end with Randolph and his race car, it's just
Speaker 5: a whole matter of self destruction. And there's a really
Speaker 5: heartbreaking scene in the book where there's been a horrible
Speaker 5: accident and he still wants to win the Grand Prix.
Speaker 5: He's like on the way to winning it, and there's
Speaker 5: this big accident and he realizes that he has no
Speaker 5: way of getting home because his car has been damaged,
Speaker 5: and so he was like, I can just take this truck.
Speaker 5: He's like, I better not take this truck. I better
Speaker 5: actually ask the that own it if I can take
Speaker 5: it or at least borrow it for a little while.
Speaker 5: And the woman that he talks to that owns the truck,
Speaker 5: it was her husband's he died in this auto accident,
Speaker 5: and she's just like, yeah, no, he died the way
Speaker 5: that he wanted to go.
Speaker 3: So everything's fine.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you can have the truck, you can have any
Speaker 5: parts that you want, and just go ahead and pick
Speaker 5: over these damaged cars, these broken cars, and take what
Speaker 5: you need. And yeah, that for me was like, oh wow, Yeah,
Speaker 5: they're just racing themselves to destruction.
Speaker 2: The world is exploding around and that's what I expected
Speaker 2: from a film like this, showing bombs going off for
Speaker 2: explosions or things. But the pair all right down to
Speaker 2: just this one track, and he's trying to get through
Speaker 2: it all and trying to survive. Although it looks quite casual,
Speaker 2: doesn't he nobody's trying to stop this race. It's just
Speaker 2: things exploding in cars, blowing up. And also Anthony Perkins
Speaker 2: standing beside the racetrack smiling, and I'm thinking, I think
Speaker 2: I would be a bit further back, knowing how dangerous
Speaker 2: this race is. But hey, clear enough. But yeah, and
Speaker 2: then the inevitable or the sad end of that character,
Speaker 2: but maybe come to that later.
Speaker 7: The issue that I found, and there is definitely a
Speaker 7: contrast between the book and the first film on one
Speaker 7: corner and the remaking the other corner is the motivation,
Speaker 7: as I said, behind Joey and Osborne's character in racing.
Speaker 7: There is no Grand Prix in the original one. It
Speaker 7: turns out, well, he's always loved fast cars, and hell's
Speaker 7: the end of the world anyway, I might as well
Speaker 7: enter into this amateur's Grand Prix and have a bit
Speaker 7: of a race. And I really get the feeling that
Speaker 7: he's not there thinking, well, if I die, I die.
Speaker 7: He just wants with two three weeks left to live,
Speaker 7: he just wants to feel excited. He just doesn't want
Speaker 7: to go out doing something that's merely banal or boring.
Speaker 7: He wants to feel like he really lived, and how
Speaker 7: he does eventually die in the film becomes all the
Speaker 7: more tragic. Has got nothing to do with the race,
Speaker 7: and in the remake his character almost seems to have
Speaker 7: a death wish. Now I'm going to race this car
Speaker 7: until I fall off the track and I'm going to
Speaker 7: go yeahoo. And that just did not ring true. All
Speaker 7: that was absolutely rubbish. But I loved once again that
Speaker 7: the character in the book and the film was just
Speaker 7: more I want to do something dangerous, but I don't
Speaker 7: want to die doing it. But I can only feel
Speaker 7: like I've lived if I've done something dangerous. Completely different
Speaker 7: motivation between the two and the book. Slash original film
Speaker 7: got that character right, I think so.
Speaker 3: Anyway, and just as a little.
Speaker 7: Bit of an aside as we are recording, this is
Speaker 7: the weekend of the Melbourne Grand Prix around Albert Park Lake,
Speaker 7: which is mentioned explicitly in the book, not in the film.
Speaker 2: So I got to go to the ones, which was great.
Speaker 2: It must have been two thousand and one, found number
Speaker 2: which you know, but enjoyed that lost my wallets. I
Speaker 2: got a bark in the end. Anyway, good there's kind
Speaker 2: of people of Melbourne took care of you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, someone phoned it and handed it into the police. Wow,
Speaker 7: very nice, thank you man. That's what Melbournians do.
Speaker 2: What else do we want to talk about with this movie?
Speaker 2: The thank you?
Speaker 3: I was just about to do that.
Speaker 2: Walton Matilda used to start Borius in that one, because your.
Speaker 5: Soul, that's the point.
Speaker 3: It's my fucking song.
Speaker 7: So the beginning of the film, we see the credits
Speaker 7: come up Ernest Gold as a composer, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 7: the guy who wrote the music for Exodus. Great composer.
Speaker 7: And like a lot of soundtracks, we get a main
Speaker 7: theme and then there are variations on the theme and
Speaker 7: they just someone in the music department thought, isn't Waltson
Speaker 7: Matilda Australia's national anthem?
Speaker 3: Isn't their national song? Yeah, we'll use that, and they.
Speaker 7: Hammered it and they hammered it and they hammered it.
Speaker 7: And I don't know whether I was pissed off that
Speaker 7: I just kept hearing this fucking tune again, or more
Speaker 7: the fact that Americans thought that's the only song that
Speaker 7: Australia has in its arsenal. But if that wasn't bad enough,
Speaker 7: and Mike's already gone and alluded to this. When Moira
Speaker 7: and Dwight go on the fishing trip. There's a bunch
Speaker 7: of fishermen who was sitting on the shore, standing on
Speaker 7: the shore and singing all the lyrics to waltson Matilda
Speaker 7: because it's a national song and every time four or
Speaker 7: five blokes get together in this country, that's just what
Speaker 7: we do, isn't it. We sing waltzing fucking Matilda.
Speaker 2: I've been waiting to burst into solo episode.
Speaker 3: No, it's been like it's not happening. All right.
Speaker 5: There's those guys on the street corners around the oil cans,
Speaker 5: like with the fire, like rubbing their hands and stuff,
Speaker 5: and they start singing waltson Matilda and every street corner.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we won't sing Waltzing Matilda, and we're not going
Speaker 7: to sing down under it, all right, So I just
Speaker 7: push it out of your head anyway.
Speaker 2: Sorry that mountain when they go off to the mountains,
Speaker 2: I actually had to pause Meat for about seconds because
Speaker 2: it's just going, I'm going, what are you doing to me?
Speaker 2: Is this is painful? Yeah? So that is a flaw
Speaker 2: in the film, definitely.
Speaker 5: From one time to stand the composer didn't like it
Speaker 5: and didn't want to do it, but Stanley Kramer is
Speaker 5: just like, yeah, no, Waltson Matilda, come on, I love
Speaker 5: this song.
Speaker 3: This is great.
Speaker 2: What to Watson? Matilda is just a great soul. God,
Speaker 2: we all had to get that out of our system.
Speaker 7: I think if this had been an American celt film,
Speaker 7: would we be hearing Denny Boyle all the way through
Speaker 7: the film?
Speaker 3: Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 9: That?
Speaker 3: Or kicking it up to Boston.
Speaker 5: They get a little heavy handed in the last part
Speaker 5: of the film with the Dutch angles. Almost every shot
Speaker 5: for a little while is a Dutch angle, to the
Speaker 5: point where I was just like watching the movie with
Speaker 5: my head kicked over. It's like, oh, okay, like we
Speaker 5: saw a pretty good Canton angle shot.
Speaker 2: I think at the beginning in the.
Speaker 5: Party scene where Ava Gardner comes up into frame and
Speaker 5: Gregory pecks on the other side and you've got a
Speaker 5: pull in the middle that really emphasizes the angle of it.
Speaker 5: But yeah, towards the end, it's just like every shot,
Speaker 5: every other shot maybe is can't and it's like, all right,
Speaker 5: we get it. The world is a skew right now,
Speaker 5: So little heavy handed with that. But I have to
Speaker 5: say that the cinematography in this movie. It looks gorgeous
Speaker 5: and I really love too, just the age of fred
Speaker 5: Astaire at this point and just the cragginess of his face.
Speaker 5: He's got a fascinating face at this point in his career,
Speaker 5: and I just really was happy to see how he
Speaker 5: looked throughout so much of this. And yeah, the oh
Speaker 5: my god, the lighting when it comes to his death
Speaker 5: scene in that garage is fantastic. And then there's some
Speaker 5: little things too that they do where I'm like, oh,
Speaker 5: I didn't expect that. Where I think it's when Gregory
Speaker 5: Peck finds out that the guy that they sent to
Speaker 5: go through the city because you don't send the captain
Speaker 5: to go through the city. K'm on Armanda Sante Anyway,
Speaker 5: It's just it's the Star Trek problem, right, and like
Speaker 5: it would be pretty boring if Kirk stayed on the
Speaker 5: ship all the time, but so they always have to
Speaker 5: send him out. But that actor who tells him about
Speaker 5: his friend having radiation poisoning, and the way he turns
Speaker 5: and walks right towards the camera, it's so uncomfortable that
Speaker 5: they try to black it out with his face basically,
Speaker 5: like that's a little much guys go.
Speaker 2: By, Yeah, that jarred a little bit. That's walking towards
Speaker 2: the camera a bit, didn't it. And then the thing
Speaker 2: about him being irritated, And that's the first sign of
Speaker 2: it coming. He's an interesting character, wasn't he. I suppose
Speaker 2: the poor guy in this bunk bed who's the first
Speaker 2: one to drop and he thinks it's just his stomach.
Speaker 2: Those are nice moments as well. Again I say the
Speaker 2: word nice. The topic is not nice. It's just well done,
Speaker 2: I suppose I should say. But just that creeping horror
Speaker 2: and terror death is hovering over us, or hanging in
Speaker 2: the atmosphere around us. And as I was watching, I
Speaker 2: guess I was also just thinking watching Gray repe because
Speaker 2: thinking what you're dying, you know, quite important. We could
Speaker 2: talk about the importance of the film, the gravitas and
Speaker 2: what it was saying, and it's obviously quite obvious what
Speaker 2: it was saying about man and humanity and our obsession
Speaker 2: with weapons, but of course just to see it in
Speaker 2: these characters who are dying one by one and tend
Speaker 2: to work out what to do in their final hours.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it was very well done. A lot of
Speaker 2: those scenes.
Speaker 5: All right, guys, let's go ahead and take a break,
Speaker 5: and I'll be back right after these brief messages.
Speaker 11: Seven the Sixth Sense, Sweet sixteen, nine Songs, seven Brides
Speaker 11: for seven Brothers, twelve Angry Men. In the versatile world
Speaker 11: of cinema, numbers everywhere, and on the Film by Numbers podcast,
Speaker 11: we explore just about any aspect from the movie world,
Speaker 11: from film history to filmmaking, to specific movements and directors,
Speaker 11: and much more. Besides, each topic on Film by Numbers
Speaker 11: is dictated by the number of the episode. Brought to
Speaker 11: you by Outward Film Network and hosted by me Phil
Speaker 11: Slatter and filmmaker David Woods, we will take you on
Speaker 11: a journey across the vast landscape of film with interviews
Speaker 11: with award winning filmmakers and academics, featuring discussion, debate and recommendations.
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Speaker 5: All Right, we were back and we were talking about
Speaker 5: on the beach.
Speaker 7: There are a lot of post apocalypse films out there,
Speaker 7: but the one film that came to my mind while
Speaker 7: watching this was one from was it the late eighties?
Speaker 7: I'm wanting to say Miracle Mile and rather than compressing
Speaker 7: the idea of people living at their lives with five
Speaker 7: months to goo. Miracle Mile is about people getting five
Speaker 7: hours or whatever it is, or one night's notification. And
Speaker 7: that's also a personal story because Anthony Edwards and Mayor
Speaker 7: Winningham are desperately trying to find each other because they
Speaker 7: want to be together when the lights are turned off,
Speaker 7: as it were. But I loved that there was another
Speaker 7: store that So, okay, the death of humanity is it's
Speaker 7: not quite a side issue, but it's not the only issue,
Speaker 7: and it's about this relationship between.
Speaker 3: Two people who feel that they need be together.
Speaker 7: And regardless of what I might think about how Dwight
Speaker 7: and Moira end up in both of these films, they
Speaker 7: wanted to make the story about them and Peter and
Speaker 7: Mary how are they going to cope as couples and how.
Speaker 3: Do they deal with it? Do they ignore it?
Speaker 7: Do we behave shittily knocking over the windows of department
Speaker 7: stores and stealing what we want like it does a
Speaker 7: little bit in the remake, or do we just try
Speaker 7: to be our best behavior with the people that we love.
Speaker 7: And I think both of these films explore that as
Speaker 7: an issue, And yeah, I'm a huge fan of The
Speaker 7: Miracle Mild is heart breaking.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's a brilliant film, and I think, just thinking
Speaker 2: back on this film, it's more I think watching it
Speaker 2: thinking about Miracle Mile and thinking about some off those
Speaker 2: are real people, Miracle Mile, and we're getting to see
Speaker 2: how they live in a world that's not hemmed down
Speaker 2: by authority and by the rules that the Navy puts
Speaker 2: on these characters. So I think, now, just looking back
Speaker 2: on what I'm thinking about the film, I think it
Speaker 2: is that sort of strict the procedures and this is
Speaker 2: the way that the captain should act, and this is
Speaker 2: the way that the privates on the submarine should act,
Speaker 2: and they have to add this is the routine. And
Speaker 2: so they're facing the end of the world from that perspective,
Speaker 2: I guess, of being in the system, a system of
Speaker 2: the Navy. Whereas so I just think that sort of
Speaker 2: affects the way that certainly Gregory Peck's character of course
Speaker 2: views the world, because he has, as we're saying this,
Speaker 2: he's the captain of the ship and he has to
Speaker 2: be the strong one and the person that keeps the rules.
Speaker 2: And I suppose there's also now just coming to mind
Speaker 2: Crimson Tide actually and what the characters are doing in there,
Speaker 2: gene Hack when and are Ig and Denzel. But anyway,
Speaker 2: so I suppose I would just maybe like to have
Speaker 2: seen a little bit more of real people. And I
Speaker 2: suppose Peter and his wife are a bit more of
Speaker 2: us because they are so low down the pecking order.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I just think it would have been nice.
Speaker 2: And we do see those little elements of the people
Speaker 2: in the club and people popping in and out, but
Speaker 2: I don't know, I just think maybe it would have
Speaker 2: given it a bit more of a looseness or just
Speaker 2: a reality, even a bit more of a reality of
Speaker 2: Miracle Mile, for example, because it's people that are not
Speaker 2: hemmed in by having to go to offer a mission somewhere.
Speaker 2: And I have all these board meetings about what we're
Speaker 2: going to do next and when's it all coming in.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Ed has just thoughts coming into my
Speaker 2: head there about what I might have liked to have seen,
Speaker 2: as well as what God you.
Speaker 5: Talked about apocalypse movies, and most of them are post apocalypse.
Speaker 5: There are those, like you said, with Mirakle Mile. That's
Speaker 5: funny because I was the first one that came to
Speaker 5: mind when I was trying to explain a little bit
Speaker 5: as far as the end is coming in this one.
Speaker 5: It's a few months as opposed to a few hours.
Speaker 5: But this one, really, especially the book, talks about the
Speaker 5: radiation and just the death deadliness of the radiation, which
Speaker 5: we don't really get much anymore. That was the thing
Speaker 5: with Threads and The Day After and those movies from
Speaker 5: the eighties where you really just saw the suffering from
Speaker 5: the radiation. It's like the ones who were killed first
Speaker 5: were the lucky ones and the ones that are still
Speaker 5: straggling around, And you didn't really see that in things
Speaker 5: like the World, the Flesh and the Devil or five
Speaker 5: or any of these early post apocalyptic films, post war
Speaker 5: post apocalyptic films. But with this one, that's the whole
Speaker 5: thing is the radiation is coming. The radiation is going
Speaker 5: to kill us all, and yeah, it's like we forget
Speaker 5: now what radiation is. I'm still just flabbergasted when they
Speaker 5: start talking about in that Godzilla remake, the one with
Speaker 5: Aaron Taylor Johnson where they're like, oh, yeah, we're going
Speaker 5: to drop this nuke on Godzilla and it's like, where
Speaker 5: are you doing this?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, twenty miles off the coast of San Francisco. I'm like,
Speaker 5: what the fuck are you guys doing. That's going to
Speaker 5: kill so many people in San Francisco just from the radiation.
Speaker 5: It's just like they forget what radiation is. Of course,
Speaker 5: there's the brilliant idea of dropping a nuclear bomb on
Speaker 5: a hurricane to disarm the hurricane, and again I'm just like,
Speaker 5: are you just not thinking about the radiation that's going
Speaker 5: to come spewing out of that. Growing up in the
Speaker 5: eighties and I talk about this a lot as far
Speaker 5: as like the Cold War paranoia was real, and the
Speaker 5: idea of like dying in the bomb blast, I was
Speaker 5: just like, Okay, I guess I can take that because
Speaker 5: it's going to be over in a second. But the
Speaker 5: thing that I couldn't handle was the idea of being
Speaker 5: like out in the wastelands with Steve Gutenberg and all
Speaker 5: these people, where you just seeing them starting to fall
Speaker 5: apart because of the radiation sickness.
Speaker 3: That's the craziness for me.
Speaker 7: I think I mentioned to you a few weeks ago, Mike,
Speaker 7: that I watched really strangely for the first time, the
Speaker 7: early nineteen eighties propaganda clips documentary The Atomic Cafe. I
Speaker 7: remember that was a really big deal in the cinema
Speaker 7: here when it came out. I think of our old
Speaker 7: Valhalla cinema, which had left of center stuff. And I
Speaker 7: didn't get to see it at the time, but the
Speaker 7: impression I always had was that, oh, it was a
Speaker 7: mildly funny look at atomic warfare and what had happened
Speaker 7: in the fifties with the Cold War and all that.
Speaker 7: I just found it terrifying, probably more so because these
Speaker 7: some of these moments were so ridiculous. There was I
Speaker 7: think one sequence where these two or three army guys
Speaker 7: roll up to some park where there's a woman who's
Speaker 7: saying our government is terrible and they're trying to destroy
Speaker 7: our European friends and our Russian friends, and they're having
Speaker 7: a go at her saying, oh, you don't know the
Speaker 7: first thing about these commis, lady, they've got the bomb.
Speaker 7: We have to have the bomb because it's what's going
Speaker 7: to save us. And there's plenty of those sorts of
Speaker 7: moments throughout the film.
Speaker 3: This is.
Speaker 7: I don't know whether it's post apocalypse in the sense
Speaker 7: that we'd seen what had happened in Japan, at the
Speaker 7: end of the war, but it's pre thinking we're not out.
Speaker 3: Of this yet. People.
Speaker 7: It takes us for one idiot in power, and I
Speaker 7: can't imagine that there's anyone around there who do that now.
Speaker 7: But it serves like, remember what happened, this could happen.
Speaker 7: So I don't know if I think I found a
Speaker 7: humor more terrifying than anything but terrific film. And to
Speaker 7: your point, I think before Mike about at that period
Speaker 7: where no one was really showing skin peeling off from
Speaker 7: the after effects of nuclear radiation fallout, there was a
Speaker 7: nineteen fifty two film which I watched good a few
Speaker 7: years ago, two three years ago called Hiroshima, Japanese film
Speaker 7: while it was still fresh in their minds. I think
Speaker 7: they might have even been made before Godzilla.
Speaker 3: Hiroshima.
Speaker 7: There's like a forty five minute sequence after fat Boy
Speaker 7: is dropped and we see what's happening to people, and
Speaker 7: that is the most terrifying thing I think I have
Speaker 7: ever seen in a war film. Ever, I don't know
Speaker 7: whether that film was aimed at the domestic cinema going
Speaker 7: market saying hey, don't get complacent, this is what happened
Speaker 7: to us, or whether it was going to be shipped
Speaker 7: off to the US cinemas, and so, hey, this is
Speaker 7: what happened as a result of what happened at the
Speaker 7: end of the war, and we're still suffering the metal
Speaker 7: trauma seven or eight years later. That sort of approach
Speaker 7: would never happen even in a well meaning Hollywood film.
Speaker 7: But yeah, this was possibly the most graphic thing I
Speaker 7: think I can remember saying from a film of that era.
Speaker 5: So you're saying that people in Japan should buy leadlined
Speaker 5: refrigerators so they can just survive a nuclear blast like
Speaker 5: Indiana Jonestead, Absolutely and what they should also. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: that was my favorite of all the Indiana Jones films. Bullshit,
Speaker 5: But I think that they should also learn from the
Speaker 5: Americans and learn to duck and cover in the event
Speaker 5: of a bomb drop that would have saved them.
Speaker 12: Paul and Patty know this. No matter where they go
Speaker 12: or what they do, they always try to remember what
Speaker 12: to do. If the Adam bomb explodes, right, then it's
Speaker 12: a bomb that can cover Sundays, holidays, vacasion time. We
Speaker 12: must be ready every day, all the time to do
Speaker 12: the right thing. If the atomic bomb explodes, duck can
Speaker 12: cover that's the first thing to do. Cover conversion. You duck,
Speaker 12: and then you duck and cover cover under the table.
Speaker 2: It's a bomb.
Speaker 13: He did what we all learned to do.
Speaker 14: Humanu unu.
Speaker 2: We're talking about threads and things like that where you
Speaker 2: can see the impact, whereas in this one we're imagining
Speaker 2: the impact because it's not quite happened to these people.
Speaker 2: I wonder if there was ever any I guess there
Speaker 2: probably wasn't, but we've been interesting to have. Maybe when
Speaker 2: they're in there, there's a briefing room footage of what
Speaker 2: happened around the world. Not vites all, of course, but
Speaker 2: I just I wonder if there was ever a discussion
Speaker 2: about that, because of course, in the remake much opens
Speaker 2: with just all those shots of the news and what's
Speaker 2: been happening, and very much what you call it just
Speaker 2: a brief sort of catch up or where we are
Speaker 2: bringing you right up to speed in tricks, and that
Speaker 2: doesn't exist in the original that they just allude to
Speaker 2: the fact that everybody's dates.
Speaker 5: Like I said, I don't think there's any way that
Speaker 5: they couldn't get the news as far as what actually happened.
Speaker 5: But yeah, the lead up to it is they probably
Speaker 5: had some sort of idea unless it was just a
Speaker 5: random thing that happened. It happened so fast. Obviously, I
Speaker 5: grew up on things like wargames where you get to
Speaker 5: see the computer modeling of the nuclear destruction and everything,
Speaker 5: and this takes place it feels like in a matter
Speaker 5: of minutes. But yeah, the lead up to it probably
Speaker 5: would have been weeks or days unless it was something
Speaker 5: completely random.
Speaker 2: Also, just thinking there about effective radiation on a city.
Speaker 2: I don't know you watched twenty four, but there was
Speaker 2: one season of that where nuclear bomb went off in
Speaker 2: the middle of la and it was forgotten about within
Speaker 2: a few episodes. In the next season, it was never
Speaker 2: mentioned again. So anyway, just the past thing I remember
Speaker 2: watching that, Well, you just nobody's mentioned in the fact
Speaker 2: this went off ten minutes ago, and.
Speaker 5: Looks like some of all fears. They tried to get
Speaker 5: a little bit better with that one with the dirty
Speaker 5: bomb that goes off, but it's like over the years
Speaker 5: nuclear bombs have lost their power. On screen, it's just like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: I just dropped some nukes on it, and it's like, no,
Speaker 5: I seemed to realize. There's a lot of ramifications from that.
Speaker 13: According to a new report from Axio's, President Trump has
Speaker 13: been very interested in a brilliant plan to stop hurricanes
Speaker 13: drop a nuclear bomb on them. Trump has reportedly made
Speaker 13: that suggestion multiple times to see your homeland. Natural security
Speaker 13: officials paraphrase by a source who was in the room
Speaker 13: for one briefing, is saying.
Speaker 5: Quote, I got it, I got it.
Speaker 13: Why don't we nuke them?
Speaker 2: Well, San Francisco, it came up for a lot of
Speaker 2: trouble in the nineties, particularly with for the role, and
Speaker 2: I do remember there was a lot of discussion in
Speaker 2: that about what would happen with the cloud and where
Speaker 2: that we're how many people that would kill?
Speaker 3: So the Rock, there we go.
Speaker 2: The Rock is the perfect educational film today for people
Speaker 2: to realize just how bad nuclear weapons are.
Speaker 5: But those were those pretty green pearls that they had
Speaker 5: that looked so they were lovely, They looked so yummy.
Speaker 5: I want to eat one of those things. All right, guys,
Speaker 5: let's go ahead and take a break and I'll be
Speaker 5: back right after these brief messages.
Speaker 8: We've just received these podcast from somewhere in the Midwest
Speaker 8: that says that nuclear blasts have been recorded on North
Speaker 8: American soil. Ironically, there's almost forty five years to the
Speaker 8: day since the world was plunged in the Little Last global crisis.
Speaker 8: While the blockade of Taiwan is a particularly provocative piece of.
Speaker 5: Psimanship on the part of the Chinese defense analysts.
Speaker 8: Make get highly unplucked with the national pride would make
Speaker 8: them want.
Speaker 7: To take the world.
Speaker 12: What I'm saying is the chances is something going seriously
Speaker 12: wrong or acquired.
Speaker 14: Some day.
Speaker 3: To a country, would the least the family there too.
Speaker 3: Reality stick probably would.
Speaker 14: Like continue names the Chinese community.
Speaker 5: Politicians, and the American letter is very strong.
Speaker 15: Sayings unfortunately will be done.
Speaker 14: Oh so aways something American.
Speaker 1: Matter, stuff, A lot of.
Speaker 14: Stuff had you can.
Speaker 11: Explained missing million stuff dispays someone who news.
Speaker 14: Is trying to get through.
Speaker 8: How did you explain the palaces suddenly coming a line
Speaker 8: mine of the months and the somewhat spent off.
Speaker 3: Switch and one time you admit you want to be
Speaker 3: money wrote.
Speaker 5: All right, we were back when we were talking about
Speaker 5: on the beach, and we want to talk a little
Speaker 5: bit more about the remake from two thousand. Like I said,
Speaker 5: it was a two parter TV movie. You can really
Speaker 5: feel the break when it goes from one night to
Speaker 5: the next the way that they wrap it up. But
Speaker 5: if we're to start with this one, let's just say
Speaker 5: Gregory Peck's acting style is way different than Armanda Sante's
Speaker 5: acting style. They definitely use Armanda Sante to his fullest
Speaker 5: power in this movie. He's not Rico from Judge Dread.
Speaker 5: He's not chewing up scenery as much. But there are
Speaker 5: a lot of I am angry Armanda Sante has scenes
Speaker 5: in here, and yeah, he really lets it fly very different.
Speaker 5: I can't say that it's all bad. I was expecting
Speaker 5: it to be terrible, but for God's sakes, I love
Speaker 5: Brian Brown and I love Rachel Ward and having them
Speaker 5: in here. Yeah, actual Australians in this movie. That was
Speaker 5: pretty remarkable.
Speaker 2: Just to buck you up in all that, really, Armando
Speaker 2: Sante interests keeps saying interesting but just yeah, why will
Speaker 2: maybe my first jokes? But yeah, and just such a
Speaker 2: different so we can't get any further away from Gregory
Speaker 2: pet just a different universe here. But yeah, nice to
Speaker 2: see Brian Brown. I love Brian Brown. That the Hawaiian
Speaker 2: shirt thing is of course, that's his personality in a nutshow.
Speaker 2: Really isn't it. They did a good job with the
Speaker 2: Moira character being a bit more what the drinking anyway
Speaker 2: for there's a better ways to say that, I'm sure.
Speaker 2: But our sort of drinking problem, which in the original
Speaker 2: film I feel feels to be quite toned down, is
Speaker 2: there a bit but it's not really in your face
Speaker 2: as much. But yes, happy to hear other people's thoughts
Speaker 2: on this one.
Speaker 7: I think that you may have mentioned something about this
Speaker 7: in a correspondence with his mic that this was the
Speaker 7: only ride of film could be made in two thousand.
Speaker 3: The reserve nature of.
Speaker 7: The Dwight Towers character that Gregory Peck gave him, he
Speaker 7: obviously could not be that reserved in a two thousand film,
Speaker 7: where in this case it was a TV not center
Speaker 7: of viewing audiences.
Speaker 3: But TV viewing audiences.
Speaker 7: Had come to expect different behavior from their heroes. They
Speaker 7: had to kick ass, they were allowed to say fuck
Speaker 7: where they needed to.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 3: Dwight Towers was going to be that gung ho American.
Speaker 7: I think the first time we see Brian Brand in
Speaker 7: the film, which is like within five minutes of the
Speaker 7: film starting where I'm under Sanity comes in to take
Speaker 7: him in saying we're bringing you off this island that
Speaker 7: you've gone and retired to. We need you back for
Speaker 7: a mission, and if you give me any shit, I'm
Speaker 7: going to break your arm. And Gregory Peck would never
Speaker 7: have said that, and the character in the book would
Speaker 7: never have said that.
Speaker 3: It was a thing.
Speaker 7: As I said at the start of this that I
Speaker 7: read the book before I saw the film. But the
Speaker 7: whole time I'm reading the book, I'm hearing everything that
Speaker 7: the Dwight Towers character is saying in Gregory Peck's voice
Speaker 7: that rang true to me. I would never ever have thought, oh,
Speaker 7: it is something armand Assante would have done. And yet,
Speaker 7: as I said in the year two thousand, that's the
Speaker 7: way that you had to make that film. I mean,
Speaker 7: maybe it could have been made different, but the manners
Speaker 7: of the characters could never have been the way it
Speaker 7: was in the nineteen fifty nine version. Fred Astaire, even
Speaker 7: as angry as he gets, he still has some level
Speaker 7: of dignity. Brian Brand's just a smart ass who is
Speaker 7: telling everyone you don't like me, get fucked. He's that
Speaker 7: alaric and Australian character that you see in those type
Speaker 7: of Australian films.
Speaker 5: He's going to be the worst while we see him
Speaker 5: at parties and just like you're all going to die,
Speaker 5: you know that, right, Yeah, go ahead and dance, have fun, but.
Speaker 3: You're all gonna die. And it's like Jesus chrazy.
Speaker 5: Now I'm the smartest guy in this room right now.
Speaker 3: Hey, yeah, we believe you, We believe you. Yeah, Hey,
Speaker 3: Mari coming home with you? Oh god, that was a lot.
Speaker 5: And yeah, to have this new love triangle really introduced
Speaker 5: here as far as is she going to go with
Speaker 5: the navy commander or is she going to go with
Speaker 5: the rogue scientists who I guess is Ian Malcolming at times.
Speaker 5: But oh yeah, it was interesting. And the thing that
Speaker 5: I really liked was that Mary was a conspiracy theorist,
Speaker 5: that she's getting all of her information from the Internet
Speaker 5: doing her own research.
Speaker 3: Damn it, that's what happens in the AHA. Does know
Speaker 3: anywhere in the twenty fifth century.
Speaker 5: They've had the internet now for three years, so they
Speaker 5: are already just like I read about this on the
Speaker 5: Internet or I heard a scientist talking about this on
Speaker 5: the radio, and I do like Brian Brown just being like,
Speaker 5: what was the name, what was the person's name, where
Speaker 5: did you hear this? It's like that whole thing of like.
Speaker 3: What's your source on this?
Speaker 7: And even the relationship between Mary and Peter. So Mary's
Speaker 7: played by a really good character actress, Jacqueline Mackenzie. I
Speaker 7: think for time she did anything where people discovered was
Speaker 7: in Rompers Stomper. I don't remember who played Peter Holmes
Speaker 7: in there, but even their relationship Grant Bowler, thank you.
Speaker 7: Even their relationship is I wouldn't say the relationship is
Speaker 7: different in that he doesn't love it quite as much
Speaker 7: as Anthony Perkins loves Donald Anderson in the original one,
Speaker 7: but he's not quite as prepared to put up with
Speaker 7: her wanting to believe the best. He is trying us
Speaker 7: out get a grip, we're going just accept it, which
Speaker 7: is not something Anthony Perkins would have done. Nice little
Speaker 7: point of trivia I found out. So the actor who's
Speaker 7: playing the Prime Minister in the two thousand version is
Speaker 7: one of our great character actors, Bill Hunter. You may
Speaker 7: remember him from News Front and the father in Muriel's Wedding.
Speaker 5: At least over here. For me, he was one of
Speaker 5: the faces of Australia. He's so good in Priscilla.
Speaker 7: The interesting thing about him, and he already had a
Speaker 7: connection to on the Beach. Apparently he was Gregory Peck's
Speaker 7: swimming double in the nineteen fifty nine version when he
Speaker 7: falls off the boat and he's going to swim after
Speaker 7: it is Bill Hunter, who was like an award winning swimmer.
Speaker 7: So there you go. Connection. Maybe the only actor who
Speaker 7: appeared in both versions.
Speaker 5: I kept wondering that was John Million still wive at
Speaker 5: this point. That would have been kind of cool to
Speaker 5: bring him back, because yeah, he was the other like, oh,
Speaker 5: we are watching an Australian film because John Million is
Speaker 5: an at although mind you, I think really what they
Speaker 5: should have done with John Million in EA version is
Speaker 5: put him behind the bar, because that's where he goes.
Speaker 7: When I first came on the show and we did
Speaker 7: Wake and Fright and I brought up another film, Soundstrack,
Speaker 7: once again his character is behind the bar, but given
Speaker 7: a lot more of a role to do. But yeah,
Speaker 7: I hear John Million's voice. He's done other things, of course, but.
Speaker 2: I wanted to hear John Million documentary. I really do.
Speaker 2: I'd love to see even now, just because he was Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's in everything, and he was so good in everything.
Speaker 2: He did. If anyone's out, please.
Speaker 12: Have a go.
Speaker 7: Have you watched I think it's Terry Frost's favorite Australian
Speaker 7: film certainly, if not his favorite film all that news
Speaker 7: front from round and seventy four.
Speaker 3: Watch that.
Speaker 7: He's amazing, absolutely amazing and the get it out, Jonathan,
Speaker 7: you might regret it.
Speaker 3: Brilliant film. It's great.
Speaker 2: Listen. I'm just gonna have to drop in my Jack
Speaker 2: Thompson's story as well, just because we're here. When I
Speaker 2: was in Australia that second time, they were doing a
Speaker 2: remake of A South Pacific with Glenn Cloaks up in
Speaker 2: the Queensland and and Cairn's I think it was. And anyways,
Speaker 2: short version is I got a part as an extra
Speaker 2: and I was in a scene with Glenn close and
Speaker 2: so there was this old guy in the background and
Speaker 2: I didn't know who he watched. So this was again
Speaker 2: two thousand and two thousand and one. My film knowledge
Speaker 2: was a lot less, and this old guy was in
Speaker 2: the background and they kept seeing him and he would
Speaker 2: sitting down and have a cigarette.
Speaker 3: Exciting.
Speaker 2: Anyway, turns out it was Jack Thompson and I was
Speaker 2: just so close to him. Now looking back, I think
Speaker 2: I found only I probably I wouldn't have been allowed to,
Speaker 2: I guess as an extra. But if I just somehow
Speaker 2: found a way to say hello to her, just talked
Speaker 2: to her because he's another one of my favorite actors
Speaker 2: and amazing and everything. The film's not that great. That
Speaker 2: was a TV movie as well, so it was like
Speaker 2: one episode did like a film. But yeah, there was
Speaker 2: a lot of that American anyway, that's a whole tangent
Speaker 2: about American films being filmed in Australia around about two
Speaker 2: thy nineteen ninet two thousand. I guess maybe tax Maybe
Speaker 2: there's a good tax breaks at the time in Australia.
Speaker 7: I don't know, but in the yikes, I think now
Speaker 7: it was in the seventies there was I think, and
Speaker 7: any Australians listening to this will throttle me if I
Speaker 7: get this wrong, but I probably will be called the
Speaker 7: ten Ba form, which was all about writing films against tax.
Speaker 7: But I'm sure after this goes to where my great
Speaker 7: friend Paul Ryan will pull me aside and say, listen, Morris,
Speaker 7: we're friends, but you didn't quite get that right.
Speaker 2: Listen, if we ever do a say specific episodes, you
Speaker 2: can get the fights absolutely spot on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that was two than one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and like he was in Attack of the Clones
Speaker 5: in two thousand and two, and I don't think he
Speaker 5: was in the Matrix. But like, for me, the Matrix
Speaker 5: is the one that really I was like, Oh, they're
Speaker 5: shooting a lot in Australia, now, okay.
Speaker 2: So I think I just missed the Matrix when I
Speaker 2: was a bit we're filming the new Star Wars and
Speaker 2: four studios, I think said, anyway, we've got off for
Speaker 2: the whole time. Doent apologize.
Speaker 3: No worries, man, no worries.
Speaker 5: They have the baby that they have between Peter and
Speaker 5: Mary or John and Mary. But it's like she gets
Speaker 5: introduced so late in the game that I didn't even
Speaker 5: realize that she was a thing, Like, oh, okay, well
Speaker 5: this is kind of cool that it's just these two
Speaker 5: as a couple and there's no there's not going to
Speaker 5: back about having to murder the baby. But she eventually
Speaker 5: shows up. I love too just how going back to
Speaker 5: and you can kind of see this in the movie
Speaker 5: that she is so paranoid about that baby. There's one
Speaker 5: scene where it's really hot in the house and of
Speaker 5: course they don't have air conditioning at this point, so
Speaker 5: they take the baby and put her out on the
Speaker 5: porch and the wife is like, you need to go
Speaker 5: get some mosquito netting and put that over top of
Speaker 5: the baby. It's just these mosquitoes bitten by all these mosquitoes.
Speaker 5: And he's like, I don't think we need to worry
Speaker 5: about that, but she's very insistent, and then he'd go
Speaker 5: and he gets some different type of gauze because they
Speaker 5: don't have mosquito netting, and she's like, well, the baby's
Speaker 5: gonnaocate now, and they have to spend all night by
Speaker 5: the baby making sure it doesn't suffocate with this like
Speaker 5: muslim over top of it.
Speaker 3: It's crib. She's really paranoid.
Speaker 5: So when he has to suggest that they're going to
Speaker 5: have to euthanize their daughter, you can really see just
Speaker 5: how she breaks down. And there's a whole where it's
Speaker 5: where she and I think it's in the Yeah, it's
Speaker 5: in the movie too, where she decides that she's going
Speaker 5: to take a trip back to England. So like she
Speaker 5: is completely broken with reality, but to have this one
Speaker 5: where it's the Internet is breaking her reality is very fascinating. Dude, literally,
Speaker 5: I don't think she literally says, I do. I've done
Speaker 5: my own research. But it was right there far as
Speaker 5: like why I've heard this, I've heard this, And her
Speaker 5: husband sees the map of this radiation cloud and he's like, no, honey,
Speaker 5: the northern hemisphere is not getting better. She's like, well,
Speaker 5: what do you know, even though he's just seen the
Speaker 5: scientific map. But that one's interesting too. There's a lot
Speaker 5: more when it comes to the crew of the sub
Speaker 5: and some of the relationships of the crew on the sub.
Speaker 5: But I have to say most of the guys on
Speaker 5: the sub just fit the brief of semi hunky but
Speaker 5: really horny. And the scene of them all singing that
Speaker 5: boulderezed version of money, money, Oh my god. It was
Speaker 5: so embarrassing to me. And just like as soon as
Speaker 5: they find out that they're going to Australia, it's just
Speaker 5: like they start talking basically like oh we can get
Speaker 5: some of that sweet Aussie boom tang, and I'm like,
Speaker 5: what the fuck am I watch that script?
Speaker 7: I'd love to know whether it was written by David Williamson,
Speaker 7: who's a revered playwright certainly and most popular playwright through
Speaker 7: the seventies and you're talking before, Don'tathan about being on
Speaker 7: the same set as Jack Thompson and David Williamson wrote
Speaker 7: a play which became a actor. Most of his plays
Speaker 7: became films, one called The Club, which was about mckismo
Speaker 7: at a football.
Speaker 3: Club here in Melbourne.
Speaker 2: Thompson and not one.
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, in the club, absolutely, yeah, of course he
Speaker 7: was in everything in the seventies.
Speaker 3: But I'm trying to think.
Speaker 7: I'm sure he was in something else that David Williamson raight,
Speaker 7: But David Williamson was the guy for a long time.
Speaker 7: And yet I wasn't sure whether it was either Russell
Speaker 7: Mulkay's influence or David Williamson thought that some of these
Speaker 7: moments were appropriate, worthy of the story.
Speaker 3: It just didn't work.
Speaker 7: That whole machismo thing on the ships, on the submarine,
Speaker 7: it just seemed like a little bit overblown. I did
Speaker 7: think it was a good move, and I think they
Speaker 7: did this on the to break. They broke it up
Speaker 7: over the two nights where the sailors think that there's
Speaker 7: a chance that there is life in the Northern Hemisphere
Speaker 7: and radiation has stopped and they are going to survive.
Speaker 7: And then by the second part no, they're not going
Speaker 7: to survive. That was truly heartbreaking. I think that was
Speaker 7: well written. I'd like to get your opinions though, on
Speaker 7: that moment where armand De sante as a captain and
Speaker 7: comes back to your captain Kirk comment before Mike, Yeah,
Speaker 7: the captain's going to be the one that goes on shore.
Speaker 7: It goes to that investigation, and with only a few
Speaker 7: minutes to go before they have to be back on
Speaker 7: the submarine, he walks into a house because it reminds
Speaker 7: him of the house he had with his wife and child,
Speaker 7: and he has that moment where he's just imagining that
Speaker 7: psychedelic moment where he imagines how they've all died, and
Speaker 7: he just tears apart. He's no longer the captain who's
Speaker 7: in control of everything. He's the human being with a
Speaker 7: wife and kid or kids that are no longer there.
Speaker 7: But I'm still torn between whether that was well done
Speaker 7: or whether that was overly melodramatic for the type of
Speaker 7: film that they were making.
Speaker 5: For me, it was a little overdone. I mean, you
Speaker 5: had those moments like the sky kind of changes behind
Speaker 5: him where he almost shifts into another reality and it
Speaker 5: just becomes it's weird, Like the scene of him destroying
Speaker 5: the house and going into the house and seeing his
Speaker 5: wife and kid, it reminded me of RoboCop for some reason,
Speaker 5: just the way that when Alex revisits his home and
Speaker 5: starts having those flashes, wife, I have something to say
Speaker 5: to you, like those kind of things. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 5: this reminds me. And then RoboCop kind of fritzes out
Speaker 5: and stomps out of the house kind of thing. Stomping
Speaker 5: out would make a lot more sense to me than
Speaker 5: destroying the house and yeah, Jehan, dude, you know you
Speaker 5: need to go. But I can understand he's having a
Speaker 5: very tough time kind of like that he is really
Speaker 5: having a hard time with his wife and kid, kid
Speaker 5: or kids being dead, because we get that denial from
Speaker 5: Gregory Peck in the first version. This one, it's like
Speaker 5: he wants to put that stuff aside, wants to keep
Speaker 5: that at bait, and then it keeps breaking through, it
Speaker 5: keeps fucking him up. So I was like, I can
Speaker 5: kind of see where this is going from. But because
Speaker 5: again it's Armanda Sante, it just felt like if he
Speaker 5: wasn't going to break up to set, he was going
Speaker 5: to start chewing it to death.
Speaker 2: You can't touched on that. There might the comparison with
Speaker 2: the Gregory pet character. I don't think it was good
Speaker 2: on in his head at the time. He just was
Speaker 2: not accepting what was happening.
Speaker 15: Were was.
Speaker 2: I guess this was a good way to show rather
Speaker 2: just to talk about how you're feeling. So I suppose, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe a bit over the top, but if you have
Speaker 2: to visualize it some way, then maybe that's the way
Speaker 2: to do it.
Speaker 5: I also liked the whole thing with the guy who
Speaker 5: goes fishing and leaves the boat, and especially where that
Speaker 5: comes in the story with the realizing just I'll screwed up,
Speaker 5: because even though it didn't look very good, I thought
Speaker 5: the showing the destruction of San Francisco was pretty cool.
Speaker 5: And then to see him look out the periscope and
Speaker 5: seeing his old neighborhood.
Speaker 3: I'm talking about the officer.
Speaker 5: That leaves the ship to see where he used to live,
Speaker 5: and he's just like, if only that periscope were a
Speaker 5: one hundred feet higher, I could see my house, And
Speaker 5: just that idea again of not seeing the bodies and
Speaker 5: not seeing the destruction they'd mentioned at one point, Oh,
Speaker 5: they must have used a neutron bomb or something, because yeah,
Speaker 5: everything Obviously you're not gonna afford to show everything destroyed
Speaker 5: unless you have a really bad Matt painting kind of thing.
Speaker 5: But to just show everything looks like it's a normal day,
Speaker 5: just with nobody on the streets kind of thing, and
Speaker 5: obviously with radiation being completely can't smell it, can't see it,
Speaker 5: none of this stuff, so it just looks like it's
Speaker 5: a beautiful day in San Francisco and this guy's I
Speaker 5: can't handle this and that break with reality. I thought
Speaker 5: that was really good as well. And I mean that
Speaker 5: scene works in the first movie just as well as
Speaker 5: it does in this one for different reasons. That one
Speaker 5: in the TV movie hit me even harder for whatever reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think as well, just even go right
Speaker 2: back to the beginning where it starts off very similarish
Speaker 2: to the original film, especially when he gets to Melbourne
Speaker 2: and he's walking through those streets. But of course it's
Speaker 2: a different take because this one is very brutal, people
Speaker 2: smashing a windows and things. That was interesting to see
Speaker 2: you as a sort of parallel, universal almost version of
Speaker 2: the first film, and it brought it a bit more
Speaker 2: to life, and I don't know what you thought about that.
Speaker 2: Mars again talking about seeing Melbourne on the screen.
Speaker 7: As I said at the start, I love watching any
Speaker 7: film where there are recognizable Melbourne landmarks up until now.
Speaker 7: My big one for that was film from I want
Speaker 7: to say ninety ninety I called The Big Stale with
Speaker 7: Mendelsome playing a real good guy role. But there's a
Speaker 7: saying of places that are recognized. A car park in
Speaker 7: Little Burke Street and this one thing where is it
Speaker 7: a film you've seen, Jonathan, which one the biggest thing,
Speaker 7: The Big Steer with Ben mendels think.
Speaker 2: I bought Thistrelian Blue Ry, but I again, I watched it.
Speaker 3: Get it out.
Speaker 7: So there's this one moment in the no self respecting
Speaker 7: mel Bernie and wouldn't scoff at, But everywhere else I
Speaker 7: wouldn't know where the sneaky car dealer is driving this
Speaker 7: car with a crappy motor, and I won't go into
Speaker 7: the whole store how that happens. But he's pulled over
Speaker 7: by the cops and he's driving over the Swanston Street
Speaker 7: bridge and he's told by the cops to pull over,
Speaker 7: and the next thing that we see he pulls over.
Speaker 7: It's about six seven kilometers down the road in front
Speaker 7: of Luna Parkinson Kilda. If you're outside of Melbourne, that
Speaker 7: means nothing. Dous Melburnie ands we think, what's that all about?
Speaker 7: But yeah, long answer to a short question, but I
Speaker 7: do love seeing my home city on film all the ways.
Speaker 2: Have The whole thing is just a bit too long,
Speaker 2: of course, if you're going to have to do with
Speaker 2: te nights, but it is nice to have more moments
Speaker 2: of different people dealing with the impending. But I certainly
Speaker 2: prefer the first version.
Speaker 5: Two s You were asking Morris how we felt about
Speaker 5: seeing Melbourne on screen again. So much of the film
Speaker 5: felt like it wasn't Melbourne, that it wasn't any place.
Speaker 5: It felt like it was the studio backlot, Like with
Speaker 5: some of those scenes of the carnage and you know,
Speaker 5: destroying the street, the windows and stuff.
Speaker 2: I was like, it just looks like a cheap backlot,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 5: And then just some of the effects too, looked pretty ropey,
Speaker 5: especially Brian Brown's car crash at the end.
Speaker 3: I was like, this is how you're going to end
Speaker 3: this movie.
Speaker 5: You're going to end this with this horrible cig explosion,
Speaker 5: and I love how the tire like bounces across the
Speaker 5: screen and when they pull up and they've got the
Speaker 5: helicopter shot and you just see the shitty see cheeks
Speaker 5: still going the fire. I was like, oh man, this
Speaker 5: is such a bad way to end this movie. The
Speaker 5: thing I liked too about this one was the way
Speaker 5: that Armanda Sante takes Rachel Ward for a helicopter ride.
Speaker 5: I was just like, Okay, are they going to just
Speaker 5: plow themselves? Are they going to do a John Denver
Speaker 5: here and just kill themselves at the side of a mountain.
Speaker 3: But it's like, no, I guess they're going.
Speaker 5: To survive this, And yeah, I agree with you Morris
Speaker 5: as far as the final image of a Sante coming
Speaker 5: in and joining Rachel Ward.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, can you say no to that?
Speaker 2: She would make me kidnap a kid and murder people.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: If she called me Collie, I would do whatever she
Speaker 2: wanted me to.
Speaker 7: Have a look at you now, because it's just an
Speaker 7: empty space. I'm not going to seem ful Colin sip,
Speaker 7: but you should.
Speaker 2: You should.
Speaker 5: She's almost enough to make me want to watch the
Speaker 5: Thornbirds which is what introduced her to so many Americans.
Speaker 5: Was that series really caught fire over here for whatever reason?
Speaker 2: I remember it was huge. Yeah, go back to that ending. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they tried to give the happy ending, didn't we bizarrely
Speaker 2: bizarre happy ending that is not happy. Right.
Speaker 5: So you've got the married couple now in bed with
Speaker 5: the baby, and you see the needle and you're just like,
Speaker 5: oh fuck, and then get away from that as quickly
Speaker 5: as possible. And then it cutting between Brian Brown driving
Speaker 5: that car. And that was one shot that I really liked,
Speaker 5: was the bridge where you see him and it almost
Speaker 5: looks like the colors are saturated on everything other than
Speaker 5: his red car that he's driving. And then yeah, just
Speaker 5: him careeming through the turns on this race track.
Speaker 2: And that was the thing too.
Speaker 5: There isn't that whole racing subplot that we're talking about.
Speaker 5: He just at the end is like, cool a fast car,
Speaker 5: rather than I'm to go through the circuit and win
Speaker 5: this race and stuff. The destruction of the here and
Speaker 5: the entropy that I was taught out, it happens pretty
Speaker 5: fast once it does have the street urchins kind of thing.
Speaker 3: I was like, all right, but it kind.
Speaker 5: Of feels more true to life as far as people
Speaker 5: just becoming like roving bands. Like to me, I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 5: this is more the Mad Max prequel kind of thing
Speaker 5: more than the original.
Speaker 3: On the beach.
Speaker 5: But but yeah, then it just looked cheap. The way
Speaker 5: that they had like dirt smudge around their faces. I
Speaker 5: was like, this looks like an episode again of Star Trek.
Speaker 5: It feels like when they arrived on Earth and there's
Speaker 5: shitty little kids that can have psych powers and they
Speaker 5: all look dirty and like they've been hanging around an
Speaker 5: abandoned city.
Speaker 1: Ring around around.
Speaker 3: Some of these sets look really good.
Speaker 5: These exteriors look really good, but sometimes the sets just
Speaker 5: looked really cheap, and like I said, the special effects
Speaker 5: looked cheap. I was really okay with the idea of
Speaker 5: the computer message coming in from I guess that was Alaska,
Speaker 5: and the whole thing of it being a different type
Speaker 5: of message coming to them rather than obviously Morse code,
Speaker 5: which I don't think is going to be sent out
Speaker 5: in two thousand and did they did they set this
Speaker 5: in two thousand, because they set the nineteen fifty fifty
Speaker 5: nine movie in nineteen sixty four. I don't remember if
Speaker 5: they set the two thousand movie in any year other
Speaker 5: than two thousand.
Speaker 7: I don't remember anything being mentioned about a yeah, so
Speaker 7: it might as well have been.
Speaker 5: And yet they had that montage at the beginning with
Speaker 5: all the news clips, which made me think that we
Speaker 5: were to watch a rapture film. Just also, the production
Speaker 5: quality of US at times reminded me of those left
Speaker 5: Behind films.
Speaker 2: I was just going to say about just came to
Speaker 2: mind about that last mentioning the last scene with in
Speaker 2: the original. We've got that and there's still time brother
Speaker 2: sign and then that's when we get a poem, and
Speaker 2: I think I would have I was, actually I'm sure
Speaker 2: maybe you were as well. Thing to see what they
Speaker 2: reference that original ending. I sort of do, but I
Speaker 2: don't think it's It definitely doesn't have the impact of
Speaker 2: that original, which is strange. I don't know why you wouldn't,
Speaker 2: not that you can one up. I don't think that
Speaker 2: original ending, but you could try, and I don't. This
Speaker 2: one just goes no, We'll just have them standing there
Speaker 2: hugging and kissing or whatever, and then a little poem
Speaker 2: in the side, and it ends, and you've got to
Speaker 2: read the pot.
Speaker 5: You're like what's that saying? It's just strange. What's not
Speaker 5: even the poem that gives the movie it's title. It's
Speaker 5: not wasn't it? Was it the Holloman or the Wasteland.
Speaker 5: I'm trying to remember it was the tsliot one though, right.
Speaker 3: I think so? Yeah?
Speaker 5: And so it's like, oh, I thought that they would
Speaker 5: have ended with that, but why do I know?
Speaker 2: Right? I was just waiting. I just thought, right, what
Speaker 2: are they going to do here? They're going to just
Speaker 2: show the same banner? But no, okay, that's that.
Speaker 5: All right, Let's go ahead and take another break, and
Speaker 5: we'll play a previous for next week's show right after
Speaker 5: these brief messages.
Speaker 16: To Adot, he's my usky, see Tobya. She'sky see Tobya.
Speaker 16: She'sky see Tobya. Minute silentiary Sash.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 5: We'll be back next week with a look at Lahan
Speaker 5: or Laine the eight, however you want to say it.
Speaker 5: Until then, I want to think this week's co hosts
Speaker 5: Morris and Jonathan. So, Jonathan, what is the latest with you?
Speaker 12: Sir?
Speaker 2: Another book? It's been ten years since I, I think
Speaker 2: the first time I was on this podcast, certainly the
Speaker 2: first time you wrote a blurb to the back of
Speaker 2: my book on Tremors, so thank you. Ten years on.
Speaker 2: The new one is about a TV show called Hamish Macbeth.
Speaker 2: If you've not heard of it, it's a BBC TV
Speaker 2: show from nineteen ninety five round for three years. Robert
Speaker 2: Carlisle was known at the time, but he wasn't a
Speaker 2: big name and as he started making this show, he
Speaker 2: then got Trainspotting by the second series. By the third
Speaker 2: series he'd made the Full Monty, so he was huge.
Speaker 2: And it's basically just a book about the TV show,
Speaker 2: which is if you like local hero or northern exposure.
Speaker 2: There's kind of a theme there. It's about little village
Speaker 2: in the northwest of Highlands of Scotland and he's a
Speaker 2: policeman called Hamish McBeth. Crazy name, crazy place, and strange
Speaker 2: things happen and it's the police drama, but it's also
Speaker 2: a comedy and it's supernatural and the second side people
Speaker 2: have visions, so it's been fun. So I've been speaking
Speaker 2: to lots of people involved.
Speaker 3: It's speaking of Robert Carlisle.
Speaker 2: I met Carallel and asked him if you would be
Speaker 2: part of it, and he said he doesn't like looking back,
Speaker 2: so he everybody else said yes, said the guy who
Speaker 2: did try and spotting that too, and the full Monty
Speaker 2: TV series.
Speaker 3: Oh of course.
Speaker 16: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's why we're working. So as this episode's come,
Speaker 2: the book should be eight. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh that's awesome.
Speaker 7: Spiritulations and Morris about yourself, what do you up to?
Speaker 7: So we're recording this in March. So I'm going to
Speaker 7: release part two of a two part episode of Love
Speaker 7: That Album, which thank you, Mike, you were very kind
Speaker 7: to be a part of. I was speaking to a
Speaker 7: whole bunch of music people and podcast people about their
Speaker 7: recollections of first going into record shops, and you're in
Speaker 7: part two, which should be at about a week from
Speaker 7: now as we record this for see here, I'm very
Speaker 7: excited for the next episode. I'm speaking to a guy
Speaker 7: called Kenny Vance who was part of the group from
Speaker 7: the early nineteen sixties, Jay and the Americans. He's gone
Speaker 7: and made a film call which I think is shown
Speaker 7: in America on PBS called Heart and Soul, a love story,
Speaker 7: and I think he's also doing Q and a cinema
Speaker 7: screenings are But it's basically not exactly like a history
Speaker 7: of do wop, but more like he speaks to people
Speaker 7: from Anthony and the Imperials and the surviving members of
Speaker 7: the Teenagers and all these other great do wop groups
Speaker 7: about their recollections of being part of the do wop
Speaker 7: scene in the late fifties. Now, a lot of these interviews,
Speaker 7: I'd say they look like about ten fifteen years old
Speaker 7: because the way the video footage is, and I'm sure
Speaker 7: that some of these people are no longer with us,
Speaker 7: but I'm a huge fan of do wop music, so
Speaker 7: they're the opportunity to speak to Kenny about his film,
Speaker 7: which is a lovely film.
Speaker 3: I must say. Anyone out there who can.
Speaker 7: Watch it on PBS or see it at a cinema
Speaker 7: that's doing a Q and A with Kenny, I urge
Speaker 7: you to go do it. I'll be speaking with him
Speaker 7: next week for release a week later on seat here do.
Speaker 5: Wop that people sing around those oil cans with the
Speaker 5: fires inside, not waltson Matilda.
Speaker 3: Just yeah over here, that's what we do. We do.
Speaker 7: What versions? Am I ever going to see your face again?
Speaker 7: That really should be Australia's national anthem. Ask any Australian
Speaker 7: that you made, what is a normal response to that song,
Speaker 7: Am I ever going to see your face again?
Speaker 9: And we do?
Speaker 3: What versions of that round the old game?
Speaker 5: I thought it would be timey kangaroo down mate, fuck off.
Speaker 5: Thank you again folks for being on the show. Thanks
Speaker 5: to everybody for listening. If you want to hear more
Speaker 5: of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of
Speaker 5: the other shows that I work on. They are all
Speaker 5: available at Wirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community.
Speaker 5: If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot
Speaker 5: com Slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the
Speaker 5: Projection Booth take over the world.
Speaker 1: You got do the gods?
Speaker 14: Don't try the game? It's top.
Speaker 1: Splash us time? Why try then?
Speaker 15: So say the problems go bad?
Speaker 14: They get the mat.
Speaker 1: Side?
Speaker 9: Was my god?
Speaker 1: What time we get to tell the small until the
Speaker 1: sound of the South South gets the ma.
Speaker 14: Boss a chop sting the.
Speaker 1: Rights web, the lad.
Speaker 8: Got by and tomato sauce the same again for the
Speaker 8: second course from Perth to Sydney. They all endorse that
Speaker 8: hot pie and tomato sauce. They say the cooking in
Speaker 8: Australia is pretty.
Speaker 5: Much of a failure.
Speaker 8: But there's one thing they consume with zest. It's the
Speaker 8: dish the Australians like the best, and it's the hot
Speaker 8: pie and tomato sauce. The same again for the second course.
Speaker 2: From Perth to Sydney.
Speaker 8: They all endorse that hot pine tomato sauce. The Prime
Speaker 8: Minister went to London Town with other Prime ministers to dinner,
Speaker 8: sat down. They gave you turtle soup, champagne and sat
Speaker 8: She said, it's not bad stuff, but I don't like
Speaker 8: it as much as hot pie and tomato sauce. The
Speaker 8: same again for the second course. From Perth to Sydney,
Speaker 8: they all endorse that tomato sauce. Billy Jones today is
Speaker 8: one hundred and three. We congratulate him on his anniversary.
Speaker 8: He's had three kits since he was ninety five and
Speaker 8: you probably wonder what keeps him alive. Well, it's hot
Speaker 8: pine tomato sauce. Same again for the second course from
Speaker 8: Perth to Sydney. They all endorse that hot high and
Speaker 8: tomato sauce. Irad ran with the other day one hundred
Speaker 8: to one.
Speaker 3: Outside I led all the way.
Speaker 8: When they held an inquiry to consider the objections, they
Speaker 8: found that his china had given him injections of hot
Speaker 8: tomato sauce. Same again to the second course from Perth
Speaker 8: to Sydney. They all endorse that hot pie and tomato sauce,
Speaker 8: Hot pie and tamato sauce.
Speaker 14: The same again.
Speaker 8: For the second course from Perth to Sydney, they all
Speaker 8: endorse that hot pine tomaross shoot the bottle. Timmy lovet