Speaker 1: Oh ye is, folks, it's showtime. People say good money
Speaker 1: to see this movie.
Speaker 2: When they go out to a theater, they are cold
Speaker 2: sodas from hot popcorn in no monsters in a protection booth.
Speaker 1: Everyone for tend podcasting isn't boring, cut it off.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy four, a motion picture shunt the world.
Speaker 2: It has become one of the most acclaimed and successful
Speaker 2: films in history. The Anxiousist is a classic in its
Speaker 2: own time. And now Warner Brothers takes you a step
Speaker 2: y'all Exorcist to the Heretic starring Linda Blair, Richard Burton,
Speaker 2: Louise Fletcher. Excellent see don James E. Jones. Their mind's
Speaker 2: a lot together with the most terrifying vision of all
Speaker 2: Exorcist to the Heretic.
Speaker 3: Hey, folks, welcome to a very special episode of The
Speaker 3: Projection Booth. I'm your host Mike White. On this episode,
Speaker 3: I am talking with David Kittridge, who has been a
Speaker 3: co host on the show many, many times ever since.
Speaker 3: The very first time he was on the show, he
Speaker 3: was talking about a documentary he was working on, which
Speaker 3: at the time was called Heretics. It is now called
Speaker 3: Borman and the Devil, and it is making the round
Speaker 3: at festivals. Just played the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, has
Speaker 3: played at Beyond Fest, played at Venice, and is coming
Speaker 3: to hopefully a neighborhood near you very soon. Is great
Speaker 3: finally sitting down and talking about the movie. I've seen it.
Speaker 3: It's fantastic, had a lot of fun with it. I
Speaker 3: would highly recommend it to everyone out there. And of
Speaker 3: course I asked David when he first got the idea
Speaker 3: of starting to work on.
Speaker 1: This in twenty seventeen, my friend Jeffrey Schwarz, who's a
Speaker 1: documentary filmmaker. He's done a lot of really great documentaries.
Speaker 1: I Am Divine is my favorite. He did Veto, he
Speaker 1: did hob Hunter Confidential. He did one called Boulevard a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, a really fantastic one on William Passel.
Speaker 1: I had no thought to actually making a documentary because
Speaker 1: I know how much work they are. They are a
Speaker 1: lot of work. You take a normal narrative film and
Speaker 1: you multiply it by another normal narrative film, and that's
Speaker 1: what a documentary is. And he was on me to
Speaker 1: do a documentary about Exorcist too, because he knew I
Speaker 1: loved the film so much, and you'd have been obsessed
Speaker 1: with it since my twenties. He basically said to me
Speaker 1: one night I was over at his place. We were
Speaker 1: watching a movie or something, and he said, if you
Speaker 1: don't make this documentary, no one ever will. And I
Speaker 1: was really irritated because I knew he was right. I
Speaker 1: knew that Borman was getting up there. Louis and Ross
Speaker 1: Bo and other people, they were all getting up there,
Speaker 1: and I knew it. I knew they were approaching their
Speaker 1: eighties or in their eighties, and Borman's case, he was
Speaker 1: well into his eighties. And so he said, if I
Speaker 1: could get you contact with Borman, would you consider making
Speaker 1: this documentary. I was just like, I get to talk
Speaker 1: to John Borman. Sure, I'm a fan. I think ex
Speaker 1: Caliber is a masterpiece. I think Point Blank is an
Speaker 1: insanely amazing film. The general hope and glory I could
Speaker 1: go on at any rate. What happened was Jeffrey had
Speaker 1: made a documentary involving Paul Verhoven. And there's an author
Speaker 1: who wrote a book about Paul Verhoven, but he also
Speaker 1: wrote a book about John Borman. So Jeffrey knew this guy. Well.
Speaker 1: I think he's in Ireland, and I wrote him an
Speaker 1: email basically saying can you forward this to John Borman?
Speaker 1: He did. John Borman wrote me back and I was
Speaker 1: just I was like, what John Borman just wrote me
Speaker 1: an email? And basically what happened was we started talking
Speaker 1: and we had a Skype call where we were like
Speaker 1: zooming that old thing called Skype that doesn't exist anymore,
Speaker 1: things to Microsoft. Basically at the end of it, I said,
Speaker 1: would you be okay with me coming to Ireland and
Speaker 1: shooting you for an interview? And he said yes. And
Speaker 1: then that was when I knew, okay, I had to
Speaker 1: do this. Why I could not live with myself if
Speaker 1: I didn't do this. And I had a friend of
Speaker 1: mine named Carson Gaspar who's been my friend for decades,
Speaker 1: literally like we were a little I need something gay
Speaker 1: boys running around New York at one point in the nineties,
Speaker 1: and he let me a little money which I still
Speaker 1: have to pay him back, and I will pay him
Speaker 1: back that this movie gets distributed that I really wanted
Speaker 1: to and yeah, I went to Ireland, we got a crew.
Speaker 1: I shot John for a day. It was a full day,
Speaker 1: and I left with an interview that I knew that
Speaker 1: interview was important and special. I was like, this is
Speaker 1: one of the great filmmakers. And it wasn't just talking
Speaker 1: about the Heretic. We were talking about all of his
Speaker 1: other work. We were talking about how we came up,
Speaker 1: we were talking about his views on cinema today. He
Speaker 1: gave me anecdotes on all of these filmmakers, most of
Speaker 1: which did not make it into the cut because there
Speaker 1: was just so much, and I knew that I needed
Speaker 1: to tell the story. I literally felt like I could
Speaker 1: make a documentary just on Bormann's interview, but we were
Speaker 1: lucky enough to The next one was Linda Blair, and
Speaker 1: she said yes once she heard that we got and
Speaker 1: I had to reassure both of them that this was
Speaker 1: not some kind of an exorcist Oh look at the
Speaker 1: bad movie. We get to make fun of people movie,
Speaker 1: this snide golden turkey bullshit. And I think what convinced
Speaker 1: John was I brought up Black Narcissus, the Palm Presburger movie,
Speaker 1: because one of the things that Exorcists two did very
Speaker 1: consciously was he shot almost the whole movie on sound stages,
Speaker 1: including exteriors, including African exteriors like this African village. These
Speaker 1: were all in sound stages and it's this weird vibe
Speaker 1: that it's not realistic, but you're in that reality anyway.
Speaker 1: And the movie that reminded me the most of was
Speaker 1: The Black Narcissus Biden Pressburger and I mentioned that and
Speaker 1: he was I did not know this. He was a
Speaker 1: huge and Pressburger fan, and I guess I could have
Speaker 1: put that together. He's a British filmmaker and they were huge,
Speaker 1: one of the most important filmmaking duos in British films.
Speaker 1: I think, possibly the most underrated filmmakers that have ever
Speaker 1: been behind a camera. They had a run of those
Speaker 1: four films that were just unlike Blife About the Colonel Blimp,
Speaker 1: Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death,
Speaker 1: just those. They also made other good movies, but those
Speaker 1: four films are such bullet proof, honest to goodness, top
Speaker 1: one hundred masterpieces. There are almost no directors that I
Speaker 1: think have done anything like that. Kupri Hitchcock, we're talking
Speaker 1: about the greats. Anyway. He vibed on the fact that
Speaker 1: I got the Black Narcissus reference because it was something
Speaker 1: he was inspired by. That film, Black Narcissist. Once we
Speaker 1: got Linda, we got Louise Fletcher, and then we got
Speaker 1: Roswell Pallenberg and then the pandemic happened and we were
Speaker 1: unable to shoot anybody for almost two years. So it
Speaker 1: was just a long process. So all in all, going
Speaker 1: back to twenty seventeen, we didn't shoot Boorman until early
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. But it's over seven years. It's almost eight years.
Speaker 1: They say documentaries take a long time. I thought it
Speaker 1: was gonna take like maybe two or three years when
Speaker 1: I was starting, but the double whammy of the pandemic
Speaker 1: and the fact that I basically had to take edit
Speaker 1: jobs just keep the lights on. I'm not rich, and
Speaker 1: this money was coming from mostly me. We had a
Speaker 1: couple of donors from wealthy friends because we set up
Speaker 1: a film collaborative and one of the things it offers
Speaker 1: to sponsor a film for finance. So theiry nonprofit. The
Speaker 1: Film Collaborative is a nonprofit. So what this person with
Speaker 1: money would do was they would give money to the
Speaker 1: Film Collaborative for my movie. The film Collaborative has to
Speaker 1: approve it first, because there's this whole thing where they
Speaker 1: have to make sure it's for real. They have to
Speaker 1: make sure it's a worthy project because their mission is
Speaker 1: to help make films that are worthy, He'll think. And
Speaker 1: I had to submit a lot of stuff, but I
Speaker 1: got approved. And then these people, so they would donate
Speaker 1: to the film collabors then assign ninety five percent of
Speaker 1: that money to the film, and they keep five percent
Speaker 1: for overhead for their nonprofit. In this way, these people,
Speaker 1: because it's always a crapshoot whether anything's going to pay back.
Speaker 1: Most independent films, almost all independent films do not make
Speaker 1: their money back, especially documentaries. They get a tax break
Speaker 1: because they donated to a charity and then the movie
Speaker 1: gets the money and everybody's happy. So we got some
Speaker 1: money that way. But yeah, it just took a really
Speaker 1: long time because I had my producers, Jim Fallen, Travis Stevens,
Speaker 1: who were helping, but I was the only editor on
Speaker 1: this film. I was the only director, the only writer,
Speaker 1: the only editor. Ninety something percent of the work came
Speaker 1: from me. And I don't feel bad about saying that.
Speaker 1: I think Travis and Jim would agree, but they were
Speaker 1: invaluable partners in this too. They helped me so much
Speaker 1: because the journey of this film. The last two years
Speaker 1: was the most difficult because in August of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: we had our first rough assa. I had cut a
Speaker 1: first rough assembly. I think he even told you that, Mike,
Speaker 1: And it was one hundred and ninety six minutes. This
Speaker 1: was the version of the movie with everybody's stories in it.
Speaker 1: Everybody had stories like the thing with this movie. When
Speaker 1: we talked to the s crew members and we talked
Speaker 1: to the actors and we did all this. These people
Speaker 1: have had huge careers, all of these people. The Heretic
Speaker 1: was a very early film for a lot of these
Speaker 1: people that I talked to, but they remembered it like
Speaker 1: it was yesterday. This was a shoot, and these are
Speaker 1: people who have done so many movies and TV shows
Speaker 1: you just can't even count. Like you look at their
Speaker 1: it's like it scrolls forever, you know. But they remember
Speaker 1: The Heretic and they remember John. This was a very
Speaker 1: special and particular production and shoot, and everybody remembered it
Speaker 1: like it was yesterday, Like it was unbelievable. And I
Speaker 1: got such amazing stories, like such detailed, amazing stories. And
Speaker 1: so the one hundred and ninety six minute version was
Speaker 1: the version but with all of the stories, and I
Speaker 1: tested it with a few friends and basically the response
Speaker 1: was very surprising because everybody said, at no time were
Speaker 1: they ever bored ever and one hundred ninety six million movie.
Speaker 1: I'm like, Wow, that's a that's an achievement. Wow, I
Speaker 1: must be a good editor or something. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it was like the equivalent when we got back.
Speaker 1: It's like the equivalent going to a really good restaurant
Speaker 1: and getting three or four amazing entrees and it was
Speaker 1: just too much. It was like, it's all great, but
Speaker 1: this needs to be we need to be shaping this.
Speaker 1: And I felt a real responsibility, especially after the interview
Speaker 1: with John, I felt a real responsibility to tell the
Speaker 1: story of this film and kind of the milieu around
Speaker 1: it that allowed it to happen the way it did,
Speaker 1: which was very particular and significant, and that is a
Speaker 1: lot of the crux of the movie. I think you
Speaker 1: and you and I Mike talked about this. It's like,
Speaker 1: this movie is not really about Exorcist too. It's about it.
Speaker 1: We have there's all the stories and this is like
Speaker 1: the foundation that the movie is, but it's about It's
Speaker 1: really about the insanity of making movies, how much it
Speaker 1: takes to make a movie, and this period of Hollywood
Speaker 1: that an auteur like Borman could be given the biggest
Speaker 1: budget in Warner Brothers history. Just think about that. It
Speaker 1: is the biggest budget in Warner Brother's history to make
Speaker 1: a sequel to the biggest movie in the studio's history,
Speaker 1: and the third highest grossing movie of all time. The
Speaker 1: Exorcist was iconic. It rewrote the book on horror, and
Speaker 1: John Borman did this movie, which is so different. It's
Speaker 1: not even a horror movie. It's a different genre. That
Speaker 1: kind of audacity is I don't know if I've ever
Speaker 1: seen it in any other movie. And it's not just
Speaker 1: the movie, it's the fact that it was made and
Speaker 1: made out a big studio on a huge budget, and
Speaker 1: was a big summer release. This is an art movie.
Speaker 1: This is like a surreal art movie and a sequel
Speaker 1: to The Exorcist. It didn't fit and that's why it
Speaker 1: was infamous and rejected and people were throwing stuff at
Speaker 1: the screen. The whole story of this movie is, I feel,
Speaker 1: just one of the most amazing Hollywood stories and no
Speaker 1: one had told it, which is why the last two
Speaker 1: years of cutting it down from one hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: six minutes to one hundred and eleven minutes, which is
Speaker 1: the final cut. Was just so hard. It made me
Speaker 1: a better editor, but I went way past my own limits.
Speaker 1: I think back to all the work I did on this,
Speaker 1: it's like I can't even wrap my head around it
Speaker 1: now here we are. The film played at the Venice
Speaker 1: Film Festival, which is a dream. I could only dream
Speaker 1: that it would have gotten into the Venice Film Festival.
Speaker 1: And we had a big premiere out here in La
Speaker 1: for Beyondfest, which was the North American premiere, and I'm
Speaker 1: about to next week. I'm flying to New York to
Speaker 1: be at the Brooklyn Horror Festival, which is the East
Speaker 1: Coast premiere, and bouncing around the world. I think it
Speaker 1: played in France and Norway, and it's going to play
Speaker 1: in Poland. So I'm really I feel like I can
Speaker 1: say without arrogance, so like, I really feel like this
Speaker 1: is a great movie, and I don't feel like I
Speaker 1: can completely take credit for it. So many things fell
Speaker 1: into line on this movie I had nothing to do with,
Speaker 1: and the most you could credit me with is identifying
Speaker 1: them and making sure they were in the cut. That's
Speaker 1: really it Borman to be that vulnerable and that open
Speaker 1: and talking about his life and as an artist and cinema.
Speaker 1: If you love movies, you need to hear this. I'm
Speaker 1: not just saying that to promote my movie. I feel
Speaker 1: like it's important. I feel like this is a great
Speaker 1: artist talking about one of the newest art forms in
Speaker 1: human history, and I think what he says is really valuable,
Speaker 1: and what he says about living as an artist really
Speaker 1: moved me and shook me to my core. And I
Speaker 1: think that the people who watched the film, a lot
Speaker 1: of people feel the same way. There were people crying
Speaker 1: at the end of screenings, and one of them came
Speaker 1: up to me. If you ever told me I was
Speaker 1: going to be crying at the end of a screening
Speaker 1: about the making of Extorsies too, I'd have thought you
Speaker 1: were crazy, because it's not really about that. It's about
Speaker 1: this man, this great artist, making this vision and it
Speaker 1: absolutely is just a catastrophe, but something comes out of it.
Speaker 1: It redefined how he made movies, eager to find how
Speaker 1: he viewed movies, and the movie he made after it
Speaker 1: ex caliber. I genuinely think is John Borman's finest work.
Speaker 1: And it's a work of fury. It's a work of
Speaker 1: a man who has something to prove, who made one
Speaker 1: of the most publican catastrophic studio releases in history, and
Speaker 1: he really wanted to show people that he can make
Speaker 1: movies like he made Deliverance. He called all the names
Speaker 1: in the book.
Speaker 3: It's obvious his love for film comes through with that
Speaker 3: interview and with all of the things that he faced
Speaker 3: and had to struggle through being sick for what six
Speaker 3: weeks and having to shut down production.
Speaker 1: In the middle of production, John Borman gets a high
Speaker 1: fever and a rational over his body and he's taken
Speaker 1: into the ICU. He almost dies. They gave him spinal taps.
Speaker 1: I literally saw the hospital bills at the University of
Speaker 1: Indiana where I was looking through his papers. I know, Mike,
Speaker 1: you've been there. The man almost died and they shut
Speaker 1: down this major studio production for five weeks, which was
Speaker 1: a huge deal because they were locked into a release
Speaker 1: date for reasons that are totally different and comes down
Speaker 1: to how the movie was finance, which is a whole
Speaker 1: nother story, but the way that this movie was financed,
Speaker 1: this movie literally was one of the things that led
Speaker 1: to it being legislated out of existence. That was the
Speaker 1: impact of this movie. It was like a neutron bomb.
Speaker 1: It was just like everything in its wake suffered the.
Speaker 3: Love that he had or has for film, the passion
Speaker 3: that comes out from him. But what comes out even
Speaker 3: more is the passion that you have for this project,
Speaker 3: and that passion that you have from the very first
Speaker 3: conversation you and I ever had back in either twenty
Speaker 3: seventeen or twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: It was one of those twenty seventeen Yeah, Mike, you
Speaker 1: were one of the first people told I'm just like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm gonna do this, but somehow
Speaker 1: I just feel like I need to make this movie,
Speaker 1: which is interesting because I have all these projects in
Speaker 1: front of me, the people. I'm trying to figure it out.
Speaker 1: But it's like, what do I feel that strongly about
Speaker 1: that I feel like about Extorsses too, and it's I
Speaker 1: don't know. It may take a few weeks to just
Speaker 1: meditate on it. I can't even tell you why I
Speaker 1: love Extorsses Too so much. It's not even the movie,
Speaker 1: because I understand the shoes this movie has. I don't
Speaker 1: disagree Bornman would agree that this movie doesn't work at
Speaker 1: least totally. But the audacity and the fact that they
Speaker 1: took these risks, these crazy risks with this project on
Speaker 1: such a huge scale. It's either gutsy or stupid. I
Speaker 1: prefer to look at it as gutsy. But my god,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know a lot of artists,
Speaker 1: but I know a lot of artists, and there's always
Speaker 1: these things where they're afraid to do this. They're afraid
Speaker 1: to do this project. Oh how will this get made?
Speaker 1: Oh if I do this, then no one will try
Speaker 1: to finance it or whatever. And it's just I wanted
Speaker 1: to make this movie be for those filmmakers who were
Speaker 1: just despondent and dissatisfied. I'm like, they don't know what
Speaker 1: the answer is. You got to do that thing that
Speaker 1: you need to do, and it doesn't fucking matter what
Speaker 1: you think is going to happen or not happen, whether
Speaker 1: it's gonna get bought or like you're gonna be able
Speaker 1: to raise money, that you have to do it anyway.
Speaker 1: That's what an artist is like. There are just some
Speaker 1: things that you just need to do in life, and this,
Speaker 1: for me was one of them. And I'm still trying
Speaker 1: to decompress from it. I'm not quite there. It was
Speaker 1: a lot just to get it ready for Venice, and
Speaker 1: then we had to tweak some stuff and go back
Speaker 1: in the mix before Beyond Fest and right now where
Speaker 1: I'm cutting teasers and stuff for our sales reps to
Speaker 1: pitch the distributors and stuff. But yeah, it's ongoing. I'm
Speaker 1: still busy working on it, hoping that it's over.
Speaker 3: So when did the title change from Heretics to Bormann
Speaker 3: and the Devil.
Speaker 1: I think that was probably mid twenty twenty four or
Speaker 1: late twenty twenty four. And the reason was very practical.
Speaker 1: It's because that Hugh Grant movie called Heretic, which I
Speaker 1: hear is good. I haven't seen it, but I hear
Speaker 1: it's good. It was up for a Baftaz, so it
Speaker 1: was not like a little released like people have seen
Speaker 1: this film. And basically the point was it was always
Speaker 1: Heretics colon something, Heretics brushed by the wings of Extoris Too,
Speaker 1: Heretics the brilliant Disaster of extorsis Too, or Heretics John Borman, whatever.
Speaker 1: It was always that. But changing it from Heretics did
Speaker 1: two things. One is we got away from the Hugh
Speaker 1: Grant movie at least, but in a lot of the
Speaker 1: test screenings, people who were expecting a making of movie
Speaker 1: were really thrown by the first I don't know, like
Speaker 1: thirty minutes, because the first thirty minutes of the movie
Speaker 1: really is about John and the movies he made going
Speaker 1: up to the Heretic, and so people were like, why
Speaker 1: are we seeing all this? We just want to see
Speaker 1: Exorcist too. I'm just like, Yeah, it's not about that,
Speaker 1: it's about all of this, and it really it's about
Speaker 1: Borman making it. It's not about the movie itself, it's
Speaker 1: about Borman and the journey through to make it. So
Speaker 1: when we changed it to Borman and the Devil, and
Speaker 1: we had a really long list by the way of titles,
Speaker 1: and I was not sold on Borman and the Devil
Speaker 1: for a really long time. I was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: sounds like a like people are telling me to do
Speaker 1: The Devil and John Borman, and that sounded too much
Speaker 1: like The Devil and Daniel Webster. And I was just like,
Speaker 1: which is a great movie, by the way, but it
Speaker 1: has no bearing, just no similarity between this movie and
Speaker 1: that movie. And I just liked Borman and the devil.
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, and I started kicking it around.
Speaker 1: And then when we showed it to a test audience
Speaker 1: with that title, we immediately lost all of the snotty
Speaker 1: notes from people about like why it's my bad exorsis fair,
Speaker 1: and we lost all of them simply because we changed
Speaker 1: the title. And I was like, that was nice, that's good.
Speaker 1: I thought it was gonna have to do some kind
Speaker 1: of editing jiu jitsu because we were trying to figure out, like, oh,
Speaker 1: so do we do it so that we just start
Speaker 1: with Harry taking then we Pepper ran his stuff and
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, that doesn't make any sense and it's
Speaker 1: going to be confusing, and yeah, we trust me. We
Speaker 1: tried every sort of edit. We tried to address all
Speaker 1: of the significant notes, which was like the notes that
Speaker 1: we would get more than once or twice, and it
Speaker 1: was just a lot. It was a lot of tests
Speaker 1: and we tested it. I got probably sixteen or seventeen
Speaker 1: times over those two years, different cuts everything from the
Speaker 1: first one hundred ninety six minute cut. I think the
Speaker 1: lowest cut we did was one hundred and two minutes,
Speaker 1: and it was just it was a lot of taking
Speaker 1: stuff out putting stuff back, condensing stuff, re arranging stuff,
Speaker 1: changing the order of stuff. It's surprising, though, the vast
Speaker 1: majority of the movie that's in there was pretty much
Speaker 1: in there in the first cut. Like the sections, they
Speaker 1: were all longer, like we have a section on Zardas
Speaker 1: and your first cut was like four minutes or something,
Speaker 1: and it was just like, there's no way you can
Speaker 1: do that in this movie. Four minutes is a very
Speaker 1: long time, even if it's something if I love Zardaes
Speaker 1: and I love Zardas, but I think the final version,
Speaker 1: I think it's like a couple of minutes instead goes
Speaker 1: through that whole thing. And Rose Portillo, who plays the
Speaker 1: actress who burns up in the first scene of Exorcist Too,
Speaker 1: has a very funny story. But in the first cut
Speaker 1: she had I think three stories, and of course they
Speaker 1: were all in there. They were like, okay, which of
Speaker 1: these three stories, and we kept the one where she
Speaker 1: was freaking out because she was set on fire. It's
Speaker 1: a very funny scene. She was protected. I didn't intentionally
Speaker 1: set her on fire in a bad way, but it
Speaker 1: was still a pretty dangerous stunt.
Speaker 3: It must have been pretty painful to go from that
Speaker 3: one hundred and ninety some minute cut down to what
Speaker 3: you have. What were some of the most painful things
Speaker 3: that you had to lose.
Speaker 1: The most painful thing I had to lose was there
Speaker 1: was a small section with Linda Blair talking about her
Speaker 1: reviews for The Heretic, and this happened after the film
Speaker 1: had come out, and we took it out because basically
Speaker 1: it did stop the movie at a dead fault. The
Speaker 1: movie was going and going, and then the scene comes up,
Speaker 1: and it's very serious because these reviews, the things that
Speaker 1: I highlight were basically talking about her body, like she's fat,
Speaker 1: she's unattractive or whatever. There were six or seven of these,
Speaker 1: like really repellent, not I'm sorry, she was seventeen, she
Speaker 1: was a minor. There is no justification for any of
Speaker 1: that shit. And all of those critics, really I had
Speaker 1: them big bold in the lower third. I was like,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure, but because some of them are not
Speaker 1: around anymore, but I'm like, fuck these people, this is
Speaker 1: not a fucking review. You are mocking a seventeen year
Speaker 1: old actor's appearance, and if you look at her in
Speaker 1: the film, she's radiant. I don't know what they're talking about.
Speaker 1: She has a little bit of like baby fat in
Speaker 1: her face, but it's ridiculous and she had to deal
Speaker 1: with that along with everything else. She had to deal
Speaker 1: with that. And basically it was her saying people were
Speaker 1: very mean and we just see these reviews come up
Speaker 1: on the screen, no music, it's dead silent, like just
Speaker 1: the reviews like she's ugly, she has chipmunk fat, whatever.
Speaker 1: And then I cut back to Lynna and she goes
Speaker 1: and that was my life at seventeen, and it was
Speaker 1: really powerful, and every single test audiance, all of the
Speaker 1: women in the testandians were like, it was like very powerful.
Speaker 1: And it absolutely killed me to cut that because it
Speaker 1: was like, film criticism is really important, and film critics
Speaker 1: right now are in a lot of trouble and that sucks.
Speaker 1: But I think there was a time in the seventies
Speaker 1: where they were almost all straight, almost all white, almost
Speaker 1: all male, and you know what, a lot of them
Speaker 1: were not terribly kind people. It feels did not know
Speaker 1: these people personally, but just reading their reviews, I don't
Speaker 1: know how you can love cinema and take delight in
Speaker 1: ripping apart in a movie. You know, and there are
Speaker 1: a lot of movies I dislike, but I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: run around and be like that person. Can'tna thank God,
Speaker 1: because those guys, those people who do that, I doubt
Speaker 1: if any one of them did a one fucking thing
Speaker 1: in their life to put themselves out there as much
Speaker 1: as any of those people who made that movie. And
Speaker 1: that killed me. And then there were a few other things.
Speaker 1: I hit a little bit where, you know, because Ross
Speaker 1: po Palenberg, the man that the writer that John brought
Speaker 1: onto the project, and John worked on an adaptation of
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings in nineteen seventy one or nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy and condensing all three books into one four hour
Speaker 1: script is gonna be a four hour movie with an intermission.
Speaker 1: And what Boorman wanted to do was to get around
Speaker 1: the Hobbit thing. He wanted to pass like nine or
Speaker 1: ten year old boys, put fake beards on them, dubbed
Speaker 1: them with male adult voices and that would be the Hobbits,
Speaker 1: and put hair on their feet and hands. And even
Speaker 1: Bormann telling the story, starts laughing because he's this wouldn't
Speaker 1: have word in a calamity, but that was the idea.
Speaker 1: And so that's a very funny moment. But it just
Speaker 1: we just had to lose it because the whole thing
Speaker 1: about cutting down this movie to its length, which is
Speaker 1: I think the right length. It's just a little under
Speaker 1: two hours, so it's not like it's a short The
Speaker 1: last section of this movie is very moving, and it's
Speaker 1: bornman talking about his life and Bornman talking about art,
Speaker 1: and he's talking about it somewhat in the past, tense,
Speaker 1: and it moves me a lot when I see it.
Speaker 1: Louis Fletcher also has a bit at the end where
Speaker 1: she talks about how life is like one big spaghetti dinner.
Speaker 1: There's good and bad and it moves everybody. And the
Speaker 1: idea in cutting it down is I needed the audience
Speaker 1: to not be exhausted by the time all of this happened,
Speaker 1: so when they're watching it, they're still engaged and moved
Speaker 1: and they're not just exhausted and want to go home.
Speaker 1: And it's very moving, but I wanted to end it.
Speaker 1: Just took a lot to get to that point. You
Speaker 1: need to do a lot of streamlining and making sure
Speaker 1: things move. Most of my editorial background, or at least
Speaker 1: most of the bills that I've been paying for the
Speaker 1: last twenty years, have come from short form which is
Speaker 1: like trailers and promos and commercials and like stuff that
Speaker 1: aren't features like. So that is a very specific kind
Speaker 1: of editing at very varsity level, and it's very hard
Speaker 1: to do well, which I'm very happy to say that
Speaker 1: is how I got paid these years. I basically wanted
Speaker 1: to cut this movie not like a commercial, not cut
Speaker 1: that fast, but it had to move, and because there's
Speaker 1: just so much in it, it has to move quickly.
Speaker 1: And the editing style that I used in this film
Speaker 1: I think I couldn't have done had I not had
Speaker 1: all that experience and had the experience with Brian Fuller
Speaker 1: on Queer for Fear for Shutter, which I was lead
Speaker 1: editor on, and that was like a two plus year
Speaker 1: project that I was working with him on to make
Speaker 1: those episodes, and that made me a better editor. So
Speaker 1: it was really all about not exhausting the audience and
Speaker 1: keeping the pace up. You can think it's not some
Speaker 1: kind of a what do they call Max Hedroom blip vert.
Speaker 1: I know I'm dating myself by saying Max Hedgroom nobody knows.
Speaker 1: Does anybody know what Max Hendrim was? Yeah? You do,
Speaker 1: we do, but it is whatever. It's the eighties. It
Speaker 1: was actually a really cool show. I have the DVDs
Speaker 1: in the other room. It's not some kind of like
Speaker 1: add cut home, Miss, but it had to move. I
Speaker 1: have a thing about documentaries that are little naval gayzy.
Speaker 1: I don't like them, and I find that a lot
Speaker 1: of them are not all but too many, and I
Speaker 1: feel like you gotta entertain the audience. You got to
Speaker 1: take them on a ride.
Speaker 3: So Borman was the first person you interviewed for this one.
Speaker 3: Who was the last person?
Speaker 1: The last person was Mike Flanagan. We shot Mike Flanagan
Speaker 1: in January of this year of twenty twenty five. He
Speaker 1: was a very late addition because he saw cut of
Speaker 1: the film without him. Of course, he really loved it
Speaker 1: at the time. I think he still is. I don't
Speaker 1: know the status of this project, but he had been
Speaker 1: hired by Blumhouse to do the next Exorcist sequel. I
Speaker 1: know that it's been on and off, so I don't
Speaker 1: know where we're at with that. I do know that
Speaker 1: they should do it because I think he is ideal
Speaker 1: for this and I think he understands it so well.
Speaker 1: In the conversation I had with him, I heard the
Speaker 1: basic just the basic hitch of the plot of this sequel,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I would see that. Now, Please
Speaker 1: let me see that now. I want to see that.
Speaker 1: He had an appreciation of Exorcist too, similar to mine,
Speaker 1: which is that it doesn't work completely, but it's really cool.
Speaker 1: There's some stuff in it that's really cool, and it's
Speaker 1: audacious and it's different, and I would actually say it's
Speaker 1: never boring. That movie is just bonkers, but it's visually
Speaker 1: so stunning, and the music is so insane by anyone Morriconey,
Speaker 1: the soundtrack is phenomenal. You just have to divorce yourself
Speaker 1: from thinking that it's actually a sequel to The Exorcist,
Speaker 1: which is hard because they keep referring to it, including
Speaker 1: like a beyond the grave performance from Max Foncito's father,
Speaker 1: Maren and Sharon, the caretakers in In and of course Linda,
Speaker 1: and it's all about what happened in that room, and
Speaker 1: it's just if he's not the first movie what happened
Speaker 1: in that room, but then we have to get there.
Speaker 1: And Richard Burton plays the priest and he's his own thing,
Speaker 1: he's in his own movie in this movie. I actually
Speaker 1: personally think that he's probably the biggest liability in the film. Like,
Speaker 1: if there's something that doesn't work in this film, that's
Speaker 1: And I like Richard Burton a lot. I think he's
Speaker 1: a great actor, but there's a disconnect here that I
Speaker 1: don't know if the movie can get past.
Speaker 3: Yeah, your critiques of his acting are really spot on
Speaker 3: with some of the line deliveries that he gives.
Speaker 1: And I also heard all the stories. There's a whole
Speaker 1: section in the documentary about like Burton and how problematic
Speaker 1: he was.
Speaker 3: Well, it's funny because there's that whole discussion I believe
Speaker 3: of the rehearsals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the read through.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And like just over the last few weeks, I've
Speaker 3: heard about several other British actors that just kind of
Speaker 3: refuse to do any sort of read through his rehearsals
Speaker 3: or anything.
Speaker 1: And it's just like Brenton didn't refuse. He just has
Speaker 1: have aggressively pranked them all what he would do basically,
Speaker 1: and this is revealed in the film. Louise Fletcher tells
Speaker 1: this story is he basically kept running to the bathroom
Speaker 1: and then say it was because his stomach was always
Speaker 1: bad when he traveled or something. So he's bolt up
Speaker 1: and run to the bathroom, and he started late, and
Speaker 1: he finished without him. And then Louise Fletcher learned years
Speaker 1: later that he pulls this every time they do a
Speaker 1: read through because he just hates he resents the fact
Speaker 1: that he has to be there so much. My own
Speaker 1: personal view is that if you're going to get paid
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: to be in the sequel to The Exorcist, the least
Speaker 1: you can do is sit your ass down and read
Speaker 1: the lines. But you know, I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel like the ghost of Richard
Speaker 1: Burton's going to just snap me at some point. I
Speaker 1: do love Richard Burton. That he was, It just was
Speaker 1: not a He was not a really good contributor to
Speaker 1: this film, and I think the film suffers as a result.
Speaker 3: So after all of that hard work that you put
Speaker 3: into it, when was the first time you saw with
Speaker 3: the proper audience? Was that actually at Venice?
Speaker 1: No? That was Venice?
Speaker 3: Yeah, what was that experience like for you?
Speaker 1: Being at the Venice Film Festival and being a film
Speaker 1: that was selected. Venice is a top five festival. Venics
Speaker 1: is up there with Can. It's up there with Sun Dance,
Speaker 1: It's up with Toronto, Berlin till You're Ride. Those are
Speaker 1: like you premiere at one of these festivals. It's like
Speaker 1: getting into Harvard. It's like it's really hard to get
Speaker 1: into one of these festivals. I don't know what percentage,
Speaker 1: it's just it's extremely low. Sometimes producers no programmers. My
Speaker 1: producer Travis Stevens has had several movies running around, and
Speaker 1: he knew a programmer at Toronto, but we knew nobody
Speaker 1: at Venice, and we submitted for Venice and I did
Speaker 1: not think we had chance in hell. And that's not
Speaker 1: to put me or the movie down. It's just the
Speaker 1: fact that after you're at a certain quality level, it
Speaker 1: really just depends on whoever's watching it. And they only
Speaker 1: have a few slots. Our lineup was in the Venice
Speaker 1: Classic slot, which is basically movies about movies, So they
Speaker 1: have I don't know how many dozens and dozens of
Speaker 1: movies about movies for us to get one of the
Speaker 1: I think the six slots or whatever it was is Okay,
Speaker 1: that's a lot. And I think only four of them
Speaker 1: were American and then there were a few from other countries.
Speaker 1: I didn't see many films in Venice, so to get
Speaker 1: into Venice was tremendous. So we get there. All of
Speaker 1: the Venice Classics titles premiere at the end of the
Speaker 1: festival because they get it. I think they just do
Speaker 1: all the other premieres, the big movies, The with Julia
Speaker 1: Roberts and Jake kell A, George Clooney and Smashing Machine
Speaker 1: with the Rock These are all big, splashy things. So
Speaker 1: we premiered on I think the second to last day
Speaker 1: of the festival, and it was a sold out show.
Speaker 1: I think the theater had three hundred something seats and
Speaker 1: I go out there and maybe two thirds to three
Speaker 1: quarters of the seats are filled and sold out. But
Speaker 1: it's so late in the festival that only the diehards
Speaker 1: are there. And I could look at the audience and
Speaker 1: there was this exhaustion and these people had obviously seen
Speaker 1: twenty seven movies in the last week and they're here
Speaker 1: for another way. But the response was really good. It
Speaker 1: was a little bit muted, but like people laughed and
Speaker 1: people were with it, and a lot of people came
Speaker 1: up to me after and that was really nice. But
Speaker 1: the beyond Fest screening in La We sold out the
Speaker 1: Arrow in Santa Monica, which is a beautiful historic theater.
Speaker 1: If you ever saw Danny Darko the interior of the theater,
Speaker 1: that was the Arrow, and to have that screening. It
Speaker 1: was programmed with a double feature of Exorcist to the Heretics,
Speaker 1: so our doc came first. Then there was a Q
Speaker 1: and A. Then they screened a thirty five millimeter print,
Speaker 1: Martin Scorsese's thirty five milimeter print. Because Martin Scorsese loves
Speaker 1: Exorcist to the Heretic. I'm dying for him to see
Speaker 1: my movie. If anybody knows how to get to him,
Speaker 1: please let me know. I think you'd really like it.
Speaker 1: But that crowd laughing all through it like reacting. There
Speaker 1: were people in tears at the end. It was the
Speaker 1: kind of reaction that every filmmaker just dreams of. And
Speaker 1: for me to get it after having worked in this
Speaker 1: industry for decades as editor and all the stuff, and
Speaker 1: just seeing a lot of my friends have movies at
Speaker 1: sun Dance and have movies at south By and have
Speaker 1: big whatever, and they have agents and little I'm just
Speaker 1: doing my thing, and I'm editing for me to be
Speaker 1: suddenly in that position is really it's crazy, and I
Speaker 1: am so grateful. I'm so grateful that and I'm grateful
Speaker 1: not only to the people who love the film. I'm
Speaker 1: grateful just for the people who helped me make it
Speaker 1: and the people in it. There was just so much
Speaker 1: of this film that was not in my control. It
Speaker 1: just happened or people were just they chose to be
Speaker 1: open and vulnerable and share things that it was a gift.
Speaker 1: It's just a gift. And it's funny, like I was
Speaker 1: working with Brian Fuller. Of course, Brian Fuller is huge
Speaker 1: the Hannibals show. He has this movie dust Bunny, which
Speaker 1: is really great, and I worked for him for Queer
Speaker 1: for Fear for two and a half years, and suddenly
Speaker 1: our movies are going to the same festivals all over
Speaker 1: the place and it's crazy like Brooklyn Horror Fest like
Speaker 1: next week, and I think Dust Bunny is playing the
Speaker 1: day after and went to tell Your Righte Horror and
Speaker 1: we're both playing in Ireland and it's like crazy, like
Speaker 1: everywhere that Borman and the Devil's playing, Dust Bunny seems
Speaker 1: to be playing, and Brian's like texting me like we're
Speaker 1: festival buddies. And I'm just like, I mean, Brian's a friend,
Speaker 1: but it's wow, I'm like up here now, that's like
Speaker 1: crazy to me, And it's a weird mind shift. And
Speaker 1: I would be lying if I told you I completely
Speaker 1: have processed it. I haven't. I'm still in a very
Speaker 1: weird and somewhat burnt out but very vulnerable place with
Speaker 1: regard to all of this, because I was like everybody, like,
Speaker 1: I'm getting emails from Edgar Wright and Sean Baker about
Speaker 1: how much they love this movie and yet, to be
Speaker 1: completely honest, I'm gonna pay my bills in six months,
Speaker 1: like every filmmaker. But that's the way it is. You
Speaker 1: get a gig and then on that and whatever. But
Speaker 1: I don't know what's next. I have projects I can
Speaker 1: be pitching and trying to put stuff together, but who knows.
Speaker 1: It's a weird time in the entertainment industry. That's a
Speaker 1: whole other podcast we can to talk about. But I
Speaker 1: know an awful lot of people who haven't worked for
Speaker 1: a while or who have not worked enough, mostly since
Speaker 1: the strikes. But it's really it's not a product of
Speaker 1: the strikes. The strikes just precipitated it. It's because the
Speaker 1: streamers stopped growing with that exponential growth, and every week
Speaker 1: saw a ceiling. And once you see a ceiling to
Speaker 1: these products, it's okay, how much can we spend? And
Speaker 1: I don't think any of the big media companies expected
Speaker 1: it to hit it ceiling at this point or as
Speaker 1: low as it was. They all had projections that it
Speaker 1: was because before the strikes, it was like everything was
Speaker 1: in production. Everybody was working because they were trying to
Speaker 1: refill their coffers and they were trying to get as
Speaker 1: much shot as possible, get as much written as possible.
Speaker 1: And the industry hasn't recovered, and it's very scary. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of very gronted people who find themselves,
Speaker 1: like after multi decade careers, unable to pay the bills,
Speaker 1: which is not a place that anybody in that world
Speaker 1: thought they'd ever be. Because when you're a key grip
Speaker 1: or when you're a second as assistant camera, these are
Speaker 1: very specialized fields, and these are very specialized jobs. They
Speaker 1: don't really translate a lot to a lot of other things,
Speaker 1: and they've spent years and years getting to their point,
Speaker 1: getting to their stature, and they make decent money. All
Speaker 1: of these below the line people, including me, Me along
Speaker 1: with everybody in the entertainment industries like looking, okay is
Speaker 1: production and to come back. It's starting to, but we're
Speaker 1: still nowhere near the point we were before the strikes.
Speaker 3: We talked a little bit about your first interview in
Speaker 3: your last interview, who was the toughest one to get.
Speaker 1: I'm really fortunate because after the first four interviews, which
Speaker 1: was Borman, Rospo, Linda, and Louise, really the four biggies,
Speaker 1: I cut a sizzle reel for the whole project. It
Speaker 1: was like eight minutes, and when I would show people
Speaker 1: that all those people were in it, there were almost
Speaker 1: no nos, especially with the crew. The crew were like,
Speaker 1: I don't even think I had to show them this thing.
Speaker 1: It made it like, Okay, you're for real. There's John, Oh,
Speaker 1: there's Louise. Oh there's Linda, Oh there's Rospo. Whatever. So
Speaker 1: who was the most difficult to get? Honestly, it was
Speaker 1: current Joe Dante was difficult to get, but that was
Speaker 1: only because we couldn't find a way to get to him.
Speaker 1: We tried through social media, and we tried through this,
Speaker 1: or we tried through that, and the way that we
Speaker 1: finally got to him was my downstairs neighbor. Ed Herrera,
Speaker 1: who ended up shooting the last two interviews, knows producer
Speaker 1: John Davidson, the legendary producer of Airplane and RoboCop and
Speaker 1: a lot of other movies, and he and Dante are
Speaker 1: friends and they would screen stuff because they're total filming.
Speaker 1: And so Ed saw a cut of because Dante was
Speaker 1: a later I forget when it was, but he was
Speaker 1: one of the later ones. I want to say he
Speaker 1: was like twenty twenty four and Ed saw a cut.
Speaker 1: I think he was in a test audience and he
Speaker 1: was just like, Joe Dante should be in this. I'm like, dude,
Speaker 1: I would love Joe Dante to be in it, because
Speaker 1: he literally went into Film Comment eighties and said Exorcist too.
Speaker 1: The Heretic is actually a good movie and it should
Speaker 1: be taken seriously. The only two filmmakers who did that
Speaker 1: it was Scorsese and Joe Dante. And we tried for
Speaker 1: Scorsese and he was impossible to get, which was a
Speaker 1: bummer because I really really wanted Martin Scorsese to be
Speaker 1: in this. Who wouldn't You're doing the documentary, Why would
Speaker 1: you not want Martin Scorsese, especially if it's a movie
Speaker 1: he has said, he has gone on record and said
Speaker 1: this is underrated so much so he has a print
Speaker 1: of it. But Joe Dante, we finally did get to him,
Speaker 1: and he was really sweet and he basically let us
Speaker 1: shoot him for a few hours and we got some
Speaker 1: fantastic lines from him, which really helped the bits because
Speaker 1: that was the point. It was. Later we only had
Speaker 1: carn Kusama as a filmmaker, and it was just like,
Speaker 1: we need more filmmakers. We need more like established name filmmakers.
Speaker 1: And once we got Joe and then we got Mike
Speaker 1: and and that feels right, that's okay, We're good on
Speaker 1: the filmmaker justifying what we're doing kind of moment. And
Speaker 1: we had it like the same way we had a
Speaker 1: trio of critics. We had a Greek chorus of critics
Speaker 1: with Bilga Ibiri of New York Magazine, Simon Abrams, and
Speaker 1: Stephanie Zacharic of Time, and they walk us through the
Speaker 1: beginning part with the Hollywood New Wave and how Extorsist
Speaker 1: Too is more like a Hollywood New Wave movie than
Speaker 1: the sequel. One of the most annoying criticism of Exorcists too.
Speaker 1: And the one I want my documentary to upend the
Speaker 1: most is people say that it was a cash grab.
Speaker 1: A lot of the critics at the time, we're just like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a cash in the studio made them do this cashion.
Speaker 1: Exorcist to the hairtic is literally I feel the opposite
Speaker 1: of a They could have so easily John Kelly and
Speaker 1: Ted Ashley and Warner Bros. Easily could have made a
Speaker 1: movie without Linna Blair, with another possessed kid, or even
Speaker 1: with Lenna Blair she gets possessed again, or somebody else
Speaker 1: gets whatever. It would have been so easy to do that,
Speaker 1: and they very purposefully and consciously went as far astray
Speaker 1: from that as possible. They wanted to do a much
Speaker 1: bigger thing. They wanted to do a prestige movie. The
Speaker 1: Exorcist was nominated for Best Picture. They wanted Exorcist the
Speaker 1: Heretics to be nominated for Best Picture. That was the mentality, like,
Speaker 1: they wanted to make something great. So it's like, all
Speaker 1: the people who like piss on this movie and say
Speaker 1: it's a cash grab, you can say it's awful, like whatever.
Speaker 1: If you just want a movie that's like the Extorcist.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna like this movie ever. It's absolutely the
Speaker 1: opposite of all of it, but as a piece of art,
Speaker 1: which I think cinema is watching it on its own terms,
Speaker 1: in its own logic and its own weird dream logic
Speaker 1: that is arched and heightened and sometimes laughable a little bit,
Speaker 1: but it's very consistent. I think it's a worthy It's
Speaker 1: a worthy film for anybody who loves cinema, and especially
Speaker 1: anybody who wants to learn about Hollywood in the seventies.
Speaker 3: When we originally were talking about things, that was how
Speaker 3: you're really framing stuff, especially this whole idea of like
Speaker 3: the end of au tour cinema and that weird slash
Speaker 3: magical time in Hollywood where all of these directors were
Speaker 3: able to make these passion projects for better or for worse.
Speaker 1: Mostly for better, like even the ones that tank. Extracist
Speaker 1: two was one of the first ones that went down.
Speaker 1: Before that, I think it was just at long Last
Speaker 1: Love Bogdanovich's musical, which you can watch it. It has
Speaker 1: its moments. I know a lot of like my friend
Speaker 1: the filmmaker Jim Fall who did the Lizene MacGuire movie,
Speaker 1: and a lot of other movies Loves at Long Last Love.
Speaker 1: He demanded that I rewatch it because I was like,
Speaker 1: I couldn't get through it, and I rewatched it. I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's good, but like the Missouri Breaks, Arthur Penn's movie, Sorcerer,
Speaker 1: Friedkin's movie, Sorcerer costs way more than Exorcists two and
Speaker 1: grossed way less than Extorsist Too. And yet everybody thinks
Speaker 1: Exorcists Too is the biggest bomb in existence. No, actually,
Speaker 1: Sorcerer lost. Everybody will lot more money than Exorcists Too. Ever,
Speaker 1: did nineteen forty one Spieldberg's movie Again not a huge
Speaker 1: financial bomb, and I think it broke even but certainly
Speaker 1: it's considered one. And it led all the way to
Speaker 1: Heaven's Gate. And Heaven's Gate was the bomb of all bombs.
Speaker 1: It was the mother of all bombs because it was
Speaker 1: a bomb that literally destroyed a studio like United Artists
Speaker 1: was literally basically destroyed by this film. The name still stood,
Speaker 1: but all of the people who had anything to do
Speaker 1: with it to make it United Artists left and had
Speaker 1: to leave or they were fired. It's been a while
Speaker 1: since I've read Final Cut, the Stephen Bach book about
Speaker 1: the May of heavens Gate. It's a great book, but
Speaker 1: basically United Artists after Heaven's Gate was a different thing.
Speaker 1: It was not under Arthur Krim and all those guys
Speaker 1: and United Artists like the Rocky just so many movies
Speaker 1: and so many great films, and that one movie just
Speaker 1: destroyed it, like utterly destroyed it. And so all of
Speaker 1: the studios from basically from then on were like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that whole thing's done, and that it was the one
Speaker 1: two punch of that. And years before it Star Wars,
Speaker 1: which really changed everything. Star Wars which literally came out
Speaker 1: three weeks before Extorsist two did, and we're battling for
Speaker 1: the same box office money. It's just such an important time.
Speaker 1: The Hollywood New Wave, which started basically in nineteen to
Speaker 1: sixty seven ish with Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie and Clyde
Speaker 1: was the thing that kind of kicked it off. The
Speaker 1: Graduate came out, I think the same year. There's a
Speaker 1: wonderful book by Mark Harris called Pictures of a Revolution.
Speaker 1: If you're interested in cinema, you need to read it. Basically,
Speaker 1: all it does is it takes the five Best Picture
Speaker 1: nominees from nineteen sixty seven, which were I'm going to
Speaker 1: fuck this up, but I'm going to try. It was
Speaker 1: The Graduate, Bunny Clyde, then The Head of the Night,
Speaker 1: Guess Who's Send Me There? And Doctor Doolittle, And basically
Speaker 1: it's a deep dive on all five of those movies
Speaker 1: in the heat of the night. I ended up winning.
Speaker 1: But it's basically like how there was this radical shift
Speaker 1: because the number one movie of nineteen sixty seven it's
Speaker 1: The Graduate. Now, The Graduate's a great movie. We can
Speaker 1: all look at it and me like, oh, it's a great movie.
Speaker 1: But it's like, watch that movie that is not like
Speaker 1: a mainstream quote unquote movie that is a very edgy,
Speaker 1: subversive whoa what is this movie? And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that I so wanted to do this documentary, it's like,
Speaker 1: that's what we need now. I want to see movies
Speaker 1: that are interesting. I was interviewed for The Guardian. There's
Speaker 1: a piece up on the Guardian on this whole thing,
Speaker 1: and I told the guy, I was just like, there
Speaker 1: are ways to look at any piece of art, and
Speaker 1: cinema is art, so you can either see is it
Speaker 1: good in the sense, does it do the things that
Speaker 1: it sets out to do in the way it sets
Speaker 1: out to them, and is it interesting? Is it trying
Speaker 1: to do things different or is it subverting your expectations?
Speaker 1: Is it doing something interesting different? Is it taking a
Speaker 1: different point of view? Exorcist to the Heretic does not
Speaker 1: succeed as being quote unquote good under this definition, but
Speaker 1: it is so interesting. And to me where I'm at
Speaker 1: with cinema and where I think I've been at, it's
Speaker 1: like it is so much more important for a movie
Speaker 1: to be interesting than it is to be good. I
Speaker 1: just last week saw a film that's an Oscar bait
Speaker 1: film out here in la in the theater, and it
Speaker 1: was good, but it was really not interesting. I never
Speaker 1: need to see this movie again. I can see that
Speaker 1: it's going to get good reviews, or it did get
Speaker 1: good reviews. It's perfectly effective at what it's trying to do,
Speaker 1: but there's nothing new. We're interesting, it's not taking any
Speaker 1: different anything like. It was exactly what one would expect
Speaker 1: from the thing. And I don't want to see any
Speaker 1: movies like that anymore. I just don't. You can take
Speaker 1: ten movies that are fine shoot for a base hit,
Speaker 1: I want to see the one that tries to swim
Speaker 1: for the Grand Slam, and I don't even care if
Speaker 1: it connects or not. I want to see that swing.
Speaker 1: That's what I feel is interesting and valuable about cinema
Speaker 1: to me, and I think there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who have just been anesthetized over the last ten
Speaker 1: years with these extremely similar like Marvel movies. Now I
Speaker 1: don't want to dump on Marvel. I actually don't dislike
Speaker 1: Marvel movies, but they are very formula. They all do
Speaker 1: follow a pattern, and after you've seen like twenty seven
Speaker 1: of these, it's just, dude, like, maybe something different. Maybe
Speaker 1: go to Criterion Channel, which is the best streaming nerves
Speaker 1: service in the world. By the way, if you don't
Speaker 1: have it and you love movies, you're missing out. Watch
Speaker 1: a brand to Palmer movie. Watch Three Women by Robert Altman.
Speaker 1: That's a logic movie that like, you can't even explain
Speaker 1: what that is. It's amazing. There's so many amazing movies
Speaker 1: and they're so entertaining, and it makes me sad when
Speaker 1: I talked to especially younger people who are like, they
Speaker 1: don't know that there's this whole universe of fantastically amazing
Speaker 1: films that some of them don't work, but they will
Speaker 1: broaden your mind. Like I've always argued, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: lose everybody that I'm talking to when I say this,
Speaker 1: but south Land Tails is a great film. It doesn't work,
Speaker 1: It really doesn't work. There's so many problems with it.
Speaker 1: But I love Southland Tails because it is just one
Speaker 1: scene with a big swing, after one scene with a
Speaker 1: big swing, after one scene with a big swing, and
Speaker 1: half of them don't work. But at no point in
Speaker 1: that movie was I not on the edge of my
Speaker 1: seat won and where that hell this was going. There's
Speaker 1: so many movies like that. They're just dismissed, and yet
Speaker 1: those are the movies that I keep coming back to
Speaker 1: for inspiration. And again, they don't have to be good,
Speaker 1: but they have something. They tried something. That's what the
Speaker 1: documentary is about. That's what I believe. I want more
Speaker 1: people to try more stuff, not just in art, but
Speaker 1: in their lives. We're all hemmed in by like fear
Speaker 1: of what will happen, or what's practical or what's not practical,
Speaker 1: and it's just I think so many people. I know,
Speaker 1: I've got to get a little more bold. So much
Speaker 1: of our life is about dealing with fear its I
Speaker 1: don't feel like you can give into it, and once
Speaker 1: you do, it's what's the point. Like you can make
Speaker 1: the decision right now to do that artistic project that
Speaker 1: you want to do right now. You can make that decision,
Speaker 1: and you know what, it doesn't have to be good,
Speaker 1: but it has to be sincere, and it has to
Speaker 1: have your energy, and it has to be the thing
Speaker 1: that you want to make, you need to make, And
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if people laugh at it. It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if the critics don't like it or whatever, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. We're here. That's what this is about. Make
Speaker 1: the thing that you most want to make. And honestly,
Speaker 1: I wish I could sometimes follow my own advice, like
Speaker 1: Lord knows, like I could have given this speech to
Speaker 1: twenty four year old me and I would have been like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but a lot of excuses, and it took me, I
Speaker 1: feel too long to get to that place. And I
Speaker 1: know a lot of people that I know who are
Speaker 1: artists aren't in that place now, and they're in their
Speaker 1: like fifties and sixties. I'm just like, dude, what's left?
Speaker 1: What do you have to lose? Just do it? Do
Speaker 1: that thing, Write that script, write that crazy script, do
Speaker 1: that low budget movie or no budget movie, like you
Speaker 1: can do a no budget movie. Now, write the book,
Speaker 1: do the graphic novel, write the piece of music. Whatever
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. The Internet gives us eternal distribution if you
Speaker 1: want that. You're an example of this. You started this podcast.
Speaker 1: This is something you wanted to do and you felt
Speaker 1: it strongly. You've been at this for years. You have
Speaker 1: been doing amazing work looking at these movies that nobody
Speaker 1: except for film there it's like me know about and
Speaker 1: people listen. It's like you. You can't predict what this
Speaker 1: is going to do or not do.
Speaker 3: David, is there good place for people to keep up
Speaker 3: with you in this movie so they can see it
Speaker 3: when it comes to a theater near the theater near them?
Speaker 1: I would probably say Instagram at this point. I'm still
Speaker 1: on Facebook. You can do Facebook. I think Instagram is
Speaker 1: probably the best way. And I'm just at David Kittridge.
Speaker 1: It's my name. Yeah, I'm also in Blue Sky for
Speaker 1: those I think there are a few, and I believe
Speaker 1: that's my name too, But yet it's Instagram as I
Speaker 1: think where we're most regularly posting.
Speaker 3: I have loved seeing all of these pictures coming out
Speaker 3: of the different you know, festivals and events and everything.
Speaker 3: It's been wonderful. So I'm just kind of here from
Speaker 3: Afar looking at this and just enjoying the whole thing
Speaker 3: because you so deserve this great ride.
Speaker 1: Thank you well, and I want to thank you because
Speaker 1: you were a huge help making this movie. I think
Speaker 1: you were actually the person who helped me get in
Speaker 1: touch with Louise if I remember correctly, That was you,
Speaker 1: And was there anybody else. I don't think it was
Speaker 1: anybody else.
Speaker 4: It could have been, though, Yeah, because I had also
Speaker 4: talked with that guy who wrote the book on Borman,
Speaker 4: but I don't think I gave his conf his information.
Speaker 1: Brian Hoyle, that's right, Brian Hoyle.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I think you might have hooked me up
Speaker 3: with Rospo Pallenberg.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: It was an interesting guy for sure, and he helped
Speaker 3: me with very interesting Doune commentary because he wrote a
Speaker 3: draft of Dune.
Speaker 1: He did very early on, but that was because he
Speaker 1: worked for Dina d Laurentis that whole time, and he
Speaker 1: took time off to work on the Heretic and then
Speaker 1: he went back to Dina de Lorencez after, I think,
Speaker 1: but he was definitely with Dina de Lorenziz for several
Speaker 1: years before he was just the main like I don't
Speaker 1: know what his title was, but he basically gave notes
Speaker 1: on scripts and helped to develop stuff. I know he
Speaker 1: worked on King Kong because we had a lot of
Speaker 1: the interview that we did with him, he was talking
Speaker 1: about King Kong. But I want to say, yeah, you
Speaker 1: were a huge help. Like you were a huge help,
Speaker 1: and not a lot of people knew I was doing
Speaker 1: this documentary. I told you, I told a few other people,
Speaker 1: and I want to thank you. You are thanks in
Speaker 1: the movie too, but I want to thank you and
Speaker 1: this podcast for just being such a wonderful inspiration to
Speaker 1: me and I think other filmmakers too. It's not a
Speaker 1: little thing, it means a lot.
Speaker 3: Well, I can't wait to see what happens Sex. I'm
Speaker 3: so excited for you.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Congratulations on the film.
Speaker 1: My friend, Thank you so much, Mike, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: S